Perfect Emo Night With The King of Carrot Flowers, Part Two

 

We went to Favorite Diner (As opposed to Neutral First Date Diner) to catch our breath and make this extraordinary moment a little more down to earth. It helped that he was in a work text chain putting out work fires as we sat down- somehow that took the pressure off. In between fielding texts, we didn't so much catch up as immediately launch into 20-year-old inside jokes, mostly Simpsons related. Between that an an exceptional turkey club, life was a perfect dream.

I don't think it's giving away the city by saying the sky was full of ashes that night. Sorry to be glib about disaster, but the fire sky really added to the overall emo of the situation. We brought out the KN-95s, with all their attendant grief. Our eyes stung and the coral/pink sun was world-endy, but my heart was full of joy and grace anyway. I don't know what's better in this world than parking on grass and moseying toward the gates with strangers of at least three generations, probably four.

BFF Formerly Sweetie walked slow with her walking stick and this was the first time we had to rent chairs instead of sitting our old butts on the grass, but other than those things, the three of us were the three of us again. We picked up our chairs, cocktails to go with the gummies in our tummies, and three matching T-shirts. (Which we did NOT put on! My symmetry brain really wishes I'd made that photo op happen!) KOCF got the new album on vinyl and I got it on CD- I should put it in the car and let it play all fall.

The opening band was Japanese Breakfast! They were dreamy and vibe-y and I liked how their gong was outlined in blue lights.

One of the first songs Death Cab played was This Is the New Year, which made me sob so openly and productively. Partly because I associate it with The Guy Next Door, but mostly because yes, YES! It's not the past. KOCF isn't lost anymore, and long-suffering Sweetie is now relievedly BFF. And we were at a concert, the home-est home you can get while surrounded by strangers. (Oh, boy, do I love strangers sharing a thing. Collective effervescence!!!!)

I promise I wasn't super intoxicated, except maybe by friend love, when my favorite part happened. They were playing Different Names for the Same Thing, and I looked around and saw it- there wasn't really any separation between any of us. Not between us or the chairs or Ben Gibbard or Japanese Breakfast's gong. OMG the Unified Field braving the smoky sky to visit my head this beautiful night. Everything, even the obscured skyline, even all my bitchy mistakes over the years, became unseparated for a little while. Ahh.

When KOCF came to my place to spend the night, I felt a deep carefulness. I want to never not be friends again, want to make sure I don't slip into stupid limerence any more times. I never want him to be not in my life again. The next day, we did ordinary things like go to my neighborhood cafe. I loved having him here. The cats loved having him here. BFF Formerly Sweetie loved having him here. I would please like this friendship to last and last and last: It might just be the best kind of love.

Meanwhile, In 2006

Between reading a history of indie rock with The King of Carrot Flowers and getting deep into my Portlandia rewatch, my ears have decided they need to be filled with The Flaming Lips almost all the time. I like the way the bleeps and bloops and bwowwwmps bounce back and forth in my headphones.

So now it's time to write about one of the most beautiful and sad and gorgeous nights of my life so far: a birthday-weekend Flaming Lips show!!! The openers were The Magic Numbers, Sonic Youth (!!!) and (I can't believe I forgot this until the King of Carrot Flowers reminded me!) Ween. I don't think it was too long before my crush/our friend-breakup, but that night, it all worked together perfectly somehow. I felt everything all the way. I was overwhelmed with love and wanting-to-be-loyal about Sweetie-Now-BFF and I was frustrated as heck that I couldn't heap love upon The King of Carrot Flowers as well.

The longing was such a presence at that show that I feel like I should've bought her a ticket. Two wives, one best friend, one longing please! I think that's who I'm always buying a just-in-case extra concert ticket for.

The longing is what the music is for. Like edibles or good speakers, it makes the songs more vivid.

There was a loooong time of sitting in the bleachers and being low-key, listening to Sonic Youth sing "What a waste...you're so chaste.." (They do that one on Gilmore Girls, too! I love the way Kim Gordon bounces and shakes when she sings. I try to imitate it every time I'm singing loud/doing dishes.) The Magic Numbers played Mornings Eleven: "Call me if you're on your own, maybe you can meet me in the morning."

I WANTED to meet The King of Carrot Flowers in the morning, then return to my cozy home with Then-Sweetie come evening time. Sometimes that DID happen, but not for illicit snuggles! We would go for a swim or for ice cream or one time, with a bunch of his grad-student friends, the zoo.

By the time The Flaming Lips came on, we'd migrated higher up the bleachers and a few of our poet friends and work friends joined us. I felt elated, but also urgent, like WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING TO CELEBRATE THIS! How did we all get to be here, together?! How did we get loves and friends and friend-loves to all be in these bleachers with us!? As happy as I was, I was also a little mad--how could I possibly express this tsunami of affection? How could I be present hard enough to honor this unearned miracle?

Luckily, we were at a Flaming Lips show! Sparkles and confetti and martian girls and lifting up the sun and battling the pink robots (I strongly suspect that the Flaming Lips are Phish for hipsters. I'm trying to banish this thought but cannot! Now you have it too!) and singing along to Do You Realize?? under the stars in my hometown with my arms around my dear ones, it was a rare moment of being sure I was giving life the honor it deserves. A rare moment of loving exactly as hard as I wanted to.

Amends Tales: The King of Carrot Flowers

 

Now we're a two-person book club! :D

I promise I will eventually get back to the hotness, but I have a few platonic updates I want to share first!

Back when BFF Formerly Sweetie and I were first together, there was a third pal with us all the time. I'm naming him the King of Carrot Flowers because we were and are talking-about-music soulmates, and the early 2000s were a very Neutral Milk Hotel-y time for me. For us all!

