Breathing Underwater.

In a middle of a room… 

there is a stage, and on the stage there is a girl, and on a girl the words “Lone Wolf”. Black ink calligraphy, one word sprawling across the back of each thigh. Tall socks and gold hoops. Black lace. When she smiles it’s all lips, and when she looks at you it’s no fucks, but when her back is turned there are acne scars and the slope of shoulders, and longdark hair. You watch her face in the mirror and maybe the facade falls away, or maybe this is just another type of mask. A harder one to remove: the eyes vacant, pointing always to the upper right corner of the ceiling. ...stands a suicide. Cross-legged in the booth at the back, we sip our drinks and take turns walking our dollar bills to the stage. Lay them at the dancers’ feet like an offering or apology.

Sniffing a paper rose. It’s been raining like fuckall and the weather has me surly. Seventeen days of breathing underwater. Sitting across from a human, the damp sinks into layers and layers. Wet wool and cotton. We wrap our tongues around cheap beers. Smiling to a Self. She says just once she wants to be the You; says she wants to kiss a hurricane, but I am a new type of storm these days. Something slow and pervasive. Sinking through layers and layers. I am not the disaster you’re looking for.   

“somewhere it is Spring and sometimes

people are in real:imagine

somewhere real flowers,but

I can’t imagine real flowers for if I

could,they would somehow

not Be real”

She says the whiskey stops her hands from shaking because she asked it to. Wraps her fingers around the shotglass, sipping and suddenly shy. A girl leaves a stage, takes a man by the hand. Settles herself in his lap. Through the gap of gauzy curtains her half-closed eyes as she gyrates. (so he smiles, smiling) I take a girl by the hand and we sit in the noisy silence and there is no shaking.

“but I will not

everywhere be real to

you in a moment”

I leave her on the corner. I do not look back. Describe to me the shape of a Self.

It’s 8am and I’m driving to work and the sun is shining through rain like a curtain as I pull onto the Ross Island Bridge. I’m sure this is a metaphor, somehow. And everything is easier than I had guessed everything would be.I say the words but they don’t feel like mine. I say the words but they taste like nostalgia. I say the words And everything is easier. The sun. The rain. Than I had guessed everything would be. The is blonde with small hands. The is wet wool and cotton. The is half-closed eyes and black lace. The is wrapping a tongue around whiskey and smiling back syllables, afraid of sounding foolish. The is falling asleep at the wheel.

Remembering the way who looked at whom first, anyhow dancing.

Tell me about your closest brushes with death. Tall buildings or pedestals: I have no use for that kind of height. How far can you jump before it’s considered falling? How long before you hit the ground?

Find nothing but faith in nothing.

When I am lonely I go to that place, and today I realized it when I was halfway there the way I will realize it when I’m halfway there next time. When I left my house I thought it was because I needed food. When I left it was because I thought I needed a change of scenery. When I left it was because staying seemed too easy, seemed like it could be forever. So 2pm and I peel myself out of bed and put clothes on my body, tuck a book under my arm. I am halfway there before I realize I am lonely. Two blocks to go and I'm stuck in my head, floating through last night. Peanut butter porter and Why didn’t we talk sooner. Afterwards, karaoke and too-bright lights. A dimly remembered recurrence like deja vu. This weekly outing sinking slowly into the realm of habitual. Cyclical time. Luis and Paula playing their usual roles. Paula with her Patsy Cline. Same songs, same drinks. This family they have created. Luis sits at the bar, speaks to me in pretty accented English. Says I sing beautifully. Says I could be one of them. A glimpse into some future I can still turn away from. I turned away. Today last night is just a lingering headache. Tired eyes and sore limbs, a bellyful of bad decisions. Today I walk into the bar with the noise and the lights, wet and cold lingering on my skin. In my hair. Find a booth at the back, go to the bar. Food. Change of scenery. When I am lonely, I go to that place. And standing at the bar, standing between me and a cheeseburger, standing between me and some hours of undistributed reading. Mike. Fucking Mike, with his brunch-drunk midafternoon advances. Mike with his standing too close, with his questions. With his introductions and explanations I didn’t ask for. Mike with his I don’t want to take too much of your time, taking too much of my time. He asks for my name, wants to know what I do. He lives just down the street, what about me? I realize halfway through the truth that I don’t have to give it to him. I don’t owe him anything. But I feel guilty; I don’t want to be rude. So I keep spewing generalizations. Lame platitudes. Conversation enders. Mike sips his Bloody Mary, the straw resting against his cracked bloody lower lip. Looking down at me, asks for my number. I give him nine out of ten honest digits, my heart in my throat. I’m sure he can tell I’m lying, positive he’s going to call me out. But he saves the fake number. Smiles. Says Cool, says I’ll talk to you later and all the while I wonder why I couldn’t just say no. No you can’t have my number, or my time, or my attention. Instead I say Great. I order my food, and a drink, and slink to my booth. I try to read with half my attention tracking his movements. I'm dreading the moment he comes through the doorway, wishing I had closed my tab, wishing there was another bar or a backdoor.

