Augusts (Not August) Past
Once I had a girlfriend from Venezuela, and whenever she kissed me, she’d run her hands through my hair and laugh. “You have a baby’s hair,” she’d say in Spanish, and I wasn’t fluent enough to tell if if she was mocking or complimenting me.
Really, what she was doing was comparing me to someone else, which is never a compliment to anyone.
This woman had thick, dark hair that framed her face in tight ringlets, and the effect took my breath away no matter how cross I was with her. She was neither feminine nor masculine, just extremely beautiful in a self-made way. She wore enormous green glasses and lots of layers in different shades of the same color, and she had very long lashes and very soft skin and very hard muscles. I liked touching her and I liked her touching me, and we were always better off when we didn’t talk.
For one thing, she had a wife whom I knew, and whenever my girlfriend and I talked at any length she assured me they had an open relationship. When she did this, I hated us both, for the lie was so apparent that it cheapened everything.
Still she smelled and felt wonderful and I liked our small adventures. We’d meet somewhere off the beaten track for an afternoon drink and then float into a hotel room until she had to rush off to a couple’s thing. My girlfriend seemed more aroused by betrayal than any physical act, but I’d thrill every time she’d lay her strong hands upon me. The sex warp would hold me for days. Continue Reading →
Rise and Toil and Thank Your Lucky Stars
I woke thinking about how, when I was a kid, you’d still encounter elders with numbers tattooed on their arms. If you were a Jewish child in the 1970s, you knew those numbers were not like other tattoos. You knew they were from the Camps. And even if you didn’t entirely understand what the Camps were, you knew they were the worst places imaginable, that they haunted your grownups more than dark closets and spiders could ever haunt you. I woke thinking about all this, and it made me dive immediately into my writing rather than succumb to the hour of lollygaggging and whining that usually precedes my book production. Because I am free to do what I think I’m meant to do, and I cannot take that for granted, especially in Trump’s America. My line did not survive so that I could merely sit on my ass. None of our lines did.
Love and Darkness, Green Days and Rain
I was so sad in my last post. More than sad, I was hopeless.
And I guess people aren’t accustomed to such despair from me. I’m glad they’re not, actually. And I’m even gladder for the subsequent outreach.
Subconsciously it’s probably why I put my great despair out there. Sometimes you don’t see the light unless you acknowledge the darkness from which it emerges. And a big source of light in my life are the people who do see me, and are loving and gracious in their perceptions. Are gentle with my heart.
Last week’s rain came right from my own body. I’d wept enough tears that they manifested as a nasty summer cold–sinuses streaming, fevers and body aches, all that natural-unnatural drama. Supernatural, too.
K and his kid dropped by impromptu Saturday evening with supplies and sardonic sweetness, their specialty for as long as I’ve known them as a dynamic duo. We sat on my dirty rug while I rasped like an inadvertent torch singer and Grace wove in between our legs. Everything under the sun got discussed except for the things that would have just hurt more. Then we even talked about those things because by then nothing hurt. My sweet sardonic friends kept me company until I was ready for bed, and then traveled back into the good night because they go to sleep just as I wake. Still sniffling, I floated in that darkness, grateful that K and I could fuse a real friendship from the embers of our failed expectations of each other. Continue Reading →