King of Carrot Flowers was with us ALL the time! On Sundays, Sweetie and I would do the big New York Times crossword puzzle, and then head over to his place to watch The Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle. We all went to see Rilo Kiley (Openers: Tilly and the Wall! Tapdancer as percussion!) in the dead of winter in a very subpar car. He was in our wedding.

He lived right by the nice pool in the park, we swam there and agreed that yes, it DID look like those Ice Mice candies inspired by the Harry Potter treat trolley. We drove weirdly far to get ice cream, and I got blissed out and swoony about the albums he played on his first-generation iPod, plugged in with the aux cord. He burned me my first and only copy of my favorite album, The Execution of All Things. It conked out in my car's CD player about 5 years ago.

Modest Mouse. Of Montreal. The first time I learned what a collective effervescence is, I was flirting with a religious studies grad student in King of Carrot Flowers's kitchen during a snowstorm disco party.

He used to housesit for us when we were away. He was our cat's favorite because he always brought sushi.

The song he kept on his MySpace page: 

Sometimes, when no one was looking, I would just hit refresh on his page over and over, just to feel connected to him.

We LOVED each other as friends and it's not at all surprising that I got a crush! Almost immediately upon marrying Sweetie, I fell into a WHAT IF I NEVER SEE A PENIS AGAIN panic so of course I would want to bi it up with this very romantic (to me) friendship.

I confessed the crush one night, walked over to his place after a spat with Sweetie and, to the soothing sounds of The Colbert Report, told him I was having feelings for him. He was very kind about it but said he wasn't interested in sharing with Sweetie. Polyamory was a few years away, I didn't even know the word yet.

If you've been a reader for any length of time, you can guess what happened: I felt sad and rejected and picked a fight to get space from him. That space lasted for about twenty years!

Then, the other month when I was babbling to BFF about how much I love dorking out about stuff with Guy Next Door, she said, "Why don't you call (King of Carrot Flowers)? You guys loved talking about music!"

So I did that thing where you send a friend request out into the universe and never expect to hear back. But I did! He accepted my apology and said "We're all better at giving each other grace these days."

It felt like I'd found a missing puzzle piece. We've been in touch ever since and I could not be more grateful.

Trauma Work Summer Part Seven: I Might Be a Villain

 

Last week, I had my last Trauma Work session! Now back to my regularly scheduled OCD! Since then, I've been having freaky dreams, but also bursts of back-to-school joy! There's a sadness hangover from all my Laura Palmer-ing,  but in general I've been feeling more empowered and proactive, a little more like an adult among adults. I'm really excited about that part, I want to live in today instead of finishing the story of Summer Princess, but here we go, back to the day of the Fire Prevention Play.

After my head-on-shoulder moment with Summer Princess, I felt brave enough to go back inside and finish my project, but I stayed overwhelmed. I ended up with my hand over my heart, gasping in front of the assembled cast. "I can't do it," I said. BossPal took over for me while I found a not-next-to-the-playground bench on which to sob. 

I called BFF Formerly Sweetie and cried it out to her. BossPal came out and checked on me too. I wanted and needed this moment of care, but I felt so embarrassed--I felt like I was letting camp and the friends down.

BossPal sent Summer Princess out to sit with me, and I'm not sure why, but I decided it was time to tell her about my crush. I thought she must know already! I'm about as subtle as The Substance! But this was part of what had made the morning so overwhelming, I felt like I "had" to tell her.

In the moment, it didn't feel fraught to tell her, it just felt like I was confiding in someone I trusted. In my love and panic, I lost track of all the power imbalances! Cis/Trans! Black/white! She's twenty-six and I'll be fifty-one next week! AND I'm longtime friends with our boss! Still, it really felt like we were just two friends talking, and I hope it felt like that a little for her as well.

Friends, I really ran my mouth that morning. I told her everything--how I was having feelings for her, how my last two crushes had been on Barbie doll beautiful transwomen so maybe I have a new/additional type. I told her how old I felt and that I was sure I would fuck it up if I someday have a chance with a nice trans lady. 

I said I was sorry that I was making her do this emotional labor, I know it wasn't her job! How do you know whether you're just having friendship or you're taking advantage of someone's kindness? That's what would obsess me out of my mind for the rest of the week and still a little bit, even weeks later.

"If ________ and I were still poly," Summer Princess said, "I'd date you--you're cute!"

That was so sweet, maybe definitely sweeter than I deserved. I don't know if she meant it or if she was just kind of managing me, but it helped.

Trauma Work Summer Part Six: Fire Prevention

IT'S A MAP!

Camp Overshare was supposed to create a Fire Prevention Play. There was a contest. It's one of my boss's most dreaded tasks. She assigned it to me, ostensibly because of my teaching artist background, but also maybe because nobody else wanted to deal with it. I tried to conscript Summer Princess to be my play buddy, but she demurred.

I was in a pretty scary house fire in the Nineties, but that was far from my mind as I helped kids create characters and compose a few lines for themselves. They already were pretty expert on fire safety, at least a few sentences worth! The table read went so smoothly! I was so proud.

When it came time to film the play, everything turned to chaos. Something about opening the Fire Prevention Play costume box made everybody a little nuts, and EVERYONE was coming to me for help. And YELLING.

And, horror of horrors, my Squishmallow had gone missing! Holly, the little purple owl with flowers on her head! I'd made her her own (Bi colors!) friendship bracelet at the beginning of camp. She was my comfort object and helped the kids sometimes, too! 

So in the midst of the swirling Fire Prevention Play chaos, Summer Princess and one of the campers were looking for Holly. I found this unbearably touching and ended up crying in Summer Princess's arms. About a misplaced toy! I was not okay.

Holly was eventually found, under a bookshelf. I asked my boss to cover me and went outside to sit on my favorite bench (OMG I loved that bench! I already miss it so!) and do some breathing. What I actually did was cry and be overwhelmed. Summer Princess came out to sit with me. I asked her if I could put my head on her shoulder, and she said I could.

