Category: Uncategorized

I’m ADHD. I’ll Love Them All, Eventually.

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What is your favorite hobby or pastime?

I have never found anyone ADHD that didn’t get obsessed with everything a hundred dollars at a time. That’s because it takes about a hundred dollars’ worth of interest before your brain moves onto something else. The two hobbies I’ve always had are reading and writing, and I’m finally learning that it’s where my most basic need and the world’s wants combine. I am giving people solid answers in their own lives by being able to see someone else struggling with the same shit, and I know that because I’ve been read in every country in the world, sometimes because my beautiful girl has a reason to be there and I don’t. I have faith in my abilities because she believed in me before I did. That being said, if she’d ever tasted the beer I made, we might be doing something completely different together. 😉

Dana and I made beer through a kit once, a Hefeweizen. For a basic mix, it was fantastic. So, I would get into beer making again if I had the stuff, so not every hobby I’ve invested in has been a waste. In fact, I think I asked for the beer-making kit from my mother for Christmas just to see if she would buy it. When you’re a preacher’s kid, being a little devil is relative.

To her credit, she was a lot more fun when she realized I was joking 90% of the time and loosened up. Lindsay and I always thought she was funnier than us because we were acid funny all day long no problem. When my mother dropped a truth bomb, she destroyed because she picked her battles better than we did and knew when she had an entrance that couldn’t be beat.

With my mother, I enjoyed crafting because she enjoyed it. Mostly cutting up things for her bulletin board in her room, which is why I’ve enjoyed connecting with all the teachers I’ve dated as an adult, because we have that lingo in common. I’ve never been up in front of a classroom, but I’ve done the work it takes to get a classroom ready for many years. I think it would be fun to be married to a teacher because they’d naturally be as creative as me and if their specialty was English I’d never get away with anything here, either.

I could be happy every day of my life with access to an eighth grade teacher’s library. This is because I prefer YA in every subject. It takes finesse to explain adult issues without adult language, like the stark reality that kids die, and not even in wizarding worlds. Cancer can and often does take them out. John Green taught me how that plays out, not Elizabeth Kubler Ross. Concepts are built with Eric Carle, not Erik Erickson. Sesame Street, not Skinner. Tolkien and Lewis, not Dr. Spock. I know this because they are who comes along to rescue children with terrible parents.

I am not singling anyone out. We are all terrible parents and children at once point or another. Children are traumatized in all sorts of ways from things we don’t remember we’ve even said. I know that this is the case because if I take the time to remember what someone has said and why it hurt me, I will regret it if I bring it up. No one likes to have things brought up that make them feel guilty, even if it’s for the purpose of not letting me feel bad over something I needed to talk out.

I am sure that because I’m AuDHD, this comes out wrong, but it doesn’t vary no matter what I do or say. People do not like to talk about their flaws and get defensive and angry immediately. I am no exception to this, but that doesn’t mean I’m not glad that someone chose to lance a boil so we could feel closer later.

I will never get over feeling insecure in my relationship with Supergrover because I didn’t have a choice over what to do when Dana and I broke up. She could think of me as trying to help her or hurt her and “in the end, it doesn’t even matter.” She can think I was trying to make our relationship easier and freer if we wanted it in the future, or she can believe that I set out to be her friend whether she wanted me to be or not. How does that work, exactly? Explain it to me like I’m five.

I didn’t think that anything would be truly solved until I looked into her eyes, and if she really had the time and space to think about it, she would agree with me. We needed to sniff each other out with more senses than sight. We did not have enough context to know whether we were scaring the life out of each other or not, because there was no context. For instance, I think she thinks it’s cute that I ask her how famous people smell, but what I bet she doesn’t know is that I picked that up from a morning radio show in Houston; what else are you supposed to say when someone name-drops? That’s because I know she’s not trying to name-drop. It’s her real life and I have to learn to hang. She’s not being an asshole, they’re her reality and now mine.

I can choose to hang or I can choose to think she’s a name-dropping asshole. I can either learn from her how to walk in rareified air constantly, or I can’t. I don’t think I would have had as much of a lock on why it’s necessary, due to two fans, her and a date I’ll call Stephanie (mostly because that’s her name and it was several years ago, so no one in my life would remember this.

Supergrover was the kind of fan that when she met me, she treated me like she’d met Dooce, Will, and Jenny (The Bloggess). She lovebombed me into complete submission, and I did the same. We just didn’t end up being the same sexual orientation (sapiosexual rather than straight/gay); according to my notes, this was hard for me to accept. Didn’t mean I was threatening. I had been sucked into a brand new world; I was green, afraid, and trying to push her away. In trying to push her away, I only made her angry. It was not a good situation because I didn’t think. My aim was to get her to block me on everything so I wouldn’t have this constant conflict within me of feeling incapable as a friend and a wife in every way possible either one could dream up. I was falling short of he glory of God when my sweet wife realized she was being Mickey’d because I hadn’t so much fallen for another woman as the TARDIS was on our lawn, then it wasn’t. Instead of moving on with my life, she became The Raggedy Doctor, me running every time she left the e-brakes on just because she liked the sound.

It was exactly the same vibe as if I’d been tapped for a tour with Beyonce, and I really, really mean it. Beyonce was three years behind me at HSPVA.

  • I would not think of her as a celebrity when I met her, because as a junior I would have been unimpressed by freshman. Therefore, I really would be capable of meeting Jay-Z and Eminem and not get rattled because to me, it’s just my homegirl’s husband and his friends.
  • The power imbalance would be the same because I would never want to hurt her in the press with my own writing….. therefore, you can take a guess on any given day who is more powerful in our relationship and she knows it. She reacts to it by not telling me anything and thinking it’s better that way. I am an anxious alpha dog, and my reactions to Supergrover have always reflected it when I could really rival Jay in my loyalty.
  • Actually, I can MORE THAN prove my loyalty over Jay, who is not a bad person but has done bad things…… and I would never treat Michael as if he is that person because I’ve never found that he’s ever done anything wrong. He cannot say the same thing about me. I can’t complain when my acting crazy was to act like the person they thought I was rather than the person I really am because saying “all this scares me” was apparently just too big a job. It’s the difference between thinking you have a problem with your next door neighbor and finding out you have a problem with Eminem on both sides of the equation for different reasons. She’s on the level, and I spit bars.
  • It would be every bit the same as sleeping with Eminem’s girlfriend and finding out just how much people can hate you in the audience. The audience will kill you if you lat them. I have no doubt that the reaction in the press if there was any interest (there wouldn’t be, anyway, because she’s famous among other people who don’t care who she is, and neither would the press. It’s just an analogy. No one
  • I would never want her to think I was running away because of something she did, so I thought acting like an asshole was better and so did she. I can say that of a relationship with Beyonce. The same rareified air that takes a while to grow into. Treating everyone like their most childlike selves not to reveal them and having some issue with something I can’t talk about here.
  • Because I’m an intel fan and she’s not, she won’t get that I mean this with all my heart. We need to rekindle our friendship because Will and Francie are caught up in Sidney’s bullshit without a clue. Left outside in front of the bank, but I’ll go into Credit Dauphine when she does.
  • Where she fails is only seeing me as Will season one, just like Beyonce would if I got into it with her.

So, if I couldn’t read her like a magazine, I would think she was a narcissist. This is not the case. We could go back to lovebombing each other at any time, because that shit is genuine. The purest on earth because I love her mind with such passion and she loves mine that way when we’re talking about intellectually diving deep.

With Supergrover and Beyonce, it is and would be hard to tell between avoiding something because it’s hard and avoiding something because you’re too busy…… and not expressing it clearly yourself because you can’t even choose. Additionally, why wouldn’t learning how to love Beyonce take over your hobbies if one of them was writing? Wouldn’t you have something to say about it? That it’s amazing and problematic?

Just because it takes a long time to turn over in my mind doesn’t mean I wouldn’t give a limb to make everything right in the end. What if Beyonce never acknowledged that her rooms were different than mine? I hope she’d know that it didn’t mean anything between us, because she’s still an annoying freshman.

Our biggest problem in life is that I treat her like she’s Beyonce and I know it. She doesn’t treat me like I’m Wil, Dooce, and Jenny anymore, and shouldn’t forget why it’s important. It’s what makes us work on all cylinders…… because Beyonce left HSPVA, and Supergrover and I both like being classically trained.

I Already Have

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

My house, the United Methodist parsonage in Naples, Texas, burned down to the ground on December 20, 1990.

It was a child’s Christmas in wails. Presents were given that year that would have been cool had they not been distorted by smoke or water damage, and I only know that looking back. Alternatively, we got presents that we knew were collected five minutes ago, and knew enough to be grateful because we had an awareness that of course no one has our lists anymore. Lindsay and I were grateful for any normalcy at all. The the first few hours, I internalized absolutely everything because I was the only one home. My parents and sister weren’t there. So, I did what I always did in that situation. I became a very tiny hostess to the fire department….. so sorry I was inconveniencing them. There were church members in my neighborhood that were all flocking to the middle of the street and I just started doing everything through an out of body experience. Too much pain to stay connected. In order to emote where people could understand me, I had to put my feelings away. My trauma reflexes do not all come from emotional abuse as a teen, but those reflexes were built on someone who’d already developed those reflexes independently.

I learn a lot about trauma using myself as a case study, because I’m looking back far enough into the past that I write like I’m someone else’s little girl. It’s a lot easier to parent yourself when you see yourself now as a different person…… because when you do all the work, you realize that you are indeed the same person and uncovering all your trauma allows you to reclaim the childlike parts of yourself that were stolen. I also use myself as a case study because even if I had an MD and a PhD, I would still never be as sure about someone else’s history as I am about my own. Patients lie, and about the stupidest shit because they think doctors are judgmental (they’re not, and you have no idea what you’re doing when you leave something out, capiche?). Doctors are, for the most part, judgmental like our last letter in Myers-Briggs is J, not judgmental like an asshole. A doctor is just as much of a geek as a computer programmer. Don’t hold back the tools that let them “if, then.” My dad was a pastor and my grandmother worked in a blood lab. I’ve been steeped in the languages of ministry and medicine since I was born, so it’s entirely possible for me to lose my shit and be completely fine in the same exact moment.

My computer had melted into my desk. My hangers had melted onto and into my clothes. When it all started, I’d been the only one home in my pajamas, getting ready for a district-wide church dance and even had a date.

I was wearing pantyhose and curlers with a Snoopy nightgown when I rang the doorbell next door. I was in preacher’s kid trauma victim mode, the first time I’d ever experienced trauma in its true sense. My house was burning down in front of my eyes and I was the only one of the four of us who knew it. My mother and sister were shopping. My father was delivering communion to shut-ins. It was all me.

All. Me.

I had just turned 12 three months earlier. My grandfather wouldn’t have known what to do in this situation, it was so unique. Age couldn’t line up to experience here because what happened was rare. The other thing is that I would not have felt as alone today. This was at least 10 years before I had a cell phone (because I’m that old, not “we didn’t buy one”) and every contact programmed into it so I wasn’t dependent on my memory for the numbers. In that kind of situation, you’re glad emergency services only have three numbers to remember.

If I’d had my current cell phone, I could have called my mother and sister at the shops. I could have called my dad while he was visiting the elderly. I could have called my grandparents because they only lived about a half hour away. My cell phone now is not handy to me because it can call out. It’s handy because without it, I wouldn’t know who to call.

(As an aside, aren’t cell phones a miracle? I have been impressed with being able to walk around and talk on the phone anywhere since our mobile was in a black bag.)

I am certain that I assured Doris nothing was wrong, it was no big deal, but I had to call the fire department. And would it be okay if I waited with you? I was doing all those things you do when you’re a preacher’s kid, assuring everyone around me that everything was under control.

So, in short, I learned two lessons. The first is that stuff doesn’t matter. The only thing I lost that were precious to me were photographs, and even those don’t matter anymore because any I have that are precious are also on Facebook or WordPress, so they’re backed up. There is no material thing I could lose that would hurt me, really. What hurt me was the second lesson.

Even when things are fucked six ways to Sunday, the reflex to make everyone else more comfortable is intact.

It’s something you don’t find until you lose everything else. You don’t find it until all the bullshit is stripped away and realize you’re pretending to be fine. The reality break from trauma makes it where you live and reflect. You have a binge-purge relationship with feelings because when they come up, you are too overwhelmed. It’s a continual cycle.

It was a brand new ball game when I realized that an anxious attachment is just an avoidant attachment style in disguise. I’ve just been avoiding me.

Invincible and Impervious

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s a topic or issue about which you’ve changed your mind?

I wrote something about Supergrover that made me realize I was saying it about her, but later something I identified within myself as well. I often find that most of Supergrover is me, but I don’t know that for sure. That I know I’m describing her, but I don’t know that I’m describing me until I read and reflect. This is not a gossip column, this is self-help. I know that she laughs and cries with me over this from a distance. We both participated. We both lost something. We both love each other and we always will. But whether there are more words to add to our story together is up for grabs. My heartbreak is not losing my relationship with someone that has power, as if she’s a cool accessory so I can name drop (I can’t, anyway, so this would be useless to me). I told her at last interaction that I had no problem going on and busting her up because I had so much anger that needed to resolve. I’ve been in this much anxiety since 2015. She says she has forgiven me and also been unwilling to discuss a path forward by avoiding talking about it. I know that she’s told me it depends on the future overall, but she won’t help us get there.

