unable to even

Wedding Rings and Other Things

October 6, 2016

Him: “We’re just waiting for Sarah’s family to arrive”

Me: (oh Jesus no)

Random wedding guest: “Who?”

Him: “Sarah’s parents”

Me: “Sean, what did you just say?”

Him: (one more time for the kids in the back) “Sarah’s parents aren’t here yet.”

Me: “No Sean, I’m Sarah, you are marrying Erin remember?”

Him: “Oh, ya. Erin’s parents. Sorry.”

Coulda stabbed him in the heart with his boutonniere pin.

Coulda woulda shoulda.

He wasn’t sorry enough to stop himself from doing it twice more.
Not during the ceremony though, small mercies.

I had enough before the sun went down and bailed. I should never have gone.

Don’t go to your exes weddings mmmm kay?
Even if they INSIST, just don’t go, chop a limb off if you have to but just don’t go.

I’ve been to a few weddings.
Twice as a flower girl, those marriages are still going after 30+ years.
The next marriage ended eventually.
The first one I went to wherein I was a friend of the bride…she’d pulled me into the bathroom a week before and said “I don’t want to do this.”

“You don’t have to, you can stop this, it’ll be okay.” I said.

She didn’t stop it, she left him 3 months later.

I’ve never been a bridesmaid nor a bride.

Went to 2 weddings last year, both beautiful and wonderful.
I went to both alone and left feeling really alone.

Been engaged a handful of times. If that hand had closed around a firecracker after lighting it and was missing a digit, which is kinda a metaphor for said relationships, dummy me didn’t know when to let go.

I didn’t keep the rings.

The kind of man I want works with his hands and couldn’t wear a ring anyways.

There is a scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral wherein Duckface is speaking to Hugh Grant and says something to the effect of “You don’t have to enter every relationship thinking ‘I must get married’, but you can’t be in them thinking I mustn’t get married either.”

I was Hugh Grant. Until recently.

My dad looked at my mom and said ‘that’s the girl I am going to marry’, and he did.

His parents met as teenagers, before the war. When he came back his family actually hid my grandpa from my grandmother saying “once Neva knows he’s home we’ll never see him again.” That lasted a week, and proved to be true. They loved each other so much. So do my folks.

I met my “one I want to marry” when I was 13 years old. For 26 years I didn’t want to marry anyone except him.
Yes, I agreed to marry 3 other people, but somehow I knew it was bullshit and that it wasn’t going to happen and it seemed rude to say no so…

Anthony proposed three times between 2006 and 2011, told sisterwife he had to because I found the ring in his pocket when I was gathering laundry. Not sure how explained asking me twice more after that, not sure I care.

Survey says, whatev’s.

It was because of the Black Wedding of Sean and Erin that I came to find out how I had been ousted from my farm life years prior.
I was sleeping with Sean you see, back in the days of being engaged and enraged with Anthony and our sisterwife.
Sean’s best friend told Anthony where I had been spending my nights.
Sean made sure Anthony found out so I would get thrown out and go back to him.
That same friend made sure Anthony found out I was at the wedding too.

Ew.

None of them loved, honored nor cherished me. And they did not forsake any others and want only me, so again whatev’s.

Made me feel like shit though. Probably the worst I had ever felt. To be betrayed like that under the guise of being loved. To be forced from my home, as shitty as it was, before I was ready to go.

I think that is part of the reason I value the free will of others so much. I know what force feels like, to be cornered, abandoned, manipulated, used and tossed away with no choice in the situation other than whatever notion brought me there is the first place.

Bob Marley said there is no bigger coward than a man who awakens the love in a woman with no intention of loving her back.

On this, and most things, Bob and I are in utter agreeance.

Whatever they awoke in me felt like love, until it didn’t.

“Her heaven will be a love without betrayal” (Beyonce)

Yes, this.

The night I met the Giant I read his palm in the blacklight. Saw him getting married, focused on his career, can’t remember much else, but he is going to have one serious accident or illness and smooth sailing from there.

I joked that he wasn’t the one for me because I was never getting married.
I’ve never been that little girl who plotted, planned and schemed about her wedding day. I just didn’t. My parents eloped. I was 6 when Charles and Di got married, watched some of it on TV. Looked like a long expensive mess to me.

I still see it as sacred. I still want to be chosen by someone that I love, who loves me and stays.

It hurt me that the Giant thought me a joke really. He said he would stay and was gone in a week.

Just because I don’t have my head full of flowers and rings and white dresses doesn’t mean the idea of loving someone for a really long time doesn’t appeal to me. It is in my DNA after all, this forsaking of all others. I was just handshy for all of the reasons listed above.