<3 <3 <3

I just want to pause here and say I appreciate this connection so much. I know it was just a summer camp friendship that my own love and attraction blew wildly out of proportion, but it was also real and special.

For me, it was an affection as much as it was an obsession. There was wholesome love there, even as my desire for her made me want to dismantle the inner structures of myself. There was something beautiful between us, even as it descended into what a friend (obviously a friend around my age) described as a "Jerry Springer situation."

I did want to possess Summer Princess. I would have loved to live out my imagination's Ma'am scenarios with her. But also, I got to know her heart a little, and I hope, even amid the panic and OCD and misunderstandings, she knew my heart a little too.

 

Southern Charmer: The Satisfying Sequel, Part Two

 

First date ropes, winter of 2022

In the midst of the birthday gloom, a glimmer. The possibility, however remote, of somebody SO PRETTY to get stoned and snuggle and maybe play ropes with again lit a little fire in me. My HSV-1 thing is listed on my Feeld, so maybe it wouldn't even be an issue. Maybe I could get...dare I say it?! Kissed?! I remembered him being a good kisser--my mouth remembered him so vividly.

I felt a renewed drive to practice my ropes again, and it didn't feel nostalgic or pine-y or performative--the idea just felt like play.

But! Something even better happened--we texted like friends. Even the day after my emotionally stormy birthday, even with both of us processing grief about other people, my heart felt lighter talking to him. After I paragraphed my birthday existential fear, I apologized for the brick of text, and he scoffed. Hardly a brick by his standards.

He told me about his tangled heart too, and somewhere in there, we talked about the possibilities between us. The hope that I might be a Ma'am to him again was a warm little flame in my heart. A sweet and trusting Good Boy felt like such a vulnerable thing to wish for, but there was something about the angsty, friendy chats made me feel peaceful enough to imagine that kind of trust.

We put a date on the calendar, a coffee date to see if we still liked each other's vibe. But before we could get there, the mentionitis! Oh the poor dear could find any old way to mention one of his partners, he was melancholy-preoccupied with her, like something between them needed ALL of his attention, even as he was aiming to give some of it to me.

So I sent one of my all-time favorite texts:

I am so, SO proud of this text!!! Not only was I honest about what I'm really looking for, I sincerely meant it when I offered friendship! My heart felt so full of the entire situation. And he did want to stay in touch as friends! Hooray!

There's already a Part Three of this treatful story, but even if there weren't, the confiding and the breakthrough text would have been enough. Thank you, Southern Charmer, from the bottom of my searching heart.

Fear and Devotion Part Two

Last week, there was an app guy who got mad at me when I wouldn’t come right over, that I wouldn’t change out of my pajamas and drive across the city to see him,  a stranger I’d just started chatting with that afternoon.

Before I blocked him, he said something like “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I work hard and I want to be loved in my off hours.”

(Dude, don’t we all.)

There was a language barrier, but still. After I deleted the app guy, I didn’t feel like he was gonna come get me or anything, I just felt like—what am I? Am I anything? Can anyone see me here? Disembodied. So small as to slip through the cracks of existence and just dissolve into the ether. This is a pretty regular emotion of online dating, of dating in general.

So, my devotion to The Shy One was a safe place. I wanted to, not pine, exactly, just live cozily in my fake-chaste fake-platonic love for The Shy One. I wanted to be just as unobtrusive as possible, and free as can be, just able to pull my love for TSO up over me like a weighted blanket. Loving someone who loves me, but who I couldn’t have—the safest possible place. I’m tired of putting my body and heart and mind and soul in the path of strangers, I wanted the soft touch of something known. Embodied and of-the-soul, safe, safe, safe.

But then, TSO wasn’t in touch for a few days, normal friend rhythm that left space for that old quest to creep back in—how could I get him to see me? How could I try again to get his unavoidably divided attention? I wanted to send him a sweet-hot picture from last January and say, “I think these two deserve a chance.”

(The young people have a phrase for this: “down bad.” So apt it makes me queasy.)

I wasn’t really gonna send the picture, but looking at it made me surge with sadness. With anger! With abandonment and betrayal. He will always, no matter how much we love each other, no matter how much I empathize with his reasons, be the boyfriend who dumped me right before a trip, Valentines Day, and a minor-but-fraught surgery.

As good as it felt (still feels!) to rest in devotion, it felt terrible to be going backwards. My heart doesn’t know how not to think of him as The One, even though I don’t even really subscribe to the concept of The One. I hope that will change someday, but I don’t think texting the darling every few days is the way there.

So I said goodbye to The Shy One again, trying to be honest and kind but feeling unhinged and toxic. It felt horrible, but I felt better the next day. Reality is scary. Forward motion is scary. Strangers are DEFINITELY scary. It’ll take time and patience and breaks and chocolate and weed gummies and tears, but being at home in myself and in hope-for-love is worth it.

Fear and Devotion, Part One

I still think closure is a thing, just not the whole thing. Not a cure-all. My newfound friendship with The Shy One didn’t stay tenable for long—that probably comes as a surprise to exactly no one. I loved being able to share a little bit of my life with him, to send him a sunrise, a ring around the moon, a short video of my work area looking just so. I loved the glimpses of his life that I got while we were avoiding almost all topics. It was such a lovely respite from missing him. I felt peaceful, hopeful, and complete in a way I hadn’t for such a long time.

But.

There was a moment last fall that I’ve always meant to write about. I was at brunch with Rainbow Pal (Not too long before a 5% difference on Palestine/Israel made Rainbow Pal and me feel unsafe to be around each other—a different heartbreak for a different day.) It was a rough week—I was just back from a family trip and my body was pretzeled with grief. The war had just started and everything felt brutal and mean.

Anhedonic, is the word. But joy prevailed: RP and I were talking about whether we think I’m poly or not (the eternal conundrum) and I said something like “I don’t know, when I was with (The Shy One) I didn’t want anyone else in the whole world, it was all about him.”

