men

Swimming without the Sharks

August 23, 2016

I notice patterns, it’s a thing I do.

Not quite Rain Man, although I do agree K-Mart sucks and hot water does burn babies.
I count crows, not cards.

I write things and other writers write things. We send our words out in little bottles to float through the flotsam and jetsam on the vast stormy waters of the internet ocean. Some are valuable and need to be caught, remembered and released. Some are like Wilson in Cast Away and provide company and comfort. And there is a lot of trash. This metaphorical ocean is polluted with bad metaphors.

I’ve been on this island of mine for over a year. I see trends in the things the currents bring. It’s probably just algorithms, but still. The internet is my ocean, I shall not want for things to read.

One week eeeeerrrrrbody is talking about wolves. Then they morph into monsters. Full moon comes and, moon things. There is weeks of goddesses and then masks floating ashore.

I have used poetic memes to weigh what sits with me like truth and what makes me roll my eyes.

Everyone has their own ideas, ideals, wishes and wants.

Anything that says things like “I am a queen bow down to me.” Makes me think (nay, KNOW) you aren’t a queen, you are an asshole.

All this talk of wolves is mostly done by sheep who have stolen real wolf’s clothes.
The real wolves are naked and don’t give a fuck…because they are wolves howling with laughter at the fucking sheep playing dress-up.

This week it’s about love, this year really or if I am going to be totally honest, this life.
I am still learning what it is to love and be loved.

Correction, this week it is about equating love with the ocean.

There it is, that is better.

“My soul is so deep I want a deep love” rhetoric is right up there with the kings and queens of sheepland. Not buying it.

Turkeys often drown in puddles because they don’t have the common sense to get out of the rain.

But “I want a love so deep you need James Cameron to find it”. It’s really cold out there kids.

There was room for 2 on the headboard. Fuck that love.

I am tired of drifting, tired of drowning. I’d rather float.

I wrote this ages ago. Paraphrased the idea really.

It’s true.

I needed to stand up. I like knowing where the bottom is. Fuck, I love knowing where the land is. I like that stability of knowing where I stand. May not be as deep as the ocean but I have found these abysmal poets are all talk and no action anyways so I am drifting in a lifeboat interpreting Morse code, waiting for someone to come get me? Nah. I can swim. I’ll be on the beach with a bonfire, blanket and snacks getting wet and overwhelmed by the waves when I feel like getting wet and overwhelmed.

They weren’t wrong when they said salt water heals. It does, but it can suck you down in its depths too when the boys you cross oceans for make you cry the seven seas and liquefy into a puddle of tears.

I prefer waterfalls, flowing rivers and days at the beach.

No more perfect storms.

unable to even

Pussy, Liquor and Boy Strippers

August 22, 2016

I bet you think strippers like you too. (Forgetting Sarah Marshall)

Last night was the night to pop my girls ‘never been to male strippers before’ cherry.

She’s just been through a break-up and is coming out the other side.
I had to be the one to take her.
Strippers do like me.
Way back in the day I may have dated one or two.

We were talking on the drive about working, clubs, stripper boys, she didn’t know what to expect and I wasn’t sure either.
I had a moment of Zen in NOLA in April with the sweetest stripper, we still check in from time to time. He is doing well and this pleases me. He is a good story. But the rules down there are different.
The boys I dated danced for men and I rarely went to see them at work and that was a decade ago or even longer.

Things change.

And they stay the same.

We were also talking about drinking. I’d stood in my dining room before we got in her truck and vowed to only have a drink or two.
“I don’t want to get drunk.” I said, and I meant it. I never want to get drunk. I like drunky better. Just that happy, bubbly, tipsy before you shed all reason and self-control. Half naked, half in the bag.

The best laid plans of mice and white girls.

I didn’t get white girl wasted.

In the sea of little black dresses on little white girls there were varying levels of ‘oh honey you shouldn’t be in public right now’.

I confessed to being a geographical alcoholic. I am.

I have 8 bottles of booze less than 8 feet away, half a bottle of wine in the fridge and a few beers brought home from work, untouched since Wednesday.

I’ll probably go another month or 3 and have a dozen drinks, maybe.

Unless I go back to a strip club.

I ended up getting drunk last night and am writing this with a righteous hangover. As I was saying ‘I don’t want to get drunk’ , I said “I can’t not drink at strip clubs”. I had a moment of clarity wherein my inner voice said ‘who do you think you’re fooling?’

Something about those places ignites my inner booze hound.

Every strip club I have ever worked at or walked into, I drank at. Sometimes to the point of blacking out.

Even when I was really just a waitress in said clubs I was adored by my co-workers for somehow being able to cajole multiple shots from customers for after work. 16-20 stacked shots waiting at 2:45 am wasn’t rare. Enough for me to get lit and share.
And even when I was really a waitress and drinking responsibly, there were a couple nights where I really should have been fired or videotaped or both.

The story of one night in particular came out.

