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dancing girls

Angels of Harlem (and elsewhere) a playlist

June 15, 2016

I should be writing.

I am not out of the sad zone just yet but I can see where the end is, timing depends on my momentum and traffic.

Instead I made 8 new playlists.

My fixation du jour?

Cleopatra by the Lumineers.

“I was late for this I was late for that I was late for the love of my life.” (I really was)

I heard it in a store and quickly scribbled down lyrics so I could look it up.

I am currently late, for an actual party.

The house is clean, the bed is made, the dishes are done, the dog has been walked. I am showered and adorned semi appropriately its 39 degrees, 102.2 F. I googled it. So I am wearing a sheer skirt, my ass is covered. The rest of my tattoos, just barely.

I am fighting going out.

I want to stay home with my music. I barely know anyone where I am going and my shyness is coming back in a way I don’t know how to deal with.
So I have gone back to high school and am hiding in my room with my albums to shield me from the world outside.

I was told therapy is making me into an open wound.

There it is. I feel raw and exposed right now. I don’t know how to people. The last few attempts have gone badly.

But I promised. And I love the birthday girl.

Just one more song…please.

I remember being blissed out when I realized you could find music on the internet. Just think of a song and there it is. Except I can’t seem to find a copy of Crash Vegas covering Down to the Wire by Buffalo Springfield.

Every once in a while I hear a song that was hidden in an album somewhere, and or never made it to the radio and I didn’t remember it until I heard it again by fluke.

My heart stops, then starts again a little too quickly. It hurts. I shake. Sometimes I cry.

Elvis Presley and America by U2, was like that, heard it pouring out of a van in a gas station parking lot and watched the sun go down with a stranger in total silence and awe of how perfect that moment was. Hadn’t heard it since 1990. 20 years had passed. Could have been to the day, I have no way of knowing.

I had a moment when I was waitressing, Curtis put on a Peter Gabriel album and I heard I Grieve for the first time in 10 years. I stood frozen in a sea of people, just lost in the music, he took the plates from my hands and served them for me so I could just be.

Yesterday…the Badger by the Tea Party came on and I was transported back to my early 20’s. It made it onto the instrumental playlist. I haven’t named that one yet.

The one with only women is Angels of Harlem, and elsewhere.

I like naming things.

On the Mend by Foo Fighters was on one drunken night in Giant’s kitchen. Hadn’t heard it in forever. We both just sat quietly until it was over and I sighed a lot. He was playing Matthew Good Band in the truck the first night he picked me up for our first real date. “I came back for you, so you wouldn’t be alone.”

I am alone now and avoiding that song.

Once upon a time in a strip club probably 7 years ago now, I sat with a table. Asked them what they did when they mentioned working together. They worked for a company that was engineering speakers that attached to the body and connected to the nervous system.

I got totally overwhelmed and excited. I took a card, they offered to let me try it.

I proceeded to get rather drunk and lost said card, never heard of it again. But it sounded like heaven.

I wonder how many once in a lifetime moments I have experienced and then lost in strip clubs, in the haze of drinking myself not shy.

Speaking of. I have quit. My skin is happy with the lack of alcohol I have been imbibing. My body is doing fine as well, except…

I was putting together the playlists and stumbled on Rat Finks, Suicide Tanks and Cannibal Girls by White Zombie and muscle memory dictated and urge to run to work and jump on the pole. Good god I can move my body to that song. Mark that one as a trigger and pack it in a box until a later day. It isn’t safe yet.

Sitting in the Giants truck. He lured me in by saying “I have this really great playlist” and proceeded to play one of the CD’s I made him. I smiled then and I am smiling now. It was the same disc I had to replace because he wore it out.

He stopped for a second. Said he heard something that made him think of my trip to New Orleans. I smiled again and am smiling again now.

I listened for a minute. Went to peek at the display to double check before speaking, but I knew it was The Band and said so. He said yes. I replied “my sister’s dog is named Levon.”

Thought of another story tonight, wherein I remember one of the half a dozen times my dad ever yelled at us. He had gotten a VHS of the Last Waltz. Sat through all the opening of all the presents, had breakfast with us, cleaned up, did all his weekend/holiday dad things and finally sat down to watch it. We were all running and being loud like kids are prone to do.
He said “I have been waiting my whole life for this, let me watch it in peace.”
I swear I barely breathed for the next 4 hours.
I feel that way too now.

Having to skip back to the beginning of a song because I wasn’t listening with all of me.

I wish we could do that in real life. Just hit repeat, make lists and mixed tapes of our favorite bits.
Skip back. Make lists blend sweetly with perfect cadence.

Shazam experiences so we can see the details of what is actually happening.

Wishing I could go back and hear things again for the first time.

Sometimes, when I get really lucky, that last wish is granted. And it’s almost better with that buffer of time. I am a new girl hearing something old and precious with new ears and a new found respect for something once lost and found again.

men

Tripping Down Memory Lane without Skinning my Knees

May 18, 2016

For once. Actually, wait for it…I almost made it.

Normally I end up bloody, road-rashed and crying in a puddle of my own making.

This was better.

I saw a meme about bigger men cuddling better.

That shit drives me nuts. Real women do this and real men do that and skinny bitches are bad and men can’t do this and blah fucking blah. To each their own. If we all like the same thing there would be only Appleby’s, the Gap, Oprah’s recommended book list and top 40 music. I would die from banality within a week.

I am always after Young Un to borrow my eyes and see what I see. He fusses about having a ‘dad bod’. This negative body image shit isn’t limited to women.