The end of Four Weddings and a Funeral is Hugh Grant saying to Andie McDowell, would you agree to not marry me and stay not married to me for a really long time.

I like that ending.

I do.

the poet

Harley and the Joker

September 5, 2016

I wrote this whole article and I was looking for a pic to go with it, found this.

Sucker punch of truth right to the throat.

He did this to me. And I did that thing that I do where I tried to understand it, tried to be a better girl for him.

I watched Suicide Squad and saw myself in there. Just a ‘lil bit. But even a little of that is too much.

Apparently in a parallel Marvel universe Joker and Harley fell in love before he was damaged.

But not in this one.

I don’t want a life that resembles movies or comic books. I don’t want to jump into vats of acid to prove my love for someone. I don’t want my brain shocked and rewired to fit someone else’s ideal of what a woman should be. I have been a woman for 42 years and seriously, I got this.

There are spoilers in here.

You have been warned.

My dad’s middle name is Harley. Always thought that was so cool.

My dad is awesome.

The bar should be sofa king high for the men I date. And it ain’t. Couldn’t tell you why that is, probably best to ask my therapist. See if we can work that out before I date again.

I shouldn’t stand here and say that none of the men I have dated have cleared the bar. A few of them have, raised it a bit, right before they left. So, does that even count?

I don’t know what counts anymore. 1+1 should equal 2 but somehow it keeps coming out to 3 or more or negative one. There are variables and percentages and none of them add up to much of anything all things considered.

I saw Suicide Squad 1.5 times.

The first time didn’t really count as we went to the drive-in, pulled up at the wrong screen waited way to long in line for popcorn that wasn’t there and missed the first 10 minutes, and the screen was way too dark. Went back again to a small theater with reclining seats and took kiddo 1 and 2 with me this time. Saw the whole thing.

I braced myself the second time around.

I worried myself with my reactions to the relationship between Joker and Harley Quinn. I was secretly rooting for them somewhere down in my damaged little heart, and I didn’t like it.

When he tried to pass her off to someone else, I felt ridiculously ill. It wasn’t the concession stand hot dog neither. It was flashbacks, I had someone claim to love me and still try to do that very thing. Didn’t set my mind at any kind of ease when Joker shot the guy after. It felt like he killed the other guy for refusing her. Nope, nuh-uh. Not okay.

I have, in the past, fairly recent actually, fooled myself into thinking that was an expression of love. I was shocked and damaged into believing it was the ultimate in trust and choosing one another. It ain’t. Honestly…I don’t even think the joker in question was buying what he was selling either. Add him to the list of those who left.

I have balked at the idea of monogamy and marriage for years. I was tortured, manipulated and brainwashed into thinking that wasn’t the way.

Been out of captivity for almost 4 years now and starting to get used to it, comfortable in all this space to move around in, explore, try this or that. Red pills, blue pills, drink me, eat me, see if I learn, grow or shrink.

Back in my mid-twenties, high school sweetheart was on the phone, and the subject of my ex-girlfriend came up. “So I know you like women” he said. During the long pause while he gathered his thoughts and balls I braced for impact, waiting for him to ask for a threesome.

Maybe it’s my period, or the memory or both, but I am tearing up at his 15-20 year old response.

“I don’t want to share you” he said. “Is that okay? Would you feel like you were missing something?”

That sigh of relief came straight from my soul.

It was more than okay.

My whole life up ‘til then and since then has always been guys finding out I had a girlfriend (or 6) and deciding I owed them a threesome.
Because? I slept with women once upon a time?

YA, UM…I DON’T DO THAT ANYMORE.

Bisexual never meant promiscuous regardless.

I love who I love. I want who I want, and if I want you, you don’t have to worry about who wants me. My body has ways of shutting that down, so does my mouth.

Once upon a time I had a Joker & Harley Quinn kinda love. A couple of times if I am being totally honest.

Intellectually I know better, but my heart gets so confused and easily swayed. Fucking movie love, has us believing, sadists, psychos and stalkers are capable of love.

When I took my son to see it we had a rousing conversation about how Harley had Stockholm Syndrome, had been driven mad by torture and captivity and it wasn’t love, it was madness and psychopathy. What good is being the Queen of anything if the King of the kingdom passes you around to his friends? That isn’t royalty, loyalty or love.

Then I saw something.

Joker’s right hand man comes into the room to tell Joker where his girl is. Joker is laying on the floor in a pattern of weapons, knives and roses. Top right there is a set of baby clothes.