Years ago I’d had beef with my bartender for a week. We were not playing nicely. It hadn’t come to blows but we were slamming things down on the bar and shit was ready to break. He brought a bottle of tequila and slammed that down on the bar after work one night, looked at me and said “we’re going to drink this and work it out.”

Half a bottle later I was on stage with 2 new strippers dancing away in my street clothes, doing the splits like I had never quit and making out with the tiny girl whose name I cannot recall. The bottle of really good tequila migrated over to the stage with us and the shots kept coming. It got a little heated and I ended up making her squirt on stage in front of half the staff and a few leftover dancers. There was more to the night but we’ll just leave it there.

The end of the story is I threw up outside my building, staggered up the stairs and collapsed, clothed, in bed next to my boyfriend at the time. I had ejaculate from my chin to my belly button and up to my elbow, I reeked of sex, puke and alcohol and I was a disheveled mess. He got out of bed an hour later, kissed my forehead and went off to work. Didn’t notice a thing or never mentioned it if he did.

Never underestimate the power of denial. (American Beauty)

Now before all y’all go thinking I am the worst girlfriend ever, there is a little more to the story. He had gotten black out drunk a few weeks prior and smashed me in the mouth for not fucking him.

I had mentally checked out of the relationship, my body had yet to follow.

I didn’t fuck her for revenge, but I got drunk to deal*.

I made it into work the next night and there were no consequences there either except a raging hangover and they had all placed bets on what time I would try to bail. I didn’t, I stayed. I am stubborn like that.

Took me a year and another beating to leave that boyfriend too.

Same club, different time, I got drunk with the man who would become my farm husband. He was on a date of sorts, with a large group of cool kids, they got me smashed and I kissed him as he walked out the door, I didn’t know one of the girls was his not quite girlfriend. She became the mistress, our sisterwife and is now his common-law wife.

That time there were consequences.

But whatevs.

*It’s never a good idea for me to get drunk when I have something to deal with.

I posted once to Facebook “For the next few hours all statuses will be brought to you by whiskey, lots and lots of whiskey”. 100 likes. Seriously guys? Someone switch off the Wi-Fi and hold my hair back.

We need to introduce breathalyzers for phones. Blow over and you can only call for pizza, cab or 911.

I almost died one night fairly early in my marriage when I was waitressing at a strip club, did a day shift on a Friday and proceeded to slam 6 Jack’s in 20 minutes before leaving work followed by half a mickey at home. I hadn’t eaten since Monday. I did however break into his Facebook account and I wish I was drunk enough to forget what I found there…but that would have meant alcohol poisoning and possible death.

I stayed in the marriage a year for every shot of Jack I took to erase that one fight we had.

Stubborn and drunk on what I thought was love.

unable to even

Fortunate Cookie

August 21, 2016

Everyone this is Sally.

Sally this is…everyone.

Angel came down from heaven yesterday, she stayed just long enough to rescue me.
Jimi Hendrix

Sally isn’t an angel, but she has wings, close e-fucking-nuff.

We used to ride through the hayfields on the tractor. The mantises would whir up out of the grass dancing in the motes from the hay we were cutting. The golden glory when the sun was going down made it look like fairies and heaven to me.

She came in from the less than heavenly porch and landed on my desk lamp the next morning.

My son anointed her with the name Sally and the working title “Guardian of the House.”

I moved her to the golden glorious morning glory porch, lest she starve, and there she stays. Guarding my house.

Thanks Sally.

The book I am writing starts out with a girl, much like me, who is a writer, much like me, sitting outside and a mantis lands on her startling her out of a daydream.

The pic in the background was a gift from the man that inspired the book.

Now, I am not saying it’s a sign from god, but it’s a sign from god.

A few things happened that keep pushing me back to the book that I don’t want to write because my muses are treating me like dirt and leaving me in the lion’s den then pointing and laughing when I got bit.

There was this fortunate fortune cookie.

And then Rob Breszny said things. A lot of things.

And then the moon was full and I was left unsupervised.

The theme of this full moon?
Leave your comfort zone and go explore the dark, your magic is in there.

I did that.

and this…

The theme of every full moon ever?

Let it fucking go.

“The mantis comes to us when we need peace, quiet and calm in our lives. Usually making an appearance when we’ve flooded our lives with so much chaos that we can no longer hear the still small voice within us because of the external din we’ve created.”

I have to return to therapy next Tuesday and she is invariably going to ask me if I worked on the book and I am out of excuses as to why I haven’t.

For a while there I didn’t know what to write.

I get it now.

I have to finish the thing.

I have plans and the book being done and sold is part of my future.

I have encouragement from other published writers that it is good and I should keep going.

So what of my fortunate cookie?

Double entendre.

My favorite.

I am writing my literal financial fortune.

I can finish this thing any way I want.

I got stuck on the book during the part where our dear heroine gets assaulted in a parking lot
Life imitated art and I was scorned by the hero and anti-hero because of it.

“Well what did you think was going to happen?”

Um, not that and definitely not this.

