Tag: Blogging

Assemble, Prepare, Adjust, Discard, Modify, Complete

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 6 Comments

My friend Emily is a teacher in Seoul, and we were talking about our lives. How everything about us makes us, well, us. We weren’t close in high school, but we both went through the same process (performing arts high school vs. “real high school”) and therefore both are driven to create. This entry is kind of “Your Blog Makes You Sound Like a Dick: Kitchen Edition, Part II,” but I decided that I didn’t need as much authority when I’m talking about being subservient for a purpose.

Creativity is a hard mistress. But that’s exactly what Emily wanted to know.

My head plays music when I cook, if this even makes sense. Not music I’ve heard, just tuneless sound that progress in order of mood depending on how the food is going. It makes me hum. I’m interested in what happens when you assemble, prepare, adjust, discard, modify, complete

It’s such a complete question that I had to think about it for a couple days before I was ready to address it. There’s an attack to cooking, and a laserlike focus. What there is not is room for error. Life comes in ticket times, the most important thing for every diner there. Whether you fold under the pressure or not is your own doing, completely. I respect a dishwasher that walks out during the first shift rather than thinking they can do a job and dragging everyone else down with them. It is why I left the kitchen to an enormous degree. I was making other people slower.

That doesn’t take away the burn, literally or figuratively. It’s an essential ingredient to creating a life in which you don’t want to escape. You don’t need drugs because you live them. The kitchen is a living, breathing organism from which there is no escape. My books have more in common with Jonna and Tony Mendez’s than they don’t. Both cooking and spying require a relentless focus without thinking of the outside world at all. To do so would be paralyzing.

People with ADHD do this better than most. Because we have no executive function, we hyperfocus on the thing at hand, a better coping mechanism for most in the race against the clock that being a cook requires. Nearly every kitchen employee I’ve ever met who decided to do it long term is because their brains and the kitchen’s rhythm fit together like a glove. People who can’t hack it should leave quickly, and often do.

Executing an idea is one thing. Prepping it for large scale is quite another. That’s because cooks play around until they like something without any recall as to how they did it to precise measurements. Did we throw in a teaspoon? Who the fuck knows? Eat it.

To prepare something for a large scale, you have to take the idea and retroactively fit it. My best example of this is hearing a pop song on the marching field. The marching band can play the melody, but it sounds off by a wide margin because everything the singer did to personalize it is gone, plus the rhythms try to mimic it and nobody has time for that.

Preparing a recipe in a restaurant is to make that dish a hundred times with different variations because you’re trying to get the best version of it on paper that you can, because you can’t really capture lightning twice. You can try, but it’s chasing the same high as everyone else.

Once a recipe is divided up, it goes into separate parts of the kitchen. A good for-instance is a steak salad. The salad is made by pantry, the steak is made by grill, and we meet in the middle. What I have come to call the ballet on the brigade.

Assembling is often more difficult than you think over a certain amount of time. By hour five you are not the same team that you were at hour two. You’re too exhausted to communicate and too behind not to try. Part of getting in the weeds is setting everything up perfectly so that if you get into the weeds, you can recover quickly. Being in the weeds is being 50 tickets deep and not panicking while expo and chef are breathing down your neck. There’s also a group project aspect, and I have caused mine to flunk. I have thought people have done things that they haven’t and paid for it, like assuming that another line cook was frying the chicken I needed, but they weren’t. We hadn’t made stations on boundaries clear. It always made me feel like the worst player in the game. I wasn’t, I was just bad at talking out loud. People would ask me what I was doing and I’d tell them and they’d tell me they didn’t need my excuses. For what? I am explaining what you asked me to explain.

The benefits outweigh the costs to an enormous degree. It ruins you for any other job quickly because going to the office feels like cutting off a limb when you’ve been on the A-team of a well-oiled machine. It is worth the arthritis and burns and cuts to feel like you actually did something that day. It’s the job you can’t wait to leave until you actually try to fit back into your old life. Maybe you can do it, maybe you can’t. Most ADHD people cook long enough to know that there’s a reason why they fit into a kitchen and they don’t fit into an office.

