Tis the Season: a short tale of childhood

     When I was nine years old, I became obsessed with the Nutcracker. I think I'd been forced to endure it at a relative's house, or maybe I watched it after school shortly after Thanksgiving. Whatever the case, I was very insistent that I get one for Christmas, despite my parents' puzzled RCA dog looks. And it wasn't the reaction one gets requesting an old-fashioned gift, but more like I'd asked for a laundry hamper."What would you do with it," they asked. "Wouldn't you rather get something a little more... fun?" This led me to make impassioned speeches about the magic of Christmas & the traditions of that time of year, the old-fashioned charm of it all. To look at my then-stepmother, you'd think I was insane. "Alright. If you want it that much..."
     I had vague but important plans for my wooden friend. We were going to dance around in the snow somewhere. He was going to escort me into a magical winter wonderland and fight rats and truly it got fuzzy after that, but I knew he was an integral part of my future. So the weeks went by and I built up this world in my head of my life with the nutcracker, adding a new layer of technicolor goodness each day.
     Christmas finally rolled around and I tore through yards of wrapping paper looking for him. A Bloom County book, a two foot long big rig, an army of action figures. I kept a calm exterior, but inside I was frantic. Where was he? Lastly, I was handed something oblong and smallish. Well, I guess I didn't specify what size I wanted. I tore off the wrapping paper and found... this. I was speechless.

     
     Apparently my parents had never heard of the classic ballet and had been almost worried about my strange choice of Christmas wish, but hey, if it made me happy, so be it. It wouldn't have been the strangest request they'd heard from me. Have a merry Christmas, everyone.
     

Still Life With Fruit

     You know how you hear accounts of old women smacking around muggers with their handbags or random citizens pushing a wrecked car off of a complete stranger in an adrenaline-fueled heroic moment and your heart fills, however temporarily, with admiration for ordinary people turned remarkable by their circumstances? And you idly wonder what you would do in their shoes? Well, I found out.
     Last Friday night I was playing Crack the Case at my fellowship's game night with five of my friends when I noticed someone crossing the parking lot towards us. I watched them approach and when I could make out what they were wearing, I froze. A hooded sweatshirt pulled up over their hair and one of those paper painter's masks that covered his nose and mouth. He bobbed his head to the side, looked through the glass door at our merry scene, and pushed it open.  I want to say I shouted, pulled some Crouching Tiger moves as I ran across the folding tables, did anything at all really, but no. No, I sat paralyzed, thinking "I'm about to die for the $1.25 in my pocket, this is so lame" and did absolutely nothing to warn anyone. As it turned out, it was just this mentally ill kid who shows up sometimes who happened to be "in disguise" that night. But that solves only half the problem. What the hell is wrong with me? Where did my spine go? As my friend Erin said afterward, we found out which Hogwarts house I'm in: It's Hufflepuff all the way, baby.

With This Ring I Thee Wed

                            If you’re expecting some militant rant on my rights, I’m sorry to disappoint. I’m not what you’d call a political person. Like the majority of my red-blooded American brethren, I am ill-informed, cynical, & easily influenced by topical TV programming. Even at my peak of teenage idealism, my dedication to the cause came in widely-spaced twenty minute spurts. I went to Queer Youth Lobby Day & daydreamed through my region’s talk with our congressman, actually repeating what was just said when it was my turn to express an opinion. So much for making my voice heard. But one of the main reasons I actively refrain from activism is the peril I place myself in by investing emotionally in any rhetoric. Because it’s difficult to think of my own civil rights (the missing ones) and not connect the people in my life who believe these rights aren’t mine with the idea they must think less of me somehow. So I don’t think about it. Or speak about it. Because I’m not up for a debate & especially because I think, traitorously, that that particular subject isn’t really the most important issue to consider when heading to the voting booth. Hate me if you like.

                The story, crap, I’m nowhere near it yet. To start painting the picture, my dad is a somewhat conservative truck driver who is married to a (quite lovely) women’s jail guard. He’s not, like, Focus on the Family conservative, thank God, but he’s definitely not an NPR listener. Like, he probably supports the whole French burqa ban. But he loves me, I've never really doubted that. And he has never, EVER, expressed any sort of disappointment regarding his only son being a flaming queer. At least not to my face, which is more than good enough for me.

                As to the other player in this uplifting drama, may I introduce my marriage. I met Jeff in July of 2006 and our courtship was pretty damn quick: we registered our domestic partnership in January of ’07, and I don’t think I’d even introduced him to my parents yet. Our relationship has survived much: active crystal meth addiction, homelessness, custody battles, separation due to jail time, mini-wars with family members, hurting our son/each other/ourselves. But again, I’ve never doubted the love that serves as our foundation, and it turns out I bet on the right horse.

