1. What was the last thing you put in your mouth ?

Dana’s ear (giggle)

2. Where was your profile picture taken?

At a bar called “Sam’s” in Portland, Oregon

3. Can you play Guitar Hero?

Very, very, very poorly.

4. Name someone who made you laugh today?

Josie, my friend Aaron’s three year old daughter. Her laughter lights me up from the inside.

5. How late did you stay up last night and why?

I think I went to bed around 12:30. Hard to say because Chef (John-Michael) came over and we sat out on the back porch and talked for several hours. I asked him to be one of the attendants at our wedding, because both Dana and I have worked for him at different times, and he is the culinary love of our lives. When he talks about work, it just makes me hot.

6. If you could move somewhere else, where would it be ?

Washington, DC. No lie. I want to be a DC-based novelist. If I don’t make it that far, maybe Austin, because Texas politics are way weirder than anything federal.

7. Ever been kissed under fireworks?

I’m not sure, but I hope that I’ve caused a few.

8. Which of your friends lives closest to you?

Robert- he’s our next door neighbor. The first time I saw him, he was wearing an Adventure Time t-shirt and he stole my heart on the spot. 🙂

9. Do you believe ex’s can be friends?

Depends on the ex. Depends on you. Can you let go and drop all your teenage crap? Having tried to be friends with an ex before, I know I can’t.

10. How do you feel about Dr Pepper?

As a Texan, I am supposed to say that it is the nectar of God Almighty, forever amen. It’s lucky that I actually believe it.

11. When was the last time you cried really hard?

Yesterday, I cried with a cry I’ve only had three times in my life. The first was hearing that my high school girlfriend started dating someone else when she went to college and lived with her for a month before she bothered to break up with me. The second was when Kathleen broke my heart by cheating on me while I was at my mother’s wedding…. with three of my coworkers in the same weekend. Yesterday, my friend Argo said she wasn’t, and a part of my heart stopped functioning. She is literally my dragon slayer, and I will be grateful to her for the REST of my life whether she ever talks to me again or not.

12. Who took your profile picture?

I think it was Dana…….

13. Who was the last person you took a picture of?

I honestly don’t remember. I don’t shoot memories, usually. Mostly landscape.

14. Was today better than yesterday?

Anything is better than yesterday.

15. Can you live a day without TV?

Not if Doctor Who is on.

16. Are you upset about anything?

No, I’m absolutely fine (I’m lying).

17. Do you think relationships are ever really worth it?

What would make you say that? They’re the only thing ever worth it.

18. Are you a bad influence?

I make no qualms about the fact that I am the sweetest, most delightful person on earth….. and a homicidal maniac in my dreams. Think love child of Dexter and Julie Andrews.

19. Night out or night in?

Night in, always. Would prefer having friends over than going out.

20. What items could you not go without during the day?

Food, water, shelter, sex, Internet. Dana will be so happy that I put sex before Internet. I think she thinks I’m connected by the belly button (I am- it’s what I do).

21. Who was the last person you visited in the hospital?

I am not exactly sure- I haven’t been to the hospital in *years.*

22. What does the last text message in your inbox say?

From my dad- I forgot to tell you, they told me I would have no trouble finding Springbok stuff. What size do you wear?

23. How do you feel about your life right now?

In the grand scheme of things, it’s perfect.

24. Do you hate anyone?

I hate the person that abused the person that abused me. I hold him entirely responsible and I hope he’s dead, but even that is too good for him. If I found him first, you would choke on vomit when I told you what I’d do to him.

25. If we were to look in your facebook inbox, what would we find?

Fucking heartbreak. Are you paying attention?

26. Say you were given a drug test right now, would you pass?

Depends on the test. 🙂 I once got in big trouble at ExxonMobil because they read me the riot act over amphetamines before even checking if it was prescribed to me.

27. Has anyone ever called you perfect before?

Yes, and it makes me uncomfortable every time. I am perfect in my flaws, but perfect is too big a stretch.

28. What song is stuck in your head?

A Thousand Miles, Vanessa Carleton

29 . Someone knocks on your window at 2:00 a.m., who do you want it to be?

The only person in my life that could make knocking on my window at 2:00 AM make sense.

30. Wanna have grandkids by the time your 50?

That is less than 15 years from now, and I don’t even have kids.

31. Name something you are doing tomorrow

Hopefully doing SHAKE AND BAKE with my favorite soprano, Douglas. Douglas is an amazing soprano, and until his voice changes, I try to sing with him every chance I get. Plus, he can sight read and I can’t. Handy.

32. Do you think too much or too little?

We’ve met, right?

My parents’ house backs up to a protected wildlife area so the only thing beyond our backyard are trees, deer, and the occasionally photogenic bird. Dana and I are staying here while they’re on photo safari in Africa, so this morning I’ve been sitting in the backyard on the deck with my grandfather’s pipe, smoking Black Russian tobacco (chocolategasm) and thinking that someone should take a picture of me because this is obviously the book jacket look we’re going for.

I kept thinking about how I should write my grandfather a letter, and I will put it on my to-do list because my hands are so crippled from RSIs that I need some time in the hot tub and lots of Aleve before I commit to handwriting anything. In that moment, though, my grandfather and I were having communion together, because he was teaching me how to smoke a pipe in my head as I was trying to get it lit. Instantaneously when I put the pipe to my lips, I was back in the cream-colored station wagon with the red interior that just smelled like him. I mentally watched him pull until the bowl would stay lit, and would chastise myself for not doing it just. like. Pawpaw.

Which was a good, safe place to be mentally because the rest of me just feels like crap.

I said it was over, and we both blew up. Me and _________. It was a disaster, just “let’s see how fast we can emotionally destroy each other on the way out.” I laugh to myself that it’s kind of like that scene in Argo where they’re trying to burn every document in the Iranian embassy. I still have a lot of scars left over from that day, and I’m not even going to pretend that she doesn’t… and that’s what I’m thinking as the nicotine buzz sets in. My mind floats above me while my body enjoys first-drag bliss.

It feels nice to let my mind go for just a sec. I am wrecked about this friend breakup. I know I haven’t mentioned it before (that was like a joke, except jokes are funny). Anything I can do to put my mind at ease for five whole seconds is a miracle. Last night I spent seven minutes making a cocktail. Seven minutes. That’s how long it took me, I was so intent on this drink being my moment of Zen. I was going to drink it on the back porch and listen to Regina Spektor. I made a DATE with myself people.