It costs an enormous amount to be a cook, because you’re just far enough above the poverty line not to get health insurance from your job and not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Therefore, you have to purchase your own insurance with no subsidy from anyone. Meanwhile, you always need a doctor for something. Most likely it’s arthritis and chronic pain. Sometimes wound care.

We work like doctors who stay over after their shifts because they can’t come down from the adrenaline of treating patients all night. If we’re not cooking, we want to be with other cooks in the restaurant, anyway. We’ll sit at the bar and talk to the bartenders, occasionally talking to a cook if they’re allowed to breathe at all.

Most of the time, they’re not.

There is a limited amount of time between one shift and the next. We have to look at what we’re selling and what we’re not, because we have to be able to plan forward with accuracy. We can’t make six orders of fried chicken if we only have enough for three because we didn’t think we’d sell that many. All restaurants have this problem. It’s a matter of degree.

The reason cooking requires such high intensity energy is that you start getting tired and you can’t stop. It’s great in the beginning. The first three hours are AMAZING. But when your shoulders are aching from being five foot two and flipping a full paella pan, you still have to keep moving for four more hours. People think about the hours we spend in the kitchen assembling, cooking, and serving. They vastly underestimate the number of hours of prep that go into every meal. That it takes a team of people on the line and in the back to keep up with demand. Prep cooks do not need to speak with as much authority as line cooks, because it’s not their ass on the line if something burns. They’re literally out of the heat. We prep everything that needs to be cooked, they prep everything that doesn’t. Line cooks don’t give orders, they give supervision. I have been the one that has chopped 20lbs of mushrooms into small dice and the person that watched over someone else to make sure they did it the way chef taught me. The thing most people do is call all cooks “chef.” This is irritating and incorrect. Chef means boss, and those motherfuckers will remind you of it constantly. It’s a meritocracy. You don’t argue with it, you decide toward running your own kitchen or you don’t. Every cook has their level. For me, I would be a horrible chef because of all the administrative paperwork and inventory. I have watched lots of people turn down chef and sous jobs for that very reason. We were made to be weird. Chefs were made to be “the man.” It is very much like being an executive director for an arts organization, because even though you’re enabling creatives, you still have to talk about money. There is nothing worse than working for owners that constantly disagree with your staff so that you’re constantly hung out to dry on personnel matters. You can’t always go back to the kitchen and tell the employees that their demands, once again, have been ignored. The owners who do this to chefs really do not care about turnover. Cooking is a small enough interest that if you fuck over a cook at one restaurant, they’ll never work for you again and they’ll tell all their friends. It will not go unnoticed.

It affects the art of completion to an enormous degree, because you cannot be the same restaurant if you have an A-team and keep submarining it. It’s a crime when you’ve got a great team and dismantle it because someone wants a dime raise or needs a day off. Most cooks don’t have the ambition to dream big because they’re only focused on improving the food.

They’re not asking you to give them the whole world. Just to help assemble, modify, and complete it….. and that other stuff Emily said.

Nothing You Don’t Need

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?

The idea of working retail appeals to me as long as I don’t have to count on the store to be successful in order to eat. I just don’t like retail. I would put out what there is and say “good luck.”

I think I would like owning a bookstore, but I’d read them the whole time I was there- or sit with my tablet and keyboard at the till, hoping not to treat customers like they’re the irritating, unnecessary evils they are at other stores. I’d still want to be polite, but no one would expect that of me if the books were in random order. Being a grumpy asshole proprietor is non-negotiable in that scenario. But again, it’s a store where I don’t have to sell anything. People see what they like and give me money.

I do not have to show them anything, point out how they could save money overall by buying 10 books instead of three, etc.

I know within myself that I could be good at selling books because it is not the same as selling cars. I would be good at selling cars, too, because I have that preacher’s kid personality show…. but I wouldn’t use it because it’s bullshit. It’s not the real me. The real me is the cranky jackass in Parts.

I went to a store once in Memphis that said, “if we don’t have it, you don’t need it.” The store was just stacks and stacks of crap. Good luck finding anything. And yet, you could strike gold if you looked long enough. Everybody knows that feeling…. grateful you don’t have to go to Marshall’s and Target because TJ (TK) Maxx had it……… but you didn’t know they had it until you went through everything and part of the time you sat on the floor.