When he finally leaves I breathe easily for the first time since first contact. Watch him stumble down the street through my periphery, unwilling to accidentally make eye contact through the window. Once he’s out of sight I gather my things, close my tab, hoping he doesn’t come back. I leave the bar, turn right instead of left. He went left. He lives just down the street.

Mike, I'm sure you are a nice guy. I'm sure your intentions were pure. I'm sure you saw me walking into that bar and just wanted to reach out. Make a human connection. Dip your toes into the water to see if I was drowning. Or maybe you just liked my jacket. Maybe you were drunk and chatty. Regardless, your inability or refusal to read my body language made me feel vulnerable. You were exercising an ignorance afforded you by privilege I'll never know. Now I’m sitting in my bed thinking about the truth. Thinking about the moment I realized I could be anybody or anything. The stories we tell ourselves. The stories we tell other people. The spaces we occupy. The ways we are allowed to occupy them.

When I am lonely, I go to this place.

Open Letter Series: #5

**Mom you don't want to read this one!

Hello darlings. I know it's been a very long time since [that one time] I had a guest post. But a friend and I were discussing the current state of lesbian affairs, and she wrote this thing, and I felt it needed a home. So without further ado, Open Letter Series #5: Guest Edition.


To Every Lesbian I've Known, and Every One I've Yet to Meet: 
I love you, but you will never love me back. Until, of course, I stop loving you. Then you will love me fully and with unbridled passion. One night, after too many well whiskey drinks, our hips will collide against a pool table and we will stumble into a sticky, sloppy embrace. We'll find our way back to my house or yours, somehow, and engage in something resembling amateur high school wrestling. With my face nestled between your legs, I will immediately regret the late night totchos we got on the way home. I will try my hardest not to vomit while I ride along with the thrusts and moans of your body. With a final crescendo-ed moan, your body will give in and I will pull myself back up to you. 

As we catch our breath, you'll look at me hoping that I don't expect the favor returned. I don't. 

It's late; I'm tired, drunk, and too emotionally damaged from past relationships to reach orgasm anyway. It would be a futile effort. You will try to snuggle into my embrace, but I'll have the spins and prefer facing the other side of the bed. When I roll over, you'll ask if anything’s the matter, and I'll mumble something incoherent. We'll both drift off into an uncomfortable sleep because it will be too hot and we are still drunk and didn't drink enough water. A few hours later I'll wake up to pee. 

Soon I'll wake up again, much earlier than you and I'll lay there uncomfortably wondering what to do with myself. I'll read Facebook until the battery on my phone dies, then roll over and try to gently wake you up with a morning snuggle and possibly morning sex. This is how I'll learn that you hate morning sex. 

Eventually you'll wake up. We'll laugh about the night before, and one of us will go home. 

We'll never talk about how either of us really feels, so we'll go on text flirting for a few months, and getting really drunk and having sex a couple nights a week. We won't talk about anything meaningful, except for when we're drunk. Then we'll talk about all the things that caused us pain in our childhoods. We will sing Brandi Carlile on karaoke just before the bar closes and walk home together, each quietly thinking to ourselves about the girls we'd rather be going home with. After two months of this, over a plate of hummus and limp carrot sticks, we'll decide, mutually, that this isn't working. We'll both cry. 

