I've been spending a lot of time with my brother and Rob. It's not that I haven't had the option of hanging out with anyone else, or even that I particularly want to hang out with both of them all of the time. It's that I need to hang out with them. They put me in a context in which I'm eternally comfortable, and at this moment, I don't need the cajoling of new ideas, different perspectives, or catalysts of evolution. I need time to mire and steep in resolutions.
To be continued...
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Silver Linings
Today marks my parents' twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Looking at them at the dinner table, it's hard to believe that the happy couple feeding each other cake has had run-ins with the law, adulterous affairs, bastard children, physical confrontations, emotional hang-ups, etc.
But here they are, twenty-five years later, after promising "till death do us part." There have been so many doubts in between day one and today, but looking at them, it's very clear that this is the life they want. I don't know if it was ever possible that they be better people.
But here they are, twenty-five years later, after promising "till death do us part." There have been so many doubts in between day one and today, but looking at them, it's very clear that this is the life they want. I don't know if it was ever possible that they be better people.
I've put on my rose-colored glasses...
... but looking at Rob still makes me blue. Is it possible that he was always blue, and I just temporarily saw him in the hue that I expected to see? Or are my glasses broken, and I'm looking at him from behind a crack in the pigment?
Saturday, December 22, 2007
On Solid Ice
Yesterday, IF woke me up at 8 a.m. with a phone call.
"Yeah?" I said, groggy and worried that there was an emergency. "What's up?"
"You sleeping?"
"Uh-yeah," I said, a bit incredulous.
"I thought you were awake."
I blinked a little bit, and squinted at the clock. "Why did you think I was awake?"
"Cuz you posted a blog at five in the morning."
I couldn't help but laugh. "What are you doing reading my blog at five in the morning?!"
"I can't sleep," he said, wistfully. "I got things on my mind."
So we talked for a little bit about the things on IF's mind: his girlfriend's Christmas present, his lack of a job, his need to "grow up." Honestly, at that hour, after having had only two hours of sleep, he did all the talking. I barely stayed awake.
Even though I was due in Chinatown for an 11:15 brunch, and I still hadn't showered, I decided to sleep for a couple of minutes - and woke up at 10:30. DC had called me while I was asleep. So had Rob. I woke up with a jolt, put on whatever was on the floor, brushed my teeth, tied my hair back, and ran out of the house. When I got to the train platform, I called Rob to see if he'd waken up on time for his final; thankfully, he had. I told him to call me when his exam was over. The next time the train was above ground, I called DC and talked about her "chocolate wonder boyfriend."
The brunch was almost depressing. A bunch of the past and present staff writers for the Kingsman had gathered with the paper's two professorial advisors. The former editors talked about their present journalistic ventures, and I just listened and ate my food. Talking with everyone reaffirmed my idea that I had been on track to something real and definite. If I'd have kept on writing for different publications and doing literary internships, I could've definitely landed a job in publishing or journalism; maybe there's still a chance, if I decide to fall back on my experiences - but I'm doubtful that'll come to pass.
Even though I'm pretty certain where my future lies, I like to see what could've been. It's always bittersweet to see the remants of a future that never was: like seeing a former lover, it's useless and natural to imagine what-if scenarios, even if you were the one who decided to walk away.
So LA and AS and SH talked about the ups and downs of journalism and looking for a job in the field, and Profs. M & M offered guidance and support. I ate my beef chow mein and drank my tea earnestly. For most of our 10+ party, there wasn't much to talk about but office gossip, i.e., who'd slept with whom, who had cursed out a professor, etc. It was amusing, but not substantial. I was thankful that the food was cheap.
The main reason I showed up was to see AS. AS is one of these genuinely good, talented, supportive, self-depracating people who doesn't realize just how wonderful and beautiful and amazing they are. She's moved to PA with her boyfriend, so I don't see her as often as I'd like, and every time I say I'll call her (there have only been two times), I end up sexing it up till I'm too tired to move, and don't make it to the phone.
So brunch went well and I caught up with AS. Then I called AJ and wandered the city. I walked from Chinatown to 23rd St and 8th Ave, and on each block at least five guys tried to holla at me. Now, I gotta say, I was dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, my black leather boots, and my black leather jacket. There mighta been a bunch of booty in my jeans, but not a bit of cleavage, and no joke, my make-up was done straight-up haphazardly that morning and the beginning of a pimple was apparent above my upper lip - so I didn't see what the big deal was. At first I thought maybe it was a fluke; all girls have their days when men everywhere can't seem to get enough of them. But even after I made my way out of Chinatown, guys were still ogling me. At that point, just for fun, I started keeping score. I stopped at twenty-six. Twenty-mother-fucking-six. Now, don't get me wrong, cuz I think I'm fly, but ain't nothing special about me that twenty-six grown-ass men gotta holla at me. I hadn't even reached SoHo yet.
AJ and I talked up a storm, Rob still hadn't called me back, and it was damn near 4 in the afternon. I decided to high-tail it back to Queens, take a shower, write papers for a certain Italian-Jew professor, and sleep. So that's what I did.
Rob and I hung out with his fam for a minute this morning. Then we went to Park Slope to grab a quick breakfast, and then we wandered for a bit. He got lost driving me to Prospect Park, and we laughed till he almost got into a car accident. If there was one thing I could change about him, it might be his lack of driving skills. Dude just doesn't pay attention to the road unless he's driving my dad's SUV.
I met up with JJP, JA and LO to go ice skating at Prospect Park. I hadn't gone ice skating in yeeeeaarrss, and even then my version of it included more ice-time for my ass than my feet. I'd met JA a couple times before at school; along with JJP (who's good friends with me) she'd been one of the founding mothers of a feminist club on campus that I used to be involved with, and she's cool peoples. She had brought her boyfriend, LO, with whom she's been a serious item since the moment they started dating. It's a year or two later, and they already have a house together.
From the moment I saw LO, I knew he looked familiar. The five of us (Rob stayed for a bit) went to McDonald's, and when LO and I started talking, immediately I knew why he looked so familiar. Of course he went to Brooklyn Tech. That facebook group is true. You can't escape Tech people.
LO and I used to run in the same social circles. He even dated a homegirl of mine for two years. So of couse we talked about classmates and whatever happened to them. It felt good to have a way of "closing the circle." Sure, JJP and JA could gab and they wouldn't leave me out of things, but I was sort of afraid that I'd feel like a fourth wheel. I'd been in high school when they started the feminist group, and sometimes I just can't wrap my mind around having a good time when I'm trying to include myself in conversations that don't really concern me. Also, truth be told, I've never been fully comfortable being myself around most school people. Most of the time, I project a side of me that I feel they want to see. Most of them (with the exception of, like, three people) have never seen the ebonics-talking, crazily cursing, loud-ass chick that my close friends are privy to. Today, I let that all shine through, and it felt so awesome to be in my own skin again.
Rob went home to help his family out with Christmas decorations, LO pretty much did pirouettes around the rink, and the three of us girls slid alongside the wall of the rink without busting our asses. Even though I didn't know exactly how to do it, I fell preternaturally into the swing of things, and like most things, I have a hunch I'll only get better with time.
"Yeah?" I said, groggy and worried that there was an emergency. "What's up?"
"You sleeping?"
"Uh-yeah," I said, a bit incredulous.
"I thought you were awake."
I blinked a little bit, and squinted at the clock. "Why did you think I was awake?"
"Cuz you posted a blog at five in the morning."
I couldn't help but laugh. "What are you doing reading my blog at five in the morning?!"
"I can't sleep," he said, wistfully. "I got things on my mind."
So we talked for a little bit about the things on IF's mind: his girlfriend's Christmas present, his lack of a job, his need to "grow up." Honestly, at that hour, after having had only two hours of sleep, he did all the talking. I barely stayed awake.
Even though I was due in Chinatown for an 11:15 brunch, and I still hadn't showered, I decided to sleep for a couple of minutes - and woke up at 10:30. DC had called me while I was asleep. So had Rob. I woke up with a jolt, put on whatever was on the floor, brushed my teeth, tied my hair back, and ran out of the house. When I got to the train platform, I called Rob to see if he'd waken up on time for his final; thankfully, he had. I told him to call me when his exam was over. The next time the train was above ground, I called DC and talked about her "chocolate wonder boyfriend."
The brunch was almost depressing. A bunch of the past and present staff writers for the Kingsman had gathered with the paper's two professorial advisors. The former editors talked about their present journalistic ventures, and I just listened and ate my food. Talking with everyone reaffirmed my idea that I had been on track to something real and definite. If I'd have kept on writing for different publications and doing literary internships, I could've definitely landed a job in publishing or journalism; maybe there's still a chance, if I decide to fall back on my experiences - but I'm doubtful that'll come to pass.
Even though I'm pretty certain where my future lies, I like to see what could've been. It's always bittersweet to see the remants of a future that never was: like seeing a former lover, it's useless and natural to imagine what-if scenarios, even if you were the one who decided to walk away.
So LA and AS and SH talked about the ups and downs of journalism and looking for a job in the field, and Profs. M & M offered guidance and support. I ate my beef chow mein and drank my tea earnestly. For most of our 10+ party, there wasn't much to talk about but office gossip, i.e., who'd slept with whom, who had cursed out a professor, etc. It was amusing, but not substantial. I was thankful that the food was cheap.
The main reason I showed up was to see AS. AS is one of these genuinely good, talented, supportive, self-depracating people who doesn't realize just how wonderful and beautiful and amazing they are. She's moved to PA with her boyfriend, so I don't see her as often as I'd like, and every time I say I'll call her (there have only been two times), I end up sexing it up till I'm too tired to move, and don't make it to the phone.
So brunch went well and I caught up with AS. Then I called AJ and wandered the city. I walked from Chinatown to 23rd St and 8th Ave, and on each block at least five guys tried to holla at me. Now, I gotta say, I was dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, my black leather boots, and my black leather jacket. There mighta been a bunch of booty in my jeans, but not a bit of cleavage, and no joke, my make-up was done straight-up haphazardly that morning and the beginning of a pimple was apparent above my upper lip - so I didn't see what the big deal was. At first I thought maybe it was a fluke; all girls have their days when men everywhere can't seem to get enough of them. But even after I made my way out of Chinatown, guys were still ogling me. At that point, just for fun, I started keeping score. I stopped at twenty-six. Twenty-mother-fucking-six. Now, don't get me wrong, cuz I think I'm fly, but ain't nothing special about me that twenty-six grown-ass men gotta holla at me. I hadn't even reached SoHo yet.
AJ and I talked up a storm, Rob still hadn't called me back, and it was damn near 4 in the afternon. I decided to high-tail it back to Queens, take a shower, write papers for a certain Italian-Jew professor, and sleep. So that's what I did.
Rob and I hung out with his fam for a minute this morning. Then we went to Park Slope to grab a quick breakfast, and then we wandered for a bit. He got lost driving me to Prospect Park, and we laughed till he almost got into a car accident. If there was one thing I could change about him, it might be his lack of driving skills. Dude just doesn't pay attention to the road unless he's driving my dad's SUV.
I met up with JJP, JA and LO to go ice skating at Prospect Park. I hadn't gone ice skating in yeeeeaarrss, and even then my version of it included more ice-time for my ass than my feet. I'd met JA a couple times before at school; along with JJP (who's good friends with me) she'd been one of the founding mothers of a feminist club on campus that I used to be involved with, and she's cool peoples. She had brought her boyfriend, LO, with whom she's been a serious item since the moment they started dating. It's a year or two later, and they already have a house together.
From the moment I saw LO, I knew he looked familiar. The five of us (Rob stayed for a bit) went to McDonald's, and when LO and I started talking, immediately I knew why he looked so familiar. Of course he went to Brooklyn Tech. That facebook group is true. You can't escape Tech people.
LO and I used to run in the same social circles. He even dated a homegirl of mine for two years. So of couse we talked about classmates and whatever happened to them. It felt good to have a way of "closing the circle." Sure, JJP and JA could gab and they wouldn't leave me out of things, but I was sort of afraid that I'd feel like a fourth wheel. I'd been in high school when they started the feminist group, and sometimes I just can't wrap my mind around having a good time when I'm trying to include myself in conversations that don't really concern me. Also, truth be told, I've never been fully comfortable being myself around most school people. Most of the time, I project a side of me that I feel they want to see. Most of them (with the exception of, like, three people) have never seen the ebonics-talking, crazily cursing, loud-ass chick that my close friends are privy to. Today, I let that all shine through, and it felt so awesome to be in my own skin again.
Rob went home to help his family out with Christmas decorations, LO pretty much did pirouettes around the rink, and the three of us girls slid alongside the wall of the rink without busting our asses. Even though I didn't know exactly how to do it, I fell preternaturally into the swing of things, and like most things, I have a hunch I'll only get better with time.
Writer's Realization #1
Ya know that feeling you get sometimes, while you're writing a piece, that it's unbelievably amazing? Well, it's most likely not the unbelievably amazing piece that you think it is. Not yet, anyway. Finish it, take a break from it, then edit the hell out of it. Even if it's unbelievably amazing in its first draft, it's not as unbelievably amazing as it'll be after it's edited and revised.
I'm Sooooooo Boring
I feel like I'm getting fatter, but yesterday, a friend corrected me by calling me "thick." "There's no way anyone can call you fat," she said, rolling her eyes. "Maybe you've put on a little weight, but you look more like an hourglass than a tub o' lard."
The truth is, I am getting pudgier. My ass has grown so much that none of my jeans fit right, and my breasts have gotten so large that none of my bras (which are 36 DD)fit at all. My waistline's expanded, too. The thing is, my friend's right. I'm by no means "fat." In this obese and image-conscious society, my proportions are "average" to "healthy." I walk down the street, and men talk to me. I smile and I get anything I want. I have the nagging suspicion that I'm not hard on myself because of social standards or lack of attention. I think I'm just bored out of my mind.
A couple of days ago, I started working out again. I biked four and a half miles on the stationary bike (twenty-minute intermediate level workout), and instead of listening to music I just thought about random shit. For twenty minutes, I fantasized about how my house would look after I renovated it: adding to the front and back of the house, tearing down the garage and making a two-car two-story garage in its place, stripping the basement and making it over, putting in new windows, etc. Then, yesterday, when I exercised on the elliptical for half an hour, I imagined the trips I'd go on: backpacking and couchsurfing in Europe, taking a camel safari in the middle east, island hopping in Asia, driving an RV cross-country with my BFFs, etc. That's what gets me through my workouts: thinking about the future. And, really, that's what gets me through the day.
I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing more I can do with my life than what I'm doing at the moment. Anything more that happens is simply an extension of the motivated, responsible, artistic, eccentric person that I am now. And though I look forward to improving my station in life and experiencing more awesome adventures, none of it excites me. Everything's become more of the same.
This feeling isn't cause for concern. It's just my mind's way of making the impossible possible. If I'd have known the full depth of the risks or repercussions or uncertainty in any of my past undertakings, I'm pretty sure I would've been too afraid or too humbled to take on the venture. I have to believe that everything is small potatoes in order to accomplish anything. And while my present is zapped of excitement, I'm fairly certain that when all's said and done, I'll be thrilled to have accomplished "impossible" goals.
The truth is, I am getting pudgier. My ass has grown so much that none of my jeans fit right, and my breasts have gotten so large that none of my bras (which are 36 DD)fit at all. My waistline's expanded, too. The thing is, my friend's right. I'm by no means "fat." In this obese and image-conscious society, my proportions are "average" to "healthy." I walk down the street, and men talk to me. I smile and I get anything I want. I have the nagging suspicion that I'm not hard on myself because of social standards or lack of attention. I think I'm just bored out of my mind.
A couple of days ago, I started working out again. I biked four and a half miles on the stationary bike (twenty-minute intermediate level workout), and instead of listening to music I just thought about random shit. For twenty minutes, I fantasized about how my house would look after I renovated it: adding to the front and back of the house, tearing down the garage and making a two-car two-story garage in its place, stripping the basement and making it over, putting in new windows, etc. Then, yesterday, when I exercised on the elliptical for half an hour, I imagined the trips I'd go on: backpacking and couchsurfing in Europe, taking a camel safari in the middle east, island hopping in Asia, driving an RV cross-country with my BFFs, etc. That's what gets me through my workouts: thinking about the future. And, really, that's what gets me through the day.
I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing more I can do with my life than what I'm doing at the moment. Anything more that happens is simply an extension of the motivated, responsible, artistic, eccentric person that I am now. And though I look forward to improving my station in life and experiencing more awesome adventures, none of it excites me. Everything's become more of the same.
This feeling isn't cause for concern. It's just my mind's way of making the impossible possible. If I'd have known the full depth of the risks or repercussions or uncertainty in any of my past undertakings, I'm pretty sure I would've been too afraid or too humbled to take on the venture. I have to believe that everything is small potatoes in order to accomplish anything. And while my present is zapped of excitement, I'm fairly certain that when all's said and done, I'll be thrilled to have accomplished "impossible" goals.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Sexy Time
My current thought, as I lay in a satisfied heap on the bed and gather myself for a night on the town: Say what you want about "making love," but when the act of sex is physically and emotionally fulfilling, fucking is a laughable memory.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
The What
Lately I've been having a hard time blogging. All the words seem void of poetry and all of my insights seem cliche. Even my grammar and syntax are off, and that's not like me. I don't know why this is happening, but at the moment I'm not concerned with "whys"; I'm more concerned with "whats." If I'm the tree, "why" might be the root, but "what" is the trunk. "Why" might be the start of me, but "what" determines what kind of tree I am. I already know that I exist; now I have to worry about my substance.
