Life Altering Truths

When my high school BFF and I fought over the same girl, it wasn’t out of jealousy of him, it was jealousy for him.  It wasn’t about the girl, it was about him wanting the girl and not me.  This is the same guy I boinked all summer.  Physical fighting scared me only to the extent of the damage I could do to someone.  When he hit me with a right hook to my left cheek, I hit him back and threw him into the lockers.  He picked himself up and looked at me and in that moment I knew he hated me.  The look hurt worse than hundreds of right hooks.  I never did figure out the wisdom in avoiding the straight guys.

My grandpa was a Mormon bigot that never accepted me and my adopted brother because we weren’t “true blood” (we pre-date Potter by decades).  Mother, the soft-spoken yet implacably obstinate and incredibly stubborn protector to us, taught me that elders are not always right, nor should they automatically be granted respect.  At a family picnic, Grandpa once hit me for something my cousins had done with his sanction.  I didn’t even think about it – I hit him back.  His face turned red and he raised his hand to strike me and he stopped and stared: my mom was standing behind me.  He pointed at me and bellowed that I was an evil child and how dare I hit him back and that he was going to punish me.  My mother calmly asked if he was also going to punish my cousins for doing the same thing?  His face went even more red and he stood there with fists clenched until he turned around and walked away.  She squeezed my shoulder and gathered my dad and brother and we left the party.  I learned that we can’t choose our family, but we can choose the people we care about.

Online experiences of the internets have changed the last few weeks.  A cousin went born-again apeshit on me on Facebook, taking various posts personally and saying I was “so negative” and why did I “have to be so prideful about being gay,” wherein I had to respond that my status updates, or Yahoo or Second Life profiles weren’t about her.  All my posts or profiles were meant to entertain, provoke, satirize, and stir things up, and failing that, they were simply mine to express or not – if she took things personally that was her business, not mine.  This evidently was not good enough and she sent a long email to me – she wanted the cousin she knew of her youth back – the young and adorkable and closeted best friend/cousin that wasn’t gay or certainly wasn’t out.  I learned that people will read what they want and make assumptions, no matter how clear or unclear one’s writing is.  I learned that “‘goodbyes” are a bluff I’m willing to call because I have no time to be someone she expects but doesn’t see.  I’ve also learned to use filters on Facebook.

Talk Thursday: Mea Culpa

Apologies are cyclical and transactional.  Action means reaction and a round of apologies.  Emotions get tossed like coins at a wishing well, wishing away the circumstances.  It’s when the coins are gone and the surface of the water quiets that the wronged is left with their time to heal and the apologist is left with promises to do better next time and those wishes have dried up and drifted away.

I had a boyfriend that swore to monogamy and ended up cheating three times because he wasn’t sure about us and had to ‘try out’ different guys.  At the time he was ‘the one’ for me, even though I knew, he knew, we all knew that we were not well matched, except in the bed department.  The bed department does not a relationship sustain, unfortunately, but that’s what we latched on to once, then twice, and three times a breakup.  Each time he screwed up (no pun intended), he’d confess his transgression and beg forgiveness and promise never to screw up again and then he’d have a big arrangement of flowers sent to me at work.  Stunning flowers.  Monstrously gorgeous flowers.  By the second set of tears and apologies, I hated the sight of them.  I was “done,” following the third episode, even though my co-workers loved the ambiance and observed that I ‘got more flowers than a dead person’s funeral.’  Each time felt like a funeral, and in a way that’s what each apology and new promise was – a little more of the relationship dying.  The mea cupla became the ritual acknowledgment of passing dreams.  I had said to him each time:  I was more sorry that I didn’t listen to myself better than him.

A decade later, now he’s still with the guy he cheated with the last time.  We talked about what worked and what didn’t work years ago and we both shared how wrong we were for each other (even though the bed department was so right – the bastard still knows exactly what turns me on).  Keeping in touch went from daily to weekly to eventually a few times a year.  When I look back at what he used to mean to me, I know I still see the man he could have been, which is the ruin of all relationships.  When we talk and he looks back, he sees the prior mea culpas I represented.