I once told her that this blog was a record of every twist and turn it took to give her a hug, meaning to be sweet and I think it was, but I’m not sure. Do you see what I mean? If someone has been creeped out enough that they ask a real person in my life if they need a restraining order, my rejection sensitivity dysphoria will go apeshit that someone thinks I’m trying to threaten them to that degree. And then to come back to me later and be unwilling to reassure me that we’re okay for years? It’s confusing as fuck to want to take care of someone and not be certain how. This is someone I have pined over like a teen romance from the 90s. Once you’ve felt that for someone, it’s always there in the smallest part of you. I can move on from wanting to be her partner. That was easy. But I cannot move on from trying to be affectionate to the extent that I can.

In the first couple of years, a line like “a record of every twist and turn it took to give you a hug” would have made her tear up a little because she would have thought I meant it platonically. Because I was direct in just asking her if she was capable of falling in love with someone intellectually because my heart ached too much not to know, now I don’t know if she’s moved on enough to accept that I mean those things platoncally again. That she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop and I’m playing her when I never want to hurt her for anything in the world. It would be a disaster. Not only would it alienate me from her, there were a very specific set of circumstances that led to those feelings like a WWII-era sweetheart, and trust me when I say it’s a bigger range than she’ll accept. I took on a project when I married her, and not that I mean it like a bitchy mean girl. I meant that in order to be her friend, I had homework. She didn’t think about what I do and when she told me who she was in real life (her name didn’t mean anything, just mutual friends so I admire her because of the company she keeps. Different playing field in terms of context to understand her, not context to write about her. If you come to this blog and it’s not there one day, know I did it for love. I’m not trying to goad her and provoke her because I’m trying to have content here. I’m saying that her shit has consequences, and it hurts me she doesn’t recognize that.

That because I talk about my everyday issues she changed the game and left me hanging. I knew this was a possibility from week one because she said something that really, really hurt me and had a cold response. She had a cold response to my grief over my mother dying and had the audacity to tell me she knew she was being a dickhead. It was basically along the lines of “why do you think I don’t understand. Why are you so special?” Because I think you think it’s weird that I’m still grieving and you have no idea what you’re in for. She said it around the anniversary of my mother’s death, and it was fresh. What we know is “fresh” is like the first three or four years. That’s because everyone could die around you and you won’t feel it like your parents’ deaths. You learn to live around something you thought you never could. In retrospect, she was a bad friend with moments of glory, but all anxious/avoidant attachments have this pattern. You binge/purge for all time until you realize it’s something a relationship can’t sustain. But what i was binging is not for normal people. Just imagine Kathy Griffin dating Steve Wozniak, but we’re not dating because it’s better for me to be the one that’d be there for her next husband should a thing like that come to pass.

I relaxed into it because of something she said. That you should stay with someone if you love them even if there’s no promise of sex anymore. She didn’t mean it in a negative way at all, she meant that a relationship is worth it if you love someone. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel that way before, I did. I just knew she knew what I was dealing with. That once all those feelings of wanting to be her romantic partner went away and learned the immensity of our bond, platonic marriage made sense to me and I began searching for images in media that represented those relationships. Not the couple from “The Notebook.” Jay and Silent Bob. The Doctor and Martha Jones. Aziraphale and Crowley season one, not two. An angel and a demon as platonic loves is my favorite quote on earth, even though Crowley isn’t an atheist. The quote is just the same idea as an angel and a demon committing for eons.

A/Theism is the greatest love story ever told, and the truth is in the slash.

Pete Rollins

I am just not really sure she knew when I changed messages, and tired of not knowing because sometimes she showed that she did and it made me glow from the inside. That when I stare at her pictures now, it’s because I’m trying to feel her presence in the room when she’s not there. It’s so much better than wanting something I can’t have, because that attachment isn’t secure. Where we fail is assuring each other this is the case and acting like it’s not true. The assurance that she’s next to me is as brillian as when people talk about seeing Christ or heaven in a hallucination, and she doesn’t accept that she has that vibe by nature, not turner. That everyone else will focus on her nature while I don’t give a shit about her professional accomplishment when in the outside world, that’s all people would see and would judge her as infinitely superior to everyone else. I promise that whatever the straight girl equivalent of internailzed homophobia is, she’s felt it. Her profession’s got a bad rap among the fans and sometimes voters, historically. Nothing about that rap is bad, you just feel it as pressure like a preacher’s kid.

On top of that, she’s drop dead gorgeous so when she enters a room, people sit up a little more because they respect her before she talks. Her words, like mine, have a devastating effect on both of us. I told her once that she should propose to Michael like Chandler and Monica, both getting on both knees and meeting in the middle. She loved that image, and didn’t get that I needed her to do it, too, because whether or not we get along, we have business and always will, because she fucked us both in the end. I’m not angry at her because I led us here at first and she finished the job. She doesn’t see the wall of bullshit I walked into, and instead of taking responsibility like she has a child now (in terms of the level to which I can understand her without doing the homework, and the feelings you can’t understand when you try when the busier person will not tell you what they think of those feelings when it’s vitally important to our friendship. I need solid communication again, because she said she wanted it and it created a situation where it’s too dangerous to let go, because it was thoughtless to believe I wouldn’t need her if she’s looked at it from the perspective that my career might be important to me. I know she never wants to tank it because she was my first patron. She will come back eventually and read all these entries obsessively (hopefully with a third, dispassionate eye because she’s judgmental so I know I can explain until she understands. I do not mean judgmental like an asshole. Judgmental like “that’s the way she processes emotions because her last Meyer’s-Briggs is J. It’s the way we call each other out on the carpet when she’s not trying to please me and it makes our friendship all the better for it because we’re constantly speaking the same language).

Therefore, I am trying to make the case for platonic marriage, not judging her. I am neurodivergent and on the spectrum between autism and ADHD with overexplaining as a basic need. You cannot imagine how much crossover there is between me and Kathy Griffin dating Steve Wozniak. It’s impossible to date a person who needs to process their feelings and it ends up being onstage. It’s hard for Supergrover to like me now, but she has a thick enough skin to let me be as I am. She loves it when my admiration runs deep. I know she does. She loves that when I look into the smallest place inside me, I see my love for her. What she doesn’t love is when I get angry and call her out on her bullshit because she thinks that’s my focus. It’s her filter. She’s one of the great loves of my life because I’ve felt those feelings and they went away, like lesbians who have that bond and their partner moves on. I can’t learn to love her like a straight woman, but I can do this. It is hell on earth that she does not see what she’s done, and how devastating it is when she nopes out. She entered a contract (a Massey pre-nup without the clause to defeat it) when we signed it by choice and now can’t deal with the consequences. I call her on her shit and she doesn’t like it and knows it’s just as essential as I do. What I cannot get her to see is that I am not berating her for her opinions and judging her as a person. Her worth is precious to me, beloved Disciple, and a good description because she loves my writing and there’s a little bit of power imbalance, in retrospect.

Sometimes I wonder what Jesus would think of his story after he died, because we’ll never know it whether he was bodily resurrected or not. I don’t need magic Jesus. Anyway. I wonder what he would think of his weird little sect actually accomplishing something by committee, a first on many levels.

The immensity of feeling like she’s always going to feel wronged because I did it once weighs on me, because she only treats me like she forgives me on the surface. It’s having faith and throwing it away over and over, spaghetti code without having some together. Never debugging the code and versioning like Microsoft (the idea that you keep advancing the operating system without taking out the code that breaks for older hardware and software. I am writing a really identifiable story because there wasn’t a pandemic in 2015. They didn’t have empathy for an all-Internet relationship because they didn’t have the context of living on the Internet before it. I didn’t have a problem with keeping up that disconnect because I’d done it all of my adult life. I can feel my emotions without being in the room, but I’ve been in powerful rooms when she’s e-mailed me from them. It’s a lot. She’s a lot. But I’m capable if she’ll see it. I don’t think of this as public excoriation. I think of it as explaining my feelings to myself and others as a survival manual. There are consequences, not all of them good. It’s a gospel, a written account.

In the Bible there is no argument for God, only people’s reactions to them. I hope that I am coming across from this perspective. That I am not interested in being that person that makes her participate in anything because I’m obsessed with her, it’s that she made me responsible for something I didn’t ask for and I’m not even mad about it, but I need her and she doesn’t have time. it’s a straight up problem that could be solved in 10 mutes, because I wouldn’t feel the need to constantly explain why I’m not an asshole and she wouldn’t feel guilty about it and push me away. But she loves lines where it’s clear my love runs deep. Really deep. So far, her favorite line I’ve written about her is that she was a mother lion who carried me through the mountains, who has no trouble with tough love as it’s required. She doesn’t respect the authority I feel when my mother lion comes out as well. That it is not a case of loving someone in one direction like she’s been doing. She has the right to walk away, and it’s a pain I know she never meant to inflict.

I said that the things that make her invulnerable and impervious at work were killing her in terms of strength coming to her through her vulnerability instead. The issue on which I’ve changed my mind is that we are actually two separate people. If you knew her real life story, even she would realize that with my childhood, I totally grew up into her adulthood if she was looking at making those connections. That her people skills are built on my people skills and vice versa, because my inner child is older than hers and her adult voice is older than mine. Oh, my God do I ever become Lindsay’s childhood nightmare of older sister oppression. Supergrover has never been an older sister and I am willing to bet that her little sisters would be enjoying this if they knew it existed.

I am willing to say it’s just projection, but I think she’d agree that the things that make her piss excellence at work are killing her on the home front, because those two worlds are drastically different. She can be soft, feminine, flirty, whatever…….. at home. At work, there are rules, and breaking them when they just don’t make sense. Rule following gets me nowhere in my line of work, and i realized that from living in hers. But please know that I’m not slamming her in the slightest. If I got excited enough to go to the moon, I’m betting I’d have a strict set of rules to follow for something incredible. That’s my story here- that nothing is bad, nothing is even hard when we’re both clear.

She is my beautiful girll.

Helvetica Brought to You By Genetics

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It doesn’t take much in life to make me happy.

I have always been a font nerd. Just incredibly so. It started with newspapers, and not even with reading them myself. When I was a teenager, one of my dad’s contributions to our church was to make a big sign for it. Not like cardboard… like a huge logo built onto the side of a stone wall, or something like that. I don’t remember exactly what it was made of, but I do remember the conversation before it was constructed.

He said that if we were going to advertise the church, the font didn’t need to be readable when you were standing in front of the church. It needed to be visible when you were driving down the road at 35 mile an hour.

And it’s not just one thing, but it is another story about my family. I have no proof of this, but my feeling about it is that my love of fonts started with my grandfather, Mayo.

Both of my grandfathers worked at Lone Star Steel for their entire careers. My mother’s father was a computer geek (this has no bearing on my current situation). I also think I may have inherited his autism, but I am not basing that on a diagnosis and it may be complete bullshit. I just observed him for years.

He, like me, ate about five things. (I’m a pro cook, but I don’t do it for myself. As a writer, I like consistency as not to interrupt my flow.)

He, like me, was the first in the family to adopt computers as a career…. except he was more high-level than I was. Not only did he do projects for NASA at Lone Star Steel, he would have been (I think, not 100% certain) the modern day equivalent of a systems administrator. The things that I recall that happened to my mother, aunts, and uncles back me up on this, because in retrospect it really seems like he was a neurodivergent struggling in a neurotypical world (which also has no bearing on my current situation, clearly). Not only did we have the connection of me being his first grandchild out of many, he could see me. For instance, literally no one around me knew how to tutor me in Algebra except him.

My father’s father was the public relations man for the whole company. He wrote like a journalist, he took pictures like a journalist. Probably neurodivergent and struggling as well, because genetics and past history in terms of observation.

I started with a tangent on my maternal grandfather before getting to the story because I am an interesting mix of both of them. I have my father’s father’s widow’s peak and my mother’s father’s nose. My dad attested to this in the video the other day…. “she’s got my face.” I assume he got it from somewhere. I don’t know whether me being genderqueer makes me notice it more, or whether it’s objectively true, but I find myself in them more than any other family member. Put together, I look an amazing amount like my dad’s littlest sister….. but inside, I’m both of them down to their careers. Not only do I use linux, I’ve got the skills of a PR man to make documentation and linux evangelism come alive on the page. It’s such a drag to read boring documentation and comments in the code, and every one of us knows it. So far, the best comment I’ve gotten when I’ve installed a package is “not guaranteed not to kill puppies and steal your women.” It was bleeding edge, and the reason it’s funny is that linux isn’t corporate and doesn’t have to conform to Microsoft bullshit. I would have a lot more fun working with developers on Launchpad than I would ever get out of Seattle……. because I could say things like “if you install this on a live server first, God have mercy on your soul.”

Where fonts come in is that coders are persnickety about the fonts used in the code editor (ironically enough, I prefer Microsoft Visual Studio Code because it’s every bit as good as Notepad++ and will run natively. Most coders use some version of the same font. It will look llike Verdana with a few notable exceptions. The first thing is that monospace type means exactly what it says. Every letter takes up the same amount of room. This is important when looking at coding because it’s so much easier on your eyes. In the newspaper business, they don’t do that because they’re not looking at the same thing. They don’t have to read the code between the content.

In an office suite and with coding, for me it’s Droid for everything- sans, serif, and mono. Not only do I just like them, it looks better for documents to always use a complete family of fonts rather than picking them out piecemeal. You can, it’s just easier on the eyes because then the spaces between the fonts look the same…… except for Droid Sans Mono. We have covered this.

If you’re an Android user, you’re used to the Droid font family because it’s the same one used on your phone. It makes it easier on your eyes due to looking at it all day.

Editor’s Note: “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face” from “My Fair Lady” is playing in my head right now as the designation below font familiy is font face.