My throat's killing me today. I couldn't fall asleep till four in the morning. My brother came home last night. I've officially decided to keep on looking for work even though I've already landed a job. Rob and I are doing well as a couple. The fictional and academic writing are going well. The paperwork for my health insurance should be processed in a couple of weeks. Mom and Dad are dealing with everything maturely and responsibly. My friends are awesome, quirky, beautiful, supportive, talented and intelligent people. I'm over the bulk of my "issues." I aced two finals and handed in a bunch of papers; the semester is going to end on a high note. In truth, my life overall has become pretty boring.
The other night, when I was on the phone with one of my closest and most awesome friends, AJ, we gabbed about her marriage engagement, her cold feet, and her issues of trust. It's not simply that she doesn't trust her fiance to be the man she needs him to be; it's self-trust that's more of an issue. She's so introspective that she knows all too well her self-damaging behavior; whenever she makes a do-or-die decision, she can't tell if she's subconsciously hurting herself or if she's already gotten over that tendency and is making a truly good choice.
Usually, my personality fluctuates from one extreme variation of myself to another, but lately I'm a well-rounded amalgamation of all of my personalities. It's unsettling and takes a little getting used to. So AJ was talking about her relationship with her fiance, and I was finding a million parallels to the problems I used to have with Rob - but I couldn't find anything useful to say. Instead, I was remembering part of a conversation that I'd had with a good friend, JS.
Earlier that day, I'd been telling JS about how Rob seems to have morphed into an amazing and really, really good guy, and she'd laughed. "Maybe he's always been a good guy and you've put on your rose-colored glasses, so now you see it," she'd said. Her words made my skin hot because I knew that she understood exactly what I was feeling. It wasn't necessarily that JS had gone through the same situation; it's that we had found copies of the maps of our lives, and we'd learned to read the signals. Verbal communication is the way we describe the terrain, and since our paths are eerily similar, she was able to offer insights about my way.
Talking to AJ was the same: a story similar to my own was unravelling before me. Instead of trading amazing insights and revelations, however, my brain felt too overwhelmed to compute. I mumbled some vague words of undestanding and acknowledgment, but I knew I was expected to give advice. AJ's problem with her fiance was one I'd had with Rob, and although I'd already completed that leg of my journey, I couldn't verbalize my method. This is what I knew: Like me, AJ's a writer and a very passionate person. Unfortunatley, her fiance doesn't seem to have any passion in his life, and she's mulling over whether or not that's a deal-breaker.
When it came time for me to voice an opinion, I found myslf remembering the words of one of our best friends, DC (she'll ALWAYS be DC, even if she gets married and remarried, ad nauseum). A year ago, when I was going through the "lack of passion problem" with Rob, I'd called DC (my only best friend that's a married mother), and in between talking her oldest child out of banging on pots and pans and nursing her youngest, she gave it to me straight and succinctly:
Everyone has a picture in their minds of what they want their partner to be, and more often than not the person you're with doesn't have all of those traits. But maybe it's not important that your partner have all those traits. Maybe what's important is that he have all the traits that can make you happy for the long haul, and that you fulfill the requirements of a "soulmate" through other people.
When I first heard the advice, it immediately rang as true. Rob will never quite understand the feeling I get when I write something and instinctively KNOW that it's awesome and life-changing, but AJ, AP, SR and JS know what I mean. Rob can't really wax philosophical with me for hours on end, but KA, IS, RM, and KB can engage both spheres of my brain that way. Et al. As much as I stress these parts of my personality, I remain an intact and ever-fluctuating person even when they're not present. It's that vague, unnameable thing that's constantly shape-shifting and evolving which needs to be loved, respected, nurtured, and understood by a partner. Its very ambiguous nature makes it difficult for one person to be its match. But somehow, Rob knows how to be everything that that vague, unnameable thing needs in a partner, and that's more than I can say for anyone else.
So maybe DC's right, and the important thing isn't that Rob satisfy all of my qualifications in a "soulmate"; it's that my life fulfills all of my qualifications for a "soulmate." The important things in a relationship are that my partner knows how to love me the way I need to be loved; that he understands me the way that I need to be understood; and that I feel the way about him that he does for me. Whether or not all of those qualifications are enough, or if Rob and I fulfill them are subject to alteration and interpretation with time and accumulated experiences and knowledge, but for the people we are at this moment, we're the perfect couple.
So that's what I ended up telling AJ - not that Rob and I make the perfect couple, but that those are my words of wisdom. They were handed to me from a trusted source of love, experience and respect, and they've served me well. Opening up to the idea that I can have everything without having it all in one person freed me to see everything that Rob does offer, instead of keeping me focused on the things he doesn't. And little by little, that's how I came to grips with the idea that I don't have to be afraid of trusting him, or anyone, or relationships in general. As simple and cliche as it sounds, he is not the be-all and end-all of what I'm looking for. He does not personify everything that I need to be happy. He has the qualifications to be with the person that I know that I am at the moment, but my ever-evolving ways keep our future a mystery. If Rob does have what it takes to make me happy in the long-haul, it's as understandable as the other option, and I can live with that.
AJ seemed satisfied with my answer, then she laughed and asked how I was doing. "Rob and I are doing good," I said. "I told him yesterday that I needed him to come home early so we could clean up the house for Abie's return. He said he'd be home around seven, and he was. But then he said he was tired and asked if we could relax for a little bit, so we got in bed with ice cream and junk food and watched our favorite TV shows on the internet. Then he said that he wanted to take a nap and that I should wake him up later. When I tried to wake him up, he said it didn't count because I'd been watching TV next to him, so he didn't have a deep sleep. He ended up sleeping for fourteen hours straight. I don't mind because he had a final the next morning, and today he ended up cleaning everything himself while I studied for my final."
Then I caught myself laughing at how much I sounded like a '50s woman with "simple problems." "The only real problem I have is money," I added. "But when I think about things, I have it pretty good. Arguing with my loving boyfriend about a problem that he fixes himself is the kind of problem that I want. If I had to choose a problem, that's the one I'd choose all the way."
My throat's killing me today. I couldn't fall asleep till four in the morning. My brother came home last night. I've officially decided to keep on looking for work even though I've already landed a job. Rob and I are doing well as a couple. The fictional and academic writing are going well. The paperwork for my health insurance should be processed in a couple of weeks. Mom and Dad are dealing with everything maturely and responsibly. My friends are awesome, quirky, beautiful, supportive, talented and intelligent people. I'm over the bulk of my "issues." I aced two finals and handed in a bunch of papers; the semester is going to end on a high note. In truth, my life overall has become pretty boring.
The other night, when I was on the phone with one of my closest and most awesome friends, AJ, we gabbed about her marriage engagement, her cold feet, and her issues of trust. It's not simply that she doesn't trust her fiance to be the man she needs him to be; it's self-trust that's more of an issue. She's so introspective that she knows all too well her self-damaging behavior; whenever she makes a do-or-die decision, she can't tell if she's subconsciously hurting herself or if she's already gotten over that tendency and is making a truly good choice.
Usually, my personality fluctuates from one extreme variation of myself to another, but lately I'm a well-rounded amalgamation of all of my personalities. It's unsettling and takes a little getting used to. So AJ was talking about her relationship with her fiance, and I was finding a million parallels to the problems I used to have with Rob - but I couldn't find anything useful to say. Instead, I was remembering part of a conversation that I'd had with a good friend, JS.
Earlier that day, I'd been telling JS about how Rob seems to have morphed into an amazing and really, really good guy, and she'd laughed. "Maybe he's always been a good guy and you've put on your rose-colored glasses, so now you see it," she'd said. Her words made my skin hot because I knew that she understood exactly what I was feeling. It wasn't necessarily that JS had gone through the same situation; it's that we had found copies of the maps of our lives, and we'd learned to read the signals. Verbal communication is the way we describe the terrain, and since our paths are eerily similar, she was able to offer insights about my way.
Talking to AJ was the same: a story similar to my own was unravelling before me. Instead of trading amazing insights and revelations, however, my brain felt too overwhelmed to compute. I mumbled some vague words of undestanding and acknowledgment, but I knew I was expected to give advice. AJ's problem with her fiance was one I'd had with Rob, and although I'd already completed that leg of my journey, I couldn't verbalize my method. This is what I knew: Like me, AJ's a writer and a very passionate person. Unfortunatley, her fiance doesn't seem to have any passion in his life, and she's mulling over whether or not that's a deal-breaker.
When it came time for me to voice an opinion, I found myslf remembering the words of one of our best friends, DC (she'll ALWAYS be DC, even if she gets married and remarried, ad nauseum). A year ago, when I was going through the "lack of passion problem" with Rob, I'd called DC (my only best friend that's a married mother), and in between talking her oldest child out of banging on pots and pans and nursing her youngest, she gave it to me straight and succinctly:
Everyone has a picture in their minds of what they want their partner to be, and more often than not the person you're with doesn't have all of those traits. But maybe it's not important that your partner have all those traits. Maybe what's important is that he have all the traits that can make you happy for the long haul, and that you fulfill the requirements of a "soulmate" through other people.
When I first heard the advice, it immediately rang as true. Rob will never quite understand the feeling I get when I write something and instinctively KNOW that it's awesome and life-changing, but AJ, AP, SR and JS know what I mean. Rob can't really wax philosophical with me for hours on end, but KA, IS, RM, and KB can engage both spheres of my brain that way. Et al. As much as I stress these parts of my personality, I remain an intact and ever-fluctuating person even when they're not present. It's that vague, unnameable thing that's constantly shape-shifting and evolving which needs to be loved, respected, nurtured, and understood by a partner. Its very ambiguous nature makes it difficult for one person to be its match. But somehow, Rob knows how to be everything that that vague, unnameable thing needs in a partner, and that's more than I can say for anyone else.
So maybe DC's right, and the important thing isn't that Rob satisfy all of my qualifications in a "soulmate"; it's that my life fulfills all of my qualifications for a "soulmate." The important things in a relationship are that my partner knows how to love me the way I need to be loved; that he understands me the way that I need to be understood; and that I feel the way about him that he does for me. Whether or not all of those qualifications are enough, or if Rob and I fulfill them are subject to alteration and interpretation with time and accumulated experiences and knowledge, but for the people we are at this moment, we're the perfect couple.
So that's what I ended up telling AJ - not that Rob and I make the perfect couple, but that those are my words of wisdom. They were handed to me from a trusted source of love, experience and respect, and they've served me well. Opening up to the idea that I can have everything without having it all in one person freed me to see everything that Rob does offer, instead of keeping me focused on the things he doesn't. And little by little, that's how I came to grips with the idea that I don't have to be afraid of trusting him, or anyone, or relationships in general. As simple and cliche as it sounds, he is not the be-all and end-all of what I'm looking for. He does not personify everything that I need to be happy. He has the qualifications to be with the person that I know that I am at the moment, but my ever-evolving ways keep our future a mystery. If Rob does have what it takes to make me happy in the long-haul, it's as understandable as the other option, and I can live with that.
AJ seemed satisfied with my answer, then she laughed and asked how I was doing. "Rob and I are doing good," I said. "I told him yesterday that I needed him to come home early so we could clean up the house for Abie's return. He said he'd be home around seven, and he was. But then he said he was tired and asked if we could relax for a little bit, so we got in bed with ice cream and junk food and watched our favorite TV shows on the internet. Then he said that he wanted to take a nap and that I should wake him up later. When I tried to wake him up, he said it didn't count because I'd been watching TV next to him, so he didn't have a deep sleep. He ended up sleeping for fourteen hours straight. I don't mind because he had a final the next morning, and today he ended up cleaning everything himself while I studied for my final."
Then I caught myself laughing at how much I sounded like a '50s woman with "simple problems." "The only real problem I have is money," I added. "But when I think about things, I have it pretty good. Arguing with my loving boyfriend about a problem that he fixes himself is the kind of problem that I want. If I had to choose a problem, that's the one I'd choose all the way."
***
Years ago, I came up with the idea that we all choose our problems - whether or not it's consciously. We stick to patterns that are harmful but comfortable, people who hurt us but are familiar, addictions which are dangerous but also routine. We are molded by the problems that we face, and become the people we have to be in order to face them. And maybe it's because we're women, or because we're human, or because we're us, but we need problems to get by.
We are untrusting of situations that are "too smooth." We feel uneasy when things have been quiet for too long. We have become too accustomed to being "problem solvers" and feel inept and idle when there are no problems to solve. So whenever life seems too simple, we come up with questions we already have the answers to, insecurities to hang over our heads, doubts that we instinctively know are useless. That's how we feel like ourselves. We're like donuts; the holes are useless and might even take away some of our substance, but without them we feel awkward.
Luckily, there are others like us who know what we mean, have gone through what we've gone through, or feel themselves headed down a path we've already been. Our lives overlap and interlock, and at the end of the day we are each extensions of one great story, a story that's undeniably ours.
Perhaps it's because I'm a writer, but this story soothes me simply because I know that it exists, and that it's getting told in different places, at different times, to different people, and that all the good I could ever do is getting done because I'm doing my part to contribute to the story. Maybe I feel this way because I have a sense of self that includes a network of close friends. Or maybe it's beause I have on my rose-colored glasses. But none of that matters. The "why" isn't as important as the "what."
Top 10 Reasons Why I Shouldn't Go Through with "The Plan"
a.k.a. WHY I SUDDENLY HAVE COLD FEET ABOUT MY PLANS TO MOVE
1) My vajayjay might as well be on vacay. Not for nothin, but I'm susceptible to the opinions of my kin folk, and I don't want them thinkin I'm a slut. Besides, 1) I'm weary of being an American notch on some Flip guy's belt, and 2) It's nearly impossible to be the one makin notches out of men when I'm the foreigner.
2) I'll miss my friends.
3) How do I know that moving to the Philippines isn't just another way of running away from happiness/responsibility? Again?
4) Rob.
5) A part of me really does wanna earn her Creativing Writing and Philosophy dual degree from Brooklyn College asap.
6) Family. And by "family," I mean "close friends."
7) My cousins in TN.
8) I'll miss out on bachelorette parties, weddings, the births of my friends' kids, tumultuous times for my loved ones in the States (that I coulda helped out).
9) Justice. (My pug.)
10) Since I won't be contributing to the family income, I'll have to borrow money from T... Thank God he's seen me naked, or I'd be too embarassed to take the loan.
1) My vajayjay might as well be on vacay. Not for nothin, but I'm susceptible to the opinions of my kin folk, and I don't want them thinkin I'm a slut. Besides, 1) I'm weary of being an American notch on some Flip guy's belt, and 2) It's nearly impossible to be the one makin notches out of men when I'm the foreigner.
2) I'll miss my friends.
3) How do I know that moving to the Philippines isn't just another way of running away from happiness/responsibility? Again?
4) Rob.
5) A part of me really does wanna earn her Creativing Writing and Philosophy dual degree from Brooklyn College asap.
6) Family. And by "family," I mean "close friends."
7) My cousins in TN.
8) I'll miss out on bachelorette parties, weddings, the births of my friends' kids, tumultuous times for my loved ones in the States (that I coulda helped out).
9) Justice. (My pug.)
10) Since I won't be contributing to the family income, I'll have to borrow money from T... Thank God he's seen me naked, or I'd be too embarassed to take the loan.
Monday, December 17, 2007
What Can You Do?
I'm about to leave the office after my first day of work, and my mom calls me crying. We sent a few thousand dollars to the Philippines to pay a loan, and the money's gone missing. Mom didn't wanna fork over the extra $50 for insurance, so now we're just hoping that the money turns up in the next couple of days... If not, my aunt and uncle (plus their four kids, and pregnant daughter-in-law) will lose their house. This is definitely not a game.
My mom and I spoke to my brother this morning, before I left for work. I'd heard her arguing with him and figured I'd play the good cop. After making her hang up the phone, I'd set a friendly tone.
"What's up?" I'd asked him playfully.
"I want to bring all of my books back home," he'd said, his voice terse from having argued with Mom. "I wanna bring books home then replace them with other books."
"That's a great idea," I'd said, "only you have a lot of books over there, and your Balikbayan boxes can only hold seventy pounds worth of stuff. We can't afford to give you more boxes."
His voice remained rigid and tight. "Then take out other stuff."
Never mind that the "other stuff" are foods and medicines for my parents.
My brother's been pampered his whole life. When I think back on us as children, I can't help but wince. Sure, our folks provided and supported us, but if they'd have had their way, we'd have been spoiled rotten. Thank God I had the clarity of mind at the age of thirteen to start working! My brother never had that. We've never asked him to work, and he's only ever had one job in his whole life. What's worse, though, is that he's pulled stunts that have cost literally thousands of dollars. Like the time he stole Mom's credit card and charged more than three thousand dollars worth of toys and video games and miscalleneous crap on it. Dozens of boxes kept on funneling through our door that day. I'll never forget it.
Most folks would have probably scared his ass straight with a beating and then sent back the merch; my mom cried uncontrollably and my dad consoled her by saying that he would help pay off the bill.
Since then, my brother's never learned how to control his spending - and every time he buys something, my folks foot the bill.
Now I'm leaving for work, and I have to laugh. Money's tighter than it's ever been, my brother (who's worn blinders his whole life) will finally be forced to realize that we're not as well-to-do as he imagines, and the pay at my new job is very-close-to-shitty. Still, I look on the bright side of things: I have health benefits, work's literally five minutes away from home, and the work itself is the usual clerical crap, which equals boring. Usually boring would bother me, but in this case, no one's cared to notice that I finished the day's work before noon, so I skipped out on lunch, spent the whole day blogging, and got to leave early. Sweet.
My mom and I spoke to my brother this morning, before I left for work. I'd heard her arguing with him and figured I'd play the good cop. After making her hang up the phone, I'd set a friendly tone.
"What's up?" I'd asked him playfully.
"I want to bring all of my books back home," he'd said, his voice terse from having argued with Mom. "I wanna bring books home then replace them with other books."