In Harley’s ideal delusion, “he married me.” Heart sighed again. Stupid heart.
For a minute there I thought ‘maybe he did love her’, in his own twisted way. But that does not negate the fact that he first had to lock her away and drive her insane to force compatibility. I have been there, locked away for months at a time, drips of Chinese water torture wearing away at my self-esteem and my own morals until I was a bleached out crazy version of my former self.

“Will you live for me?” right before he had her swan dive into a vat of industrial chemical waste.

What I almost did. What I am writing a book about.

Logically I know this is not okay.

And yet I sat in the theater and cheered them on in spite of myself.

My eyes welled up with tears when she said “I lost my puddin’.”

I’ve lost my puddin’ a few times, lost my mind too…but that’s okay, I’m finding myself.

Something loving, mutual, sane and easy, hold the puddin’.

Uncategorized

What if her Name is Actually Becky?

August 24, 2016

Mama Susan (My Queen Bee) said to me when I posted this meme…

“The day is coming when you’ll realize that your pussy is humble and you are magic.”

“Soon” she said.

I already have. He’ll probably see it too. Pray he don’t call me when he notices.

So what are you gonna say at my funeral, now that you’ve killed me? Here lies the body of the love ~~of my life~~, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head. Here lies the mother ~~of my children~~, both living and dead. Rest in peace, my ~~true~~ love, who I took for granted. Most bomb pussy who, because of me, sleep evaded. Her god listening. Her heaven will be a love without betrayal. Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks…

I’ll drink to that eulogy.

Pray I don’t die here.

I’m not dead yet.

Once upon a time Sunshine said she was going to finish her water and get into the wine.

I said “baby please, drink that Ménage a Trois the Giant left here, get it out of my life.”

Rolled my eyes.

Middle fingers up.

She said she wasn’t going to get turnt, and I laughed, “How can you baby girl? It ain’t even a full bottle”.

She said ‘say goodbye to boys that don’t pick you & show up half-drunk with half-drunk bottles of wine’.

The biggest grin pulled up the corners of my mouth and I spit ‘tell him boy bye.’

Gift me liquor, tell me to keep drinking, then dismiss me for what you coaxed me to do?

no no HELL NAH

And I don’t feel bad about it
It’s exactly what you get
Stop interrupting my grinding
(You’re interrupting my grinding)

Middle fingers up.

Leave unfinished business in my house?

Tell him boy bye

Make me apologize?

Tell him boy bye

Text me while you’re with her?

Tell him boy bye

I ain’t sorry

I’d only heard snippets of Sorry by the Queen B. flipping through radio stations.

“… Her shroud is loneliness. Her god was listening. Her heaven will be a love without betrayal. Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks.”

Heard it full through the other night and everything came rushing back. Broke my heart and filled it up simultaneously.

I love it when women get strong.

She was then I was the fucking side chick. I was ashes. The fire went out.

He poured ¾ of a bottle of wine on it after I doused it with 3oz of vodka in a wine cooler.

I ain’t sorry

Let’s have a toast to the good life

My therapist told me I am allowed to have more than one emotion at a time. I laughed so hard I cried.

I told Giant I had run the gambit of feels and landed on shame.

But there was more, there is always more…until there isn’t.

I am shocked anyone found my off switch as I am forever turned up and on.
I am pissed.
I carry with me the tiniest bit of uncharacteristic hope that he will wake up one day and he’ll realize what I am* and what he’s lost.
Beyond Most Bomb Pussy…

He always got them fucking excuses
I pray to the lord you reveal what his truth is.

Yes Queen B, she said it better than me. And those Beyoncelogues, damn woman. Preach.

Intuition, I knew this was coming.

Denial, I pretended it wasn’t.

Anger, I was venomous.

Apathy, now I don’t care.

Loss, his.

Emptiness, I found room to move in this space.

Accountability, I own what I did.

Reformation, I don’t want to be loved by halves, I’m whole on my own.

Forgiveness, I forgive, until I can’t anymore, and then I forgive myself.

Resurrection, I deserve better.

Hope, I am better.

and I can do better.

Redemption makes him look small.

He only want me when I’m not there

You better Becky with the good hair.

Sorry, I ain’t sorry

No no hell nah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxsmWxxouIM

http://www.bustle.com/articles/156559-transcript-of-beyonces-lemonade-because-the-words-are-just-as-important-as-the-music

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

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.

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)

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)

Boys

Happiness is a Warm Bed

March 29, 2016

This is important.

And now for my next trick I will use quantum physics to justify my happiness.

I am my own cock blocking robot from outer space. From out near one of Saturn’s moons I presume. Atlas sounds correct, carrying all this weight around with me when I should just be shrugging.