The only thing that ever wins over Droid Sans is Helvetica…. that’s because it’s hard to find if you’re not an Apple user, because Apple actuallly bought it for distribution and Windows didn’t. They made up their own knockoff called “Arial,” and if they’d followed Steve’s advice to focus on design, they would have bought it, too, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. In case you didn’t think Helvetica is worth serious money, there’s a whole ass documentary by the same name. Helvetica is everywhere you look. Everywhere. I once bought a copy of Helvetica at Goodwill and a whole ass Mac came with it. Buying a Mac at Goodwill was on purpose. The first is that it would be old as shit. More like a glorified typewriter. The second is that it didn’t even have a wireless card in it, so I wouldn’t be tempted at Starbucks.

When I go to Starbucks, I’m there to play for keeps. I am going to get something out of this writing session if it’s the last thing I do. “Getting something out of a writing session” is relative. Sometimes it’s that I can judge whether my writing is better or worse. Sometimes I realize that even if it’s six pages of bullshit and four wide margins, I still worked out. Writing is a muscle, and you’re strengthening your core.

I am just saying both my grandfathers have taught me a lot about what it takes to be a computer geek and a writer who focuses on art. A lot about what it takes to be neurodivergent in a neurotypical world…. particularly with my father’s father, I feel like a resurrection now that he’s dead. I am certain my father would say that, too, because he’s observed us together his whole life. I, just like him, have leapt in my bedroom to escape all the peopling. Everyone else just worked around us. Now that I’m older and I’m looking at his life in retrospect, the things that seemed weird about him when I was a kid are the exact same things that are making me weird now.

I am dying laughing thinking about how tears will roll down his face at that line. How tears would have rolled down my mother’s, aunts,and uncles’ face as well because I have just revealed the fact that I have both their dad’s numbers because I are them.

“All lesbians have this straight guy side to them…….” -me

Through my father’s father, I know that I have found both of my beloveds in this life, and they are to me. Invaluable and precious just like my grandmother was.

So, when I think about my personality, I am my dad on the inside and my mom on the outside in my behavior and actions. I think like a man, I look like a woman. This isn’t problematic to me because I’ve solved the mystery because now I have a word like nonbinary, where that disconnect doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. I named it and claimed it, sister.

Although I know my first and ony thought at the first sign of breast cancer means rip them both off immediately, because what I saw when I saw Tig Notaro is that it didn’t make her look any less feminine than she did before and my shirts would hang right.

I say this not to say that I’d have top surgery on purpose because I feel I was born in the wrong body. I just know I won’t struggle with body issues afterwards because you cannot even guess how little it would bother me to look male to some people. My mind is big enough to accept that I contain multitudes and no answer is easy…. why most people think I’m the most intense personality they’ve ever met because when they tell me they have a problem, I say, “do you want some advice, or did you just want to vent?” If they say that they’d like advice, I will go Griffin from MiBIII on their asses. I can “if, then” my way through an emotional situation like a doctor, and I do that because of my dad. He left the ministry to pursue a career in medicine and my stepmother is a rheumatologist. They got married and we lived together when I was young enough to pick up their patois quickly and easily. I get lost in a psychological H&P.

So, to get back to what I was saying about fonts, I know what to use and when because I have all the use case scenarios where you have to make readability a priority, and that comes from my dad, too. He preached about it. He said, “when Kennedy was assasinated, it said, ‘Kennedy Shot!’ in about 80pt font. When Jessica (llittlle girl that got trapped in a well) got rescued, the newspaper said, ‘Jessica Safe!’ in about 80pt font.” I don’t remember the sermon verbatim, but it centered on the ways in which bad and good news is delivered. Perhaps it was that you can only control what you broadcast, not what you take in.

When broadcasting your good news, it helps to make readability a priority.

Difficult to Say

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.

It’s really difficult for me to find a time when I’ve felt out of place, and not because I’m so confident I never do. It’s the opposite. It’s combing through every day of my life to figure out if I can remember a specific story about this, because feeling out of place is almost a continual state of being. I write with confidence and self-assuredness because I am not dealing with social anxiety while I type. You are getting how I sound when I’m alone… not when I’m trying to balance all the energetic forces in a room.

In public, I tend to go out with one person or perhaps meet up with two or three friends at a time. I do not like to go to parties very much, because I find that I only have one mood that likes to party and I don’t know how to get there. I have just been at a party and sometimes enjoyed myself without knowing what I did to deserve the favor. I like overhearing conversations more than I like participating in them. People are interesting to me, and if I don’t know them at all and just overhear them, it’s impossible to identify them on this web site. You won’t meet them, because I don’t even know who they are.

So, to the people at Starbucks and the zoo, I’m listening (trying to bring you Niles and Frasier Crane realness here). I honestly believe that I’ve become a blogger to learn to handle my shit because walking around and hearing everyone else and having my mirror neurons go off makes me feel tired and low-energy. I hurt for what I see around me, particularly homelessness. If I ever have cash, I won’t by the time I get home. That’s because I carry cash a quarter to never and when I do it’s only two or three dollars at a time. I will give it to anyone who asks, because since I don’t carry cash, I don’t often have the chance to give poor people money at all.

If I saw someone buying beer or cigarettes with it, more power to them. I don’t care. The gift was not in seeing what they did with it. The gift was seeing that I may have issues, but being kind is not one of them. But I also notice how long it’s been since they’ve had a shower and I take all that on, too. I empathize with Jacob who wrestled with God. Being empathetic doesn’t incapacitate me, but the struggle constantly disfigures my hip. My blog is a record of the scars.

One of the reasons I wish I’d gone to medical school is that balancing the energetic forces in a room and having your mirror neurons go off at everyone’s pain is the plight of the INFJ. I wouldn’t have gotten in to medical school because sciences and maths aren’t my gift, but I wish I had gone to gain clinical separation. It doesn’t stop an INFJ from doing these things, it just turns the volume down to a point we can take care of ourselves. Our nature says “give it all away.” I am learning to do it on my own just through the nature of becoming stronger in myself. I’ve felt so out of place not being the person to take everything on, and emotional strength is helping me create and maintain boundaries.

Those boundaries are more important to me now than they used to be, because what I’ve realized is that especially growing up queer in Texas I developed a habit of trying to be perfect in all things, do all things for others and not myself, so that people would overlook my deficiency……. because society and culture tells me that there is one. I have tried to be the queer version of the acceptable minority, and now my current favorite documentary is “I Am Not Your Negro.”

I am alive today because of James Baldwin. “Go Tell it on the Mountain” was assigned by my ninth grade English teacher and she had a pretty good idea what was up. I cannot imagine that a black woman teaching in Texas wouldn’t know what she was doing placing James Baldwin in the hands of high school students studying the performing arts. Like no one would pick up on the fact that she was surreptitiously trying to give us a hero without saying anything………….

In education, my experience is that it takes a black soul to reach out to a gay one. Not one of my white teachers ever gave me a gay author except one, and she wasn’t intelligent enough to realize Celie was queer as a three dollar bill (and couldn’t have said it that way even if she did). Because friends totally do that stuff with each other, right? It’s all normal. Totally and completely normal platonic behavior. The difference in tone at the two schools was stunning and had everyhing to do with context. It was like being taught about antiracism from Kendi and Coates, then having to live with Karen’s commentary on what she thinks they meant. Karen hasn’t had to deal with any of the shit on the list.

Black people dealing with internalized racism have a better sense of what internalized homophobia does to a person, and it shows. Sure, lots of black people spew hate at me, too, but it’s not personal. It’s been programmed into them by their churches and most don’t think they’re doing great harm because they think they’re helping me by telling me I’m going to hell.

But I could find that in the white church as well.

Evangelicals all suck, because the opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty (picked that up from Anne Lamott). For the people who aren’t evangelicals, we find common ground easily and often. It helps me find my place in the world to an enormous degree.

I am never trying to be egotistical, just trying to stop apologizing for my existence. I have the rights to thoughts and emotions. Freedom of speech, but not freedom from consequences.

When I sound egotistical on my web site, it does not mean that I am egotistical. The difference is that in person, I am only one piece of the conversation. I do not have a lock on anything except my memory of a situation. Ego doesn’t come into it except when I’m writing about the past. First, I am cognizant that this is only my perception of a situation, and others’ perceptions are just as valid. Second, it’s not your name in the author slot. It’s not my story because I’m all that, it’s my story because you didn’t write it.

I am also projecting confidence because I am aware that I am in front of an international audience, and people who are creating blowback are taking it personally a hundred percent of the time, often castigating me over a sentence that could be construed to have been about them because it reads universal, but it isn’t. Their egos are so involved it doesn’t matter what I say. I do not tolerate their foolishness because my opinion is just as valid as theirs, and I know my own intent. I also know when I’m wrong and I just sit there and take my lumps.

Those conversations generally center on “I AM SO FUCKING ANGRY AT YOU FOR SAYING SOMETHING TRUE IN A WAY I DIDN’T LIKE.” Not once has anyone come up to me and said, “now that I know the whole story, I really acted like an asshole and I’m sorry.” No, they show up on my doorstep full of spit and vinegar and I talk them down off the ceiling if I actually care about them. My tolerance is less these days because it doesn’t help me to have friends that care what I say here.

If I am talking about a univeral concept between abused kids, for instance, someone who is not abused will see it and turn the meaning inside out and backwards and now I’m a fucking terrible person for something I never said. That’s happened quite a lot, and made me feel out of place.

I’m going to close with a Kristina Mahr poem, because it encapsulates everything I’m trying to say to everyone who pops up here….. because generally when people are angry, it’s because I’ve said something that called them out for hurting me.

This web site is my place.

Another World Before Columbus

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Your life without a computer: what does it look like?

If your love were taken from me
Every color would be black and white
It would be as flat as the world before Columbus
That’s the day that I lose half my sight

Suzanne Vega

If the Internet didn’t exist, life as I know it would be very different. I still would have gone to Oregon, but I wouldn’t have married Dana. Dana moved to Oregon for an Internet relationship, so without it, I wouldn’t have met her or her former partner (said Internet relationship is a mensch). I went to Oregon for what I thought was family, but I stayed because I made my own. I really did like it more than Texas, and the only reason I say that is even in 1997, no one cared if two women were holding hands if they walked down the street. I walked into all kinds of things (not just a door) seeing cute girls interact. I wasn’t trying to pick anyone up- I just noticed sweet female couples all around me and thought, “I want that.” I might have gone to DC, I might not. This is because Kathleen worked for Global Information Systems. I don’t know what she would do had the internet not been invented, but it wasn’t as prevalent then as it is now, so perhaps we would have still gone to DC because databases don’t need internet connections to function. We could do everything old school- backing up to tape drives and floppy disks if we needed them.

No e-mail necessary.

I wouldn’t have joined AOL chat rooms or Internet Relay Chat, so I wouldn’t have been able to widen my network to the extent that I have now. There are some people I’ve known for 30 years and have never seen their faces in real life. When you’ve got as many complications as I do, and the personality type that I have, being friends online fits better. I can cast a bigger net for people like me. I express my thoughts clearer when I’m writing, but it takes out tone of voice and everything that goes with it. There is also no way to redirect after a sentence or two, also problematic. I type 90 words a minute. You cannot imagine how far down the wrong road I can go before someone calls me on it.

I also would have gotten worse grades in college. If I wasn’t doing so hot, I’d go up to the professor and ask if they needed a web site. Cher Horowitz had nothing on me. It was a jumping off point to start negotiations. I worked my way to an A one blink tag at a time. (That was actually a joke. I made fun of it all the time. When the blink tag was deprecated, it was like working for a restaurant. Web developers were popping champagne while Geocities went apeshit. It was a very good day when the customer realized they were wrong.)

I wouldn’t have gotten a job in IT when I was 19. I started as an Academic Support Assistant in the main computer lab, then eventually got two of my own at different times. The first was the one in the Graduate School of Social Work, where I met Brene Brown and still kid her that the hottest ticket in Houston is being invited to her house to watch her watch “Ted Lasso.”

I wouldn’t have learned that Brene had really done well for herself unless she’d been on television after writing successful books. If I close my eyes, I can literally see her next to Johnny Carson. I think those two would have had a riot together, and I’m sorry it didn’t happen. I do think that Brene would have been successful, I just don’t think I would necessarily know who she was because my introduction was YouTube. It’s not her books that made her famous. It’s the Internet.

The second computer lab I supervised wasn’t for the kids. It was for the professor. I was the only support staff for the entire college when it came to WebCT (distance education software bought by Blackboard), because there weren’t that many professors interested in using it, frankly. It was hard to get buy-in at first. The smartest ones saw that this is where we’re going now. I need to learn this before I have to rely on it. It reminds me of a Netflix president, though I don’t remember their name. “If we didn’t know streaming was coming, we would have called it “DVDs by Mail.”

The worst said “I’m too old for this shit” and tried to pass their course management onto me, because they were far too Important to do it themselves. Male professors treated me like “the help” a good bit of the time. Men are not programmed to see women in IT. I never fit their narrative. What they didn’t know that I did was that I was more man than they’d ever be and more woman than they’d ever get.

Now that I’m 46 I still think that, but I have empathy for not wanting to learn new software now. I have reached saturation, and did a long time ago. What is this “Instagram” you speak of? Seriously, though. I don’t use it. I accepted a Threads invite right away because now I’m using social media to introduce myself to readers (and you, for that matter. The comments section is just as important  what I say.). I have to go back and learn what I’ve missed, because you’ve never seen a more “deer in headlights” look when I think about the fact that I haven’t noticed anything since SnapChat.