"That's a great idea," I'd said, "only you have a lot of books over there, and your Balikbayan boxes can only hold seventy pounds worth of stuff. We can't afford to give you more boxes."
His voice remained rigid and tight. "Then take out other stuff."
Never mind that the "other stuff" are foods and medicines for my parents.
My brother's been pampered his whole life. When I think back on us as children, I can't help but wince. Sure, our folks provided and supported us, but if they'd have had their way, we'd have been spoiled rotten. Thank God I had the clarity of mind at the age of thirteen to start working! My brother never had that. We've never asked him to work, and he's only ever had one job in his whole life. What's worse, though, is that he's pulled stunts that have cost literally thousands of dollars. Like the time he stole Mom's credit card and charged more than three thousand dollars worth of toys and video games and miscalleneous crap on it. Dozens of boxes kept on funneling through our door that day. I'll never forget it.
Most folks would have probably scared his ass straight with a beating and then sent back the merch; my mom cried uncontrollably and my dad consoled her by saying that he would help pay off the bill.
Since then, my brother's never learned how to control his spending - and every time he buys something, my folks foot the bill.
Now I'm leaving for work, and I have to laugh. Money's tighter than it's ever been, my brother (who's worn blinders his whole life) will finally be forced to realize that we're not as well-to-do as he imagines, and the pay at my new job is very-close-to-shitty. Still, I look on the bright side of things: I have health benefits, work's literally five minutes away from home, and the work itself is the usual clerical crap, which equals boring. Usually boring would bother me, but in this case, no one's cared to notice that I finished the day's work before noon, so I skipped out on lunch, spent the whole day blogging, and got to leave early. Sweet.
My First Child
He's almost six feet tall, weighs well over two hundred pounds, and is built like a linebacker. There are piercings in his ears and dye in his hair. Most of his wardrobe is red or black. When he opens his mouth, there's no way of saying beforehand if he'll talk about Neil Gaiman or the injustice of America. He's eighteen years old, but I don't care if he's thirty - I'll still call him "Baby." He's my little brother.
Abie comes home tomorrow night. Before talking to him, I was excited to see him. I kept on thinking about our partnership in the Philippines, We're gonna run that joint. But then I called him and he gave me an attitude, and I realized that I'm gonna have to play mommy once we make the trek overseas. It won't be the first time, but it sure as hell will be the last time.
Ever since Abie found out about our father's infidelity, he's lost a lot of respect for him. My mom's not exactly the brightest crayon in the box, so Abie doesn't look up to her either. All that's left is me. I try to teach him the best I can. I mold his thoughts and shape his personality to fit that of a successful, respectful, respectable, decent man - but I'm only five years older than him and by the time my train of thought's evolved to the next step, I have to undo everything I just finished teaching him. It's a long, involved process, and somewhere along the way he got stuck in one of my phases and I just kept on going. I guess that was bound to happen.
Now there's a different problem. My mentality is that of a forty-year old, and he's eighteen. We're going to live in the Philippines. He's at that age where he wants to figure shit out on his own and doesn't wanna hear different from anyone; I'm in the position to act like a parent. Obviously, I won't coddle him and keep him from making mistakes. But I want to be able to sleep well at night, too. So where's the right balance? How do I make sure that he's developing into a good person, and also give him the freedom to make the character-defining mistakes that everyone has to make? Is it too late to worry? Should I just have faith that I've taught him well and enabled him to survive?
Taking a step back, I see the obvious answers to the above questions, and innately I know how to handle the situation. Like all tough situations, all it takes is some time and some writing, and I know just what I should do. (Very rarely must I rely on advice from trusted sources, though I'm always happy to hear the suggestions of true friends.) But in taking the responsibility of guiding an eighteen-year old toward full maturity, I know that my parenting skills will be tested to their limit. This realization is only now washing over me: when I'm in the Philippines, I won't just have the mentality of a forty-year old; I'll be acting like one, too! I'll even have the eighteen-year old "son."
I've had several abortions, and I feel like I've brought up a kid already. I also have the feeling that my maternal desires will be quelled by the onslaught of nieces and nephews brought to my Filipino door. I wonder if all of this will stifle my urge to have children of my own; I feel like that's almost a certainty. And if it does happen, and I enjoy bringing up others' children just as much as I'd enjoy taking care of my own, I'll have satisfied another requisite of this life. I wonder how much more I'll need to do before I feel like I've really done it all.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Star light star bright, first star I see tonight...
Please please please please snow so hard tonight that a foot and a half of dense white coldness will have blanketed the streets and sidewalks by dawn. I don't want to have to take my finals tomorrow...
Friday, December 14, 2007
On Misplaced Energies
FORWARD: I'm not sure that this really makes sense, but it's what I was thinking at the time...
***
It's four in the morning and I can't sleep. The roads are too slippery for me to drive, and I don't feel like busting my ass on the ice. I'm editing my latest story and realizing that a lot of it is probably crap. The thing is, I'm proud of it. In it I admit jealousy and pettiness and a slew of other emotions that I am only capable of feeling until they are put into words. After they're released on the page, I can get back to being the boring and decent individual that I attempt to be; those are the people that seem normal, and these days, I crave normality.
I spent the last two hours ironing clothes. I felt like it would dull my mind and make me sleep, but the repetitive action only let my mind wander aimlessly. I daydreamed about the next five years of my life: earning a physician's assistance degree while soaking in tropical sun, bonding with my extended family, indulging my maternal side by playing house with all of my cousins' kids, expanding young minds and building their characters, learning my heritage up close and personal, finding the time and relaxation to write, being less westernized and urban, fulfilling my desire to learn my parents' native language; then, coming back to the States, earning a good wage, going back to school in order to earn the long list of degrees that I want, reestablishing myself with the literary connections that I've made, fixing up and adding to my house, setting my folks up for "early retirement" so they can live it up in the Philippines while they're still healthy enough to enjoy it, renting out rooms in my house to my friends/fellow bohemian types, buying more property, living the dream.
It all feels so tangible and within my grasp, and for the first time in my life I'm not intimidated by this fact. I want it and I'm not afraid to admit that I want it. I'm painfully aware that Murphy's Law loves me, but I don't care. I'm gonna make it.
***
When I tell people that I'm going overseas, I cite various reasons. The one fact that sticks out, though, is that I'm the first-born child of immigrants who have never gotten their heads out of the clouds. Perhaps that's why I'm as "innocent" as I am, and still have wonder in my eyes and hope in my soul - but it's also why I have to be the one to handle the family finances. Much to the detriment of our collective economic status, my parents have never understood the meaning of "living within one's means." Perhaps it was guilt, or lack of planning, or just plain ignorance, but both of my parents act as if we were the sole owners of a bottomless pit of cash.
Now that they're facing their second bankruptcy, their assets are in danger of being repossessed, and the house is in constant danger of being foreclosed, I must push my altruistic-idealistic-romantic notions of finding an occupation which speaks to my soul - writing, teaching, nonprofit work, etc. - in order to make a living doing something that earns lots of money. And even though I'm doing it for my family, a part of me wants to give it up. Like KC said a few weeks ago, "There comes a point when you have to stop blaming your family for your craziness, and become your own person."
This resolve to earn a physician's assistance degree and make money is exactly that. I feel like it's my chance to give up the craziness that is my family's neediness; ironically, I must do that by first fully giving in to it.
And maybe that's why I'm thinking so much of MG these days. To the untrained eye it might appear as though she's giving up on her lawyerly goals and her liberal ideals, but that's simply not the case. In order to fulfill her own desires, she must first indulge her pragmatic consciousness, which demands that she be financially supported before she can resume her course. I've only got this one life to learn from, but this much I've realized: people who are true to themselves don't have misplaced energies. Their lives usually follow this pattern: Step 1: let your passion dictate what you want to learn. Step 2: Give yourself the means to live comfortably. Step 3: enjoy the hell out of the experiences you want to make your life about.
"I don't think it was jealousy," MG said to me. "I just felt like that should've been me. I should've been the one graduating from law school and making $125,000 during my first year as a lawyer."
I laughed with MG, aware that her self-depracating tone was as much mockery as it was truth. From the moment I met her in the Fall of 1998, the one thing I knew about MG was that she wanted to be a lawyer. In high school, she had joined the debate team, won trophies for her arguments, and had even earned the role of co-captain for the team. As time went by, her experiences refined her path and identity, and she became more and more involved with politics and altruism. She was convinced of her lawyerly ambitions, and every chance she got, she pulled me into whatever she was working on. Luckily for me, my path constantly merged with MG's; she shaped my political awareness and altruism more than anyone I've known.
When MG decided against the big bucks of corporate law in favor of the work-for-the-little-guy feel of nonprofit law, it was only another hint at her awesome humanitarianism. "I've been poor my whole life," she jokingly said to me. "There's no use in changing that now." And maybe that's why she was the root of my civic-mindedness. It was MG who introduced me to NYPIRG; MG who came up with the idea of OICE; MG who championed all of my endeavors, despite the craziness or abdurdity with which others labeled them. More than that, it was MG whose heartstrings were tugged by the pain of women who had stories of neglect and abuse. She was undeniably human in her sympathies, but also completely humane - a characteristic not attributed to most people. In her was the rationality behind lofty ideals, a dissonant yin and yang that made her more relatable.
Whenever I've felt like my moral compass might slip, it's MG I call to keep me steady. I think of her a lot these days, as I prepare for my life in the Philippines. Although her altruism is undoubtedly intact and she remains a steadfast supporter of women's rights, religious charity, and the next generation of do-gooders (among other worthwhile aims), she has put her legal goals on the backburner. MG's path has gone in an entirely new direction, and she is now in an amazing corporate communications graduate program'; she will no doubt be earning a good wage in the near future.
I laughed with MG, aware that her self-depracating tone was as much mockery as it was truth. From the moment I met her in the Fall of 1998, the one thing I knew about MG was that she wanted to be a lawyer. In high school, she had joined the debate team, won trophies for her arguments, and had even earned the role of co-captain for the team. As time went by, her experiences refined her path and identity, and she became more and more involved with politics and altruism. She was convinced of her lawyerly ambitions, and every chance she got, she pulled me into whatever she was working on. Luckily for me, my path constantly merged with MG's; she shaped my political awareness and altruism more than anyone I've known.
When MG decided against the big bucks of corporate law in favor of the work-for-the-little-guy feel of nonprofit law, it was only another hint at her awesome humanitarianism. "I've been poor my whole life," she jokingly said to me. "There's no use in changing that now." And maybe that's why she was the root of my civic-mindedness. It was MG who introduced me to NYPIRG; MG who came up with the idea of OICE; MG who championed all of my endeavors, despite the craziness or abdurdity with which others labeled them. More than that, it was MG whose heartstrings were tugged by the pain of women who had stories of neglect and abuse. She was undeniably human in her sympathies, but also completely humane - a characteristic not attributed to most people. In her was the rationality behind lofty ideals, a dissonant yin and yang that made her more relatable.
Whenever I've felt like my moral compass might slip, it's MG I call to keep me steady. I think of her a lot these days, as I prepare for my life in the Philippines. Although her altruism is undoubtedly intact and she remains a steadfast supporter of women's rights, religious charity, and the next generation of do-gooders (among other worthwhile aims), she has put her legal goals on the backburner. MG's path has gone in an entirely new direction, and she is now in an amazing corporate communications graduate program'; she will no doubt be earning a good wage in the near future.
***
It's four in the morning and I can't sleep. The roads are too slippery for me to drive, and I don't feel like busting my ass on the ice. I'm editing my latest story and realizing that a lot of it is probably crap. The thing is, I'm proud of it. In it I admit jealousy and pettiness and a slew of other emotions that I am only capable of feeling until they are put into words. After they're released on the page, I can get back to being the boring and decent individual that I attempt to be; those are the people that seem normal, and these days, I crave normality.
I spent the last two hours ironing clothes. I felt like it would dull my mind and make me sleep, but the repetitive action only let my mind wander aimlessly. I daydreamed about the next five years of my life: earning a physician's assistance degree while soaking in tropical sun, bonding with my extended family, indulging my maternal side by playing house with all of my cousins' kids, expanding young minds and building their characters, learning my heritage up close and personal, finding the time and relaxation to write, being less westernized and urban, fulfilling my desire to learn my parents' native language; then, coming back to the States, earning a good wage, going back to school in order to earn the long list of degrees that I want, reestablishing myself with the literary connections that I've made, fixing up and adding to my house, setting my folks up for "early retirement" so they can live it up in the Philippines while they're still healthy enough to enjoy it, renting out rooms in my house to my friends/fellow bohemian types, buying more property, living the dream.
It all feels so tangible and within my grasp, and for the first time in my life I'm not intimidated by this fact. I want it and I'm not afraid to admit that I want it. I'm painfully aware that Murphy's Law loves me, but I don't care. I'm gonna make it.
***
When I tell people that I'm going overseas, I cite various reasons. The one fact that sticks out, though, is that I'm the first-born child of immigrants who have never gotten their heads out of the clouds. Perhaps that's why I'm as "innocent" as I am, and still have wonder in my eyes and hope in my soul - but it's also why I have to be the one to handle the family finances. Much to the detriment of our collective economic status, my parents have never understood the meaning of "living within one's means." Perhaps it was guilt, or lack of planning, or just plain ignorance, but both of my parents act as if we were the sole owners of a bottomless pit of cash.
Now that they're facing their second bankruptcy, their assets are in danger of being repossessed, and the house is in constant danger of being foreclosed, I must push my altruistic-idealistic-romantic notions of finding an occupation which speaks to my soul - writing, teaching, nonprofit work, etc. - in order to make a living doing something that earns lots of money. And even though I'm doing it for my family, a part of me wants to give it up. Like KC said a few weeks ago, "There comes a point when you have to stop blaming your family for your craziness, and become your own person."
This resolve to earn a physician's assistance degree and make money is exactly that. I feel like it's my chance to give up the craziness that is my family's neediness; ironically, I must do that by first fully giving in to it.
And maybe that's why I'm thinking so much of MG these days. To the untrained eye it might appear as though she's giving up on her lawyerly goals and her liberal ideals, but that's simply not the case. In order to fulfill her own desires, she must first indulge her pragmatic consciousness, which demands that she be financially supported before she can resume her course. I've only got this one life to learn from, but this much I've realized: people who are true to themselves don't have misplaced energies. Their lives usually follow this pattern: Step 1: let your passion dictate what you want to learn. Step 2: Give yourself the means to live comfortably. Step 3: enjoy the hell out of the experiences you want to make your life about.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Is Passion Overrated?
Now that I'm being a bit more pragmatic and conservative about things, life's gotten a hell of a lot more manageable. My goals are more clear, my thought processes make more sense, and things seem more cut and dry.
This sounds all well and good (especially since I was headed in a bad direction), but I've noticed that since turning over this new leaf, I haven't felt the clear high of living purely for living's sake. I haven't felt overtly joyous. My heartrate hasn't quickened at the thought of something so lovely that it hurts. For me, conservatism is the equivalent of emotional Lithium: I have put on the backburner the intensity and passion that once drove me to write a novel in a day, debate over ideals, perform on stage. And yet I don't feel the hardness of hitting rock-bottom like I used to. It's like living in constant middleground, aware that nothing and everything matters and simultaneously remains inconsequential. I am running on auto-pilot.
But I am getting a lot of work done in an efficient manner...
Is this "stage" okay only if it's temporary? Should I not care? Why can I only get things done when I am void of passion? Am I really void of passion? Or is this my subconscious way of blocking out distractions from the task at hand?
This sounds all well and good (especially since I was headed in a bad direction), but I've noticed that since turning over this new leaf, I haven't felt the clear high of living purely for living's sake. I haven't felt overtly joyous. My heartrate hasn't quickened at the thought of something so lovely that it hurts. For me, conservatism is the equivalent of emotional Lithium: I have put on the backburner the intensity and passion that once drove me to write a novel in a day, debate over ideals, perform on stage. And yet I don't feel the hardness of hitting rock-bottom like I used to. It's like living in constant middleground, aware that nothing and everything matters and simultaneously remains inconsequential. I am running on auto-pilot.
But I am getting a lot of work done in an efficient manner...
Is this "stage" okay only if it's temporary? Should I not care? Why can I only get things done when I am void of passion? Am I really void of passion? Or is this my subconscious way of blocking out distractions from the task at hand?
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
This Just In
I'm sitting at work, typing away at my blog when I should be transcribing reports, and a wave of enthusiastic realization just hit me. That fraudulent feeling I had? Just like the fear: it's gone.
An Ongoing Post: Random Quotes & How They Apply to Me
"Writers can only break the rules afer they've mastered them. I'd be surprised if you didn't break the rules."
- A creative writing professor at NYU. I don't know if this was her intention, but when I'm manic and writing a million words per minute, I remember this moment and feel like God.
- A creative writing professor at NYU. I don't know if this was her intention, but when I'm manic and writing a million words per minute, I remember this moment and feel like God.
***
"[A]nyone who is doing something creative, they're always chasing something. And a lot of the time you're not even sure what it is you're chasing."
- A.C. Newman of The New Pornographers
My newfound calm is derived from the feeling that I no longer have to chase anything as passionately as I once did. Instead of an impending sense of doom, I now feel confident that everything I want will happen.
***
"I hate that I think so highly of you. Sometimes I'll act a certain way and do things for a long stretch of time, then realize it's because of your influence, and I can't tell if I'm me or an extension of you."
"Everyone's an extension of me and I'm an extension of everyone. That's what good artists can do: expess themselves in such a way that practically everyone relates and everyone's actions are tainted by the whim of the artist - whether directly, inversely, or indirectly. The artist's eyes are the lenses with which we see ourselves."
"That's-That's-That's... True. Fuck."