We'll still text each other for 6 more months, but all social interaction will feel strained and sad. I'll see your profile come up on my Tinder account and I'll swipe right, just to see if you swiped right. You didn't. 

A few more months will go by and I'll leave town. I'll get the job of my dreams and a dog and you'll look at all my Facebook photos, wondering how you ever let me get away. I so look forward to our time together, sweet Lesbian. With love and eager co-dependency, Other Lesbian

I'm Not Surprised...

But I never feel quite prepared.

When I was a very small child, I lived my whole life. By which I mean that my childbrain crafted the most fantastic dream spanning a lifetime. Full of color and depth, characters and emotions. Accomplishments. Failures. I grew and dreamed and cried and loved. And hated. Everything so vivid, everything real the way breathing is real. Then I woke up. More accurately, my mother woke me up because it was time for preschool.

My entire life I have felt the vestiges of that dreamlife resonating somewhere beneath the surface of my reality. I’ve always felt like this existence was a puzzle I’d put together once already. Some cosmic hand had scrambled the pieces, put them back in the box and asked me to start over. The picture would always be the same; the sequence would eventually unfold even if the pieces came back together in a different order.

I was 26 years old when I woke from the dreamlife as a child again. And part of me, sometimes conscious sometimes not, has always expected that would be the end of this assumed waking life.  

Three (nearly four) years ago I ran away from the home I’d burned down, every single lie I’d ever told nipping at my heels. I started b Honest with the intention of just that: to BE HONEST. With the new people I met. With the people I’d left behind. But most especially with myself. I wanted a public forum to hold myself accountable, somewhere to reflect openly and genuinely on my thoughts, observations, and feelings. What I found is that honesty is hard. Wherever you go, there you are, and here I am with all the lies I didn’t know I was telling starting to salivate offscreen. If time is in fact cyclical and unchangeable, this is the point in the story where I start drinking gasoline and swallowing other people like lit matches, trying to set myself on fire.

Or.

I can claw through the charred rubble of my own history and show you this vulnerable, beating heart beneath it all. This sounds hyperbolic because it has to be. It has to be steeped in metaphor because everything I’m feeling is too real, and I’m so very scared of you all.

Today I turned 27 years old. I outlived the dreamlife. And I wish I could tell you my first response was relief, because it wasn’t. Isn’t. It’s so much more complex than that. There are so many good things in this life. Good people, good experiences. But I am tired, and I thought I was nearly finished running. I’m staggering over the perceived finish line while the universe whispers in my ear that I have to keep going, and I’m not allowed to know how far or how long. And I’m tired. I’m running beyond the estimation of my capabilities and I’m tired. Terrified.

I’m not writing this so you can feel sorry for me. I’m not writing it so you can try to fix or reassure me. I’m just trying to get back to the original mission of this blog: a space to examine my thoughts and feelings. A space to be vulnerable and hold myself accountable. I didn’t die. I didn’t wake up. I have to/get to keep running this race. So here I go. Plunging into the next year of my life; this year I never expected to have. I am so thankful for the love and support you’ve all shown today. Every day.

I love you.

-b

Open Your Eyes

Tonight, I was standing in line at Trader Joe’s waiting to checkout with my customary Friday-night champagne and salami. I’d gambled on a particular clerk’s bagging skills. I felt confident he could load up one person’s items and blow through another before I’d been standing long enough to get bored. I was wrong. I’d overestimated my attention span. I let my gaze wander over the usual display rack of chocolate bars, mints, and seasonal oddities. Shifting from one foot to another, I happened to glance to my right.

There, perched in the middle of the store in a modified walker/crib were three pomeranian dogs. They wore tiny jackets with color-coordinated bows tucked behind each ear. Little blinking red lights were affixed to each of their collars, for safety I presume. Attached to the front of the cart with white zip ties, the hand-painted sign read: Caution! Guard Pomeranians. Next to the words, a fluffy painted pomeranian looking like a modified ball of sunshine, red tongue lolling from its black-lined mouth. Pictured alongside the guard pomeranian were the Mother Mary, and a uniformed man toting a rifle.

