I try not to do it, but I’m really fucking good. I can reduce people to tears when I want to, as you can imagine. I have enough verbal flexibility to completely cut someone off at the knees, and I feel very important about saying this because I preach so much forgiveness and patience. The reason I’m able to write about forgiveness and patience so much is that I am a mother fucking instruction manual on what NOT to do. My pain is your gain. I can only hope that I am learning with you, over time, when I go back to my own words and realize I’m not living up to the ideals I’ve presented.

God, sometimes you just want to take the low road so bad. The things that enter into my head that slip through the filter are always the things I should have kept to myself. When things aren’t fair, they’re not just unfair. They’re completely FUBAR. I do not deal in “middle-of-the-road.” I yell a lot. My cats could give me the “stop thinking about it” lecture.

There’s only been 12 years of my life that you haven’t been completely fucking with me. I want those years back. Give them to me. NOW.

See, I just took the low road. And what do I have left? I’m angry again, and I did it to myself on purpose. But that little jolt of anger was a rallying cry to be more than I am. To rise above. To just be the best writer I can be because I’LL SHOW THEM! No, I won’t. And I probably can’t ever, because again, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Anyone who’s known me longer than 10 years has a glazed look on their faces when I speak about my writing. That’s why I connect to my readers. I put a lot of emotion on the page, and I don’t always have a place to go with it except here. I don’t want my real friends to get bored and not want to be my friends anymore.

Thanks for giving me a place to crash whether I’m on the high road or not. I hope you’ll let me fall occasionally, but be there to pick me up when I do. This is not a web site.

I have built a community.

Because the low road? There’s a reason they call it that.

Every once in a while, I’ll run across a question for Advice Column Thursday, and then realize that it’s too important a question to wait until the next week. I received an e-mail that I will not attribute at all to protect anonymity, but the question was, “if you’ve lost the love of your life, and you both know it, how do you go about fixing it?” I decided I could make this into a much bigger piece than an advice column, because life is so rich that there is no one way to decide that one person is an embodiment of it… until you do.

And then there are those loves of your life that are ripped away even when you do your best to take care of them. In relationships, this means getting dumped or maybe, the person dies. There is no one way to lose love. We can even talk about things about your own body that slip away. You meant to take care of your hands, because you’re an excellent carpenter. Then you went to work at a restaurant and used a deli slicer to take an inch off your professional bird-flipper.

It can all be expressed as the same problem, and can be expressed as the same solution. It just takes a little bit of extrapolation. So let’s not talk about romance exclusively. For the purposes of this article, “love of your life” can be anything from music to manhole covers.

In this manner, I have lost the love of my life a lot, and each time, I thought I was going to die. Each time, my heart felt like it was beating outside my chest in fear. I don’t have her anymore. I don’t have him anymore. I don’t have it anymore.

It is gone.

There are a lot of steps to healing something like this, but let’s just take first things first. Let’s start with you.

How much of a mess are you right now?

Level with me. Let’s triage this. (I used to be a basic medical assistant and I am a mental patient myself. It’s what I know.)

1. What happens when you wake up? Are you able to get out of bed? Once you are out of bed, do you get ready for the day, or do you spend the day in your pajamas?
2. How much sleep are you getting? Average is normal. WAY TOO LITTLE or WAY TOO MUCH is what you’re looking for in terms of symptoms. No, you are not Garfield.
3. How much are you drinking? Be honest with me. No, really, I am one of the least judgmental people on earth, and this is clinically important. HOW MUCH ARE YOU DRINKING?

Just looking at those three things alone should be enough to wake up your weird shitometer. Those triage points are not really there for me. I don’t really know you, but you do. You can take a look at these three things and I’m pretty sure it will give you a clear enough picture to know whether you need professional help. If that wisdom comes to you, let it sit.

Don’t fight it, don’t cajole it, don’t do anything to it. Just hear it. Invite the idea to come sit a little closer so that you can think all the way around it. Let the idea sit until it’s comfortable. It’s not the answer, it’s an option. You might choose poorly this time around, but the next time you’re in this situation, going to get help will reappear and you will all of the sudden be more interested in it. Don’t be threatened. Be real. You’ve just lost the love of your life. Save your own.

Take care of yourself first, because what person seeing what a mess you are is going to run back and say, “Oh, God! I was completely mistaken! What was I thinking?” If it were me, though, I’d cocoon in my dirty house with all the windows drawn like a modern-day Auden poem writ large (STOP ALL THE CLOCKS, BITCHES). If you’re like me, you need a few days of “dumped girl” to get it out of your system. Allow yourself to nurse you. Allow yourself to go out and buy those things that make you feel at home in your own skin. For me, these are things like almond soap with little shards of almond for pumice. Stash Tea in Double Bergamot. Ginger snaps. Rogue blue cheese. Apples.

Treat yourself with kindness, and just think.

This is the part that most people skip. They skip that time “in the desert” that they need to get their heads in the right gear. Maybe it’s not intentional, but it seems to me that as soon as a relationship starts to circle the drain, people get uncomfortable with living in grey area and will actually throw someone out of their lives before they’ll admit it. Better to go on the defensive because they can’t hurt you if you hurt them first, can they? What you miss is that relationships are born and reborn in the spaces inbetween.

It requires an ability for which few people have patience: living in the inbetweeen. Living in the inbetween is so hard because you have to be comfortable with what you don’t know. You have to be comfortable with being able to carry huge questions in your head, and sometimes, you have to carry them like a burden for a very long time before there’s any resolution at all.

When people have to carry burdens without knowing where they’re going or what’s in the bag, they intentionally try to make a snap decision that will resolve the cognitive dissonance. That’s why you don’t really mean that you never want to see someone again. It means that it will be a while before you can even think of engaging with that person.

In short, don’t snap.

Hold the cognitive dissonance in your mind long enough to map it. If you need help with this, use a drawing program like Visio or Freemind. What drawing software will do is allow you to see your thoughts on paper as how they appear in your brain. You can spend as much time as you want grouping and regrouping your ideas until they come out in a rational order (this is also invaluable for work brainstorming, btw).

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT go back to the love of your life and tell him/her/it that you’ve got it all worked out now. YOU USED SOFTWARE! No, the software is just a tool, as are you.

Once you’ve looked at these drafts, you’re in a better position to know yourself, and that’s the point. You cannot give anything to anyone else if you’re pouring from an empty cup. Plus, this guy that dumped you? Do you *really* want to go back to him after you see all his shit in black ink glory?

If so, then you need to proceed with caution, but I understand why you’re doing it. Stay strong, sister. I’m not going to lie. The chances that your babe/dude will respond the way you thought they would in the car is almost big, fat zero. This is why you’ve spent so long caring for yourself. You haven’t even attempted to come here unless you were ok with any outcome, right? RIGHT?

Here is a piece of advice, free from me to you. Do not go wait on her front porch.

No, it’s not.

It is NOT A GOOD IDEA. What are you going to do when you show up with flowers and you’re sitting there like a jackass when she pulls up in the driveway driving her “physical therapist’s car?”

I write letters. This is a large part of why. I want to tell my true love what the possibilities of our relationship might be, and let him/her SAY YES TO THE PROPOSITION. It’s a more genuine connection than springing something on your love and expecting an immediate answer. I understand. You’re panicked about your life, so they should be, too.

Be cool.

Be. Cool.

Breathe.

There is nothing better than the confidence of that “yes.” WAIT FOR IT.

