So, just like at the beginning of summer, I was in
waiting-for-letters mode as I settled into my Dad’s apartment in a suburb of
Small Hometown City. His was a quintessential divorced-guy apartment,
rent-to-own cream-colored furniture and nondescript lamps. Where were vertical
blinds on every window. There were pretty pine trees around the front balcony
though! Dad was (and is) a man of
routine and coffee, as I eventually grew up to be. (Coffee always, but the
routine part of my heart took a while.) It was comforting and monotonous there,
great for feeling safe and figuring out what was next.
During the intermittent times I lived with Dad, my bed
was a waterbed, sheeted with mustard-colored cloths from my Grandpa’s restaurant
days. It was heated and welcoming. There was a nice big closet for my not-many
clothes and a yellow landline phone perched on top of a moving box. There was
room on the windowsill for my thrift store tchotchkes.
The immediate challenge as my long-distance
relationship with Perfectly 1993 Guy began was having anything to say in my
letters. The main emotion of my early adulthood was exquisite boredom, still
one of my very favorites. (These days, on the rare occasions when I’m called in
to my college bookstore job, the boss saves the most tedious tasks for me and I’m
grateful!)
But I could put off the letter writing troubles,
because Perfectly 1993 Guy planned a visit almost right away. He and I had
consecutive birthdays, though he was a year younger than me, so we planned for
him to visit me at my Dad’s on the weekend of both birthdays. It was truly one
of the top two most adorable weekends of my young life. It might take me a
while to get my head around it but I’ll do my best to not take a million years.
A couple of Thursdays ago, I was having a very
annoying day, which in 2020, sometimes feels like an OH NO THERE’S NO MORE
CIVILIZATION day. (Oh trauma-brain, not always helpful!) My internet was down
so severely that they scheduled a guy without making me perform any restarts!
My Animal Crossing villagers inexplicably stopped talking to me—I’m not proud
of how upsetting this was! I thought it was a puzzle but a quick Google showed
me it was just a fixable glitch. I thought a nice drive to the gorgeously
be-leafed nearby state park would take the edge off, and it did, but OF COURSE
the tire light was on.
During our weekend election fun/BFF time, Sweetie
filled up the tires for me (I’d gotten rid of my air compressor in a flash of Tidying
Up madness year before last. I am not great at life sometimes!) and the tire
light went off, but I still wanted to get it checked out. I’ve still got some
savings from the 600$ a week pre-Mitch McConnell-actively-starving-people-to-death
times, so I was braced for new tires. I planned to get a ride from the car
place and wait at home, these aren’t really
sit-around-in-public-catching-up-on-the-New Yorker kinds of days.
OH, Cute Car Place guy. So cute he could be made-up,
but isn’t. Tall, Black, with long locks and a beard and the most lovely attention-to-detail
hands. Younger than me, but not by too much. He is so, so friendly and sweet.
He deserves all the paragraphs.
My car’s name is Valentine because that’s when I got
her, back during the earlier and smuttier days of the Kitten Calendar. We were
in for her February inspection year before last when I decided I would ask him
out by sending a very polite note to him at work. I never heard back, so I
figured he was taken or just uninterested. (Or! Says my ever-hopeful brain,
maybe he just didn’t get the card?)
This time, when I brought Val in the following Monday,
he seemed disappointed that I wouldn’t be waiting around like I usually do. “Did
someone tell you you can’t? You’re always welcome to stay here with us.”
He noticed I was due for an oil change (THAT light
hadn’t come on, I work from home so I’m really not driving much.) and even
though my maintenance plan had expired, he gave me the oil change for free.
(Like Rory Gilmore with her Prius, I take Val to the dealership even though you’re
not supposed to. I like her to have a home.)
This sounds way more like a praise letter on the Awesome
Etiquette podcast than an entry in a sex blog, but as I’ve been learning
with my Perfectly 1993 Guy story, kindness is sooooooo hot. The thoughtfulness,
the care, the multipoint inspection the frequent update-texts from his work
number, I can’t overstate the happiness it bought me. I spent days in a gentle
cloud of I-talked-to-the-cute-guy well being, It’s kind of dazzling the
difference one cute, kind face can make.
And Val didn’t even need new tires! When I came to
pick her up, I high-fived Cute Car Place Guy with elbows like I’d learned to do
at all the post-Covid protests. I missed his warm end-of-appointment handshakes—oh
handshakes. Even though my mask was on, I’m sure he could see that I was
smiling. It’s possible I was glowing. A light I don’t feel too often, a sweet
little heart-lamp, fluttered on and the world was a little more full of hope
and joy. Obviously I sent him a (non-ask-out) thank you note. Of course he
texted an effusive work text when he got it, and that made me shine for like
seven more hours. Thanks, thanks, thanks.
Eventually, it became clear that I was gonna have to
go home. The guys were starting college and Last Bitchy Gay Guy’s dad wasn’t
renewing the lease on the spare apartment. In the last days before I went back
home, Perfectly 1993 Guy and I decided to tackle another block of mine: blowjobs.
I’d done a couple that didn’t feel too onerous, but a
particularly harsh night of casual sex when I was younger had made me associate
going down on a guy with contempt, with being treated harshly. Nothing in the
universe was harsh about this guy though, so why not give it a whirl?