The trio were keeping a close eye on everybody passing their cart while their mother fastidiously examined each bottle of wine on the shelf. She would select a bottle, peer closely at the label, lean in to see the price tag, and frowning return it to the shelf. All the while those little dogs, poised in their cart, keeping an eye on things.

Now, let’s be real. I’ve worked in a veterinary clinic for nearly four years. I’ve seen plenty of dogs in strollers. I’ve even seen trios of dogs in clothes before (though the last one was yorkies in dresses). And while these guys were pretty adorable, all fluffy bundled up, I’ve seen cuter dogs in stranger places.

What surprised me was how many people walked right past those dogs. How many people nearly walked into those dogs, and their cart. Or their mother where she was examining wines. And they didn’t miss a beat. They didn’t look up, or say hello, or say sorry. Like some kind of autopilot allowed them to swerve around [unimportant object] on their way to the chocolate-covered almonds, or next open sales clerk.

It made me wonder how much more we’re missing. How many things do I nearly collide with without every knowing? I mean this literally and figuratively, of course. Maybe it’s time to look up a little more often. Maybe it’s time to open our eyes.

I don’t know if that woman ever settled on a bottle. When I left, a man had slowed in front of the cart, looked up from his phone, and was raising a tentative hand for examination by one of the dogs. When I left, those pomeranians were guarding nothing more than the fact that they weren’t guarding anything at all.

Happy Friday, boo faces.

-b

Don't Let It Get You, and I....

Won't let it get to me.

Tonight and a dark bar where you can't hardly see the company unless you’re looking hard enough. $5 glasses of Merlot and $1 off whiskey because Wednesday. Because the girl you know is leaving and the bar didn’t know but they seem to sympathize anyways. Jubelale tells you the season has changed, winter on a summer-drunk tongue. Your focus funneled into pool cues and angles and an impossible shot made possible by the sheer physics of luck.

Every time I tell the story it becomes more true. The crying. The leaving. Even in this place where past and future chafe against the thin membrane of memory. I don't remember the sloped parking lot. The bar where I handed the waitress my phone, asked her to call us a cab because even my monocular vision couldn’t procure us a ride home. Here is what I remember: the parking lot like a ski slope for beginners, no rope to guide us home. The Christmas tree refuses to grow in the corner you’ve allotted, and I think that must be a metaphor,

In the parking lot where we stumbled and weaved the dark-haired memory tells me I was never meant to follow. Tells me I was born to have dreams. And I laugh, say the parts of myself still connected to you feel bruised. Tell her some day I’ll heal, but tonight I feel like an open wound. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for but it’s more than this. Hours ago, an impossible angle and a reckless shot, the 8-ball sinking into the corner pocket and even strangers have to sigh for the luck of it all. Perhaps these hands are more skilled than they know. Perhaps these hands know the path they are supposed to follow.

My therapist says it’s time to let go, says she can help me through alone but hope is a dangerous emotion. She can’t navigate the breadth of this emptiness, You. Do you know I still think of you at night? Wish the smell of you had stained my pillows, spoiled me to any future suitors' advances. There are times I feel like my sadness has chummed the waters of their affections, caused these hapless heartbreaks to rise to the challenge, hell bent on erasing this you that I still cling to. Is tragedy a thing, or its absence? I’m never quite sure.

I fear the morning, that still, quiet gray. My breath unfolding around me like a whisper. Like an apology. Everything is so different than I’d hoped everything might be. Even the feel of you against my bare feet: foreign like the countries we’ll never see together. Imagine Spain. Australia. Scotland. These places our breath has never mingled in dark alleys or hostels. Never risen off of each other's skin to be born again.

The dark parking lot where I’m buying cigarettes and the olive green shirt in dark-rimmed glasses asks how my day is. I say Can’t hardly complain and he laughs so soft his shoulders don’t move. See, he’s been having the same day too. As soon as I leave he’ll crawl back into the store, prop an elbow on the counter like the memory of a bar, and spill his stories. But I will be too far gone to hear. I watch my breath puddle around the cold.

I am too far gone to hear. I am too far. I am gone.

-b

Because Love is like Falling and...

