San Francisco, 5:26 a.m.

I'm not sure if that's possibility or pot in the air. 

Today's writing

When I first found out I was pregnant I shook. Only later I realized it was from excitement. I had no idea my body could do that. One hundred pounds ago, it likely couldn’t. Now I was capable of growing a human being. Jesus Christ, could you even imagine?

We all know the particulars of our circumstances and see them as special, because to us they are. We know the obstacles and the odds. And we know how much it took to get us to where we are. This is why parents so often see their children as snowflakes – to them, they are.

I wasn’t just me anymore. I was with snowflake.

Joni Mitchell on continuity

“I don’t know if I’ve learned anything yet! I did learn how to have a happy home, but I consider myself fortunate in that regard because I could’ve rolled right by it. Everybody has a superficial side and a deep side, but this culture doesn’t place much value on depth — we don’t have shamans or soothsayers, and depth isn’t encouraged or understood. Surrounded by this shallow, glossy society we develop a shallow side, too, and we become attracted to fluff. That’s reflected in the fact that this culture sets up an addiction to romance based on insecurity — the uncertainty of whether or not you’re truly united with the object of your obsession is the rush people get hooked on. I’ve seen this pattern so much in myself and my friends and some people never get off that line.

But along with developing my superficial side, I always nurtured a deeper longing, so even when I was falling into the trap of that other kind of love, I was hip to what I was doing. I recently read an article in Esquire magazine called ‘The End of Sex,’ that said something that struck me as very true. It said: “If you want endless repetition, see a lot of different people. If you want infinite variety, stay with one.” What happens when you date is you run all your best moves and tell all your best stories — and in a way, that routine is a method for falling in love with yourself over and over.

You can’t do that with a longtime mate because he knows all that old material. With a long relationship, things die then are rekindled, and that shared process of rebirth deepens the love. It’s hard work, though, and a lot of people run at the first sign of trouble. You’re with this person, and suddenly you look like an asshole to them or they look like an asshole to you — it’s unpleasant, but if you can get through it you get closer and you learn a way of loving that’s different from the neurotic love enshrined in movies. It’s warmer and has more padding to it.”

Why I write

 

This morning's writing

I was tired. I had been tired a long time. At some level I had been tired my entire life. As a child, shouldering the burden of an overly confidential mother who discussed her sex life with me before I turned 8; a college student who hadn’t done her homework, who never did her homework; an obese adult carrying around an extra century of weight before surgery forced me to shed it. At some level parenthood held no candle to any of this.

But at another level it dwarfed everything. The totality of the situation, the finality, the statement. You were a mother; you did what needed to be done. There was no escape. Love itself was the warden.

Today's writing

I was supposed to be in Ojai right now. Okay, not Ojai. I was supposed to be in Oak View. That’s 10 minutes west of Ojai. But I came home.

 

I’d made the plan with Marie. We knew each other from back before the day. We hadn’t seen each other in the better part of a year. She was going to be on retreat in Ojai. “Come down,” she wrote. Well, why not?

 

Baz. My 5-year-old son, that’s what. Adam was going to have to work; no time to keep an eye on the kid, who was out of school for the summer. So okay, I was going to take him along.

 

I need to pause here and say that Baz was going through a bathroom phase. I mean, a serious bathroom phase. As in, obsessed with bathrooms. But it gets better, or worse, depending on how you see the matter. He wasn’t just obsessed; he was also hyper-picky. So after dragging me by the hand to whatever restroom he’d happened to find in whatever place we happened to be, he would then decide fuck this, I’m not going in here.

 

Is it too dramatic to say that kids are nuts? That they have their own dungeon of logic and you may only enter it if you’re wearing the right equipment, which very few of us seem to possess? Look, don’t ask me about kids. This one wasn’t planned. He was just willed into existence. And I love him. I know that sounds like a duh, big 10-4, buddy, but it’s not. Some people don’t love their kids. Others don’t like them. I both love and like my son. Except when he’s being insane. Which these days he so often is.

 

So yes, I was supposed to be in Ojai. We packed yesterday, took toys and books and his nasty-ass loveybear of a teddy, Tahoe, along. I neglected to fix Tahoe’s seatbelt the way Daddy did it. Somehow this escaped Baz’s notice and I took it as a good sign. We left the crunchy neighborhood I’d longed to leave for good, turning right onto California and left on Alcatraz and then right on Adeline toward the freeway, and soon we were southbound.