I personally think he is sexy as fuck. More so when he opens his mouth to sing or speak, boy has substance. I don’t covet him anymore but I am not deaf/blind either.

But that’s me, I am a sapiophile. Attracted to intelligence over looks every damned time. That and compatibility.
I spent way too long with men who had no desire to know me on any level other than how well I cooked, cleaned and fucked.
I’m past that now. But even they had bellies, some of them.

There is an anthropological precedent that leans towards a natural attraction to a heftier man.

Cave men had to journey far and wide to bring home the proverbial bacon. Bigger belly, more fat stores, more successful of a hunter.

I messaged he who posted said meme and said ‘I like cuddly menfolk’. I do.

Hot Neighbor and Gelfling were exceptions. I outweighed both of them by 10 or twenty pounds (never could guess weight). Their hipbones and cheekbones sharp as knives. The pixie dust running through my veins loved the pixie dust running through theirs. And if my washing machine ever broke I coulda just scrubbed the dirt outta my clothes on their abs. I let them go.

Wolfling was tall and toned, but he was a fun gym-rat-sport-fuck, nothing more. Although he had moments of sweetness too, I will give him that. But that is all he gets. I let him go a long time ago.

I pulled up pics from the archives just to say ‘look, this is what my exes look like’.

Ex hubby and the Hulk in particular.

“Well, I figured the Hulk was big, you call him the Hulk.”

“Good god I loved walking next to him, feeling so safe and so small”. I said, “how I felt about him wasn’t conditional on him loving me back, mind you he finally said it the day before he moved far away.”

I said something to him about loving Memphis Lee, and he said “We love you too.”

My eyes lit up, so did his. I remember that moment clear as day, blue eyes shining in the sun, that squint he would get and just the slightest curl to his mouth when he saw that I heard him and understood. I do, I did, I always did.

I just love who I love for as long as I love them.

My love for the Hulk manifested in an hour drive every two weeks to knock on his door and give him candy and a hug. I called it reverse trick or treat. Sometimes he let me in the house, sometimes he didn’t. He had the sads worse than I had ever seen. He moved home the day after he said that and has been happy since. And I let him go.

I had a private photo album hidden up in my Facebook with photos of ex-hubby. I’d forgotten about it and briefly wondered if I had deleted it, but nope, there it was. Was being the operative word. I opened it looking for proof of his thickness to prove my point and braced myself for … something … anything.
And nothing happened. That was what shook me up a bit, the nothing. I took what I needed, just a moment from the past to show the present and deleted the damned thing. I let him go years ago.

I spoke yesterday about the distinction I make about ‘before’ and ‘after’. Sufficed to say, ex-hubby was from the time called before and there was no magic there.

The time called after has been a sort of fairy tale. My bliss coming in metered doses, chapters if you will.
No happily ever after…yet.
Glass slippers and valiant knights, wolves in men’s clothing, Giants and other assorted beasts and fae.
And now this…
“You’re the King and I’m your lionheart.” Of Monsters and Men.

I found my king and I am his lionheart. I just had to figure out what that meant.

I started the whole body type conversation trying to explain that I don’t have a type, but I do.

It’s just not physical.

I love someone.

“He loves me and is terrified of it, I am not over him. I blink and he is there, so I try not to blink.”

“…you’re not over him….It’s never fun it hurts.”

(over him is not an option)

“Especially since I know he is just being a chickenshit.

(oh lord)

Maybe I do have a type.

FUCK.”

That was when I started to cry. Not from the memories but because of the reality of this mess.

I love someone who is afraid, because I am afraid too.

I wasn’t running, I was standing still. Which, as it turns out, is just as bad.

I likened my heart to a revolving door. I don’t know how to deny entry without risking broken glass and no door at all.
Time to tear it all down and start over.

He comes and goes and until now I just let him because I too was coming and going.

Not anymore.

Maybe I should move out of this building and build a castle with a moat around the empire in his chest.
Keep us both safe from the world and broken glass.

men

Cyranos

May 16, 2016

I had one of the more fucked up conversations of my life today.

If my sister heard me say that she’d undoubtedly quip…”Well that must be pretty fucking weird coming from you Sarah.” I don’t think she reads this, probably best all things considered.

It was sister. It truly was.

It wasn’t the words so much as the source. All things in good time and in context.

I read a thing a while ago that I shall now paraphrase out of sheer exhaustion and laziness. I have been writing for 13 hours, I can’t seem to turn my brain off nor stop. I haven’t eaten save a few handfuls of M&M’s. I am running on caffeine alone. 4000 words of good copy.

Maybe it’s time for the fighter to be fought for, for the lover to be loved something something blah blah blah.

I read it a while ago and for a brief moment I allowed myself the luxury of hope.

Hope is a four letter word. I try not to indulge.

I posted today, something called Still Is. I tried to hide it over on my page.

Didn’t really work so good. And hour later…the ding in my inbox.

“It’s about him isn’t it.” Statement, not really a question.

I paused before answering, sometimes the truth needs a deep breath and a whiskey chaser.

“Yes.” Another statement, no question. Everything seems to be about him even when I don’t want it to be.

“So fucking call him already and stop torturing yourself. Or give me the number and I’ll do it.”

Ever get that feeling that hovers between awe and dread. Ya, I had that.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and all, but no. Bad idea.

The awe turned quickly to AWWWW.

Seriously? You would do that for me?

It’s not that far of a stretch for me. I do this shit all the time.

And it’s funny, I can easily set my ego and wants aside to help those I have coveted and fucked, no problem…never expected to have that happen to me. I always get the polar opposite. If they don’t have me, they hate me. For a while anyways.

