shiny things

The thing that convinced me that we were at an end was when I thought about sending him the lyrics to Send in the Clowns, to make a point, you know ... to say how sad and ridiculous we had become. But it hit me that he wouldn't get the reference. He wasn't literary. He didn't follow theatre. Those were worlds he didn't feel drawn to in any way.

So you left him then?

No. I lingered. I stayed almost a decade more. It was convenient. Oh, I scold myself now. Maybe if I had left sooner, I might have met someone wonderful. Actually, I did meet someone wonderful - several someones. But I couldn't let him go. No, I lingered.

When did you actually leave then? Or did you?

He left me. Isn't that hilarious? He grew weary of me complaining about how unhappy I was and he left me. It's actually the nicest gift he ever gave me!

When was that?

1983. One would think I would have snapped up a new beau then. But with the hideous hair of those years, I couldn't compete. Women wore these high-rise wings of hair on their foreheads and I think they functioned like the bright feathers of a male bird. Men were drawn to them. I couldn't bring myself to wear ridiculous hair, so I suffered by comparison.

Men didn't want you?

Oh, they did. But only after they talked to me. Men always find me attractive after they've spoken with me for a while. I can always tell when the switch has happened. Their eyes change and they lean in a little. But my problem is that by the time they realize they're interested, I'm so angry that I push them away. Their slow awareness of who I am bores me. I need a man whose smart enough to figure it out immediately. And there aren't that many around like that. No, men are like little children. They like shiny things.

So you've been alone all these years? There was no one else?

Well, there was George. But I try not to think about him. He was the sweetest man and I treated him terribly. He scared me so. He had this ability ... he was French. I don't know why I said that. Being French had nothing to do with it. Ha! He had this ability to do things just as you were wishing he would. He was so in tune, you know? Not just with me. Everyone. It was uncanny. And scary. Every time he did it, I would be mean to him because it scared me. But we still had some very wonderful trips and we even lived together for a bit.

In France?

No. We were in Montreal.

pores

I never said you couldn't go.

Well, you implied it. You totally fucking implied it. Your facial expression. Your body language. Every pore on your body pushed out a NO.

Now you're just being crazy. Pores don't have a language.

Yours do. Your pores get involved in every conversation we have. They sell that pore shrinking shit specifically for people like you, to shut you down, to give other people the chance to breathe.

So go, then.

Oh, nooooo.

Go and have a wonderful time.

Ohhhh no. You're not getting me that way. That's mother guilt right there. You SAY for me to go, but there's punishment waiting for me somewhere down the road.

For God's sake, Jimmy, just GO.

I'll go. But I am warning you. If you punish me later, I will not stand for that shit. I will not stand for that shit.

I'll try to keep my pores under control.

Fine. You do that.

Good-bye.

I'm gonna kiss you good-bye. Try to pretend you like it.

He kisses her on the cheek. She smiles. He goes out the door, slowly, looking back at her several times. She picks up the telephone.

Hello? Yeah, it's June. Ask Bo how long it would take to move all of Jimmy's things out to the curb and can he do it right now. No, no furniture. Just clothes, shoes, some sports stuff and knick-knacks. I'll need boxes.

cheap joe

After I graduated from college in 1983, I eventually found work as a counselor in a community based mental health outpatient facility in rural south Georgia. I stayed there until after my marriage and the birth of my son in 1987. My time at the center was a mixture of increased knowledge and understanding about mental health, psychotropic medication and the interaction between socio-economic status and the availability of quality medical care.

There are so many stories from this time in my life. But the one that stands out the most is about an alcoholic farmer who, in his mid-sixties, found himself court-ordered to attend the drug & alcohol group I co-led with my boss. I'll call him Joe, to protect his privacy. Joe joined us because he had received one too many DUIs. It was our ritual to welcome new members by giving them the opportunity to tell us why they were there. This was Joe's explanation:

"I am NOT an alcoholic and I do NOT have a drinking problem. I'm here because I'm cheap. When I bought my new Cadillac, the dealer showed me several optional packages for my new car. One of them optional packages included an automatic dimmer for my headlights. That was pretty fancy. A sensor would pick up on the fact that a car was headed towards you and it would automatically dim your lights if you had your brights on. I liked it, but I didn't want to spend the extra $600 on the package that had that in it.

"On my 65th birthday, I was driving home from a party my friends threw for me. A state patrol officer was driving towards me and I failed to dim my lights. He turned around and pulled me over. I reckon he smelled a little alcohol on me and he gave me a sobriety test and that's why I'm here. I was driving just fine, but I didn't dim my lights, which could have happened to anyone, any time. If I hadn't been cheap, I woulda bought that package with the automatic dimmer and I wouldn't be here today."

I had a copy of the police report from that night, so I asked him, "Joe, didn't you fall out of your car on to the pavement when the patrolman instructed you to exit the vehicle?"