 

While I went to school in Santa Barbara, I’d never been to Ojai. I’d heard things – hippie, outdoor, Bart’s Books – and knew I wanted to experience it. More than anything, I wanted to get the fuck away from the rote: the loud, obnoxious apartment complex next to our duplex, the living room that sometimes felt more oppressive than comforting, the rutted roads that seemed to lead everywhere and nowhere. Berkeley, my home for the better part of 20 years, but no sort of home for anyone with any shred of sanity.

 

What I didn’t realize – or more likely didn’t allow myself to understand – was that I was taking 45 pounds of responsibility along with me. Talk about rote. I don’t care who you are or who your child is, if you tell me that taking care of them isn’t all about repetition, I’m going to tell you you’re a son of a bitch and to get the fuck off my lawn.

Live from King City

We're meeting Deborah near Ojai. Left a day early. Oops. So we're in King City and the kid is running naked and watching cartoons, and I'm letting him because there's not a whole hell of a lot to do here and why not anyway, and maybe he'll nap at some point although probably not, and you hear there's bomb Mexican food here, and thus memories are made. 

Today's writing

The guy is a writer. A journalist. One of those people who sticks an iPhone in the face of some dead kid’s mother, looking for a quote. Who trolls scenes of car crashes for kicks. Writes a bunch of bullshit and publishes it because he can, not because it’s accurate or makes any sense. When I tell Tabitha this, she looks at me as if I’d said that her ass had detached and was doing a little tap dance across the lobby.

“Dude,” she says, “what do you have against writers? Journalists? They’re, like, the lifeblood of democracy.”

The wish

That I could stop looking at my phone.

Counting my likes.

Checking my email.

Wondering who cares about me, and why.

The treasure

People who understand you, really understand you, are gems. Watching them explain you to someone else? That's a turn-on. 

More writing

Damian changed all that. Never had there been anything like him, anything like us. I look back and shake my head, but only slightly. Fact is, when we love, we make no fucking sense. Logic does not reside in libido. Soft, stupid gazes, set off by smiles we can’t control, don’t compute.

Marcus sent me this

Months later, it is still my Facebook cover photo.

I'm going through some shit. I don't talk about it here. And I won't. 

Early-morning writing

Damian’s and my last night before it all crumbled, went south, went to hell. We played dress-up that night, made a thing of it. I didn’t want to ask what the excuse was at home, but I did. I did it pretty much right when he picked me up. “So,” I said, “what does Joyce think you’re up to tonight?”

 

He was in the middle of kissing me. Stiffened. Pulled away. Straightened. “Why do you care?”

 

“Because I do. Because I should.”

 

“No, you shouldn’t. It’s none of your business. Why would you possibly care what I tell her?”

 

Damian. He could be such an asshole. Just dig in his heels, look at you with that fuck you, I’ll do what I want glare. It wasn’t his fault that I’d fallen in love with him, was it? He didn’t do anything wrong. He just had that hair and those eyes and those dimples and that smile and that cock, that goddamned thing of beauty that offered so much pleasure. I found everything about Damian beautiful, but looking back on it, I’m not sure if it was his presence or his void that I found most attractive. Sometimes we love people because they’re more absent than anything. More empty than not. Something like that.

 

Joni Mitchell, "All I Want"

I am on a lonely road and
I am traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling
Looking for something, what can it be
Oh I hate you some, I hate you some, I love you some
Oh I love you when I forget about me
I wanna be strong I wanna laugh along
I wanna belong to the living
Alive, alive, I want to get up and jive
I want to wreck my stockings in some jukebox dive
Do you want, do you want, do you wanna dance with me baby
Do you wanna take a chance on
Maybe finding some sweet romance with me baby, well come on

All I really really want is our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you too
All I really really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you
I wanna talk to you, I wanna shampoo you
I wanna renew you again and again
Applause, applause, life is our cause
When I think of your kisses my mind see-saws
Do you see, do you see, do you see how you hurt me baby
So I hurt you too
Then we both get so blue

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Looking for the key to set me free
Oh the jealousy
The greed is the unraveling it's the unraveling
And it undoes all the joy that could be
I wanna fun, I wanna shine like the sun
I wanna be the one that you want to see
I wanna knit you a sweater
Wanna write you a love letter
I wanna make you feel better, I wanna
Make you feel free
Hm hm hm, hm
Wanna make you feel all free
All I wanna make you feel free

19 years ago

ME: God damn it I don't want to be here, not in a fucking cubicle, not anywhere near some corporate bullshit ...