When you get it, read “Getting the Love You Want,” by Harville Hendrix. It helped me to vocalize what I wanted in relationships, and is one of the few self-help books I still have.

He advocates that if you want to get back together, act as if. Eventually, the muscles will retrieve the memories from your brain and tell you why. For instance, in the beginning, your muscles will just think, “I’m getting her a coat.” After a few weeks of doing this every day, “it’s going to be cold out. My love will need a coat.” Caring about someone when you don’t actually reboots your brain into caring about them. It’s a very simplistic analysis of Dr. Hendrix’ work, but I hope that I was able to make it as clear as banana. I don’t like mud.

I will close with one last thing. I lost a great love of my entire life within the last few years. I have no idea what she’s doing, where she is, anything.  But I spend my days caring about her so if I see her again, the anger and embarrassment won’t eat me alive.

If your love is a memory, maybe you should do that, too.

I think that our goal as humans is to master the concept of “enough.” I was thinking about this a few days ago when Margaret Cho tweeted my marriage article on her own stream, and again when Martina Navratilova re-tweeted it this morning. I think about the concept of “enough” a lot, because I think it is the primary thing that’s created much-needed sanity around my head. I sit with my eyes closed and my headphones in, playing “White Noises- Best of,” and in the silence I hear nothing but my own voice. That is intentional. I am so ADD that I cannot hear me if anything else is on. Because why in the hell would I want to watch me when I could watch Burn Notice?

Sitting there has to be enough. Listening to nothing and having all the sound blocked out around me. That has to be enough. The comfort of my own voice speaking to me, telling me tender things I could have missed. That has to be enough.

Because if it is not, one friend is not enough. One celebrity endorsement is not enough. One beer is not enough. One pizza slice is not enough.

If I cannot rest in “enough,” I run in “more.”

Do you know what I mean? Have you been there?

When you cannot rest in the concept of enough, you will constantly run toward things that you think will fill you up. But they don’t. Because you don’t see the one purse you bought to make you feel better about losing your job as enough to heal the pain. You’ll go shopping fifteen times, and every time you go shopping, you’ll buy something to make the pain stop. That pain won’t go away if Kate Spade is giving purses away for free on the sidewalk in front of your house (But, dear Jesus, that would help. Please remember me in your kindom…). In that way, things become distractions from stopping long enough to ask yourself, “what is this really about? What am I doing?”

Let’s say you don’t think shopping is a “real” addiction. Ok. Let’s get dirty. People smoke crack and buy throws from whores for the same reason they buy 15 purses.

I can’t get vulnerable enough to address my issues on my own, so I’m going to try and intentionally avoid dealing with it until my face collides with a concrete wall.

Everyone, everywhere deals with the concept of enough, because you have to find it within yourself. You have to find it sitting in the living room with your headphones on because one celebrity endorsement isn’t enough in one day. I am unemployed. I have to work to make the money to buy my sweetie whatever she wants and I can’t breathe because she’s so important to me and she makes so much more money that all I need is a few more people to recognize me. A few more.

See? In five more sentences there would have been track marks on my arms.

One of the things that has gotten me to slow down about my getting noticed craziness is that the more people notice, the more its enough. The waiting for the people to arrive is over. They’re here.

And they love me enough.

Back in the day, I got a meme. You list 100 facts about yourself. That’s it. Simple. Last time it turned out hilarious. I have high hopes for this one.