Joe looked startled, but quickly recovered. He said, "That was because the cuff of my pants got tangled on the brake pedal. I was just fine."

The group was a seasoned bunch, at all different stages of recovery. There was a long silence as I let them absorb the story and think it through. I knew they would do the work for me. Bo was one of the guys who had been there the longest. He had killed his own three year old son in a DUI crash into a ditch. He was an extremely depressed man, but he was sober. He finally said, "That's bullshit and you know it."

Joe said, "Naw, I don't know it. I've been driving since I was old enough to reach the pedals on my Daddy's tractor. I've been drinking since I was in high school. I ain't never had problems before and I don't have a problem now. You don't know what the hell you're talking about."

Another pause, then we heard from Sue Ellen, who was addicted to cocaine. Her Daddy had been the county's district attorney for years and years and had spoiled Sue Ellen rotten. After a lifetime of getting everything she wanted, she found herself strung out and in jail. Sue Ellen was our best dressed group member. She leaned in and tapped her cigarette ash into the ashtray and casually asked, "Was this your first DUI? 'Cause they usually don't send you to this group on a first DUI."

Joe looked at me. He knew I knew, so there was no sense in telling a lie. "No, it was my fourth. But I wasn't drunk the other times neither."

This time, the group was silent, all looking at him. Sometimes silence tells the speaker he is full of shit.

Joe did eventually admit that he MIGHT have a problem. But that was months down the road. Recovery is an ugly and unpredictable thing. And it is never over.

The question for me - and for you - is this: What is our drug of choice? Alcohol? Crack? Food? Inactivity? Sex? Purses? What is it that we can't stop doing that causes us to lead a less than full life? And will we, like Joe, spend lots of energy on trying convince ourselves - and others - that we really don't have a problem? What lies will tell ourselves about the cuff of our pants? What will we rationalize by saying we were too cheap? How will we convince ourselves that we are JUST FINE?

Yep. Recovery is an ugly and unpredictable thing. And it is never over.

a midget, a little person and a man of very small stature walk into a bar

So, about 15 minutes ago, I heard someone laboriously climbing the steps to my third floor apartment. There are four apartments up here and I wasn't expecting anyone, so I didn't think anything about it. But then there was loud banging on my front door. I looked out the peephole and saw ... nothing. Then the person backed up and I realized it was a man of very small stature. (I was going to type "midget", but I debated over whether I could still use that. I pictured someone commenting, "I believe they prefer the term 'little people'. So then I was going to type "little person", but realized that didn't communicate gender. So then I changed it to "a man of very small stature". Leave your comments below. Sigh.)

Anyway, I didn't answer the door because I didn't know him, it's late at night, he wasn't yelling "FIRE", and I have a recurring fear of being murdered by an axe murderer, although to be honest, I never pictured it would be an axe murderer of very small stature. So then he moved across the breezeway and began knocking on my neighbor's door. Here is the weird part. He didn't knock on the door of the single guy living across from me who is built like a linebacker. (I might have opened the door to take a quick picture of the two of them standing next to each other, just to illustrate this blog entry. I know how that sounds. But how could I have resisted?) No, he skipped that apartment and went to the other one across the hall, which happens to be vacant right now. When nobody answered, he went to the one next to me and banged on that one. Nobody answered because it's vacant too. At that point, I heard him start complaining loudly. I couldn't quite make out what he was saying, but he sounded really mad. Then he stomped down the stairs.

I have so many questions!

Question One: Why didn't he knock on the linebacker's apartment?

Question Two: What was he doing knocking on so many doors?

Question Three: What would you have done?

This is not one of those stories where there is a trick answer or a punch line. I'm not setting you up. This really just happened.

Now I'm wondering if I would be writing this at all if the man had been six feet tall. Is it wrong that seeing a man of very small stature served as a writing prompt? How bad a person am I?

we still burn

heart beat
blood rush
visions of love

these things you cannot see in me
and so you smile and talk
never knowing, until I tell you,
what you're doing to me

you freeze
you stutter
you forget your own name
and I see your response

we are still teenagers in love
decades later, we still burn

vanilla world

My life has been filled with experiences that would cause many people to faint from the shock of what they were seeing. My worldview is painted by interaction with alcoholics, drug addicts, homeless people, mentally ill people, immigrants, sexual deviants, criminals of every description and people who have secret lives. To say that I have been changed by exposure to the wide variety of people and environments is an understatement.

In 1991, I started interviewing people who lived on the margins of society. At the beginning, I asked all the wrong questions. My questions were driven by my own personal sense of horror that I, too, might be vulnerable enough to end up on the streets or drawn into behavior that was "bad". My fear guaranteed that people would hold their darkest secrets away from me and give me just a glimpse into their world. At the end of a day of interviewing, I would return to the safety of my vanilla world and collapse into my comfy chair, secure behind my deadbolts and my location in a "safe" neighborhood.