And here is this man that by all rights I hurt rather badly and rather recently telling me “If he has any fucking ounce of a clue how valuable you are….he will swallow his pride and finally come get you…..if he’s half the man he claims he will hold on to you like it’s life or death….because it will be.”

It is such a strange sensation to be treated the way I treat others.

Case and point.

Young Un messaged me last week out of the pale blue.

We talk once a month sometimes more, rarely less, hence the paleness of the blue.

Been doing this for a while. Tripping in feelings and using the other as an opposite sex touch stone of sorts. Ego strokes and advice from someone who thinks differently enough to break the loops/bad mantras we both get stuck in.

Said he needed advice.

I love that he trusts me. I love him.

It’s been 2 years and 2 days since we met.

We had a rough go for a bit in the middle there.

But in my candy coated way of glossing things over, he was, and remains sweet as fuck.
Because he always was.

I credit him with my first steps of becoming. He was the first boy who was my choice. The first one in a long time that was of my tribe. In the brief time we had together he treated me like gold.
He made the transition from mundane to magic a lovely one and raised the bar.

He laid out his dilemma.

Said “the overthinking part of my Scorpio brain is having a meltdown”.

Oh baby, I know those.

His sounded like “what if what if what if”…

He is smitten you see, been talking to this girl since Christmas, but she had a boyfriend.

Now she doesn’t.

So the ‘what if’ was clearly labeled “what if I don’t say anything and I lose her?”
Followed closely by “what if I say something and I lose her?”

Conundrum.

I am Queen of the land known as SAY IT SAY IT SAY IT. It’s actually pretty hard to shut me up unless you put something fun in my mouth.

Young Un is fully aware of this. I practiced on him one time in late July and again in March.

I also have some shining examples of phrases that make girls swoon…

So I Cyrano’ed.

I said…

Here’s what you do.
Go look in the mirror.
Use my eyes so you can see what I see.
Realize how incredibly handsome and wonderful you are.
Then tell her what you just told me.
That you value her friendship but you are smitten as fuck and you don’t want to lose her.
Tell her she is worth waiting for if that is what she needs.
You used the term ‘head over heels’, tell her that, because honestly it is sweet as fuck coming out of your mouth.
And one more thing…tell her talking to her is the best part of your day…if that is the truth.

He told me it was the truth and he did SAY IT SAY IT SAY IT.

10 minutes later…

She said the same thing back to him. I could feel him glowing through my phone. And I glowed along with him.

That is what love is.
I’m not IN love with him, I don’t need him with me, his mess is mine and so is his joy.

He told me he is glad we stayed friends, I am too.

I forgive and have been forgiven.

And listen here all ye who are actually listening…if she/he is important, don’t let them go.

“And he had better grab onto you and hold you like you’re the fucking Holy Grail.”

I am beginning to believe I just might be.

It’s time to say what needs to be said, in my own words.

Uncategorized

Still Is

May 15, 2016

“Who knows” I said, “you and me…the idea of us might have been the knife that cut him out for good. I have no way of knowing.”

I don’t. I look and wonder, hope and faith fighting it out. But I know nothing.

And the moment I did know, was bittersweet. In the way of those horrid romance novels, I had to leave to see the truth.

And now I wait, and I work. Can we just skip to the end now, the happily ever after or something like it. A sort of fairy tale. Shaking sleeping beauty, wake the fuck up.

I saw and re-posted that Bukowski quote today and broke my own heart, hard. I did that and I’m bleeding out at the thought of it.

I am so fucking sorry.

As a teenager, I fancied myself a writer, dropping bad acid and dripping bad poetry on bad trips. Reading Bukowski made me realize I am not a poet. That sometimes less is more (but I can’t shut up) there is beauty in simplicity and I wasn’t the only one who thought the world was seven layers of fucked up. He made me fall even more in love with words. I saw that words are power, the can kill or heal depending. Like knives.

Silence does that too, kills or heals depending.

Limbo is a bitch.

I said before that my heart went away a year ago and never came back. It’s true. She bounced off a satellite or three, slipped away from me in middle of the night. Traveling through time zones and space, landed softly. She’s currently locked out of the house. This is me, helping her scratch at the door.

Every time he breaks me, and he does, I put myself back a little different. I like the person I am becoming, the one that heals and forgives, gets stronger and braver. Like a mosaic, or a stained glass window. But this time I broke him and I don’t know how he heals, I never did. To the naked eye it seems like something he cannot do, or maybe just not alone.

The only thing I know is he needs time, which I have and will gladly give. The other ingredients of his forgiveness elude me. I know he values loyalty and I fucked that one up, royally. Openness and honesty I can do. I have told him a few times that I fucked up, apologized with sincerity and then make a point of not making the same mistakes twice. He forgave me once.

It doesn’t help that I find new creative ways to fuck up or that he finds new things to look for and assume.

I’m tired of this dance, my feet hurt and I am a little dizzy, please can we just go to bed already, I’d rather dance with him there.

Accepting all I’ve done and said,
I want to stand and stare again,
til there’s nothing left out…

Peter Gabriel radio edit In Your Eyes.

the poet

Open Letter to The Poet

May 2, 2016

I had plans to write just this one line.

~~I stayed, I tried and~~ I fucking love you…god knows I do.

The end.

But, there is always a ‘but’.
When she sent me over to your page to read ‘pretty damned sure this is about you Sarah’ and I found myself blocked, for the first time in 2 years, I knew beyond doubt and question that you loved me.
Not because of what you wrote, because you blocked me.