1. The first time I ever smoked pot, I was 25 years old. I had just gotten my nails done, and due to a broken lighter, I set my fingernails on fire. These things only happen to me, people. I mean, how should I know that acrylic burns?
2. I have had eight relationships over my lifetime, when I ever really only wanted the one. However, it is hard to keep a relationship together when you’re a lesbian in one country and your partner is a lesbian in another. Dating was good for me. Marriage is even better. I’m in my element. Plus, about earlier in my life, I said “18.” There’s a big fat “I told you so” in there somewhere.
3. Dana and I are both smart as hell, but I would say that our “emotional quotient” is much higher. We like helping people. Dana more than most. I am an irritated old bastard, and I show it a lot of the time. Dana is a better person than I am, trust me on this one. Even though I do like helping people, it has to be on one of those days where I like people.
4. I am a first soprano, and nearly always have allergies. Singing ranges from resplendent to repulsive. I’ll blow a low note and then measures later a high C will float off beautifully. I’m also a terrible sight reader. But I’m a first soprano and I’m not jealous of others. Miracle! Holla!
5. I knew Beyonce in high school. Do you know how much that yearbook would be worth if I’d had her sign it? Dana and I would already have our retirement paid.
6. I am pretty much a person that likes to be told what to do. I am getting more and more interested in trusting my own intuition, but no one is perfect. I have the skills to lead, but I’m very afraid of conflict. I want to help people, I don’t want to fight with them.
7. The color of my hair is natural right now, but most of the time, you can’t find my hair color in nature but you can find it at Walgreens.
8. I’m only at number 8. Holy fuck.
9. We have some Toasted Corn Doritos. Could I interest you in some junk food?
10. I like expensive beer, but I can afford Hamm’s.
11. Diet Cherry Coke is more expensive than Hamm’s, and I like it better.
12. My favorite game is “Cards Against Humanity,” because it allows me to be the absolute creeper that I want to be for shock value. Preacher’s kids are the worst kids.
13. I used to be a preacher’s kid, but I’m not now. My dad helps run my stepmom’s rheumatology practice.
14. Ok, FORMER  preacher’s kids are the worst kids. Even former preacher’s kids still fall into two categories, and they rarely vary. First child wants to go into the ministry or at least thinks about it because they won’t have to work so hard, they already know the ins and outs. Second child wants to grow a large wild hair and do everything Christianity hates until they run out of steam and realize it wasn’t so bad. (Editor’s note: Guess.)
15. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an opera singer, but I chose trumpet instead. To make matters worse, Lindsay (younger sister) was in the children’s chorus at HGO. I sat at every rehearsal like a brooding Salieri. I liked instrumental music, but I think I would have done better at music contests if I’d embraced my inner diva while it was still young enough to be malleable. It’s not that I’m ancient now, it just wouldn’t be as easy. Here’s the reason I chose instrumental music- choir didn’t seem like real music. In our choir, I was one of the only students that could actually read music and I damn near failed choir because of solfege. They caught on to me because I was just moving my hand up and down in peace signs. So singing is amazing, and most of the singers I know (professionals, not amateurs) are fucking morons, wrapped up in their own drama with very little “other-awareness.” I am lucky in that I always found someone I liked in choir, because all singers aren’t like that, but the pressure and attitude made me crazy. I don’t function in that world because I just don’t like it. And I don’t feel like I have to apologize, because every choral singer in America knows the type I’m talking about. DON’T YOU? If you’re a first soprano and you say that you have no idea what I’m talking about, then you are either lying to me or one of those types who just can’t admit it. If you REALLY don’t know what I’m talking about, then you must not be a musician. I’m in our church choir, but I’m pretty sure it will never be more than that again. Blow your hair back rep is fun, but the rehearsals aren’t.
16. My outer personality and my inner personality are quite different. My outer personality is a cross between Brittany and Eleanor on Alvin & the Chipmunks. My inner personality is a lot like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino.
17. I drink. A LOT. However, my favorite drinks aren’t alcoholic because I’m ALWAYS thirsty. It’s been looked at and I’m not diabetic or have failing kidneys or anything, I just don’t go more than 20 minutes without something to drink- when I’m home. When I’m out and about, I at least try to act like a normal person. I would say that I’m pregnant, but everyone knows that Dana’s sperm count is way too low. Can I check into a hospital just for the shaved ice? Dana broke my heart when she was working for the meat department and I saw a huge tank full of chipped ice. It’s used for wrapping fish, so it wasn’t food grade. That cured me of pining for it, though.
18. Speaking of cure, my grandpa Max always said that if your lips were chapped, you could put cow dung on your lips. It wouldn’t do any good, but it’ll keep you from lickin’ ’em. The first time I heard him say it, I literally fell down with laughter.
19. I almost asphyxiated when my grandma Rena said, “she can’t help it that she’s ugly… but she could stay home.”
20. I wear a t-shirt and jeans nearly all the days of my life, so when I nellied out at Kelly’s wedding, grandma Rena said, “you look good as a woman.”
21. I’m in love with whiskey a little bit. Dana is okay with this, because she has actually seen me spend 15 minutes just smelling an empty glass. It’s not about the quantity, it’s about the quality. If I know that I have enough money for two drinks at a bar, I will forego having two drinks and have one spectacular one instead. However, anybody can make good *expensive* whiskey. Even when I’m poor, I can still afford Old Overholt, one of the best ryes on earth. My favorite drink in the world is rye and ginger, but I’m emotionally connected to it. I went to visit my first love in Canada, and it’s very popular there. So rye and ginger is the moment I step into the joy of that moment. I’m not going to tell you my favorites, because I’m sure they’ll be in Recommendation Wednesday’s column soon.
22. Advice Column Thursday is getting really popular.
23. My wrists hurt really bad because I’m trying to do this in one sitting.
24. That was a terrible mistake.
25. I’m blessing and releasing it.
26. I’m an asshole for that last one.
27. I’m not going to tell you why.
28. The best poem I read when I was a kid started out “psychedelic rainbows, multi-color tears.” God, no wonder I live in Oregon. I thought that was cool.
29. I’ve tried shrooms twice, because it’s Oregon and that’s what we do.
30. The first experience almost ruined shrooms for me forever. It ended angrily, with a lot of fighting, and that friend’s dead now so I can talk about it. Basically we did shrooms and went to a bar around the corner from our house. Dana and I love shitty bar food, so we got an appetizer platter. We didn’t know that the waitress had charged our appetizer platter to his credit card, and instead of being cool and accepting money, he came at us with all he had. We walked home and ended up eating peanut butter sandwiches to heal the pain.
31. The second time I did shrooms, it was in the privacy of my own home. Dana let me have them and she stayed sober. While we were talking, I told her that I could see galaxies, and I could. They were just appearing when my eyes were closed. It was transcendent, and we went out on a high note. Quit while you’re ahead.
32. I used to have a doll named Rattyobotic. I have no idea where the name came from, and if I had to hazard a guess, I had her right about the time that my dad discovered Radio Shack.
33. I was addicted to the Quimby clan when I was a kid, and can quote them almost verbatim. I’ve also read “A Girl from Yamhill County,” the Beverly Cleary autobiography. There is a Ramona statue in Portland’s downtown library that made me cry the first time I saw it.
34. My other favorite books were the Caldecott winners. I loved The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin. To this day it’s still one of my favorites.
35. Just because of the way my mind works, I feel a lot of the time like I am The Giver. The Giver is the character and the title of a book that changed my life. I will treasure it always, and I give it as gifts when I have the money.
36. Another series that I really dug was “Hatchet,” by Gary Paulsen. It’s about a junior-high age kid that goes to visit his dad in the wilds of Alaska. During the flight, the pilot has a heart attack and dies. Brian is alone in the wilderness for about 30 days. The second book explores what would have happened if he hadn’t been rescued and had to survive through the winter. There are others, but those two are the ones I still have.
37. I love teenage fiction to this day. I really like the “Angus” series. It made me roll on the floor with laughter. So did “Can You Keep a Secret?” by Sophie Kinsella, as well as “A Girl Named Zippy,” by Haven Kimmel
38. The best dramatic book I’ve ever read in my life is “The Solace of Leaving Early,” also by Haven Kimmel.
39. I am very affected by books, as you can tell. I feel that I am part Leah from “The Poisonwood Bible,” by Barbara Kingsolver.
40. I have secrets that I can never tell, because they’re about interactions that I promised to keep quiet. But it is KILLING me not to tell. I was involved with a woman that was not out, I have an old friend who is now a very public figure, and I have the desire to tell those stories, but not the inhumanity.
41. I am unusually close to some of my old girlfriends, because they have absolutely invaluable insight into how I’m doing mentally because they’ve known me so long.
42. I like all of Dana’s exes, too.
43. It’s amazing how we have this weird little community that we wouldn’t trade for anything, because it’s how we measure against how healthy we feel.
44. Our friends are gracious enough to be both honest and comforting.
45. The first thing I ever did for love was calling a radio station and having them announce her birthday on air, and sending her a rosebud. On the card, I wrote, “for all you do, this bud’s for you.
46. I was 13. Budweiser’s ads are ubiquitous.
47. The biggest thing I ever did for love was take my girlfriend on a cruise down the Potomac with the monuments glistening in the night. The worst part was that I kept it a secret for three months, and as she was getting ready, she asked me what to wear and I said, “well, it’s probably going to be cold on the boat” and clapped my hands over my mouth.
48. I gave my high school girlfriend a key to our apartment with mixed results. One day, I came home to a “sorry I was an asshole” card with a dozen roses that said “go to your stereo and press play.” Celine Dion’s “Because You Loved Me” filled the room. I forgave her. Also, one day I came home and the girlfriend and her best friend had short-sheeted my bed and turned everything in my room upside down. However, there is no causation link.
49. I was alone a lot my senior year of high school, and my girlfriend started to feel like home. For her, it didn’t feel like that. Home has always been Canada, and always will be.
50. I wonder how my life would be now if I had emigrated then and can’t imagine it, as if that dream died with that relationship.
51. I’m lying. I totally think about Canada all the time, and all my friends know it. They would bust me in a hot second.
52. Canada works on a point system, and not being fluent in French is a big fat deal.
53. That would never happen in the United States. Not ever.
54. I’m not usually right on stuff like this.
55. Dana’s parents live in DC, and I am so blessed because I still have friends there. Going to visit the parents is one-stop shopping.
56. Sometimes I wish that my mother-in-law could see how much I absolutely adore her. I hope that she doesn’t mind if I call her that, but I have it on good authority that I am now folded into the family, because sharing a backseat with my two Bamberger girls is a bitch. It only takes a few minutes before I remember that I didn’t ask my psychiatrist for any Xanax.
57. I don’t take Xanax a lot, only when I’m about to have a panic attack.
58. I’m the smallest, so I’m in the middle. You get the picture.
59. I bet Dana’s parents’ heads explode as well.
60. I am so much like Dana’s dad, because he and I read voraciously. We also get into humorous arguments.
61. I’m still right about the whole checking in for a flight with an iPhone.
62. Sometimes I wish I was Dana’s sister, because she’s an attorney and it’s always been one of my dreams to be a lawyer.
63. I’ve made it just far enough in Con Law to be such an asshole during a fight.
64. My sister got an A- in Con Law. I got a B+. I was consoled that I did better on the final. I got 102; she only got 100. She probably doesn’t remember it, but it is one of my greatest wins. 🙂
65. That was the hardest class I’ve ever taken, and the professor has kissed me while drunk. So, he liked me, but he irritated the piss out of me, too. This takes explaining. He’s warm, funny, brilliant, handsome, has taken the bars in both Texas and Louisiana (beat that with a stick). He’s also a sadistic bastard and his heart is black given the way the tests were worded.
66. I met one of my closest friends right before that class started. Einsteins had given me a free bagel dog and I passed it on to her. We’ve always said, “you had me at bagel dog.” We both agree that it’s unfortunate she’s straight, because it would have been a killer meet-cute for our grandkids.
67. I love straight people. I don’t know what you Evangelicals think, that I just live in this bubble of gay that creates prejudice against straight people. No, Portland is post-gay. Everyone just has partners, it doesn’t matter how they go together. They just do. If you want to live your life that way, it’s fine to me… as long as “live your life that way” doesn’t affect me.
68. I hate people a lot of the time, especially in groups.
69. I don’t mean to hate people, it just happens. I get very socially anxious for no reason at all.
70. It’s probably not “for no reason,” it just happens so infrequently that I don’t know the trigger.
71. My first concert was The Beach Boys
72. My last concert was Talib Kweli. I’m hoping to see more, I just don’t have the money to go to concerts. It’s not just the tickets. I don’t want to go the length of the concert with nothing to eat or drink.
73. My favorite slang is “dumbass attack.”
74. My favorite curse word is fuck. I can conjugate it at will.
75. I have worked in kitchens. You will constantly hate my behavior from now on if you do not just accept this fact. Cooks are dirty motherfuckers and we show it.
76. At work, Dana’s the boss. It’s bled over so that I think she’s the boss at home, too. She reminded me that this was not true and I haven’t gotten my ass in gear this fast in, like, ever. It’s all because of you.
77. It’s 3:35 and I’m starting to wonder whether Dana is going to come home soon or whether she’s trapped in the kitchen with no respite. I never trust her schedule unless she has the day off.
78. That’s just what it’s like being a cook. That’s why we don’t have regular friends. We eat, drink, and be merry after we’re finished entertaining guests. That is a fact about me, because it’s an apt description if you don’t know me.
79. Think of me as a cross between Mrs. Padmore and Daisy.
80. When I really like people, I often call them by their full names.
81. Low libido is an excellent way to stay married.
82. So is high libido.
83. My friends tell me that I should consider becoming a marriage and family therapist. I think I would be happier in sexology. It combines the aspects of sex with the aspects of lovemaking, and would allow me to help people with both, thus keeping me happy because I don’t think I would ever be bored. I might, though. Dr. Kinsey’s work reads like Moby Dick.
84. My crazy place is feeling unloved and unworthy and unmotivated to the point that I can’t get out of bed. I take pills so I don’t go there anymore.
85. The picture I lost and miss the most is the picture of my girlfriend Jenn and me kissing in the surf. I love how I look, I love how she looks, and it doesn’t matter that I’m with Dana now. It’s just a damn good picture.
86. I am really grateful that Dana isn’t jealous in the slightest.
87. I had to take Plan B because I was very intoxicated. I hardly knew the guy except that he knew Dana. Just goes to show that every woman has to put up with this crap, even if they love women.
88. I say that to prove how deep our love is, because that was years and years ago.
89. The wound heals quickly when you stay home every night so that your partner knows where you are at all times. In those moments, I grabbed Dana tighter than ever, and I won’t let go.
90. Dana thinks that as the more attention I get, the more I’ll forget about her. I say the more attention I get, the more I need her and to not ever use those words with me again because it’s a future I cannot imagine. We took divorce off the table so many years ago that to me, it’s like breathing. Dana is my lobster.
91. We’re not legally married, but we’re registered in Oregon as domestic partners. Texas doesn’t have that. Neither does Virginia. We both feel a little exiled.
92. Although Maryland wouldn’t be so bad.
93. We can’t afford to live in DC.
94. My observation of DC, which luckily is slowly changing, is that there are tourist areas and ghetto, and if you’re lost, you’ll wind up in the ghetto sooner or later.
95. I once got lost behind Camden Yards in Baltimore. There’s 30 minutes of terror I wish I could erase.
96. I saw a drug deal go down behind Fredrick Douglass’s house.
97. I didn’t make it to my dinner party. I gave up being lost and tried to get home. For those of you that know DC, I thought I was crossing the Potomac and I was crossing the Anacostia. I had only lived there for three months, and it was dark.
98. Dana got me a lap dance for getting the job at Marylhurst. To date, it is possibly the weirdest and least sexual thing that has ever happened to me.
99. There’s a strip club next door to our house.
100. We go there because we can stumble home.
     1. Not always.