I started using linux when I started being a web developer, because at the time, Apache was vastly superior to IIS, the Windows version of a web server. In fact, that was about the time I learned how to install WordPress on my own server, which I used as production before I transferred everything to go live. Still a database for content management, which was a game changer in terms of managing web pages. The difference is that back then you also had to know webdev because you had to get a hosting company, install and maintain it yourself, and code all the things that didn’t come with the theme.

I did all of that for my first blog, “Clever Title Goes Here,” but for my second, I decided I was a writer. I don’t have my own hosting company anymore, but I’m thinking about it because I could do so much more with it. My main problem is that in the free tier of WordPress, I don’t have access to what’s called a head tag. That’s where you put all the things you need for web analytics, because if you don’t, WordPress offers a pay-by-month solution for a free product. I understand that it’s the labor dollars to pay the engineers for updates to the plugin, but it’s not necessary for someone who already knows this stuff.

And finally, I wouldn’t have met Supergrover. I’d have been an arrested teenager the rest of my life. I’m angry af at her right now, because her actions are making her look like a jackass and she won’t listen to that. She ramps up my anxiety and beats me up emotionally when I tell her that. It’s not personal. Emotions are for weak people. It’s the only reason she’s even got a shot at redemption, that it’s not personal. She’s a hurt little girl with third degree burns all over her body and she doesn’t realize she’s spreading the fire to me. I cannot say for sure, but either she does this with everyone, or she does it with me because she’s pleases everyone else and I’m the only dog she has to kick. It is generally one of those extremes, and in abused kids it rarely varies. She’s not a narcissist. She’s protecting everything she has left. She doesn’t emote because she can’t access emotions all the time.

It makes her invulnerable and impervious, the things she does in her job that make her piss excellence are killing her when it comes to strength coming to her through her vulnerability instead.

I finally just cut through the silence and told her that her actions made her look like a jackass because she wasn’t giving me the tools to love her or move on. Either way, I’m screwed. She doesn’t get that she made me responsible, and I hear Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez in my head when I say that word, because he’s about to get the houseguests to the airport not knowing if he has tickets for everyone or not. He calls Jack Donovan and tells him he’s going to take them through, and to get his shit together before he gets there. “I am responsible…….” It’s disturbing to think I’ve heard Ben Affleck in my head since 2012, but it is what it is.

As an aside, I love Ben Affleck’s films so much. Argo was great. It won best picture and should have. But Air has the same vibe; it’s set in the same time period, so it’s the same color palate, etc. It is amazing, and I want more from him. Doesn’t he also have a friend that acts or something? Seem to remember something about it in the news. 😉

We could have watched both movies together and bonded in 15 minutes, but we didn’t. Just another cultural reference of mine she never picked up, because intel and science fiction are my bag, not hers. She didn’t even know what I was talking about when I said that Wakanda had a Tolkien case officer. 😉

Her face would light up at the music in Argo because she’s never seen me when I listen to it. Never seen me excitedly say, “OOH! OOH! Listen to this! The horns are about to enter the chat.” I think she would also enjoy my reaction to the bassoon solo in my other favorite movie, which I’m betting only Jack Lucas will know because even I thought it was an English Horn at first. But he’d know it was a bassoon even if I woke him up in the middle of the night. For the rest of you, there’s a correlation between Air and the movie I mean. But I’m not going to tell you what it is because I want to know if Jack knows what I mean first. 😉 He absolutely will.

She doesn’t think about me at all, but not because she’s trying to be an asshole. She just dicks me around because she doesn’t get back to me when she does have time unless I get angry enough at having my needs ignored that I don’t walk on eggshells around her. Walking on eggshells has been my only choice in this matter, and I’m just not going to do it anymore.She took away my right to write whatever I wanted and now constantly ramps up my anxiety that all I’m good for is getting her fired.

She really didn’t have the right to shut down for eight years, but I let her. It’s because I’m emotionally intelligent enough to know why she’s an avoidant attachment style, and she’s not emotionally intelligent enough to deal with it, nor my anxious attachment style on top of it. An anxious attachment style is not bad, per se. It’s bad when people talk to you and you don’t believe them, worrying yourself to death, anyway. This is what I’ve done because she keeps her trap shut and doesn’t give me anything to calm me down. I’ll give you a for-instance. If I say to Zac, “hey, you seem distant. Did I do something wrong?,” he’ll say he’s been slammed and he’s sorry. Now, I can choose to believe that he’s hiding something or not. If I spiral out, that’s on me. He told me what he thinks, and I’m undermining him by not believing what he says.

But you can’t do that with an avoidant attachment style because if they’re being avoidant, they won’t even give you words like, “no, we’re okay. I’ve just been slammed.” For an avoidant personallity if they say them, it could be the truth or it could be a lie. You do not know because their words and actions do not match…. and they’ll leave you in that anxiety til Jesus comes or you die mad about it.

They’re reassuring you while being their avoidant selves at the same time, talking around nothing. It’s the same way that when people meet in the grocery store and say they want to get together. Good luck. God bless.

In short, without the Internet, I don’t have a life. I love her in color, but when she pulls back, I fall into a world before Columbus. I’m not in love with her, it’s just that my life becomes all gray area, all the time. It’s too much pressure and she knows it.

And the more I think about it, that might be a good thing. The jury is still out, and “the hardest part of being a lawyer is convincing 12 K-Mart clerks you’re right.” -John Grisham

About ADHD and Autism

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What skill would you like to learn?

I am not picking something I don’t know anything about, but if I start now, I might learn some of the finer points by the time I die. I will never know them all. There is a crossover, and I’m starting to think that I’m more autistic than ADHD. Stopping the Adderrall only convinces me some of the time. I mean, I can list the symptoms I have and they’re all text book……. but they’re also signs of being autistic and trauma reflexes. Even if I went to a doctor, I think my issues are so complex that they would think what I do…. it’s not a case of just one thing. Everything in medicine starts with one diagnosis. Just one.

“It depends.”

That’s why med students are asked for diagnosis, secondary diagnoses, and protocols.

Experts in medicine are not counted by how many As they got in medical school, though if they fuck up, that’s definitely an indication. No, being a superb doctor depends only on what you’ve seen and what you haven’t.

You’ve seen it if you’ve ever watched “House” (it’s not lupus). Those kids go through every dependency like they’re on a bender searching for House’s opioids. They don’t tell you this on the show, but every illness they’re talking about is what’s called a “fascinoma,” probably Latin for “first case” or something. I’m too lazy to look it up, but that’s what it means for lay people, anyway. In law, it’s “prima facie” (pronounced “fa-chee.”). My three fields have dependencies in common. You have no idea how much they matter in Ubuntu.

In all of these things, particularly Ubuntu and medicine, the consequences for being wrong are drastic and cause gastrointestinal distress.

Here’s why I’m specifically mentioning Ubuntu. Most linux nerds have autism. Most nerds, for that matter. You don’t have to be neurodivergent to be a nerd, but neurotypicals, you should know not to intrude on a safe space. You do it all the fucking time by thinking you’re going to be cool and go to ComicCon, but when you get there you’re somehow put off by the other patrons. If you can’t learn anything about the Autism spectrum by observing a Star Trek convention, you’re not paying attention. Neurotypicals seem to live by the slogan “walk softly and carry a big stick.” That’s because you’re perfectly lovely until we do something you don’t understand, and then you get judgmental and sometimes angrily so.

Supergrover definitely didn’t have empathy for it, but at the same time, she didn’t know enough about me to really take it in, because she knows from autism. And she didn’t see any neurodivergence in me not because she wouldn’t, but because she couldn’t. I’m not blaming her, because it would have been totally different if I’d been hanging out at her house for the last eight years. If she’d actually seen me in my day in, day out appearance and mannerisms, she would have had me pegged by the way I walk. Also, I’m not sure that it would occur to her how much crossover there is between me and some of the other people she interacts with on a daily basis. She didn’t get it and not because she didn’t want to. It was impossible to do all that online.

“The medium is the message.” -Marshall McLuhan

I think after a while, we just got so used to our rhythm that meeting up seemed weird, plus I could have more of her if I was only in her DMs because I was the only one traveling with her consistently. I am not sure  that anyone e-mails her more than me (by quite a large margin…. and if that’s not true, what I lack in frequency, I make up for in volume.

I wonder if she ever knew I was writing letters to her like a WWII-era high school sweetheart. I didn’t even realize that until today. News from the home front, essentially.  I wanted to be one of the pictures taped up in the cockpit, but I never wanted to be the only one unless that was a possibility. Next to her son or something. I don’t know.. Just not left in a box in Virginia.

I know by now that I am every bit the photo I say I am, and here’s how I know that.

She rips me off all the time. We’ve been writing to each other for 10 years. I absolutely know that things I’ve said have entered her lexicon, and she quotes me almost every day. I know they weren’t all bad lines, and hers weren’t either. I think I’ve said “painting my feelings as fact” 50 times since she said it. She says “pack up your toys and go home” now. There are word associations with me by the thousands. This is why I believe that I am her Impossible Girl, woven into her from the inside out. I haven’t changed her because we interact. I have changed her because now our brains are inextricably interrelated because reading someone’s most important thoughts makes them last a lifetime. She has two legacies now…… the one that’s big and impressive, and the one that fucking matters.  We’ve been writing to each other for 10 years. I absolutely know that things I’ve said have entered her lexicon, and she quotes me almost every day. I know they weren’t all bad lines, and hers weren’t either. I think I’ve said “painting my feelings as fact” 50 times since she said it. She says “pack up your toys and go home” now. T This is why I believe that I am her Impossible Girl, woven into her from the inside out. I haven’t changed her because we interact. I have changed her because now our brains are inextricably interrelated because reading someone’s most intimate thoughts is different than having a conversation.

Reading things makes you retain information longer than conversation.

It’s just that she’s so busy she cannot retain all of it. I’ve made it impossible. “LORDAMERCY” is a direct quote. 😛 I wish she would just not read it until she had time rather than responding immediately, because writing is what I do, not her. Of course I’m going to have more output than her if I’m workshopping an idea. During one of our big fights about it, I called her out on the carpet and she didn’t respond at all to it. “I told you to create a folder in Outlook and a filter so that my e-mails weren’t coming directly to your inbox, but going into that folder so you weren’t getting notifications for them. It was your choice not to do it. I didn’t expect you to be johnny on the spot, but you were.” That’s because she’s a fixer/pleaser always trying to please me as well.

Interestingly enough, this did not start happening until after I was a total idiot, so I’m wondering if she’s reacting to me like she reacts to her husband now. That nothing is ever good enough for me because she’s trying to please me and doesn’t see that I don’t need it. That gives me more empathy than anger, enough to bring me to tears because if I’d noticed what she was doing, I could have said, “my beautiful girl……. stop. You’re perfect.” And in fact I did try to say that a million different ways, but it didn’t take.

She is so pure- concentrated hope, love, sweetness, and light. She will also eat your face off.

Only my mother knows the whole story, and she didn’t hear it until long after she died. I comforted her and told her she could go, because I was safe. That she never had to worry about me again, both because she couldn’t and didn’t have to anymore. All the mother-love I have in me transferred to her and not as a replacement. Because she has kids. She’s already a mom. She got offended when I said she had that vibe, like it was some sort of joke. Even if I had been joking, I would have meant “I think of you as that vibe because it’s the one I need most desperately.” But it’s a mix. I kidded her later about our past and she destroyed me, not a sick burn that I thought was funny, either.

I told her that, too. Then she got even more defensive. I realize that I dropped an absolute bomb on her, but it’s never about me. Ever. I don’t have needs. I just said something to piss her off. It’s only my behavior, not what triggered it.

But my mother is the only one who knows exactly who I’m dressing down when I do it and she would be horrified. Absolutely horrified. That’s because my mother put a lot of stock into titles. But the rest of the world sees her as her title. In my head, she’s six. Our inner children talk to each other in adults’ voices. (What could possibly go wrong? Editor’s Note: A LOT). I am not sure that she’s taken in that I’m 14 when I talk to her…. and I’m not 14 with anyone else, because I don’t trust anyone else that much. She got in under the wire and disarmed the bomb. You only think my anger management is bad now. She metaphysically hugged and kissed me back together…. but I’m still a work in progmess. I have just begun the process to complete the transition.

Transitioning is a big word in my community. I hope I have a quarter of resurrection in me that my friend Evan has. God, he’s the most beautiful trans boy I know, and a redhead like Zac. Trans people have a lot of crucifixion moments. Lots of Sanhedrins out there, lots of Pilates…… but unlike Pilate, they were never chosen by anyone to have input.

I don’t have contempt for the Sanhedrin, because they were always going to be assholes. I have contempt for people who have the ability to not be an asshole and DON’T. Pilate could have saved all this from happening…. crucifying someone for their words and not their actions, a minority in culture because the Jews were ruled by the Romans. Jesus has more in common with Sandra Bland than he has with Joel Osteen, and please go right up and tell him to his face…. also don’t be an asshole. Put that shit on YouTube and send me a link. 😉

I would give up my life’s savings for that asshole to get a clue. He is a white supremacy Jesus apologist with one of the biggest platforms in the world.

He could overhaul American Christianity………….. but he doesn’t.

What all of this has to do with ADHD and Autism is that I’ve been rambling for 30 minutes without stopping regarding things that excite me because I can. I cannot do this in conversation witih anyone else, and I have stopped trying. No one puts up with it

Even when I can’t help it.

So I have to learn it on my own.

I just want you guys to know that I’m crying right now. Writing these entries take a lot out of me, a tempest in a teacup. Sorry for the cut and paste mess.I left it in because it proved my point.

