these days of leiderhosen

“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...

I'm deforesting my own treeline. Letters of great length are being writing that will never be sent. They pile up into a flammable heap in the corner of the dining room. Produced but unedited, unrevised and unread. Already a huge stack has been condemned to the recycle can and I'm sure to produce even more useless material. There is no Beloved any longer and I am trying my best to square with that.

What was it Maya Angelou said?  "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." "Anything that takes you away from me is bad." Declared early on and often. "I'm not interested in hearing you complain about work."   "I don't like him. He makes you laugh." I began to be divested of my friends of the male gender simply because they made him jealous of their talents and charm. "Can't you ask your father for help?", avoiding financial chaos post-separation.  Tell you what, Peaches: You can call him. Good luck because I know what he is going to say better than you do, just like when you pushed for a goddamn house. And then there was this: "I am not going to come to help you unless you sound like you need help"  He was sitting in a recliner, in the next room, watching telly. Later amended to: "I am not going to come to help you unless you call for me".  Location, same r...

I'm going to do something I never thought I'd do: my collection of fragrance is going away. I don't know how they are going, but I need to write a list of them. I have two scents now. Tom Ford Neroli Portofino, oil and something called body spray. So this is my brief affair; it's going to be warm kind of sunshine sexy, smelling like oranges. I bought the spray last weekend when I was furious with Senor Leiderhosen. I Hate Perfume Russian Tea Caravan I have a 5 ml liter bottle inside another little plastic capped bottle from The Container Store, ninety-nine cents. Wouldn't have it any other way. So sexy and intentional. Enough to last me a while. I put it on the tattoo of my Mum's signature; she hated perfume. How our noses ran in church when little white eldery Ladies  wore hats. It's warm. When my nose is full of it, I feel it right here. Here. Where my breastplate armour  would lean towards Heaven on the prayer cards of me. It's a Dark and St...

The title and refrain of this song are her last request, at her most frightened. My Sarah often delights in her "broken heart". I don't understand what she means and to request the explanation seems very personal, indeed. I hate when I feel the nerves around my heart constrict enough to make my eyes just gush. But this is the price. This pain is the price of love, isn't it. Winter is hard. Oh is it you say Where is your ice scraper and shovel Where is your long underwear That you never take off entirelh Until you see hyacynth I turn forty nine this year And sometimes dawn is so dark and the night so early i dont get to see Marjorie!, cloud, Sally Corona, and TiFFani at all. So Im in a bit of a funk, like every winter In quick succession Huge amounts of work and pressure coldness  that no amount of hot baths and cashmere can cure and aching fingers (this new) a birthday i like celebrating with as few people as possible Holidays that make me qu...

There is something about the safety and love of gay men. In 1990 I moved to Seattle. I was 21, alone and nursing some substantial heartbreak and disappointment. Capitol Hill/Seattle, 1990 - 1998. I had inadvertently moved to the gayest neighborhood in Seattle. Even better, I had moved into an apartment building with the best neighbors ever, homosexual men. Men who took it upon themselves to allow me in. We danced at Neighbors most Fridays. There is  nothing like being out on a dark night in a crowded urban club full of beautiful men who love Madonna and Prince even more than I did. Dance and lights and drinks and sweat and the sexual tension between beautiful young men you could lick off the matte black walls. In a hot summer night of solidarity when a woman had the chutzpah to remove her shirt and disco wildly in her Maidenform, the DJ taunted her and tried to express how unwelcome she was.  In response: her male escorts proceeded to remove all their clothing down t...