- Sydney Jo and Me, on the subway this morning (Dec. 13, 2007). Quintessential manic conversation, after a sleepless night spent writing my latest novel, planning my left-brained life, philosophizing with Rob over the merits of the TV show Journeyman.
Just Jump
Until a couple of days ago, I was fully in touch with my artistic, introverted, over-analyzing faculties. I was writing highly cerebral work (see: Exercise of Futility), philosophizing with friends, and completely immersing myself in thought processes. Then it all took a backseat to action.
See, I have stories for days. I can tell you about my trips to the ER, how I got the scar on my leg, my many love affairs and exotic romances, fistfights that I've been in, strange jobs that I've had, run-ins with the law, sex stories that'll make you blush, misadventures to faraway places, etc. - my life runs the gambit on experience (except for drug addiction; I've dodged that bullet).
But none of it is the stuff of "real life." None of it "matters" in the conservative, everyman, survival kind of way. None of it will figure in (in an obvious manner) with the way I want my life to end up. And as much as I love my misadventures, I do eventually want to "end up" somewhere good. That is, I do want to "settle down" - not in a "settling for less" kind of way, but in a "cozy and comfortable, don't want to change anything" kind of way. I want the crazy, off-the-wall antics of wanderlusting vagabonds, but also the executive capitalistic swine's spoils. I want to amass so much knowledge and experience that I can back up any of my goals and actions, but I also want to be able to further my artistic exploits, financially & emotionally provide for a highly extensive network of extended family, and feel centered and complete. In short, I want "it all," and "it all" contains more than most people would desire.
I spent my entire adolescence battling my parents on the subject of money. A true die-hard liberal, I didn't buy in to the consumerism and capitalism of traditional varieties of "success." I adamantly proclaimed on more than one ocassion that I'd happily live in a cardboard box as long as I was constantly writing. Then my financial well-being became instrumental to the well-being of my family, and that all changed. It's one thing when the weight of that large chip on your shoulder prevents you from eating; it's an entirely new subject when that chip on your shoulder inhibits your ability to provide food for your loved ones. So money became my friend.
The fact that my family's well-being figures into my chosen capitalistic path eases my mind. Beyond the cute clothes and manicures, I still equate myself with rebellious, bohemian hippies, and I still want recognition for my artistic endeavors. I realize that most of the logic-minded, practical people who make up the higher-echelon of earners in the United States do not consider the arts vital, and that my insistence on joining their ranks as well as the ranks of best-selling writers is somewhat contradictory. However, I also realize that there are very few people who seriously seek out this kind of success. I am willing to personify a walking contradiction if that means simultaneously fulfilling my definition of "successful."
On my list of "Things to Do" are a smorgasbord of projects, such as creating a non profit organization that assists New York City families, and traveling the world. I want to learn at least four more languages, and I want my writing to find a large and appreciative audience. I want to financially take care of my family, and I want to save lives through medicine. I want to know that despite all the bad I've done, I'll leave an indelible and awesome positive imprint on the world.
And, so far, it's happening. I feel like phase one of my invention is complete. I've come into my own as a writer, and I've acquired many connections in the literary world. Now onto the next level. It's time to settle into my new role as Physicians Assistant, and make good money saving lives.
See, I have stories for days. I can tell you about my trips to the ER, how I got the scar on my leg, my many love affairs and exotic romances, fistfights that I've been in, strange jobs that I've had, run-ins with the law, sex stories that'll make you blush, misadventures to faraway places, etc. - my life runs the gambit on experience (except for drug addiction; I've dodged that bullet).
But none of it is the stuff of "real life." None of it "matters" in the conservative, everyman, survival kind of way. None of it will figure in (in an obvious manner) with the way I want my life to end up. And as much as I love my misadventures, I do eventually want to "end up" somewhere good. That is, I do want to "settle down" - not in a "settling for less" kind of way, but in a "cozy and comfortable, don't want to change anything" kind of way. I want the crazy, off-the-wall antics of wanderlusting vagabonds, but also the executive capitalistic swine's spoils. I want to amass so much knowledge and experience that I can back up any of my goals and actions, but I also want to be able to further my artistic exploits, financially & emotionally provide for a highly extensive network of extended family, and feel centered and complete. In short, I want "it all," and "it all" contains more than most people would desire.
I spent my entire adolescence battling my parents on the subject of money. A true die-hard liberal, I didn't buy in to the consumerism and capitalism of traditional varieties of "success." I adamantly proclaimed on more than one ocassion that I'd happily live in a cardboard box as long as I was constantly writing. Then my financial well-being became instrumental to the well-being of my family, and that all changed. It's one thing when the weight of that large chip on your shoulder prevents you from eating; it's an entirely new subject when that chip on your shoulder inhibits your ability to provide food for your loved ones. So money became my friend.
The fact that my family's well-being figures into my chosen capitalistic path eases my mind. Beyond the cute clothes and manicures, I still equate myself with rebellious, bohemian hippies, and I still want recognition for my artistic endeavors. I realize that most of the logic-minded, practical people who make up the higher-echelon of earners in the United States do not consider the arts vital, and that my insistence on joining their ranks as well as the ranks of best-selling writers is somewhat contradictory. However, I also realize that there are very few people who seriously seek out this kind of success. I am willing to personify a walking contradiction if that means simultaneously fulfilling my definition of "successful."
On my list of "Things to Do" are a smorgasbord of projects, such as creating a non profit organization that assists New York City families, and traveling the world. I want to learn at least four more languages, and I want my writing to find a large and appreciative audience. I want to financially take care of my family, and I want to save lives through medicine. I want to know that despite all the bad I've done, I'll leave an indelible and awesome positive imprint on the world.
And, so far, it's happening. I feel like phase one of my invention is complete. I've come into my own as a writer, and I've acquired many connections in the literary world. Now onto the next level. It's time to settle into my new role as Physicians Assistant, and make good money saving lives.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Hodgepodge of Carpe Diem
Scene: Maria is wearing a faded green T-shirt that fits snugly over her DD's, and green and blue-striped pajama pants that are loose. The metal shelves to her left are almost empty because she's donated a majority of her clothes. The faded sun is coming into her bedroom through the window at her back, and she sits on the green bedspread of her lumpy twin-sized bed.
V.O.
It's eight o'clock in the morning, Rob's helping my mom with breakfast, and I'm stuck on my piece about our anniversary. If I wrote in the first person, it would sound more like a blog entry. If I wrote in the ominous third person, it would sound pretentious, but it would be more likely to have the feeling I want. Third person it is.
[typing "A Rush of Love"]
A lot's been happening the past week, and I feel brand new. I wonder if it's possible to short circuit the person that you were in order to become the person that you are.
I mean, obviously
I know that
change takes time,
and nothing
happens
out of the blue.
But
what if
I jumped
Out of my window
and landed
on my feet
as somebody new?
Some people are lucky; they know instinctively what they want and work towards that goal. Me? I'm of a different type: I think too much, ask too many questions, and never settle for less than I'm owed. It takes me longer to get to my aim because I first have to settle on an aim. It takes me longer to fulfill a goal because I want so much, and my mind must first wrap around every component that I'm dealing with. And not to sound obnoxious, but if I'd been born a talentless, dumb, homely hunchback giant, maybe I wouldn't be that way; maybe if I had been born with less potential, I'd just make up my mind and try my damnedest to reach a specific goal.
But that would be too easy, and I've never been simple.
This past week, instead of continuing down my usual road of insecure decision-making, I stumbled on a kernel of humility which made me address every mistake I've ever made. And after internalizing the life lessons that I didn't want to face, I was no longer afraid. The usual fears - of myself, of failure, of success, of mediocrity - no longer applied to the person that I somehow became.
So I'm attempting to hold onto this newfound sense of wonder and identity and build on it as best as I can. Along the way, there will undoubtedly be moments of insecurity, but that's human and I accept my humanity.
V.O.
It's eight o'clock in the morning, Rob's helping my mom with breakfast, and I'm stuck on my piece about our anniversary. If I wrote in the first person, it would sound more like a blog entry. If I wrote in the ominous third person, it would sound pretentious, but it would be more likely to have the feeling I want. Third person it is.
[typing "A Rush of Love"]
A lot's been happening the past week, and I feel brand new. I wonder if it's possible to short circuit the person that you were in order to become the person that you are.
I mean, obviously
I know that
change takes time,
and nothing
happens
out of the blue.
But
what if
I jumped
Out of my window
and landed
on my feet
as somebody new?
Some people are lucky; they know instinctively what they want and work towards that goal. Me? I'm of a different type: I think too much, ask too many questions, and never settle for less than I'm owed. It takes me longer to get to my aim because I first have to settle on an aim. It takes me longer to fulfill a goal because I want so much, and my mind must first wrap around every component that I'm dealing with. And not to sound obnoxious, but if I'd been born a talentless, dumb, homely hunchback giant, maybe I wouldn't be that way; maybe if I had been born with less potential, I'd just make up my mind and try my damnedest to reach a specific goal.
But that would be too easy, and I've never been simple.
This past week, instead of continuing down my usual road of insecure decision-making, I stumbled on a kernel of humility which made me address every mistake I've ever made. And after internalizing the life lessons that I didn't want to face, I was no longer afraid. The usual fears - of myself, of failure, of success, of mediocrity - no longer applied to the person that I somehow became.
So I'm attempting to hold onto this newfound sense of wonder and identity and build on it as best as I can. Along the way, there will undoubtedly be moments of insecurity, but that's human and I accept my humanity.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Fugue
If I could, I'd be someone else from here on out. I'd take all of my acquired knowledge, my wisdom, my experiences, and I'd spin myself into a person that doesn't have the baggage that I have now, the past, the responsibilities. I'd lay it all down and wash it all with my tears, and I'd be brand new again.
This is what I know.
Part 1
I know that I'm an opportunist who will milk any situation, and that if I'm truly honest with myself, I have painted my way into a corner.
Part 2
The docs tell me that I have paranoid and sociopathic tendencies, and that I suffer from severe procrastination that stems from dissociation. They suggest that I go to therapy regularly, and probably think that because I am paying my medical bills upfront, by check, I can afford several sessions of cognitive behavior therapy per week.
There goes the money T wired to my account.
Part 3
I've never liked therapy. I was brought up to believe that people with friends and family don't need "professional help." The only reason that I even saw the therapist was---well, I don't know exactly. The thought of being in a hospital and having the doctor call on a psychiatric consult seemed exotic at the time, like I belonged in an episode of ER or House or Grey's Anatomy. A small part of me believed that I would suddenly become Katherine Heigl or Sandra Oh, just because I was staying in the hospital. And besides, I thought it would make another great story to tell my friends, another facet of my life to spin into allegory or fiction.
Part 4
This was me, on Wednesday: in a hospital bed, drowsy, popping pills. I'd slept for most of the previous night and that morning, and I'd talked with a psychiatrist. Scans and x-rays and all sorts of tests were conducted on me, and one thing was clear: I suffered from anxiety.
Part 5
Is there anyone who doesn't suffer from anxiety? Isn't anxiety just a sign that you're truly alive, that you're doing things, that you're scared of things, that you're not braindead? Isn't anxiety as natural as sweat and tears? Breathing and heartbeat? What's the big deal with "suffering from anxiety"?
Part 6
Yesterday, second visit with the psychiatrist: I told him all sorts of things. Like, how sometimes a sense of doom will come over me, and I'll be so scared that I can't move. It'll happen at the oddest times, but mostly in the dark, when I'm alone. I'll imagine a man coming out of the dark to attack me, and all of a sudden I'll be petrified and absolutely terrified. I want to scream, but there's no sound in my throat. I want to move, but my legs are stuck in place. Tears gush out of my eye sockets, uncontrollably.
But I only told him about my hysterical fear after I told him about my severe procrastination. How I can't seem to do anything on time - pay bills, do homework, call people back - because of no particular reason but that I don't want to. I think I have a phobia of success. Success, to me, equals loneliness, and I don't want to be lonely. I already feel so alone all the time, and success - monetary, status, academic - would only create a larger gulf between myself and the people I want to relate to.
The first thing I told the doc, though, was that I'm horny. It came out as a joke, a sort of ice-breaker. But after he laughed, there was a glint in his eyes that let me know what he was really thinking. He was going to write down my inappropriate joke and think about it some more, and maybe suggest to colleagues that something had happened to me when I was younger, that I'd been sexually molested or abused. So I qualified my joke, explained it away as something I always do out of nervous anxiety, and when he asked if all of my friends did the same thing, I looked away and laughed. "Friends?" I'd said, incredulously. "I texted people that I'm in the hospital, and only three people bothered to text me back. One of those people didn't seem concerned at all, but sounded purely snide about the situation."
And that's how I started talking about people and how they can't be trusted, and how I've always had so much on my mind concerning the nature of human beings. I trust blindly, because that is my way of trusting completely. I love blindly, because it's the easiest way to fall in and out of love and know that I'm giving all I have to give.
And yet, despite all of my blind actions, I know instinctively that there is a nugget of my self hidden deep within me, and that nothing negative - failure, betrayal, destitution, hunger, etc - can take it away from me. It is this nugget of self that I keep hidden and do not share, and if by some stroke of fate I found happiness in a particular situation and vowed that I would stay in that situation for as long as I live - with a lover, with a spouse, with friends, with my station in life, with my career, etc. - I would give away that nugget of self. My identity would be in whatever I vowed to encompass, and if that thing ever went away, I wouldn't know who I am.
Part 7
My memory is slipping. The doc found that out during our first session together, and he attributed that to my concussion. I nodded, but what I wanted to say was, "I couldn't tell you anything about any recent day - and that's not because I collapsed in a pharmacy parking lot and hit my head hard on the concrete. It's because I've been distant from my reality. I've been distant with myself. Nothing I do feels like it's really me doing it. Nothing I say feels like my own belief. I feel like I'm always acting, like I am not anything people believe me to be. I feel like a fraud."
Rob tells me that my memory sucks, and I laugh because I know it's true. Days can be boiled down to three or less sentences, and not out of boring circumstances. I can string together a story and write out a tale, but when it comes to my life, I don't know what it's about or what to do with it. There is no arch, no skeleton, no conclusion to be made that isn't purely existential.
Part 8
Today, I woke up, and everything felt brand new. I had sloughed off everything that had once defined me - my grades, my internships, my political activism, my writing, my friendships, etc - and decided to take along for the rest of my life journey only the things that I really need. Everything else can be picked up again in due time, but for now, I'm all right.
I don't know where my sense of resolve came from. Maybe it's the pills prescribed by the doc. Maybe all I really needed was to talk to a professional. Maybe I'm done with feeling bad about myself, about my circumstances, about my actions. Maybe I'm ready to remember every facet of every day and stake claim to everything I do and am as my own.
Part 9
This is what I know: A guy stole my parking spot on Tuesday night, and I got out of my car to curse him out. The next thing I knew, I was in a hospital, and the nurse told me I'd collapsed.
Now I'm in my own bed, after having forgotten about my life for three days, and everything makes sense. I don't know why everything suddenly makes sense. I don't even know if I truly think everything makes sense, or if it's a defense mechanism (a kind of denial) which regulates my emotions and my well-being that's making me believe that everything makes sense.
But I'll tell you what I do know: I'm okay.
I know that I'm an opportunist who will milk any situation, and that if I'm truly honest with myself, I have painted my way into a corner.
Part 2
The docs tell me that I have paranoid and sociopathic tendencies, and that I suffer from severe procrastination that stems from dissociation. They suggest that I go to therapy regularly, and probably think that because I am paying my medical bills upfront, by check, I can afford several sessions of cognitive behavior therapy per week.
There goes the money T wired to my account.
Part 3
I've never liked therapy. I was brought up to believe that people with friends and family don't need "professional help." The only reason that I even saw the therapist was---well, I don't know exactly. The thought of being in a hospital and having the doctor call on a psychiatric consult seemed exotic at the time, like I belonged in an episode of ER or House or Grey's Anatomy. A small part of me believed that I would suddenly become Katherine Heigl or Sandra Oh, just because I was staying in the hospital. And besides, I thought it would make another great story to tell my friends, another facet of my life to spin into allegory or fiction.
Part 4
This was me, on Wednesday: in a hospital bed, drowsy, popping pills. I'd slept for most of the previous night and that morning, and I'd talked with a psychiatrist. Scans and x-rays and all sorts of tests were conducted on me, and one thing was clear: I suffered from anxiety.
Part 5
Is there anyone who doesn't suffer from anxiety? Isn't anxiety just a sign that you're truly alive, that you're doing things, that you're scared of things, that you're not braindead? Isn't anxiety as natural as sweat and tears? Breathing and heartbeat? What's the big deal with "suffering from anxiety"?
Part 6
Yesterday, second visit with the psychiatrist: I told him all sorts of things. Like, how sometimes a sense of doom will come over me, and I'll be so scared that I can't move. It'll happen at the oddest times, but mostly in the dark, when I'm alone. I'll imagine a man coming out of the dark to attack me, and all of a sudden I'll be petrified and absolutely terrified. I want to scream, but there's no sound in my throat. I want to move, but my legs are stuck in place. Tears gush out of my eye sockets, uncontrollably.
But I only told him about my hysterical fear after I told him about my severe procrastination. How I can't seem to do anything on time - pay bills, do homework, call people back - because of no particular reason but that I don't want to. I think I have a phobia of success. Success, to me, equals loneliness, and I don't want to be lonely. I already feel so alone all the time, and success - monetary, status, academic - would only create a larger gulf between myself and the people I want to relate to.