                Now, the story: Thanksgiving day found Jeff, Tristan(son), and myself spending the day with assorted members of the family my dad had the good sense to marry into. I was playing with this ring I had found on the sidewalk near my grandpa’s place, which started a conversation with my dad about the sad fate of Jeff & mine’s wedding rings (pawned, long ago). I didn’t think anything of my dad’s questions to Jeff: believe me, if I’d known the outcome of it, my manipulative ass would’ve paraded my ringless hand & matching sob story around long before this. So. The next day, Black Friday, my dad calls me and OFFERS to BUY JEFF & I SOME RINGS for CHRISTMAS! So we met him at the mall and took him up on his offer, of course.

                And aside from walking away from this with a beautiful set of matching rings, I walk away with much more. I know that whatever my dad’s opinion of gay marriage in general, my father respects my relationship with Jeff, my quasi-adoption of Tristan, and sees that this is for the long haul. I’d love, after all this exposition, to expand on this. But what else is there to say? What else could I possibly ask for? 

"It's not me, it's YOU."

                I discovered something about myself while I was living at the homeless shelter. It wasn’t the fortitude with which I faced my circumstances, the unflappable faith that things would turn around, or even the reserves of inner strength I’d tap into to dig myself out of it all. No, what I found out was this: I am catnip to crazy people. This continues to be true today.

                Maybe I secrete bacon-scented pheromones that only folks with untreated schizoid personality disorders can smell. Maybe they just like the gleam of terror in my eyes. I don’t know. What’s clear is that hordes of the severely deranged invariably, inexorably, make their way to me. And there they set up camp. Why? Because I don’t have the heart to shoo them away. Wait, scratch that. I don’t have the backbone to set reasonable, healthy boundaries with people. I am often frozen, wide-eyed & wooden-grinned, nodding fervently while someone warns me of the surveillance devices found in dental fillings, shows me letters from the raccoon in the television, or accuses me of being in cahoots with the fish-man who stole her baby. My husband has had to pull me out of situations like this all the time, glaring at me all the while. He has that amazing ability to disengage with or without grace when it’s time to hit the road. Me, not so much. At least, that’s how the story reads most days.

                She's nutty. The specifics aren’t for me to say and, though entertaining, they don’t have anything to do with my point. I answered the phone and there she was: self-pity, guilt trips & accusations screeching through the airwaves. I hung up & turned my phone off & regretted that choice as soon as I did it. It’s not how I wanted to communicate. Then my friend Jeremy’s phone rang. HER. Looking for me. He covered for me. A temporary solution. I called my friend Erik and talked it over, and texted her this: “I’m sorry, I’m overextended. I have made myself appear more available than I am willing to be. Good luck with your problem. I’m sorry.” Which is as close as I could get to the real truth without generating more trouble or hurt. She got the point. She blustered, whatevered, and finally asked if I wanted her to erase my number. “Yes.” I replied. She must have gone through this before. She sent a “Thank you” and went on with her life. Maybe there’s a lesson in here somewhere.

A poem. Why? God only knows.

Roses

4-5-11

It’s a cliché- wine, candles, the red trail of flower petals. You’ve even got Sade crooning low from the speakers. I should snicker, kept safe in my cynicism, but instead, instead I break. I cry explosively, red-faced and leaking, pulling in great heaving gasps of breath to gibber unintelligibly at you. It hurts to be opened like this, cracked like an oyster by the simplest of tools. Your kindness hurts. You hold me and pretend I didn’t ruin the mood.

Distance does funny things. I save your letters, smudged cryptic by familiarity, tearing at the creases. I study them like some dusty codex. The phone is a magic portal from which your voice recites poetry in German, Portuguese, Czech, your native Spanish. Nights it chants, weaves a spell and I see you slick in your wetsuit, black hair thick with sand and salt, or maybe in your UCSD hoodie, or that poncho you got in Tijuana the weekend we met. Days, I imagine you in your lecture halls, or making tamales with your mother and numberless sisters. Your life is a foreign land, with its promise and richness. I dream it into being.

Leapfrog the states, the space between us. I may fly coach, but it feels vaguely European, my big love story. This flight I’ve something special for you: a cross for my Catholic, white gold. Diamonds. I can’t keep from opening the box, tossing little lights across the lap of the anxious woman next to me. Put away, then out again it struts- turning round and round, a good luck charm, a fetish. I rub my fingers raw with its magic.

Slow-motion reunion on the tarmac, lifted up and spun around, my feet landing for the last time. I hand you the velvet box and you hand me more of these damned red blooms. Wings gone now, I see it coming, see it gone hissing with the sun into the Western sea. This is the moment I will look back on as the turning point. Not months later when you ask to renegotiate the terms of us. Not after your awkward confessional phone calls, begging forgiveness: I am already stone. It is ego before it turns to truth, this assessment of Cain’s offering.

I love you more than you love me.

Same great taste, now 1/3 the fat!

     So I ended up a little over 270 lbs. and wigging out a bit about it, which led to me abandoning my vegetarian ways for the time being and hopping back on Atkins. Also, I've been doing 3 miles a night, 6 tonight to get used to pushing my body so I can start jogging. And I've been doing some ridiculous resistance band workouts, I look like some senile old bat who can't figure out how to work a jump rope. The preliminary results? I've lost 27 lbs! Which is a great start, especially for the relatively short time I've been doing this schtick. Aside from minor irritability from all the meat and the grossness of eating a meat-centered diet, I'd recommend it for quick results. I think the biggest aid is the ketosis urine strips. Every night I piss on one and see that my body is responding, regardless of what the scale may say. It seems to serve as great psychological reinforcement. 