And honey, that is really fucking fucked up.

“If you love me, then love me.” Stephen King

Why is this hard?

What you wrote was glorious, and all of the things most women dream of hearing.

I am not most women. Nothing compared to hearing you whisper “you fucker” in my ear, that I gave you an ‘emotional boner’ or sighing when I said something that pleased you. That was the real you talking to the real me, that was us. That laugh when you’d call me a clever girl, like diamonds, but more precious.

I asked you out for coffee, 2 years ago tomorrow.

I remember the dancing dots, my hopes soaring that you might actually say yes.

You spent 20 minutes hunting through my profile pictures and found exactly what you were looking for, a reason to say no, a nipple.

You decided in that moment I was exactly like all the rest, an attention whore/exhibitionist who would do anything for social media likes.

You told me to fuck off.

You never asked me why I put it up. For the record, it was a show of solidarity for a female friend who had been put in Facebook jail over a nipple. Nothing more.

There was nothing to forgive. You were protecting yourself, I saw it. I understand. I feel protective over you too, viciously so, even in absentia I would allow no one to speak badly of you.
Even now, I still defend you. I always will. It’s my way.

The exact same amount of time you spent looking for reasons this would never work and making assumptions about me, I spent learning you. Gleaning why you are the way you are and trying to figure out ways to prove I loved you with the parameters given.
And lordy-fucking-lord there were a lot of parameters. I could barely move an inch without hitting a wall.

I think I realized, the third or fourth time you came back, that if you stayed, life as I knew it would be over. And I didn’t mind. I called you my life’s work and I meant it.

“…my love for you is so overpowering I’m afraid I will disappear.” Paul Simon

I wasn’t afraid.

I knew that once I laid eyes on you the rest of the world would fall away. And once you saw into mine you would trust me. My face would forever reflect that fact that I belonged to you alone. My body and mouth would back that up in their respective languages. I am yours, nothing more.

And I wasn’t afraid.

I started out being afraid of you. In awe. I chuckle to myself when I think back to my first idea of what and how you were. Some of it astute and the rest so far off.

I imagined you in a small apartment above a bodega. A desk overflowing with poetry and balled up pieces of paper, a few whiskey bottles and full ashtrays. A small iron balcony on which you would sit, smoke and drink your morning coffee or afternoon whiskey and just observe.
Pounding at the keyboard, trying to diffuse some love back into the world, one drop of your heart’s blood at a time.

Every time I bought a book or a piece of your work I thought I was helping you in some small way. Funny in retrospect, but it is the thought that counts.

Poor and lost and lovely to me. And I loved you, as is, or as I imagined. I still do.

When I realized how wrong I was, I just chuckled to myself and gleaned an even further understanding as to why those walls of yours are so damned high.

I wish I could remember the exact moment that I realized you were human. Flesh, blood and marrow. Fallible and fumbling, just like me. It was a good moment. I fell harder for you and became braver than I have ever been.

When you told me about your life I absorbed every word, every tone in your voice that said ‘this is what made me’. I learned you, even when you left, I kept studying our conversations. I wanted to be better at loving you. You were worth it.

You taught me I wasn’t worth it, to you.

Your safety is more important than the risk it was to just love me and see where it goes.

I understand, your safety is important to me too.

That is why 5 people know your name…and no one knows the secrets you told me in the dark.

I wouldn’t trade a minute of you.

Since last July I have had plane ticket money tucked away in a drawer, waiting for you to call me to you. But you never did.

You opened up a whole new world of possibilities as to how honest I can be with those around me about who and what I am, the things I want and the things I have done. You made me admit things out loud that I had hidden even from myself. You unlocked the cage society made for me and set me free. And I know you loved me for it.

So I will always love you. I had to flip the switch from active to passive. And now back again, there is nothing unlovable about you to me.

I am writing this to you, in blood red, dripping graffiti on one of the walls you threw up to block me with. And that is the best I can do, in the parameters given.

lost boys

Looking Back and Fucking Thumbs

April 28, 2016

“…that’s a biiiiiiiig fuckin’ thumb you just sent me.”

That was the first time I heard his voice. InstaSploosh.

I am a sucker for a southern drawl, I won’t lie.

American accents sound like home and happiness. Some more than others. “Just shut up and let me say this” sounds bad regardless of the voice. I think even Morgan Freeman telling me to shut up would get my back up.

And that badly placed thumb on Facebook messenger. I hate it, seems dismissive. And yet I hit it by accident on the regular.

Meh.

Just gonna roll with it. And “big fucking thumb” has become part of our language with each other. I do so love it when he says ‘fuck’.

We talk, oh lord we talk for hours upon hours. I feel like I am in high school again, phone cord stretched to the limit out the back door so I can smoke and listen.

High school sweetheart went to juevie when we were god, like 17 maybe. I spent every night on the phone accepting collect calls and every day for the next month working to pay off the phone bill. He came home and dated someone that wasn’t me for the record. Why does my life get stuck on repeat? That was 25 years ago and I am still doing the same thing? And why do I have to have these moments mid-write?

And now that heaven is on fire, in the worst technicolor, oh and I’ve been chasing angels all my life. Amber Run, Heaven

There it is.

So now what us gonna do?

“This war won’t stand long, God won’t let it.”[1]

I am still fighting. I’m tired now.

“I am tellin’ all y’all it’s a sabotage.” [2]

Mercury is in retrograde, all phone lines to God are currently down, please try again later.

Day one. Shit is already slipping sideways.

