welcome to 32

I spent the first week of my thirty second year fighting off the worst sickness I've experienced. It was prefaced by a week of heavy immune system suppressing drinking. I noticed a burgeoning sore throat and bought some cough drops and figured a cold was on its way. The next morning at work I noticed my chest was a tightening fissure of pain. I sensed the impending doom with unusual presentiment. Uncharacteristically, I headed to the store for medicine and settled in for the night at one in the afternoon.

The cold became a rapid decline into a three day blur of fevers, sleeping off and on, a migraine that felt like my teeth were going to erupt from their sockets and the concern that maybe I wasn't gonna have another birthday. The signal that I was improving was just as frightening, I experienced horrific hacking coughs that produced some loosening phelgm. The next morning I was aware of being alive and felt slightly antsy. All good signs that death was not imminent.

I've always considered myself lucky to have a set of caring people in my life, people who insist on my doing something better for myself than whatever it is I'm currently subscribing to. I had no sense of exactly how sick I was until these people called me to check in on me and sounded completely appalled at my condition. It's true, I was barely able to speak or form sentences. And I found it hard to rise out of bed. I guess the survivor in me was just certain I was just going to do whatever it is I had to do. Thankfully I managed to wriggle out of work with ease and was able to spend a good chunk of time recovering.

I was given a package of antibiotics by my boss that would squelch the strep throat virus out of my system. I didn't know if I had strep throat, but it certainly seemed possible. And I'd just gotten news that my niece had it and got sick just a couple days before I did. I'm not a big antibiotics taker (thanks to the lack of health insurance) so I figured why not. I got through the meds and I am still not feeling well, so it turns out I didn''t have strep. I just have some other mega virus chest cold thing that walloped me into bed for four days.

So as I look ahead to more recovering and hoping that I don't have walking pneumonia, at least I have a reason to take it easy these days, and it's not just cause I'm 32...

happy birthday cake!

What can I say, I have a lot of fans!

red velvet cupcakes by jen

I have the best sister in the world.

the iowa nebraska divide

The Mighty Mo!

the proven pudding

It came as no surprise. I turned the corner and remembered suddenly that this has happened before. And his figure was there, the streets empty of cars, the sidewalks quiet and wide, and he stood out among the cement, a lone man with his perpetual baseball cap, his long lean body, the man that I thought was going to be mine someday.

How wrong I was. It all seems so silly to me now, a waste of time, an obvious mess. The last time I saw the drunken ambusher I was a giddy thrilled caricature of myself. This time there was the lack of his pull on me. I had no need to fall into his orbit, he had no power over me. In fact, I barely broke my stride as I approached him, said hello, and continued on.

Of course, I am still impressed by our banter, which has never wavered from top shelf quality exchanges the sort worthy of another era where puns, words and wittiness were prized above all else. It is rare that I muster up the verbal enthusiasm needed for those exchanges with people, but he brings that out in me. I am always trying to impress him, I guess.

My eyes were tearing up from a host of different things, I had just put on makeup, I'm allergic to the cats, I was saddened by the typical morning glumness of the kid, when I turned the corner. I rolled my eyes. I had to walk past him to get to the cafe, I had to wipe away the streaming tears. And they wouldn't stop. By the time I reached him, I looked up to see him expecting my approach, resigned to speaking to me, a little concern in his eyes.

He asked if I was crying. I said I was just allergic to being outside. We laughed. We said other things, pleasantries, and then I turned and kept walking.

When I arrived at the cafe I realized that clarification was needed, that our encounter was awkward in some ways, that it may have seemed like I was trying to get away from his as fast as possible. I texted him, which I haven't done in about a week and a half. And even that was a fluke. Mostly it's been three weeks, since the brit's arrival on my horizons, since I realized that feeling and having a mutual attraction was so much more worthwhile.

Our texts were still friendly, because we're more comfortable there, in words, than face to face, and I told him about not getting in to Iowa. And he didn't respond. And for an hour or so I figured he was just busy arriving to work in the cab that he stood waiting in the barren street for. After that, I realized that he didn't register it, because it was sandwiched in between two unrelated sentences. No one could be that self absorbed and insensitive. Well, I didn't think he had it in him, despite his track record.

And I didn't hound him, or wonder or care. I actually forgot all about it until I saw him again this morning, except this time I was already at the cafe, walked down the empty street figuring he'd been and gone, but an hour later his figure ambled into my peripheral vision and my eyes were drawn up from the newspaper to see who was there. And he waved, smiled, and I did the same in return and he kept walking in search of his cab.

My eyes went back to the paper, but the memory of his ignoring my news returned, so I launched up out of my chair and headed out after him. His eyes were desperately scanning the streets and he welcomed my arrival at his side with those eyes, the kind of sad sick eyes that you never want to see, the sort of eyes that glaze over you as an obstacle blocking the road ahead.