Our last conversation was a few weeks ago and saying goodbye was a pleasant sort of finality.  We’ve always gone through the ritual of goodbye but his other line rang for work and he had to go and with a soft click he was gone.  He texted me a few moments later and I read it and deleted and turned off my phone.  He was still sorry, and I was still glad I grew a pair and left him.  We were strangers trying to make sense of sorries from years ago, and I don’t want to pretend that we are any closer than we never were.

Talk Thursday: Semi-True Stories

My grandma told the story to my father (he said), who told the story to me when I was growing up.  My grandparents had gone on vacation to Mexico and came home with souvenirs and knick-knacks of their trip, one of the items being a small mirror adorned with bells that was supposedly a charm against evil spirits.  The fact that my rigid, stoic, church-going grandparents had gone to Mexico was more shocking than their penchant for primitive magical beliefs, but my young-adult mind took the story in stride, listening to my dad’s voice and watching how his face changed as he enjoyed spinning the yarns he loved spinning.  I’d heard the story being told to my uncles and cousins at a family party, but I felt lucky that he was telling the story to just me this time.

They hung the charm on the inside door of their bedroom closet.  Over the years they forgot about it.  My dad watched my face as he explained that one hot summer night my grandparents had gone to bed when they heard the sounds of bells shaking softly against their closed closet door.  He must have been satisfied with my expression because he kept going with his tale, saying that my grandpa got out of bed.  The sound of bells stopped, but he opened the closet door and pulled the string to the light switch, but inside, nothing was amiss.  The charm hung calmly on a ribbon on a small nail, the bells silent.

Satisfied, my grandpa shut the door and went back to bed.  They awoke to the sounds of bells again, ringing louder and more vigorously than before.  Grandma got out of bed this time and the sounds stopped before she opened the door.  She pulled the string to the light switch and looked around, and like my grandpa had seen, nothing was amiss.  The charm hung silently against the door.  She shut the door and went back to bed and they both fell asleep.

They both shot out of bed when they heard the sounds of howls and hissing accompanying the sound of bells ringing violently.  My grandpa flipped the light switch and my grandma stood behind him when he threw open the closet door.  A black shape leaped up and over my grandpa’s shoulder, they both screamed, and the black shape of a cat jumped out their bedroom window.  There was a loud crack inside the closet and the sound of bells stopped.  Grandma looked at the charm and the mirror was marred by jagged cracks.  An evil spirit had come and gone.

I didn’t remember the story being told this way and I waited for him to finish.  He was silent for so long I grew impatient and said, “It was just their cat, locked in the closet.”

My dad took a sip of his beer and looked thoughtful.  “Son.  They never had a cat.”

Talk Thursday: Fabric of Connection

(Fair warning:  this is incredibly fractured and I’m tired and irritable.)

My role in the space I’ve created here this past year has been more of an unraveller than a weaver.  Negligence is self-evident.  I spent a lot of time tonight looking back at prior posts and comments and I cringed because there’s so much I didn’t do, least of which was writing and sharing.  Those nice little strings here and fixing hems there haven’t been completed.  Tonight I read other blogs that I haven’t been to in ages and noticed a common theme of people examining the space they’ve created and the reasons for which have changed over time.  My space here and my intentions have changed too – and I don’t have the full answers yet because I’m in the middle of it.  Obviously, I don’t want to let this space go or I wouldn’t have bothered writing at all.  Somewhere in my heart is the need to afix more buttons to this work, to gather more threads where my life is woven with others and chronicle those moments and bindings.  It’s not to say that there won’t be times when I cut a thread or get cut myself – nothing nothing nothing in this universe stays the same.  Change happens, will happen, is happening.  The weave we think we’re working with will invariably be knotted differently than we expected.

When I read other blogs and their spaces spaces and looked back at my own I had to pause and take it in and appreciate the connections.  While blogging may be one of the most self-centered and narcissistic exercises this side of Facebook status updates, it is the act of reading and feeling others in their experiences of exhibitionism and self-less narcissism that make this weave of life so fascinating and worthwhile.  All these words on virtual pages that may or may not make an immediate difference to anyone or ourselves, but in time may show our textures and colors and changes because we’re able to see a pattern that moves beyond this space we can “see” only in now.