Saying that unlocked my heart, and a butterfly swarm of giggles came out. An unlatching, a relief. A bubble of assurance and self-knowledge so profound that I couldn’t stop laughing. RP said later that they loved seeing me come back to life—they helped me come back to life. I miss them so much.

But anyway, devotion.

Back to the present day, dating is just being a little bit scary. Talking to so many people, sometimes rematching by mistake and feeling like I might be stupid or mean, sometimes not matching because the person looks a little familiar, getting a “Hello?” when I hadn’t written back in like ten minutes, it can feel so depersonalizing, so disembodied.

Most app-suitors are kind-if-boring, but the ones that aren’t kinda add up in my body and heart. Accreting.

Happy Frilly Friday! Introducing Dear Ribbons, A Nonexpert Advice Column

 

I have a shoulder injury that makes me leery about getting back to ropes, so darn I'll just have keep getting frilly! 

Friends, I’ve been having the nicest week helping a friend of mine get their mind ready for an anticipated date! They are going on a picnic! I absolutely adore giving out advice and cheerleading when asked. Plus helping my pals steer themselves toward their slutty dreams helps me steer my own life better, too!

So if you would like some heartfelt and experienced-but-nonexpert advice on love, etiquette, grief, self-compassion, and/ or what emojis to use, please write to me! Email thekittencalendar@gmail.com and put Dear Ribbons in the subject line. I promise to love you and your story, and to steer us both/all towards optimism, self-love, liberation, hope, and hotness!

Knotty Thursday: Athena Self-Tie and The Relationship Anarchist

 

I have to say that the best thing about this Athena Harnessish thing (Go here for the version I started from: https://youtu.be/2m7F-Tos2S8) (OMG I need longer ropes! 30 feet goes so fast!) was sending a (hotter, I think) picture to The Shy One while I was still playing. I miss him a wholewhole bunch, 24 days left at least! I've been sending him a kiss emoji every day around sunset, seems like all's well there. 

Another cool thing happened too! On Monday night, I had a first date with The Relationship Anarchist. They're so fun to talk to but the chemistry was off. But! The ropes really liked them and they were a very good canvas! Then they had the idea to do platonic ropes and cuddling some more sometime, I said heck yeah! Excited to see what I can come up with for them next. This came out so pretty, yay me!

Knotty Thursday! Friendship Knot

 

Yay haven't learned a new knot in a while! This one is soooooo cute, it reminds me of two pairs of hands clasping.

This breakoff week, (Still missing The Good Boy and The Southern Charmer a lot!) I feel SO VERY grateful for my friends. They are so extra there for me every day, I couldn't be luckier. I feel a little antsy taking a (sort of) (very short) break from flirting, but it's been a gift to remember how rich and full my friend life is. 

And! Speaking of friendly awesomeness! Mr. Adorable started writing text-letters again! So lovely to hear from him. 

Actual Casual Sex Part Three: The Kinda Emo Part

I’ve been thinking a lot about what the word “romantic” actually means to me and in this particular case I think it means being all fizzy and lonesome from no-cuddling-but-very- competent stranger sex and getting a hankering to tell my hot unavailable friend all about it. I wanted to tell The Coach about the hookup in detail to get him off, but I also just wanted to confide and get his perspective. Plus, there’s a story between us, however mismatched, and I wanted some grounding.

I sent the text to The Coach at 11:11. (Didn’t time it that way on purpose.) I even checked this time if I was interrupting some other lady’s evening, and he said I wasn’t.

He was slutty/sweet/curious, instructive and encouraging. I opted not to get explicit, but I liked telling him this new adventure. After I was pretty sure he’d fallen asleep, I confessed that if I was gonna casual anyway, I wished I’d casualed more with him.

When I woke up the next day, I saw that The Coach had texted at 4:33 AM and offered, you know, some more casualing.

I asked about friends with benefits, and that was fine with him. I don’t know what that means, really, or if it’ll result in any more adventures with The Coach, but I like that door being left open, even as it also makes me want to jump out of my skin. If nothing else, it would be really nice to have somebody besides my ex-wife to talk about my sex-life with! (I don’t give her much info, but I’m pretty sure it’s more detail than she’d like!)

As for Casual Guy, I’m grateful. I liked his instructions, his sweet voice, his unequivocal fucking. I needed it so much.

With all this adventure in the past month or so, of course there are also triggers to care for. The line between arousal and anxiety has always been shifty for me. I would like to spend some time being extra kind to myself, give myself space to think and feel and crush and process. (And get back to learning my knots!) And then I would like MORE PLEASE, UNIVERSE, if you don’t mind.

 

 

 

From Good Second Date to Ghost, Part One

 

From Good Second Date to Ghost, Part One

Nearby Guy and I chatted for most of the summer, on Hinge and off. I originally asked him if we could be just friends because I was scared about poly stuff after that adorably mortifying late-afternoon with Poly Friends’ Partner. I fully owe PFP an apology for griping about his friends-ish winky-facery! When Nearby Guy and I finally met for a just-friends dinner a few weeks ago, I was a fountain of mixed signals, using the friends word a jillion times but at no point turning off the flirt.

Not JUST because his Hinge profile included “pretty good with knots” or because he’s wildly geographically desirable, but also because he seemed to be the perfect combination of hot and warm. I felt comfy with him. He’s just a little bit shorter than me and just a bit fatter, a dark-skinned black man with just the absolute sweetest smile. Plus big dommy hands I could not stop thinking about when I got home from that friendly dinner. Horniness and bravery overtook me and I asked by if we could retroactively upgrade our friend dinner to a date-date. He said he was down so yay!

So it was that I found Nearby Guy on my couch a few nights ago. We’d met up at a bar but it was too loud so he graciously agreed to come over even though I had nothing to offer but the supersweet pink Moscato I like to mix with Pasteque La Croix. (My official drink of lesson planning, and also of typing this.)