I tried to tell him, but he was too frantic, too stressed about being late to work, too freaked out. When it finally broke in, he actually stopped, he actually lost that distant faraway look and looked me in the eye, not afraid of me anymore, and gave me his sorrows, offered me a hug and mourned with me. And I told him, what I've tried to tell the rest of them, but it felt real telling him, not like a defense mechanism, that it's okay, because it doesn't matter, and now, the now is so much more exciting than that.

And the cab he needed arrived and he said it, he knew it, he said that the world was mine now.

And even though in my heart I've never loved him more than I did in that moment, when he was able to step out of himself and really be with me even just for a moment, and not just be with me, but get me completely, I don't feel like there's anything more to do or say with him. I don't feel the need to chase him into my life again. And that is what the brit gave me. And I am so glad.

puddle monger

He dawdled behind his mother and older brother. His feet were heavy with his boots, nearly up to his knees, bright green things pulled up over his pants, and he toddled about in them as if they were guiding him.

I watched them walk toward me and noticed how his rain boots found each puddle differently. Sometimes he jumped into them to cause a splash. Sometimes he gently traversed the outer edges of the pooling water and stood in the center. His mother called out to him several times to hurry along and his head merely lifted slightly at her voice, but his eyes remained trained on his course.

From the beginning it was a rainy gloomy day and it seemed nothing could bring a smile to my face, made it all the sweeter.

breach of contract

It's been a baffling experience of the sort that I'm just beginning to mentally untangle. I don't want to think about it at all, but it still bothers me.

At first when it happened, nothing was wrong. As time passes, it becomes a widening chasm of wrong-doing, a lengthy discourse on fucking things up when everything was just fine the way it was. And as more time passes, I begin to get angrier and angrier.

Contextually, it doesn't make sense. Given all that has happened between us, the years, the awkward attempts at friendship, the eventual acceptance on my part that we weren't so bad at being friends, that one thing could destroy all of it seems unfair. I suppose in the scheme of the world, it makes perfect sense that it happened, that it was bound to happen, that it is just the nature of having friendships with someone of the opposite sex. People seem to be in hearty agreement that if a guy and a girl happen to be in the same vicinity they should be together. They just can't admit it. Or something.

I must admit, for a long time I held this belief. I found it difficult to be friends with guys and not want a sexual relationship, an intimate relationship, but after some time (in which I grew up), I realized that I was perfectly capable of being friends with men as long as they were happy to be my friend and not kiss me. The tom-boy in me was happy that I could be friends with boys again, and I was enriched by the perspectives of the men in my life.

I counted him among that group. And I never never never wanted anything more from him. In fact, I could barely fathom why we were even friends to begin with. I sometimes found talking with him a chore, he was perpetually gloomy, and his idea of a good time was seeing a movie, any movie (which led to the hilarious event of my actually seeing "The Break Up" in the theater). Every so often we would actually have a good time and talk like normal people. I appreciated knowing someone who had also miserably failed at the social circle that emerged from the fiction department. He often listened to my lengthy treatises on men and boys and whoever was causing me the most trouble at the moment. We got into the habit of meeting for lunch at the Thai Spoon after school ended and because I missed the Thai Spoon with its flock of spinach rangoons, quickly crafted plates of excellent noodles and the best thai iced coffee I've ever had, I began to associate our time with delicious food.

He was in a long relationship with someone I knew but didn't know from the fiction department. I was in and out of a lengthy relationship with Eric. There were no issues with us being friends. No one cared. I didn't care. It was a reason for me to eat at the Thai Spoon once a month or so. And that was that.

And then--

His girlfriend of common law marriage length began the tedious break-up process with him, which I coaxed him through several weekly appointments to let her go. If she wanted out there was no reason to struggle against her. He began to unfurl, losing his foundation, understandably, and I was his only outlet of support. And even though I was disgruntled about my role in all of that, I felt obliged to his listening of me when I had my break-ups. So I decided to take on being a good friend to someone I had peripherally been friends with out of indifference and habit for six years.

Our weekly hanging out at my apartment (because we were both broke and I was doing the lemonade diet and couldn't really eat out anywhere) was on week three when he suggested he wanted to get high for his birthday. So I went through the rigors of securing some pot and we hung out on the eve prior to his birthday and got high.

He claimed it was the first time for him. He managed to get fairly high, running the gamut of "I don't think this is working" to irrational giggling. We were sitting in my apartment, the sun was rising, the conversation was beginning to reach that stilted moment I find with some people where I just don't know what to say anymore. He kept awkwardly checking up on my emotional status, trying to unearth something which I wasn't feeling and I later discerned was proof to concur with his belief that I was in love with him.