The mixer was sugar free and I didn’t notice when I used it. Made the whole thing taste like asshole… and that was just the thing to happen to absolutely BREAK me. It wasn’t about the martini. It was that I could not even maintain anymore. I poured the whole thing down the sink and sat on the floor in the kitchen, praying my end of the frayed rope prayer. “Shit, God.”

And as I was sitting on the floor, God whispered, “ain’t no girl worth this, sweetie.” My friends say she’s manipulating me and I tell them that’s fine, they don’t realize what an asshole I am, either. They say, “yes, we do” and I’m not sure quite how to take that, but whatever.

What I know for sure™ is that my friends cannot take away the thousands and thousands and thousands of lines of prose between us, and even if that is all I have left, it is enough because it has to be. I cannot live my life with this much anxiety all the time when all I want to know is whether the resurrection took or whether I am absolutely throwing my time in the garbage because I’m giving time and energy to someone who doesn’t want it.

I think of myself as a dog, loyal to a fault in all relationships, because especially when I’ve hurt someone, I whimper like a part of me is missing.

No, actually, it’s a lot like that.

I wasn’t planning on changing my entire life yesterday. I just did. Because Alert Logic has high standards for confidentiality, I can’t tell you why, but I’m not there anymore and it is a very good thing.™ I assume when you read this that you’re hitting the fan thinking, “she doesn’t have enough people to buy her book yet!” You’re right. I didn’t quit my job to be a stay at home novelist. I was only unemployed for 60 minutes.

Stay tuned.

What I can say for Alert Logic is that they are an amazing company and I will never have anything bad to say about them because they didn’t do anything wrong. It was my decision and I made it. I just wish I could tell you more than that…. I know you want every detail, but you’ll have to be satisfied with “other factors at play.”

I think the hardest part of an Internet relationship is that when things go wrong, there’s very little way to apologize. When either of you think on the things you’ve told each other, you just can’t believe it. There’s someone out there that *knows* you. Not your body. Not your bullshit. Not the armor you wear in public.

You.

So what happens when someone gets mad and slashes that level of trust? So far, the answer for me has been to regret it every moment since. She’s right. I could have handled things differently. At the same time, there’s no way to go backward, and neither of us are solid enough (yet, I hope) to go forward. Too proud. Too us.

I have to come to the realization that the resurrection may not take. The way I handled being frightened and threatened (becuase so much energy was going to her than Dana at times) was a stray cat backed into a corner that’s just had a bucket of ice water dumped on him. Oh, I take it back. I wasn’t even that nice.

I got to the place of PLEASE STOP THE PAIN I CAN’T HANDLE ANYMORE ANXIETY OH MY JESUS PLEASE STOP.

And then I couldn’t think straight anymore, as if I ever could. So I ran as hard as I possibly could, and you know what?

I got about fifteen feet before I tripped on a rock and started to cry. The problem with that is she’s a first child. There may or may not be a way to ever reach her again. First children don’t give their trust easily, and as I was reading over some of our conversations from the past year, I picked up everything that I had missed before.

She loves me so much she can’t breathe, either. I had to sit with that for a long time. Hours, even, because that means the fight was based on nothing more than not really believing that someone like that could love someone like me.

These are the moments when it’s hard for me to say that I do. I have to love me whether I’m amazing or not. And if it’s any consolation to other people that love me right now, it’s just as hard for me to love myself because I see all the irritants as clearly as you do. The difference is that you can run away from me, but I can’t.

I have to love me even if I lauched the torpedo that sank us.

I can’t promise, but what I can do is try. Try every day. Try like nothing else matters, because. it. doesn’t.

I feel like such a Disciple after the Ascension. Dumb guy, eager to please, and missing direction…. I think there are elements of that in me and ________ alike. I need to read the Book of Acts, or as I personally call it, “The Gospel of Holy Shit What Do We Do Now?” We’ve had the resurrection, now how do we maintain it? There’s a lot of hurt feelings on both sides, a lot of hurt pride. First children are both perfect. There are no flaws in either of our logic. And if you believe that Dana will personally laugh in your face with her second child tongue firmly in cheek.

This entire experience has been a lesson in love, because if we are both first children and always need to be right, someone has to give somewhere. Because I was the one that freaked out, I gave first. I could not be right and alone. I gave so that my heart would lead me instead of my head. However, of course we can’t rebuild Rome in a day, and this morning, the great philosophers Wilson Phillips’ “Hold On” was playing when I arrived at my parking space. I allowed myself to absolutely lose it for the length of the song, and it was brutal. Alligator tears because resurrection happens in the middle of the mess, and the mess hasn’t ended. We’d both like to live to fight another day, and we both have the capability to emotionally destroy each other.

Did I mention that we’re both first children? I cannot underestimate this influence, because I know better than I know anything else in the world that first children are authoritative to a fault. It’s all or nothing and we will both punch the wall until our knuckles bleed trying to wrestle it out. The blessing is that even though resurrection is hard, it’s worth it. I want her to be a part of my life until one of us dies.

She knows me better than my therapist, and in some ways, better than Dana because she lets me use her as a sounding board when there’s something I need to verbally process before I talk to her. There is no one with which I’d rather do the work, because maybe we’ll learn a thing or two about compromise instead of mutually assured destruction.

We will finally come together, I think, when we can both get down on our knees like Monica and Chandler, and admit that we can’t live without each other, but at the same time, we are both going to kick each other’s asses into next week for all eternity.

I really, really love you. I give.

And for those of you who are wondering how Dana feels about all this, there are so many levels of confidentiality that I cannot even. What I can say is that if she wants to identify herself, so be it. But that’s up to her. It is my hope that neither the Fanagans or I miss this relationship. It is too good, too exciting, too amazing, too frustrating, too “SAY UNCLE, DAMNIT.”

I have never been happier.

OUT of the deep have I called unto thee, O LORD;
Lord, hear my voice.
O let thine ears consider well
the voice of my complaint.
If thou, LORD, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss,
O Lord, who may abide it?
For there is mercy with thee;
therefore shalt thou be feared.
I look for the LORD; my soul doth wait for him;
in his word is my trust.
My soul fleeth unto the Lord before the morning watch;
I say, before the morning watch.
O Israel, trust in the LORD; for with the LORD there is mercy,
and with him is plenteous redemption.
And he shall redeem Israel
from all his sins.