They left me to my own devices, laughed when I got hurt. Made me feel dumb and small. An insignificant speck floating around in a huge sea of blue.

“Enlightenment is when a wave realizes it is the ocean.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

I’ve always been able to write the story of my life.
I just forgot for a bit and handed my pen to others.

The ending has always been up to me.

Now I know what I don’t want.

I love the ocean, god knows I do. But that doesn’t mean I want to go ass over teakettle off the side of a boat in the middle of nowhere breathing canned air with no idea where the land is.

I am content playing in the surf near the shore. I can go under, get wet and stand up when I am feeling overwhelmed and catch my breath.

I just want to play in the waves, I am done drowning and choking.

Neil Gaiman said his favorite stories were the ones where women saved themselves.

I am swimming to shore.

So now I know what I want because I know who makes me cry when I look at my phone and I know who makes me smile.

It ends like this…I get loved as is. By someone who doesn’t make me feel like I am gasping for air, grasping at straws or unworthy.

He isn’t a poet, but neither am I.

He calls me a ‘dork’.
I know it means that I am adored.
It’s not everyone’s happy ending, but it works for me.
I’d rather that than be someone’s sexual soulmate and never hear a word.
Or someone else’s Lady of Stars, but we have to end this gracefully.

Fuck that fuck this fuck them.

I want peace and quiet. I want a relationship that doesn’t have me posting to this blog every 5 minutes trying to work shit out because I am not getting any help and I can’t breathe.

I am a good girl, I just needed a good man to see it.

I’ve done my PhD. in Fuckboi Languages, Variations and Interpretations, I have the Scorpio decoder ring, learning how to speak pragmatic lumberjack is going to be a cakewalk.

Or a cookie walk.

lost boys

No Funeral Required

August 20, 2016

The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.
Joss Whedon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Sometimes that is the truth.
I have shit days, we all do.
The ones where we just want it to end, whatever mask ‘it’ is wearing that day.
Good news?
Masks don’t last, wounds heal and eventually things get better.

Hot Neighbor is always asking me if whatever is vexing me in that moment is going to bother me in a year. My answers vary from a ‘Probably not’ to a chuckling ‘nope’. Then he hugs me and I feel less busted than I did before I said the thing out loud. He is leveling up at lightning speed and keeps asking me to join him. With his gentle nudges and check-ins that all sound like “Sarah, evolve, its time now.”

I ask after his Russian nesting doll and he shows up when I need him.

So there is that then.

The hardest thing I ever had to do was forgive someone who wasn’t sorry.
Unknown

It’s actually not that bad. You should try it sometime.

Once you have done it, it gets really easy.

I’ve done it and I’ll do it again a few dozen times before my life ends.

Here’s how, in one easy step.

Realize that…

Everyone has their own perception and reality.
Matter changes when observed, so me being near you will alter your behavior to a degree, but the microcosm that is you, is still you. We have this immediate second that we live in and everything else is just stored data. As creatures with active imaginations and sometimes/often corrupt filing systems for memories, sometimes the data gets distorted and no amount of arguing or worry on my part is going to allow me to change your mind. Whatever you think happened is your hardwired reality. So be it.

So that isn’t it either.

I think the hardest part of the human condition is saying good bye to someone who is still alive.

I avoid it like the plague.

‘Cause when you’re done with this world
You know the next is up to you
John Mayer

shit.

It IS up to me, and for a long time I didn’t know what world I wanted to live in.

The fear of the great unknown keeping me tethered to the Walking Dead. Just like Michonne and her walkers on leashes, no arms to hold me, no teeth to bite me neither, but damn they smelled bad and held me back.

The severance becomes exponentially harder when there are invisible threads and entangled particles.

I went to a funeral once and a Buddhist monk came with a ball of string. I am not sure what the purpose was but when he cut it I felt a palpable release, like she was free.

I have been wrong this whole time, I don’t need an exorcism with an old priest and a young priest, I need a monk with scissors and a ball of string

I wrote a thing once and now it’s making me cringe. That happens a lot.

Something along the lines of ‘when given the choice between the devil you know and the devil you don’t stick with the familiar, he will probably hurt you like he has before, but at least you know how to tend to your wounds.’

That is a shitty philosophy. The girl who wrote that is dead to me now. I have no problem burying older outdated versions of me, I don’t even bother with flowers on their graves anymore, just smile wistfully now and again, thinking ‘you silly bitch, thanks for the lessons on what we ought not to do again ever.’

Catharsis is easier when there is a cataclysmic event to accompany it.

“Traitor child. I must despise you now”
Queen Bavmorda, Willow

But what happens when there is no blow out.

What if you just drift apart slowly?

What if you really like being near that person because your soul feels good but because of circumstances beyond your control (see above where their reality is different than yours) it ain’t working anymore.

What then?

That my friends, is the heaviest door to close.

There is no fanfare or funeral or closing ceremony.

It just is, becomes it just isn’t.