Ironically enough, I was lamenting about the guys in my life, the brit, the drunken ambusher, etc. There was never any indication on my part that I even liked him as a person. I was very conscious of even being close to him and we played a lengthy subconscious game of musical chairs around my apartment. I worried about the prospect of his attempting to kiss me like a disturbing alarm that only I could hear and I chalked it up to paranoia from smoking pot.

And finally, after I'd convinced him that sleeping on my floor was not an option, he was standing at my door, I stood behind him in the hallway ready to accept the doorknob and lock him out of my life, he wouldn't leave. I knew then what it was, but I still played dumb because I thought, well I don't want him to think that I'm looking for that at all. And I didn't want to have any more awkward conversations. I was tired, it was eight in the morning and we'd been hanging out since a little before midnight. I just wanted him to get out.

Thankfully he did not attempt to breach the physical barrier of my walls, for I was so disinterested in the prospect of him kissing me, he was forced to merely stand next to them and shout out at me his desire to kiss me. And I winced. I literally, in front of him, winced. And I said, "I don't think that's a good idea."

After some awkward fumbling attempt at apologizing he was finally gone. I feared he would return, he would knock on my door, try to explain things, try to mend things, but he didn't and I fell asleep with a deep sense of bafflement and exhaustion.

Very few people in my life have been able to appreciate the depth of this terror. That it was unsolicited. That it happened in my apartment. That I was already uncomfortable. That he used the premise of being high to kiss me (his lackluster explanation). Ugh. The whole thing makes me hate him. I loathe him. I will never speak to him again. Most people cry out that I am being harsh, unfair and unkind to someone who needs my friendship at this crucial point in his life.

My only defense is that if I were a guy this would have never happened. He would not have attempted to manipulate a guy friend into a kiss even if he was high. I have no idea what he was thinking, but I know that much. The funny thing is, as much as the idea disgusts me, if he had said, hey I've always liked you, we're both single now, whaddya say? I'd have a lot more respect for him and I might be able to continue being his friend.

I'm not sure why this event has created such a stark sense of devastation in my world. Part of it is that I felt helpless, unsure of what was happening, manipulated, duped, and then the next day and the next, like the aggressor and not the victim. Even he treated me like the bad guy, assumed I was mad and seemed happy to let me be angry without attempting to take responsibility for what he did. Mostly I think what it did was remind me that sometimes, I give myself away too easily, to the wrong people, for no reason other than to be received. I felt taken advantage of, and now I feel like retreating into myself, to hide that part of me.

the culmination of three months time

Once again, Iowa has turned me away, taken the fullness of all I had to offer and said no to me. And once again, it is almost more a relief to know, to just have an answer. I've never been good at living in uncertainty. Chaos I can handle, I can deal with, but not knowing is hard on me.

In a lot of ways I'm relieved not to have to uproot myself, set myself and my writing up to constant scrutiny, suffer what is rumored to be a harsh and treacherous path to writing glory. Even though it offered a proscribed change that I was willing to accept and looking forward to taking on, I am glad that it was a no.

I don't know what lies beyond today. It is a good feeling that brings both sides of the spectrum of feelings with it. And all I can say is that I know I am lucky to be in this position yet again, that I have the world at my feet, that I am at another fork in the road with no burdens and little responsibility to hold me back.

All of what I do is pushing to be something I've always wanted to be. It all seems unnatural, unfair, when I get home I'm too tired to do the thing I love most. I never said it better than I did in his presence (the brit's), when asked what I do for a living, that everything I do is to support me as a writer. Iowa fit into that, but not being there doesn't mean I can't still be a writer. That's the thing people don't get. Of course I'm disappointed I didn't get in to Iowa (again) but it doesn't mean anything other than I didn't get in (again).

The truth is, I don't write as much as I could, I don't focus on my success as a writer as much as I could, I don't do all that I could be doing to be a working writer. So as with other things in my life, I'm going to see what occurs when I give it my full attention, when I approach a problem with a renewed sense of discipline, earnestness and enthusiasm for seeing some glimmer of progress.

And maybe actually focusing on my writing and not the path will lead me somewhere worth going.

lost

I've spent a long time looking for my people. My tribe. My group. Every time I think I've found them something happens that tugs at the rose lens I forget that I wear and suddenly they aren't my people. They belong to each other quite happily but somehow I am always an outsider.

I've been around long enough to know who they aren't. Maybe I don't have any people. Maybe being an observer excludes me from that. And yet when you're separate from something, objectivity can be lost to lust and envy.

Perhaps they are hungry all the time.

Pondering koi at the MCA