I swear to jeepers, it was a paradigmatically good second date. We chatted for hours, touched a little, then touched more and more. I had so much fun talking to him that I almost forgot to be distracted by the playlist. (It’s really time to make a new makeout playlist. The last one I made was for Mr. Sweetface in 2017 and it lives in what used to be iTunes—on the desktop! Why does that feel so old-fashioned? And why isn’t it in my Apple Music? Mystery!)

Oh my goodness he was so lovely to be next to, strong and soft and so warm. His smell, a dizzying/lush perfect musky man smell, reminded me of Pagan Boy so I felt right at home.

Once we finally kissed, I insisted that he high-five me, forgetting for a sec that he hadn’t been in the same drought as me, hadn’t just finished an epic trek through the touch-desert.

You know I love some hot hand-holding, and this was…oh boy. Our hands and forearms felt made for each other. I loved feeling his soft pulse under my gentle grip on his wrist. I loved that thing where we put our hands together to compare sizes. Oh, those fingers. So strong-but-yielding, so alive.

So of course when he asked if I wanted to go upstairs, (Inviting me to my own bed, but that’s fine!) I said yes. I changed out of my pretty date dress and into my pajamas.

Pagan Boy’s Crush: A (’93-Present) Friend Story

Though neither I nor Pagan Boy would have used the word “polyamory,” there was sort of another presence in our relationship. Pagan Boy’s Crush was one of his cool friends who sometimes met us at Basement Rave Place. I looked up to her so much—in my memory, she-of-then is kind of a goddess sculpture, dressed in fitted silver or coral dresses as opposed to my grubby goth slips and too-short polyester dresses. Her boyfriend was a hippie-cute straight boy with glossy blond curls. He seemed a little out of place at the club, but maybe I was just biased in Pagan Boy’s favor.

One night, after we said goodbye to them outside the diner and started off on the long drive to PB’s, he said the most magical five words in my then-as-now love lexicon:

“I made you a mix tape.”

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

In some ways, the mix was totally us: “Let’s Go to Bed” by the Cure! (Robert Smith is a milkshake! We always said.) Sound bites from MST3K (“Mike! Mike!” from Manos, our fave.) and the campy pornos PB favored.

But a lot of the tape was…bitter. Crush bitter:

“Tempted”-Squeeze

“Wave of Mutilation” –The Pixies

“Boy”—Book of Love

 (OMG I need to make a Crush Bitter playlist from the nowtimes ASAP!) (I’m not really feeling like that but the songs would be treasures.)

I meeeeeeaaaaaan it was a good mix, but as he drove us through the early morning, he said sheepishly:

“I was thinking about (crush) when I made this.”

I really don’t remember his pining for her feeling like a problem, don’t remember being annoyed about my mixtape being a proxy bitter-love note. I was kinda like, yeah, I get it.

Pagan Boy’s Crush and I had our own thing going on—is there such a thing as platonic grinding? (If so, it would be a good name for my entire memoir.) She was the first girl I danced with in kind of a sexy way. I want to stress how much this wasn’t a for-his-gaze (only) Girls Gone Wild kind of thing. When we danced together, we were whole, and joyful, transcendent and so perfectly ourselves. We were beautiful and free on the checkered dance floor, definitely not giving the faintest fuck about anyone else.

Chaste though we (mostly) were, “our song” was all the raunch:

“You Suck”—Consolidated (feat. Yeastie Girls)

Mostly, Pagan Boy’s Crush seemed like a sophisticated dream, someone I wouldn’t have known how to really connect with because I was such a mess and she was so…her!

But then! Almost 30 years later! She reached out to me in a side-chat at Pagan Boy’s Zoom funeral! And it turns out we’re like emotional sisters. Our lives all these years have been so different, but it felt like we got each other’s whole deal right away. Now we talk once a month or so and I tell her my homebody adventures, she tells me what things look like in whatever state she’s traveling through (Very Nomadland but without the bucket situation!) and we compare notes on what hijinks our brains are up to lately.

I don’t believe in the afterlife or “divinely ordained” but it’s hard to not feel like Pagan Boy made us into a friend match. It makes me feel magical and hopeful about what other unexpected connections might be waiting out in the world for me, hopefully not just on Zoom.

Perfectly 1993 Guy Part Ten: The Long Goodbye

 

After I put him on that birthday afterglow bus, I lived in the glow for a few days or a few weeks. I sat in my post-high-school job at Burger King (I would pretty much do anything to avoid a challenging job interview. Plus I’ve always loved tedium and discounted snacks!) daydreaming about his warm skin and soft hair and to-be-continued mixtape, looking out the drive thru window in a happy haze between customers. But then, just as the word “temporary” had derailed a lovely afternoon of our visit, three little words out of my face closed off whatever I thought might come next with him.

 

“I need you,” I found myself saying into my yellow landline phone. I would very much like to go back and unsay it, even if the results would still have been the same.

 

“You need me?” he wasn’t being harsh, just a little incredulous. “I can’t be…needed right now.”

 

His reasons were sound and to be expected, but that didn’t make the conversation any less devastating. He had just started college. There were girls there with purple hair and he wanted to be free to live his college life. Totally valid! But my heart both deflated and exploded into a fine, sad, messy mist.

 

For some reason, his guilt or my sentiment or both or just love, we decided to keep my planned visit a couple weeks after the breakup. To say goodbye I guess. I met the purple-haired girl there—I remember her name being Sloane but it’s possible she had only recommended the BAND Sloane to him. (“She was underwhelmed if that’s a word, I know it’s not ‘cause I looked it up, that’s one of the skills I learned in my schoooooool.”) She left Perfectly 1993 Guy and me alone to lay in his tiny dorm room, on a pleasingly narrow twin bed.