My laptop decided to do an update shutdown and I lost 5 pieces I was working on. Microsoft Word had the audacity to dangle a carrot called “would you like to restore your previous documents” to which I replied YES. And no, not a thing. Just blank spaces where before there were words and feelings and thoughts and links.

“This is me breathing.” [3]

Jason had to tell me that yesterday. Breathe baby.

Somehow he knew. I was sitting in front of my laptop, mouth agape, tears rolling down my face.

I have a private album upon the Facebook called “holding area”. It’s where I put the things. Snippets, screenshots, inspirational shit. I was pulling screenshots off my phone looking for a conversation with Leah for an article. We fought, I was expecting a heartpunch. What I wasn’t expecting was uploading these tiny wee thumbnails that were not conversations with Leah.

Here come the Giant. Waltzing out of the past.

I wasn’t ready.

Sucker punch.

And this wasn’t the worst one. Not even close.

I have a self-defence mechanism, sharpened and honed over the last 3 years of dating ghosts.

More often I cut myself on the damned thing and baby do I bleed.

I decide I made them up in my head and he wasn’t that great, he didn’t really say those things and I am just a silly girl and look, everything is fine now.

And then time passes and I go looking for something else, innocently enough and I open their assigned oubliette.

And lo, he did say those things, and so much more.

I have got to learn how to label things better.

I also need to learn to stop looking back over my shoulder lest I trip, or worse. What if God sees and I become Job. Nothing grows on salted ground. I need to grow.

I said to Jason that I thought he deserved better, that I wasn’t coming into this clean. And he just stayed. Made a hundred excuses as to why this WILL work.

He doesn’t punish me for my past or even ask me to hide it. He works through it with me and looks for the why.

He doesn’t tell me to shut up. Quite the opposite actually.

He simply says “okay baby”. Let it out baby, give it some air and let’s work through this.

We did. We are. We will.

“Maybe what you think is you being a hurricane just feels like a light sprinkle to me.” He said.

I think so maybe, yesh baby.

This.

[1] Cold Mountain, Ruby Thewes

[2] Beastie Boys, Sabotage

[3] Grosse Pointe Blank, Martin Blank

lost boys

Afternoon Delight

April 20, 2016

Oh, I know
I’m holding on
I’m holding on to a ghost

I know
I’m tangled up
I’m tangled up in your ropes

I know
I’m skippin’ work
I’m skippin’ work like a stone

I know
It’s ok I’m not a-ok right now
Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker, N/A OK

That happened, verbatim. And I got coconut oil on that dress, I love that dress.

I am not ok right now.

And for my next trick I will reach into my recently retired winter purse and pull out… a carrot peeler?

And resume my position of puddle girl crying on the floor.

Only in my head. Okay, truth. My eyes leaked a little, but the flood seems to have passed. Just waiting on a dove and an olive branch.

We are almost done, I swear it. I can’t even anymore.

Sorry my Sunshine. I have tried fucking this poison out, crying it out, toughing it out and it just keeps ending up here. Skip over this if you must, I will understand.

The pen is my sword, my blood is my ink and a carrot peeler has become a catalyst.

My dad gave it to me years ago.

It’s important to me. I have lost a lot in this life, not that though, never that.

And I kinda want my Tupperware back. I don’t want it back so much as I just want back in the house and upstairs. I will forever wash the Tupperware if I can just go back upstairs.

I still read his horoscope when I read mine.

This…

*Welcome to the Beauty and Truth Lab.
We’re coming to you live from your repressed memories of paradise, reminding you that you can have anything you want if you will just ask for it in an unselfish way.
Welcome to the end of your nightmares, beauty and truth fans!
The world is young, your soul is free, and a naked celebrity is dying to talk to you about your most intimate secrets right now.

Just kidding.

In fact, the world is young, your soul is free, and at any moment you will feel a flood of ecstatic compassion for salamanders, oak trees, clouds, toasters, convenience store clerks, and even the ocean itself.
I’m your host.
My name is the Sacred Janitor at the Edge of Time, and I’m proud to announce that this is a perfect moment.
It’s a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you are on the verge of finally figuring out exactly what it is you really want more than anything else . . .

Fucking Postcard from 1952 is playing again, seriously?

Hadn’t heard that song in a week, but twice in two days. Still a thunderpunch to the heart.

Add *Rob Brezsny and a carrot peeler and I have flashbacks galore.

The one I call Giggles and Human Serotonin was sitting with me at the bar one night, the Giant was messaging me. In an untoward and forward manner considering he has a girlfriend. But I was feeding it. Love does that, makes you bend. Sometimes at the knees.

I asked him to come get me and he didn’t. He’d been drinking.
She answered in her 19 year old way of making pouty dolphin noises.
For a minute I wished I was her, at least she had a shot with him if you considered their age.

She asked me why I couldn’t let go.
I told her I was in love with him.
“Well, have you told him that?” she asked.
“No, honey, I don’t know how.” I said (except here and now like this I suppose)

I vowed aloud to her the next day if that happened again I would walk out the door to him.

I had to wait 3 whole days.

He messaged on a Tuesday, said he was home asked if I wanted to watch a movie.
I didn’t even have to think about it.
I made some half-drunk bullshit excuse ran out the door of work and hopped in a cab before he changed his mind. Passed about 300 bucks worth of customers on my way out. Didn’t care, still don’t.

We were both drunky when he opened the door and I stumbled inside.

We had more drinks.

We giggled and laughed and talked and touched like we hadn’t spent the last month apart.