He stood to the side of the couch arm while I sat
looking up at him. His face was beatific, he looked so vulnerable and patient.
Kind. His penis was truly the most lovable of all, medium-sized and always
friendly, just a perfect companion.
It didn’t take too long! Just a few minutes of
tentative, teeth-minding learning on my part and he was groan-whispering “I’m
gonna come.” And he did. It was another in a series of momentous exchanges of
love and warmth.
Swallowing was then, and for some reason remains, a
point of pride for me. We had planned out that part in advance, so he had a
Peppermint Patty ready to counteract the taste. (Which wasn’t so bad of
course!) So lovely, so thoughtful.
We literally brushed each other’s hair after that. I
explained, in the way that one explains something one knows absolutely nothing
about, that this was “a lesbian thing.” I think I got the idea from “artistic”
nudes in my dad’s photography books that I used to sneak (lengthy) peeks at when
I was little. Whatever the inspiration, the mutual hair-brushing was very nice.
In the parental back-and-forth of those years, it was
arbitrarily my dad’s turn to house me. I packed almost everything I had into
dad’s small car, heartbreakingly leaving behind the Popples knapsack that
contained (Among, I assume, other treasures) my senior year book, never to be
seen again. (Remind me to borrow my sister’s copy sometime for that pic of me and my friends’
legs, all in black and white striped stockings and lug-soled Mary Janes.)
I don’t remember the ride home with dad, aside from
the relief of being on the way home and the hope for future mail. I had to get
some kind of job to pay for the long-distance phone calls. I had to figure out
my post-graduation life. I felt loved, wistful, dreamy. I knew I would miss
Perfectly 1993 Guy so much, and that our story wasn’t over yet.
It’s taking me a long time to write these days, because
Sweetie bought me a Switch and I don’t spend very much time not on Animal
Crossing! The upside is, all of the imaginary flower-watering seems to have
cut my anxiety score exactly in half! Hooray! I’ve missed writing to you,
though—how have you been? I hope you’re well, happy, and registered to vote!
Maybe you already voted!
Anyway, so. At some point that summer, I moved out of
Beach Aunt’s beach house without even saying goodbye. She left me a modest bill
of 170$ which I didn’t try to pay back until ten years later—by then she wouldn’t
even cash the check! Beach Aunt was so kind before her Flat Earth/Anti-Mask/Openly
White Supremacist phase kicked in! I miss her.
I ended up moving into First Bitchy Gay Guy’s
apartment with him. Not too long after that I quit Great Adventure too. I’m
pretty good at stretching a last paycheck (See also: shoplifting.) but I don’t
know how I paid for my life that August! I sure didn’t quit smoking or
diner-ing! Maybe the guys took care of me, who knows.
The apartment was nice, with pretty hardwood floors
and wide windows overlooking a stone courtyard. It was sparsely furnished,
though, and the toilet was perpetually clogging. FBGG and I had sort of a George
and Martha vibe, part put-on and part real nastiness. It was both agitating and
familiar, having come from such a fighty home. We had quite the snit one night
when I spattered the pretty white patterned linoleum in the kitchen with RIT
Dye red during a painful and harrowing hair-dying incident!
The kitchen was maybe only stocked with ramen, cereal,
and pilfered diner coffee creams and sugars. Presumably also coffee?
So the stage wasn’t perfectly set for romance, but
romance happened anyway. FBGG switched rooms with me so Perfectly 1993 Guy and
I could have a little more snuggle room. The bed was a mattress on the floor,
with bright yellow sheets. The walls were wood-paneled and unadorned. The rooms
was warm and sparkly with love. He and and I didn’t know what we were doing in
the very best of ways, and he was unerringly loving and sweet.
My body was cooperative in all the ways except that
one. After years of indifferent/violent/cruel partners, I was really only able
to come by myself, and not always that! Perfectly 1993 Guy was fiercely (But
also somehow non-pressuringly) determined.
No one had ever gone down on me before, let alone
someone so beautiful, let alone someone with whom I was so thoroughly smitten!
Tenderly, kindly, with a gentle tongue and just the right amount of stubble, he
made love to me with his whole cute face.
I so much wanted to let go for him, but I would feel
the warmth and shudder recede almost as soon as it arrived. No matter how
steadfast of tongue he was, I couldn’t convince my body to trust him all the
way, to trust myself. I sure did love all the trying, though.
“Are you okay?” I asked. He seemed a little sad when
he came up for kisses and air.
He sighed. ”I just want to be able to do this for you.”
Of all the parts of this story, that line makes me the
most wistful. Will I ever hear that unconditional, sweet generosity from a
partner again? I hope so.
Ohboy The Limelight. First Bitchy Gay Guy said it was
the coolest club in New York City, so we had to go. The three of us
drove to Hoboken and took the PATH train in. It cost *gasp* eighteen dollars to
get in, but I think gay (This was before I knew about all the letters to use.)
folks could go in the back door and get some kind of deal.
It was one of the few non- Great-Adventure-or-just-bed
dates I remember having with Perfectly 1993 Guy. I was sooooooo excited! TO SEE
HIM! To GO DANCING! To go be in cool New York City! It all seemed impossibly
exotic and thrilling, like a really zeitgeisty dream.