 

We stayed spooned up in that bed for a long time. I looked out the window at the pretty campus feeling romantically achey. The Get Up Kids wouldn’t be invented for two more years, but it was maybe the most emo weekend of my life. That is REALLY saying something.

 

We decided to go see a Dead Milkmen show a couple of hours away from campus by train. The club was at the beach so things did NOT get less emo despite the very silly music. As we walked from train to club to beach, he got grumbly because I was walking too close and kept walking into him. Nonetheless, I put my head in his lap and rested on the train ride back. I wanted him to be hard beneath my sleepy cheek so I would know his desire for me had been real. I was vigilant for it but don’t remember the results being decisive. What a sign to look for.

 

In his dorm room he had a childhood teddy bear named Clyde and I decided to take him home with me for consolation. He was a pretty big bear, dark brown with one of those really sincere faces that stuffed animals sometimes have. Perfectly 1993 Guy told me years later that he hadn’t wanted me to take Clyde, he just hadn’t known what to say. I feel such a longing to know what happened to Clyde, to hug him tight. (Confession: For the past few months I’ve slept with a stuffed peacock named Nancy, a platonic I-was-having-a-hard-day-post-attempted-coup gift from Sweetie.)

 

We tried to be friends, especially when I came that winter to a school a few hours away from his. I knew every day of my short photography school life (With darkrooms! And chemicals! Glad I tried it while I still could.) how close Perfectly 1993 Guy was by train. My first night at school, I used a big handful of change to call and let him know I had arrived. After a couple of will-we-or-won’t-we visits (More chaste, longing spooning with a little wrestling thrown in? Odd.) things got too snitty and he stopped taking my calls.

 

I called him a truly reprehensible number of times for a couple of months, including on Valentine’s night surrounded by the mylar balloons of my roommates’ more successful relationships. I imagined the phone ringing and ringing and ringing in that tiny room, knowing purple-haired girl would think I was pathetic. I definitely was.

 

Aside from nicely saucy letters from Pagan Boy, (RIP) my loneliness that winter and spring was abject. Eventually, by some miracle, Perfectly 1993 Guy did pick up the phone and we went comfily to a fantastic King Missile show where I got to hug John S. Hall and accidentally poke him with my spiky bracelet. (Another object I’s just LOVE to have today. Wonder how it’s doing?) We saw each other a few more friendly times but he was one of the few old friends/flames who didn’t make the real-life-to-MySpace-etc transition. I looked him up on LinkedIn a couple years ago. Without his Eddie Vedder hair he looks like a regular person, a regular BEAUTIFUL person.

 

I never won’t miss him. I’ll never forget that Bee Girl moment of being loved by him, of being wanted. It both went by so fast and lasted my whole life, like so many of the stories I tell you here. Thanks for listening dears, I’m all wistful and grateful.

Quarantine Crush Part Eight: Phew/Sob/Yay!

I couldn’t sleep after I asked him if he meant the songs, so I got up and went to my email, to the poem thread. I didn’t write a poem there, just told him how I felt. It was a pretty unhinged thing to do in the (here) middle of the night, but I’m glad I wrote it. I’m glad he knows.

His late-even-for-the-west-coast reply brought equal parts relief and heartbreak. He hadn’t meant the songs the way I did. He has a partner and they’re happy. That meant I didn’t have to worry so much (still some though) about his safety. I was grateful to the person, so QC was being looked after. (It’s tempting to say here of course he’s taken, he’s the Actual Best Person, and that does have sort of a fatalistic ring of truth, but lots and lots of perfectly lovely people aren’t taken, I know. Like me!)

What a letter this was. It was the kindest, calmest, most accepting, most platonically loving letter in my collection of I-don’t-like-you-that-way notes. Genuine, golden, shining care for my well-being and valuing of the real-life writing relationship—what more could a person even ask for.

My heart physically warms up when I think about this letter. The only rejection I’ll keep to calm me down in times of jangledness—a talisman, a charm.

The wanted to keep writing poems back and forth and I hope we will again someday, but not now. For me, writing with someone takes so much trust, maybe the MOST trust, and I’m saying this as someone who has submitted to being set on fire for fun. (Oh Fireguy! Here is a cuddle in case you’re reading, and even if you’re not.)

After the (probably shouldn’t have been a) surprise partner fact, the trust was a little harder to access, and what we were doing felt (to me) too intimate to do with someone who belongs to somebody else. Even if we’d done away with the songs and the daily chitchat and the encouragement, I would still have ended up combing the poems for signs of love. I really, really HATE combing through poems for signs of love. I’d rather let the poems and the people and the real feelings just be what they are.

So I said a grateful bye-for-now to the Zoom reading, citing (my new favorite euphemism of ever) “time zone issues.” They’ll be IRL and back to being far away soon enough anyway. I got to hear Adorable Co-Host read a poem and I got to send one last (for now) post-reading high-five to QC. I’m so pleased and proud about his latest.

It felt good to put myself first, to give myself the space (So weird to need space from someone who is 2,500 miles away, but, phones are little Pavlov machines.) to paragraph everything through.

I miss his daily presence in my inboxes and I’m certainly more bored and lonely than I was last week. Way less sobbing though. I really, really wish we could have continued that series of poems, it was really good. Maybe we can write again someday. (In the first draft I accidentally wrote “today” instead of “someday.”)

In the end, I’m a little mad at myself for the crush part, but I think all in all this was a very, very good adventure. It feels productive and hopeful to have let out a love that has lived in my body all this time, to be able to hold it up to the light. I’m glad he knows how I feel, how important he is to me. I’m so, so grateful that I could be there a little while for a dear friend in a harrowing time. I’m proud to have had and been a bright spot.

Dear QC, dear everyone (well almost everyone) in every Kitten Calendar story, thank you. I have the luckiest life.