The first thing I told the doc, though, was that I'm horny. It came out as a joke, a sort of ice-breaker. But after he laughed, there was a glint in his eyes that let me know what he was really thinking. He was going to write down my inappropriate joke and think about it some more, and maybe suggest to colleagues that something had happened to me when I was younger, that I'd been sexually molested or abused. So I qualified my joke, explained it away as something I always do out of nervous anxiety, and when he asked if all of my friends did the same thing, I looked away and laughed. "Friends?" I'd said, incredulously. "I texted people that I'm in the hospital, and only three people bothered to text me back. One of those people didn't seem concerned at all, but sounded purely snide about the situation."
And that's how I started talking about people and how they can't be trusted, and how I've always had so much on my mind concerning the nature of human beings. I trust blindly, because that is my way of trusting completely. I love blindly, because it's the easiest way to fall in and out of love and know that I'm giving all I have to give.
And yet, despite all of my blind actions, I know instinctively that there is a nugget of my self hidden deep within me, and that nothing negative - failure, betrayal, destitution, hunger, etc - can take it away from me. It is this nugget of self that I keep hidden and do not share, and if by some stroke of fate I found happiness in a particular situation and vowed that I would stay in that situation for as long as I live - with a lover, with a spouse, with friends, with my station in life, with my career, etc. - I would give away that nugget of self. My identity would be in whatever I vowed to encompass, and if that thing ever went away, I wouldn't know who I am.
Part 7
My memory is slipping. The doc found that out during our first session together, and he attributed that to my concussion. I nodded, but what I wanted to say was, "I couldn't tell you anything about any recent day - and that's not because I collapsed in a pharmacy parking lot and hit my head hard on the concrete. It's because I've been distant from my reality. I've been distant with myself. Nothing I do feels like it's really me doing it. Nothing I say feels like my own belief. I feel like I'm always acting, like I am not anything people believe me to be. I feel like a fraud."
Rob tells me that my memory sucks, and I laugh because I know it's true. Days can be boiled down to three or less sentences, and not out of boring circumstances. I can string together a story and write out a tale, but when it comes to my life, I don't know what it's about or what to do with it. There is no arch, no skeleton, no conclusion to be made that isn't purely existential.
Part 8
Today, I woke up, and everything felt brand new. I had sloughed off everything that had once defined me - my grades, my internships, my political activism, my writing, my friendships, etc - and decided to take along for the rest of my life journey only the things that I really need. Everything else can be picked up again in due time, but for now, I'm all right.
I don't know where my sense of resolve came from. Maybe it's the pills prescribed by the doc. Maybe all I really needed was to talk to a professional. Maybe I'm done with feeling bad about myself, about my circumstances, about my actions. Maybe I'm ready to remember every facet of every day and stake claim to everything I do and am as my own.
Part 9
This is what I know: A guy stole my parking spot on Tuesday night, and I got out of my car to curse him out. The next thing I knew, I was in a hospital, and the nurse told me I'd collapsed.
Now I'm in my own bed, after having forgotten about my life for three days, and everything makes sense. I don't know why everything suddenly makes sense. I don't even know if I truly think everything makes sense, or if it's a defense mechanism (a kind of denial) which regulates my emotions and my well-being that's making me believe that everything makes sense.
But I'll tell you what I do know: I'm okay.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
It's occurred to me that I probably shouldn't say this...
But when have I ever adhered to convention or regulations?
I've stayed home all day, smoking weed, drinking wine, and eating pot brownies and spaghetti laced with special mushrooms. All this after fucking most of the morning away and being visited by a good friend who shall remain nameless. Good friends will do that: come to your house after conveniently forgetting you've existed for the past three years, only to inundate you with news about all the men you used to fuck and all the yummy illicit goodies you can buy from their new dealer. But I digress... The fact is, I've been a sloth all day, listening to music, reading articles on nerve.com, and generally wasting away my day whilst feeling artistic - and when I say "artistic," what I mean is "eccentric."
I've written twenty pages for my creative writing class while under the influence, and now that the effects are slowly passing, I want to be productive. There are papers to write, orphans to teach, money to make. I'm thinking about my artistic endeavors and realizing that I could always play the "damaged beyond repair card." You know what that is, right? That's when a creative person - let's say, a writer - is good at their craft, proficient and all that, but the reason that people continue to read their work is because it's like watching a trainwreck unfold before your eyes. You peer into their psyche and feel - what? grateful? hopeful? disgusted? alive? - because you realize that you may or may relate to them, but you are definitely not so screwed up in the head as to share your general screwed-upedness with the masses.
I can feel myself slipping into manic mode. Pretty soon, no one's gonna see me/hear from me except on-stage and on-line. At least, that's the way it used to be, when I needed to digest a little life. Right now, I'm struggling not to revert to outdated ways while hanging on to my sense of self...
Fuck this. My keyboard is sticking and I need to write papers...
End.
I've stayed home all day, smoking weed, drinking wine, and eating pot brownies and spaghetti laced with special mushrooms. All this after fucking most of the morning away and being visited by a good friend who shall remain nameless. Good friends will do that: come to your house after conveniently forgetting you've existed for the past three years, only to inundate you with news about all the men you used to fuck and all the yummy illicit goodies you can buy from their new dealer. But I digress... The fact is, I've been a sloth all day, listening to music, reading articles on nerve.com, and generally wasting away my day whilst feeling artistic - and when I say "artistic," what I mean is "eccentric."
I've written twenty pages for my creative writing class while under the influence, and now that the effects are slowly passing, I want to be productive. There are papers to write, orphans to teach, money to make. I'm thinking about my artistic endeavors and realizing that I could always play the "damaged beyond repair card." You know what that is, right? That's when a creative person - let's say, a writer - is good at their craft, proficient and all that, but the reason that people continue to read their work is because it's like watching a trainwreck unfold before your eyes. You peer into their psyche and feel - what? grateful? hopeful? disgusted? alive? - because you realize that you may or may relate to them, but you are definitely not so screwed up in the head as to share your general screwed-upedness with the masses.
I can feel myself slipping into manic mode. Pretty soon, no one's gonna see me/hear from me except on-stage and on-line. At least, that's the way it used to be, when I needed to digest a little life. Right now, I'm struggling not to revert to outdated ways while hanging on to my sense of self...
Fuck this. My keyboard is sticking and I need to write papers...
End.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Sex Toy Review: Adam & Eve's Tingle Tip Waterproof Vibe
Perusing the packaging of Adam & Eve’s Tingle Tip Waterproof Vibe left me slightly stumped. Not only were the tapered 9 inches of purple pleasure-provider less than plump, but it purported to stimulate “you special secret spot.” Now, I love the written word almost as much as I love sex, but what’s up with the assonant ambiguity? Couldn’t they have been more clear on their claim of g-spot concentration? And why the poor grammar?
Setting aside my spelling sensitivities, I slipped the vibe into my hand and smelled it. (Strange, I know, but it’s a habit made necessary after having a roommate who liked to “borrow” even my most intimate of intimates.) I’m used to the sweat of silicone on new merch, but what I found was a slick that smelled liked someone had smoked pot and rubbed the roach around the vibe’s entire nubbed surface.
Lucky for me, the odor didn’t gross me out. Instead, it took me back to the seedy basement parties of my teenage-hood, full of fun times, phalluses, and pheromones. My imagination flush with fantastic memories, I took two AA batteries from my nightstand (which weren’t included), toweled off the toy, and went to town.
The flexibility of the vibrator was awesome for reaching a girl’s number one “hard to reach spot”, but I kept getting distracted by the protrusion which held the hang cord an inch from the base. Not only did the edge of this bump feel unexpectedly hard and sharp as it entered my hole, but the annoyance it caused distracted me from finding my g-spot.
G-spot stimulation is, after all, is the name of the game when it comes to this particular vibe. Built to concentrate quakes from its tip to that hard-to-find corner, its shape and limberness definitely assisted in locating my g-spot. Once found, however, traditional use of the vibe didn’t have the goods to finish me off. Too tiny to focus on the full area of my g-spot, the tapered tip made me feverish but was ultimately futile.
Unwilling to accept the device’s futility - and thisclose to cumming - I used the concentrated oomph of the tip on my clit while hugging the rest of the vibe around the curve of my slit. This definitely did the trick.
After having seized in self-indulgence for some time, it then dawned on me that the assonant ambiguity of the vibe’s claim might have been intentional - and that’s when I decided to try anal penetration with the vibe.
The tapering of the vibe made it easy for even an anal novice like myself to purge of her inhibitions - and man, was it worth it! The knob at the vibe’s base made it easy to control the vibe’s intensity - regardless of what angle it was being used in. And the concentration of quakes from its tip felt divine as it was lunged deeper into my backside.
I only have two criticisms for this vibe: that it wasn’t exactly “whisper quiet” (as advertised on the package), and that it has that pesky nub for a hang cord (Who needs a hang cord for their vibe, anyway?). The important thing, however, is how I felt after using it. It was as if I’d just left one of those high school parties that the vibe’s smell reminded me of: I was sexually satiated and happily high.
Lying, Unintentionally
She asked me
if I got support from my family,
And without hesitation,
I nodded affirmatively.
if I got support from my family,
And without hesitation,
I nodded affirmatively.
My well-adjusted demeanor
couldn't help but hide
The feelings of worthlessness
that I kept bottled inside.
The truth is,
I was crying every night.
I was considering
giving up the fight for my life.
Despite all the good I was doing,
it just wasn't enough.
Mom and Dad call me a failure,
and I can't handle that stuff.
Back in the day, they were happy
to see me wishing on stars.
Now there's no time for fantasizing;
Family debt is off the charts.
None of my daydreaming
or imagination does any good.
And though I've risen to every challenge,
Whisper "Give up," and, believe me, I would.
When she asked about support from family,
I couldn't yet handle the truth.
That all along, I've been projecting positivity.
While reeling from trespasses against my youth.
More of the Same
I'm soooo stressed right now with classes. I feel like I'm a good student who just can't catch a break. I shoulda known better than to take classes with a professor who runs hot and cold on me, but I figured I needed the classes to graduate so I'd do it. I was doing well, coming to class every week, but finances at home are really bad, so I was having a hard time keeping up with the classwork. At one point, I worked 60+ hours a week just to help out at home, and I'm sure if I was still going to my shrink, she'd say I was in need of anxiety/depression meds. I lost 14 lbs. in 2 weeks. I couldn't concentrate. I wasn't sleeping. I figured, I'd keep on going to class, explain my situation to the professor, and hand in my papers asap.
Then, a few weeks ago, he screamed on me. Like, SERIOUSLY, veins-popping-from-his neck, spit on my face, his face deep crimson, military-style, screamed on me. He made an example out of me in front of the class, for what he was capable of if a student wasn't handing in their work on-time. And something broke in me. The frustration of my situation was all I could take, and I couldn't handle the added stress caused by a professor screaming on me. Call me sensitive, but I need to be treated with a certain amount of understanding and respect - especially when my world is fall around my ears and I'm struggling.
The next week, I handed in some of my work, but he seemed dismissive of me. I didn't know what else to do. It took so much energy just to reach out to him and let him know that I'm still doing my work and that I really am trying to keep up, and his reaction was the equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders. No words of encouragement, no attempt at figuring out a Plan B. I stopped attending class.
I stopped going to my Penguin internship in order to free up some time for academics. I've been giving myself a lot more time to relax during the past couple of days. I'm becoming more focused and more driven. All I can think of doing is handing in my papers, coming to class, explaining myself to the professor, and hoping for the best. The truth is, though, in a lot of ways, I need a break from life. The past month has been hell for me. I'm talking about insomnia-and-indigestion-inducing, can't-even-afford-to-buy-a-turkey-for-Thanksgiving, my-parents-calling-me-worthless-cuz-I-can't-earn-enough-for-the-family-despite-the-fact-that-I'm-working-around-the-clock, eyes-swollen-shut-from-crying-so-much HELL.
Which is why I'm leaving. I can never fully extract myself from my family because our relationship is symbiotic, and despite all the crap they put me through, I love them. I need to make cash asap, and I need to be done with school. Only, I know what the job market's like, and I know I won't be able to earn much more than I'm currently earning after I get my English/Philosophy degree. So I've decided to go to the Philippines (where my baby brother's going to school), take up my uncle's offer to teach English in an orphanage in his district (he's a councilman), and earn a BS in physicians assistance (in a US-accredited program). It should take less than 3 years to complete, and during that time, an affluent friend of mine has agreed to loan me cash to help my family. After I earn my degree (which will cost a combined 3-year total of about $1500), I'll have good earning potential, so I can pay him back. And in the process, I get to take a break from the stress of NY living.
So that's my plan. At first, it felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders simply because I figured out a plan. Now another weight (just as heavy) has replaced it; I need to make it happen. I need to pass my classes this semester, transfer my credits to the Philippines, and continue with life. If I don't pass my classes, the whole plan goes down the toilet and I'm not sure what to do next. I just know that I was very close to going crazy. The way I was going, with my frustration at its boiling point and suicidal/homocidal thoughts circling my brain, it was only a matter of time before I did something crazy. For the time being, I've been given some hope. I have a plan and I'm doing what I have to do to get by. I just hope all goes well. I don't know how I would react to more disappointment. I'm gonna get to work. I'll talk to you soon. I hope things are going well with you.
Love,Maria
----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: ??? Date: 01 Dec 2007, 08:49
Leaving the country in a few months??? Yes, we DO need to update each other!!
Then, a few weeks ago, he screamed on me. Like, SERIOUSLY, veins-popping-from-his neck, spit on my face, his face deep crimson, military-style, screamed on me. He made an example out of me in front of the class, for what he was capable of if a student wasn't handing in their work on-time. And something broke in me. The frustration of my situation was all I could take, and I couldn't handle the added stress caused by a professor screaming on me. Call me sensitive, but I need to be treated with a certain amount of understanding and respect - especially when my world is fall around my ears and I'm struggling.
The next week, I handed in some of my work, but he seemed dismissive of me. I didn't know what else to do. It took so much energy just to reach out to him and let him know that I'm still doing my work and that I really am trying to keep up, and his reaction was the equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders. No words of encouragement, no attempt at figuring out a Plan B. I stopped attending class.
I stopped going to my Penguin internship in order to free up some time for academics. I've been giving myself a lot more time to relax during the past couple of days. I'm becoming more focused and more driven. All I can think of doing is handing in my papers, coming to class, explaining myself to the professor, and hoping for the best. The truth is, though, in a lot of ways, I need a break from life. The past month has been hell for me. I'm talking about insomnia-and-indigestion-inducing, can't-even-afford-to-buy-a-turkey-for-Thanksgiving, my-parents-calling-me-worthless-cuz-I-can't-earn-enough-for-the-family-despite-the-fact-that-I'm-working-around-the-clock, eyes-swollen-shut-from-crying-so-much HELL.
Which is why I'm leaving. I can never fully extract myself from my family because our relationship is symbiotic, and despite all the crap they put me through, I love them. I need to make cash asap, and I need to be done with school. Only, I know what the job market's like, and I know I won't be able to earn much more than I'm currently earning after I get my English/Philosophy degree. So I've decided to go to the Philippines (where my baby brother's going to school), take up my uncle's offer to teach English in an orphanage in his district (he's a councilman), and earn a BS in physicians assistance (in a US-accredited program). It should take less than 3 years to complete, and during that time, an affluent friend of mine has agreed to loan me cash to help my family. After I earn my degree (which will cost a combined 3-year total of about $1500), I'll have good earning potential, so I can pay him back. And in the process, I get to take a break from the stress of NY living.
So that's my plan. At first, it felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders simply because I figured out a plan. Now another weight (just as heavy) has replaced it; I need to make it happen. I need to pass my classes this semester, transfer my credits to the Philippines, and continue with life. If I don't pass my classes, the whole plan goes down the toilet and I'm not sure what to do next. I just know that I was very close to going crazy. The way I was going, with my frustration at its boiling point and suicidal/homocidal thoughts circling my brain, it was only a matter of time before I did something crazy. For the time being, I've been given some hope. I have a plan and I'm doing what I have to do to get by. I just hope all goes well. I don't know how I would react to more disappointment. I'm gonna get to work. I'll talk to you soon. I hope things are going well with you.
Love,Maria
----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: ??? Date: 01 Dec 2007, 08:49
Leaving the country in a few months??? Yes, we DO need to update each other!!
Saturday, December 1, 2007
PIECES: Chapter 3
Acceptance, Philips the orderly knew, was a funny thing. It had nothing to do with truth or falsehood, good or bad, being real or fake. Acceptance, as far as Philips the orderly was concerned, was like any other point of contention: it boiled down to a single question. The question when dealing with matters of acceptance was (like all the other questions) quick, direct and to the point: Could you look yourself in the mirror?
Philips the orderly could accept the fact that he would never grow another inch. He could accept the fact that his mother would always be the most beautiful woman he’d ever know. But gay marriage?
Gay marriage, Philips the orderly had decided as he mopped floors in the psychiatric ward, was something he just couldn’t accept. It was cra-zy. Not just crazy, but the kind of crazy that made Philips’s skin crawl, even after tending to a senile grandmother who repeatedly called him “Niggerboy” and assured him of its political correctness because she was his relation, his “sister”, of the same flesh and blood because the colors of their skin were within two shades of one another on a Maybelline cosmetic counter.
Philips knew well the feeling that grew in the pit of his stomach every time he thought of gay people. It was the same kind of feeling summoned by dark, stormy nights, a Roman Polanski movie called Rosemary’s Baby, and the wail of Philips’s mother’s newborn during certain scenes of that movie. This feeling was further perpetuated by the fact that Philips’s mother’s four-year old had a knack for appearing in blackened doorways during the dead of night, his rather misshapen features all the more skewed by the putrid green light cast by Incredible Hulk night lights that had been purchased in bulk and distributed around the house, his very presence a reminder that life has a way of making unexpected twists and turns.