I’m Not Sure I Don’t Pay Attention to All of Them

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

By writing to and for myself, I pay attention to my life in minute detail. It is literally my job if I want to sell books later. Brene Brown has nothing on me, I swear to Christ. I am betting that we process much the same way in terms of throwing everything out on the table and seeing what it looks like. I don’t know if she’s a natural INFJ, but I do know she’s a professor in a profession to which INFJs naturally gravitate, so even if my letters aren’t hers, we’d be simpatico. I know that, because we’ve spent some time together informally.

Editor’s Note: If I sound like an ass because I keep mentioning it, it’s not because I’m trying to name drop. The answer is twofold. My audience is growing every day. Every single day. That means if you read every day, you’re in the know. Other people aren’t. Secondly, the more times I say Brene Brown, the higher I’ll be in Google rankings for searching her because it has indexed how many times I’ve said it and how many people have clicked on my link because of it. It’s not personal. It’s trying to use her platform to introduce myself to new readers, and not only is a good way to find my target audience, I know for a fact that this is not something she’d care about in the slightest.

I just taught her how to use Microsoft Word, but now that it’s so essential I know I did ACTUALLY help her in her career.

She taught me that it’s okay to throw emotional bombs on the table and look at them, because if you don’t stay silent, there’s a 50/50 chance that you’ll resolve the conflict. If you keep silent about your needs, those odds fade to zero either way.

The hardest part is developing the strength to say what you need out loud, because I call them emotional bombs for a reason. If you express a need, people who have low self-esteem will see it as an attack. You’re screwed either way, because either that person’s going to get mad at you and walk away, or they won’t. If you are in any way an anxious person, you’ll put off that conversation for eons. You don’t want to chance it. If you say you need something and they get angry, it might lead to the relationship ending. You have to learn to care nothing about that. This is because stating your needs clearly and walking away when they’re not being met is your only choice. People don’t change because they’re not willing to do the work. You are mostly the age you got married, because that’s when you set up your new family patterns and they repeat. In a lot of ways, people divorce to grow up….. particularly couples who get married at 20 and stay together until they’re 40.

This is why I’m not married and just dating. I do not want to stagnate. If it happens that I find a partner, I still want someone that wants their own space, even if we live together. I want to normalize it not being weird if I’m holed up in my office and they’re not holed up with me. I’m dating one of the biggest extroverts I’ve ever met, and I love it because I can pay complete attention to my own life while he’s off doing his thing, because he knows that partying is his jam and not mine and that’s perfectly okay. I don’t need him as a possession.

Supergrover, Cora, and Bryn are the one I treat like possessions in terms of being a seriously pissed off mama bear. Come after my girls and I will end you, if combat is limited a really mean letter.

I write differently when I want to work things out, I will only say that.

Healing an anxious attachment style is built on learning to believe someone the first time. It is also learning to believe when they’re lying to themselves. Learning to tell when actions and words don’t match, correcting the story that you’re telling yourself. If someone is unwilling to help you correct that story, they should be uninvited to participate. You also can’t hold anything over their heads. You just have to wait it out. Life is long.

If you are thinking of someone else’s needs all the time, you are doing immense harm to yourself if you have low self esteem . You’re making decisions based on your own echo chamber and trying to read someone else’s mind. Those two things will put you in an asylum if you let them.

The hardest part about throwing an emotional bomb over your shoulder is that you have to walk away and see if they come back.

You have to pick yourself up out of rejection sensitivity dysphoria to be able to even trust that they will. So you wait. And you get more unhappy. By the time you do express needs, you’re mad as a wet cat backed into a corner claws extended.

Your conversations will be a mix of “well, that probably sounded better in my head” and “well, that escalated quickly.”

I realized that I had to stop interacting with Supergrover because it was killing me. She was the person that when she talked, my self esteem went up and down. It wasn’t the message, it was the medium. She has lived inside me for 10 years. Her signal is the purest, because her voice is the only one that is always in my echo chamber because our e-mails are all mixed together in my head. Who knows who said what after a while? It’s one story. It just got to where we were alternating between tennis and fencing. We take turns having the high ground, but I can be angry and still think “as you wish” all day. (I like The Princess Bride, despite the fact that it has kissing in it.) That’s because it’s not her worth going up and down.

I threw that bomb knowing she was emotionally incapable according to past behavior, but she can do something about the present.

One of the things that will stick with me is that she said she could do nothing about the past. But she could do something about the present. She didn’t realize that I was saying it as well, in heels and backwards.

It’s the reason we complete each other when everything is going well. Her IQ is higher than mine. My EQ is the highest of anyone I’ve ever met considering how much people tell me how frightening and intense I am.

Dave Chappelle (incidentally also from Silver Spring) once wrote a skit for Chappelle Show called “The Ni**er Family.” It was absolutely hysterical and I laughed until I cried. But Dave said it was a mistake, and the why stopped me in my tracks.

He said:

Everyone was just cracking up in the audience….. but then I noticed this one guy. And the way he laughed, I knew he was not laughing in the way I intended.

It changed his entire career because he left the show and really did the homework on himself. We do not agree on trans issues and never will, but I’m not going to take away from his success or be less proud that he rose from the ash of what he burned down. But the only reason he could do that is that he, Jesus, and I all know the same thing.

The resurrection didn’t happen on the cross.

Jesus went into the garden of Gethsemene the same way The War Doctor wrestled with The Moment on Doctor Who, the bomb that developed a consciousness you had to argue with to get it to go off. There are no records of his prayers there, but here’s what Dave, Jesus, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt: Jesus did not forgive everyone else for their indiscretions without first forgiving himself.

Let’s Pretend It’s Yesterday

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 6 Comments

What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?

Pretending it is yesterday is important because there is no tomorrow. There is only today and making it through. Every year I think it’s going to be different, but it’s not. The anniversary of my mother’s death hits me like a freight train. I don’t forget my mother is dead anymore. I don’t have the three second heartbreak every morning. It doesn’t stop body memory from throwing me for a loop, though.

I think that’s because I didn’t cry at her funeral. I worked it.

I didn’t fall apart until after I’d come back to DC, because I don’t do public grief. Being in show mode cost me, but it was less expensive than what I would have felt if I’d wept openly. No one would have made fun of me or anything like that. Me not emoting isn’t based on other people. It’s based on how I feel about being vulnerable, because my personality seems to believe that empathy only flows one direction at church. I’ve never been a member of a church in my life. Not really. I’ve never turned off that preacher’s kid mentality where it’s not my turn to grieve, it’s the congregation’s. So, at church (regardless of denomination because I haven’t been UMC since 17) I am always in show mode.

After my mother died, I lasted a few weeks at church. I eventually went back, then noped out a second time. I won’t go back unless I’m a paid ringer in a choir, because I can catch sermons on YouTube (or preach them myself by putting manuscripts here). I can find a lot of things at church, but God is not it. Doesn’t make me less spiritual, or make my belief in Jesus’ message less pure. It’s that church, for so long, has only meant “work” to me. Thus, getting paid to be a section leader instead of being an actual parishioner. I’m great at church as a choir member or lay preacher. I’m am absolute shit at sitting there and just taking it all in. Just being a member does nothing for me, because I’m a preacher’s kid. I can’t turn it off. I am not there to serve. I am there to lead, because that’s what i know to do. I got an F in church member. Periodt. Pastoral care is for other people, those that can look at a church without seeing the sausage being made. That tape starts running the first Sunday I attend, because I’ll overhear someone on the vestry or whatever at coffee hour. I can case the joint in 15 minutes and tell you whether the church is healthy or not, because you don’t have to have a degree to know that. You have to have thousands and thousands of hours of observation.

I have them.

My dad said something to me after he left the church that’s always stuck with me, and why National Cathedral is my church now (via YouTube) and why it’s pretty much the only place I want to audition. He said that after he left the church, he just wanted to be anonymous. We ended up at St. Martin’s because they had like, I don’t know, 10,000 members or something? I don’t know what it is, but it’s a lot. Everyone from me to James Baker and George Bush (who I was not that excited to meet……….. as a president. Meeting the former director of CIA was amazing.) Speaking of which, that reminds me of something Zac said. Just replace “church” with “government.”

When I walk into a church, it feels like when Zac says, “I’m a middle aged white man who works for the government. I’m here to help.”

I fall over laughing because it’s funny, AND I’m 10 years older than him and finding out HE’s middle aged was quite a trip. but the point stands. I feel like that on the first Sunday I visit every church. It was so freeing when I stopped doing that.

So, to anyone who thinks I’m an idiot for preaching about Jesus while also not going to church, you and me? We are not the same. You love it because you don’t feel the pull between “this is amazing” and “been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.” I will never fit into a congregation until I can submit and give up an authority I don’t have. That authority was the nature/nurture that raised me, so I’m never going to get there, never ever in my five dollar life, so I made change.

Preacher’s kids come in two flavors. “This is everything I want out of life” and “fuck this shit.” The latter is for second children, and gets stronger the more kids you have. i think the pull to follow in your parents’ footsteps is based on how old your younger siblings are in comparison, because what I’ve noticed is that the longer you spend as the only support staff, the more you feel bound to it. If you don’t become a minister, you’ll marry one because it’s what you know. Do not ever in your five dollar life think I’m bullshitting you about having been support staff, because even if you’re a “fuck this” preacher’s kid, your congregation will still see you as an employee. They can’t help it. The preacher’s kids are divine somehow, way better than their kids.

Having known two of them my whole life, I’m going to go with “that’s a no from me, dawg.” Sending your kids to the preacher’s house because you think we’ll rub off on them is valid………. but what you see is what you get. You just weren’t looking for truth. You were looking at me through the filter of my dad’s platform. I promise that if I’d been a pastor, I would have been every bit as good as he was, because you learn everything by osmosis and then you get a degree you don’t need. Ministry could come through work experience alone. That’s because you’ll learn a shit ton of new things, but old habits die hard. What was modeled is how you’ll be.

The reason I would have been great and not just good is that my father’s forte was going into churches that had been fractured and making them whole, and you can see it clear as day. I am so glad that I did not grow up with a toxic mess of a pastor………. the one who broke the church before him, which has absolutely no bearing at all on my 20s and 30s. Eyeroll (seriously. Biggest one on record).

Pastors, let me scare you a little bit because you need to be aware. If you have the type child that can case the joint like I am, we can tell what kind of pastor you are. If you are a toxic mess, we know it. You cannot hide it. Handle your shit and get help. Do you think we know this because we’re so smart? Fuck, no. It’s because when you’re a train wreck, our behavior makes us political pawns. I know that and I never did anything that as out of the realm of normal teenage girl behavior and I was still in this shit if the finance committee decided to revolt.

They’re mad at you, but they don’t get mad at you. They treat us completely differently as if we can’t read them blind. Their energy has changed. Just because my dad wasn’t toxic doesn’t mean he didn’t walk into a wall of bullshit first.

My mom walked me through that with all the strength she had, so when she died, church didn’t look the same. I didn’t realize how much association there was in it. That when my mother left the church building, God left with her.

I find God through music. Bach is like praying twice. If I have a God moment in church, it’s going to reside in a chord. The ultimate God moment for me is Easter morning at a church like National Cathedral, where they go all out with pipe organ, brass quintet, and full choir. Welcome to my definition of the trinity. Trumpet players act like they’re God, so it’s a shorter leap than you think. 😉

Maybe I’ll use great works in my plans for tomorrow. Listening to music like that heals grief, the only thing I really need.

To close, here is the best Mommy and me moment I own, made for me by my father’s father:

The Other Marriage Article

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have talked about the unconventional arrangement accidentally made between me and a friend, that we are bound out of loyalty and not romance. That at first, it was impossible for me to remain cool when she was so hot (and boy does that not have anything to do with her looks). She’s married, I’m as settled as I want to be. But just because it’s not romantic doesn’t mean there aren’t a huge set of problems between two people some days.

That relationship led me to thinking about politics, when one of my friends was talking about how the Republicans are the dad.

Republicans are the dad.

Republicans are the dad.

It has become a toxic relationship not because Republicans are the dad, but because they see being kind as soft……………..

They’re treating all Democrats like they treat women.

Toxic masculinity has reared it’s ugly head. I don’t know that people really grasp what happened on 1/6 in terms of intelligence. Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran all saw us shit ourselves on international tellevision.

Get your shit together, Congress.

Toxic men and vegan lesbians are going to have to put away their egos for a second and work together. I think they’re the ones with the biggest egos in the room here, let’s face it.

It is not lost on me that vegan lesbians are a very effective weapon against toxic masculinity- because we aren’t dependent on men for sex. We see right through what you’re doing (before you do) because we had to learn we didn’t want it when we were nine…. and not even the creepy touches. Touching at all. Thinking you’re entitled to hugs and kisses from me.Thinking that my wife nd I exist for your pleasure. I assure you we exist for ours. If that makes you feel bad, it must be so hard to be you. I have empathy for a man. Men do get close to me. Obviously. That being said, as a collective you’re so fucked up I don’t think you could find a clue with both hands and a flashlight.

My favorite fact in life is that the picturesque farm where Langley is built was owned by a lesbian couple before they bought it. So, to me that just says that we have the world’s most sophisticated intelligence agency and lesbians sold them their whole look. You are welcome. Thanks for eventually hiring us. That was rude. I’m sorry. You have made up for it many times with the way you’ve embraced trans people, women in particular. But even though I was a bitch to you, it leads to my next point. Please forgive me, I was on a roll…………. and I know you guys hate when I do that. 😉

It’s not your Alexa that’s dangerous. It’s your microwave. Don’t tell them I told you Pop Secret information. They’ll put me over the stove in a Jiffy.