We fucked with reckless abandon and lightning bolts louder and brighter than before, to that damned song. Explosions in the Sky. The one that only previously reminded me he promised he would stay. After I promised him that if she wasn’t the one I would just take his hand and take him upstairs. I don’t break promises, I did exactly that, twice.

Now I reminds me of him, inside me. Us. Molten and moving.

The carrot peeler happened the next day. We had a lunch date planned. I brought over pasta and made parmesan curls with it, all fancy-like.

Whatever had been holding us back physically had dissipated the night before, never to return.

There was no music when we went upstairs, no false pretense of a movie. No cover of darkness. I got to see him in all his glory, holding me down and open, blocking out the sun. Like an eclipse, I stared too long and the image and halo are burned into my eyes and memory.

Earlier I danced in the kitchen to a live John Mayer album while he finished off renos in the dining room, occasionally sneaking peeks at the other through the doorway and smiling. I caught a glimpse of what life would be like if he had stayed with me and I floated around that fucking kitchen, doing dishes and grinning like an idiot. Idiot being the operative word.

Both of us.

And I say this with all kindness intended. My darling Giant. You are a fucking idiot. Who lets this go? Who lets me go?
At least I hope you are an idiot, it’s that or the world’s most beautiful liar. Please be an idiot and then stop doing that.

What if this storm ends and I don’t see you? (Snow Patrol)

unable to even

After the Flood

April 4, 2016

I have cried and come enough the last few weeks to end up drowning in all of it.

The levies broke and I got washed away. Trying to get my bearings and figure out where I am and where I want to be.

Now everything is a salty/sex-and-tear stained soaked mess and I’m trying to figure out what, if anything, is worth salvaging. Picking through the flotsam, hanging some of it out to dry. Fighting the urge to throw it all away.

Ain’t nothing making any sort of immediate sense at all and I’m losing my mind.

Saturn has gone retrograde and the life lessons and déjà vu are coming in such rapid succession I can’t pull back far enough out of the feels to see the big picture.

8 planets are heading into retrograde. That’s a lot of planets. Honestly, I don’t know what it all means to have them moving backwards like this, except I feel like I am running up the down escalator. Fighting for every inch of climb. It just started and I am already tired.

Like a heartbeat… drives you mad…In the stillness of remembering what you had…And what you lost…And what you had…And what you lost.*

Forgive me father for I have sinned and I have no plans on stopping anytime soon. In fact, I think I want to stop being so fucking virtuous and start thinking/believing that I deserve some happiness too. Taking it when it presents itself. Being a good girl and worrying about people who couldn’t give a fuck about me is no longer serving me, nor my ego/heart/logic/vagina aka the Royal We.

I am not a saint, at some point every saint had a choice.

If Saturn goes retrograde, and he has, does that mean he stops being an asshole?

Sadly, the answer is no. If it’s even at all possible Cronos the Titan becomes and even more titanic alcoholic dad swinging a belt with ferocious strength and deadly accuracy.

Ow.

The fuck?

The actual fuck, seriously now. Not cool universe.

“Oh baby you almost got a hysterical tear filled panic attack induced ear full of crying girl yesterday. I hit a fucking wall, after I thought I couldn’t hit it any harder. I sprained my soul I cried so hard.” I said.

“Next time….call me. Cry and wail and scream….we don’t even have to talk….just know you won’t be alone. And those walls serve a purpose….” He replied.

“It is time for a big upheaval methinks violently tearing things down so I can rebuild and the universe is swinging the wrecking ball with my name in it.” (Please let this be the truth.)

“Let that fucker swing baby.” (I love it when he calls me that).
He proceeded to send me his phone number, just in case. The world needs more of him, MY world needs more of him.

I didn’t post on a Sunday, I think I have missed maybe one other Sunday ever. I didn’t know what to say.

I have 14 documents open on my laptop. 15 if you count my Opus, but the filth and the fury contained in there is for print only.

All these tidbits and opening paragraphs, some just a link to a meme and a working title.

I can’t seem to make sense of anything. And everything is so rapidly changing. Things that were the truth last Monday morning have ceased to be tangible or real.

I drunk texted the Poet in one last attempt to free his head from his ass, to no avail.

I slept with the Giant for an extra week to attempt the same thing and also because um …mind boggling lightning sex. Nope, just got passed over yet again for the safehaven of a traveling waitress.

Now here I go again, I see the crystal visions, I keep my visions to myself. It’s only me who wants to wrap around your dreams and…Have you any dreams you’d like to sell? Dreams of loneliness…

(Of what you had and what you lost)*

Friday/Saturday were cluster-fucks of epic proportions.

Took a Friday night off work to go to a birthday party with friends. Got lost, got rescued by a man I have harboured a tiny crush on for a decade. We were flirting, then we weren’t, then we were again. We had a date and then we didn’t and now we do again.

I went out for lunch the next day with friends from the previous night’s birthday revelry. With the intention of going to a tattoo shop re-opening. Said shop has taken over the Hulk’s old apartment and converted it beautifully into a tattoo studio. I haven’t been there since he left last July. Thought I was okay.

Nope.

I made it up the stairs. Everything was so different. Eyes wide open, taking everything in. Every time I blinked flashing right back to couch snuggles and kitchen renos, unpacking boxes and then packing them again. Face love from his brown dog. Knees shaking at the bottom of the stairs, confessions into his jacket on the back steps. Biting my hand to stifle moans having afternoon sex and knowing how thin the walls were. Choking back tears when he left.

Caught a mutual friend’s gaze in the middle of this. He was looking at me with that “are you okay?” stare. His eyes and mouth conveying pity mixed with concern. I turned on my heel and ran down the stairs. I was not okay with this.