     Anyway, that's all I've got. Not necessarily funny or interesting, but something I take some small pride in sharing.

Tourette's of the Spirit

     I'm coming to realize something about me that is probably only a surprise to myself- I am not and probably never did resemble the Beaver. I am Eddie Haskell, through and through. Where I ever got the notion that I was some line-toeing goody-goody escapes me now, though in all fairness I did say things like "golly" and "horsefeathers" until I was about 13. Okay, so I still say "horsefeathers". The point I'm sluggishly establishing is that my character, like that of our own dear nation, has upon close examination always been questionable.
     A timeline for your perusal:
Birth to Three Years Old- I poop with abandon, wherever and whenever it pleases me. I do not clean it up.
Four Years Old- I make out with my aunt Bonnie's dog, Junie.She quickly abandons the new relationship in favor of fresh cat poop. I find a snack in my nose.
Five Years Old- I instigate a hamster massacre by holding my hamster's newborn cubs in appreciation of life's miracles. My hamster eats her young while I scream. Later that year, I disagree with something my grandmother says and slap the glasses off her shocked face.
Six Years Old- My cousin Ashley entreats me to impregnate her through her belly button. We are unsuccessful.
Seven Years Old- I am sentenced to detention and a minor spanking for mooning someone on the playground. All involved struggle to keep a straight face while the sentences are carried out, save me.
     Fast-forward to the present. At a crowded meeting celebrating milestones in sobriety, a woman's shoes catch my eye. They are sneakers with some sort of iridescent holographic pattern all over them. "I love your shoes" I say, to no response. "Miss, those are really kickass shoes" I reitirate as she turns around. "You have anal warts!" I exclaim, gaining the attention of everyone but my target. Doubling over laughing at myself, it hits me.
     I was never the Beaver.

The F Word

     265 lbs. That's... wow, that's really something. That something, boys and girls, is fat. Great fleshy mounds of fat that jiggle uncomfortably when I move. That's 75 lbs in the last year. I'm at a loss to explain how this massive weight gain occurred, other than that when I recommenced eating I apparently didn't stop. I tried the Atkins thing but didn't stick with it, gaining more weight than I started out with. Now I'm doing the vegetarian thing and trying to stick to that, despite some holiday-time miscategorization of what was blatantly ham and not free-range tofurkey. The point of going vegetarian wasn't necessarily weight loss, so I suppose I can't complain that I stay the same weight. But I admit frustration. All the vegetarians I've known have been a healthy weight or underweight. I did think weight loss would be a welcome byproduct.
     All is not mystery, though. When I lived at the park and then the shelter, I walked everywhere, several miles a day. Now, I have a bus pass. Also, most of my snacking is processed grains, empty carbs I'm obviously not using and totally devoid of nutrition. What I need to change if I truly want to change is obvious. More activity, more conscious eating habits. But whether I follow through remains to be seen. That's as close to a resolution as I'll allow myself to get, rededication to a process instead of some far off goal I'll likely abandon. Wish me luck.

I Know What You Did Last Winter

     I have been straining to resist the knee-jerk New Year reflection montage that I assume everybody does this time of year. Not because I have any regrets about the past year- quite the opposite if anything, but because it's a pretty artificial frame of reference. What I mean by that is external markers have far less significance than the guideposts and high-water marks you yourself establish. Were I to succumb to the calendar referencing, I'd be tempted to think myself amazing for the distance I've figuratively traveled and set up camp right here until discomfort forced another shift in my life or consciousness.
     Last year at this time, the house I rented(paid rent to a roommate, anyway, turns out they were squatters) along with six other tweakers was emptied out by the sheriff's department, most of the useless crap we'd hoarded or "created" finally making it's way to the dump. I made my way back to the park I'd lived in previously, a haven for homeless drug addicts, whores, and other human refuse. After my husband got out of jail, I lived in the furnace of a train engine there in the park, shooting up speed and looking for recyclables until the ridiculousness of it all sank in. So yes, sure, I'm a world away from where I was then. I have come far. And yet...
     There is far to go, and no true destination. My natural, instinctual self would be content to say, "I have come so far, it is done." and start in on stagnant mode. But I can't stand still, or anyway I won't. I'm hiding out at my grandfather's senior studio with my husband, sleeping on a broken recliner. We still look forward to some unknown future date when we will have our own place, enabling, hopefully, shared custody or at least visitation of my stepson. So, obviously, much has to change, and change it will. But in it's own time. Anxious foot-tapping won't help, but it's difficult not to hover over this planted hope, worried over when it will bear fruit. I aim to find some middle ground of acceptance of the now while moving forward at as brisk a pace as opportunity allows.
     Happy with what growth I've managed? Certainly. But chomping at the bit to gain further hold on some autonomy.