I have been holding the threads in my mind that mean both connection and specific people and I’ve been asking myself questions that won’t get answered, at least not here.  The answers will come later, after the part where I quietly attend to the loose stitches, the hems, and all the button holes.  I’ll know when I know when I’m not tired and manic and annoying myself because I do feel guilt and I really hate that.

***

I am sitting here listening to music.  I keep forwarding through songs when something bothersome comes on, such as Beck’s “Loser” or Nitzer Ebb’s “Murderous.”  I am thinking too much.  I have been writing this in between reading posts and email:  write, backspace, edit, repeat.   I’m absorbing the fact that as of today I’m back in grad school, that class starts on November 3rd, and that I’ll be finished next November.  I’m annoyed with my parents because they’re aging and they tell me stories instead of telling the truth about their health.  I’m happy I made dinner tonight for Scott (yes, it’s a rare thing).  I’ve lost five pounds of the ten I gained this past year.   I’m slightly concerned about my current contract and the financial challenges in California for higher education.  I’m blathering.

I’ve written a lot of nothing and I’m okay with that because it means I’ve sat my ass down and wrote.  Please note that if you consider all the words on this post, know that I’ve deleted more than what is posted.  At this point, you may also consider yourself blessed.  G’night.

Talk Thursday: Life

Most couples have their code words or gestures for wanting to leave a social gathering, but we read each other so well we’ve rarely had to use them.  Saturday, we were both dreading a certain party, Scott, because he was afraid I wouldn’t know many people, and me, because I knew someone was going to play the accordion.  We agreed that we’d split at the first sign of a recital and anyone carrying a large musical case, or else I threatened that I would jump through a window.  Scott wasn’t sure if I was serious.  I repeated our ‘code’ and smiled sweetly.

We arrived and I met the host and hostess and recognized most of the folks.  A sweep of the room for some quick hellos and a beeline to the niblies and drinks – I kept it to one margarita.  Who knew what could happen with a mixed group with alcohol – they could suddenly square dance (which is how they all knew one another)… or play the accordion.  I weighed the risk of stomach acid and a second (or third) margarita and chose water.  The host needed a little help with the barbecue (he’s nearly blind), so I played chef, which is unfortunate for anyone who wanted their hamburgers on the rare side.  The food and banter were excellent and I had a great time.

Scott and I sitting next to each other when the host got ready to serve dessert, but first, we were in for a musical treat!  I looked at the window and then at the margarita pitcher and he sort of smiled nervously.  I blinked slowly and looked at Scott and he looked at me and we both shrugged at each other with our eyes.  I squeezed his knee and leaned back in the chair and watched our friend get out a black behemoth of an instrument with way too many keys and buttons and rest it on his thigh.  I was ready to imagine rolling hills and ponies and sunshine on my shoulders and being far from this place.  I wanted another margarita.

He started playing and the room melted away.  I was hit by so many associated sounds and images that I felt lightheaded for a minute, but I was brought down to earth when he’d pause to flip the sheet music.  Much more intricate than playing a piano, he played the treble notes (on similar piano or organ keys of ivory and black) with his right hand, he played scores of bass notes with his left, and he pushed and pulled the accordion as it drew in or expelled air to make tones and sounds.  He played six songs, and in that time I saw rooms of people dancing, funerals, carousels, waltzes, and Bohemian parties.  He said he had not played for a while, but his playing seemed nearly flawless to me.  The music stayed with me all weekend and I’m glad that we stayed to hear him play.  It is hysterical to me how intentions and planning sometimes mean nothing to the surprises we go through in life.  Sometimes these moments feel more than or greater than the instance itself.  Life, or something like it, because how can you describe those moments that take you out of yourself and bring you back to more than what you were before you left?

Talk Thursday: Two Late Topics

For Talk Thursday, I’m behind a few weeks with “Milestones and Mortality,” and my own topic of “Castaways.”  I’ll think of some suitable self-torture in another venue, but for now, all ya’ll get a little stream of consciousness.  Instead of a cohesive piece, it’s gonna be piecemeal, disjointed, and chaotic – kind of like the top of my desk at the moment.