Everything about the appearance of little Andy in the dark scared the bejesus out of Philips. He reckoned the thing that scared him about Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, Children of the Corn - other than the fact that he was easily scared by any kind of self expression that depicted a less than pleasant reality - was the very idea that Evil (with a capital E, of course) was born, and not made.
Philips the orderly subscribed to the idea that nothing truly evil could be born into the world. He was a well-meaning, churchgoing bachelor who never had the balls to ask a beautiful girl out on a date. He exercised because studies conducted by individuals who were paid to know more than most people know suggested that regular exercise was good for him. Likewise, Philips believed in God because, from the time he was in diapers, his mother, the reformed Lutheran turned Muslim who became a born-again Christian in her late thirties (and consequently joined a congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses only to grow tired of door-to-door soliciting and become a vegetarian Jew), had told him that God was a righteous and good entity, to whom Philips was to dutifully thrust the entirety of his trust.
During their breaks, and in between performing appropriated tasks, orderlies, janitors and (occasionally) LPNs crowded in the men’s locker room and rolled dice. Now and again, responsibilities were put on the line in lieu of money; men would scream out their chores, call out the usual, “yous gots to do it if I win”, and roll the dice enthusiastically. It was in this way that janitors were made to dispose of human waste from bedpans, and orderlies were made to scrub mildewed bathroom floors. Now and again, an LPN would be sentenced a similar fate. And, very often, Philips found himself fulfilling his duties as an orderly while balancing those of a janitor. He did this even though, the good, law-abiding citizen that he was, he never gambled.
“Is that Mama’s Boy?”, a ruddy, dark voice laughed as Philips entered the locker room.
“Sure is,” another answered.
“Hey, Mama’s Boy!”, the ruddy, dark voice called out. “Come over here, I wanna ask you something.” Several others chuckled, the general hardness of their tones mingling so that they formed one large, strange and moist voice as all eyes followed the rolling dice.
“Why you gonna call him over here for?”, a short, stocky man wearing a soiled T-shirt snickered. “Ain’t like he got no money or nothin’.”
Philips appeared at the edge of the lockers, his eyes glued to the floor.
“You got any money on you, Mama’s Boy?”, Stinky, a heavily-set, middle-aged ex-boxer, taunted.
Philips met the man’s gaze, then turned his attention back to the floor. “Nah,” he managed to say in response. “I ain’t got no money.”
“Talk good when you talk to me, boy,” Stinky growled.
The young man swept all signs of sarcasm from his face. “No, sir,” he properly enunciated, his steady voice pure and sweet as fresh honey as he looked the man in the eye. “I don’t have any money.”
The three men behind the ex-boxer chuckled as a half dozen or so other men proceeded to roll the dice again.
“Your paycheck still go straight to your bank account, Mama’s Boy?”, Stinky asked amidst the bustle of hustling going on.
“Yes, sir,” Philips said with a nod. “It does.”
“That’s the way yo’ mama like it, ain’t it?”, Stinky laughed, his gold-capped teeth gleaming at his carefully-chosen words.
Philips, unable to meet the man’s gaze any longer, looked down at the floor again. “Yes,” he mumbled in response. “That’s the way she likes it.”
“I’m sure it is,” Stinky said in a low voice, a twinkle in his eye. “Now go on and git. I hear yo’ mama’s throwin’ a barbecue tonight. I bet she wants you to pick up some cabbage for ’slaw or somethin’, right? Somethin’ like that from the store?”
Philips nodded, then walked away. The man to the left of Stinky, whose skin was the color of butter pecan ice cream, laughed as Philips walked out of the locker room. “How you know what his mama want, Stinky?”
The ex-boxer smiled knowingly. “I know a lot about his mama,” he said.
***
Working the night shift afforded Philips many privileges. He was able to see his mother and her children every day. He was also able to lounge about his mother’s house, wearing only boxers and a T-shirt, and do, basically, nothing. As far as he and his mother were concerned, his only responsibilities were to earn money for their family, to love their family, and to love God. Since Philips did a good job of maintaining these responsibilities, he never felt the need to feel badly about himself.
But others? Of course Philips felt badly about other people!
Other people, to a man like Philips the orderly, were strange creatures. The way Philips understood it, if there was one thing that he had learned throughout all of his years at the psychiatric ward, it was the difference between sanity and insanity, and desiring a mountain of attention was simply uncalled for, unnecessary, abnormal, insane. Likewise, drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes before the legal age, doing any kind of illicit drugs, performing any kind of defunct act like listening to disco - all of that categorized an individual as insane. See, it boiled down to one thing and one thing only when you dealt with Philips the orderly: a question. And, in this case, the question was, “Could it be helped?”
Stinky, the janitor with gold caps and a bad attitude, could not help but be a jackass - and Philips hated him. He hated the way Stinky patronized him, humiliated him, shamed him time and time again. He hated the way Stinky picked on . Most of all, he hated the way Stinky blackmailed him. After all, young man that Philips was, it wasn’t his fault that he had allowed his raging libido to get the most of him on that warm, Spring day two years previously. And it was certainly not his fault that Stinky had happened to walk to the back of the locker room on that same day, only to catch Philips in the act of relieving himself of his raging libido. Most of all, it was definitely not Philips’s fault that the picture from his wallet had provided the necessary visual aide to achieving climax, and that Stinky had taken it upon himself to collect that picture as evidence. . .
Naturally, if it had all been avoided, there would be no reason for blackmail, no way that Philips would have become Stinky’s lackey - but that was all beside the point.
Could any of it have been helped? Certainly not, according to Philips’s rationale. Although many passages of the Bible warned that masturbation was a sin, Philips’s mother (who was the supreme judge of all things religious) had said to the contrary. And the fact that Philips had had to relieve himself right then and there? It was all God’s doing. God - or so Philips believed - had willed it so. And who was he to question the authority of God? Wasn’t Job deprived of his wealth and affluence? His family and his farm? And didn’t he dutifully trust God? Surely, Philips could trust God in the matter of a spied masturbation!
For a moment, as Philips walked down the refrigerated vegetable aisle of the local grocery store, he compared himself to the psychiatric patients that he tended every day. Doing so felt like an intrinsic extension of his thinking, since he was, after all, submitting himself to the whims of a janitor for the purpose of having his masturbating habits kept secret. This was indeed enough reason for anyone to think him worthy of institutionalization.
As soon as these thoughts registered in his mind, they were discarded with a violent physical flourish, so that Philips looked like he was swatting at invisible killer bees. He quickened his pace until a display of freshly cut flowers caught his eye. Then a pair of familiar faces obstructed his view.
“I thought that was you!”, greeted an elderly man whose skin looked like shaved milk chocolate. “Gloria and I were just talking about your mom’s barbecue! We’re already looking forward to her famous coleslaw!”
Philips greeted the elderly couple warmly.
“Are those flowers for your mom?”, the elderly woman asked, her short, gray curls swinging behind her as she spoke. “I know she loves lilacs!”
“Yes,” Philips answered with a smile. “They’re for my mom.” An awkward pause followed, then a quick, deliberate blinking of his eyes. “How are you, Mr. Perkins? I heard your knees’ve been giving you trouble lately?”
“Oh, I’m okay, I’m okay,” the old man chuckled, a warm thought putting a smile on his face. “Our granddaughter - the doctor? She’s in town, so she’s checking up on me every chance she gets.”
“Say,” his wife said, a glimmer of mischief in her old eyes, “why don’t we ask her to come along tonight? You two can meet, maybe exchange telephone numbers. . .”
“That’s a great idea!”, her husband exclaimed. “Josephine would love to meet Malcolm!” He saw the boy cringe at the mentioning of his given name, then added, “Surely you didn’t expect us to call you by your last name, like we were your friends from around the neighborhood!”
“Yes, Malcolm Xavier Philips,” Mrs. Perkins said, mockingly, “we’ve known you since you were in diapers, know practically everything about you and your mom.” She laughed, then added, “We’ve known her since she was in diapers, too.”
Her husband joined in laughing heartily. “I just wish we could see your brothers more often.”
Philips nodded his head earnestly. “They’re getting big,” he said of his mother’s two other children. “Andy’s gonna be in kindergarten next Fall, and Julius is five months old now.”
“Five months old,” Gloria Perkins echoed with a shudder. “I can’t believe five months have passed already!”
“Neither can I,” Philips replied, wearily. Before the couple could make any other inquiries, Philips politely took his leave of them. He could almost hear the gears of Gloria Perkins’s mind turning, the rusty cogs threatening to come to a conclusion about the identity of the boys’ father. After he was out of earshot, the elderly couple’s conversation turned to all things concerning the neighborhood: the soaring real estate values, the strange family that had moved in down the street, gossip about the identity of Anita Philips’s lover. They laughed at the thought that the forty-five year old woman had been able to keep her lover’s identity a secret for so long, and then Gloria Perkins’s face became altogether thoughtful as she considered the young man whom they had seen.
“Malcolm is certainly a good boy,” she said as she inspected an avocado. “We should definitely call Josephine and ask her if she’d like to come along tonight.”
“I don’t know,” her husband said, shaking his ashen, shaved-chocolate face. “He didn’t look too pleased at the idea of meeting anyone.” He stopped abruptly, then implored aloud, “I wonder, maybe he has his own secret lover?”
The elderly woman laughed at the suggestion. “Like mother, like son, you mean?”, she asked, her gaze slanted to convey her disbelief.
“You never know.”
“Maybe,” the wife said, thoughtfully, as she put an avocado in her shopping cart. “But could you just imagine? Our Josephine with Malcolm? What a wonderful couple they would make! He’s such a good young man! Always thinking about his mother, and you know what they say about the way a man treats his mother and the way he treats his wife!”
“Certainly,” said the husband, as he recalled the proverb. “Malcolm is excellent husband material - so sturdy and reliable! And wholesome, too!” He took a moment to study a display of prunes as he stewed in his words, then said, off-handedly, “Did you know, the only picture he keeps in his wallet is one of his mother?”
Philips the orderly could accept the fact that he would never grow another inch. He could accept the fact that his mother would always be the most beautiful woman he’d ever know. But gay marriage?
Gay marriage, Philips the orderly had decided as he mopped floors in the psychiatric ward, was something he just couldn’t accept. It was cra-zy. Not just crazy, but the kind of crazy that made Philips’s skin crawl, even after tending to a senile grandmother who repeatedly called him “Niggerboy” and assured him of its political correctness because she was his relation, his “sister”, of the same flesh and blood because the colors of their skin were within two shades of one another on a Maybelline cosmetic counter.
Philips knew well the feeling that grew in the pit of his stomach every time he thought of gay people. It was the same kind of feeling summoned by dark, stormy nights, a Roman Polanski movie called Rosemary’s Baby, and the wail of Philips’s mother’s newborn during certain scenes of that movie. This feeling was further perpetuated by the fact that Philips’s mother’s four-year old had a knack for appearing in blackened doorways during the dead of night, his rather misshapen features all the more skewed by the putrid green light cast by Incredible Hulk night lights that had been purchased in bulk and distributed around the house, his very presence a reminder that life has a way of making unexpected twists and turns.
Everything about the appearance of little Andy in the dark scared the bejesus out of Philips. He reckoned the thing that scared him about Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, Children of the Corn - other than the fact that he was easily scared by any kind of self expression that depicted a less than pleasant reality - was the very idea that Evil (with a capital E, of course) was born, and not made.
Philips the orderly subscribed to the idea that nothing truly evil could be born into the world. He was a well-meaning, churchgoing bachelor who never had the balls to ask a beautiful girl out on a date. He exercised because studies conducted by individuals who were paid to know more than most people know suggested that regular exercise was good for him. Likewise, Philips believed in God because, from the time he was in diapers, his mother, the reformed Lutheran turned Muslim who became a born-again Christian in her late thirties (and consequently joined a congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses only to grow tired of door-to-door soliciting and become a vegetarian Jew), had told him that God was a righteous and good entity, to whom Philips was to dutifully thrust the entirety of his trust.
During their breaks, and in between performing appropriated tasks, orderlies, janitors and (occasionally) LPNs crowded in the men’s locker room and rolled dice. Now and again, responsibilities were put on the line in lieu of money; men would scream out their chores, call out the usual, “yous gots to do it if I win”, and roll the dice enthusiastically. It was in this way that janitors were made to dispose of human waste from bedpans, and orderlies were made to scrub mildewed bathroom floors. Now and again, an LPN would be sentenced a similar fate. And, very often, Philips found himself fulfilling his duties as an orderly while balancing those of a janitor. He did this even though, the good, law-abiding citizen that he was, he never gambled.
“Is that Mama’s Boy?”, a ruddy, dark voice laughed as Philips entered the locker room.
“Sure is,” another answered.
“Hey, Mama’s Boy!”, the ruddy, dark voice called out. “Come over here, I wanna ask you something.” Several others chuckled, the general hardness of their tones mingling so that they formed one large, strange and moist voice as all eyes followed the rolling dice.
“Why you gonna call him over here for?”, a short, stocky man wearing a soiled T-shirt snickered. “Ain’t like he got no money or nothin’.”
Philips appeared at the edge of the lockers, his eyes glued to the floor.
“You got any money on you, Mama’s Boy?”, Stinky, a heavily-set, middle-aged ex-boxer, taunted.
Philips met the man’s gaze, then turned his attention back to the floor. “Nah,” he managed to say in response. “I ain’t got no money.”
“Talk good when you talk to me, boy,” Stinky growled.
The young man swept all signs of sarcasm from his face. “No, sir,” he properly enunciated, his steady voice pure and sweet as fresh honey as he looked the man in the eye. “I don’t have any money.”
The three men behind the ex-boxer chuckled as a half dozen or so other men proceeded to roll the dice again.
“Your paycheck still go straight to your bank account, Mama’s Boy?”, Stinky asked amidst the bustle of hustling going on.
“Yes, sir,” Philips said with a nod. “It does.”
“That’s the way yo’ mama like it, ain’t it?”, Stinky laughed, his gold-capped teeth gleaming at his carefully-chosen words.
Philips, unable to meet the man’s gaze any longer, looked down at the floor again. “Yes,” he mumbled in response. “That’s the way she likes it.”
“I’m sure it is,” Stinky said in a low voice, a twinkle in his eye. “Now go on and git. I hear yo’ mama’s throwin’ a barbecue tonight. I bet she wants you to pick up some cabbage for ’slaw or somethin’, right? Somethin’ like that from the store?”
Philips nodded, then walked away. The man to the left of Stinky, whose skin was the color of butter pecan ice cream, laughed as Philips walked out of the locker room. “How you know what his mama want, Stinky?”
The ex-boxer smiled knowingly. “I know a lot about his mama,” he said.
***
Working the night shift afforded Philips many privileges. He was able to see his mother and her children every day. He was also able to lounge about his mother’s house, wearing only boxers and a T-shirt, and do, basically, nothing. As far as he and his mother were concerned, his only responsibilities were to earn money for their family, to love their family, and to love God. Since Philips did a good job of maintaining these responsibilities, he never felt the need to feel badly about himself.
But others? Of course Philips felt badly about other people!
Other people, to a man like Philips the orderly, were strange creatures. The way Philips understood it, if there was one thing that he had learned throughout all of his years at the psychiatric ward, it was the difference between sanity and insanity, and desiring a mountain of attention was simply uncalled for, unnecessary, abnormal, insane. Likewise, drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes before the legal age, doing any kind of illicit drugs, performing any kind of defunct act like listening to disco - all of that categorized an individual as insane. See, it boiled down to one thing and one thing only when you dealt with Philips the orderly: a question. And, in this case, the question was, “Could it be helped?”
Stinky, the janitor with gold caps and a bad attitude, could not help but be a jackass - and Philips hated him. He hated the way Stinky patronized him, humiliated him, shamed him time and time again. He hated the way Stinky picked on . Most of all, he hated the way Stinky blackmailed him. After all, young man that Philips was, it wasn’t his fault that he had allowed his raging libido to get the most of him on that warm, Spring day two years previously. And it was certainly not his fault that Stinky had happened to walk to the back of the locker room on that same day, only to catch Philips in the act of relieving himself of his raging libido. Most of all, it was definitely not Philips’s fault that the picture from his wallet had provided the necessary visual aide to achieving climax, and that Stinky had taken it upon himself to collect that picture as evidence. . .
Naturally, if it had all been avoided, there would be no reason for blackmail, no way that Philips would have become Stinky’s lackey - but that was all beside the point.
Could any of it have been helped? Certainly not, according to Philips’s rationale. Although many passages of the Bible warned that masturbation was a sin, Philips’s mother (who was the supreme judge of all things religious) had said to the contrary. And the fact that Philips had had to relieve himself right then and there? It was all God’s doing. God - or so Philips believed - had willed it so. And who was he to question the authority of God? Wasn’t Job deprived of his wealth and affluence? His family and his farm? And didn’t he dutifully trust God? Surely, Philips could trust God in the matter of a spied masturbation!
For a moment, as Philips walked down the refrigerated vegetable aisle of the local grocery store, he compared himself to the psychiatric patients that he tended every day. Doing so felt like an intrinsic extension of his thinking, since he was, after all, submitting himself to the whims of a janitor for the purpose of having his masturbating habits kept secret. This was indeed enough reason for anyone to think him worthy of institutionalization.
As soon as these thoughts registered in his mind, they were discarded with a violent physical flourish, so that Philips looked like he was swatting at invisible killer bees. He quickened his pace until a display of freshly cut flowers caught his eye. Then a pair of familiar faces obstructed his view.
“I thought that was you!”, greeted an elderly man whose skin looked like shaved milk chocolate. “Gloria and I were just talking about your mom’s barbecue! We’re already looking forward to her famous coleslaw!”
Philips greeted the elderly couple warmly.
“Are those flowers for your mom?”, the elderly woman asked, her short, gray curls swinging behind her as she spoke. “I know she loves lilacs!”