That’s the kind of shop I’d run. It would be a glorious mess no matter what was in it. But even if it were only books and books alone, I wouldn’t sell nothing you don’t need.

Observations, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am spread out on Zac’s bed as Oliver cuddles my feet. Zac is in New Orleans, so I’m on puppy duty. I don’t like being here while he’s not here as much as I do when he is, but Oliver is a 24 hour friend. He is just there for me and all my dog-cuddling needs.

I’m grappling with how to move on in one sense and how to stay in another. Being present and showing up, but also being sensitive to my friends’ needs as well. No one is more important, I just have to struggle with how much I’m willing to take on at any given moment. I have reached my breaking point, but it doesn’t matter that I’m here. It matters how I respond. I can’t fold into myself and be comforted by isolation. I don’t want it anymore.

I also reserve the right to stay home and lick my wounds. Balance.

I could tell you more, but I won’t. It’s sensitive and not worth the hassle of blowing everything up. I don’t want to live with it, and I don’t want to live around it.

I thought I was in on the ground floor of something, and it blew up in my face. I let someone into a sacred space, and was welcomed and rejected within hours. I don’t deal with whiplash well, and I’m spiraling out in my own head while not trying to talk about it here.

It’s the balance of being respectful and writing around things on purpose because to tell the real story would cause more harm than good. I have more experience doing this than anyone can possibly imagine. But just because I’m good at it doesn’t mean that I want to.

Living my life out loud has consequences that I care about this time. It’s what happens when you have good boundaries. You don’t let just anyone stomp all over them, but you make the agreement with people to be the one that’s willing to throw down with them when you’re in every mood known to God and man. There’s no option not to pick up the phone, because you said you’d be there. It’s not a matter of going to extremes. It’s a matter of adjusting boundaries so that everyone feels safe, even if it’s hell on earth right now.

Hell on earth is relative, because it won’t last long. It is born of confusion and grief for something I thought was solid.

I don’t want to change too much too fast, and the adrenaline of a moment comes down. It always does. It is the dance of intimacy. You get close to someone, and then you can’t handle being that intense, so you back off. That cycle runs on repeat for the length of a relationship no matter what it is. Even coworkers. Sometimes you want to be near them. Sometimes you don’t. That can vary by the day.

Life is full of those gray areas, but it’s not about whether you’re enough for someone or you’re not. It’s being clear in communication so that no one has expectations they can’t handle because they don’t know how to meet them. Figuring it out takes more time than people are willing to spend thinking about how they want to react, and not looking at their reactions after they’ve happened to make sure the decision they made was right for everyone.

Not doing it leads to nuclear fallout. It escalates prank wars, real wars, Facebook comment sections……….

No one thinks of real world consequences on Facebook.

I can say with clarity and honesty that my beautiful girl and I didn’t. Everything was a dance of intimacy that bordered on two extremes. It’s not the situation I’m talking about here, but it’s a good example of it. If Facebook messenger had been then what it is now, there would be much less of a problem. Boundaries could have been created and maintained with the button that indicates “video call.” Doing everything through writing cost us a connection and gave us another. It affected how we related to each other with HUGE differences between, as Zac would say, “meet space and meat space.”

I should have had to sit with her anger. She should have had to sit with my fear. I should have seen her eyes when we talked all that through.

Knowing that not everything can be done virtually is like breathing for me now, and I pay attention to it closer than I ever have. This is because I spend so much time in this space, the one where everything centers on writing, I am prone to forget that I need things like hugs and kisses, too.

It’s a complicated construct, and the first step to managing it is being aware. That the things you say in instant messages and e-mails matter. You are not putting on a game with someone else’s feelings. It just seems like it because the leap in someone’s head is too great. That if you feel something here, you won’t feel it in person. That’s okay.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that because I’m direct, people often bite off more than they can chew because they think they’re playing with me and they’re not. What I’m saying to you via writing is the exact same thing you’d get in person…. I would say things completely differently, but the reaction is the same. I am hearing you and adjusting everything based on what you say.