Over the years, I lost some of my horror, though I maintained a healthy dose of fear - just enough to ensure that I made smart decisions when it came to my own personal safety. The obvious criminals are easy to avoid. It's the sociopaths that are hard to spot. (They look and act so normal!) Instead of asking the question, "how did you end up here?", which was a question motivated by my own fear, I learned to ask, "what is your fondest dream?" And people tell me their stories and secrets. Occasionally, someone shares something with me that shocks them more than it does me. Getting a glimpse into the deepest recesses of a person is to be altered forever. You can't touch someone - soul to soul - and walk away the same person you were before it happened. So, I bear the imprint of hundreds of people. And I am richer for it.

But I write this not to discuss the more shocking bits of my years of interviews. Instead, I share my absolute dismay that there are so many people who are clueless about the wider world. They live their entire lives in vanilla world, with their only exposure to darkness being occasional glimpses on national news broadcasts or magazine articles. But I've even watched them turn away from those. "I don't want to see that." Instead, they turn their attention back to their own vanilla world, where things are boring and safe. I watch them in amazement, realizing that unless they have something very shocking happen in their lives, that they will die without ever seeing color. Their lives are beige and always will be.

The most shocking aspect of vanilla world is the conviction its residents have that every person is the master of his or her own fate. They truly believe that anyone experiencing difficulty can rise above it if only they strengthen their determination. They, mostly born into comfort, refuse to consider that they may be a direct cause of the discomfort of many others. And if they can mix religion into the recipe, they can convince themselves that God means for them to live a life apart from the disturbing realities of life outside vanilla world.

Lest anyone think I'm discussing only rich white people, let me state for the record that I see people of all races, religions and socio-economic levels living in vanilla world. I use the word 'living', but I really mean 'existing'. Because I honestly now believe that unless you have some color - some experiences that shock you and pull you out of your vanilla world - you aren't living.

Allowing color in doesn't mean you have to go to the extremes that I have gone. No. In fact, you can add color simply by admitting that you live in vanilla world. Do you? If you're not sure, then you probably do.

luke 1 haiku

Doubt – questioning – faith
                Each is a part of the whole
                                All is possible

song of myself: one

My fingers are long and slender.
They were made to play the piano, the guitar, your heart strings.
I pluck you. You pluck me.
There has always been much plucking.
And forever shall there be.

anticipation

I've applied for a job. For the first time in a really long time, it is actually something I want to do, rather than something that will earn excellent income or will allow me to contribute. I've felt like I've been sacrificing myself since I left my best-job-ever in 1993.

But things are never quite so black & white. There are very few perfect jobs. Every job requires some sacrificing of yourself, I suppose. But for now, I am allowing myself to feel some excitement about this opportunity. If it pans out, I will only be working part time and I will earn very little money compared to the executive salaries I have been fortunate to collect in previous years. But I believe I will be far happier. Fingers crossed!

i think we should do it

Part of getting older is accepting your memory limitations. So, admitting that you can't remember the name of the person you're talking to is important. Learning how to write reminder notes to yourself is another important skill.

When I first started writing reminder notes to myself, I could write one or two words - or even initials - and it would be enough to help me remember. But a few years ago, I found myself looking at my reminder notes and asking myself what the heck I was talking about. A reminder note would say "remember boxes". What boxes? For what purpose? Was this for work? Was I taking boxes somewhere or picking boxes up and bringing them home? This went on for a while until I finally started writing myself detailed notes that anyone in the entire world could figure out, even if they spoke English as a 2nd language.

But my latest dilemma is one that I have no solution for that does not involve ritual humiliation. But maybe ritual humiliation is just the next step in this memory loss process? I don't know. A friend of mine called and said the following, "I've thought about your suggestion and I think we should do it. In fact, I think we should start immediately, so I thought I would call and schedule a time with you to get started. How about Saturday morning at your place? I can be there by 10 a.m. Is that too early?" I said it wasn't too early and we hung up the phone.

I have no idea what I suggested, so I have no idea what she is coming over on Saturday to do. I don't know whether to provide snacks or buy swimming goggles or organize some crafting supplies. I don't know why I didn't just tell her that I couldn't remember what she was talking about. I should have. But now I find that I am enjoying not knowing. There was a time when I would have really stressed about not knowing. But right now, I kind of like imagining all of the possibilities. And I keep thinking that it will suddenly pop into my head. That's possible, right? Of course it is.

All I know is that when my friend arrives on Saturday morning and finds me standing there with crafting supplies, wearing swimming goggles and offering a snack, she is either going to be very pleased or very annoyed. And I think I can get us through either of those reactions.