“Yes,” Philips answered with a smile. “They’re for my mom.” An awkward pause followed, then a quick, deliberate blinking of his eyes. “How are you, Mr. Perkins? I heard your knees’ve been giving you trouble lately?”
“Oh, I’m okay, I’m okay,” the old man chuckled, a warm thought putting a smile on his face. “Our granddaughter - the doctor? She’s in town, so she’s checking up on me every chance she gets.”
“Say,” his wife said, a glimmer of mischief in her old eyes, “why don’t we ask her to come along tonight? You two can meet, maybe exchange telephone numbers. . .”
“That’s a great idea!”, her husband exclaimed. “Josephine would love to meet Malcolm!” He saw the boy cringe at the mentioning of his given name, then added, “Surely you didn’t expect us to call you by your last name, like we were your friends from around the neighborhood!”
“Yes, Malcolm Xavier Philips,” Mrs. Perkins said, mockingly, “we’ve known you since you were in diapers, know practically everything about you and your mom.” She laughed, then added, “We’ve known her since she was in diapers, too.”
Her husband joined in laughing heartily. “I just wish we could see your brothers more often.”
Philips nodded his head earnestly. “They’re getting big,” he said of his mother’s two other children. “Andy’s gonna be in kindergarten next Fall, and Julius is five months old now.”
“Five months old,” Gloria Perkins echoed with a shudder. “I can’t believe five months have passed already!”
“Neither can I,” Philips replied, wearily. Before the couple could make any other inquiries, Philips politely took his leave of them. He could almost hear the gears of Gloria Perkins’s mind turning, the rusty cogs threatening to come to a conclusion about the identity of the boys’ father. After he was out of earshot, the elderly couple’s conversation turned to all things concerning the neighborhood: the soaring real estate values, the strange family that had moved in down the street, gossip about the identity of Anita Philips’s lover. They laughed at the thought that the forty-five year old woman had been able to keep her lover’s identity a secret for so long, and then Gloria Perkins’s face became altogether thoughtful as she considered the young man whom they had seen.
“Malcolm is certainly a good boy,” she said as she inspected an avocado. “We should definitely call Josephine and ask her if she’d like to come along tonight.”
“I don’t know,” her husband said, shaking his ashen, shaved-chocolate face. “He didn’t look too pleased at the idea of meeting anyone.” He stopped abruptly, then implored aloud, “I wonder, maybe he has his own secret lover?”
The elderly woman laughed at the suggestion. “Like mother, like son, you mean?”, she asked, her gaze slanted to convey her disbelief.
“You never know.”
“Maybe,” the wife said, thoughtfully, as she put an avocado in her shopping cart. “But could you just imagine? Our Josephine with Malcolm? What a wonderful couple they would make! He’s such a good young man! Always thinking about his mother, and you know what they say about the way a man treats his mother and the way he treats his wife!”
“Certainly,” said the husband, as he recalled the proverb. “Malcolm is excellent husband material - so sturdy and reliable! And wholesome, too!” He took a moment to study a display of prunes as he stewed in his words, then said, off-handedly, “Did you know, the only picture he keeps in his wallet is one of his mother?”
PIECES: Chapter 2
The room could have been beautiful. It could have been peaceful. It could have been a haven away from the bustle of day-to-day living, a minimalist’s answer to chaos. There was no reason for it not to be.
But it was a small room with hard walls and one cheap table in its center, and the suffocating silence existing within the room flung itself from one hard white wall onto another. The subtle sheen of the walls was easily ignored by those who didn’t search for it. The calm stillness that could have been interpreted as safe was instead a strange and heavy precursor of doom.
There were cracks in those gorgeously painted walls, and an uneasiness in that fog of silence - microscopic flaws that served to deprive everything of its innate beauty, so that even “innateness” did not exist in and of itself.
Of course, there was another reason that the room lacked an easygoing nature, a more obvious excuse for its uncomfortable air: the room was the culmination of years upon years of hard work on the part of scientific researchers who desired to discern the most beneficial atmosphere in which to conduct the psychiatric evaluations of juvenile offenders.
And, oh yes, a psychiatrist had killed herself the week before in a room down the hall - that was another reason for the uneasy tone. (But the room’s construction? That was the main cause of the room’s disconcerting mood. Its having been constructed at all was a sure sign of this.)
Angela Moreno sat in a white lounge chair, feeling altogether quite comfortable as she smoked a cigarette. She faced the door, which was constructed of wood because the board of elite professionals hired to figure out what material would be best to use in the construction of a door had decided that wood was the most comforting of building materials. Every now and again, as she awaited the voice of the doctor to arise from its dormancy, Angela Moreno uncrossed her arms, dangled whichever hand held the cigarette in whatever direction her limb chose, and tapped ash onto whatever surface would catch it. By the time the doctor had looked up from the handwritten story in his calm hands, there was a powdery, gray ring encircling the teenage girl.
“You’re a very good writer,” the doctor said, the corners of his lips rising slightly as he spoke.
Angela thought she recognized praise in the doctor’s voice but had been too far removed from emotion to be sure. Instead of attempting to decipher the feelings that permeated the doctor’s deep, brisk voice, she languidly stretched a thin, food-depraved arm to her left and used the back of the lounge chair as support for that feeble, elasticized appendage. She then spied an orderly as he stuck his round, dark head into the peephole of the wooden door. And all of a sudden, streams of consciousness filtered through her brain like a short grocery list of connected thoughts. She had seen the dark head in the porthole, then noticed the exceptional whiteness of the room, the giant slab of exit way that existed in the form of a door, the escape that was defined by that portal. . .
Unavoidably, it appeared: the small, solid gray pebble of a question that never hesitated to scream into the vastness of Angela’s brain after all other thoughts had vacated: What did she have to escape to?
The doctor noticed the shadow of emotion that had flitted away from his patient’s dull eyes as soon as it had appeared. He, too, had seen the orderly (a new one, called Philips, he thought) poke his head into the glass porthole of the white, wooden door.
He focused his attention back on Angela, and forced the corners of his lips to raise slightly. The gesture seemed mechanical. It was as if he were commanding the muscles of his face to find the exact tautness that could have been interpreted as amicable. His smile was simply that: a smile. A physical indication of happiness. An attempt at appropriateness. (As most actions are.)
“I liked your story, Angela,” the doctor offered, the corners of his mouth involuntarily rising as he spoke.
Angela nodded listlessly. She was still looking in the direction of the door, but thought she heard the doctor smile. After taking her time to light another cigarette, she nodded her head again.
Somehow, (she thought by watching too much television) Angela had arrived at the conclusion that the next doctor assigned her case would be evil. This doctor, however, was proving her wrong. He was a homely man in his late fifties with gray hair and a receding hairline. His looks and mannerisms were small and imprecise, and his clumsiness could not be mistaken as threatening. He had a habit of peppering pretentiousness into their dialogue, a definite indication that he had decided on his occupation because of some vague (and incorrect) notion that psychiatry would be exciting. Add to all that that, for whatever reason, he reminded Angela of her father. (And neither men, Angela had concluded, were evil.)
There was no reason for Angela to find a connection between the doctor and her father. They shared no similar interests or habits. They did not have the same manner of speech or wear the same cologne. They did not have the same body type or facial structure. Yet Angela could tell that the same qualities were definitely present in both men. And not necessarily the small eccentricities of personality that they shared in common (like leering at the snot they picked out of their noses while stuck in rush-hour traffic). Nor their familiar lack of fashion sense (as displayed by each man's tired wardrobe, circa 1997). Not even the biological make-ups of their average male human bodies (you know: breathing, pissing, farting). What they shared was that indefinable, elusive string that binds all characteristics of a person, making them whole and keeping their personalities and bodies and selves and souls intact so that they are them.
As silence continued to permeate the room, it dawned on Angela that similarities between this particular doctor and her father had been the reason that the former had been assigned her case. But that couldn’t be right. Because if the doctor’s close resemblance to Angela’s father had truly been the reason for their pairing, he would have been the first doctor assigned her case, and this was simply not true. He was the second doctor (another specialist in the field of child psychiatry, no doubt), who would get paid for listening to Angela Moreno speak.
(This, to the patient, was another sign of humanity’s incompetence: it was she who should have been paid for allowing people to listen to her speak.)
“You know,” the doctor began, his white lab coat fading into the white walls, the white chair in which he sat, the short, white carpeting that swallowed the entire floor, “this only works if you cooperate.” He paused in expectation of a response, but the patient only continued to suck on her cigarette and make perfect smoke rings which floated above her head, so he took down some notes.
Angela shifted her weight in the lounge chair. With a deep inhalation of cigarette smoke, she eyed the immaculate mahogany finish of the lounge chair’s backing and dug the short stub hanging perilously from her left hand into that beautiful crisscross pattern of natural wood that the experts had deemed necessary in order to create an atmosphere suitable for the likes of herself. She flung her legs to the left so that she faced the doctor. Her elbows rested on her knees and her back hung like that of a hoodlum. She considered the course of events that could follow from her conversation with the doctor, and decided that it would do no harm to humor him.
“So my last doc killed herself, huh?”, she laughed, her raspy voice scratching the inside of her throat. “That sucks.”
The doctor nodded his head unaffectedly. “Something like that.”
“Did you know her?”, she asked slowly.
He shook his head.
“She was nice.”
“That’s good to know,” the doctor answered, his round, pale face wrinkling as he forced himself to smile. “We like to think of ourselves as accommodating.”
Angela chuckled at the thought of a dozen men in white lab coats, standing in a circle and deciding on the best decorum of the hospital staff. “I’m sure you do.”
The doctor jotted down a few more notes in his notepad, and the patient grew impatient. She tilted her head, and as she did so her chin was raised, as were her eyebrows. The shallow pattern of her breath hinted at the constancy of her smoking, and her eyes opened up as if she were in need of someone to pick an eyelash out of it. All of this, along with her rigid spine and crossed arms, betrayed a frustrated boredom.
She swallowed in the doctor's behavior like it was cod-liver oil: The way his head bent over his notepad as he diligently scribbled, the lack of attention he lavished on the patient, the slackness of his posture even as he hoped to convey a subtle air of authority. A deep inhalation of carcinogenic smoke sunk Angela's moodiness into her practically non-existent gut, so that when she spoke the only emotion conveyed was a shadow of synthetic haughtiness.
"So?"
“So, what?”, the doctor asked as he raised his head.
“Am I getting out of here any time soon?”, Angela asked simply.
The doctor winced. “You’re a smart girl, Angela,” he said sluggishly as he watched the patient roll her eyes. “Your I.Q. is off the charts. I don’t know why you play these cat and mouse games when you know that I know what you’re capable of.”
Angela threw her head back and laughed. “ ‘When you know that I know what you’re capable of,’ ” she repeated. Her small stomach rose slightly and revealed its hardened tone and structure. “Do you realize how funny that is?”, she asked, her catlike eyes twinkling as she casually stretched her limber limbs. “It’s like that episode of Friends when all the characters go around saying, ‘He doesn’t know that I know that he knows.’ ”
The doctor smiled meekly. “Okay.”
“Don’t you watch TV?”, Angela asked, as she tucked a soft tuft of jet black hair behind her ear.
“No,” the doctor replied quietly, “I don’t.”
“A man after my own heart!”
The doctor narrowed his gaze, blinked as if lemon juice had been squirted into his eyes, and cleared his throat. “You do know that Dr.-”
“I know her name.”
“Is there a problem with saying her name out loud?”
“Sure there is,” Angela replied, smiling. “But then, if I explained what the problem with that is, I’d have to explain the problem with everything else.”
“ ‘The problem with everything else?’ ”, he repeated lifelessly.
The psychiatric patient nodded enthusiastically. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” she whispered confidentially, “but there are a lot of crazy people out there.”
The doctor raised an eyebrow at the suggestion. “I see.”
After a moment of deliberation, the doctor said, sternly, “Angela, your case is under review. If I say so, you could be put in jail for an extended period of time.”
“Yes,” Angela replied curtly, “I know.”
“And you also know that I’m talking about jail, right? As in, an actual cell?”
“I know what jail is.”
“Then why aren’t you even attempting to use that intellect of yours to come up with more than some mundane remarks about nothing at all?”
The patient shrugged. “In the end, everything we say is a mundane remark about nothing at all.” She paused to laugh, then, noticing her cigarette to have burnt out, lit another. “Go on and say it,” she dared the doctor, puffing on her cigarette as she did so.
“ ‘Go on and say it’ ?”
“Stop repeating every fucking word I say!”, Angela demanded, pounding her fists onto the overstuffed arm of a chair. “There! I’ve said it! I’ve said ‘fuck’. Now the gloves are off. Now say it!”
“Excuse me?”
“People tiptoe through life when they should be jumping in it,” Angela dully remarked as she stretched out her thin arms. “After I told you that everything we say is a mundane remark about nothing at all, you wanted to say, if only to sound conversational, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’. But you didn’t say a goddamn thing.”
Obviously amused, the doctor furrowed his eyebrows. “And how do you know what I was thinking?”, he chuckled. “Are you a psychic?”
“No,” Angela said confidently, “I’m God.”
She began to laugh, but the certainty in her voice stifled her laughter, so that all that was left was awkward silence.
The doctor, who was very much perturbed with the turn of events, broke the silence with acidic thoughts. “Do you realize that you’ve committed a murder?”, he asked.
All emotion evaporated from Angela’s face.
“Yeah,” she managed to answer through lips that were suddenly chapped, “I’ve realized that.”
“Do you realize that you’ve spent the last year in a government-run psychiatric ward?”
“Yeah,” Angela replied, feeling suddenly naked even though she wore pajamas. “That one’s kind of hard to escape.”
“And the fact that you’ve murdered someone?”, the doctor interjected, grimly. “That isn’t hard to escape?”
For the first time since Angela had been led into the white room, she was uncomfortable. Her assured countenance fell, and she closed her eyes.
“Angela,” the doctor said as soothingly as possible, “you’re a smart girl, I know that you know exactly what to say in order to get out of here.”
“You’re just wondering why I’m not saying any of it?”
The doctor nodded.
“Maybe I know that I’m not rehabilitated?”, she offered, before taking a drag from her cigarette.
The cool air being funneled into the room seemed to roar.
“Is that what you think?”
“Isn’t that what my previous doctor thought?”
The doctor sighed. “Does that matter?”, he asked, resignedly.
“Doesn’t it?”
And then their session was over before it began because Angela was no longer talkative. She had realized early on that this doctor was not like the last, but to what extent this was true, she hadn’t been certain. Now everything was clear, and she didn’t know what to make of it. Her mind was full of information and yet she knew that none of it was useful.
It was as if Angela were being suspended in thin air by a thin cord of sanity. There was nothing for her to do but let gravity do its job.
But it was a small room with hard walls and one cheap table in its center, and the suffocating silence existing within the room flung itself from one hard white wall onto another. The subtle sheen of the walls was easily ignored by those who didn’t search for it. The calm stillness that could have been interpreted as safe was instead a strange and heavy precursor of doom.
There were cracks in those gorgeously painted walls, and an uneasiness in that fog of silence - microscopic flaws that served to deprive everything of its innate beauty, so that even “innateness” did not exist in and of itself.
Of course, there was another reason that the room lacked an easygoing nature, a more obvious excuse for its uncomfortable air: the room was the culmination of years upon years of hard work on the part of scientific researchers who desired to discern the most beneficial atmosphere in which to conduct the psychiatric evaluations of juvenile offenders.
And, oh yes, a psychiatrist had killed herself the week before in a room down the hall - that was another reason for the uneasy tone. (But the room’s construction? That was the main cause of the room’s disconcerting mood. Its having been constructed at all was a sure sign of this.)
Angela Moreno sat in a white lounge chair, feeling altogether quite comfortable as she smoked a cigarette. She faced the door, which was constructed of wood because the board of elite professionals hired to figure out what material would be best to use in the construction of a door had decided that wood was the most comforting of building materials. Every now and again, as she awaited the voice of the doctor to arise from its dormancy, Angela Moreno uncrossed her arms, dangled whichever hand held the cigarette in whatever direction her limb chose, and tapped ash onto whatever surface would catch it. By the time the doctor had looked up from the handwritten story in his calm hands, there was a powdery, gray ring encircling the teenage girl.
“You’re a very good writer,” the doctor said, the corners of his lips rising slightly as he spoke.
Angela thought she recognized praise in the doctor’s voice but had been too far removed from emotion to be sure. Instead of attempting to decipher the feelings that permeated the doctor’s deep, brisk voice, she languidly stretched a thin, food-depraved arm to her left and used the back of the lounge chair as support for that feeble, elasticized appendage. She then spied an orderly as he stuck his round, dark head into the peephole of the wooden door. And all of a sudden, streams of consciousness filtered through her brain like a short grocery list of connected thoughts. She had seen the dark head in the porthole, then noticed the exceptional whiteness of the room, the giant slab of exit way that existed in the form of a door, the escape that was defined by that portal. . .
Unavoidably, it appeared: the small, solid gray pebble of a question that never hesitated to scream into the vastness of Angela’s brain after all other thoughts had vacated: What did she have to escape to?
The doctor noticed the shadow of emotion that had flitted away from his patient’s dull eyes as soon as it had appeared. He, too, had seen the orderly (a new one, called Philips, he thought) poke his head into the glass porthole of the white, wooden door.
He focused his attention back on Angela, and forced the corners of his lips to raise slightly. The gesture seemed mechanical. It was as if he were commanding the muscles of his face to find the exact tautness that could have been interpreted as amicable. His smile was simply that: a smile. A physical indication of happiness. An attempt at appropriateness. (As most actions are.)
“I liked your story, Angela,” the doctor offered, the corners of his mouth involuntarily rising as he spoke.