My relationship with my beautiful girl broke down because of this very dynamic. She felt threatened, like she was being scolded and there were all kinds of recriminations. In reality, I would say “this is what you’re doing that hurts me. Please adjust.” She was not direct with me in saying “this is what you’re doing that’s hurting me. Please adjust.” Instead of going toe to toe with me, she held it all in and said I was painting my feelings as fact. What I wanted her to do was paint her feelings as fact as well, because they are. I can argue logic. I can’t argue emotion. How she feels is how she feels. I think you can only paint your feelings as fact because of this.

I wanted to dive into her, it’s just that her depth was about 4 feet deep and diving requires more than that. I do not mean that she is not deep. I am talking about respecting limits on how far down I’m allowed to go and all those breathing apparatuses.

My analogy for this is that we both said things that got us to 12 feet and then we tried to take it all back and it was too late.

But I’m telling you about this relationship in order to protect another, because my beautiful girl is not the only one that deserves a hard out.

But these are just my observations.

This Thing We’ve Created and Managed

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m thinking about the -email that I got from my beautiful girl this morning. It came a few days ago, but she made a lot turn over in my head that’s just not finished. Here’s the line that got me in a good way. She said something about me deciding I was the only arbiter of the friendship/relationship. I said something bothered me, she adjusted. I was upset at last interaction that she called it “this thing we’ve created and managed,” and I felt like I’d been mortally wounded. It seemed very dismissive of what we’d built and/or destroyed.

The entire truth of our relationship rests on that slash.

Because that slash rests on our burn. We can’t sit down and “and/or our way through something.” I’ll say too much, she’ll say too little. She is content to let me think what I think, when I’m starving for her input. I’m the arbiter of our relationship because she stopped throwing down. We couldn’t move any better, stronger, or faster than the day before because when she walls off, my history is to go off like a chihuahua because her distance makes my trauma bond scream.

At the same time, she’s not responsible for treating me or bending toward me just because I’m having a moment. I have never been telling her to jump in and fix things. I’ve been telling her that if she wants a relationship with me, here’s what I need from her. If not, we can’t have a relationship because too much has happened for me to both manage those trauma bonds and the relationship concurrently. That’s because when she wants me to be close, I don’t have a problem with that. I have a problem with middle-of-the-road, will they or won’t they bullshit. I cannot de-escalate anything because either the trauma bond goes off or it doesn’t. There’s no middle ground. It feels very much like being an addict. If I can’t have hard drugs because I’m addicted to them, the right answer is not “just do a little bit less heroin.” There are so many layers as to why I have a trauma bond that screams, but part of it is that there’s not just one. We have the childhood trauma dump, and what I’ve come to call “the hard out.” I cannot tell you everything I know, and I cannot tell you everything she knows, either.

So, part of the reason that I paint my feelings as fact is that I am trying to talk around a lot of shit. I am weaving the tale as I see it according to the limits I’m trying to enforce, because I have a hell of a story I’m not writing at the same time I’m trying to describe my life. But whatever anyone knows outside the two of us, it’s not enough to make sense of anything that I could say if things were different.

So, I would imagine that when Supergrover thinks I’m bagging on her, she’s not getting the real story before my blog entries get published, so when she reads, she’s not taking it into account. That I am not blaming her, I am blaming the situation and circumstances because I cannot actually tell you about the situation and circumstances.

In protecting her, I have probably made things worse. But I don’t feel bad about it, because there’s no possible way that I’d be okay without being able to use this space as a tool. I write my way into and out of things all the time. She’s an easy target because she brought those circumstances into my life, but I am not taking my anger out on her. I project that anger onto the character because I have a hard out.

I am exhausted and I feel it in my bones. That I know we’ll be successful, but not based on anything that happened in the past. She’s going to have to step up, because I’ve adjusted my vision and realized the ways in which we aren’t good for each other. I have told her those things a number of times, and while she has managed to say what she doesn’t like, she’s never said what she does. I mean, even to the minimum. I know she likes Diet Coke and coffee. I know she likes Jack Daniels. I know she likes pizza. I know those things about most of America. Random factoids that have added up in all kinds of ways, but those I can talk about… because they’re not close to the hard out.