The resurrection of this friendship came with my recognition that I was in the deep to begin with. She’d pushed me away in order to keep me from her broken places, which I took as a personal slight even though it was never meant to be. To my mind, it was based on something small that turned into something large because I felt like I was getting cut from the popular girls’ table and I reacted with just as much teenage bullshit.

Realistically, that was just an excuse to leave. When Diane pushed me away, I reacted the exact same way, and my inner teenager liked it just as much. This relationship was never supposed to go to that place of fear, where I am so shriveled up inside that I don’t think I have any options and stop taking up room… and start taking on their stories as my own. Same software, different case.

In my dreams last night, I figured out that she had to forgive me. If this is the play that we’re acting, if her actions are exorcising my demons, so be it. What could it hurt? The thing is to stop running from it and accept it for what it is. I could not possibly be fully formed after these 24 years enough to believe that this is a separate issue, that there is no crossover.

I’m not any different, but she is.

I cannot think of two people less alike than Diane and well, anybody else but especially _________. Still a fire sign, but the oldest instead of the youngest… which apparently means that we each have the skills to verbally wrestle each other to the ground, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. We are too strong together not to fight like that. It’s a sign of passion and interest, not anger.

The breakthrough came yesterday, because Dana and I both stayed home from church and talked. We ended up talking about me and said friend, but we didn’t set out to stay home from church and hash it out. Dana has hives so bad that she can barely move, they’re agitated by stress, and she has an appointment with an allergist soon so she can’t take anything for it. She is literally in so much discomfort that it makes me cry, like watching your firstborn get a Vitamin K injection in the heel.

The silver lining of the black cloud was having the time to talk.

We got to decide together what we were going to do, because I said what I needed and so did she.

Dana said she didn’t like sharing me with _____________.

I very nicely told her to get the fuck over it.

It sounds mean, but at the same time, that’s my boundary. You can’t take her away from me and I will fight with you until you see that. I need her to sit with it and figure out how much of me that ____________ can have, because she’s not going away and in fact may help me with some writing in the future. Dana not getting over it, in short, is a big problem.

Besides, I manage my own darkness left over from Diane quite well, and in the moments I falter, __________ is right there to remind me that it’s been a year and some change and she still hasn’t gotten the gay yet, so apparently you cannot catch it from Facebook Messenger, but to be fair I’m not sure. You should probably read the EULA (End User License Agreement).

We did not need to die. We needed to be reborn so that the chord between us was only hitting the right places instead of the wrong ones… and to that end, my response is look up to the heavens and thank God for the sun as I swim up toward it. I want to lie on the water, feeling the weightlessness of it all, and how glad that I am on the top instead of the bottom.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Sitting here with a large bottle of water and my little computer. Amy Winehouse is singing “Someone to Watch Over Me,” which is heartwrenchingly hilarious in only a novelist’s mentality. I realized that I had a few more things to say about this friend breakup, if only for a chance to have *that* blog title in my portfolio… However, what I have to say isn’t about her. It’s about what one feels in that Internet safespace. It has nothing to do with our personalities in the slightest.

Emotionally freebasing crack with someone over the Internet was a mistake, but our friendship was not. It is highly unlikely that we would run into each other, but not impossible. I realized that I started to fear an “IRL” relationship- not because I didn’t desperately want it- because I realized that none of that closeness in our world made any sense in the grand scheme of things. Were one world to collide with the other, it would be noticed.

Even over the Internet, our worlds collided plenty. We are both such strong women. I love us together. We can just be as big as we are, and we are huge. Both first children. Both well-acquainted with fighting like first children. So alike in some ways, so different in others. It is a match made in novel heaven, and I could kiss Novel Jesus for it. Because of Novel Jesus, I am blessed in all measure.

I had to pull back when I realized that I was letting her stories become more important than my own. That was not of her- it was entirely on me. I started to check out of my own life a little bit, and it did not go unnoticed. This morning I had a revelation… that whether I wanted to admit it or not, she was becoming a rebound from Diane. That I was freebasing emotional crack with someone over the Internet to get away from having to think about my own pain and my own recovery and my own bleeding, broken heart. That I was taking this incredibly healthy, loving relationship and using its dopamine to fill a dark place. I wanted to spare her from me just as much as she wanted to spare me from her. OH MY GOD THAT’S IT. We’re pushing each other away because neither of us want the other to be exposed to our really dark places. Ooooh, that’s chewy.

I wanted desperately to live in her world, and had to stop it immediately when I realized that it was a continuation of the same pattern I’d had with Diane, not because of anything *she* was doing, but because of my actions behind the scenes. There’s no way she could have known my internal dialogue, so I’m glad she can read it here if and when she’s ready. The difference is that Diane’s world was false; there was no there there. With this woman, there is nothing but clean, pure, white light coming at me. It’s so bright I have to avert my eyes (WELL STOP IT!). It’s not that her world wouldn’t overlap with mine, it’s just that I’m in one place geographically and she’s in another. There’s no way to create normalcy AROUND the freebasing crack emotionally. There’s no small talk. There’s hello and a line of coke to start the night, but that is not unusual. Ask anyone who’s ever been in a serious internet relationship EVER. It happens. Your heart jacks up as if speed has been directly injected.

The take-home message is that I was more interested in living in our little bubble world at times than I was interested in living my actual life. It conflicted me and screwed me up because I was trying to make so many things work at once that something had to give or everything was going to fall, all at once and with force.

I know she probably feels really shitty about now, especially since I was so quick to go to guns immediately to stop the pain. She didn’t know how bad it was, because she couldn’t look at the whole picture of my life, and neither one of us were honest with the other. We fell back on old kid tendencies and didn’t express frustrations, boundaries, feelings, anything that would occur in real life friendship every single day.

I realized that I had to leave her in peace when I realized how quickly I was willing to give up the entire life I’ve worked to build in not even a second’s time in order to live in that bubble world forever than on the ground. And since you are the reader and I am the writer, I will only say that if you knew this bubble world like I did, you’d want to live in it, too. It’s like waking up every morning and freebasing crack.