HIM: Hi.

Reader, I married him.

More from BAD HAIR

My eyes caught on a crystal I’d hung in my window years ago during my hippie period. It didn’t last. Nothing does. The thing shone in the half-light, throwing its rainbows across my desk. How did rainbows understand the order in which their colors were supposed to appear? They made it look so easy for the rest of us. Meanwhile our colors were out of order, scattered, thrown in ways that could never be understood.

Hopeful. That was the word. That was always the word for me. My mother knew that. “Meredith,” she once said, “you have this whole ice-cream-in-the-sky thing going on. You know?”

What I did know was that my mother used euphemisms like English wasn’t her first language. “Mom,” I said, “it’s pie.”

 “Jell-O, tiramisu, I don’t give a damn. Girl, you’ve got to get real. Life will knock you down and kick you in the nuts. That’s what I’m saying to you.”

This time I didn’t even bother to explain the concept of mixed metaphor. God knows what her response might be.

From BAD HAIR, the Young Adult novel

He took a sip of whatever blended thing he’d gotten. How weird: such a guy drinking a girly drink. Thing was, it worked. “Yeah? What is it about dogs that gets you?”

            What didn’t get me?

            Start with the look in their eyes. If dogs had a filter, I wouldn’t know it. Sometimes it was too much to look deep into those eyes. You really had to make yourself go there. What had those eyes seen? How were they still so trusting, so loving, so deep? How could you possibly hurt someone who looked at you like that?

            But there was more, so much more. The way they wiggled when they saw you. The honest horrible-ness of their breath. The way they put their paws in your lap when you sat down, as if to say you’re going to stay for a while, right?

            The look they got when they realized you had to leave.

            They never wanted you to leave.

            I didn’t know another creature like that, anyone who wanted you there, always and unconditionally. People needed their space. I was no different in that regard. But dogs, they were always there when you needed them.

            But what happened when you didn’t?

            “They just get – discarded,” I said. “And that’s when they’re lucky. I mean, they get walked in on a leash, dragged in on a chain, stuffed through the midnight drop box. I’m not kidding. And you wouldn’t believe the condition they’re in when they come through. People get animals like it’s against the law not to have them. Then they don’t feed them. They let them get sick and don’t treat them. You should see the tumors hanging off some of these dogs. How do you just ignore that? How do you --?”

            Then I stopped. There was a lump in my throat and it wasn’t from the dogs, either.

            It was for me.

With Honey Mahogany, 2016

 

Sonora, 2016

 

Love and Rockets, "So Alive"

I don't know what color your eyes are, baby
But your hair is long and brown
Your legs are strong, and you're so, so long
And you don't come from this town

My head is full of magic, baby
And I can't share this with you
The feel I'm on a cross again, lately
But there's nothing to do with you

I'm alive, huh, huh, so alive
I'm alive, huh, huh so alive

Your strut makes me crazy
Makes me see you more clearly
Oh, baby, now I can see you
Wish I could stop
Switch off the clock
Make it all happen for you

I'm alive, huh, huh, so alive
I'm alive, huh, huh so alive

I don't know what color your eyes are, baby
But your hair is long and brown
Your legs are strong, and you're so, so long
And you don't come from this town

My head is full of magic, baby
And I can't share this with you
The feel I'm on top again, baby
That's got everything to do with you

I'm alive, huh, huh, so alive
I'm alive, huh, huh so alive

Du dn du
Du dn du
Du dn du
Du dn du
Du dn du
Du dn du
Ooh
Du dn du
Du dn du
Ooh
Du dn du
Du dn du
Ooh
Du dn du
Du dn du
Ooh
Du dn du
Du dn du
Ooh

Today's writing

The few times we slept together were ridiculous. Epic with a few rough edges. She’s not relationship material, though, and not just because I favor dudes. Tabitha’s got some issues. We stayed up late talking about them. There was some guy who knocked her up in Missouri. Years afterward and she still hasn’t seemed to get over it. Over it or over him, I’m not too sure which.