 

I originally took on this meme from another blogger in October of 2007. I’m going to re-do it, but also leave the old answers in place. The old answers are in italics.

1. Who were your last 3 texts from?
   1. Not a whole lot of people text me these days, so the answer is boring. They’re all from Dana.
   2. I’m still just as boring.
      1. Cool if I come over and take a shower? (Matt, after work as a landscaper)
      2. On the way shortly, loved your message 🙂 (Matt, after leaving him a message that Dana and I were lonely because it was getting too lesbian in here)
      3. We’re crossing the Ross Island Bridge if you want to come on down. (Matt and Wayne, his dad, picking me up for choir practice because Dana is a lazy bum and she knows it.)
2. Where was your default picture taken?
   1. On Facebook, it was taken in John & Tony’s living room- it’s a picture of me kissing Tym goodnight. She’s my favorite Canadian.
   2. My profile picture is a crop of a picture that was originally Jill, Lindsay, and me. However, I thought it best if girls prettier than me did not share my profile picture space. THAT IS MINE! The picture itself was taken at Trinity Episcopal Church in Houston. I think it was some sort of 70s dance.
3. What’s your middle name
   1. Diane
   2. My middle name, on my birth certificate, is Diane. It’s a gorgeous name but I don’t think it fits me. I want to change it to “Doctor.” That way, I can still be “Leslie D. Lanagan” but I have a TIME LORD MIDDLE NAME! (Speaking of which, I want the Name of the Doctor to be something hilarious, like Gerald.) AND I CAN REPLACE THE D WITH A TARDIS!
4. Does your crush like you back?
   1. Yes (blush)
   2. I’m married now. I don’t have to blush. Dana is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
5. What is your current mood?
   1. I’ve got that brain race thing goin’ on. Life is chaotic right now, and I could use a nice cup of tea and a sit down.
   2. I am intently reading over my old blog entries and instead of importing them ALL into “Stories,” just picking out a few that I think are well-written and stand out from the noise.
6. What’s your computer like?
   1. It’s a PC laptop. It does everything I need it to do and more. If I figure out how to get my wireless network card to work in Linux, this thing could help me take over the world.
   2. It’s a different PC laptop, but I still can’t get linux to run perfectly on it. For some reason, it will install, but it won’t boot. I’ll have to take a look at the partition tables and it could take a while, so for now, I’m just using Windows until I have more time. However, I do have linux running inside Windows because now my computer is at least THAT fast.
7. What color shirt are you wearing?
   1. Cream-colored sweater with blue stripes, dark blue oxford.
   2. Silver Tab jeans with a Dunkin’ Donuts t-shirt that shows off my… neck.
8. Are you horny?
   1. This is one of those questions that’s really fun when someone else answers it.
   2. Truth time: not a lot. Enough, but not a lot. Depression Medication is MAGIC! It can reduce you to “whiskey dick” in a single dose!!!!!
9. If you could go back in time and change something, would you?
   1. They say that the past makes you who you are, but there are certainly things I would do differently- mostly to avoid hurting other people and to get a better world view earlier so I didn’t spend so much of my 20’s thinking that the things other people did were all about me… or perhaps a better phrase is “being so insecure in my 20s that I couldn’t go five minutes without taking the emotional temperature of a relationship.”
   2. Absolutely. I would have given up the charade a lot sooner with Dana and just told her how I felt. But how I felt wasn’t clear enough to base it on a marriage. We were really good friends, but I didn’t know if it could be more than that. But I wasted a lot of time in Houston dating women that were amazing and wonderful that ultimately did not fit me as well as Dana did, and it’s an interesting experiment to think what would have happened if *she* had moved to Houston with *me.* She would never have forgiven me for June, July, and August, but sitting by my parents’ pool with a margarita wouldn’t have sucked, either. At the time, Dana was also still married, and I couldn’t in good conscience cross that line, either. So it’s a moot point, but if I could do my life over, I would have moved back to Texas and taken Dana with me. Then we would have stayed there until we couldn’t stand it any longer, and then six months later we would have moved back. I know how that story ends: “MY BODY IS NOT SUPPOSED TO MELT WHEN WE’RE OUTSIDE, IS IT?”
10. Do you speak any other language?
    1. Hablo muy poquito espanol, pero no practico mucho.
    2. Francais c’nest pas comfortable pour moi.

