these days of leiderhosen

It’s not just the spiteful cat. She may be possessed. 

Yes? No? 

Finally the lawyers have been called in to explain shit. You just have to listen. This is how we break up, how we dissolve this.  This is your way out. Proceed in an orderly fashion. I've got a weight around me dragging me down, down, down but at least I don't have the mess of you, that hypersensitivity you cultivated to make yourself feel special, which you are not. This I know and this is one of the reasons you need me not to be around. I love having new people in my life. I love variety, wonder, pleasure and discovery. The laundry, on the other hand... I'm so glad to be done with you.

Texting is not communication. Texting is the passing of a cooler friend in a crowded hallway on the way to fourth period French. Texting is the “lifting of the chin” reverse-nod. High school hallways can do as much damage as anything else, but it was a quick way to learn rejection, surrounded by hostile and vibrant energy. I never knew if I was going to be swept up into an embrace and swung around until I laughed with delight or ignored entirely, that uncertain fragility and fear. That is what texting feels like now. High Fucking School. I am so long done with that. One discovers that what other people think is none of your concern, so you’d best be clear expressing one’s open-ended love and avoid damaging the feelings of others. The sign says: Be kind or be gone. I mean it and will not live by less. Sometimes I’m down for being the one texted when one is bored and possibly aroused. With you that pays such lovely, extraordinary dividends. Our chemistry is amazing and, a...

I hate: Being filled with physical need, not knowing where and when the next embrace is coming from. I might just explode with desire. Messy. Having discovered the pleasure of telling the people I love that I love them, and then being unable to tell the newer members of that group the same out of fear or misunderstanding. I get so much joy out of simply delivering that news to someone. As if it was not written all over me in capital, glowing letters.

What I am having here is a long night of the soul. Monday, February 4 th , 1 in the goddamn morning. I have eaten all of the green, tinny tasting olives. Delicious. I wake up now, in the middle of the night, discovering something And I am not sure if that is at all good for me. What I want to do is what I said: I am here until my father no longer needs me anymore. That’s what I want. That is the true thing. I said I’d do it and I meant it. It cost me much more than could be imagined: My Beloved. My best Self, in a way. To catch you up on this deal with my own personal devil: It’s beginning to go badly. Da’s aging poorly with all the damage he has done To himself in the myth of his glorious life. He has been a remarkably good sport about it It’s raining outside, a proper storm. I bet it sounds great in the attic, right beneath the roof. My roof. My gift of a roof. What I want (which is all I know) Is to take my lover up the la...

Please like me, I think. Please, please. Please don’t see me as awkward, scary or desperate Please accept me and my gifts. There’s no price to me as I give myself as freely as I can. Please talk. Please call. Please text. Please be your best self.

(It was as if you'd dropped me off past the dog beach, to let me have a day by my most happy self in my favorite spot on earth. Essentially my Valhalla.) When I die, I want to go like that.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. Arthur Ashe (1943 - 1993)

I have no problem with God although I was pretty fed up with his followers, particularly the ones who renamed and manhandled me into the Organization. The All-Knowing Invisible Sky Friend: watching everything and everyone, passing judgment and granting the wishes for one's followers? You could not convince me to buy into it. Understanding that the brain is generating thought, appreciation and occasionally solace out of only electrical impulses is no less wonderous. Science, beauty, and creativity are all the higher power. Knowing that there is no One True God, no Heaven and no Hell, decomposing is what I look forward to every day. Even as I sit writing this, I am dying and rotting with the greatest pleasure. There are those loved ones who have up and left the party without me; I like reflecting on the lessons, experience, and love. Why some love still reverberates long after the person has been reduced to ash still mystifies and delights me. Without it, I would have perished ...

I don't know how much more of this I can take. So high and so low all at the same time.

Well, that was neither difficult nor unpleasant. Nice.

I am so done with being heartbroken and disappointed. It is so exhausting. Thank Gawd Honeycrisp apples are in season.

I just wanted to thank you for showing up. My great fortune in all of this is receiving love from every imaginable quarter. It has been breath-taking and humbling. Thank you to my father and brothers who have surprisingly emancipated me, reminding me I am entitled to be as independent cusses as they are. Mark stepped up unexpectedly and proved to be a great friend, acting like the older brother I've always wanted. To my Mum: who proved you can go through unimaginable horror and still continue breathing afterward. She imbued me with her generous heart which has made this easier. And harder. Thank you to El Kay who always takes the late night shift of the heartbroken phone calls. You are so awesome. Thank you to my divorced friends who provide excellent advice, reminding me this is the way OUT, and I will feel better someday. When, exactly? Thank you to my attached/undivorced friends for listening and helping despite not knowing the nature of this sad quagmire, taking me ou...

...there are a lot of Russian bot traffic. Have you found anything interesting yet? Fondly, H.

To the Thief who stole the anti-depressant medication off the porch: I get it, I do. It's rough out there and if you haven't got a job to go to, I reckon this is one way to amuse yourself while we are all at work, paying our taxes. It was a package that could hold anything, anything at all. Something you could sell or ingest, left right out there in the open. Maybe you follow the USPS truck around and "clean up" after them. I was waiting for them, those bicolored capsules. With everything that was going on then I thought I had left plenty of room for the order. Before I ran out. When I ran out, I was fine for one day. On day two, I was tearful. Day three: hysterical. Four? Out of my goddamn mind and frightening all I encountered.  That has never happened before and it never will again. Never has the front of a Richmond-bound express seemed so inviting. This lasted for four days, while I argued with the mail delivery pharmacy and my insurance. No one could tal...

N's husband stopped by work as he had forgotten his lunch. I will miss the opportunity to provide that kind of intimate, loving support to someone. I would like to think that my husband and I were good friends. He was my best friend, certainly. Now that we are separating- and it seems to be taking forever - it's double the loss.  It's radio silence on all fronts. I am so sad sometimes.

“leaving is not enough; you must stay gone. train your heart like a dog. change the locks even on the house he’s never visited. you lucky, lucky girl. you have an apartment just your size. a bathtub full of tea. a heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. you had to have him. and you did. and now you pull down the bridge between your houses. you make him call before he visits. you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. don’t lose too much weight. stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. and you are not stupid. you loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars...

I had a flat tire right there, across the street from my parents' house. There could be no better place for that particular situation.  If anyone had been standing in the dining room, they could have watched and filmed everything. Dad and I changed that tire.  He even gifted me his X-lug wrench as there was none in the car’s trunk and after trying out his, I was sold. In display the rare case of competency, speed and style in the changing of tires and he, heroically, lay down in the street and  handled the jack and I managed the flat, the new tire and the lug nuts. When we reversed into the drive outside his well-stocked garage  (not everyone grew up with a full size air compressor?), he checked all the tire pressures, reloaded the trunk and customized the lug wrench with a bit of paint. After that fascinating interlude, we went to the library. Early in the day, I threw together a free-form meatloaf. He was impressed. It was the first entree I’ve made in th...