The problem is once people are addicted to crack, it’s extremely difficult to get them back off. You just snap your fingers, and it’s done. The emotional version works exactly the same way. You get a kind of emotional fibromyalgia when the stimulus is missing.

Let me see if I can explain this in clearer terms.

I fell in love with her mind the same way that I fell in love with Christian’s. Christian was a buddy of mine in PDX back in the day that became well-known in the global hacker community. When we met, he’d just finished his black hat days after catching the FBI’s eye and not wanting to irritate them any more than he had to.

One night, Christian came over to our house after having smoked several bowls and taken an Ambien… he must’ve also been drinking Red Bull, because he didn’t seem intoxicated and drinking Red Bull is akin to breathing in their community. Anyway, he launches into this story about how he got noticed by the FBI, and by the end of it, I didn’t sleep for three days. The thing that saved Christian’s friendship with me is that he was my apartment complex neighbor and I could match the face with the voice and make all of those connections that helped our relationship to feel normal…. when in reality, he could have been reading every packet going in and coming out of my house. Because I loved him, I didn’t care. I was proud of him. I wanted to write a book about him, and he said he would do it, and then he moved so the project tanked at a mutual loss of words.

Being together was emotionally freebasing crack because Lisbeth Salander was sitting in my living room. Being together *longer* allowed me to see his heart. I can’t be together longer right now, but I want to. I think the best thing that you can do as a friend is admit it when you can’t be one, even when you thought you could originally. You have to be able to hold it in your mind that it’s going to cause pain and you have to feel it with them in order to still feel like a decent human being afterward.

The love didn’t end, though. I still see stars. It just has to look different in terms of which world I spend my time, because I have a wife and two cats and two friends who occasionally crash at my house to think of. 😛 The entire point of my entry is to say that I am in so deep with this relationship that working on a different balance has to start with how much I’m willing to hear and take on after our conversations as it does with the conversations themselves. I am not the type person where I can say, “could you be a little less, um…..” Because no. I can’t. That part of my programming was never installed. Emotions don’t go backwards, they only go forward. I can only back off a nerve if I’m not paying constant attention to it, but of course I’ll spend a lot. Her feelings matter, and I know I hurt them. I just can’t be the one to comfort her, because that attention will turn into paying more attention to her hurt than I do to my own need to separate.

I know me. We’ve met.

This morning I woke up to a cup of French Roast from my favorite coffee place, and sat on the couch and did nothing. I didn’t write, I didn’t read, I didn’t surf, I didn’t do anything. I just let my mind wander while I stared off into space for three hours. There are several things that those three hours gave me:

In the moment, making the decision to start a friendship I *knew* was going to undo me ahead of time was as big a split-second decision as I’ve ever made in my life. It felt somehow familiar, as if I’d been in that relationship before. It started out as the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had, and as time wore on, I just became so me that it wasn’t healthy any longer. I offer nothing that she did wrong, because it isn’t there. I’m the one that feels broken, not healthy enough for her, and I want to be. You just cannot imagine what a large statement *that* is.

The balance was off, way off, and I didn’t notice it for a long time. I will come clean about the fact that I have never met her, have no idea what she really does for a living, and am fairly certain that in person, I’d probably want to hit that. It doesn’t matter. I’m again, old and married. Plenty of people get my eyes, but never my heart if I can help it. I have to manage my boundaries with an iron fist now, because not knowing I had to was RUINING EVERYTHING and I couldn’t figure out WHY. You cannot imagine how quickly I lost control in this relationship and would have given her everything. She didn’t do anything to further this, it was just my internal freakout mode of OH MY GOD YOU’RE MY NEW BEST FRIEND CALL ME EVERY DAY. I couldn’t keep up with her. I couldn’t stay unbroken enough to manage my own expectations and boundaries, and I felt like I was failing because she has an arm, but there were getting to be fewer and fewer situations where I could catch the ball. That part I can safely step away from, because I didn’t like the feeling like I’d been dropped in the middle of Baghdad without any money, and the line from Indiana Jones ran through my head… “Marcus? Marcus would get lost in his own museum.”

Lost in my own museum just about covers the last year nicely.

I can hear you all reacting from THERE. What ABOUT Dana? This relationship lived in my head the entire time it was going on, and I didn’t have a clue until Dana started feeling like “second best friend.” If that wasn’t bad enough, my actual best friend started feeling like second best friend, and I noticed…. but it wasn’t until I started feeling like my own second best friend that I did something about it.

I am certain that I absolutely blindsided her. I mean, pushed her to the wall emotionally. It was not intentional, but that’s how breakups go. One person knows before the other. I knew it was time when I felt like I’d done something wrong, I got picked on for it needlessly, and I picked up my toys and went home.

It was a small thing that broke the camel’s back. The thing about abused children, and I am a work of art, are very adept at manipulation…. and I am a writer… and I am an asshole. We were emotionally doing lines on each other. It was all in the interest of healing, never anything negative, but the intense chord that ran between us started to hurt in a familiar way and I ran hard to get away from it.

The hardest part and the victory is that for once, I broke my own heart. I didn’t know I could do that. Just reach in and snap it in half. It sounds like a cold and calculating thing to do, and in some ways, I’m sure it is. However, she’s a fan. She’ll be able to see my heart as clearly as you can, and I hope that she finds the love for her there when she needs it the most…. and that by the time she does need it, my love is healthy enough to kiss her broken places, too.

My friend Aaron and I came up with “afterthemath,” because it’s our shorthand for emotions over logic. My afterthemath is hurting. I think I broke it. I have to put it in a cast and eat ice cream and listen to breakup songs until my world turns right side up.

She could take me to heights I’d never seen, and when the mountains became valleys, I started to feel small. That’s because when we met I exploded with joy all over the place. Finally, a place to put *my* secrets. Even though I post most of them on my web site, there are still skeletons, like the extent of my damage from the PTSD I’ve suffered over time. The extent is very, very scary, and I wish I was making it up so that it wasn’t so terrible. Whatever you’re thinking, it was worse. My mind and body lived on anxious high alert every day, all day, and when she started kissing my broken places, the anxiety felt like a combination of pain and freebasing crack.