I think it’s hilarious that men are so bitter that we’re so angry, because what is it in society we could possibly dislike? I mean, we got our own credit cards in the 70s. Straight women will take your crap because they want you and also you have in large part done jack shit to make women less financially dependent on you when it comes to needing money and love. It seems like we have to choose between those two things quite a lot when we need groceries.

It matters when we’re pregnant and vulnerable and we have to nickel and dime you for everything because you aren’t doing the planning for the household and think everything costs a fortune and absolutely go apeshit even when numbers don’t lie. You’ll go off like a bomb and if we’re lucky, we’ll get the money after you’ve come back to reality. If we’re strong enough, we’ll beat your ass (verbally and physically). Not all of us fight the same way, but we’re all furious. We will absolutely go balls to the wall with you and steal your wives while we’re at it (KIDDING, Jesus. Calm it down.).

Traditional marriage is killing this country, because the only people that ever talk about it are the people who are still trying to hold up a system that doesn’t and shouldn’t exist. They hate queers and all the other expletives. In fact, their view of women informs their view of queer men. Queer men are soft. Democrats are soft. Transitive properties that all add up to a disorienting set of problems because they’re tangled as tight as that necklace you left in your underwear drawer when you were nine. There’s no clear path, and we’re trying. It would be helpful to be able to cull laws like old e-mail. To have one set of people working to maintain this system while another tries to create something better. I don’t know what that looks like in total, but I don’t mean switching from capitalism to communism. I want a system more like Canada, which is a capitalist society with a free market that also has a better safety net than we do because they aren’t nickel and diming vulnerable people who have to choose between love and money.

They don’t have it all figured out yet, either.

But they’re in mediation and we’ve literally got guns on the table.

Republicans are trying to be the husband that slaps his wife around. The party of no. Led by a naked, soulless, incompetent, greedy imbecile that those people think is an Emperor.

Democrats cannot stop violence by being passive all the time because we’re getting asses handed to us on most things. That’s because we don’t want to respond with violence and peace doesn’t work. It’s a gridlock.

We need a restraining order, because there comes a time in every abused person’s life when they’re just done. That’s where I am now. Just done. It’s not that I won’t vote and volunteer and all that stuff. It’s that I have burnout because I’m not moving the needle, and really no one is on a grand scale. Realistically, how long do you think it will take white supremacy to fade if we start working on right now? My guess is at least a century or perhaps two. I do not mean working on it legislatively. Legislatively does a quarter of nothing for me. That’s because Congress reflects culture, it doesn’t create it. If there is no culture for something irregular, we will not legislate it into being.

We are stuck in this, from the global to the personal. This is just unsustainable, and I am shocked at how many people think it is.

Because all of us, women and minorities, have to ask daddy for everything.

First and Second Chair

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

In what ways does hard work make you feel fulfilled?

The title is a music reference, because when you’re the lead trumpet player, depending on where you live it’s called “first chair” or “first desk.” Everyone has a chair, and they’re ranked. Yes, I have been as low as 7th chair. I wish I’d done better on that audition. But I was 7th in the city of Houston. Beat that with  stick.

I was also 13 years old.

I am not a prodigy. I make a lot of mistakes.  I’ve splatted wrong notes on the back walls of MOST Houston auditoriums, but a time I didn’t and it went really well, I was on a television show called “Black Voices.” I was a soloist during Summer Jazz Workshop. Didn’t make it less funny when I was on camera. I am just picturing all my black friends falling over with laughter right now. “You were on what now?” My favorite was the logo over my big ass glasses.

Another time it went really well was when I was in one of the jazz bands (I was in Jazz II. I told you I wasn’t a prodigy. But again, different playing field. You know who else was in Jazz II? Robert Glasper from “The Robert Glasper Experiment.” and Jon Durbin from “The Suffers.” If I’d stuck with it, maybe I’d have a Tiny Desk Concert of my own, but I sincerely, sincerely doubt it. I loved performance. I was unconvinced by hard work. It’s not because I didn’t want to do hard work. It’s that my embouchure was wrong (how you set your jaw and ilps), which made practicing for more than a half hour complete murder, and it’s good concerts don’t last that long because I’m not sure I would have made it through all of them, either. For that reason alone, symphony was wonderful for me because in general, trumpet parts in classical music alternate between resting for 200 measures and the most majestic clarion call you’ve ever heard. It feels like being a goalie when your team is superb.

Most of the time, everyone is on the other end of the pitch, but when it’s your turn, you come up BIG. You have to have enormous balls for classical music, because a random eighth note high A in the middle of nowhere and perplexingly alone is not uncommon. The other thing s that I could hit a high A out of nowhere, but it may wander a bit in pitch from left to right until I find dead center. In classical music, this is not an option. It must be crisp and clean, every note tapered. The hard work was never the notes, though. The hard work for me was in reading music the first time accurately, which takes thousands of hours to learn how to do.

I have never been so relieved in my life than when I went to a huge ass choir competition in high school. The sight reading portion was lifted straight out of the United Methodist Hymnal. It was the first time in my life I had “sight read” anything so perfectly. And no, I did not tell anyone…. no trumpet player (or soprano, for that matter) would tell you they had an edge at something. Trumpets are line cooks. Sopranos are line cooks with nail polish.

I got into choir the same way. I auditioned, and I got into the junior varsity choir. I asked the choir director, “are you sure? I’ve done major works at my church…. messiahs and requiems and all that stuff.” Believe me, questioning her was the hardest work I’ve ever done, but I came up big. She gives me this contemptuous look and throws a Handel at me. Hard. Then, she picks the most exposed, most difficult entrance she can find……………… FOR HER. Bitch, I earned this. She thought she was so clever, but I’d been in the adult choir for three or four years by this point. You know what you do EVERY SINGLE YEAR? The Messiah, or at least highlights. Few churches put on “the whole thing” (in quotes because even that is redacted most of the time by taking out optional sections. It’s long. It’s really, really long. And you do “The Hallelujah Chorus” occasionally at Easter as well. This was not a piece with which I was unfamiliar. I’d memorized the highlights by now…. and if I could explain my voice type, it would be “Charlotte Church as a teen.” My voice (and hers) has matured, but still what people at Bridgeport used to call my “high, high, fluty voice.” I drove that audition like I stole it, and I was the first person in the history of Clements to be in varsity band and choir at the same time.

I’ve just noticed I sound like an obnoxious dick. It goes with the territory, but I figure I can tell you I’m good at something when I’ve spent so much time telling you all the ways in which I need to get it together and how my life is an emotional dumpster fire of my own making a lot of the time.

Additionally, I gave up trumpet a long time ago. I’ve taken prescription meth for a very long time (Adderall or Concerta, depending on what release schedule we’re doing this month……… eyeroll……..), and it has been murder on my jaw and teeth, just like for junkies. Therefore, playing my horn is painful because of the sound vibrations. The fact that I don’t play anymore has not occurred to the rest of my personality, because I have turned ego up to eleven when I need it. The key words are “when I need it.” I don’t need to walk around DC feeling 10 feet tall and bulletproof all the time. I’m sure that if I dressed like a baller I could walk into any meeting anywhere and fake it. You cannot convince me for love or money that I do not have the smarts to be a Rep or a Senator. Not possible anymore. But I have the mental acuity to do the job. I am woefully unelectable, mostly because I would hate every minute of campaigning. I would frustrate the fuck out of my support staff because my answer to every problem would just be “let’s skip it. There will be people there. ” But if I was in Congress doing the job, I’d be as diligent as ADHD allows you to be, and on my worst day I would wipe the floor with Y’all Queda. I’d probably be censured by my own party for my language, but nothing I said would be untrue. Congress has issues and they scare me. The legislation doesn’t matter right now. The people are sub-par, and that’s okay now.

Because of all of these experiences (except working in Congress. I was a political science student, so I know about working in that part of Washington, I just don’t.), writing sets me on fire. I’m old enough now that I really have stories. It’s age that gives me credibility now, because I don’t have letters to fall back on. Graduating from college has been a shit show because I am barely capable of working a full-time job and going to school. I should have stayed the extra year in Houston to finish up, but I had a partner with a very lucrative job offer who said “go to George Mason. it’s right across the road.” I didn’t even get a chance to enroll and register for classes before that deal fell apart.

Besides, I got my money’s worth, anyway. I wasn’t one of Brene Brown’s kids at Graduate School of Social Work, but she was one of mine when I was the supervisor of their computer lab. I actually got into the Graduate School of Social Work contingent upon my BA. I’d just helped the Dean figure out a very complicated computer issue and she was very grateful. But I didn’t get into GSSW based on that issue. It was based on the conversation I had with her while trying to fix it. I always chat about nothing because people have no idea what I’m doing. All they hear is “blah, blah, blah, I’m done.” So, we engage in small talk and she’s the Dean of the GSSW and I’m an INFJ. I didn’t get in because of what I do. I got in because of who I am.

The thing is, though, I’d forgotten all about it because all I heard from Kathleen was “blah, blah, blah let’s go to DC.” And if I had thought about it, it wouldn’t have changed my mind because unless I’m at my family’s house and never leave to do anything, Houston feels like a toxic mess. The only exception to this is that Lindsay still lives there and introverts don’t make friends. An extrovert adopts you and drags you into public.

That’s the hard work right there. Being industrious enough to make my own friends and get my own dates. It took a lot of courage to lay it all out in front of Zac and say “this is what I’m dealing with, are you in?” In fact he was. ❤ The added bonus is that Zac told me that he was military intelligence the second time I met him, but not the first. So, I actually was brave enough to get my own date that time and manifested a really great partner, because my interest in intelligence doesn’t come from him. It just provides us with “intelligent” conversation.

He doesn’t emotionally overload me and I don’t do it to him. That’s because I process like a lesbian all day and by the time it’s evening I do not give a fuck about my feelings. (I just laughed so hard I would have made Oliver jump straight in to the air if he was here.) Zac doesn’t hear my bullshit, because I don’t need him for that. In fact, it’s great when he opens up to me about his problems, because I’ve spent enough time on myself.

Editor’s Note: Straight women are crazy. Absolutely insane. Why do you not date bi men when you’re all over gay men like white on rice? I would bet A LOT of money that my boyfriend smells better than yours and I’ve never even met him. Remember when we used to have a special term just for straight men who bathed? Straight women worry a whole, whole lot when his ex is male. They can save a lot of time and energy by not doing that.

Also, I’m a good enough writer that I could have gotten into a GSSW anywhere. You see all the stream of consciousness crap, but I clean up nice. 😉  I sometimes feel bad that you’re getting the B-sides and rough drafts, but at the same time, this is the hard work (said in Kristen Bell’s voice). Blogging is writing as a valid art form. It is a lesliecology of brain droppings in which I can cherry pick the best lines I’ve come up with and use them elsewhere. So much of my writing comes from e-mail and Facebook comments because I’m reflecting on something that someone else said, or something I’ve written previously works even better in another context. Making the commitment to write every day without fail. I got up to 63 days before I broke my streak for one. This is because writing is a muscle. I will not be a good writer until I can write in any mood, in any situation, in any anything. Creativity is a grind, and I will not be where I want to be without woodshedding, a music term that extrapolates nicely here.

When you’re practicing, some parts of a piece are really easy. The notes, that is. You still have to craft a narrative and that’s where the work comes in. That being said, you have to be technically accurate before you can craft the narrative, so you isolate the four measures in which you’re really going to be screwed during a concert if you miss. In a symphony, you have moments where if you miss a note, it won’t be noticeable because there are 150 people playing next to you. At others, there are three. When you’re out there all by yourself, it is frankly really fucking scary. You learn to manage, but it doesn’t go away.

Through voice lessons, I’ve become a phenomenon with singing comparatively.

It’s not how good of a singer I am, it’s what a train wreck of a trumpet player I was. I mean, obviously, there are high points to when I was living that life, but I feel so much more at home in my body as a singer because apparently the large amount of metal in front of my face was blocking my talent.But now that I’ve worked really hard in all things, given my whole heart to everything and everyone I’ve ever loved, I only have one thing left to say.

I am fulfilled.

Second chair no longer exists.

A Mel of An Entry

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Mel is a chef in England who loves my food posts, so I keep thinking of writing them, especially as the food entries climb to the top of the leaderboard. I got this writing prompt from a web page called “19 Creative Writing Prompts About Food for Kids.” This seems to be in my natural age bracket. I’m 46, but I identify as a nine-year-old, I just say “fuck” a lot more. 😉

Describe a trip to the supermarket. What kind of food do you find there? What would you buy? How much would you buy and why?

I follow the Michael Pollan rule at the grocery store. Don’t shop in the middle. Everything you need is on the outer rim. To add to that, the aisles are a trap of advertising the new and most convenient thing, but it’s not always food. As Pollan also says, “don’t eat anything your great grandparents wouldn’t recognize as food.” I also adhere to this last piece of advice: “Eat food. Not a lot. Mostly plants.”

I only eat meat when I go out because I don’t like preparing it at home. So, I will tell you what I think in terms of an omnivore’s diet, which for me is mostly vegan with all bets being off if I’m outside the house. I feel like I’m showing I take Pollan seriously. I do eat “mostly plants,” even when they taste like Italian sausage.

As an aside, one of the best meals I’ve ever had was ordering a Beyond Italian sausage on a bun in a restaurant, because in a restaurant they’ll drop them into the deep fryer. If you’re a vegan, buying a deep fryer is a lot of fun because there’s not a lot of saturated fat in the food, so you can afford to let loose on preparation. Deep fried sausage would taste good even if the sausage originally didn’t. You can cover up a lot of shit with fat, more if the protein is breaded. A good example would be that you may not like Beyond Beef or Impossible Burgers, but you’d have a foodgasm if I served vegan “chicken fried steak.” But people get touchy about that stuff. The idea is off-putting, so they won’t touch it. I’m never going to get people to try vegan food by telling them it’s good. We don’t have to talk about it. Just eat it. (oh, and even the most hardened vegan can relax about deep fried foods. The temperature is high enough to destroy ALL biologicals. This is not true of a flat top. Beef *will* get on your Impossible Burger at Burger King if you don’t tell them to microwave it instead……… but that little bit of beef fat is really fucking good.)