I think that’s why the easy way out is what everyone else seems to do which is flip the switch between I have you to I hate you.

I don’t hate anyone because a huge part of what I am is understanding. So it’s hard for me.

Damn near impossible.

Probably because I see walls where there are actually doors and vice versa. I have bloodied my knuckles knocking on doors that once were opened to me but have now been locked/bricked over.

Watching through my fingers, watching through my fingers
Caught off guard by your favorite song
Oh I’ll be dancing at a funeral, dancing at a funeral
Sleeping in the clothes you love
It’s such a shame we had to see them burn, shame we had to see them burn

What’s gonna be left of the world if you’re not in it?
What’s gonna be left of the world, oh

Every minute and every hour
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more
Every stumble and each misfire
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more
Bastille

What is going to be left of this world without them in it?

Me.

I am all I ever had anyways.

All the things they left behind, all the things I became when my particles met theirs and my atoms changed and transformed from being tangled up with them.

This I get to keep.

I’m gonna go ahead and do what Joseph Campbell suggested and cleanse my doors of perception and wander out into the infinite.

They can stay in that graveyard where I buried all the previous versions of me. Keeping each other company.

No funeral required.

…and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand
Sanober Khan

Uncategorized

Yesterday is Where I Left it.

August 10, 2016

Yesterday I saw a soldier demon try and claw its way out of a little girl. Constantine

Yesterday, all my trouble seemed so far away. The Beatles

Wait, no yesterday was the trouble and I was the little girl with the demon in her, wanting out.

I live with chronic pain. I just do. I don’t talk about it often. I haven’t had more than a week below a 3/10 since Arizona, and that was 7 days out of 7 years. I miss that chiropractor like oxygen. I swear she had angel wings and a halo. Her hands were made of magic and she rearranged my bones into a less painful configuration for a time.

I don’t talk about it often because to speak of pain aloud gives it acknowledgment and thereby power over me.

I hurt, and that’s okay. I am used to it and most days it doesn’t bother me. And on the days it does, I either let it or I don’t. Some days I have no choice and it huffs and it puffs and it blows my house down. So I nap and cry and put ice packs in interesting places and wait it out. All storms pass.

I am in control over my own damned self.
I manufacture my own happiness and other emotions in my own mind.

Giant said something the other day and I was quick to correct him.
He said “I can’t come running over and make you a happy Sarah.”
No you can’t, you can add to it, but you can’t create it with your presence or take it away with your absence.
My sadness also belongs to me and me alone.
I cried rivers over him, which flowed into oceans, but they were my own.
I could have stopped at any time, but I chose to go with the flow and see where it took me. Which is here, and here is good. I float.

4-6 days a year I hit an 8.
10/10 being active labor or the first while after the car crash that started all of this.

Yesterday was an 8.5

When I say I live with chronic pain I mean she sleeps with me every night, I try to roll over and ignore her, but she wakes me up sometimes. She sits with me in the car and I avoid acknowledgement until about hour four then she sits in my lap and weighs heavy on my legs and lower back.

I made a decision upon a farm couch 7 years ago.

There is no parallel universe with any version of me who would not have stubborned herself up off that couch. There is no doppelganger of mine that convalesced and died there. Sisterwife lays there dying now, her choice, not mine.

There are days where I hurt so bad that I cry hysterically and this opens me up to emotional outbursts that I cannot control. But there are days when I don’t. I live for those. I love being in the water because I float myself down to a 2.5. The stretching and cardio I get on the pole and the endorphins released during sex lessens the pain as well, or distracts me the same way opioids do. The pain is there and I simply don’t care.

Apparently poles of all kinds are good things for me.

I take the same attitude with my PTSD. I don’t have it. It has a key to my house and pops by now and again to remind me something bad happened years ago. But I have mentally put so much space between me and then, it’s like watching an old movie clip. If I put effort in I can remember the whole film, but why would I? I didn’t do that to me, someone else did and they are long gone and far, far away. I’m in no clear or present danger. Those little flashes are just warning lights when I veer down a familiar path. So I leave.

I do not understand why we would prolong our suffering. Wasn’t it bad enough the first time?

I didn’t do those thing to me, someone else did. Not my problem. I practice kindness not cruelty because I can. The only person I can control is myself, and these are my choices.

Let go and let god.

Everything is as it should be.

This too shall pass.

Laugh and smile as often as possible and pass it on to others.

I live for belly laughs, good food, better sex, writing, loving and learning.

Yesterday all of those things seemed really far away.

Yesterday don’t matter ‘cos it’s gone. Rolling Stones

Today is a whole new glorious day.

lost boys

Tinder and the Really Big Fish

August 8, 2016

I shut that shit down 2-3 weeks ago now?
I don’t know exactly, just more time has passed that I have not been on it than I was actually on it.

The first guy I pulled out of the water is the one I want. He’s huge.

But the fuckbois just keep on coming. And I keep throwing them back.

My arm is tired.

Bad date messaged yesterday asking if I wanted to see him again. I did not engage.