She helped me decide things that helped me to feel like my choices that day were to stay normal that day or freebase crack, that’s how jacked up I was on adrenaline. When you are old and married ™, there’s not a lot of excitement that goes with it. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that married relationships aren’t strong. I am saying that they are not anything close to the explosive dopamine of “new relationship.” I wish I could tell you what caused this explosion, because it wasn’t sexual. She’s straight, I’m gay, and never the twain shall meet.

Sufficed to say, she put a story in me that will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, go away. And I considered typing ever a hundred more times.

And then I couldn’t *choose* between freebasing crack or not.

I ended the relationship because I needed emotional rehab immediately. I don’t want her to think I don’t love her. In some ways, I love her more than myself because emotionally freebasing crack causes my heart to beat outside itself.

I just know that I have to take care of myself, first, rather than her, because she’s got a support system in place that rivals The Kremlin. All I can do is offer up my brokenness to God, and say that I’m sorry I ever thought I could emotionally freebase crack in the first place. Her secrets are so large that I could fit inside them. Easily. With room. Blankets and teddy bears and Twizzlers all over the place, understand? She’s built a huge house in my heart and mind… but I had to look at the chord differently when I realized that I was living in it instead of attending to my own needs. I fought like hell to get out of a relationship that encouraged me to give up myself, and the timing wasn’t right for me to be in another one. I know this all sounds terribly romantic, but it’s not. I just can’t express the depth of emotion involved unless I go there. I don’t have enough words for this relationship, and I constantly pay for using the wrong ones, because a lesbian can’t be close to another woman unless there’s sex involved, or at least that’s been the line in the lesbian community since Moses gave me his beeper number.

I felt so much that I stopped taking care of myself. I won’t stop the resurrection if this problem is resolved, but it is too big a problem to sit in my head all day, every day, until I’m dead.

There is no wish in me greater than to tell you that this is all a joke, that I’m overreacting, etc. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m cutting off a relationship before its time… and at the same time, this is not a problem that can be fixed in an hour a week. There’s going to have to be some major apologizing all around, and first, I at least need to spend my 40 days and nights wandering the desert to understand myself a little better. I am no use to anyone if I’m trying to carry secrets in an empty basket.

I originally wrote this last year, but thought I would share as a completely different example of my fiction. I’m still working on this one, because there are many, many people waiting to see what happens to Sarah.

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My name is Sarah Silverman, but I am not that Jew from television. I am that Jew from Anyone Famous Middle School. It’s not really called that, but it doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that AFMS is in some crap town in the middle of Texas, and I’m the only Jewish person I know. And my name is freaking SARAH SILVERMAN.

Ok, so I take that back. I know three other Jews. There’s my mom, Ruth, my dad, David, and my little brother, the originally named David Michael. Our house is average-sized, but not because we can’t afford more. It’s that my mom and dad both had rich parents growing up, and they said something about not communicating if we weren’t forced to. Whatever. I would knowingly, gladly sell all of these people for a door with a lock. Yes, that’s right. David Michael and I aren’t allowed to have locks on our doors until we turn 18. That makes my lock four years closer than his, and I’m marking each day with a big red X on the wall calendar in my room.

Oh, my room… It gives me a little thrill whenever I think of it. When I was 10, my parents said that I could design my room any way I wanted (without knowing that their daughter had such expensive taste). I pored over design catalogs for months until I finally had what decorators call “a vision.”

The top parts of my walls are exactly the shade of pink that you think a pink elephant would be. The bottom half is Texas A&M maroon. The chair rail border is a deep teal. When I describe this to people, invariably they always say, “so you want to live in an Indian restaurant?” Yes. Yes, I do. There are jewel-tone pillows on the floor, and my bed is a futon mattress. My shelves are white built-ins that my dad helped me with- he doesn’t, and shouldn’t, trust me with a saw. There are prints of Ganesh in every pose possible, and the piece de resistance? A teapot my mom ordered me all the way from INDIA. When I make tea, I pour the hot water over the teabags, and just for a moment, I feel like a real Bollywood princess.

Not that being a princess counts for much around here.

My dad is a carpenter, always covered in sawdust, a pencil over one ear, and his head permanently stuck in the clouds. A spaceship could land in our yard and little burritos could walk out before my dad even noticed that something was odd. Case in point: a few years ago, I wrecked my bike trying to use the half pipe at the skate park. There is blood dripping from my face to my feet. I wheel my bike up to the garage, its kickstand at a rakish angle, and my dad says, “Geez, Sarah… is your bike ok?” Smooth move, Dad.

My mom is a doctor. I’d tell you her specialty, but it’s obscure and you’d put the book down before I could explain it. The point is that my mom keeps it together around here, but she runs a tight ship. There is no special treatment, especially on sick days. In her mind, there is nothing medically sound about staying home to nurse an illness. Sleep does not cure anything. There is medication for everything that is wrong with you. Unless there is bodily fluid coming out, and even then, at a rapid pace, there is no excuse for staying home from school. Only once has that plan backfired. When I was in second grade, I had what I thought was a bad cold. My mom gave me some cold medicine and sent me off to school. About 11 AM, my dad gets a call. “Hello, this is Helena Busybody from Eccentric Elementary School. Could you come and get Sarah? She has vomited in the class fish tank.” People still talk about the day I killed Punk Finn, only by now, the fish was begging for his life before I callously covered him in used grape soda. I will probably be called “Fish Ralph” for the rest of my life.

My mom and dad both say it won’t last forever, that there is life after middle school, but I have my suspicions. Parents are practically paid to tell you that. I mean, they wouldn’t be very good parents if they told the truth… something akin to “when I was six years old, I flushed an orange down the toilet and flooded the entire first grade. Then, when I was 35, I ran into one of my classmates… who only recognized me as “Fruit Flush.” IF there is life after something like that, it’s not that people forget. It’s that you can laugh about it, too. But only if you are the CEO of some big fancy company and you can cover up your pain with a brand new Prius, for which you wrote a check. I think I read it in a book once- “laughing all the way to the bank.” Right now, I can only laugh my way to the 7-11, because there is exactly $7.46 in my account. That’s right, baby. The only thing “Fish Ralph” can buy to cover her embarrassment is a Big Gulp and some Doritos (which goes a long way, actually).

Did I really just refer to myself in the third person?