 

We fell into it one afternoon. There wasn’t a lot to do and so I asked her back for a few beers. Then I realized the refrigerator was dry and so we made a run down into town. “We should just scoot some from the hotel,” she said, but I laughed and said no. I needed the job, still do. I used to work in a kitchen at a tech company, but I got laid off. Not fired. Laid off. I didn’t mind. Working at a minimum-wage job totally screwed up my focus on life. I didn’t miss the kitchen. I wanted to belch my anger in Stella’s stupid face. Stella was the kitchen lead. She said many things, but the one thing she liked to say most was yes. Yes to everything, especially when it came to screwing me over. I mean, you can run a kitchen very well without coming down on people all the damn time. They’re constantly facing failure. When things go well, the top people take the credit.

 

But I digress.

 

We went to Gualala Supermarket. All the tourists went across the street to the Surf Mart. But Gualala Supermarket had the better booze selection if you knew where to look. I knew the guys who worked there, still do. They kept some good stuff in the back for me. We skipped the beer and went straight to the vodka. Then we went back to my place.

 

I wasn’t necessarily planning for anything to happen. But somewhere between Gualala Supermarket and Saint Orres, it was set in motion. Maybe it was the motion of her knees beneath her skirt, the way the breeze from the open window blew the fabric. It could have been the staticky music on the radio, KTIDE, where I always had my radio tuned. As I drove, I flashed back to working as a bartender at the Gualala Hotel before it closed. When you’re a bartender, you’re in someone’s space. You’re the obstacle to what they want. You’re the fucking remedy to their problem. People respect bartenders. You’re their psychologist. That’s because we fucking care. When I was working at the Hotel, I always asked, how you guys doing over here? One time this douche said, you know, I’m okay but I wish your shirt were a little less loud. And I was like, fuck you, bro, did I ask your goddamned opinion?

 

But again, I digress.

 

KTIDE was playing Sarah McLachlan. I know you’re not supposed to like her. She’s wimpy as fuck, but fact is I do like her. I like her a lot. I like her depth, you know, her meaning. They were playing “Adia” when we pulled back into the dirt parking lot. And I just knew.

 

I just knew.

 

But when it happened, we were both surprised. Surprised in that way of well, I expected it, but now that it’s here, I’m kind of like fucking amazed. We were doing shots. We weren’t fucking around. We were laughing about front of house, how they basically fold napkins and take shots. “Back of house,” I said. “That’s where it’s at.”

 

“Yeah,” she said, and barely suppressed a burp. We both laughed.

 

I don’t know if I kissed her or she kissed me. I only know that one moment we were laughing and the next we were making out. I was still dating Kwan at the time. But it wasn’t going well. And we weren’t exclusive. I wonder if one had something to do with the other. Then I had my hands on her tits. I hadn’t done that since junior high. I’d always known I was gay.

 

“Oh, shit,” she said, pulling away. “Does that mean we’re not doing any more shots?”

 

It felt like she was in a rush to get naked. I wasn’t feeling like that. It had been a hard six months. I’d lost my grandma, I’d lost my emotional support animal. Jake was everything to me, goddamned Pit Bull mix. I became one of those people who threw myself into work. Whatever I could do around Saint Orres, I did it. Rosemary treated me like family. I needed that. Family didn’t mean perfection, didn’t mean I was the saint of the clan. It just meant that I belonged somewhere, anywhere.

 

“Hey,” I said. “Hold up.”

 

She blinked at me. Did I hurt her? I didn’t want to hurt her. She was cute. I didn’t even know how much I liked her, but I still didn’t want to cause her pain.

 

“It’s just,” she said, “I’m still kind of suffering from what happened to me a few years ago.”

 

That’s how I found out about Damian. How he got her pregnant and then acted as if he’d never known her to begin with. How she had an abortion because there was no other choice. How did didn’t cry on the table, didn’t cry at home, only cried months later when there was nothing else left to do. And then she left, moved to California, started over again. As if you could just do that. As if you could leave what you’d done, who you were, behind.

 

It’s a script. Life is a script. We played it out the way it was written. Afterward we lay on my couch, spent, stunned. “Well,” she said, “that’s where the shots took us.”