Angela nodded listlessly. She was still looking in the direction of the door, but thought she heard the doctor smile. After taking her time to light another cigarette, she nodded her head again.
Somehow, (she thought by watching too much television) Angela had arrived at the conclusion that the next doctor assigned her case would be evil. This doctor, however, was proving her wrong. He was a homely man in his late fifties with gray hair and a receding hairline. His looks and mannerisms were small and imprecise, and his clumsiness could not be mistaken as threatening. He had a habit of peppering pretentiousness into their dialogue, a definite indication that he had decided on his occupation because of some vague (and incorrect) notion that psychiatry would be exciting. Add to all that that, for whatever reason, he reminded Angela of her father. (And neither men, Angela had concluded, were evil.)
There was no reason for Angela to find a connection between the doctor and her father. They shared no similar interests or habits. They did not have the same manner of speech or wear the same cologne. They did not have the same body type or facial structure. Yet Angela could tell that the same qualities were definitely present in both men. And not necessarily the small eccentricities of personality that they shared in common (like leering at the snot they picked out of their noses while stuck in rush-hour traffic). Nor their familiar lack of fashion sense (as displayed by each man's tired wardrobe, circa 1997). Not even the biological make-ups of their average male human bodies (you know: breathing, pissing, farting). What they shared was that indefinable, elusive string that binds all characteristics of a person, making them whole and keeping their personalities and bodies and selves and souls intact so that they are them.
As silence continued to permeate the room, it dawned on Angela that similarities between this particular doctor and her father had been the reason that the former had been assigned her case. But that couldn’t be right. Because if the doctor’s close resemblance to Angela’s father had truly been the reason for their pairing, he would have been the first doctor assigned her case, and this was simply not true. He was the second doctor (another specialist in the field of child psychiatry, no doubt), who would get paid for listening to Angela Moreno speak.
(This, to the patient, was another sign of humanity’s incompetence: it was she who should have been paid for allowing people to listen to her speak.)
“You know,” the doctor began, his white lab coat fading into the white walls, the white chair in which he sat, the short, white carpeting that swallowed the entire floor, “this only works if you cooperate.” He paused in expectation of a response, but the patient only continued to suck on her cigarette and make perfect smoke rings which floated above her head, so he took down some notes.
Angela shifted her weight in the lounge chair. With a deep inhalation of cigarette smoke, she eyed the immaculate mahogany finish of the lounge chair’s backing and dug the short stub hanging perilously from her left hand into that beautiful crisscross pattern of natural wood that the experts had deemed necessary in order to create an atmosphere suitable for the likes of herself. She flung her legs to the left so that she faced the doctor. Her elbows rested on her knees and her back hung like that of a hoodlum. She considered the course of events that could follow from her conversation with the doctor, and decided that it would do no harm to humor him.
“So my last doc killed herself, huh?”, she laughed, her raspy voice scratching the inside of her throat. “That sucks.”
The doctor nodded his head unaffectedly. “Something like that.”
“Did you know her?”, she asked slowly.
He shook his head.
“She was nice.”
“That’s good to know,” the doctor answered, his round, pale face wrinkling as he forced himself to smile. “We like to think of ourselves as accommodating.”
Angela chuckled at the thought of a dozen men in white lab coats, standing in a circle and deciding on the best decorum of the hospital staff. “I’m sure you do.”
The doctor jotted down a few more notes in his notepad, and the patient grew impatient. She tilted her head, and as she did so her chin was raised, as were her eyebrows. The shallow pattern of her breath hinted at the constancy of her smoking, and her eyes opened up as if she were in need of someone to pick an eyelash out of it. All of this, along with her rigid spine and crossed arms, betrayed a frustrated boredom.
She swallowed in the doctor's behavior like it was cod-liver oil: The way his head bent over his notepad as he diligently scribbled, the lack of attention he lavished on the patient, the slackness of his posture even as he hoped to convey a subtle air of authority. A deep inhalation of carcinogenic smoke sunk Angela's moodiness into her practically non-existent gut, so that when she spoke the only emotion conveyed was a shadow of synthetic haughtiness.
"So?"
“So, what?”, the doctor asked as he raised his head.
“Am I getting out of here any time soon?”, Angela asked simply.
The doctor winced. “You’re a smart girl, Angela,” he said sluggishly as he watched the patient roll her eyes. “Your I.Q. is off the charts. I don’t know why you play these cat and mouse games when you know that I know what you’re capable of.”
Angela threw her head back and laughed. “ ‘When you know that I know what you’re capable of,’ ” she repeated. Her small stomach rose slightly and revealed its hardened tone and structure. “Do you realize how funny that is?”, she asked, her catlike eyes twinkling as she casually stretched her limber limbs. “It’s like that episode of Friends when all the characters go around saying, ‘He doesn’t know that I know that he knows.’ ”
The doctor smiled meekly. “Okay.”
“Don’t you watch TV?”, Angela asked, as she tucked a soft tuft of jet black hair behind her ear.
“No,” the doctor replied quietly, “I don’t.”
“A man after my own heart!”
The doctor narrowed his gaze, blinked as if lemon juice had been squirted into his eyes, and cleared his throat. “You do know that Dr.-”
“I know her name.”
“Is there a problem with saying her name out loud?”
“Sure there is,” Angela replied, smiling. “But then, if I explained what the problem with that is, I’d have to explain the problem with everything else.”
“ ‘The problem with everything else?’ ”, he repeated lifelessly.
The psychiatric patient nodded enthusiastically. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” she whispered confidentially, “but there are a lot of crazy people out there.”
The doctor raised an eyebrow at the suggestion. “I see.”
After a moment of deliberation, the doctor said, sternly, “Angela, your case is under review. If I say so, you could be put in jail for an extended period of time.”
“Yes,” Angela replied curtly, “I know.”
“And you also know that I’m talking about jail, right? As in, an actual cell?”
“I know what jail is.”
“Then why aren’t you even attempting to use that intellect of yours to come up with more than some mundane remarks about nothing at all?”
The patient shrugged. “In the end, everything we say is a mundane remark about nothing at all.” She paused to laugh, then, noticing her cigarette to have burnt out, lit another. “Go on and say it,” she dared the doctor, puffing on her cigarette as she did so.
“ ‘Go on and say it’ ?”
“Stop repeating every fucking word I say!”, Angela demanded, pounding her fists onto the overstuffed arm of a chair. “There! I’ve said it! I’ve said ‘fuck’. Now the gloves are off. Now say it!”
“Excuse me?”
“People tiptoe through life when they should be jumping in it,” Angela dully remarked as she stretched out her thin arms. “After I told you that everything we say is a mundane remark about nothing at all, you wanted to say, if only to sound conversational, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’. But you didn’t say a goddamn thing.”
Obviously amused, the doctor furrowed his eyebrows. “And how do you know what I was thinking?”, he chuckled. “Are you a psychic?”
“No,” Angela said confidently, “I’m God.”
She began to laugh, but the certainty in her voice stifled her laughter, so that all that was left was awkward silence.
The doctor, who was very much perturbed with the turn of events, broke the silence with acidic thoughts. “Do you realize that you’ve committed a murder?”, he asked.
All emotion evaporated from Angela’s face.
“Yeah,” she managed to answer through lips that were suddenly chapped, “I’ve realized that.”
“Do you realize that you’ve spent the last year in a government-run psychiatric ward?”
“Yeah,” Angela replied, feeling suddenly naked even though she wore pajamas. “That one’s kind of hard to escape.”
“And the fact that you’ve murdered someone?”, the doctor interjected, grimly. “That isn’t hard to escape?”
For the first time since Angela had been led into the white room, she was uncomfortable. Her assured countenance fell, and she closed her eyes.
“Angela,” the doctor said as soothingly as possible, “you’re a smart girl, I know that you know exactly what to say in order to get out of here.”
“You’re just wondering why I’m not saying any of it?”
The doctor nodded.
“Maybe I know that I’m not rehabilitated?”, she offered, before taking a drag from her cigarette.
The cool air being funneled into the room seemed to roar.
“Is that what you think?”
“Isn’t that what my previous doctor thought?”
The doctor sighed. “Does that matter?”, he asked, resignedly.
“Doesn’t it?”
And then their session was over before it began because Angela was no longer talkative. She had realized early on that this doctor was not like the last, but to what extent this was true, she hadn’t been certain. Now everything was clear, and she didn’t know what to make of it. Her mind was full of information and yet she knew that none of it was useful.
It was as if Angela were being suspended in thin air by a thin cord of sanity. There was nothing for her to do but let gravity do its job.
PIECES: Chapter 1
It was nearly midnight, and yet the doctor was still in her office. Shadows were draped over every lampshade, every file cabinet, every inch of her cherry wood desk that had not already been covered by a patient’s file or a ceramic picture frame holding a photograph of one of her children. The strange, sterile scent of hospitals - something like petroleum jelly and overly-starched linen - hung in the air. The only sound within the space in which the doctor sat by herself was the steady tick-tick-tock of a grandfather clock, its long, lean white body an elegant silhouette against the gray of night.
The doctor took no notice of the fact that the grandfather clock’s glass face had been shattered by her own fist the previous day. She did not check her reflection in a mirror, even as she could have easily opened a powder compact and taken note of her fine, even complexion and unwrinkled skin. She did not notice the fact that every thought hiding within the rafters of her mind was directed towards keeping busy, not allowing herself any time to think.
Thinking, she knew subconsciously, was dangerous. In a single moment, she could discover something that had been carefully hidden from her attention and her carefully crafted view of the world could be changed.
A loud thud resounded in the middle of the doctor’s spine, and she was forced to stop writing. Her hunched back suddenly straightened, her spidery frame immediately shuddered. There was a problem. A big problem: she had slipped. She had thought.
“FUCK”, she screamed.
Even then! Even there! After midnight! Within her beautiful office with its pale blue walls and plush wall-to-wall carpeting! Problems, she realized with a violent shake of her head, were bound to find her no matter where she went or what time it was!
Fuck, indeed.
The doctor, her lithe frame diminutive in comparison to the grandfather clock that stood in the middle of the wall, put a shaky hand over her heart. Sporadic tugging at her short, limp hair produced oily clumps of unwashed mahogany brown strands within her fists.
Yes, she conceded with a sigh and a nod, problems would always find her. This was indeed inevitable. Problems have a way of finding every one - no matter how many soccer practices they attend (because mothers are expected to take time out of their busy, non soap opera-watching schedules to watch their ungrateful brats kick a ball in the grass); no matter how many donations they give to the church (because that slut their husband left them for donates two-hundred dollars every Sunday and one can’t very well succumb to defeat twice by the same whore); no matter how many hours they spend volunteering at homeless shelters (because they feel like shit and understand that watching others feel even shittier is a useful pastime).
The doctor was no exception to this rule. For even as she sat in her comfortable, reclining ergonomic chair with its leather backing and luxuriously soft cushion, her soon-to-be-ex-husband was on the phone with his lawyer, talking over the assumptions people could make of a man who received alimony from his ex-wife. Right at that very moment, as the doctor studied a patient’s medical charts, her thirteen-year old son was achieving orgasm as he watched lesbian porn and imagined his father’s anorexic-looking mistress stroking his minuscule cock. And right after, at the same time that the doctor’s white lab coat was happily flittering around her ankles and she filed medical charts away, her own growing (stomach and) suspicion of pregnancy was being confirmed by her own doctor, who had decided on working late to avoid his wife.
But none of that matters.
For right at 12:19 a.m., as the doctor sank into the buttery softness that was her black leather recliner, scanned the room wearily, and felt the need to pee, she spied from the corner of her eye a chart she wished she had filed away without noticing.
Yes, amidst the clutter of floor lamps and file cabinets, shards of glass that fit perfectly into a grandfather clock’s face, long white lab coats that energetically flittered along ankles as a sure sign of happiness, there was room for a stray manila file. There was always room for a stray manila file. Or a homeless kitten. Or a wandering toddler in a mini-mart.
“FUCK!”, the doctor screamed in agony, her attention undiverted. “Fuck me hard!”
Of course, no one heard the doctor’s rhetorical request. And even if someone had, it wouldn’t have mattered.
It was too late.
The doctor had already thought, and she continued to do so. Fucking, kids, her fucking kids, that bastard she used to be married to, the late nights spent waitressing to pay for that bastard’s dentistry degree, going to med school because there was nothing better to do with a Mensa I.Q., deciding it would be “interesting” to treat “kiddie psychos” - it all whizzed past her in a whirl of confusion.
As soon as her mind found a particular tiny crease in her brain (one called Angela Moreno), it stopped working. The doctor closed her eyes and diverted her attention long enough to think of the simple things, the things that used to matter - or perhaps, she conceded, the things that had never mattered before, but on which she had foolishly placed a great deal of importance.
This is what she came up with: her pantyhose was torn, her sixteen-year old daughter always answered the telephone with a bad attitude, the interest rate on her mortgage was too high, Nordstrom’s was having a sale in a week, the embryo growing within her womb would only suffer a similar fate: paying taxes, thinking, dying.
At 5:02 in the morning, with her head hurting from having thought too much, the doctor was at ease. She had run through all of her thoughts. Like a faucet whose waterline had been shut off, she inevitably had nothing else to give, nothing more to push through her vessel. Everything had been used up.
For the first time in her life, she had no questions. That damn kid was right… Everything made sense. When she said that… Nothing could bother her. The mind treats its own ailments. And she hated it.
So she hung herself.
The doctor took no notice of the fact that the grandfather clock’s glass face had been shattered by her own fist the previous day. She did not check her reflection in a mirror, even as she could have easily opened a powder compact and taken note of her fine, even complexion and unwrinkled skin. She did not notice the fact that every thought hiding within the rafters of her mind was directed towards keeping busy, not allowing herself any time to think.
Thinking, she knew subconsciously, was dangerous. In a single moment, she could discover something that had been carefully hidden from her attention and her carefully crafted view of the world could be changed.
A loud thud resounded in the middle of the doctor’s spine, and she was forced to stop writing. Her hunched back suddenly straightened, her spidery frame immediately shuddered. There was a problem. A big problem: she had slipped. She had thought.
“FUCK”, she screamed.
Even then! Even there! After midnight! Within her beautiful office with its pale blue walls and plush wall-to-wall carpeting! Problems, she realized with a violent shake of her head, were bound to find her no matter where she went or what time it was!
Fuck, indeed.
The doctor, her lithe frame diminutive in comparison to the grandfather clock that stood in the middle of the wall, put a shaky hand over her heart. Sporadic tugging at her short, limp hair produced oily clumps of unwashed mahogany brown strands within her fists.
Yes, she conceded with a sigh and a nod, problems would always find her. This was indeed inevitable. Problems have a way of finding every one - no matter how many soccer practices they attend (because mothers are expected to take time out of their busy, non soap opera-watching schedules to watch their ungrateful brats kick a ball in the grass); no matter how many donations they give to the church (because that slut their husband left them for donates two-hundred dollars every Sunday and one can’t very well succumb to defeat twice by the same whore); no matter how many hours they spend volunteering at homeless shelters (because they feel like shit and understand that watching others feel even shittier is a useful pastime).
The doctor was no exception to this rule. For even as she sat in her comfortable, reclining ergonomic chair with its leather backing and luxuriously soft cushion, her soon-to-be-ex-husband was on the phone with his lawyer, talking over the assumptions people could make of a man who received alimony from his ex-wife. Right at that very moment, as the doctor studied a patient’s medical charts, her thirteen-year old son was achieving orgasm as he watched lesbian porn and imagined his father’s anorexic-looking mistress stroking his minuscule cock. And right after, at the same time that the doctor’s white lab coat was happily flittering around her ankles and she filed medical charts away, her own growing (stomach and) suspicion of pregnancy was being confirmed by her own doctor, who had decided on working late to avoid his wife.
But none of that matters.
For right at 12:19 a.m., as the doctor sank into the buttery softness that was her black leather recliner, scanned the room wearily, and felt the need to pee, she spied from the corner of her eye a chart she wished she had filed away without noticing.
Yes, amidst the clutter of floor lamps and file cabinets, shards of glass that fit perfectly into a grandfather clock’s face, long white lab coats that energetically flittered along ankles as a sure sign of happiness, there was room for a stray manila file. There was always room for a stray manila file. Or a homeless kitten. Or a wandering toddler in a mini-mart.
“FUCK!”, the doctor screamed in agony, her attention undiverted. “Fuck me hard!”
Of course, no one heard the doctor’s rhetorical request. And even if someone had, it wouldn’t have mattered.
It was too late.
The doctor had already thought, and she continued to do so. Fucking, kids, her fucking kids, that bastard she used to be married to, the late nights spent waitressing to pay for that bastard’s dentistry degree, going to med school because there was nothing better to do with a Mensa I.Q., deciding it would be “interesting” to treat “kiddie psychos” - it all whizzed past her in a whirl of confusion.
As soon as her mind found a particular tiny crease in her brain (one called Angela Moreno), it stopped working. The doctor closed her eyes and diverted her attention long enough to think of the simple things, the things that used to matter - or perhaps, she conceded, the things that had never mattered before, but on which she had foolishly placed a great deal of importance.
This is what she came up with: her pantyhose was torn, her sixteen-year old daughter always answered the telephone with a bad attitude, the interest rate on her mortgage was too high, Nordstrom’s was having a sale in a week, the embryo growing within her womb would only suffer a similar fate: paying taxes, thinking, dying.
At 5:02 in the morning, with her head hurting from having thought too much, the doctor was at ease. She had run through all of her thoughts. Like a faucet whose waterline had been shut off, she inevitably had nothing else to give, nothing more to push through her vessel. Everything had been used up.
For the first time in her life, she had no questions. That damn kid was right… Everything made sense. When she said that… Nothing could bother her. The mind treats its own ailments. And she hated it.
So she hung herself.
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