A few years ago a friend (my lover at the time), asked me if I wanted to go bouldering. For those of you who are unfamiliar, bouldering is essentially rock-climbing but without all of the contraptions. The walls are shorter, the courses designed to be safely conquerable. There are no ropes, no harnesses. No other human being anchoring you to the ground with the force of their weight. Nobody to catch you. In bouldering there is you and the wall: your feet and hands snugged into holds fashioned to keep you from falling.

I agreed to go despite a lifelong fear of heights and a recent distrust of my own body. See, there are times my body forgets to be my body. Times my hands disconnect from the circuitry and drop whatever they’re holding. Times my feet tangle themselves into the subtle nuances of thin air. I have frequently felt helpless against gravity. But the truth is I was tired of the cold and the dark; winter so long you forget there is anything but winter. Tired of the routine and the safety. The artificial warmth of bedrooms created by breath and blankets. So I said yes.

The Circuit is an indoor climbing gym full of lights and noise and bodies. The climbing walls are coded with numbers, letters and colors according to difficulty. We entered that foreign space with our rented shoes and borrowed chalk, not knowing what to expect. Intimidated by the novelty we sequestered ourselves to a corner of the wall. My lover (at the time) jumped into the fray while I read and reread the rules. Never stand, walk or climb underneath another climber. No running, skipping or jogging. No food or drinks on the carpet. No Climbing under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Committing them to memory like they held the secret to success. Like they could equip me for the task at hand. 

Following the beginner pattern she easily scaled the first wall, an up/down circuit that brought her quickly back to where I sat cross-legged on the ground below. I think you’re up. I stood, walked closer to the wall studying the pattern, breaking the code. The bodypuzzle unfolding in my mind. 

My hands surprised me with their steady, arms bearing the body’s weight with unanticipated grace. My borrowed shoes gripping the divots and juts just so. My body splayed across the wall and climbing. Slow and steady. Strong and sure. I reached the top of that first course, pounding an open palm across the flat space between wall and ceiling. Victory. But coming down is the hardest part. The body, better suited to rising than anything else, slowly stuttering its way back to the earth’s surface. Toetips stretching delicately, probing out each ledge. I made it back because you have to make it back, one way or another. 

I hit the ground with a splitlip grin, ready for more. What’s next?  

We slowly worked our way around the perimeter of the wall. Some courses were top-out, no coming down from those. Once you were up and over the ledge your feet carried you down the ramp like feet were intended to carry you. Others, up/down like the first, required the cautious consideration of navigating your path in reverse. 

In climbing, there comes a point eventually where you are halfway up or down a wall and everything just stops. Your arms refuse to reach for that next handhold. Your legs won’t straighten or they won’t bend. You can’t move up or down. Fatigue creeps into every muscle and joint, fingers aching, heart pounding. The only option is to let go. 

Lately my life feels like that first unconquerable wall. Everything tired, everything aching. Letting go means forfeiting all of the height I’ve gained. Means falling. Means trusting the ground to catch me. Means letting myself be caught. There are no ropes or harnesses, no person anchoring me with their weight. There is only me and empty space; those subtle nuances of air. When you can’t climb anymore, you let go. Acknowledge there are more walls, more days. And maybe you will be stronger next time. Or maybe you will just be less afraid of the falling. More accepting of gravity. 

The first time I let go I fell hard from a high place. Landed heels to ass to back. Let my body sprawl across the padded ground. Let my body breathe and laugh, flexing hands and arms and legs. When I think about living I think about climbing. I think about falling. Think about standing back up, powdering my hands with fresh chalk.

Analyzing the bodypuzzle. 

Scaling the next wall.

-b

So long, so long.

I am a reckless collector of memory.

Under my bed shoe boxes teem with notes, postcards, scraps, and shopping lists. Totes stuffed with cards from every occasion. My empty spaces overflow with Miss Yous and Happy Birthdays. The ticket stubs: Brandi Carlile, The Great Gatsby. The empty gum cartridge from my first solo road trip, each silver bubble ruptured in an effort to stay awake, stay awake, stay awake. Albums full of photos from when photos were a thing. Smiles permanent and fixed points in time like somehow remembering makes them real. Like remembering makes anything more real. Your face could be more than your face just because I ask.