There is nothing worse than being the narrator of your own story and realizing that there are so many quirks you never knew you had. For instance, in these first few paragraphs alone, I’ve changed tenses about a billion times. How do I know that? Because my hippy dippy 8th grade English teacher (who insists that we call her by her first name… whatever) never shuts up about it. “If you can’t write properly now, you won’t be able to write properly in high school. And NONE of you are going to escape from this class if you won’t. Because God knows it’s not because you can’t.” Miss Witkov, I mean, Karen, used to be a writer at some magazine in New York. How she ended up in Nowhere, Texas is anyone’s guess. We have our theories, but none of them ever seem to match up to the insanity that moving from Manhattan to Nowhere requires. One of the better ones is that her husband was a New York Met, so when they divorced, she moved so she could start all over and not have to tell a soul that her ex plays on such a horrible baseball team.

And we’ve arrived at another of my quirks. I have ADD, which doesn’t make me climb the walls if I have to sit still, but it does make me tell stories that jump off into tangents upon tangents until I forget what I originally wanted to tell you.

Another case in point: where was I? Oh, yeah. I was talking about my family and rudely interrupted myself to talk about the craptastic study in humiliation that middle school has been. We talked about Dad, we talked about Mom… so I suppose it’s time we talk about David Michael, whom I lovingly refer to as “Seven of Nine.” It’s a character on this old show that my parents watch, called “Star Trek” or “Star Trivia” or something. But the reason I call him that is out of nine times he’s come up to bat in Little League, he’s hit someone with the ball. The pitcher, the catcher, the referee, the water boy, his coach, the other team’s coach, and in a stunning array of athletic dexterity, a man in the bleachers. Behind the fence. On the bottom row. David Michael’s baseball career is, to put it kindly, somewhat limited.

Which is a good thing that he’s a genius. And by genius, I am not being an adoring big sister. It’s annoying to have a younger brother in Mensa. When I was eight, I came home to David Michael rearranging my books in alphabetical order, because he was returning “Brave New World” and couldn’t stand “the mess on my bookshelf.” When I was nine, my brother invented an iPod battery that would last four weeks at a time. He’s got quite a fortune stashed away in a trust somewhere, which makes it easier to be nice to him. Nothing creates a brother/sister bond more than “I’m going to be rich, and you probably won’t.” I can picture it now… David Michael rolling up to my old, beat-up Mitsubishi in his brand new Bentley. Or at least, I could if he had any interest at all in such things. David Michael will probably end up buying some sort of video game company just so he can go into the office and call it work, while I am working at Wendy’s and trying to finish a screenplay that will almost certainly go straight to Spielberg’s desk. I think he’s looking for new material. I saw War Horse.

All that’s pretty far away, though. I’m 14. I only have one friend that’s already dedicated her life to something. MaryEllis, whose name is comical only because she has a slight lisp, was hand-picked to go to this gymnastics academy in Houston to train for the Olympics. She was excited about it right up until she got there. From then on, she’d just call and when I’d pick up the phone, start wailing about how miserable she is and how it’s all going to be worth it when she’s standing on that podium even though she’s going to have to lose 10 more pounds. No, thank you. She can go on eating rice cakes until she’s a wig on a stick if she really wants gold that bad. Me? I’m takin’ my time.

I should at least wait to decide what I want to do with my life when I have time to think about it by myself. In my room. With a lock on the door.

Kermit Henson Doyle was conceived under the blackberry bramble in his grandparents’ front yard, front yard being relative in the middle of nowhere. His mother, Leila, was 21 years old. His father, David, was about to turn 40 when he was t-boned on the highway six months later. The age difference never mattered, it was just a fact in their world, like Leila having brown eyes and David having blue. David and Leila have to have a strong relationship in this book, because there are millions of people in age gap relationships that make it work for them. There’s a lot about age gap relationships out there that’s negative. I just wanted to bring a new spin to an old idea. When I was young, I was in an age-gap relationship that was flirty and fun- I’ll never forget it. We broke up because it got real, but I don’t think either one of us want to forget that time in our lives, because it was great while it lasted. For instance:

Her: I don’t think I liked chocolate ice cream until I was older.
Me: (slow drawl, dripping with sarcasm) Had it been invented yet?

David and Leila will be full of quips like this, because they don’t ever ignore that the age gap exists. It is not the elephant in the room, so therefore fair game in love and war. David can just as easily turn it around on his child bride and tell her to make sure she finishes her pablum before the New York Times. They’re full of it, and so in love with each other that neither can see straight, which is ironic because they are heterosexual. 🙂

It was in this spirit that Kermit was conceived- loving, willing, and totally unexpected. Leila did not want to get pregnant, but she didn’t NOT want to, either. She just didn’t know until she peed on the stick and saw the + that she felt the veil of The Virgin alight on her shoulders. It would be an honor to have David’s baby, and she felt like she had been called, annointed in some way. She did not feel that David had put her in a negative situation. Leila was honored that David trusted her this much.

And then he was hit by a car and died on the scene.

Leila struggles with this mission- to have David’s baby and cherish every piece of David that there is left on the earth.

David struggles with the fact that he “died in a car accident” and can never see Leila and Kermit ever again.

Daria struggles with knowing that as Gregory is stepping up and taking David’s place, it is eating David from the inside out… and at the same time, David’s love for Gregory has never been so white hot and pure because Gregory is the father he chose for Kermit two years ago when this plan was set in motion.

Kermit feels every one of these emotions under his toddler-aged skin, and will continue to all of his life.

Gardner calls herself Daria after the TV character, because she knows that people will want to write about her and they can’t use her real name, so fuck it. Daria it is. She chose Daria because Daria is entirely nondescript. Not even her speech stands out. She only shines in moments of sheer awkwardness, and that’s how she likes it. Daria has what others would call her secret life, but she’d just call a “compartment.” Lots of things fit in that compartment, from chapsticks and tampons to severed heads she was glad to have cut.

Daria is a study in contrast. It’s like having a doctor for a mother. She tells stories at the dinner table rife with the ways she’s dug into humanity (literally) that in the middle her eyes kind of drift and she forgets the other people in the room are literally shaking in fear. She doesn’t remember what it’s like to have fear, and sometimes makes a really shitty friend because of it. She doesn’t need anything, so why should you?