‘He who bailed’ keeps checking in on that weird timeline I only associate with my lost boys who don’t have access to clocks or any concept of time.

I am totally out of get out jail free cards, must have lost them in the move.

I told him that I already have amassed a fuckboi army with those from my past and I wasn’t looking to add to it. They are enough trouble as is. I have already established patterns and relationships with them. They are not ideal but they are familiar, and as much as a fuckboi can belong to anyone, they are mine. And I have the anti-venom for when they bite me in the ass.

The problem with a fuckboi army? They don’t show up when I need them, they just show up, fully armed and ready to take over whenever it suits them. ‘I wonder what Sarah is doing, she was really nice.’

See also “when I am happy a bell gets rung in the graveyard of my heart and all my skeletons get up and ask me to dance.”

And the new ‘recruits’?

Ew, no.

I didn’t ask for this.

My tinder window is closed so they are finding me on instagram and messaging me there. Delete/block/repeat.

I had tentative plans with one or two, but that was July and you are just messaging me yesterday?

‘He who bailed’ said he was trying not to message me so he didn’t appear desperate. He’s a nice enough fellow so I gave him the following advice.

“If you are interested in women my age I will tell you a secret. Good morning texts are good, good night texts are good. Shoot a message out during the day and we might not answer because we are busy, so don’t double up. Don’t listen to your cock or your brain, go with your gut, your gut won’t lie.”

I didn’t want someone who was going to message me every day. Until He did. And I liked it. And then he stopped, and here I sit. Feeling like shit, wondering what happened.

A month, a full calendar month of checking in here and there daily. I didn’t feel overwhelmed and I didn’t feel neglected. Now I do.

I really did try to keep feelings out of it, just breathe and see where it goes. But that is the thing about being in the ocean. You are bound to get wet.

Sunshine and I noticed a strange category of men on tinder who had a profile pic of them holding a fish.
(See also men holding gators and goats, a bizarre sub-species)

“Is this fish for me? Am I supposed to be impressed with the size of the fish? Do you need me to cook it for you? Did you wash your hands? What do I do with this fish?”

I like fish and I like fishing, it just seemed odd, like a cat proudly yowling after the gift of a dead thing.

Then I looked on my guy’s Instagram and there he was, grinning and holding a huge pike.
And I thought it was adorable.

If you like someone, perceptions change.

Changing them back, now that is a bitch.

Establishing happy habits just to have them taken away?

Ain’t that the fucking truth.

This would be a good time to call in the army, but they don’t come when I call, they only come when I’m happy and I ain’t.

I don’t want to go fishing again.

Uncategorized

Firewalking

August 7, 2016

The neighbors are fighting again.

At least she is fighting back this time. She sounds like a different woman when she sticks up for herself.

It’s not going to last long, she is going to crumble, I give it 15 minutes.

I have heard their soundtrack before, played it too.

I relocated to a bigger apartment in the same building and now I have front row, balcony seats.

It hurts me.

Mostly it’s him calling her names and smashing shit and then this shrill wail, like a banshee comes out of her mouth.

It is echoes of my own.

I used to be her.

I dated a him.

And another him with another face, and probably a few more.

I want to reach out and down from my balcony and pull her up to mine. Show her what it looks like when women make it on their own. How nice it can be, how clean and quiet. How we laugh. How we swap stories saying ‘yes honey, I’ve been there too’ over coffee.

One of my best girlfriends is in the shit right now.

She said “I know you are getting sick of me.”

I replied “I got 9+ years of being in those relationships, my patience for you is nowhere near ending. However, please don’t take that long.”

It seems to be some rite of passage. Like some phoenix from the ash bullshit but the fire has fists and a drinking problem.
And what happens if you don’t rise? You have to pack so much ice around you, you freeze to death.

Mental abuse is still abuse and she has suffered with the rest of us.
And she is in it again.

Different man, different face, different way of cheating on her.

He is an addict and his mistress is drugs.

“But he has demons”

Honey we all do, he just chooses to feed his.

He would rather risk another psychotic break than stay clean.

The core 4 friends I have are all strippers, or were until recently. Myself included. We’ve all seen drugs change people we knew and loved into strangers and we have all watched as years have gone by and somehow some of them stay intact.

There is a spectrum. On one end is the unfortunate kid that smokes one crack rock and dies of a heart attack at age 16 and there is Keith Richards. Everyone else falls somewhere in between.

I have watched people succumb to cocaine psychosis and it made me quit. I didn’t love myself but I didn’t want to give myself a chemical lobotomy either.

I have watched girls end up on the street from bad boyfriends and bad drugs. Took a few into my house and gave them a shot at getting clean. They took it.

I wish we had some kind of hive mind collective we could tap into, project our experiences into the minds of our friends. So they could feel what we felt, the fear, the knuckle that left me with a scar on my lip. The warm arms of those who loved me taking care of me and now…the men who defend me, protect me, love me, take up arms against those who even look at me the wrong way.