(Pop culture sidenote: I can’t think about The
Limelight without picturing Michael Alig lurking past the couch where the first
season cast of The Real World were sitting and being not-awesome at clubbing.
I’m re-resolving not to watch Party Monster but I may need to rewatch
that episode and also consume a bunch of Club Kid content on YouTube. My quar
hobbies are weird.)
Anyway, the outfit! Not even a little bit Club-Kid-like,
but maybe the coolest I’ve ever felt in clothes. My favorite thrift store
minidress was the exact same navy as my aforementioned (And
afore-swooned-about!) Docs. No hose or socks. The dress was thick polyester
with a sort of lacy texture. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more beautiful or
perfectly dressed, but that feels like something I might’ve typed on this blog
before.
Once inside, we stood in line again for like EVER to
get onto the “gay floor” with FBGG. I remember that hallway SO
VIVIDLY—wallpapered in garish orange and gold patterns—actual church meets
Dee-Lite. The real sex shows were all the way on the top floor, FBGG
explained—I couldn’t even imagine what that might mean.
Once inside the “gay floor,” FBGG sort of winked out
of existence, just melted away into the scene. I was a little overwhelmed (but
trying diligently not to show it) by the sight of a naked Howard-Stern-looking
guy crawling around with a saddle on his back. It’s alarming, the first time
you see the back of somebody’s balls in a public place! For me at least.
With FBGG off cavorting, Perfectly 1993 Guy and I were
on our own. I was THRILLED to be holding hands with someone so beautiful and
new. We decided to check out the Disco/Eighties Room, where I was certain I
would know what to do! My all-the-way-raver years were a little ways off, but
I’d been going to clubs since I was fifteen. Being carefree and slutty and
ridiculous on a dance floor was practically my superpower.
And yet. The main property of Perfectly 1993 Guy was
stillness. He grew up to be a psychologist, and I’ll bet he’s a good one. I
don’t know if it was the pleasant inertia of him or the self-consciousness of
being in such a big cool place, but I felt frozen. Even when Groove Is in
the Heart came on! I just couldn’t make my body move in any kind of
dancelike way. With him watching me, I forgot how to have LIMBS. I was tranced
into statuary by lust, by his beauty, by being in the presence of so many
people who seemed so cool as to not even be human. So we gave up on the dance
floor.
We found and sunk all the way into a midnight-blue
C-shaped couch situated in semidarkness but lofted above the main (techno even
more tuneless than the kind I knew and loved) dance floor. All the while we
were snuggled up kissing, I kept thinking I should make myself get up and go dance,
but I never did. I’m so glad.
It was too loud for us to say much more to each other
than briefly hollered words between kisses. We were curled up side by side, his
hands on my face, in my hair. Outside of time and space, completely free from
the *ahem* real world, from any kind of context at all. His
very-gently-stubbled chin. His warm cheek against mine.
Being so innocently and mutually enjoyed felt new and
strange—I’d almost felt with Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, but that was in Perfect
Aunt’s living room, that was two sweet children. This was happening in a dark
house-musicy Eden where somewhere was Saddle Man.
My feel were up on the edge of a big industrial coffee
table that was strewn with votive candles. I’m not sure where I got the idea
that pouring wax on people was sexy, probably from Madonna. Perfectly 1993 Guy
picked up one of the votives and dripped wax lightly onto my upper thigh. Kiss,
gentle pain, kiss. With the next candle, he moved further up my thigh, closer
and closer to the edge of my underwear. His hands wandered the bottom of my
skirt, just grazing the most sensitive places, then more wax, and more kissing.
It was probably four in the morning when we left this
candleglow lust-haze and dragged ourselves downstairs to wait for FBGG. We lay
on a giant round red velvet pouf under chandelier light and Baroque wallpaper,
tired, so tired. So ready for bed. So many trains and Hoboken between us and
sleep. I was so thoroughly sated, and greeting the grey dawn completely in
love.
Other than the shoes, I don’t remember much of that
first Great Adventure visit together. EXCEPT THIS: We went on The Enterprise
(no relation), one of those Space Shuttle looking rides that rocks back and
forth, higher and higher, until it finally flips over. LOVE an upside-down ride,
especially with, thrill of thrills, Perfectly 1993 Guy locked in beside me.
And, he was… talk-singing.I can’t overstate how low-key this guy was
overall—even though he looked like a rock star, he was the quintessential nice boy.
Except in this moment, when, inexplicably and delightfully, he decided to blurt
out the entirety of “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine (Pause to
Google “Zack De La Rocha problematic” and then remember I’m supposed to be
typing…) As the ride started rocking its way up, he started with “Some of those
that work forces/are the same that burn crosses” and got all the way to “Fuck
you I won’t do what you tell me!” by the time the ride got to the upside down
part and the rest of the riders were screaming. I was laughing my head off in
eye-rolling disbelief. It was the perfect, most ridiculous love-moment for a
sort-of-punk-rock eighteen-year-old girl in 1993. It made me so happy (and
still does!) because it made all of the sense and none of it at once.