Quarantine Crush (Because of Course) Part Four

The couple of days I spent staying with QC before heading back east are two of my favorite days of ever—like a charmed bubble of time when I could love and be loved, be nowhere and everywhere. It was the distilled feeling of being perfectly free and perfectly cared for.

His arm around me that night as we sat on his front stoop looking up at the few stars we could see.

His hand warm on my shoulder.

Dozing in his bed next to him listening to bluesy songs.

It was perfect. It was perfect love. That I could only let myself love him all the way once my bags were packed and waiting in his living room, I guess that says something about me.

Like the Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow story, that weekend means so much partly because it was so (in this case vexingly) chaste.

To be treated with such care.

To be given absolutely every heart thing by a man who expected nothing in return, who let me just lay there next to him and be. To have let myself do the same.

I have to believe that feeling can exist again out in the world for me, but with someone who isn’t just-friends or star-crossed or whatever. (And with constant kissing and him knowing all the knots.)

I would definitely ravish now-QC if it were possible, (It isn’t, for a variety of reasons.) but even if I had Sex Tardis technology I wouldn’t change any little thing about that weekend in 2001. I can’t think of a more perfect example of love-from-a-masculine-person—I’d never rewrite it.

And then QC and QC’s Adorable Co-Host took me to the train or the bus or whatever and said goodbye. I looked for signs and poems in the midnight lights as I rose away from unconditional love, and toward it, too.

In a few days, my brother would pick me up at the Small East Coast City bus station, lugging my life and a box of tomatoes from our Iowa Grandpa. I’d move into my sister’s old room at my mom and stepdad’s house, to live with the three of them until I figured out what to do next.

Quarantine Crush (Because of Course) Part 2

In all my years of therapy, I’ve done so much thinking about how my body keeps a physical record of trauma, but once in a while it hits me that I’ve got a record of so much love in here too.

In early drafts, I started listing off times that Quarantine Crush seemed like more than a friend back then, but I kinda want to keep them to myself, partly because they’re dear and partly because I’m petrified of being fact-checked. This story ends with me tangling myself in a made-up version of present day events, and that’s enough having-the-rug-pulled-out-from-under-me for now.

When I was twenty-five, my search for love was absolute, all-encompassing, and unapologetic. I perpetually fretted aloud to my in-the-driver’s-seat friends about this-or-that crush, or lost love, or bottomless, nebulous yearning. I worried SO HARD that I would never find The Right One, and I kind of admire that ability to be a messy romantic ball of need all the time—now, visits to that place in my heart just tend to make me feel powerless, trapped, and jittery. (Though in fairness that could just be cabin fever.)

Anyway, there were long, quiet, questioning moments, at least on my end. Times when I thought “Maybe?” or “Why can’t it be THIS one?” It’s possible I even DID try to start something and was rebuffed, but I don’t think so. That would have been braver than helplessly and somewhat peevishly waiting for him to make a move.

Now, sheltering-in-place and deprived of most everyday touch (Besides hugging the cats and Sweetie) my body gets quiet enough to remember the physical pleasure and comfort of those young friendships, especially with him. It seems, back then, like it was so, so easy to get myself held. Or to do the holding.

Anyway, for about a year and a half, all of the poets were with me almost every day, writing with me, cheering me on, helping me rehearse, indoctrinating me into the magic of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and always, always, just so casually sharing their whole selves with me. QC and his venue-running-partner (Just the cutest little newly-out Christian gay guy in the universe) stole and kept my heart the most.

Their venue was/is my favorite, a place where I always felt like everything I wrote was brilliant but that if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter because my poems and I were so gently and thoroughly blanketed in unconditional love. Life among those poets, especially within QC’s venue, was truly the deepest and most uncomplicated acceptance I’d yet felt.

So of course, in this timeline, a few months ago when life became about fear, isolation, losing most of my work, and my mom refusing to social distance, I joined that same venue during a Zoom call. Miraculously, it had persisted for twenty years, and it was profoundly, comfortingly, welcomingly the same.

And there he was. Almost never with his camera on, but still.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First we’ll have to talk about leaving California, (On literally a midnight train, okay it might’ve been 12:30), about 9/11 and Sweetie and QC Dobblering a boombox playing “In Your Eyes” in Sweetie’s and my wedding ceremony at my request.

But for now, I’ll leave QC and myself in 2001, occasionally falling nebulously into each other like the kids we were, fluffy and soft as sunset clouds.

The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, Part Seven

I sometimes wish the other people in the story had just as many paragraphs I could read about their inner lives, but they don’t. The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow is now the Man Who Sewed Me a Pillow, walking around another city being almost a complete mystery.

After the stupid Beatles letter, about twenty-five years went by. (What are we, Twin Peaks?)  Then, you know that feeling where you run into your (probably gay) first love at a family funeral and can’t stop flirting? No? Just me?

That’s how, about five years ago, I decided that the Boy-Now-Man Who Sewed Me a Pillow needed to be my friend. I got his number, took his picture to go with it, texted to apologize for being such a jerk in high school, was forgiven, then proceeded to do almost nothing about really making friends. I’d invite him to my yearly Christmas party, he couldn’t make it, we’d talk about making other plans, then not make other plans. Each year, Favorite Aunt would join facebook in reminding me to wish him a happy birthday. (If she was reminding HIM to wish ME a happy birthday, there’s no evidence.)

Then this year, a year in which I’d resolved to remember how to make new friends, a favorite artist got a retrospective in his city. I invited myself for a visit, set monthly reminders to actually remember to make plans, and then, to my great disbelief, there were plans.

I’d been thinking of this kind of the way I would any other awkward new friendship, but a few nights before our visit, texting him about museum logistics, I felt a surprising tide of warmth. It felt as though we’d always been making plans, ordinary and wonderful as making plans with Sweetie or Favorite Aunt or anyone else I readily and easily love. It startled me a little that I could feel that much closeness with someone I really didn’t know at all, even though I guess that’s what this blog is mostly about.

