I get along the best way I know how.
Grabbing quick food — as healthy as I can — smoothies, bread and hummus, almond butter and cheese — sometimes completely unhealthy — NY style pizza or curly fries and cheese (PS - hating myself because I would really like to lose weight) — always washing it down with whiskey and telling myself in the haze afterwards that life isn’t so bad after all — plugging through the work day with a smile on my face because darn it life is SO much easier if someone smiles and it might as well be me. Stealing the few minutes between work and rehearsal to see my boyfriend, to just sit with him and hold him and to have someone there who doesn’t need or demand anything from me — unless it’s just ME — and to appreciate that. Off to rehearsal, where my cast mates adore me and the director doesn’t — awkward on stage flirtation with my leading man and avoiding the other male cast mate who hits on me — completely acknowledging my failure as a dancer and even as a singer and actress sometimes — vowing to improve while remaining humble but DAMN couldn’t the director throw me a bone every now and then?! The pats on the back at the end of rehearsal, the reassurances, but knowing how much I still need to work on… Going back to the boyfriend’s house, eating food and watching mindless television, rubbing his back, curling up in his lap and falling asleep until he nudges me and points out that it’s midnight… Stumbling back to my place and staying up for another couple hours, because at that point I’m wide awake again… Repeat, ad nauseum. Work, whiskey, insufficient food because I don’t have time to cook, boyfriend, rehearsal. Oh, and throw in a little band jamming on the weekends. My life.
I’m so grateful for these mornings where I don’t have to be at work until 11am — Mornings After where I can savor the glow — the memory of his hands and the fireworks — as I sip my coffee — which he brewed before he left for work this morning — more like swilling coffee, I confess — as I listen to music by Charlotte Church’s boyfriend, Jonathan Powell — funny, having mothers tell their children who remark “You sure have been spending a lot of time together!”, “They’re boyfriend and girlfriend, honey” and the children are startled —
He’s beautiful and perfect and always has been and always will be in his imperfection and his hurt and solitude — a “lovely, lonely man” indeed — bearded and brilliant and sweet and rough and scratchy and rough and — [and it’s time for me to get ready for work]
I’m stronger than the rest of them. She says. As she gulps her whiskey.
It’s worse than inadequacy, because it’s just lunatic non-value. Not even unimportant, just “not important.”
Sometimes I hate being a woman. No, that’s not true, I just hate other women.
[I want a haircut. Any time I’m suffering from low self-esteem it can be cured with a haircut. Vain? Yes. Easy solution? Yes.]
You know why I hold on to you? Because out of all the good things that could happen, that I want to happen in my life, you’re the only good thing that HAS happened, you’re the only present tense and the only real thing I CAN hang on to. And maybe if you’re good enough to be true then everything else will come my way (eventually) too.
The satisfaction and comfort. Of sitting on the floor and sipping whiskey, you’re strumming the guitar and he’s strumming the banjo, creating a literal two-part harmony, never mind the metaphors that occur in bed.
The absurd moments of ordering fast food from the drive through then sitting in the back of the van, tailgate open, as Beatles blare from the speaker. Taking shots between bites of fries.
The absolute beauty of him. Long hair and soft eyes— eyes so subtle and intriguing that you even wrote a song about them. Brown eyes, indeed. The temptation to spend the rest of your life memorizing every single detail— every last pore on his skin and the patterns of the soft white hairs that caress soft corners of his temples and the nape of his neck and his jawline.
What do you do when it becomes too real?
It’s all right to think of it in terms of poetry, of music and light and quiet whispers and gentle touches, but somehow it’s hard to hold on to that artful, abstract quality when you know damn well it’s all much more real than that.
It’s his cat meowing, interrupting his low moan in your ear. It’s your nose stud getting caught in his beard and falling out. It’s fumbling in the dark for your glasses of whiskey, because your mouth is dry from so much kissing. It’s shivering, because somehow all your clothes ended up on the floor, and him laughing at you as he wraps you up in a blanket.
There’s no candles or music or satin sheets. It’s the white noise of the fan and the old hand-made quilt on his bed and the light from the computer monitor. There’s no silky lingerie, just t-shirt and shorts pajamas, that don’t stay on very long anyway.
It would be sordid, if it wasn’t so sweet.
It’s the frustration of trying to please each other, noticing what makes us quiver. It’s the constant sticking-your-tongue-out because one of his beard whiskers got in your mouth, or ducking your head because his long hair is sticking to your sweaty face. It’s the stupid compliments, the awkward things that you find the hottest of all— the salty, salty taste of the sweat on his neck. It’s sighing in resignation because you know you have to deny yourselves certain things. It’s needing to change the bedding before you can go to sleep.
It’s… so very real. And for all its reality, so very hard to believe.
I can’t decide if it’s a tightrope or juggling act. Always balancing on that fine, fine line and running the risk of falling to your death at any second— or keeping swords and flaming torches aloft in the air, spinning precariously over my head, to have them come crashing down on my head at the tiniest missed beat.