 

Editor’s Note: This was written a few years ago by an online friend of mine, and I asked if I could re-post because it might give my friends some insight on what it meant to me to come out as having been catfished as a kid, because while we weren’t girlfriends, we were close enough for it to really, really hurt. I still hold out hope that Rainie MacMillan of Swansea Wales who played in a band called Jezebel Spirit is actually a real person. Rainie, if you’re reading this, I love you deeply and our friendship changed me in a lot of great ways. I wasn’t catfished if you were a real person. You just left in such a hurry that I think it happened. One minute, you were there and full of life… the next, you were gone from the world. Disappeared. No rhyme or reason, just absolute cut-off with no denouement or closure.

This essay is the one thing that is making me feel better, because it validates everything I’ve been feeling. This person catfished under a different gender; looking into his past allows me to look into my future. Because I was so young, I never engaged in cybersex or any of the more adult topics here. I just want to prove that even if Internet people aren’t real to you, they are to other Internet people. Aliases that die affect us, and this piece is one of them that shows how much.

–

For the first four years of my internet life, I was Karen Camino, an asian girl living in unspecified parts of Texas. I completed my persona with a web site and a bio, lending her an authenticity rarely duplicated in other mediums.

The funny thing is, she became real after about a year or so. She had her own motivations, her own family life, that usually mirrored my own, but she had the ability to act out her family life looking retrospectively at my own.

After a few years, the charade chafed as I began to meet people from online in real life and Karen became revealed for the fiction that she was, shocking many of the people who had grown close to me. To many of them, all they had ever known was Amy and this “Gregory” person had just replaced her, like in a bad horror flick.

This was one of my first and most intense experiences with the ability of modern technology to incorporate two seemingly contradictory truths.

I was/am Karen Camino.

I was/am Gregory Pierce.

While the name of Karen Camino is just a relect of my childhood now, she still exists. Not only in the memories of people she befriended, romanced, and loved, but in myself as well, as she let me become less “man” and more “human”.

Am I a transgendered? androgynous? or something new, made possible only through modern technology? I have no wish to become fully female in the classic transgendered sense. I am not a woman trapped in a man’s body. Nor do I deny both sexes, become a neuter, as the term androgynous implies. Yet I still have the yearning to feel as a woman does, to experience sex as a woman does. It tugs at me as if it were some lost fragment of humanity, once experienced, now gone.

When I engaged in cybersex as a female, my mind imagined sex as a woman. I imagined being penetrated, both riding on top, in control, and being ridden, on the bottom of the couple, releasing my control willingly to my partner. I experienced anal sex as a woman, different than as a man. I enjoyed the shared politics of lesbian sex, and the transgressions of de/constructing gender roles as a lesbian.

All of these things I imagined in my head, eliminating my penis. Did I feel as if power had been stolen away from me in some Freudian penis envy? No. I felt empowered as my boundries broke down, as I tried to understand how sexual relations felt to others. It was perhaps one of the most powerful moments of my life. Would I have felt the same if I was a woman pretending to be a man? I think so, and the number of women I knew during this period who went under the guise of male supports my hypothesis.

DANA DOESN’T KNOW WHAT MASH IS.

Apparently, the ’80s game that swept the nation missed Northern Virginia, because she had never heard of Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House. It’s going to be difficult to explain without visual aid, so here are the basics:

• Take out a sheet of notebook paper and write the word at the top like this: MASH. The larger the letters, the better.
• Name three people you’d like to marry.
• Name three places you’d like to live.
• Name three kinds of car you’d like to drive.
• Put three numbers, which are the number of kids you’d like to have.
• Name three different pets you’d like to own.

Basically, just put the things you want to know about your future life in groups of three and let the MASH spiral work its magic.

The MASH Spiral

Once your categories are set, get the friend who’s playing with you to draw a spiral and tell them when to stop. Then count the lines across the spiral and that number is the number of lines you have to count before you cross something out. Eventually, you’ll end up with one thing in each category, but don’t forget to start with the M at the top of the page. Don’t you want to know what kind of house you’ll be living in?

As you can see by the diagram (look who got a Wacom tablet!), Oprah and I will be living in a Portland mansion with two children, a cat, and a Saturn Sky in the driveway. Life could be worse.

I could have ended up in a shack with someone who doesn’t know what MASH is.

I originally wrote this while working as a basic medical assistant in my stepmom’s rheumatology practice. This story is not about my job, but about what I wore.

–

When I am wearing my white coat and stethoscope, people mistake me all the time for the actual doctor in our practice. I’ve said before how much this frightens me, but now that I’ve worked here for a while, I’m more comfortable with it. If someone started to have an allergic reaction that caused shortness of breath, I’d know what to do. If someone needed an injection, we’d get through it together. If someone has an irregular heartbeat, a murmur, or a swooshing sound as their heart pumps, I know to at least ask them if they’ve ever seen a cardiologist. Most of the time, they know what their heart is doing. Sometimes not.

The heart is a particularly touchy subject with patients- as well it should be. When I’m the first guy to ask them if they’ve had cardiac trouble or if they were born with a heart defect, the silence is deafening. And then, it never fails. “There’s something wrong? With my heart?” There’s fear in their eyes, and I tell them that no, nothing is wrong. Lots of people have unusual heartbeats. And sometimes, just sometimes, I hear it wrong. So we switch to the other arm for blood pressure. If I hear the exact same thing, there are two answers. The first is that I can do an EKG right in the office if the doctor needs me to. The second is that if the doctor thinks nothing is immediately wrong, we can send them to an actual cardiologist. But nothing matches that look. Most patients think that an irregular heartbeat is a sign of immediate and painful death. Of course that’s not true. The heart is an amazing resource of power and strength. Many people have written better than I have about the stunning analogy of its physical and emotional resilience.