I’m also not the person that likes to fool people for fun.

I don’t categorize my diet at all. I’ll just tell you what I eat, because I’ve already told you the rules.

“Eat food. Not a lot. Mostly plants.”

I swear to you, this advice is better than you think it is. You are better off counting calories than counting fat grams and carbs. Just make sure you stay under 2,000 calories a day. You could have a healthy heart and eat a stick of butter that way. Fat in and of itself is not bad. Calories are simple math, don’t force them into calculus. You will naturally slim down by eating more plants because you won’t be eating all saturated fat and you can eat way more of things that have very few calories and plenty of vitamins. You’ll also stop craving so much sugar by eating fruit. It’s not that your body doesn’t crave sugar, it just needs complex carbohydrates and Hot Tamales won’t cut it (I am bad about taking my own advice. Hot Tamales are life.)

I cook with concepts, so I’d start with a couple of ideas.

When buying staples, you want to duplicate salts and sugars. For instance, a dish will taste better with soy sauce AND salt, or brown AND white sugar. It adds complexity, more notes in the chord. I also like to double up on fats, because olive oil can withstand higher temperatures and butter has a completely different flavor profile. You can go on baking your turkey with butter alone, but mine is better and I haven’t even tasted yours. 😉

A NOTE ABOUT STAPLES

You’re going to think laying out serious cash for staples is a mistake. Let me tell you why it’s not. Good salts, sugars, vinegars, and oils will obviously last a lot longer than the proteins you’re cooking with them. $200 spent on those things will last six months to a year depending on what you’re making, whereas you’re buying protein and veggies every week.

With expensive staples, you can afford to buy everything else on the cheap. Cooking isn’t down and dirty when I’m making a Filet Mignon. I’ve started with the best ingredient, so it’s automatically going to be worth three stars. Give me a meal that’s three stars when you started with chicken backs and necks. That’s when you’ll lose the audience because the idea of a desperately cheap ingredient that tastes bad is stuck in their minds when they think of peasant food. In my world, they don’t matter. I’m not here to impress you, I’m here to impress David Chang, who would know implicitly that I started with garbage and made him a feast. Because that’s how he cooks, and Bourdain before him.

Editor’s Note:

Here’s the dirty secret to peasant food.

Food is beholden to gentrification. If I made a flatiron for someone 30 years ago, it would have cost about the same as picking it out of the garbage. Rich white people found out what you could do with a flatiron, and now it’s an expensive steakhouse item and five to ten times what it used to cost before it was valuable to Karen and Chad. How did it get valuable so fast? There’s only two flatirons per cow.

If you’re going to make the next trend, peasant food also requires the best in spices. I would prefer to buy it all fresh, but I can’t find that and neither can you. I can always find basil, oregano, rosemary, mint, and cilantro. Harder to find more than that, but I do recommend buying them when you’re actually going to cook something within a few days, and just buy a small amount, otherwise, it will be as rotted as the salad you bought with the best of intentions.

In my own kitchen, whether it’s vegan or dairy, I like to have plain yogurt on hand. It is useful for everything breakfast and everything that needs an emergency dollop of sour cream, like putting too much ghost pepper sauce in your eggs. Also, yogurt is the best at cooling Indian dishes. You don’t have to make raita. Vindaloo is just as good with plain Greek yogurt.

Moving on, sauces are easy to make if you have containers to store them. They just won’t have preservatives in them, and there’s no shame in buying them because of it. I like Grey Poupon just as much as the next person. I also have never attempted ghost pepper wing sauce, but I eat a hell of a lot of it.

However, I’ll tell you how to make the sauces I use most frequently, even though I’ve explained some of them before. Fresh salad dressing is so much better, especially with fresh herbs. You just don’t need as much fresh vs. dry.

Top of my list is mayonnaise, but I hardly ever leave it plain. I could live on vegan Hellman’s for the rest of my life….. I make my own mayonnaise when I’m branching out into salad dressings or burger toppings…. pasta salad is also a hit around here.

You need a large bowl and whisk or a blender. I recommend a blender because mayonnaise is so much easier with both hands free.With a bowl and whisk, get ready for a workout because you’ll be holding the bottle above the eggs and whisking them simultaneously and it’s a bitch if you haven’t done it a thousand times with a chef watching to make sure it’s perfect.

You need three egg yolks, a bottle of good oil (canola, grapeseed, and avocado are all very good), and some acid. Lemon juice is classic, but other vinegars are just as good or better. I do white vinegar the most often because it tastes like the “tangy zip of Miracle Whip.” However, I have made creamy ginger salad dressing with lemon juice and sesame oil.

How thick or thin it is depends on ratio, but you can thin it out with a small amount of water (an excellent fix if you feel it start to break, and you will definitely feel it….. it’s like watching a bowl of spaghetti sauce balanced precariously on a table knowing you’re the klutzy five-year-old.)

The easiest way to get egg yolks (for me) is to crack all of them into a soup bowl and carefully pick up the yolks, placing them into the blender or mixing bowl. Please for the love of God do not tell me you have an egg separator. In cooking, your best allies are your hands. You can learn to separate eggs with a gadget, but you know implicitly when all the eggs whites have left your hand. Just don’t pick up more than one at a time. They’ll break, and you’ll have to start over.

Editor’s Note:

Always put a cutting board down if you’re going to crack eggs. Egg whites on your countertops are an invitation to food sickness. After you’ve cooked with eggs, it’s very important to scrub down all your surfaces, because egg whites are invisible. Also, much easier to use a cutting board if you dampen a tea towel and put it under. It will keep the board from moving as you chop if you’re working with plastic (or wooden and not as heavy as a butcher block). My recommendation for how to clean the kitchen no matter what is a few drops of Dawn in a bucket of warm water. It will strip the oils and biologicals off of anything, superior to something like 409 in my opinion because I’ve never worked in a kitchen where we used multipurpose cleaner instead of Dawn. If it bubbles too much, just wipe with a towel and use less soap next time. 😉

Once you get the eggs yolks in the mixing bowl/blender, add your acid- one tablespoon of whatever. Whether you’re mixing or using a blender, the acid will make the egg yolks turn white. In French, that’s called the sabayon stage, and it’s the signal you can start pouring in the oil.

I don’t have any set amount of oil to add, because I just add it until I have what I need. Three egg yolks, I’ve found, will support a large amount of oil. So, whether I’m making one meal or several, I just keep whisking until the gods whisper to stop.

At this point, you can add anything you want. I will always add a pinch of salt, but anything else is a no-go unless the mayonnaise is a compound, like, say, blue cheese dressing. Salad dressing is not fancy. It’s just mayonnaise with stuff in it. So, you can literally throw anything you want at mayonnaise and it will adjust. Throw in some garlic powder or roasted garlic, it’s an aioli. Ranch dressing is probably the most complicated on the list, and not because it’s technically more difficult. You have to shop for more herbs and spices (I also add fresh tarragon- it’s not for everyone, but I love it). For burgers, I just throw in a little ketchup and sweet relish. A good pesto sauce will rock your face with mayonnaise. You can make a killer blue cheese dressing by buying all the ingredients for ranch and just adding blue cheese crumbles to it. Either of these dressings taste much better after the flavors marry, so leaving it in the fridge overnight is advisable before you serve.

For dressings, I really like sesame oil. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. Mixing it with any kind of vinegar or citrus is just amazing. Put your oil and acid in a jar with fresh herbs and shake. You’ll have to shake it every time you use it, but it will still taste better than anything you could buy.

Peasant food is also things like lunch meat. For instance, shaved ham that you bought at Dollar Tree can be transformed with eggs, jalapenos, and butter….. even better if you have nopales as well.

I can also cook the hell out of Spam.

The trick is to get it so thin it looks like it’s been shaved, but not quite. Then, respect first contact and put it on medium-low heat (a three on electric). Walk away. Don’t touch it. Call an adult. No, seriously. It will take about 10 minutes per side (I think…. I’d just look at it and decide if it had enough color on it rather than setting a timer. Instructions are for um…. civilians.) What you’re looking for with Spam is the same carmelization that you’d get on plain ham or bacon. It’s red, then brown, then black. I like cooking Spam until it turns the color of the caramel on a creme brulee. What you end up with is something that’s crispy and perfect on the outside, a little mealy inside. Perfect for breakfast or diced for a hell of a fried rice, though I’d also saute pineapple in butter and carmelize it before adding it.

(Mel, shut it. This is Hawaiian friend rice. ;))

The staples you can skimp on are things like rice and beans. The no-name is going to taste exactly the same as brand, including buying them raw in nondescript bags and preparing them yourself.

I would explain to you how to make rice, except that making rice over the stove is hard to me when rice cookers are as low as $14, the only specialty item I have in my kitchen because it also does grains like oatmeal, brown rice, millet, quinoa, etc. You can learn to make rice over the stove from someplace else. I have $14. Why spend time explaining something that will actively make you stop reading? 😉

I don’t use water when I make rice, though. I use vegetable stock. I also don’t generally make rice plain, so I keep lots of dried cherries, cranberries, nuts, and seeds around. This is also useful for breads and pancakes, so dried fruit and flax seeds are a minimum for me. I also have hemp hearts, chia seeds, cashews, walnuts, almonds, sesame seeds, and pumpkin seeds. Putting these things into bread/carbs gets me the protein I need in addition to Beyond sausage dropped in a deep fryer (praise to you, Lord Christ).

Let’s wrap up by talking about drink staples.

I will not buy skim anything.It is devoid of everything about milk that is good for you, including taste. Plus, if you are not putting full-fat milk in your coffee, you are allowing the acid to have free reign. Let the acid bind to fat and your stomach might have a fighting chance. I use soy milk since it’s the thickest of the plant milks, but only because I can get it shipped by the case from Amazon. If I was buying from the grocery store, I’d probably buy Ripple, which my dad will be pleased to find out is not, in fact, a 40. It’s milk derived from pea plants. I call it “Gregor Mendilk.” I like it in coffee because it’s a little sweeter, like lactose free.

Always buy decent coffee. It’s like a gift to future you. However, what many people don’t do is buy a pack of Folgers and mix the expensive coffee with it. I prefer a very, very dark roast, so you won’t notice the difference and you’ll only have to buy coffee once a month or two (the time savings alone make it worth it). I also recommend having a backup Folgers, because it will keep forever. You know what’s worse than having cheap coffee? Getting up at 0500 and realizing you don’t have any coffee.

I also buy Stash teabags in obnoxious quantities. I’m going to have to buy some loose leave at some point, because I think it would be cheaper than using two or three bags at a time in the Keurig. I use that much tea in the Keurig because what you lose with it is steeping time. If you are using a kettle and pot (microwave water and you are dead to me), I recommend steeping for a lot longer than the British do. I’ll leave my teabags in for 11 minutes if that’s what it takes. I want my tea to be as full-bodied as coffee, which generally means letting it sit longer.

My mind has just been wandering regarding food. Like, what is it I really know? What advice do I have to pass on?

I don’t. I am passing on everything I have ever learned. Just follow the rules.

Eat food. Not a lot. Mostly plants.

You Got Me Straight Trippin, Boo

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s the trait you value most about yourself?

I’m not so good at talking about my “traits,” because it feels like all of them are somewhere in the middle in terms of value being good or bad. I’m tripping because none seem more important than the other.

For instance, being queer does not make me interesting in and of itself. Overcoming other people’s reactions to me being queer is what makes me brave, because it’s not something to which people have the right to react. It is what it is.

To me, it’s all like that. A trait’s beauty is dependent on its circumstances. If having brown eyes had been interpreted as wrong in the Bible, I would be overcoming fear and hatred of that instead. It’s the same amount of important.

Plus, my mind is an interesting combination of nothing right now, because I just woke up about 20 minutes ago (getting up at 0700 hasn’t taken. It’s 0520). I could go downstairs, get some coffee, read the paper. But that’s what normal people do. Creativity is a cruel mistress, even when it’s Internet word vomit.

[At this point I started joking with Cora (The War Daniel’s daughter who is now also mine)… Why was I not smart enough to have a child that lives with me? “The problem with using infants for waitstaff is that you get very poor service.” -Lemony Snickett She’s 25. Still funny.]

We’ve been chatting back and forth- she’s got some amazing artwork and I was telling her she should put it up on CafePress. All kinds of weird creatures with extensive back story- just more creative than I’ll ever be with visual art. She could make money easily because all she’d have to do is upload her art digitally. CafePress buys all the merchandise and you just pay for what you use- no up front cost because the costs to CafePress are billed to the customer.

I did a limited run of “Fanagans’ Wake” t-shirts, as well as one for line cooks that says “Keep Calm and Sell the Rail,” and they eventually did ok. But I’m not Cora. I enjoy working with fonts and spacing. She can design and decorate whole worlds.

An inborn trait for all INFJs is wanting others to be the best they can be. I thought of this because when Cora started sending me her artwork, I thought it might be useful for her to know about CafePress, and not because I’m trying to direct her into success. I genuinely would like to have a coffee mug with her artwork on it because I’m not saying that as “overbearing tiger queer mom.” I mean that her work wouldn’t look out of place at ComiCon, and I believe that the only reason she’s not making bank is that she’s an unknown. All unknowns start somewhere, and I’m getting in on the ground floor. I am also not here to make my dreams her reality.