The ones that love to watch me belly laugh and squeal, not scream. The ones I can melt into because I trust them.

They are what is waiting on the other side of that firewalk.

This is the “warmth that can only come from a burning”. (SK)

I know you are tired, but come, this is the way. Rumi

The neighbors got evicted, too many noise complaints. I hear him blaming her for it and my eyes roll so bad they get stuck and my blood boils. But that is the way it is, I can see it from one floor up and across the way, she is in it and can’t see what he is. I wish she would just realize he ain’t nothing but a wet paper bag and fight her way out.

I don’t know how old the neighbor is 25-30 if I had to guess, the years haven’t been too hard or too kind, she wears her sadness like a mask that only the rest of us who have shed one just like it can see. The fake smile that never reaches her eyes that dart in fear lest she get caught talking to me.

I am the enemy. I am a walking example of what she could be if she left him.

And I called the cops on him one night when I heard the sickening sounds of a well landed punch and the air leaving her body for a minute. Nothing happened, cops came and left, she stayed. I’ll call them again.

I’ll go get my girl again and bring her somewhere safe. My house is safe, we built it that way.

My Sunshine went through some shit too, an addict witnessed the whole thing left her to get beat. So I rolled up with my kid and a baseball bat. Still regret not running that waste of skin down with my car.

I will do it again for anyone in harm’s way.

I escaped death by the kindness of strangers and the patience of friends.

Someone has to help. I am someone.

Uncategorized

Who is this Masked Man?

August 4, 2016

Who is he really? I have no idea.

There exists a meme that makes the rounds about forgiving someone who isn’t sorry and how that’s strength.

It is.

I should know, I just did the thing.

It’s going to take longer for me to forgive myself. But only by a lil bit.

2 years it took me to come to the realization that I fell in love with a masked man.

And only the mask.

He’s kinda an asshole without it.

He is not the Batman, beyond the rich/hermit thing. He can’t even save himself.

The lightbulb that went off burned my retinas.

Sitting in therapist’s office, she was questioning why I even come to her at all.

“Sarah, you seem to be able to figure things out rather well on your own, why are you here…am I actually doing anything for you?”

She is, but I have to stop with the day-to-day and resurrect my past. I am afraid I did that thing that I warned her I would do which was twist the conversation into a new direction to get away from what I don’t want to deal with.

Recent past? I got this.

The time called ‘before’ like when I was married? I am actually alright with all of that too. I learned a lot, mostly what not to do. I shed skin that didn’t fit and itched something awful. I have already danced naked on that grave enough. I can’t even remember where I buried them.

Way back when I was a little girl with glasses, a huge vocabulary and skinned knees?
She needs some love and attention and then I think we are going to be okay.

Someday soon I will reach back and pull her out and tell her everything is going to be better than fine. It is going to be spectacular.

I hold onto ghosts, lawd knows I do. I feed them, water them and give them a place to manifest. My bedroom is a Ouija board and I commune with the dead on soft sheets, my hands are wandering planchettes that move with psychic, spiritual guidance and spell out sweet things on their skin or trace the constellations in their freckles trying to decipher maps to home or both.

At least when they appear I can recognize them, they remain true to the men I knew, and their newfound transparency is pretty sweet.

The golden rule with the dead is ask them what they want.

I said to the Giant “When I start to develop genuine feelings for someone it’s like a bell gets rung in my heart’s graveyard and all my skeletons get up and ask me to dance.” Via text the morning after we slow danced in my dining room.

Happened when I loved him, Jason too and the Hulk. Young Un the first was the first so he got immunity and I recovered alone.

I am doing that thing again. Talking (non)sensical nonsense in avoidance.

What of this masked man…

Well shit.

I can see it with abundant clarity now.

Flowed off my tongue as the truth tends to do.

I said

“The first night, the night we talked for 12 hours he was this attentive, excited, vulnerable man with this unyielding strength. I fell in love. I did. I fell in it and stayed there, wet up to my waist and waiting for his return.

But the man that called me the next day and every subsequent day or night after that, wasn’t him.”

Maybe the stars were aligned a certain way that first night, or it was the Fireball, blame it on the alcohol. Or maybe the doors of perception were either cleansed or filthy…filthy sounds more astute.

Or it could have been prima nocta. I was taken away and mindfucked by a man that wasn’t mine.

There it is.

Whatever happened, he never came back. Except to lord over me a bit.

I wanted that back so badly I couldn’t see the truth. I just wanted My Poet back. But My Poet didn’t actually exist outside of that time and place.

It was a well-constructed mask that fell away over the next two weeks and then he fell away too.

I did the same thing in my marriage. Fell for him in the first 3 months when it was summertime and we were new and life wasn’t hard. Then he turned into a video game playing couch-potato and I became a Fallout widow. But dammit I hung on to those 90 days for dear life and wasted my dear life for the next 2556.69539 days.

Until I landed in therapy.

I’ve worn masks too.