Took me 45 minutes sitting in the parking lot to start seeing/breathing normally enough to leave.

I think my writer’s block yesterday came from my inability to articulate the why I was so sad. I still don’t know exactly. Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty (Stanisław Jerzy Lec ) so does every drop of rain in a flood.

When the rain washes you clean… you’ll know, you’ll know*

Time to get clean, learn to swim in this or else I’ll drown.

I’m ready for things to make sense right about … now.

(*Dreams, Fleetwood Mac)

the poet

Open

March 26, 2016

my actual bed

“We must be willing to give up the life we planned for the one that is waiting for us.”
(Joseph Campbell)

I had plans. Big Bad Wolf plans.

Poet popped by again after yet another agonizing absence.

He said repeatedly during this latest apology “Don’t say anything.”

I is getting mighty tired of this irony.

I bit my tongue until it bled.

I sat quietly and listened as he said I made him feel like I was always in a rush to get off the phone, I wasn’t attentive enough. Jesus wept boy, I sat on my porch in -20 February weather because that is where I get the best phone reception, we talked for 40 minutes until my hands were frozen arthritic claws and my battery died.

I’d sent a story and a message … nothing. Not even dancing dots.

For 6 weeks this time.

Came back and asked me why I disappear? (Eyeroll)

He stayed a whole week almost. Filled in the absence of the Giant quite nicely. Had me thinking ‘alright, things make sense again’.

I wanted to go to California. I wanted to be with him. I had nothing holding me here. I was waiting for him to call me home.

Instead he called me a conundrum, “Sarah you are Everything I have ever wanted and everything I have ever run from.”

These are all the things I wasn’t allowed to say during his apology/mansplaining.

He doesn’t like me dancing, I don’t either and I can provide written testimonial from dozens of dancers that prove I am not a typical stripper. But what is the point? He wouldn’t believe them anyways.

Good god I look bad on paper.

Chain smoking, whiskey drinking, single mom, stripper. With a bad habit of sitting in the same sweats for days on end writing feverishly, forgetting to eat and shower and function beyond getting the words out. Then stilettos and thigh highs, painted up like a geisha. Crippling self-doubt monthly and sometimes I am the queen of the world, usually on Wednesdays. Consistently inconsistent. Yuck.

He says I say ‘fuck’ too much, and that I am not used to anyone listening to me so I’m too loud. He isn’t wrong.

I love loud too. I have a handful of people I would take a bullet for. If I ever loved you I still do but I spent a few decades not knowing what love was. I am getting there, still clumsy and learning to walk.

When I was 5 months pregnant I got into a relationship thinking that is what I should be doing. Monkey-barred through 18 years and 5 more failed relationships. So many years being someone’s mom, daughter, sister, wife I never had time to figure out who I was.

Been working on myself for the last 3 years and I know I look a mess. Pulling everything apart, trying to find the ‘why’. Under constant renovations but my foundation stands.

I have lavished love on the wrong people, those who take without giving, expect acceptance but only give attention conditionally.
Ownership is not love, it is belonging with someone and giving yourself freely.

I am more terrified of forgetting than I am of being forgotten. Social media is a touchstone for me, all these markers saying ‘you were here’. Good or bad, yes, there I was. On the bad days I can scroll back and remind myself, this too shall pass, in a while you will not feel like an unlovable monster. My phone is full of videos chronicling belly laughs with my girls. Selfies that trigger the feelings I was feeling that day. A virtual diary full of words and 3×5’s.

Again, I look a mess.

Because I am a mess, and I know it. I try to tidy up the edges, tuck my crazy and my heart back in, but they escape.

Poet said he didn’t know who I was. I was allowed an explanation for that…neither do I.

He took it upon himself to read parts of the blog and scrolled through my Facebook looking for clues.
I let him in, I let everyone in.

I am left wondering if he managed to find all the posts that were about him, and there are many.

Shame is a Prison
Condolences and Gratitude
His
The Little Known Plague of Male Poets
Minefield
Temple
Necromancy
Precious
Building an Empire
Whores, Housewives and Paper Handcuffs
Because of You
The Other Kind of Apocalypse
Five Guys
Honorable mention in Bridges and Tightropes, not to mention volumes of explicit porn written just for him and sent directly to his inbox.

I think I have written more for and about him than anyone else.

And it’s still not enough or too much.

Left a post on my wall saying ‘remember darling, it’s a status update, not a diary’. It’s both honey.

He called me and rambled on about how freaked out he was. How he didn’t understand how I could be so open. When I write for him I have structure and discipline. He didn’t understand my mess. Easy enough to explain, I am both of those things.

He said he would call me after he had more coffee and could articulate. Then bolted in the night, again.

There is the irony folks, he ran from my open, which was the quality that he claimed to love the most about me.

I do.

He thinks I do these things for attention.

I don’t.

I AM happy when someone comes forward and says I helped them in some way. But numbers mean nothing to me.

I am doing this for me. As far as I know I have this one life and I want to experience it and remember it in all of its messed up glory. Whether it be the continuing saga of Young Un, or how I loved the Hulk or that time I was laughing so hard on the change room floor I couldn’t stand up much less dress myself.

Poet says he hates bloggers for how they have to document every time they stub a toe.
Broke my toe two weeks ago, been dancing with my toes taped together, like lotus foot-binding, agony in every step, didn’t mention it until now.
But every time he has broken my heart open, I have to put myself back together, I archive it here.