Every few months I dig through the e-mail archives. Click through the digital relics. Expose myself to the plotlines fallen by the wayside; all the places my story didn’t go. All the places it did. The inside jokes I’m no longer party to, familiar but forgotten like the tune to a lullaby your mother used to hum. We were once so small. Like any good archaeologist I recognize beauty in the scraps, even if I can’t identify their original purpose. If I hold onto these things I can nearly piece them back together, nearly piece myself back together. Nearly find peace.

Today I learned that a former coworker lost her battle against depression, and it’s got me thinking about the lexicon of losing. What it means to be reduced to words and memories. How a struggle so fierce can be expressed so passively. I only knew her casually, but this loss tears at the seams of my community. Prickles at the back of my mind. We are so small. Memories. Words. There is no agency in either. After we’re gone we are thrown to the mercy of the people who cling to us. If we knew how they would cling, would we ever be able to leave?

There is no such thing as a casual tragedy. But there is information gathered in passing, a hung head in the back hallway, a moment of processing before the day lurches forward again. I didn’t really know her, but somebody did. This was somebody else’s beginning and end. And I feel selfish for the relief, that brief instant of recognition: this could have been my loved one. Someday it still might be. But today I can read through the archives fondly knowing the people I care for are still breathing. I can tell them I love you, please be ok even if those aren’t the words I use to say it. I am so profoundly sorry for everybody today who can’t say the same.

Here is what I remember: a laugh, and a smile. Eye contact from when eye contact was a thing. How you could mine something interesting from the most mundane details. You made a person feel so fucking special just for breathing. If you knew how we’d cling, would you still have to leave? Did you have to leave us with the pieces so you could find your peace?

In a New York City bar I left my ring on the sink, but not before tracing its lines into the pages of my notebook. In the back of my car, all the clothes I never wear. No longer taking up closet space, but still within easy reach. Memories. Words. Nothing ever big enough to replace a person. Nothing ever real enough. It is reckless the way we hold on; the ways we let go. Slowly, slowly, then all at once.

To every You I have ever clung to: I love you. Please be ok.

-b

trag·e·dy, noun

trag·e·dy, noun

1. an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe.
2. a play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, especially one concerning the downfall of the main character.

Lately I have wondered about tragedy. The weight of it. The taste, the smell. Wondering about the ways we wear it. Casually like scars so faded we’ve forgotten their origin story. Sharp and white like screaming. Heavy like a gravity we never thought to question. What does tragedy eat for breakfast? How does it takes its coffee? Once you taste it does it haunt the corners of your mouth? There is a space between me and tragedy; it exists in a separate context. I do not wear it as a skin. I do not wrap my tongue around it every time I try to speak.

Is tragedy the presence of a thing or its absence? The moment of combustion, or the second the machine stops firing? Synapses so perfectly balanced lapsing into silence. Maybe it is both. A thing and the absence of a thing. What is the last story I will hear?

I love you or I’ll see you soon or Goddammit, traffic is terrible today.

What is the last story I will tell myself?

I’m sorry or This can’t be happening or Oh my god, oh. My god.

A friend sits across from me in the back booth of a cafe and says What do you believe in? People and words and stories.

A person wakes up and tells himself a story. He carries six firearms into a classroom and ends nine lives two and a half hours from where I sip black coffee. Tragedy. I believe in people.

Lucero Alcaraz, Treven Taylor Anspach, Rebecka Ann Carnes, Quinn Glen Cooper, Kim Saltmarsh Dietz, Lucas Eibel, Jason Dale Johnson, Lawrence Levine, Sarena Dawn Moore.

This tragedy tastes like cold coffee. Tastes like mouth gone dry, like the absence of a thing. I wonder what they ate for breakfast. Wonder about the last story they told themselves. I run their names over my tongue and they feel clumsy, unfamiliar. Does proximity directly impact the force? Does their tragedy resonate more fiercely because the shockwaves ripple through the same tectonic plates where I sleep, and eat, and live?

Lately I have been wondering about tragedy. How we eat/drink/fuck/fight/sweat our way through it. The blood and tears and vomit. The weight. The taste. This is an incomplete thought.