It’s when people are sitting in the exam room, shaking because of something I said, that I feel the most vulnerable. I don’t have the want or the ability to make clinical decisions, but it’s amazing how a small comment can change the course of their visit just because I heard something unusual and remarked about it- always calmly, always as a point of interest and not of worry. The doctor will tell them when they can worry. I just listen. Maybe I’m making a mistake by saying anything, but I like getting to know things about the patients. I can’t tell you how many times a comment about a heartbeat or a swoosh had led to a story about how as a child, they had to go to clinic after clinic to find out what was wrong (most of our patients are between 60 and 80). Or maybe it’s that they had a triple bypass last year and their doctor said to cut out the pizza and beer.

Their stories become my stories.

Yesterday, there was a patient for which we were desperately trying to find a hospital bed. Everyplace we called within 40 miles was on drive by or divert. As we called and called, the patient kept getting more white as she tried to hold off the waves and waves of nausea. She needed someone to keep an eye on her, and, in The Outfit™, I walked into her exam room.

We’d put her in a wheelchair, and I sat on my rolling stool. Within minutes, she had leaned forward to put her head on my knees. I patted her back and stroked her hair, just trying to do what I could for the moment. She’d had an injection of Phenergan to combat the nausea, and the vomiting had let up… temporarily.

And then I felt it. Hot sick on my coat, my pants, my socks, my shoes. I’m a sympathetic vomiter, I don’t do well with bad smells. I knew I had to act fast. I tried to put a trash can under her, but there was no way to do that without her laying her entire head into it… such a good look. So what did I do? I got up, put my coat in the wash, put another on, and went back into the room. When she had her head in my lap, she could reach the trash can, but she wasn’t falling into it.

I sat there, battling my own waves of nausea trying to help her when I realized that this was all medicine would ever be at its core. New drugs and other therapies come out all the time, but it takes a lot of human kindness for someone to trust you enough to administer it. Case in point: when we finally found her a hospital bed, it was on the southeast side of Houston, at least an hour from our office. She didn’t want to go there. She didn’t know anyone.

She wanted to stay in my lap, smelly pants and all.

These are my recollections of September 11th, 2001. Originally posted on “Clever Title Goes Here” on September 11th, 2006.

803 N. Van Dorn Street is approximately three miles as the crow flies from the Pentagon, and that was my address in the city of Alexandria. My birthday evening was spent at a tapas bar, where five hours later I was projectile vomiting from eating bad mussels. The next morning, I didn’t go out to Fairfax, where I worked. I was home, in bed, three miles from the Pentagon with no idea that my entire existence was about to change.

 When I woke up, I went to my computer (always) to check e-mail and to talk to friends in Houston. My Republican friend, Jim, instant messaged me frantically. “Leslie, a plane has just hit one of the towers at the World Trade Center. TURN ON THE NEWS. As I went to the television, I heard a sonic boom that sounded like it was just across the street. The walls rattled. My neighbor told me that the noise was so loud that one of the pictures had come off her wall. Because of the distance of the Pentagon from my house, I didn’t suspect what had happened until I saw a feed of it on CNN. It was then that I went into complete and total shock.

The phone lines were jammed, and my panic grew as I couldn’t reach my wife, my parents, my sister… anyone. I sat alone in my house and wondered how long I personally was going to be under attack. I was so numb with shock that it didn’t occur to me to think of anybody else, because survival mode had taken over. I am not kidding when I say that the federal air space above my house was flooded within the hour. Fighter jets flew above my head for the next 54 hours- one every ten minutes.

Finally, my wife was let go from work and sent home, and when she came through the door, we held each other so tightly that we each thought we might suffocate, but neither wanted to let go. The feeling in the room was that we didn’t have to go back to Houston, but we wanted to get the hell out of DC. The only thing that stopped us was that we didn’t know which city would be under attack next, and it was probably better to stay in the house with the fighter jets over it than no fighter jets at all.

My parents and my in-laws had no idea what was going on, and they couldn’t reach us by phone. I don’t remember if they contacted us by e-mail, but it was several days before we could talk to them. By the time we were connected, we were overcome with emotion at hearing their voices. My in-laws wanted us to pack up and move immediately. My dad was the voice of calm in the situation, saying that Houston was under just as much threat right then because of the massive amount of refineries in the area, and we might as well stay put.

The end of the day was terrifying. We didn’t want to go to sleep. We sat on the kitchen floor and cried so hard that we were shaking with grief. We prayed for all the people who had been lost, and their families who had to really experience it. Oh, wait- no. We weren’t really that selfless. We were scared out of our minds, and even though we could see past ourselves into the lives of others, at least a good hour of the shaking was not knowing what the hell to do. Analyzation made us paralyzed.

The months afterward were tough. The part of the Pentagon that had been hit was visible to the freeway, and getting into DC took hours for those first few days because so many people stopped to cry and gape.

At Christmastime, we flew home through National Airport. There were little boys, 18-year-olds, with fully automatic weapons at every turn. People were getting frustrated and loud as they had to unwrap all of their presents, and to me it was a little bit silly. Why get upset when we were practically at Defcon OH MY FUCK? For the first time, I had a woman probe the zipper on my jeans and the underwire on my bra. At that time, we did not have to take off our shoes… but we did wish that we’d booked through Dulles.

Slowly, things got back to normal… though lots of sermons at church were about the tragedy and the rebuilding plan. I’m not sure that you ever get over it, nor do you learn to live with it- as I so eloquently heard on the news yesterday. You just live it.

And tell it. And retell it.

I found this in the Web Archive  of my old blog, “Clever Title Goes Here,” and thought you might like to read it. Originally written in 8/2003.
–

What is the first semi-major purchase you made with your own money, why did you decide to purchase that item, and how did you raise the money to buy it?

Even now, but especially as a child, I was a sucker for those “AS SEEN ON TV” products. I didn’t realize that people in infomercials were allowed to stretch the truth, and sometimes even LIED. So, anyway, I was watching this infomercial for the SCANDINAVIAN SNOWBALL RING- a huge pearl ring that, for some reason, captivated me. I thought it was so beautiful that I watched the infomercial over and over again. I started saving up my money. It was only four payments of nineteen ninety nine plus tax, shipping, and handling. It didn’t matter. I didn’t mind. With a SCANDINAVIAN SNOWBALL RING, I would be glamorous. Beautiful people wore SCANDINAVIAN SNOWBALL RINGS.

Eventually, my parents noticed that I was working so hard to buy this ring and getting frustrated because four payments of nineteen ninety nine was a lot of money for a six year old. They decided to order it for me and have it under the tree at Christmas.

On Christmas morning, my mother presented me with a small brown cardboard box. It had been mailed from somewhere in California. Could it be? Could I possibly be getting the SCANDINAVIAN SNOWBALL RING that my heart so desired?

I opened the box. There, nestled in cloth, was the most beautiful ring I had ever seen in my entire six years of life. It was even more shiny, more brilliant than it had been on television. I was so overwhelmed that I didn’t even know what to say. I could only stare at the box and wonder how Santa knew I had been trying so hard.

Forty five minutes later, sounds that could only be identified as six year old broken heart were coming from my bedroom. The SCANDINAVIAN SNOWBALL had rolled off of its perch sealed with cheap glue, never to be found again.

Dear David,

I had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting you at the end of a reading in Portland, Oregon. I say “unfortunately,” because it was not pleasant. I have read every one of your books and I love the face you present to the world so much that I didn’t want time to slip away and the chance to thank you vanished.

So I’m standing in the top balcony trying to ask a question and it’s too loud for even me to hear me. All of the sudden, it was quiet enough and I yelled, “DAVID! LOOK UP HERE!”

You put your microphone to your mouth and you said, “ohhhhhhhh, we do not yell.”