Aside from the ride/smitten tummy flips and cotton
candy romantic nighttime amusement part colors (Us was so many, many
year in the future. But also, things can be romantic and Jordan Peele-y at the
same time…) nothing particularly sexy happened while we were at the park, just
the spark of possibility and the THIS ONE IS FOR ME certainty that
paradoxically made me believe I could never have him. (Wow I’m exactly the same
forever.)
We left pretty late and made the hour’s drive back to
First Bitchy Gay Guy’s apartment, (It was a family extra, something having to do with
divorce I think, pretty sure that’s why this just-out-of-high-school kid
already had a pretty nice apartment…) stopping along the way to shoplift some
Marlboro Reds from the Acme. I usually smoked Camel Lights but shoplifters
can’t always be choosers. Sometimes I even resorted to ew/gasp menthols. All of
it seems gross now but also dirty-nostalgic, like cigarettes are a fun old bad
influence friend I’m glad to be rid of.
It was (Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!) decided that
Perfectly 1993 Guy would share the foldout couch with me while FBGG would take
the bedroom. The living room had the stereo (Pause to sigh over the existence
of stereos that were actual physical things…) so I put on a mix I’d made for me
and FBGG, a mix of the dance-y, dreamy, and the absurd, culminating for reasons
I can’t quite explain in Billy Joel’s “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” Kind
of world-weary for where I was at in my life, but I found it romantic. Quick
search—yep, I still do. Possibly I’ve always been an almost-46-year-old divorcee?
Anyway, INSOMNIA. The best kind, full of diner coffee
and cigarettes, curiosity and happy, wholesome lust. He lay just outside my zone
of touch at first, occasionally brushing my arm with a warm elbow. He smelled
like sun and clean sweat and life. I was perfectly restless, almost
holding my breath. What was I wearing, asked no one? I’ll tell you!
A coral slip I’d swiped during my BFF’s Thrifty
Shopper job back home. It had a sheer frill of ruffle around the fitted top, soft
coral lace along the bottom. I’m surprised I never just went ahead and wore it
as a dress, I think I would, now! It was a little big on me, but skimmed my
hips in a very satisfying way. The slip felt like silk to my naïve skin, but
was most likely some flavor of polyester. Best of all, I don’t think I was
wearing it to be seductive! That’s just what I slept in. Teenage me rules a lot
of the time!
Sooooooooooooooooooooooooo gradually (a tape-flip,
getting up to smoke a few times, always in sparky semi-silence) our bodies
edged themselves closer. Softly, tentatively, he took my hand. Let’s let that
last another lifetime, another frozen-in-amber moment to clone or treasure on
the shelf.
“Are you SURE you’re a lesbian?” He finally (FINALLY, FINALLY!)
asked.
“Actually I’m feeling pretty bi right now,” I sigh/said,
and then we kissed. It was a soft, playful, hopeful kiss of people who are
learning how. The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow helped me to learn that I kissed
too hard and too thrustingly (Probably influenced by the bad, lazy teen boys of
pre-BWSMAP days) and Perfectly 1993 Guy continued that lesson. He taught me to
probe and play sweetly instead of just devouring his face the way instinct and
experience told me to.
There must not have been much night left, but we
kissed and cuddled through it. His soft, perfect hands caressed me with
respectful, tentative curiosity. It was the first time I’d felt both wanted and
honored, both horny-as-fuck and patient, both cared for and fully embodied. It’s
hard to process the pace and tenderness of that first, sexy-nightgowned night,
but there it was.
I started this No Contact High Fidelity project first
and foremost to think about touch and give myself something low-stakes to work
on during quarantine, but I think I’m learning stuff too, just like Girl Rob
does in the vastly-vastly-superior-to-the-book new High Fidelity show.
(On Hulu. Seriously the best writing friend a person could have.) Typing my way
though this, I started to understand why my standards remain so (sometimes
vexingly) high, why I’m willing to wait out so much time alone until the right
person arrives: I’ve already experienced so many beautiful, ideal, fateful, hot
romantic moments in my life. If no more come along, I’ve already been quite
thorough. I feel so grateful right now to Perfectly 1993 Guy and almost all of
the other Kitten Calendar characters.
Of course I found my 1993 Docs available online in my size when I Googled them for this picture. My birthday IS coming up!
I’ve been realizing that this story has a LOT of me
just being a terrible person, I’m sorry! Thinking about First Bitchy Gay Guy
really opened a can of horrified-with-myself, not just because it’s when I
first learned and applied the term “f** hag”. It’s also dawning on me that
every relationship in this no-contact High Fidelity has more than two people
involved, though not sexually—I guess that really shouldn’t be a surprise.
Anyway, the general bad-personing. In high school, I’d
cultivated a shoplifting habit. Just little stuff: cigarettes, nail polish, a
small mountain of Easter candy to support a VERY brief flirtation with bulimia,
etc.
But with FBGG, things really escalated. I don’t really
understand why he liked goading me into theft—he certainly didn’t want for
anything. He and Perfectly 1993 Guy were the first rich friends I ever made, at
least they seemed rich to me! Even so, remember when ATMs had envelopes for
deposits? Using his bank card, we would make fake deposits and then withdraw as
much cash as we could from each one—usually around 300$.