What is wrong with me?

I put poor vagina on lockdown around the whole Giant debacle.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. Albert Einstein

So I tried something different.
I denied myself my usual human Band-Aid and chose to just let the hurt heal on its own.
It did, not even the slightest hint of scar tissue, it wasn’t like that. He isn’t like that.

Sometimes we must fast to get closer to god.
In so doing, I remembered I have been gifted by the gods.
I’m activating one of my superpowers. This one is called “I can sugarcoat/ justify anyone’s behavior” now with an added twist it’s MY turn.

I do that. Read anything here about Young Un and you would think he has a halo.
Um, he left me too, in a less than majestic manner. But we are okay now.
I painted Ex Hubby a saint as well, we are not okay now.

Everything changes, everything is temporary and all I have is right now and the stories I write here to remind me of what ‘now’ felt like.

I also remember the time called “before”.

Once upon a time there lived Sisterwife, Bad Kitty and Jesus.

If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it does it still make a sound?

It’s a cat in a box, we really don’t know for sure.

Double slit theory proves that all matter behaves differently when observed.

So if I fuck him and she never finds out, am I really hurting her?

Nope.

The atoms I am composed of do behave much differently when I am with him, ecstatically actually, and his thrum rather harmoniously with mine.

Do what thou wilt, this shall be the whole of the law. Aleister Crowley

The witch in me has to add ‘Do no harm’.

I can’t. I am not that girl.

I slept with Jesus for the most of the 90’s into the oughts’ while he dated his her. She still doesn’t know.

I’ve spoken with him about ‘us’ at great length. I was really happy, pouty but happy. He was really happy, guilty but happy.
Her? She was blissfully oblivious. I needed him to tell me one more time that I was a good girl. He did, I was. Amen.

After the 6 year internment-camp/prison/cheatfest that was my marriage I vowed I would never ever do that to another woman.

But I never did. I am not capable of that cruelty, never was.

The Jesus tree crashed down in my bed once a week, sometimes twice and his girlfriend never heard it. I didn’t make a sound outside of my room, just enjoyed the time we were given.

Sisterwife, was all hacking and chainsaws. She made it a clear cutting competition. Bragged, harassed. Used Facebook as a weapon and a wedge trying to and succeeding in cutting me down. We took turns throwing each other under the bus.

When Bad Kitty was actively pursuing her married Monster I helped her move physically closer to him. I had to grit my teeth for sure, some of my old wounds started to open and weep. But I genuinely cared about her and I wanted her to be happy. I have an ingrained need to contribute to the happiness of others, so I justified her behavior. Until she attacked his wife then I cut her off with the same axe I defended her with.

I know I am only in control of myself and my actions. I am not here to judge anyone. I have my own moral code and my own way of doing things. Louis CK calls them his ‘believies’ and he lives by none of them. He is my power animal.

You see kids. I want someone who does not belong to me. And he wants me too.

I had to ask myself why myself and the Giant deserved less happiness than what I’d helped Bad Kitty attain.

I have never and would never behave the way Bad Kitty and Sisterwife did. I behave the way I do. Loving, nurturing, constantly putting the happiness of others before my own. His happiness happens to be linked to mine.

What if someone throws me under a literal bus tomorrow and I missed out on amazing conversation, snuggles, backrubs and lightning sex with this colossal giant of a man that I feel amazing just being in the same room with?

Fuck it.

I went to his house. Matching bra and panties, freshly showered with every intention of fucking him.

I was afraid I’d slipped out of my goody-goody-two-shoes and he had found a pair of his own, but as his slid my underwear down over my ass and flipped me over to massage my front, that panic subsided. I looked up at him, my leg slung over his shoulder so he could work the knots out of my thigh and saw his eyes half closed in a blissed-out state that matched my own…no guilt, just cake and lightning sex.

I watched him smiling all the way up into his eyes, immediately shed guilt I’d been carrying.

I wrote the rulebook for lovin’ young uns. And he is young.

Thou shall not covet the young uns. If they come, let them, but don’t try to keep them. (It is actually more rewarding that way, having them return over and over without implied obligation or imaginary lockdown)
This too shall pass. Bask in the now, don’t think ahead. Or else the consequences will be yours to suffer alone.

My girl just got back from Burning Man. Explained the policies which allow this to continue. Sooooo unlike other festivals that leave chaos in their wake, this one has a carry-it-in carry-it-out policy. MOOP (material out of place) is forbidden. Nothing is left behind, the hardpack is squared off and fine combed for the last little bit of glitter and feathers. Leaving it as pristine as it was before 70 000 people did their thing in the desert. Ensuring the reverie can happen again the next time.