I am so sorry, I acted like a jackass. But it was for a very good cause.

You are one of the people that’s helped me make sense of my life. Hearing your Southern drawl talking about growing up gay in North Carolina takes me back to my own childhood in Northeast Texas. We are kindred spirits, and yet not. I know you on the page. I won’t say that I love you, I will say I love “that you.”.

We both know what that means.

I am in the infant stages of launching a huge web site. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life, because I feel open and free instead of closed and stupid. Writing is definitely the best job you’ll ever have if you write about yourself, because not only do you figure out the times in your life when you’ve been a dickhead, you have an ever-present reminder in the faces of others.

Tears rolled down my face as I listened to your interview on Q with Jian Gilmeshi. We shared a moment through transparent waves. For the first time, I had words to express what I was feeling, and I broke like a dam.

Thank you, David. It is a moment that has divided time, kind of like dropping to the floor and praying in the bathroom launched Elizabeth Gilbert’s career.

Speaking of praying, this is what I wanted to tell you at your concert that night.

I love Christianity again, and one of the reasons why is that I read “Jesus Shaves.” I learned why it was important. God is always going to be around because it has been argued to death- there is simply no way to prove God is not real. And there are always going to be things we can’t explain on earth, so we all turn to our respective religions and talk to our gods, even if it’s money or drugs. What if there’s no God? Just sit with that for a minute. If there was no God, would you regret one second of the time you spent praying? I’m guessing not, because for a lot of people, that’s the only time of the day when they get quiet enough to hear what their consciences have to say.

I choose to believe that the voice that talks back to me is God, even if it’s completely ridiculous. As C.S. Lewis famously said, “I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God, it changes me!” It is the most eloquent quote about prayer I’ve ever heard. I got that feeling again in “Jesus Shaves” because of the denouement- basically, and I’m paraphrasing, “would this conversation have gone any better if we’d had the right words?”

Probably not. The words of faith are as sacred as your heartbeat. There’s no way to bring them up to the surface. They don’t live there.

A great example of this is Pope Francis declaring that if you do good works, you are redeemed… including atheists. Atheists don’t give a crap about redemption, but I give a crap about treating atheists with kindness. God is just my opinion. Not God is just theirs. Christians are not responsible for how atheists react. Christians are responsible for not treating people like crap just because they’re not “one of us.”

There’s just so much “one of us” in the world, David. Even if we don’t believe in God, we still believe we’re chosen. Everybody’s culture is better than everybody else’s. It never stops.

Until people run across your short story and preferably, your voice reading it. Your care coming through as you think about how you can explain something in French for which you’d have trouble in English.

You show your vulnerability, and they show theirs. I especially love the bit where you are speaking the English equivalent of what you said in French, because that’s exactly how I speak Spanish. When I was 17, I went to Mexico on a mission trip, and I gave my testimony. It was something like “thank you for the day to speak with the children. We went to church, we read the Bible…” At this point, I am utterly terrified. That’s pretty much all I know. The best part of that trip was that I only knew how to speak Spanish in the present tense, so I couldn’t express what had happened and what was coming. I could only live now, ahora mismo. In those ways, I see the similarity of our hilarity.

“But a bell, though… that’s fucked up.”

It’s interesting. Dana and I both ran into people from our respective bus rides within a week. Today I walked to the convenience store across from our apartment building because I’m a member of the coffee club- and I’m a writer- so there’s never a moment when I don’t need a cup (Don’t worry. I see how that sounds. I just can’t fix it. The tenth one’s free). I see this guy as I’m leaving and we recognize each other. I remember him from a bus ride a few months before. He asks me how I’ve been. I tell him that I’m great. I’m unemployed for the moment, but I’m writing a ton and my blog is in the infant stages of success. I ask him how he’s doing, and he says, “I don’t want to tell you, because your story is so happy and mine is so sad.” For once in my life, I realized that God was working through me. I didn’t just feel it. I knew it. I said, “I’m unemployed and I’m a blogger. I think I can JUGGLE SOME STUFF AROUND. I have time to listen, but I can totally understand if you don’t want to talk.” He pulled out his Gatorade and sat down.

I don’t want to endanger his privacy, but a long story short is that he’s an Australian chef looking for a job. He was born here, but he hasn’t lived here in a long time. He told me that even driving was different, and I understood that to mean that he thought it was intimidating. Don’t worry, that’s normal. Portland traffic only has two kinds: the ones that are patient and accommodating, and the ones that would run you over even if they saw their mother in the back seat. It seems as if there is no happy medium. His father is dying, and he has trouble keeping his composure.

When I saw his need, I physically reacted. I listened to his story, about being a Chef but because he hasn’t been a Chef in the United States for so very long, people aren’t exactly forthcoming with work. But he’s brilliant. He wants his space to succeed. I looked at him, and I said, “I trust you. I’m going to tell you something I don’t tell very many people (editor’s note: in real life, I mean. When I talk about “work stuff” to my wife, or to anyone else, really, they tend to get a very glazed look in their eyes.*). My web site has had over 2,400 views in the last 30 days. It’s growing at a rate of 50 to 100 viewers every single day. I’ll tell you what: you get a chef gig and I’ll promote you on my web site and direct customers toward your restaurant. If I get famous before you, I’ll take you with me. You get famous before me, you take me with you.” I meant it, too. There are few people in this world as beloved as food columnists.

The light returned to his eyes and he started to smile.

He looked at me, and I said, “do you feel better?” He said, “I feel amazing! Thank you so much!”

He took my cell phone number and promised to call.

I wanted to pray with him, just to get inside his energy space to assure him that no matter how things work out, he’d have the strength and vision to move on. I resisted that temptation because I didn’t want to look like a religious zealot. It didn’t matter. I didn’t have to pray with him to lift his spirits. I didn’t do it with money. I did it with hope.

Amen.

—————————————————–

*I feel Jesus’s pain; It’s that whole “can anything good come out of Nazareth? thing all over again. It’s Haterade, Jesus. Remember, you drink Starbucks!

Jesus: I drink Starbucks now?

Me: Yes, dear one. The Vatican got in on the ground floor with Pepsi. They’re giving it to us at cost.

Jesus: Meaning that I can I have all the bottles of coffee I can drink?! This is GREAT! I can do amazing things so much faster!

Me: Yes, and the plain sweetened coffee is only 50 calories per bottle!

Jesus: But the best part of heaven is that I can have anything I want and never gain any weight. I will always look like the famous artists painted me. All beautiful and gorgeous and white. What a laugh! Don’t they know I was born in the Middle East? I look more like Aziz Ansari!

Me: And you’re just as funny, sir.

Jesus: What’s that “sir” stuff? Haven’t we been friends your entire life? Wasn’t I there when you got drunk and told a deaf guy, “I think it’s so cool that you’re deaf?”

Me: Nevvvvver going to let me forget that one, are you? Did you not see my real intention? He got to sit in on the forefront of cochlear implants. He got to WITNESS HISTORY IN HIS OWN HEAD!

Jesus: I did, and you’re awesome, but I can’t help giving you shit when it’s just so easy.

Me: Thanks, Jesus. I do what I can. Tell the old man I said hello, would you?

Jesus: Mom thinks you’re a bad girl. (editor’s note: I am instantly frozen in terror.)

Me: What is it now?

Jesus: Kidding, she just wants you to send Francis her regards. She loves him like she loves me.