Nothing that I have written on my web site in 10 years has had the real story, and it never will. So my process is trying to find things I can write about. It’s not sordid or illicit. It’s the purest love I’ve ever known. Still can’t talk about it.

Trauma bonds are tricky because again, when you try to break them it makes you weak, like physical withdrawal. I can handle being away from her the longer it goes on, because when we’re not interacting I’m not feeding said bond milk and cookies. I’m not babying it and allowing it to grow.

And none of it is even close to her fault, because I could deal with the hard out so much better if we were collaborating. It’s not a hostage situation over here. I am not saying, “I have a trauma bond so you must accommodate me.” I am saying that both being together and apart causes different sets of problems and I need to know which one I’m working on today. Our relationship going up and down like a roller coaster was making my trauma bond feel like dopamine and depression in a continuing cycle because I could not achieve homeostasis. I don’t have a crush that’s out of control.

I never have.

What I need is more e-mails like this one, that recognize we both participated. We both need to adjust to each other and get with the program. The clue phone is ringing in terms of where we need to go to be stable and happy. Those options are two extremes, because it’s not child’s play. It’s the nature of our friendship/relationship in this thing we’ve created and managed.

Here’s what I know. When she’s really taking it in, she’s doing everything in the most wonderful way she knows how. It’s when she stops listening that there’s a problem. Here’s what I mean. She really saw me. She saw how much it bothered me for her not to call it a friendship or a relationship because it doesn’t honor what we’ve actually been through. It minimizes it to an enormous degree.

It’s the thing that proves to me that Michael and I aren’t the only ones who will come, because she loves her girl, too.

The small things are the big things.

Because I have a hard out.

The Man Who Regrets, and the Man Who Forgets

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

The title comes from a Doctor Who episode about The Moment. The Moment is a weapon that can take billions of lives, but has developed a consciousness and you have to reason with it and accept your fate before it will activate. The Moment stays with The War Doctor as he grapples with whether to blow up Gallifrey to save the universe from collapse. The Moment is with The War Doctor when he’s with Ten and Eleven. The Moment tells The War Doctor that this is who he will become if he blows everything up….. that he will live long enough to become the man who regrets, and the man who forgets.

It resonates with me today as I look back over 40 straight days of posting, because I talk a lot about regrets and remorse so I can change myself going forward. I forget to play. I forget to explore alternate universes and dream bigger. In my last entry, the alternate history was staying with Kathleen long enough to have had kids, but I didn’t change anything about the relationship itself. Everything that cost me would have continued right on being expensive.

I’m trying to get smarter about where my energy goes. I haven’t lost myself in new relationship bliss because I’ve stayed motivated to write to my heart’s content, which is far more than I thought it would take to keep it happy. I am relentless about self-discovery, and I truly do not love when other people think they’re the main character. They’re the main character when we’re interacting, but they do not have a lock on our memories together because we were having different experiences when those interactions occurred. How I perceive someone shouldn’t have bearing on how anyone else sees someone because they’re not going to get the same interaction I did. They bring a different set of experiences to the table.

Those are difficult conversations to have, which is why it’s easier for me to have partners and friends who either get it or don’t care. People who get it see everything I write about them. They lived it. They don’t have to love it. They know when our conflict is resolved in real life, it will be resolved here. That I do not have a preconceived notion of who they are and expect confirmation bias. I am a diarist, and the only reason I’m considered good at blogging is that it’s not very popular anymore. It’s easier to stand out, the way it was when both Dooce and I had 200 readers on a good day.

I absolutely tanked the blog that made me in a fit of rage. I didn’t have the coping mechanisms to deal with blowback that I do now, and I couldn’t get mad at anyone else. I self destructed.

I have been afraid I would do it again, and instead of attracting people into my life that care I write said diary, I actively avoid them.