 

And we laughed. It’s what you did when you didn’t know what else to say, weren’t sure what else to do. I probably should have kissed her, at least held her hand. Instead I just stroked her hair in this confused way. I mean, what the fuck now?

 

Little Miss

 

The work

Is to stop taking the way other people act as representative of who you are. 

Today's writing

It’s not like this has never happened before. I’ve cheated. I will admit that. There was Pennie Jo in high school. I broke her heart with Kathie. It was one of those just happened situations. “What?” I can hear Pennie Jo hissing, “she fell and your dick wound up in her mouth?”

 

Then there was my one same-sex experience. Gary, I think that was his name. My dick didn’t wind up in his mouth, but we did have a mutual jerkoff session, so I suppose that counts. We were drunk and in college. These things happen, but my girlfriend at the time wouldn’t have accepted that as an answer, so I never told her, even when we broke up six months later. Catherine. One of the true loves of my life. I would say I never forgave myself, but forgiveness has always come pretty easily for me, at least when it comes to me. I’m not good at letting others off the hook. Hypocrisy. Adds iron to the blood.

 

This is different, though. That shit was way in the past. I thought I’d grown since then. I thought I’d changed. I’d been to therapy, taken restorative hikes. I’d attended men’s groups. And I’d lost my mother relatively early in my life. Doesn’t that count for something in the evolved sense? Aren’t you supposed to grow up quickly when there is pain to manage or – more likely – flee?

I just realized

Today is my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. That stopped having too much meaning a while back. Still, it's worth noting.

Morning music

 

Truth

 

Ray Bradbury, "Zen in the Art of Writing"

We must take arms each and every day, perhaps knowing that the battle cannot be entirely won, but fight we must, if only a gentle bout. The smallest effort to win means, at the end of each day, a sort of victory ....

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

The Pub is open inside!

 

Today's writing

When he walks in, my mouth low-key dries up. I’m not sure that I realized it before, but I find this guy attractive. Okay, he’s hot. Not in any sort of traditional way, but that’s what I like, nontraditional. He’s nothing like Damian but in a way he reminds me of how I felt about him: like I could just stare into his eyes longer than I should, caress his skin with reverence until the light fades.

 

What is it with me and the taken ones?

 

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” I say.

 

“Oh, come on. You can’t tease me like that.”

 

I step forward as if in some sort of dream.

 

When his mouth meets mine it’s like it’s happening to someone else. I’m extremely jealous of that person. But it’s me, and it’s him, and we’re making out like high schoolers, hands as busy as our tongues.

 

No one else is in the lobby. No one else will be in the lobby for at least an hour. Still –

 

“Jesus,” he says.

 

We pull apart, look at each other like the human sweet treats that we are. I know places. We can make this happen. It’s just stupid animal passion, the kind that magnetizes us together and tosses us apart when we’re through.

 

It has nothing to do with love.

Just now

I paid my overpriced rent on the duplex we rent in a Berkeley slum. I feel too tired at the end of the day to do anything, let alone prepare to move. Somehow I have to escape this Catch 22.

Just written

There is a freedom to seeing someone as they really are. Often that signals the end of expectations. 

Coming out of it

The fog. Sleeping most of the day. Inability to put words on paper, to work, to ride the cute little purple bike I bought not that long ago. The fog is clearing. But slowly, slowly.

Today's writing

I grasp her wrists, hold them in the air, bring her closer to me. Her perfume is intimacy, a strong and clean scent that makes me want to make love to her again. “I’m not human,” I say. “I’m superhuman. You just happened to get lucky.”

 

“You got lucky.”

 

“I’m not arguing there.”

 

“You love me.”

 

“Well,” I say, “duh.”

 

“Duh? That’s what you have to say?” She in turn takes my wrists, tries to hold me down to the bed. I let her. She brings her face close to mine, nestles her mouth close to my ear.

 

Then she asks:

 

“Do you want to fuck Tabitha?”

 

I blink so hard that it feels as though boulders are being dropped onto my eyes. I breathe in hard enough that it feels like razors are cutting my throat. Fact is, I’ve been sleeping for a long time. Maybe even before Mom died. I’ve been walking through life with my eyes open and very little else engaged.

 

“Um,” I say, “sure?”

 

Oh, Jesus. I should know better, right?