Too bad we can’t do this with people. Come in, enjoy, camp out and then leave with just memories, without scarring the landscape.

Too bad? No, exactly this. Leave no trace except the lingering lightning under our skin.

Boys

The Most Cake

March 27, 2016

My virtual fortune cookie this morning said “Savor your freedom – it is precious.”

I smiled.

Been clicking on that thing for 8 years now, this is a new one. The exact right thing at the exact right time.

Hot Neighbor has been around quite a bit lately. Bless him. Holding me together when I felt like flying apart. Imparting his ancient Scorpio alien wisdom. He is a really spectacular big spoon and he brings me pie.

He disappeared for a month or three. I asked him about it and he said he had been experiencing his own melancholia. He described it as catlike. Sleeping a lot. Hiding out, wanting to be petted, but not too much.

Sounds way more dignified than mine. I lean towards the canine side of things. Slobbering on myself and everyone around me, chewing bones down to nothing. Prone to getting excited at the littlest bit of attention and then cringing at the mess I made because I didn’t go out when I should have.

Postcard from 1952 came on as I was writing this. I have a 9 hour playlist I write to for about half as long every day and somehow it always appears in the shuffle. And I cry.

I didn’t cry today. This is huge.

A few days ago I let out a righteous bellow at the universe, calling my power back. I felt it flowing into me, like one of those paper lanterns, holding it still forever then in one little moment, the air is hot enough and it just floats.

Up, up and away went my final fuck.

I left the Land of Melancholy and was immediately transported back to that delightful space of zero gravity/zero fucks. Nothing holding me down. God how I missed this weightless/lightness.

I was grieving the loss of my Frankenmonsterlover aka the Giant. For like a month. Put myself on lockdown. Got catlike myself, “Don’t fucking touch me, leave me alone, let me cry and sleep in no discernible pattern.” Hot Neighbor was the only one allowed to pet me, and even then, one too many touches and I hissed at him.

He came back anyways.

We talked some more. I explained that my 3 years single I had been treating as an experiment. Throwing myself into everything with vigor, quite often blowing shit up then retreating making notes and exploring what went right or wrong. Then go back into the field, do more research and try something else. It’s science.

Not a bad way to be really, except when I get too heavy into the theory and forget to go out and live.

Feel free to laugh at me, I am laughing right now. But after the Giant told me he was seeing someone else I continued being monogamous. I know right?

Let me explain.

I get hurt and I immediately crawl into bed with someone safe and fixate/fix myself that way.

Also, he left an open fun thing with me for a normal relationship with her.

Except he hasn’t left…we still talk and see each other.

I somehow decided I had to let everyone go.

Wolfling was easy, the rest, not so much.
Young Un had been holding my hand for a while and he is just sex walking.
Drogo did one of his magic telepathically linked check-ins, and I missed him.
Home was maintaining safe distance, but I could feel him watching out for me.
Poet resurfaced, how do you abandon someone whose greatest fear is abandonment? I can’t really, so I let him in, but he is physically far away so that seemed safe enough, until it wasn’t.
Even Gelfling reappeared, but I didn’t take the bait…yet. I am waiting for it to get warm again.

Oh wait, I am lying, I had a date with 88. It was a really good date and I really should have fucked him.

Might still, I left that door ajar. Who am I kidding, my door is never locked to those that have the password.

Home called me out on my lunacy. He said “It amazes me how fast you are willing to give up what you are for one guy.”
I mewled a weak retort about how I do want to find everything in one person, I do. But I also don’t want to lose myself.

Giant seemed ideal, the things he wants and the life he has are compatible with mine.

But he wants a normal relationship with a normal girl.

But…he still wants me too, he never left me, I left him.

Epiphany in 3-2-1

What he really wants his cake whilst eating me too, whilst I have my own cake, and him.

Um, I’ve always been the girl with the most cake. I know exactly how good that feels.

Why would I deny him that, or me?

We still talk, he reads my words as fast as I can type them, listens to the music I gifted him to the point of wearing out the discs.

He says he doesn’t want me waiting around for him.

Neither do I.
I have unfinished business elsewhere.

He says he doesn’t want me to go.

Neither do I.
I have unfinished business with him.

He says he doesn’t want me feeling second.

I really don’t.

I realized mid-write. He wants her that way.

He wants me too, exactly as he found me. Which is exactly what I wanted. As is.

He might actually be the Frankenmonsterlover I thought he was, with sprinkles, icing and a cherry on top.

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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