Zac only reads something if I tell him to in any kind of urgency. The rest of the time, he just surfs because he knows that writing is my interest. He doesn’t have to make it his. It just helps that he’s also a bookworm and I wake up to “Zac has gifted you” for my Kindle. He’s introduced me to writers I never would have discovered on my own. He also knows I’ll read anything, so just send me what he likes. I don’t need him to find me things he thinks I’ll like, because I’ll dig into whatever since he likes it. I’m not being cute or coy. If Zac likes something, I probably will, too. None of that classic gender role shit, because he’s fairly femme looking for a man and I’m fairly butch looking for a woman. Christian evangelicals and queer radicals all get what they want and everyone wins.

The part about Christian Evangelicals winning was way more about being afraid to walk into just any bar holding a woman’s hand than it was about hoping they ever win anything. And how it would be twice as bad for Zac to walk into just any bar holding a man’s hand.

It’s important to me not to project heterosexual privilege, and when people can tell that Zac is queer, it means something to me. When I’m not glued to his hip, there’s an equal chance that someone is going to say something nasty to us. It’s why I don’t want to date straight men again. It would be too harsh to say never, although I’ve said it. If it happens, you’ll know something extraordinary has happened and it is a flaw I’m willing to overlook. The benefit would have to be huge.

Bryn has the same outlook that I do. Say what you want, we’ll work it out. I just collaborate with her a lot so she has a rough outline of what I’m going to talk about She reminds me of past history so I have a jumping off point to connect the past to the present. Developing our relationship is the best thing I’ve ever done for myself because I don’t have many people in my life with whom I share that much history.

It’s how I would have liked my relationship with Supergrover to go, but she didn’t like bringing up the past for frames of reference and didn’t want to collaborate with me for the future. She has just influenced every single thing I’ve written here because I was workshopping the idea with her, first. She was getting the rough drafts because I wasn’t publishing my letters to her. I was going back and taking the feelings out of them that read universal. I was taking the details that made it too personal to the two of us and casting them aside. When she cut contact with me, she was no longer that internal monologue, so she wasn’t hearing my thought process every day like she had for the last 10 years.

She didn’t like the play because I stopped giving her the brochure.

I am not comparing the two women to each other, only the reason they are both so valuable to me. My history with Bryn starts in 1997. My history with Supergrover starts in 2013. Both of them have palaces in my head because they’ve lived there long enough to create them. Bryn likes hers. Supergrover doesn’t. I am not turning one away in favor of the other. I am giving my energy to the one who needs me.

I have needed Supergrover from the moment I laid eyes on her. She needed me. I still need her, but I can’t put energy toward her because I don’t feel needed. She told me that she’s read through many lines, and I think it was probably that she thought I’d found a new toy and I’d forgotten what she meant to me, has always meant to me.

I stopped responding to her because I was willing to do anything for her and I didn’t feel a quarter of that coming back at me. It doesn’t mean that she didn’t feel it. It means that I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t get her to interpret it. I didn’t want to be the equivalent of the girlfriend who obsesses over the meaning of intended punctuation……………… anymore.

I missed laughing when she flipped me shit about things, missed having make up text after we fought, missed telling her I loved her and I missed her and that being a good thing.

That’s always what I’ve meant by “showing up.” “Loving me enough to struggle.” Lay out your thoughts, fears, dreams, hopes, secrets, lies, all of it. I used to be that place for her, and I will always be there if our differences are reconciled and celebrated. There’s no possible way I could tell our story as if it was fact. You’re not even getting the whole picture in my head because I can only write one line at once. So, not only are you not getting her side of the story, she’s not correcting anything with either one of us. Your guess as to what her story might be is absolutely as valid as mine. Other people influence her behavior to an enormous degree, but I don’t write about them because I do not have a relationship with them. Here’s a big for-instance. I learned about Michael way too late for that knowledge to be helpful. But over time, he became a useful coping mechanism. That our relationship could be virtual because theirs was on the ground. I didn’t have to worry about her- he had it handled. Remember, in my head, she’s six years old with a lot of layers to cover up that fact. I needed her to have a boyfriend. I needed her to get married. I needed her to be the country mouse to my city mouse. Knowing that I would have run to the drugstore in the middle of the night if she was sick didn’t have to eat at me because she already had someone to do that.