I wasn’t exactly myself when I’d go to work, but that veil was a fake name and more make up than I wear on a day to day basis. Geisha-face with stilettos basically. Salome in her war paint. Call it what you will but I was only selling the skin my soul came in, not my soul itself.

I’ve spent a lot of time teaching and training myself not to lie, I can happily say ‘what you see is what you get.’ I’m mutable and I have my moods, but I am always myself.

I wandered off again.

He claimed to be one of 4% of men who derive pleasure from sharing his woman with other men. We talked about it at great length, I sent stories and started a book about it.

I had yet another moment of clarity. They have been coming down from heaven like lightning strikes in the heat of July.

He’s never had what he wanted. What if the reality of it is actually more than he could bear?

That too feels like truth as it rolls off my tongue. It’s my truth as well. I am not sure I could be that girl/his girl, but I was willing to try.

I am all the things all these men ever wanted until they are confronted with the reality of it.

Be careful what you wish for.

This is my one true face.

men

Of Course You can Touch my Butt

August 3, 2016

Oh honey, you had a bad day?
Come over here, tuck yourself into me.
And of course you can touch my butt.
Do you need a sandwich?

Oh honey, you’re still at work 16 hours into the day and you can’t come over?
Here is a picture of my butt to remind you that it is here waiting for you to touch it.

The word document file name for this article is ‘actually touch my butt’.

I was sitting on the porch last night and the neighbors were fighting and my heart got heavy and I’d just made a new Word document called ‘touch my butt’, it was open so I vented there.

This is why I lose things. I give them obscure names, my laptop reboots without my permission and poof.

Buh-bye now, see you next year when I’m cleaning and organizing.

It’s the morning after the new moon.

Save one bill, everything is paid. I’ll get to it today.

The house is spotless, like “It’d be okay if Queen Elizabeth popped over for tea” clean.

Burned some candles and some sage last night.

We are only letting love into this house. So mote it be.

I feel clean, calm and I keep smirking.

Doesn’t hurt a bit that the Lumberjack messages me intermittently throughout the day, every day.

He’s working way too hard right now and I haven’t seen him in…I don’t know how many days.

Huh, funny, I usually count these things.

He said his last girlfriend and he broke up because she was constantly fussing about him working too much.

So she spent the time she did get with you bitching about not seeing you so now she never gets to see you?

That makes no sense.

A lot of things women do when it comes to men make no sense to me.

There are a bazillion people on the planet, if the one you have isn’t working for you do not play blacksmith and try to heat them and hammer them into something that is not their original shape. Go find another one that fits your shape.

Don’t get me wrong. In the folly of my youth (which really only ended 3-4 years ago) I thought if I just tried hard enough ‘I could change him’.

I’ll tell all y’all a secret. No, you can’t. And really? You shouldn’t want to.

How hard that must be on a person you (profess to) love or care about to constantly feel like they have to adapt to please you, like they are not enough as is.
Pretty sure that isn’t love.
I am quite sure that is how the bulk of my exes made me feel. If I just behaved a little better, or was a little quieter, less aggressive, less sassy, less needy/slutty/chatty/sleepy/sneezy/bashful/dopey/grumpy etc. etc. but then I am not me. So why’d you pick me again? And why won’t you touch my butt?

I still have men in my life that make me feel this way. But not for long. We are only letting love into this house.

This is the problem with the neighbors, they fuck and fight and that isn’t love. It’s just a loud, screaming, sobbing mess.

Women are not put on this earth to fix men. They aren’t broken.
Men are not put on this earth to lord over women. We got this.
We’re two separate yet compatible halves of one whole.
Men don’t need to be fixed, they need to be loved and nurtured and left to go build things.
Women do not need to be ruled, we need to be left to be creative and kind and loving.

I’m about to get called out for being anti-feminist.

I could give a fuck.

I do not believe that men and women are equal. I believe we are symbiotic.
And by sucking the life out of the opposite gender trying to get them to submit, we are actually hurting ourselves.

Women have access to this powerful, protective, productive male energy and we harness it to
…
hold our purses at Bed Bath and Beyond?
That doesn’t seem right.

When did we trade nurturing for nagging? And can I please take my nurturing back?
Nagging feels shitty, both to give and receive.

By denying a man his masculinity you are denying your divine feminine self.
Um, what’s not to love about being a woman, we are soft, mystical creatures that create things out of nothing, capable of abstract thought, we feel things on these deep emotional levels and have multiple orgasms.

I jiggle when I walk. He likes that, as do I, I hate doing squats. I am soft. I do not consider this to be a weakness, but strength instead. I am not hard and rigid like him. I flow. I adapt. I soothe myself and others.
Put me against a wall and things change a bit. I have a vicious mouth on me and for the most part I can hold my own physically. But when there is a good man around, I don’t have to do those things. I can build things, fix things and I can appreciate having a man around to open that jar.