That’s how I afforded my first pair of Docs. Though I
understand now that they are just kind of ordinary well-made shoes, they seemed
like impossible treasures. We took the PATH train and the subway all the way
from New Jersey to St. Mark’s Place to get them, a momentous experience I
remember as vividly as any love scene. Those shoes were beautiful. (Just a
heads-up, this story has a LOT of the word beautiful in it! It was my
favorite word then and probably is now too.)
The ATMs at least have the air of the impersonal to
them. BUT. Just once, FBGG and I dined and dashed. I think every hard
waitressing day I ever had later on (There weren’t as many as I deserve, I was
a TERRIBLE waitress but it was so much fun. But that’s another chapter.) was a
repayment of Karmic debt. Even though I don’t believe in Karmic debt!
Maybe even worse, when we DID pay for our coffee and
pie, I remember us leaving mere pennies as tips, justifying it as “Well, they
already get paid.” !!!!!!!!!!! I should devote the rest of my life to One Fair
Wage. One night, on a roadtrip to my hometown, the waitress asked if we had
meant to leave just eleven cents and we said yes. She said that she would rather
we leave nothing. I SWEAR TO GOD, years later, that waitress became my kind,
wonderful, perfect-to-share-a-smoke-with boss at another diner. I truly do not
deserve the blessings in my life.
Okay, enough confessing for now.
One more variation-on-a-theme though: I remember
calling Favorite Aunt from a payphone to update her on my whirlwind friendship
with FBGG. “He’s in love with you, just wait and see!” I guess she was taking a
break from shipping me with The Boy Who Sewed Me A Pillow.
Although I’d resolved at the beginning of the summer
to get more serious about being a lesbian (Doing my own bi-erasure but also
just wanting to satisfy the urge…) My First Bitchy Gay Guy kept insisting I’d
like his best friend. So, on my day off from the Six Flags, I got the two of
them in for free.
OMG! I’ve been putting off the brain-treat of writing
about requited love all summer! Time to set a timer and start.
The day after I graduated, I moved away from my suburban
town to go live with Beach Aunt at the shore. She was renting me a room for
some insanely cheap price: I think it was 170$ a month. I gave a way lots of my
thrift store clothes and most of my high school (sometimes Jane’s Addiction
related) art. I kept a lot of the ridiculous tchotchkes I’d looted from a
friend’s Thrifty Shopper job: Lots of sincere-looking animal figurines in Seventies
colors. It might be my overly poetic memory, but I think I carried a (Little)
birdhouse (In My Soul) on my lap in Beach Aunt’s overstuffed-with-everything-I-owned
compact car.
I left behind Bucky Fellini, the rabbit I’d purchased
at the State Fair the summer before and named after a Dead Milkmen album. Don’t
worry, we will eventually be reunited! And I think the Dead Milkmen are still
together!
I had 300$ in graduation money, a dozen white roses
from my mom, and a new set of oil paints I would (spoiler alert) never be
unlazy enough to learn how to use properly. I had a tape from the coolest girl
in the school: Mary’s Danish on one side, mix after the album ran out on the
other. Push th’ Little Daisies by Ween. Sensitive Artist by King
Missile. Nineties AF. I had candles and incense that had been too stinky to
burn in mom’s house. I had a floral vintage suitcase filled with thrift store
lingerie. I was ready for nothing.
The strongest emotion of living in Beach Aunt’s house
was the feeling of WAITING FOR LETTERS TO COME. Come to think of it, that
defined part of my California time too, and even now, a little bit.
There was a bus that carried workers from Beach Aunt’s
town to Great Adventure, so she helped me to get a job there. Not ambitious
enough to wait for a spot to open up in the old-time photo studio or something
else nominally creative, I took the easiest job to get: Maintenance. They gave
me Smurf-blue shorts, a bright yellow shirt, and a visor. Not exactly a look to
look for love in.
(Serendipity side-note: The Mayor of Kittentown worked
there that summer too! We never met, but I think I probably flirted with him on
the ride he operated, which, after several enjoyable minutes of Googling, I’ve
deduced was just prosaically called the Giant Drop. Love a big drop ride!)
Aside from some one-night concert friends I’d made at
a Dead Milkmen show when I first got to the beach (“If you don’t have Ween,
then we’re gonna raise a scene!” the band sang, paraphrasing an
important plot point of Punk Rock Girl.) I was essentially friendless for the
first month of the summer. On days off, I would either float on my own in the
pretty blue waves or take the bus to the park to rise the roller coasters for
free. It never got old!
During one particularly tedious shift clearing tables
and sweeping up cigarette butts in the 1950’s-themed area of the park (They
only had about 10 songs in rotation. One can only take so much “Leader of the
Pack.”) I met My First Bitchy Gay Guy, my literal partner -in-crime for the
rest of the summer. He would be the one to introduce me to the very most
Nineties-dreamy guy in the universe, who would be my first sex-with-love around
midnight between our two early-September birthdays. Oh swoon swoon swoon.