I am learning to play the guitar, my fingertips grown thick, trying to peel away from themselves. They harden so I can press harder into the pain; so I can produce a clearer sound. And maybe that’s what we’re all doing and maybe that’s what we’ve always done. Press into the pain until the distortion is erased. Press into the pain until it’s the only song we have memorized. Play it, over and over again. Make it more beautiful every time.

And then? We learn a new song. Keep our fingertips hardened with clumsy, honed with practice. Let tragedy be the baseline that thrums through our blood. I believe in people, and words, and stories. I believe in tragedy. I believe in pressing into the pain so we can create something more beautiful than our struggle.

-b

"somewhere it is Spring and sometimes people are in real:

I am sitting on a couch across the city from my home, the sky outside like a lucky packet of Starburst: everything red and pink like it could melt on your tongue. So sweet. It is fall now, but the fall before the rain and there are leaves stretching their red-rimmed veins to catch the last rays of summer. They gather themselves in quiet piles along the curbsides. Sitting on this couch I can hear a soccer game at the Jesuit high school behind the house. Music splitting the quiet into before and after. Music sounding like every robot deathmatch scene from every futuristic movie. Voices, and floodlights, and I can imagine the smell of fog-heavy grass even though there was no fog today. Memory. The lawns here are green the way nothing should be green after so much hot and dry. 

Walking around this house with its big empty rooms, and furniture like adults would use it’s easy to be Not Quite Me. I uncoil the hose and add water to the fountain. Or sprinkle flakes into the aquarium. Or run my fingertip over the waxy leaf of a thriving houseplant.  I remember to feed the dogs. Chase the cat inside before bedtime. Lock the front door. Keep my clothes on or the curtains closed. Tonight I will light a fire in the pit out back. I’ll feed it scraps of newspaper, the last seasoned logs of summer. Tomorrow I’ll pack my things and go back to Real Life. 

It has been two weeks and one day, nearly to the hour, since it fell apart in my hands. Since I said goodbye to a whole future. Since Real Life stopped meaning what I thought it meant, and started meaning lonely. Meant crying in grocery stores. On bathroom floors. On mountainsides, and car rides no matter their duration. For ten of those fifteen days I have been Not Quite Me living a borrowed reality. Tomorrow that ends. 

I’ve been trying to make responsible choices, be impulsive in the least destructive ways. I bought a guitar instead of a puppy. Tried to eat my dinners instead of drinking them. 

I am anxious to post this because it’s been so long since I sunk down into that writing place, and I don’t know what I’m trying to say except it is fall, and at 7:30 the sun has packed its bags for the night, and I’m going to be alright. Maybe not tomorrow when I’m confronted with my real life. But some day, in some other future. Perhaps one I haven’t glimpsed yet let alone kissed goodbye. 

And I hope you will too. Be alright. You are so brave for facing each day with your shaking hands and heavy heart. You are so brave.

-b

I’ve missed you so much.

A man with a plan. I mean a plan with a ham.

“It has to be less than twenty dollars.”

$22.46, $28.30, $24.98.

“What about this one?”
“No. It has to be less than twenty.”

I’m standing in  the Corvallis Trader Joe’s, elbow deep in Easter hams. The gold and silver foil crinkles while I grasp at labels, becoming increasingly desperate.

“This one. This has to be it.”

Carly glances at the price sticker. $20.36.

“Ok....”

I realize I’ve been holding my breath when I remember to inhale again.

“But you’re going to owe me thirty-six cents.”

Of course. 

It started with a free sample.

But before we get into it, I have a confession. I’m thoroughly infatuated with Trader Joe’s. I love the individually priced, seasonally-rotating produce. I love the gimicky specialty items, canned dolmas and cookie butter. I swear by their soyrizo when an event calls for breakfast tacos. And of course Two Buck Chuck, which is technically now $2.99 Chuck, but still the best bargain on the block.

Now that I have a reliable income, Trader Joe’s has become the foundation of my adulthood. Hell, before I had a reliable income I’d treat myself to their $1.99 microwaveable black bean and tofu enchiladas. [Note: this was during an unfortunate period of time where I experimented with gluten-free veganism AKA acute self-hatred.] I primarily subsist on chicken sausages, bags of kale or spinach, and the occasional 85% cacao Dark-Chocolate-Lovers chocolate bar. And the samples. Party meatballs in honey bourbon barbecue sauce. Chicken fiesta quesadillas with mild tomatillo salsa. Once the Trader Joe’s on 39th and Holgate gave out carne asada samples and I visited three times in as many days.