Lumberjack is having a stressful time at work right now. He talks to me about it, I make suggestions and ask questions and he comes to his own conclusions. I do not presume to know what is best for him or even exactly how his business works, I have an idea because I listen when he speaks and I ask questions.

He throws the word ‘perfect’ around a lot. I am not. What I am is compatible. The things about me that are feminine and good work with the things about him that are masculine and good.
And for once I feel appreciated, so I make sure he does too.

My job here is to see him when I can. Listen to him vent, rub his back and let him touch my butt. Because like the rest of me, it is soft and soothing and divine.

unable to even

Medusa’s Other Curse

August 1, 2016

On a long enough timeline everyone settles into the boxes I put them in.
He’ll stop blowing the lid off eventually or so help me I will get out the duct tape.

Or the coconut oil.

Once I’ve compartmentalized them and figured out the lessons they were sent to teach me I still get nostalgic twinges from time to time. I cared for them, still do when they let me. I saw different versions of different futures with them.

As of late, it has become abundantly clear that when I feel like I could actually end up in a viable relationship with someone new, them old ghosts all come a knockin’. Like I have to run the gauntlet of temptation and answer the Sphinx’s riddles to come out the other side clean.

It has happened before, it will probably happen again. It is history repeating on repeat, just with a few new players.

I also have to remember everything they taught me, pop quiz tomorrow or the next day. Every day.

I see your patterns and raise you a ‘if you wanted me you would be here’.

The gargantuan moral in all of this is no matter what I saw happening, or the promises they made…none of them are here with me now.
I went to bed alone last night and for as many nights as I can rightly remember in the recent past. Unsustainable. The center does not hold (Yeats)

Viable.

That’s the million dollar word.

Spoke to Jason last night. At least he acknowledges what a big deal it is for me to use that term to describe a man.

Basically translates to ‘I haven’t fucked this up yet’. Don’t plan on it neither. There is no angst here. Just so far, so fun. And due to circumstances beyond my control I haven’t slept with him yet, but we keep talking. It’s like accidentally dating. Probably a good chance to get it right all things considered.

The last few times I tried to date someone it went bad. I stumbled and fumbled, said things when I ought not to have, kept my mouth shut when I ought to have been saying something. The usual.

But I learned.

Hulk taught me that I didn’t have to settle to settle down with someone. That all the qualities I admire in a man can be found in one body. Just not his or with him. He had his dream life waiting and I stepped aside gladly.

Young Un taught me that 20somethings are plausible, possible options. And that friendships can grow from the bones of old not-quite relationships…on that long enough timeline I speak of with fondness and regularity.

And now the Giant.

He said he was riding his bike over, I knew it meant he was planning on drinking. I had no plans to stop him. A few beers tends to flush his cheeks and loosen his lips a bit. Look, don’t touch was my mantra, might as well feed my eyes if that is all that can be fed. Ears too. He says nice things. Enigmatic things, prophetic things. I swear he is the only exception to my rule of men where the words they say are the words they mean. He speaks in riddles and rhymes sometimes. Not sure if I like when he does it as I have grown so accustomed to the other and found peace there.

Working on peace. Draping myself in white flags trying to keep both the sexier and more vulnerable pieces of me covered, but he is a snake charmer and sometime I cannot help but wiggle and dance this way or that, then the music stops and I am not sure how I ended up tucked into the space we should have left for the Lord.

I forgot myself after 2 beers myself and bent over in front of him trying to find a song. I know what I must have looked like in that moment. Blissed out, swaying a little to this random piece of music I found with baroque guitar and Uilleann pipes. Smiling, eyes half closed. Hot Neighbor was here too (oh ya, that happened) and him being near me is akin to being in water (I float), Sunshine was in fine drunk form too and we had all been belly laughing. I am pretty when I am happy and I was.

Or maybe I just moved in that mythical way he has accused me of, the one that flips his switch. He hasn’t explained it to me, just acknowledged it. He has explained nothing. Or quite possibly everything, who knows at this point.

It was probably just the Coronas.

And the mood lighting, and the good moods, and the food and the whole night.

He kissed me on the porch in the fairy lights. And there may have been some territorial pissings in the dining room prior, as I said Hot Neighbor came by.

I told Jason this and he asked if that was when the orgy started. No habibi. No orgy, and not stress either oddly. Everything just flowed, as it should be.

Giant thanked me profusely for not letting things get out of hand. As if I had a choice. As if any of them give me choices. “Jumping takes strength of will”* and I don’t want him by halves.

I think he sees me as Medusa, too scared to look right at me so he just sees my reflection.

And therein lies the lesson. The Giant, the Poet and Gelfling. All left because of preconceived notions about what I am and what I want.

None of them thought to ask me. None of them took the time to learn me.

Giant says he will one day finish the book of me.

Jokes on you darling.

For one, you never looked past the cover.

I am an open book. Rare and valuable.

And two…

I plan on dying with a pen in my hand.

Rewriting until I get my happy ending just right.

(*Dead Like Me)

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…and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand Sanober Khan

…and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand
Sanober Khan