Mortality is much on my mind most of the time.  The last few weeks, even more so because of big time life and death events:  elderly relatives’ birthdays, friends’ children’s birthdays, a friend’s suicide, and my mom’s increasingly poor health.  I’d love to channel Elton John’s “Circle of Life” (belted out at the top of my lungs) and force myself through a deeper understanding of life and the challenges thereof, but my sense of grace and wonder is jaded.  Most days I’m more in tune with Depeche Mode’s “Blasphemous Rumours.”  Most days.  I don’t have many issues with my own mortality.  I don’t know how to deal with people nearest to me dying.  I’m clueless, flailing, and graceless.

I reached a certain health milestone today when I went to the follow-up physical after my little summer aspiration episode.  Lovely time, that – I hope to never repeat it (the aspiration, not the physical).  Other than my stomach acid issue (which can be controlled through drugs, diet restrictions, and exercise), I’m healthy as a fookin’ horse (though not nearly as hung, thankfully).  Here I be, 41 years old, and the doc was impressed with my bloodwork and improvements since summer.  Thank the lords for small mercies, right?

I was listening to the song “Castaways,” by Toyah, when I made myself send out a topic, any topic, to the Talk Thursday group.  I didn’t have a thought or story to tell.  At that moment, I felt rather adrift in my own thoughts about blogging, about writing, about online communities and the rhetoricals of what constitutes sharing too much?  Hard to imagine that I am questioning the whole blogging thing after 3+ years into this space, but that’s where I am.  No, I haven’t given up, but I’m acknowledging that sometimes I just don’t feel like talking.  Thanks to the folks who’ve stuck around through those silent spaces.

Talk Thursday: Self-Deprivation

Restraint has limited meaning in my life’s vocabulary.  I like to think restraint has limited meaning in my life, considering my archetype of gluttony and penchant for exuberance, but the reality is that I’ve aged and learned and grown and know that sometimes a lot is way too much.  God, that hurt to write, but I digress, and I’m also writing stream of consciousness and memory.  You have been warned.

Growing up, I was lucky that my family was not devoutly Mormon, because the extended family really got into the monthly fasts.  None of the platitudes or homilies or stern eyebrows made a difference to me – the expectation to willingly deprive oneself of food seemed obscene.  Add another few years and the development of hormones and a changing body, and God himself was going to have to take away the gift of masturbation after I’d unwrapped THAT lovely present.  As early as a teen, I was actively pursuing sex and sexuality and not even bothering with the lip service to virtue and restraint and self-deprivation that was Mormondom’s heritage, because I could see the future of that path before me and it was a barren waste of self-hatred.  I had tasted some of life’s forbidden apples, which I freely ate because I was told not to, just like Eve – nothing in this world would convince me of waiting or saving myself for invisible and intangible rewards, not when you compared them to the immediacy of sharing, connecting, and sweat.  The difference was that I wasn’t kicked out, I wasn’t banished, I wasn’t escorted from Heaven.  No angels from heaven, no fiery swords, not even bad dreams.  After me and “Hamlin” and the incident in the tent (and the hot tub, and downstairs at my house, and also in his room – all summer long), I knew that liturgy and exhortations and threats of eternal darkness didn’t add up to the glory that was life.  Rebel, me – I wanted divine intervention, but heaven stayed quiet.  Thank you, heaven.

About the same time, I hung out with a Mormon guy, “Conner,” who was trying so hard to be a rebel but couldn’t quite figure out or vocalize that Mormondom had him firmly under its thumb.  He wanted me to introduce him to a female student that I knew really well, and I did – but they didn’t click.  He was socially awkward and I tended to make friends with most everyone, but he was savvy enough to figure out that through me he could make other friends.  We were quite a pair, considering that the more he paid attention to me the more I ignored him, which only egged him on and sparked some inner need of his to be acknowledged.

One night we were alone at my house.  He and I listened to the stereo and he steered the conversation to sex and who was or wasn’t do-able, and if I had any condoms since he’d never seen one before.  I stifled a laugh and threw a few Trojans at him, but then my phone rang and I turned around to sit at my desk and answer it.  I don’t remember who was on the line, but we chatted for a few moments and I hung up and turned around in the swivel chair to find Conner standing there with his pants down and a condom stretched over his enormous, erect penis.  I laughed in surprise and for one instant he looked terrified and sad and ashamed, but I recovered and said “Impressive.”