Funny thing, promises. When I’ve made them, I don’t break them. And funny… that means that in a way I’m doomed to repeat some of my mistakes over and over and over again. Because I promised I would be there, I promised I would always care (in some way) and I promised I would keep trying. So I keep trying, and you keep almost responding, almost reciprocating, only to let me down again. And again. Just like the first time, and it will never be the last.
You would think that almost a full year later— a full year!— and with my own situation vastly improved, that I wouldn’t care so much. And by care, I mean “feel so hurt and miserable” when you back out. When you don’t even back out, you just flat out ignore me. But no, it still hurts. As badly as it always did. I’ve learned how to manage the pain— I don’t get myself plastered to the point of being sick any more, I just internalize it and let it fester. And then you text me a joke and make me laugh, and I forgive you, and try to extend the olive branch again. And again. And again.
When will it end? When will my faithfulness be rewarded? Because damned if any other woman is going to love you as much as I do. In the way that I do. You said so yourself. Almost a year ago.
I want to get ice cream and sit on the hill overlooking the city and just be with you— like we used to be, in the old days when it was uncomplicated, when we could just laugh and talk about music and you would put your arm around me with the sweetness of a child. I want to feel the breeze on my face and the warmth of your body, not even touching mine, just being there. I want to think all of the soft, happy thoughts that you inspire in me, I want to see the world through your mad, surreal, impish brain. I want you to irritate and annoy and confuse me, and I want the time to figure you out.
[exerpt]
— Odd reminiscences of the first few times I really heard this Mumford & Sons album. Driving back home a certain morning— it colored everything since, yet remained strangely neutral in and of itself. The music, that is. The morning was never neutral. Or rather, the morning was neutral and that was the problem. I’m doubly… forgive my vocabulary— screwed… because not only do I have a personality that naturally makes me disinclined to get truly close to other people— to allow myself to put even a small portion of my trust for happiness in them— but I was also hurt very viciously by someone who has that same “tendancy to be distant” as I do, which only reinforces my negative subconscious that says, “If you get close to people— not only will they hurt you but you’ll hurt them.” +++ Oh, the false security of a good-morning kiss. False because it’s also a good-bye kiss. He wakes you up, brings you a cup of coffee, your lips meet his before either of you has time to say good morning… Then, a few intense and blissful moments later, he’s saying it’s time for him to leave for work, and he’ll see you later. The early morning still-sleepy smell of him, the softness of his shirt and the smoothness of his skin (and the roughness of his beard) torn from you as suddenly as it woke you. Funny. I used to believe that hearing a certain song on the radio was an omen. I believed… and I don’t think it ever came true. Not in that moment, certainly. Oh, eventually he came around and there were good days to break up the bad. But that song, our song, was never the omen of resurgent friendship that I wanted it to be.
[exerpt]
Just laughing at the fact that… I’m his girlfriend. Oh, I know, to most of you that seems like a completely normal state of existence. For some (and I shall name no names) it’s being single that’s the anomoly! But this is truly unique and special for me (and yes, I will admit, so much better than the relationship I previously desired and still feel hurt over sometimes) and it’s just unique enough to make me chuckle. Chuckle at myself, at my reservations and which of those reservations are still lingering and which have been thrown to the wind— were thrown to the wind almost as soon as I met him. Oh, that might be over-stating things. He did have to work to win me over— I was still pretty wrapped up in this previous failed-relationship that never even got off the ground. But I was still waiting and hoping, so it took a pretty special and dedicated man to convince me to look elsewhere for happiness. And I stand before you today, convinced. God only, God only, knows what “The Future” holds. (Have I mentioned this dilemma already?) But it feels good, it feels like it could hold good things for both of us, maybe even together. Because so far there’s nothing that prevents us from being good for each other. From working together. From working well together. True, there’s an issue of “faith” and the fact that he’s not a (oh, I shudder at the cliched lingo!) professing born-again believer. But then, it’s not as if I’m some Super-Christian, setting a standard for him to match! I’m only a struggling human being, too, and just because my struggles are perhaps based in a slightly different set of ancient rituals and words… well! It’s less about the liturgy and more about the living, if you get my meaning. (Although I do love me some liturgy, when done properly.)
My stars, if this isn’t a perfect lazy Sunday afternoon! Enjoying a whiskey buzz. Reading Kerouac. Eating Skittles. Listening to Gillian Welch. Only negative— missing him.
+++
Problem solved. He came home. And I greeted him with a hug and kiss and said “Welcome Home” then led him to the cocktails he asked me to have waiting. We had a nice supper (bachelor style, but still nice!) and watched Doctor Who and had a nice neck on the couch. We kept saying to each other, “It’s good to see you” and “I missed you” even though he hadn’t been gone for a full 24 hours even… it was the thought and feeling of being in different cities that made us each feel a tug towards the other. And, as he said, “You can’t help your feelings. And if you feel like you miss someone… you miss ‘em!” Sounds silly to type it out, maybe, but it was nice to hear him say he’d missed me, too.