Daria used to have fear, once. It’s gone away now. She doesn’t talk about it, but she was molested for years. That fact is not important in terms of her day to day psychology, just a quick and neat explanation of how she got so divorced from her emotions that the government realized they needed her way before she realized she needed them. Daria was “the type.” Daria could watch her mother with a knife up to her throat and not feel anything. She knew that for sure because her mother was used in a training exercise.

Daria deals all the time with her wish to be a warrior, and her wish to have feelings, because apparently you can have one or the other, but you don’t get both.

In each relationship in a book, there is symbolism. Daria represents a man-vs-self conflict, and Kermit is a Christ allegory. Daria doesn’t know it yet, but Kermit will be the key to her undoing…. and rebirth.

Dr. Gregory Doyle is based on every doctor I ever knew in my entire life. I am so certain in that archetype that to go on feels redundant. My stepmother is a rheumatologist, so I even lived in the same house with a doctor, and I would like to say for the record that Gregory isn’t her. My stepmother is a hurricane when it comes to common sense and picking up after herself. Gregory barely got through medical school because he skipped his own classes and went to ones that were much higher level just to see what happened. What happened was that he did not follow process and one of the most brilliant physicians and researchers the world has ever known almost wasn’t. You will see the doctors I’ve known spring up in the stories he tells from time to time, but Gregory is his own man.

He was born near Portland, Oregon when Beaverton was just “the sticks.” He comes at medicine from a very wholistic approach, as Oregonians are wont to do. However, that’s what makes him outstanding at his job. Gregory has an encyclopedic knowledge of both Eastern and Western medicine. He is the kind of doctor that gave himself the kind of background where he could read a book on a procedure and fifteen minutes later be confident enough to not only perform said procedure, but teach others on the first try…. and then trip on his way out of the operating theater and hit his head on the hand sanitizer. Gregory does not have a sense of humor about this. However, he has given up the rage in favor of a very pregnant sigh.

It is important to note that Gregory was every bit as attracted to Alex as she was to him. Attraction engulfed his body because of course it did. He’s a geek. Alex was gorgeous. He’d do anything for one more minute in the same room with her, much less a kiss. He’s been told all his life that he is handsome in a John Cusack kind of way, but fails to realize what that means to most people as he doesn’t have the iconic cultural connection to the movies where Cusack shines. He doesn’t understand the reverence of the compliment. He walks through life with a stunning lack of interest in anything the opposite sex liked to do, so it wasn’t until he met Rebecca he was sure he wanted to get married at all. It is hard for Gregory that his mate is a woman, not because he’s gay, but because he literally has no idea how to live with a woman at all. He doesn’t understand how much money and time it takes to wear the outfit well. It’s just easier if Rebecca picks the clothes, and he means that sincerely. She buys the kind of unisex, sporty stuff he’d wear anyway, and does all the laundry. To deny her a t-shirt or a pair of boxers once in a while is just cruel.

He lets Rebecca do the laundry, because she says it calms her. He understands why. The laundry room is set off from the house, soundproofed enough for Rebecca and Daria to bitch about life until the dryer’s done. He knows that Rebecca and Daria talk a lot, but not really what they talk about. It doesn’t really interest him. He is interested in a woman who is independent to a fault, and does not realize the ways this might affect him as he grows in the role of husband.

In his life away from Rebecca, he works at a cancer research facility in Houston. They’ve moved five times during his employment, because with the Internet, it doesn’t matter where they live.

No one loves Gregory more than Daria. He doesn’t know it, but Daria sees Gregory as a support system for her collateral damage. When Daria cannot be there to hold Rebecca and assure her that she’s just going to be gone a few days, no problem, Gregory is the one that has to relay the message that she couldn’t make it, got caught up, in a different time zone, or whatever the wheel of excuses might be today.

Rebecca knows that all she can do when Daria’s gone is distract herself with Gregory.

In the middle of the night, he knows that there’s a million reasons to love Rebecca for the rest of her life. However, he does not know how far she’s taking this whole “my nickname is Alex” thing.

Rebecca’s initials are RAR for a reason. She’s a secret keeper, an archive for others’ information and has been all her life. Her father was an American black soldier who met her Iranian mother during an undercover op in Desert Storm. Her parents were older when she was born, they are dead now, and the reasons why are still unknown to her. She has the facts, but not the emotions behind them. All of this leaves her with a quiet feeling of unrest, but she does not know why.

Rebecca is defined by her love. She lives it. Gregory is her everything and it shows, as if a lightbulb is on in her abdomen giving her an all-over ethereal glow. It’s not just Gregory, though. It’s Leila. It’s Kermit. She speaks volumes of love disguised as a million other different emotions, and has to apologize a lot for letting small emotions become big ones.

Rebecca’s friend Daria is saving her a little bit at a time, because Rebecca knows for certain that Daria is not in love with her. She knows that Daria only wants companionship and the kind of archetype you mean by “bringing her home to meet Ma.” Talking about Daria leaves Rebecca in a heap on the floor, because they’ve shared so much that Rebecca is afraid of her. Doesn’t trust a friend that would lay themselves bare like that without ulterior motive, and doesn’t have a clue why she would need one.

Rebecca’s relationship with Gregory is a conundrum, because while they love each other beyond all measure. Rebecca takes particular delight in using her husband to participate in ridiculous adventures for which he is not emotionally capable. Gregory would much rather kiss Daria and Rebecca goodbye and let them have the adventure while he makes the tea and fluffs the pillows on the couch before settling in to a Dexter marathon. Rebecca would rather make him into Mr. Smith. He does not want to go, and never really takes up the mantle. Rebecca is often faced with the choice between predictability and excitement. Sometimes she chooses wisely, and sometimes she just feels like she’s failing at life in a way that no one else ever has.

Because, see, she and Daria are companions… over at each other’s houses a lot… talking about anything and everything… and Daria spills a secret that changes their lives forever. In an instant, Rebecca goes from confident and fully-functioning adult to small child in an adult’s body, no myelin on her nerves, heart beating outside of her chest as she now knows that Daria isn’t combatting danger. She *is* the danger. Daria is unhinged in a very unique way, broken down by her own government and turned into a monster in purple All-Stars.