He looked relieved and he hefted himself with one hand and I laughed again and I was pure evil:  I told him he’d better put that away before he lost his testimony.  He went pale and then put on a brave face.  He didn’t move, so I asked him when he last masturbated and he looked at me like I was insane. I was stunned.

“You don’t jerk off?”  He shook his head.

“That’s fucking nuts,” I said.  He cringed but he kept his hand at his crotch, and I became aware that I was painfully hard in my jeans.  He eyed the bulge in my pants and I eyed his monster.

The garage door slammed and we were a frenzy of hiding condoms and a condom wrapper and Conner zipping himself up and the two of us assuming a ‘relaxed’ and settled look, knowing someone in my family was now home.

I hope he came to know himself and his body, and that’s my prayer to him (and pardon my pillaging of Enigma), that the path of excess led him to the tower of wisdom.

Talk Thursday: How Does Your Garden Grow

(As seen through the skewed lens of an English nursery rhyme.)

Horny, horny, hormones quite thorny,
How does your libido grow?
With blood lust, and taught skin
and wanting you more than you know.

(Chances of being chanted by future generations are nil.)

So what’s YOUR version?

We Be in SLC

Our roadtrip has taken us through all the western states except AZ, CO, and NM.  As of this afternoon, we landed in Salt Lake City, Utah.   Internet experiences from each of our stays have ranged from spotty to slow – which means major suckage, regardless.  This is my first opportunity to sneak in a Talk Thursday topic, as well. 

We’re staying with Julz and Bill.  Midas is getting along with their dogs really well.  We will see Neener and her family tomorrow and we’ll be seeing their new baby, Brox Donavan, for the first time.  Sunday is Lynski’s birthday party, and Monday by noon we’ll be heading back towards home. 

Right now it’s a really nice feeling to be sitting down and not moving.  Don’t get me wrong, we’ve been through some of the most beautifully scenic rides throughout the whole world, but there’s something to be said about living life on the road and each stop adding to the postcards of our life.  Friends and family really are what it’s all about.

Talk Thursday: My Process

When I do readings, I’m reading the present.  What is.  I’m not interested in reading a moving target that changes every second of our conscious lives.  I’m interested in the light and shadow play of today, the shapes and expressions which describe the mosaic of their past that hint (or state calmly or shriek loudly) of their possible future.  I’m interested in the metaphorical manifestation of who they are in that moment.  I don’t want to know their issue up front – the cards will mirror them perfectly.

The cards I like working with the most are wrapped in silk and stay in “the bag,” which is a velor embroidered cloth bag.  Inside the same bag, I keep the runes in their own smaller pouch that is tied with a silk ribbon.  My process, when I read cards, stays fairly consistent but the smaller details can and will change:  the querent shuffles until they feel they’re ready, they will cut the deck with their non-dominant hand, and I will ask them to focus on a specific image or state of being while they pull each representative card and leave it face down.  The things that change are invariably the number of cards they’ll pull, which will depend on the kind of reading we’re doing:  body/mind/spirit, chakra spread, Celtic Cross, strengths/equilibrium/challenges, or simply one card only.  Each person is different, each reading is slightly different.

When I’m working with runes, I like to have the querent remove all the runes from the bag and then count them back into the bag.  Call it metaphysical OCD, but there should be twenty-five runes – no more, no less.  The exercise also puts their touch into every rune. I ask that they focus on themselves, on where they are in their life, on their career or love or family or whatever issue they’re most interested in examining.  In the end, they will draw one to three runes and we’ll read passages of a small rune volume and talk through the metaphor of their moment.

Reading isn’t about divination.  It’s not about cards up my sleeve or knowing their “stuff” before I lay out the cards.  It’s not about tuning into the universe and having knowledge outside of myself.  Reading is about ritual and listening and honoring the space that the querent is sharing, because they’re willingly looking at their light and shadow.  It’s not my job to play judge and jury.  It’s my job to remind them of the passages in their own life’s work.

My process for myself is a little easier.  Abridged.  A much more shortened version.  With runes (after removing all and counting them back into the bag) I’ll draw only one and share a brief example of what it means to me.  When I read cards, I’ll shuffle and fan them face down in front of me and then I’ll draw one to three cards.  The querent was brave enough to walk their shadow, I figure fair is fair to walk my own.  We know our own proverbial demons but we all like to forget them once in a while.