These days, what even IS a body adventure? I know I
should be working on my No-Contact High Fidelity proj and learning the knots on
Thursdays, but the sense of hopelessness that’s pervaded my snuggle-outlook since
Quarantine Crush is hard to shake. I think a lot about what quarantine-long lack
of touch (Aside from some very special occasion exceptions (Like, say, friends
are alive after being boxed in during a police-incited riot…) Sweetie and the
cats are the only people I can hug or high-five. And the cats are TERRIBLE at
high-fiving!) is doing to my brain and body. I’m not really sure what my psyche
is up to, but I think it’s time to figure it out.
Yesterday, I was “at” my favorite Zoom book talk,
sponsored by our local bookstore/coffeeshop. I like to go and mostly mute
myself, hear what some local strangers are reading, occasionally unmuting to chime
in about a book or invite everyone to a march. This week though: WHOA!
We were listening to a lady talk about the cool
workbook that comes with Life Before Slavery when, OHNO! I looked up
from my doodling to see: A naked, face-hidden white guy playing with his erect penis!
“It’s so small!” Exclaimed the lady who was trying to
talk about her book. Though I’m resolutely against size-shaming, I so much admired
her bravado and he definitely deserved worse! It was just kind of normal-sized,
lovely even though it belonged to an invasive, rapey creep. They muted his
video feed and we aimed to get back to books.
I felt awful for the moderator and for the rest of the
group. After a little nervous laughter and dismay, we went back to our talk. I
was a little more chatty than usual and was happy to make some new friends for
the first time in a while and add some more books to my TBR.
What that guy did to our Zoom was evil, violent,
hateful and invasive. I can’t believe anyone could be that callous, selfish and
cruel to anyone, let alone a neighborhood bookstore!
Stepping back and looking at my own physical and
emotional reaction, though, I am shocked, SHOCKED and a little alarmed. Though
I guess a delayed reaction may come later, I felt no fear, no triggers, no
jangled sense of helplessness. What my body felt about being subjected to this
nonconsensual cam guy was:
…Yay?
It could be an adrenaline thing or a self-protective bravado,
but I think my reaction is more base, if I can use that word in a non-judgmental
way. What stayed in my body for the rest of the evening and a little bit still
today was/is a clear, quiet physical happiness. It almost feels like…health.
Against all ethics and reason, I felt a sense of
possibility and joy. Later, after the talk was done and I finished the dishes
and played my phone games and caught up on the news, I had some very nice
personal time, with a further-reaching, more hopeful imagination than I’d had
in a long time.
There were some more sense-making things contributing
to that healthy feeling, to be sure. An old friendship dragged itself up
yesterday from the Bernie scrap-heap (Hi Pagan Boy! Welcome back if you’re
reading!) and I spent a few hours at my own (not the same one) bookstore job
for the first time since March. It was a generally good and progress-y day.
But. this invasive, creepy moment was the most
personal sexual encounter I’d had since those nights taking Quarantine Crush’s
songs the wrong way. It was the nearest I’d gotten to getting friendly with a
penis since… when was Comedy Guy? Like a year ago at least! In spite of myself,
something was fulfilled in me, a glowing little (yet regular-sized) puzzle
piece of joy fitting neatly into my Sacral chakra. I have no excuse.
I think the take-away here is this: It’s time to stop
neglecting my sex drive and my kink. As creative as I’ve gotten with working and
socializing remotely, I think there’s a lot of room for improvement in my
virtual sex life, which doesn’t currently exist beyond swiping through Bumble
and Hinge. I want whatever I find to be consensual, private, and personal of
course, but just as surprising and stimulating. I’ll let you know how it goes!
It’s been such a hard couple of weeks, even here in my
relatively un-police-terrorized neighborhood. My city was one of the ones with
the curfews, with the police brutality toward protesters, with the military
occupation. We’ve had so many victories, too, but I still really struggle to
put the experience into words. Mostly I’ve just been repeating it over and
over, like I did that time in the Nineties when my house burned down. Only
everything is burning down and building up all at the same time.
On Saturday the 30th, Sweetie an I were in
a big protest (I’m so fucking SICK of the phrase “peaceful protest” because of
its respectability politics implications, but it did start out that way.) and
we got separated from our friends (twenty- somethings who referred to us as “protest
moms”) just before the first fire started. (“Tear gas is an accelerant,” my
young friend later pointed out, not sure it wasn’t the police who set their own
car ablaze.) My friends were boxed in by the police and I was just outside the
crowd. Sweetie, panicking because she struggles with wearing a mask for very
long, had gone to get the car. I stood there feeling like the very epitome of a
dumb white lady, filming and sobbing, while my stuck-in-the-crowd friends
texted periodic updates so I’d know they were alive.
My friend in the crowd texted “Walk, don’t run, north.”
I followed her instructions and picked a place for Sweetie to meet me with the
car. I sat in some grass on a quiet corner, took off my mask to breathe a
little better, and snapped a selfie, mostly so I would know I was alive. My regular
check-in-buddy, my extremely mild-mannered neighbor in charge of feeding the
cats if Sweetie and I ever get hurt or arrested, had never received this
upsetting of updates. I hoped I wasn’t scaring her. I wanted to text Quarantine
Crush but I knew that made no sense. I was relieved when his facebook reactions
showed me he was out there rooting for me.