INFJs think in visions of what might be. We start with an issue and spin it out. We throw everything on the table to see what it looks like and look before we leap to an enormous degree…….. except in my case, this is often derailed when I have stars in my eyes to an enormous degree. But everyone goes stupid at love. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t.

I saw kids with Auna.

I saw living with Theresa.

I saw being old with Sam.

I do see being old with Supergrover because life is long and it’s not over. I am terribly small, but would never sing that particular song.

None of these things have or have yet come true, and it doesn’t matter that they didn’t or haven’t. That’s because the visions in my head are only guidance. I think in some ways it’s my brain protecting me from fear. That if things do work out, here’s what it will look like. Here is a goal you can work towards.

It was particularly important for me to see a future with Sam because I was so terrified. I am glad she broke up with me in retrospect, but she’d have to know just how many walls she broke down in order for me to even go on a date with her, especially after she gave me so many red flags in the beginning that I just ignored because she was adorable and I felt safe. Even with the red flags, everybody’s got ’em, so I would have tried harder had she let me. I’m just glad I didn’t have to. It was too early to work hard. I’m sure I came with red flags, too, clearly. I’m just glad I didn’t have to mourn her, because Supergrover was there to catch and told me how much of an idiot Sam was. She has a history of telling the absolute truth, so it was easy to rest in my pet monster on a leash.

If you’re playing Skyrim, she’s very unapologetic that she is Alduin.

She’s not. She is Paarthurnax for everything he was, is, and will be.

I want the best in life for her, too. If she was a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbeder, I believe she would see some direct correlations to our relationship with Uncle Iroh and Zuko. It feels amazing that I’m in season three now.

If you never met Supergrover or she never sent you a photo, you’d think you were being e-mailed by a prize fighter, but one who seems like he spends his time at home painting his nails and wearing a tutu just to see his daughter smile. But then you look at her and realize that she’s a six year old girl with lots of complicated layers who also believes in adorably seductive and tasteful Halloween costumes, thanks be to God.

Just because we’re not a couple doesn’t mean I can’t be interested when Vogue magazine is on the coffee table. I, just like her, love pictures of beautiful people. I’d like to see pictures of her in different outfits and settings whether I knew her personally or not. I love photography. I do know her personally, though, so I pretend like settings and outfits matter when I’m really only looking for her microexpressions.

An inborn trait of INFJs is that we all know you can’t tell when someone is happy by looking at someone who’s smiling. It is not found there. It is found in their eyes, the way their muscles tense when pulled just so, whether crow’s feet go up or down (in my case). You can hide a drained soul from many people. I am just not one of them.

If you are my friend, though, I do have boundaries. If I can tell that you’re struggling, I will not intrude unless I feel there is clear and present danger. I need you to be capable of realizing that you’re struggling and asking for help. I also see when people are incapable of doing those things and probably won’t just step in, but I will be relentless about telling you to handle your shit with medication and therapy. It’s not my job to fix you, but it is my responsibility to tell you when your behavior is affecting me. I am not the be all and end all, but I know from depression and alcoholism. If I’m willing to say something, it’s already bad because I’m not judgmental about everything. I assume you’ve got it handled right up until you don’t. However, I’m not sure I would be insistent with someone who didn’t live with me. Their behavior just doesn’t affect me enough for it to be a burden on me otherwise, and criticism is always unwelcome no matter how constructive you’re trying to be. No one thinks you are trying to lance a boil. It’s always an attack.

I’ll give you a huge for-instance. I couldn’t, shouldn’t, and didn’t tell Dana to stop drinking or I’d leave. That’s because I was in the situation, not looking down on it. Is it surprising to anyone that I accidentally developed a wandering eye? I needed a catalyst for change, and Supergrover was it. The “accidentally” part is that I did not go into that relationship expecting anything close. I walked into a wall of bullshit I’m still not out of yet. Even she would agree that I stepped in it up to my ass, because she knows she’s a handful and calls her own life crazy because it is. Laying out the story exactly how it happened is like that scene from Men in Black II:

J: Okay. Straight to the point. [whispers in a serious voice] You are a former agent of a top-secret organization that monitors extraterrestrials on Earth. We’re the Men in Black. We have a situation, and we need your help.

K: There’s a free mental health clinic at the corner of Lilac and East Valley. Next!

No one gets this life by accident, and yet I did….. just through my inborn traits.

Lost in Your Mind

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Supergrover,

When my mind goes quiet, there’s a black and white picture of you that appears. It’s the only one you’ve ever taken just for me. It’s not that I don’t like other pictures of you. That’s not it at all. I like that you were thinking of me when you took it, and there’s just a hint of a smile with mischievous eyes. I wonder what your eyes looked like that day, and the days after…. in which we were clinging to each other and you kept whispering “you’re safe.” Beautiful girl, you whisper me to sleep with that one enduring phrase. I don’t sleep much, but when I do you watch over me, just like you’ve done since I was “young.” When I get scared in the night, I hear you in my head. “Maybe a doughnut will help.” I would have taken any vow that day, but the one I took was unusual.

Sometimes I feel like you don’t realize it’s unusual, because you’re big picture and I’m in the weeds. I know it would take you being on vacation for us to even have a chance to drink coffee together, so it’s just difficult having feelings you’re not there to catch because you can’t and shouldn’t be. Yet, I still signed the paper with blood.

The game changed from Old Maid to No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em, beautiful girl. Please know that this is true. Feel it in your heartbeat. Let the knowledge settle in you, because I am not placing guilt or blame. I am asking “where do we go from here?” Our connection is pure, but not our communication.

This relationship just makes me turn things over in my mind constantly, but is only one cog of many. My complications are dependent on what I’m tracking, and I owe you an apology for making you think you’re not on the face.

I am so sorry that when you came to me with what you were going through, I reacted poorly. I was having a bad day and I exploded. A laundry list of what you were going through with no thought to what I was going through made me crazy, because it was just reinforcement of the last eight years. I express needs, you express avoidance. I was frustrated that nothing was changing no matter what I did. I thought you were blind to something that has been in place since our inception. That the things we share do not go away when we don’t speak. We are making things worse for both of us, convinced we’re right and without each other. It’s stupid, but I’ll live.

The reason, though, that I was upset is that I could have written the essay on what you were going through. I do not take my needs lightly where you are concerned because your time is more objectively valuable than mine (during business hours). I have to weigh how I feel before I talk to you because I pick my battles carefully. I don’t try to goad, provoke, or scold you. I agonize over every decision because I have to think “does this matter right now compared to what she’s doing?” There will never be anything in my life as important, comparatively, so by the time I’m brave enough to lay something out with you, I’ve thought about it for weeks.

Every decision where you are concerned comes with complications, and I’m one of the people that can handle complicated. What I cannot handle is a conflict between two people where only one person says anything. You explained to me what you were going through, but ignored everything I said so I felt unheard after years of saying the same thing.

While you’re off thinking I’m a judgmental dick about everything, here’s what is actually running through my mind:

Where’s she going? What’s she doing? Does she have all her meds? Where’s Michael on this? Did she get that weighted blanket? Are the girls going with her this trip or is she on her own? Is a driver picking her up? What’s his story? When is wheels up? When does she land? Will she have e-mail in-flight or will there be crap going on? Don’t forget to tell her you love her when you know she’s going to be in the air.

This type monologue has been running every day for 10 years, and intensifies when I know it should. I know you don’t necessarily like it, but I remember pleading with you- that you need someone to care about you and could you just let me? Please? I always want to take care of you and I’m sorry I haven’t done it more often.

Limiting our interaction stops me from feeling unwanted, but it doesn’t stop the monologue because we fucked up and we’re married now- without me ever being able to explain why I mean what I mean to anyone other than you, and so far you don’t get it, or you really, really, do and that’s why you don’t want to talk about it. My job is to be lost in your mind. To be the best at separating what can go into the character of Supergrover from what can’t leave the building. I am afraid that I’m the worst.

The simplest answer would be to just stop writing about it, and I say that to myself every single day and realize I can’t go anywhere else. In this space, I have complete control of the narrative. I can relax and breathe, because no one else can respond. I mean, they can. People leaving comments is fun. I mean that Bryn and I aren’t going through each other’s comments and responding on the other’s behalf. I tell a story, people only talk to me.

I am not just writing the you in the entries, but the you in the comments. The you that exists in my world vs. the you that exists in yours. It’s never going to go away and we are both cutting off our noses to spite our faces by pretending we can walk away as if nothing happened…. but that’s not the problem.

The problem is that you absolutely can walk away like nothing happened, shooting emotions like metal spikes while I’m telling you that nail guns fucking hurt. By the time you told me everything you were going through, you told me there was no space for me in a way that meant change. That I could deal with things as they are. Period.

It cannot be the whole story. I know it. But you should understand that you walked into this willingly. I don’t need you to say you’re sorry and disappear into the ether. I need you to accept the reality of the situation and say “what’s next?”

There’s no one else for me and you knew that’s what would happen- because it happens every single time. The information becomes more important than the connection. I do not say that to guilt you at all; there will be others, just not ever again in the same way. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for at least seven years (now eight).

Nothing about our situation is wrong and bad. I love you in a way I don’t have the capability to love anyone else, and that makes me feel unique and special in a way I didn’t before. My worth on the planet doesn’t come from you, but the perks to living here sure do.

No judgment. No guilt. I just can’t engage anymore because I can’t communicate where you can hear it.

If I send a letter by publishing it here, it’s because I don’t have any expectation of it being read. I don’t want to open the door to more fighting. I want you to be at peace, even if I’m not it.

We told each other we loved each other once upon a time. Now, that check needs to cash. I’m just not going to wait at the bank all day, leaving empty-handed at 4:00 PM.

But know that if we agree to meet, I’ll be in the lobby with your coffee. I’m tired of feeling crazy for doing exactly what you need me to do. I’m just working without a net, and afraid.

Until my mind quiets, and the shadows reveal your face…. contemplative because I’m lost in your mind.

Yours,

Leslie

Writing a Letter, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Mel,

I thought you might enjoy a food post since you’re in “learning a new kitchen” hell right now. I hope you’ll think of me when it’s time for your shiftie. If you don’t get this, I completely understand. See you in three years.

Love,

Leslie

When I think of food, I think of Mel, because she has jumped on the bandwagon of telling me to write more about it.

Because I am not up on current trends, I pick her brain looking for inspiration. I ask her food questions, she sends me pictures of Bletchley Park. It’s an even exchange. This is because asking her questions about food gives her energy. Getting the pictures is just a bonus. I don’t remember what food we were talking about at last interaction, I just think of her in general, the chef who can tell me about food culture in England and yet we’re tracking together like white on rice due to Escoffier’s meticulous detail.

If you have worked in a professional kitchen, you are beholden to him. The entire system was made by him. That’s why Julia Child was a tough motherfucker, and my language skills aren’t good enough to tell you how much of an understatement it is when you go through a program like that while female now. She was the first.

Working for OSS in Technical Services carrying around highly classified information is way less dangerous, but she did that, too. The reality is that there’s probably more sexual harassment and rape in kitchens/culinary schools than there is at OSS. I could be wrong. Those things are everywhere. Men do not like competition, and when their words fail, their fists come out- with other men. There’s a special hell for smart women, because few men truly recognize female brilliance when they see it. They’re programmed to be annoyed.

This is not any less true in the kitchen. It’s harder for women to speak up in all fields, but the kitchen is its own kind of hell because when you’re working that closely, you can’t help but touch each other. Assault happens every day of your life if some guy decides you deserve it, and some guy will. It hasn’t happened to me in every job consistently, but it has happened to me in every job. Every male line cook who has ever stood next to me saw me as his assistant. Every goddamn one.

We were paid the same, we had the same rights and responsibilities, and every day Daddy Knows Best. Nothing changes, whether they’re shit or fantastic. Male line cooks won’t ask women for advice unless they’re so young we have a matronly vibe to us- because they know they’re both screwed and scared and they can’t talk to anyone else. Men will not ask women anything until they’re afraid they’re going to lose their jobs and they have no choice but to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable to another male line cook is deadly for all kinds of personal and professional reasons….. one of them being that they’ll start treating the vulnerable kid like they treat women. Sexual harassment is real for men at work, because the amount of towel snapping and ass grabbing is highly regulated….. amongst each other.

Food isn’t worth it if you’re female. It’s just not. Those misogynistic French bastards took the thing women had been doing for millions of years unsung and decided it was valid when they learned. Just one of the many things women regret teaching men because thinking that women are the way they are (intellectually more stumped yet emotionally intelligent to the prehistoric) has so often come from theft. I can’t even imagine the numbers on an intellectual property lawsuit covering all women everywhere.

I am not saying women should quit (go on strike, really). I am saying that if you are female, you pursue this job because you can’t fucking do anything else. This is your passion, your drive, your coffee, your cocaine….. when you are high as hell on adrenaline after a rush, it becomes as primal a thrill as can be had legally. You dream pars and food cost. You have no idea what to do with yourself before 5:00PM. Days off are a story they tell little kids. Your family is a distant memory.

You didn’t come here to win. You came here to own the whole fucking thing.

And that’s what I’m thinking about when I think about Mel taking on a new kitchen. She can handle herself just fine. But I hope she has a me on the line, because there comes a time in every young man’s life where he will not accept female authority and needs to be disabused of the notion. This is probably best done by a chef barking down. But when they don’t, there’s safety in numbers and laughter in revenge.

I hope it’s going well for her. At least well enough to get a “heard.”