Me: Of course I’ll do that, Jesus. Francis is the best thing that’s happened to the Catholic church in a long time. Have you listened to The Moth? That story about the guy barely out of medical school who saved Mother Theresa from dying eight years before she actually did?

Jesus: You’re kidding ME! I was there!

Me: I keep forgetting that you have this whole timey-wimey thing going on.

Jesus: I keep forgetting that you don’t. I know your whole life. I wish you could see mine.

Me: I could’ve if your father had had one ounce of insight that we were going to want to know everything. We only get the highlights. You’re such a hero, but you’re so much more attractive when you’re flawed. I prefer you not as Jesus Almighty, but Jesus, that dude who tried to learn everything. Literally! Everything! What did you see after you left the temple at 12? Did a spaceship land and little burritos walk out? Did you have to bum enough money for a Middle Eastern breakfast- impossibly strong cigarette, muddy coffee that leaves the top of your hair buzzing, and a newspaper that you probably can’t read- not because you don’t know the language, but you don’t know the slang.

Jesus: True. It’s hard to keep up. But at least I have your blog.

Me: You say that to all the writers.

Jesus: Are you offended?

Me: No, we need you more than most.

(really must buy the url “slangforjesus.com.” It would be a way to categorize slang so that Jesus would know what the fuck we’re talking about when he comes back. Kind of like Urban Dictionary, but for the Savior of the world’s sins. Instead of having $80 used t-shirts, it would have $10 towels monogrammed “I said wash, dude.”)

Ok, Fanagans. I told you that I would tell you the truth about myself, good or bad. Today I don’t have good or bad news. It just is what it is. I’ve had a few friends tell me that I sound like I’m going into hypomania on my blog, and these are the kind of friends that I trust. I feel that they could be onto something, but at the same time, I also see the flip side of the coin. Because I trust my friends enough to know that they’re probably right doesn’t mean that my story isn’t emotionally valid. Feeling both sides of the equation doesn’t give me the perspective that it does to others, so I just thought I would take a minute and address what’s going on.

First of all, Dana and I are struggling financially. This is important if you’re thinking about giving the web site a donation, but not in the grand scheme of things. I’m not saying anything one way or another, it just is. Because we’re struggling financially and I don’t have a job, I don’t feel productive when I’m not writing. The impulse to take care of Dana and to get noticed as fast as possible has very little to do with my current state and everything to do with feeling panicky about how to make ends meet. Publishing comes from my drive to show everyone that I’m worth their time. I have the experience.

I have been involved with writing and coding for the web since I was 19 years old. The first time I put up a web page, it was to impress my first love, Meagan. I don’t think she gave a rat’s ass that I did the web site, but it did give me a marketable skill. There wasn’t a single class that I flunked at University of Houston, because every time I thought I was going to get an F, I offered to make the professor a web site. It worked every time.

Or, at least, it did back then. Now there are content management systems as easy to use as Microsoft Office. Back then, though, you couldn’t just type. You had to know your strong from your em (Webmasters HOLLA!). I learned everything I could get my hands on, because the Internet was a way for me to communicate.

I am an introvert. I have always been an introvert. That doesn’t mean I don’t like you, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to spend time with you, but it doesn’t add energy to my mood. It drains me. Extroverts have extra energy in public and have trouble reflecting in private. I’m reading this great book, Introvert Power, and it’s teaching me all sorts of stuff that I didn’t know about myself before. For instance, I didn’t know that I didn’t want time without people, I need it to function in the world.

This blog has provided me with a way to dream bigger than I ever have before, because the way the publication cycle goes, I can work anywhere and everywhere. The drawback to this enormous job is that I don’t get paid… but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. There are women all over the world that support a partner and kids off of a blog like mine. I need a solid body of work before the web site can sustain on its own. I am the restaurant owner watching his kitchen a hundred hours a week.

Part of me is manic, and part of it is the web itself. In a 24-hour news cycle, you have to move fast to keep up. Why do I post the amount of times that I do in a day? Blogs are connected with something called a ping. A ping is a notification that a blog has updated. As you can imagine, people that use RSS readers or similar aggregators get thousands and thousands of notifications every week. In order to stand out, you have to make your blog appear in someone’s feed more often. My Facebook profile is connected to my WordPress account, so it posts a notification in your news feed the time the server added it, not the time I wrote it.

It’s kind of like wanting attention from David Sedaris and knowing you’re in the top balcony. You have as much to say to him as the people on the front row, but he would never hear you unless you jumped up and down and screamed his name (I know because I did this).

Activating the ping to go off or the Facebook notification to appear is the equivalent of jumping up and down, hoping that somebody sees you. I am driven and passionate about making this web site succeed, and it comes across as hypomania because of the way I juggle the production.

I generally only write for three hours a day, longer on Fridays and Saturdays because those are Dana’s long nights at work. However, I publish all the time because I have an automated job that posts them for me when I’m not at my computer. I also have Pidgin Messenger, so if it looks like I’m on Facebook all the time, I’m really not. It just means that my computer doesn’t have a screensaver so Pidgin won’t tell you I’m away.

I’m not saying there’s not a problem, but I think it is minimal at best. The biggest thing that this burst of creativity is giving me is a sense of purpose and direction toward the life I want instead of the life I currently have. I have to believe that one day, I’ll be a household name. I’ll be a question on Jeopardy! You know what gives me the courage to keep going toward my dream? The fact that I already write to almost every country in the world. The only continent I haven’t touched is Antarctica.

I will slow down when I either have a stable of writers to pool the work, or a charming and very rich patron (that was a joke).

(enter stream of conscience)

A long, long time ago…

This is what we’re doing? This? Right now?

You’re a hack.

You’re a wanker.

Let’s move on.

Agreed.

Star Wars is a good movie, though.

YES. Thank you, Leslie. There’s probably a hundred people on earth that disagree with you. What earth-shattering revelations do you have for us today?

You’re fat. Come to think of it, you need a dye job, too.

I deserved that, didn’t I?

Yes, because that was a dick move.

Dick move, guys. Dick move.

What’s that from?

I don’t remember. It’s just a think we do with Volfe?

Yes, we’re pack. We have a language just like the McLanemys (editor’s note: my dad, my stepmom, and all blended sisters. Hey, wait… new band name).

Why do you think that?

Why don’t you? We have standard responses to everything known to God and man. Knowledge is power, and knowing is half the battle. Hail Cobra. 70-inch plasma screen TV… with Netflix. Kevin Got Bored.™ I’m tweeting this.

Describing our family is so weird.

Are you off on a tangent again?

No, I’m talking about our sitcom. Who we’d pick to star in our own Friends episode. The friends that sustain us when we’ve forgotten to take care of ourselves, keep us honest emotionally. You’d take a bullet for them every time you hear the gun fire, but they’re not related to you. Society does not know how to interpret deep friendship anymore because all of the words used to describe it have long been associated with homosexuality. However, my pack has both men and women, small in number but fiercely close. So close that I proudly wear my pack’s number, painted with a stencil on the back of my truck. We’re nerds, so the pack number is 42. My bumper number is 11. If you know the first thing about science fiction, you’ll get those references.

Alex, I’ll take “Famous Science Fiction References” for $2,000.

“How many actors have played The Doctor before Matt Smith?”

“What is 10?”

Correct!

“$1600”

“In Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, the computer spends years calculating the answer to life, the universe, and everything into what number?”

“42”

Oh, I’m sorry. You didn’t phrase your answer in the form of a question.

This is a stupid game.

So, tomorrow then?