You guys, there are few things I love more than holiday meats. Having been a vegetarian a good portion of her life, Carly has little experience with holiday meats in general Easter ham in particular. One fateful sunny afternoon we walked into Trader Joe’s where I bee-lined for the sample station, per usual. She followed more slowly, actually doing some precursory shopping before sidling up next to me. Nestled in those little white paper cups were morsels of thick-cut maple glazed ham, smeared with dijon mustard.

“Ham?”

“Ham.”

“Right. Because Easter is a thing I guess.”

We ate our cups of sweet, salty, meaty goodness.

“What do you want to do for Easter?” I asked.

“Eat a ham.” She responded, zero hesitation.

“Really?”

“Obviously.”

Thus the Easter Feast of 2015 was conceptualized.

What makes a feast? 4 lbs. of pre-cooked, spiral cut ham, one jar of Sweet n’ Hot mustard, one package soft, sweet pull-apart rolls. A veggie tray, because we’re not brutes. 20 fluid ounces of coconut water to wash away the dredges of last night’s wine. The final crumbling corner of Carly’s chocolate chip banana bread. Sitting in my car, we appraise our recently acquired goods.

“What now?”

“Oh. You don’t want to sit in this parking lot and eat ham with your bare hands?”

“...”

“...”

“Let’s find a park or something.”

Easter Sunday 2015 we woke up in Corvallis, Oregon feeling a little delicate, having become unconscious in our Super 8 hotel room the previous night after an evening of poetry, wine, and late night television. Saturday morning we’d driven down for Festival Poetics, where I would eventually perform 25 minutes of poetry to an audience of eight people, because Easter Sunday.

But first, the Feast! Unfamiliar with the area I plug the word “park” into Google Maps and we’re off. Sunlight glimmers off the silver ham wrapper. Sketchy looking clouds begin to crowd the horizon, and things look windy, the way they’re starting to drift horizontal like gravity switched off. But my comfortably warm and sheltered car lulls us into believing an outdoor picnic will be tolerably warm.

The “park” nearest Trader Joe’s was actually an empty field with free-standing benches on each corner. Across the street, a church and a community garden. Between the two at the foot of a giant shade tree, a lone picnic table. A scattering of volunteers hunch over rakes, spades, and trowels. They’re busily weeding and tilling. I count at least three straw hats, as many as five humans total. Responsible adults, every one of them. And there, maybe 15 feet from the garden gate, was the picnic table beckoning.

“Wet grass where nobody can see us, or picnic table where those other humans might watch two grown women eat a ham with their bare hands?”

“Or we could just sit in Carrrl?” Carly suggests hopefully.

“Noooo, we cannot sit and eat a ham in my car!”

“Ok, ok. Let’s do the picnic bench.”

We gather our food items and every piece of warm clothing we own, having realized fairly quickly it is NOT tolerably warm outside. I smile and give Carly a thumbs up. Game time. We’re halfway across the street when a hooded figure swoops around the side of the church with alarming speed and perches atop the one picnic table, casually texting. We freeze, clutching the ham, looking uncertainly from each other to this angel of picnic doom. A small animal cry of desperation wrings itself from my lips before we’re laughing, helplessly standing in the middle of the street, shuffling uncertainly.

Luckily, before we have time to formulate a new plan the black clad stranger leaps up with that same unfathomable speed and disappears back around the corner. This is how we found ourselves sawing off hunks of cold ham to squash between mustard smeared sweet roll, eating in near silence, our fingers purple with cold. We avoid eye contact with the gardeners as they take their leave. We avoid eye contact with the children playing tag. We avoid eye contact with the elderly couple walking their dogs past us. Nothing to see here folks, keep it moving. 

“Are you going to write a blog about this?”

“I probably should, right?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“Just two ladies in the park eating a ham.”

I'm so glad you're my weirdo.

Xoxo,

-b