Sweetie and I were waiting in the car when our friends
finally unstuck themselves from the crowd and started making their way towards
us. They texted that they were almost run over by a police car in an intersection.
(They later clarified that it was THREE police cars that went ahead and drove
into the crossing protesters. May Heather Heyer haunt those police bitterly for
the rest of their lives.) I got out of the car and waked toward my friends and
though our county was still in the red zone, quarantine-wise, we definitely did
hugging.
Though it was the police and not the protesters instigating
and cultivating the violence and fear, our mayor put our town on curfew after
that day. I did activism from home most of that time, but many people I cared
about were still out in the now-also-military-occupied streets. I joined the
protest watch group on Facebook, so I knew when my friends had to close the
windows of their homes to keep the teargas out. I knew when the police were
dropping teargas bombs from helicopters. Like everyone else with a heart, mine
was petrified, breaking, and proud all at once. I took roll calls every morning
so I’d know my friends had survived. So far, they have.
One night, after days and nights of terror, once I
finished posting my phone number for the however manyth time in case there were
emergencies in the night, I RSVPed yes to Quarantine Crush and Adorable Co-Host’s
poetry reading, figuring I needed any comfort I could get. Figuring that things
were now so life-or-death (I know! They seemed super life-or-death before!) that
heartbreak and longing couldn’t possibly be factors any more.
Oh, Adorable Co-Host. Perhaps the person who hung up
on me because I was talking too much about U.S. imperialism after 9/11 wasn’t
the person to go to for comfort in this particular week. I feel like an actual
crazy person for having thought so.
There were many signs in the pre-Zoom-reading chitchat
that should have told me I’d better log out. Someone said “I’m glad *theyre*
protesting.” (Emphasis mine.) The apparent queen of this almost-all-white
reading piped up in favor of “states’ rights” as if we were in Civil war times.
A white guy (possibly the one who said “We’re all in cages now” a few weeks
before) used the phrase “identity politics.” I really should have logged out.
“Since we’re not gonna get abolition,” began Up-To-That
-Point-Adorable Cohost, “One way to compromise with the police would be…” I tried
to push back, but he switched into lecture mode:
“I mean, the police do good things too, like control crowds…”
I stayed for a little while. I read a nice
post-protest poem and a not-nice letter to city council. I felt so jagged and
broken that it felt like I was shouting Sweetie’s house down. (There was a weather-related
power outage at my place, so I camped out with her for a bit.) I heard what the
readers had to say, and it was good, as much as I could hear through my humming
panic and boiling blood.
Right now, I’m so angry with myself for whatever in my
heart and not-okay mind made it seem like this reading would be a place of comfort.
I’m so angry at myself for mistaking facebook friends, twenty-years ago friends,
for people who would really care about a city so far away, about me.
In the grand scheme of things, micro-abandonments by
white and/or not-sufficiently courageous friends, don’t matter so much. I know
that. What matters is that the Minneapolis City Council is in favor of defunding
the police, that my city, through the efforts of so, SO many may have a chance
at defunding as well.
Please, no matter who you are or where you are, go
beyond your usual roles. Use every platform you have, not to make a cozy space
for hand-wringing moderates, but to work for real change. Sheltering-in-place
is not an excuse for sitting by the sidelines, especially not online. Write to
your mayor, your city council, your governor, your friends. Please.
I am SO PROUD OF MYSELF this morning! Technically I learned this one time in rope class like eight years ago, but it feels new all over again. Probably should practice it a bunch more times in case I ever get to put it on somebody cute. (Obviously I'll use it on myself (loosely, safely) a lot sooner.) Hooray! :D
Before I head-argue with BetterHelp lady any more, I
just want to stop and celebrate the creative surge and series of breakthroughs
I’ve been experiencing during and following my Quarantine Crush adventure! I’m
never sure if its super-ethical to consider people muses, (Past and present
muses, feel free to weigh in! Not here because the comments are turned off.) but
QC is a powerful one anyway. Since Zooming with his poetry reading, I’ve
written poetry I’m excited about for the first time in years, revived an old
poetry series, made however many drawings and paintings, tried new drawing
styles, gotten a new perspective on my business life, and written like a
jillion paragraphs here.
I even signed up to read from the Kitten Calendar at
an old-fave local reading so I’d have a way to re-experience rope adventures!
Miracle of miracles, I’ve even learned to love
dressing up for Zoom events, including pretty shoes for no reason!
Whether or not I can justify the tears to a narrow-minded
therapist, crushes fucking WORK for me, and they often lead to more friendships
as well! (Angel Face is still one of my main inspirations—he invited me to
Online Goth Night on Friday and I am TOTALLY going!)
Romantic lovewise, though. I know I can’t control if I
ever find the requited version again. If I don’t, I think I can probably handle
it, because I almost always feel completely full of all the kinds of love in my
life: friend-love, family-love, work-love, talking-about-Gilmore-Girls-love,
art love, book love, nature love, and of course good old fashioned self-love.
Actually, I think I’m pretty amazing at love, even as I’m still missing a
person or people.