Ex-hubby told me, after he read the blog and realized I wasn’t the thing he had built me up to be in his mind, that I would die alone with nothing but memories.

Aye, I have those. In written words and photographs.

I have asked repeatedly ‘who is going to love me with my guts splattered all over the internet.’
Not the Poet apparently.

I had a little tantrum upon the Facebook. Answered by the usual rousing chorus of “fuck that guy, you are amazing and we all love you as is” with a ‘nice ass’ thrown in for good measure and comic relief.

This has happened so many times, I have become comfortably numb. (Pink Floyd)

What hurts me now is watching him sabotage his own happiness.
But I think it’s his way, creating pain out of nothing.

I was as wide open with him as I ever have been. I wouldn’t change a fucking thing.

when i was married

Princess Bride vs. Sisterwife

March 24, 2016

Mawage is what bwings us togever today. Mawage, that bwessed awangement, that dweam wivin a dweam.

Mine was a nightmare.

Once upon a time I thought I loved my husband. I really did believe that. And there might have been times that I did.

It wasn’t his fault. I was painfully unaware of who I was as a person. I hated myself most of the time, felt unworthy of even being alive, much less loved. So I didn’t know how to love, I thought it was all claws and teeth. Hanging on for dear life. Jealousy, pirates, murder, revenge.

Wait, that was Princess Bride, wasn’t like that. Not at all. That was true love.

Someone brought up sisterwives last night.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Yes, I had a sisterwife. Inconceivable right?

Like I said, I thought I loved my husband.

That wasn’t love, it was a war of wills and egos. His, hers and mine.

Some part of me felt like I had to do penance for the years I spent as someone else’s mistress. In retrospect, even karma is not that creative of a bitch and the things I put myself through made baby Jesus cry on my behalf.

To the pain.

I was never like her. I cared about the man I was sleeping with, I was never vicious or malicious. We made each other happy and he came back to me eventually. Then I left him for this mess.

We’ll never survive.
Nonsense. You’re only saying that because no one ever has.

I survived, barely. Hubby was cheating on me with a rodent of unusual size. I regularly fell into lightning sand, drowned, left to fight my way out on my own. I really should regret that decision to move into the Fireswamp, trying to build a summer home there and the ensuing 7 year chaos. But I can’t. I was born of that hellfire, heated, hammered steel, I am unbreakable.

At the time I thought I had what I wanted, mostly. Hubby had some semblance of a hobby farm.
I loved the farming, sometimes. Most times it was a struggle. A battle of dirt and wills, massive effort versus minimal reward and struggling to keep the myriad of animals hubby brought home and dropped in my lap from dying.

I wanted two baby goats, (as you wish) I ended up with 2 dozen, way too much. I wanted one horse to ride we ended up rehoming 6 and I rode two of them twice. We had 6 dogs, 3 liked ripping the pigs and sheep apart. I had geese and ducks and chickens that were constantly getting killed by this or that because the fences were shit.

He brought home critters to keep me locked in while he cheated. I kept their suffering to a minimum, mine was immense.
But in between I got a whole bunch of good pictures to slap up on Facebook. My little virtual internet existence looked pretty fucking amazing. It wasn’t. I edited out the bloodstains, death, dirt and the tears. The nights he would disappear and I knew he was out with her, she was in charge of posting those photos. The epic fights wherein I would drive away, further and further each time until I landed in the city and stayed. He put an ad in the paper and sabotaged the new relationship I had landed in to get me to come home.

I went back and things were good for a few months. My old paranoia crept back. It was inevitable him sneaking off to see her again. So I made a proposition, move her in. Lightening my work load, easing his financial burden and just eating the pink elephant in the room once and for all.

We could just kill each other as god intended, sportsmanlike.

It was the best/worst idea I have ever had.

I truly believed that after him cheating on me with her for 6+ years there must be some redeeming qualities about her. Nope. She was a burden and a drain. A true parasite, with borderline personality disorder and a love of opiates. She was high most of the time and the sneakiness continued, I just had front row seats and got stuck making her lunches for work.

He told me if I let her move in he would give me a baby. I died that day.

I’m not a witch I’m your wife. But after what you just said I’m not even sure I want to be that anymore.

I am a witch. I should have gotten in my truck and driven to a land far, far away, but I didn’t.

I was mostly dead.

We tried the threesome thing once. I was so grossed out by how she looked, tasted, smelled and behaved…I walked out in the middle of it. What is that thing? Haven’t touched a woman since and I cannot begin to imagine a scenario where I would again.

It was the best idea I ever had because it finally pried me out of there. We slipped back together in hotel rooms for 4 months until I gave him an ultimatum. The last ultimatum I ever gave anyone. He countered with one of his own, said I needed therapy, and boy did I ever.

Seriously, how did he think that was going to go?

I learned a lot about myself in the process. I am tenacious as fuck. Loyal to the point of insanity. I survived something that would have killed a lot of people, and there were moments where I wanted to die.

It took me three years on my own turning my entire life over in my head, learning fighting and fencing anything anyone would teach me and spilling my guts out here to figure out what love is. I filled my drama quota for the next three lifetimes.

As I sit here now, in my clean, tiny house, writing away, I am warm and happy. The only souls I have to look after are mine, my son’s, a tiny dog and two kittens. The gardening I do consists of watering my houseplants and orchids once a week. My bed is my own and I can chose who comes and goes. This is infinitely better.

I almost fell back into the pit of despair, but I’m out now.

Not sure how to proceed, maybe if I had months to plan or a holocaust cloak.

Someone is trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen.
And I am trying not to rush a miracle (you get rotten miracles.)