The choice that Rebecca has to make is how to handle that anxiety. There is no one in the world with a purer heart than Daria. No one. She was built to kill for a reason, and she is who she is for the greater good out of necessity. Rebecca is clear that there is no way in the world she can or will back out of Daria’s life. Right now, her questions center on herself and the hardships of loving Daria for who she is. She knows she can turn off her emotions and handle amoral violence… that’s a non-issue, because she’s a secret keeper, hurt in the way that all secret-keepers are. She is terrified of every op, every phone call, every communication anywhere. She knows it would be interesting to watch what happened if anyone tried to attack Daria in her presence, because she knows within herself that the white hot anger of injustice will slice someone’s head off if it was ever necessary for it to happen.

Rebecca is certain that she was meant to be the kind of friend that warrior needs, if she can only hold it inside her mind for five minutes that going a day without Daria doesn’t mean she’s never coming back.

She hopes.

My name is Rebecca Alexis Radnowski, my nickname is “Alex,” and I am 28 years old. My father was African-American, and my mother was Iranian. I say “was,” because none of that matters anymore. They went to my funeral long before I went to theirs. Yes, that was cold. No, we don’t discuss it.

My husband is Dr. Gregory Doyle, who needs me to help him get out the door in the morning because he’s so scatterbrained, and will also almost certainly cure cancer. I wish I was kidding. The duality that lives in that man is exhausting. At the same time, it’s kind of awesome that at first when people hear that “Gregory and Alex are coming,” they picture stylish glasses and small dogs. (I love gay people, and in a way, I’m sad I didn’t turn out to be a lesbian. I felt better about it when I realized that I did not have to be a lesbian to empathize and support one. It seems so cliche, but one of my best friends really is a lesbian. My heart bleeds for my gay friends, only because this is a thing that never should have been a thing in the first place.)

As for my actual love life, Gregory and I met at a sci-fi convention and connected because we were both the same level of weird. Neither one of us was dressed up, and neither one of us was carrying anything except an amused-yet-terrified expression. We spent the day together, wandering through layers of humanity unthought of by God, and gave thanks that we each had an ally in the best sense of the word… a hand to grab so the crowd wouldn’t swallow me as much as I wanted to swallow him… whole, completely, without reservation…. and that was ten years ago. We worked so well on the first day that we decided, “why stop now?”

For some people, love creeps up like a plant straining toward the sun. For others, it is a proton rubbing directly against an electron. It was right from the first collision, because we are each stronger when we pool our resources than trying to go it alone. I thought when I got married that I would have to give away my strength. I didn’t realize that marriage wasn’t supposed to *take away* anything. That I was missing out on the gift. I had to realize that I wasn’t longing to be owned. I was longing for a companion.

Gregory swept me off my feet with his mix of oddity and charm. For instance, there’s the name thing. Don’t call him Greg. He won’t tell you he doesn’t like it, he’ll just save it up after you leave and yell at me inappropriately. I don’t mean that he’s mad at me personally. He’s just yelling in my direction, which is understandable and also annoying. Sometimes I want to smother my husband with a pillow in his sleep to collect the insurance money. I wonder every day about my skill level and whether I’m good enough to get away with it. Because the only way you really know that you love someone is that these fantasies are what give you the strength to work on your relationship for another day. I keep telling myself that every time I mentally cut off his penis and throw it in the trash can when he forgets to set the coffee pot to go off at 5 AM. Hell hath no fury like a woman forced to walk to the kitchen to press the “on” button and wait for sustenance. Dear me. “This is coffee, not NAM. There are rules.”

At the same time that Gregory is snippy about his name, he is also one of the most loving men I’ve ever seen. If pictures are worth a thousand words, then video is worth millions. His brother-in-law died in a car accident a few months ago, leaving his sister stranded a week before Lamaze. Of course they were both overwhelmed in their grief, but there were also logical considerations. She couldn’t just not go because her partner was dead. I watched my husband stand up. His eyes flashed, and he became a co-parent in an instant. Gregory and Leila (his sister) named the baby “Kermit,” because neither of them were religious and the only thing that consistently brought them to their knees spiritually was the Sesame Street News reporter singing The Rainbow Connection.

Leila and I have come a long way over time. I really had to sit with how I felt about her, because even though their relationship was not and could not ever be sexual, I still felt threatened. I did not necessarily want to get pregnant as well, but I knew that I was losing my husband’s time and I felt sad about it. I was trapped between knowing he couldn’t be there for me right now because Leila was taking up his time out of necessity, not greed… and knowing that just because he was gone out of necessity didn’t mean there wasn’t room for me to have feelings about it. I finally confronted him, and I’ll never forget how he did it, because it was one of the kindest ways I’ve ever seen anyone set a boundary. I hope that when I have to say something this emotionally charged, I can do it with this much grace. He said:

I am so sorry that you need more than I can give right now, but know that you do not have to be jealous. Eventually, there’s going to be a time when you need Leila in the same desperate way, and she and I will come running toward your danger, too.

There it is. Boom. I knew I was being an asshole, and instead of stuffing everything in and taking my complete bullshit, he opened his heart wider and offered me more love, not anger that I “wasn’t cool with everything.” Instead of continuing to need him, I threw myself into things that encouraged my creativity. The aforementioned lesbian friend (nicknamed Daria because she’s not out to anyone) and I became companions. It worked out rather nicely, actually, because I had all the fun of marriage without the pressure to ever have sex. If you don’t have a lesbian friend, get one. They’re so different than my straight girlfriends, because when we get together I can wear whatever I want, drink whatever I want, smoke whatever I want, and there is no snippiness later. It’s as easy as hanging out with dudes, because dudes forget shit and move on. If you do that shit in front of straight women, they’ll remind you of your behavior at least every chance they get for the first ten years, and then annually until you die. Women do not live on bread alone. Gossip just about covers it, though.

Wow, that was snarky. Not all straight women are like that, and sometimes lesbians are worse. I mean, what is more dramatic than the epic bar fight that occurs when two women love the same woman? It is vicious, and there are often scars because there is more emotional attraction to a one night stand than can ever be handled appropriately, because women aren’t typically wired that way in the first place. Lesbian marriage is a poker game of emotion, and you can tell what’s up by how things go down (as it were). With marriage, though, when it’s good… you know. You never want to leave that person’s side, because you can’t live happily ever after without the other half of your stories.

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And that is the beginning of my first thriller. Stay tuned.