It has really struck me in the past few days how
simple, how ordinary, my romantic wishes/fantasies/hopes are. I don’t think it’s
crazy or demanding to hope that someday before too long a masculine person will
be sending me songs for smitten reasons, not for just-friendly reasons like QC
or for opportunistic predatory reasons like Bill. And maybe, just maybe, that
song-sender will know all the knots.
Because of my age and other particulars, it’s easy to
see my romantic hopes as lightning-strike bonkers. I sure thought of it that
way while I was divorcing, but I had to make room for that imaginary guy
anyway, I had to try. Such an ordinary wish, to be like-liked. It happens to
people all the time. I know that I deserve it as much as anybody, that no
amount of self-as-project can make it come along any faster or slower. It comes
when it comes. Until I get there, I fall, I get giddy, I cry, I make art. It’s
a pretty good plan.
I am WILDLY underemployed this summer, so I need some
CDC-friendly adventures. I need to be always writing paragraphs. So!
1.Learn
one knot a week. Think about how much the Republicans would resent me using
stimulus (ha) money on a new set of shiny peacock-blue ropes.
2.High
Fidelity without the visits. I feel pretty resolved about all
of my past loves, but it would be fun to visit them in my mind and heart. Since
I already lavishly paid tribute to The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, I’ll start with
the guy after that. The guy who sang Rage Against the Machine on amusement park
rides. The guy who looked like Eddie Vedder at just the right moment. The guy
who was my first sex/love combination. Ohhhhh Full Name Guy, you’ll be a summer
treat.
That way, until I find my next human true love(s) I’ll
have all the rope-love and paragraph-love to keep me company. Thanks for
reading, wish me luck!
Sometimes, I’m lucky enough to have paid someone to
say exactly what depression itself would say, so I could hang up on them both.
Toward the beginning of quarantine, constant family
contact, fear about my job, and general everyone-might-die-ness was making me
worry that I might lose any of the mental health ground I’ve gained in the past
few years. Insurance was in flux as I filled out every disaster relief form, so
I took some of the extra money my brother had sent (He felt lucky to be able to
work full time from home.) and subscribed to BetterHelp.
The first therapist I tried seemed insufficiently
invested in science, letting slip some Trumpesque complaints about CDC
guidelines. The second one was better, but I think she was mixing me up with another
of her clients. Suffering from Quarantine Brain myself, I felt compassion for
her, but didn’t think she would help with my growing sense of nonexistence.
The third one, I liked. She seemed sensible, grown-up,
and (I’ve seldom in my life found this appealing, but in-these-times etc.) like
she knew what I should do next. She
recommended The Four Agreements, one of the worst, victim-blamiest self-help
books I’ve encountered, (By the Book sums it up pretty well: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/stitcher/by-the-book/e/59267477#/)
but
I decided to overlook that red flag. She sent me a so-detailed-as-to-be-sleep-PREVENTING
Sleep Hygiene Diary, but she also seemed fine when I disregarded some of her
advice and took other aspects to heart.
Last Tuesday during an early morning phone session,
still weepy and off-balance from saying bye-sort-of to Quarantine Crush, I was
sharing my pretty boilerplate 45-year-old-single-bi-woman worries when I heard
(not for the first time in my may therapist lifetime.) third therapist lady become audibly annoyed:
“Well, you have this air of desperation,” she said,
and that can be really off-putting. If you really do what you need to do to
love yourself, they’ll be more attracted.”
A.Desperation
seems like a TOTALLY REASONABLE EMOTION TO HAVE when:
1.Tens
of thousands of people are dying.
2.My
work life is fairly decimated.
AND
3.I
was relearning how to write poems with a friend I missed so, SO much.
B.What
did attracting anybody even have to do with it when I had:
1.Fallen
for someone who was both taken and
2.A
dear, important friend and
3.2,500
miles away?!
“I just think you need to adjust what you’re looking
for.” She said.
(Connection? Poetry? A creative spark? A window into
meaning from the past? Hope? Songs? I know what she meant but it seems like she
was oversimplifying.)
“What am I looking for?” I asked, joining her in irritated-voiceness.
“Well, romance might seem really nice in books, but in
real life, you might be too sensitive for it.”
(Note: The Highly Sensitive Person book suggests
this too, but it also suggests that communities with a lot of immigrants have fewer
sensitive people, so I put it in the garbage. Not even good enough for the recycle
bin.)
I tried a little bit to tell her how many different
kinds of relationships I’d tried, certainly more than the average person.
“It’s just that I’m mostly happy being alone,” I said,
“So I’d rather not keep trying casual stuff and then getting mad at partners
for being too casual.” (Basically the theme for years of this blog.)
It really irked my soul that she was reading me as a commitment-hungry
stereotype when I was willing to love someone I’m unlikely to even see any time
soon—seems like maybe it was the opposite problem. I’m still arguing with this
lady I unsubscribed to a week ago.
She told me that AT MY AGE (caps mine, she wasn’t yelling)
I needed to start changing my expectations.
“Men don’t want commitment after they’re divorced, so
you’re probably going to have to go with it and be grateful for the couple of weeks
you might get.”
“Well, that is really…grim. I’m hanging up now.” And I
did.
I called Sweetie and cried out the hurt and shock that
someone who was supposed to be on my side, and also someone who was basically a
stranger, could be that cruel.