The warmth that spread through my body over this really very ordinary exchange reminded me of the feeling I sometimes got during trauma work—something was being gently prised loose, except this thing that had been stored in me wasn’t a hurt or a breakage but a treasure, a hope.

***

***Note: I watched The Unicorn Store right before writing the first draft of this part, but it probably would have been pretty glittery anyway.

Boy, The Unicorn Store really had my number.

There had been some doubt about whether we’d get to see the exhibit we’d planned for, the one I’d written into my 2019 goals, but there he was with tickets when I arrived, peering down into his phone looking EXACTLY the same except for a little grey and a cute beard and looking EXACTLY right for his way-cooler-than-I-am city. I called his name, we hugged, and we breezed into the museum, a little awkward but mostly in the care of bright colors, details, textures, and happy banter.

We had never hung out together so far from Favorite Aunt (though in a way it didn’t feel far from her at all…) so I thought it would be weird. Objectively, it IS weird to make plans with someone you knew for six months thirty years ago, or, more accurately kissed and loved but never really knew at all.

But really, as we moved from room to room catching up (in between times of me getting in trouble for taking too many pictures) nervousness and oddness gave over to a silly joy that had its own momentum. The sensation, which I’ve felt a couple of times before, was one of my heart unlatching, of becoming unseparated from him, from art, from myself, from love, from every beautiful thing that has ever been in the world.

(Is all)

It was both the old-friend sensation of no time having passed between visits and the mystical feeling of meeting a muse. It was both picking up where we’d left off (wherever THAT was) and noticing a labyrinth-string that I’d been following all along.

As much as I would have liked to be some imaginary cool, restrained person, I couldn’t really stop myself from becoming a high tide, an effervescently glitter-shining sea of exclaiming, gasping, giggling. It was both a Very Big Deal and the easiest, most natural thing in the world.

The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, Part Five

An old painting, but apt. <3

It was such a pleasant weekend but I’m antsy to get back to the story, anxious for the part where the paragraphs drop me back in 2019, on a few-weeks-ago bright spring day in a nearby city, surrounded by people with fancy dogs and deeply curated outfits, pleasantly arguing with Sweetie (Still ex-wife, now freakishly close best friend and co-aunt) whether I was stopping to take pictures of forsythias or just boring yellow leaves.

While driving toward family for Easter, Sweetie and I decided to play YouTube DJ, with the rule that we could only pick fun-to-sing but wholly undignified songs. This led to a lot of belting hair-metal ballads and the over-optimistic decision to swing by my teenhood home. I was curious and it was on the way. I had this idea that it would be healing to be there and see how un-evil the place was, to be there as a strong adult with a reliable car for easy escape. But we hit a bad pothole and a hubcap flew off my pretty car, and Sweetie was worried about the tire.

Even if there hadn’t been car-upset though, the street would have felt rotten and bleak. Not even a couple of Pokéstops could redeem it—that place doesn’t deserve Pokéstops! The sky was trauma-grey and there was no escaping the fact that this was the place where the worst things of my life happened. The little park made me so angry and the old house had been painted a particularly upsetting shade of taupe. It was old-Twilight-Zone creepy there, without the fun or charm. I fucking hate that block, I hate that I’ve spent so much therapy time on it, I hate it, hate it hate it.

The magical thinking of mental illness clicked in and I thought I had broken my lovely car by getting curious about this awful place, but the tire was fine and if I want a new hubcap, the guy at the car place is very cute. Nieces and nephews several towns over broke the spell of the bad street, my youngest nephew chose a Captain Marvel book on our traditional comic shop visit, and all was well.

Back in the nineties, it’s still that summer. I’m pining and waiting for the mail—which, now that I think about it, was my default state for the ensuing ten years. I loved the feeling that someone cute was going to send you a card or a letter or a mix tape, sometimes they even still do.

Far more painful than the pining were the long and painful treatments for STIs—who knows if I got them consensually or not, I guess it doesn’t matter. The doctor was a harsh and judgmental old man, gouging and pinching away at the hurts, freezing my insides to try and heal them. There were big, intimidating, emphatic antibiotic pills. My mom was there with me for all of it, and, though we’ve spent big chunks of our lives at odds, for this, she was kind.

Once, after a particularly harsh doctor’s visit, I was walking in town and heard kids yelling “Slut!” out of a pickup truck at me. The summer was half ugly insult, half beautiful dream.

When school started again in the fall, everyday life settled onto me like a weighted blanket, not in a pleasant way. I gained so much weight (though I’m sure I was teensy compared to today, but this was WAY before Dietland/Roxane Gay/Shrill.) that my drama teacher (No Kate Moss herself) took it upon herself to tell me that I needed new jeans. I remember those jeans, high-waisted and acid-washed to almost white, devolving into a permanent wedgie as I got bigger. I want to say I didn’t care, it seemed like I didn’t, but I seem to remember it a little too vividly.

(This might have also been why I only got the teensiest, tinesiest part in that fall’s Drama Club production, one scream from backstage in a murder mystery. I hate this drama teacher. She also told me I’m too tall to ever be a leading lady, which I guess is true in the patriarchal sense. Fuck that lady though.)

ANYWAY, there was a very bright spot to look forward to! The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow was coming up with Favorite Aunt for the Drama Club production, maybe in early October. In anticipation, still glowing with love about the pillow, I sewed him a shirt.

Objectively, this shirt was probably pretty hideous. I LOVED fabrics that made not sense back then, I really kind of still do. It was aqua blue, light green, and purple, with a large and semi-realistic-looking fish print. (He told me the other week that it also had tiny turtle buttons, a detail I thoroughly enjoy.) It was the most structured thing I ever sewed, with a collar and buttonholes and all kinds of ironing and steps. There is NO WAY I would ever have the patience for all those steps today, good job teenage me.