I wish she would just take in the enormity of the things I’ve said that I don’t regret, like “of course I’ll want to be the first one tested if you need an organ. Please.” To me, that promise is every bit as real as running to Walgreens at 0300. I didn’t do anything because she needed me to do it. I did it because I saw it needed doing.

Although before I gave her an organ, we would have had a very serious conversation about the YouTube video in which she woke up from surgery queer as a three dollar bill. Just the weirdest organ rejection side effect ever.

It has been long enough since I’ve wanted to be the person that ran to the drugstore at 0300 that I know within myself just how much I am…………

The Man Who Regrets, and The Man Who Forgets

Into the Multiverse

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Describe your life in an alternate universe.

I am good at a lot of things. I’m going to write until I find something real. That might be in one scene, that might take a couple. Today is one of those days where I just have to start the tap running and hope something comes out. I am very low energy today, but I’m fried. I’ve written an entry every day for over a month- today is my 40th day in a row. I know that I am posting more than normal because I can’t find things as easy when I go back. 😉 I am dedicated to letting the past stay there, so I don’t link to anything. If you’ve missed it, good luck. It’s a different way of reading the web, and it is successful. That’s because people know they’re OG and can prove it. A true Fanagan knows what my life was like in 2013 and still does, so I can make jokes about things I’ve written without all of you knowing what I’m saying.

It creates intimacy, and it keeps blowback to a minimum because if someone didn’t read something about them, they generally won’t go look it up unless someone sends them a link. Trust me when I say that no one ever lets someone know when I’ve said something glowing about them. It’s a lot to want to escape from, which is why my inner circle is so small. I cannot have anyone in my circle who doesn’t understand that they are a complete person. That they are light and dark and angels and demons and hot sauce and peanut butter. All of ’em. None of us can truly be changed by the other, and no one gets changed by my silly web site, because they don’t pay attention to it unless they want to be here. There is no requirement on being a reader and being my friend. But when I don’t have friends who care about my writing, it makes me comfortable enough to continue. My writing matters. My personal relationship with every one of you does not.

If Hottie McHotterson wanted to define me by one entry and I was happy about it, it would have been “Go Tell the Bees,” preferably the audio version as I think it means more in my voice. I’d re-record it if I had spare time and server space, because I was so emotional the first time around. But it got me where I needed to be. Full of love, anger, remorse, grief….. and also joy. In one scene I told her about the day she was having a moment and I told her that we were sitting outside with a glass of wine in the sunshine, and we worked at GEICO.

That would be a good jumping off point if only because I’ve thought about that picnic for 10 years, and have imagined it many times. However, I can make our friendship look good. I can do nothing for working at GEICO.

So, I’ll write about what I could have done had my life followed the track that most people’s do. I used to be married, and I had all the hope in the world for that relationship. In fact, I was married twice on too much hope. With one, it was that we were the wrong personality type for each other. With the other, we were so much alike that we didn’t take our conflicts as seriously as they should have been taken for far too long to course correct. I’m going to write about being married to Kathleen, since it’s the closest to my real life now. I could have stayed in Alexandria after we met. It’s an alternate history that starts in college as opposed to 20 years ago.

I am alone in the doctor’s office. Kathleen would have come with me, but she’s at a softball game. I’m flipping through a magazine when she comes in. She’s smiling.

Leslie…. it took.

I say, “are you sure?” This woman has run three blood tests, but I’m asking if she’s sure….. #thankselizabethwarren

The doctor’s glasses slip a little on her nose and she looks at me like she’s gotten an A on the group project. “Your little monsters are going to own this town.” She knows she can say stuff like that to me, that I already feel like there has been some sort of alien invasion…. one that I can’t feel yet….. but she can. There are two heartbeats, both of them strong. We weren’t trying for twins, just a side effect of the implanted embroyos. We only did two, because Kathleen is Catholic and neither one of us wanted to think about having to remove them. I just hope that they turn out looking completely different from the jump. Otherwise, I will have to write their names with Sharpies on their foreheads. If I don’t, I know myself. One baby will get fat, one will look like it’s malnourished, all because I’m embarrassed that I don’t know which child is which. Thank God there’s not a chance they’re identical. There’s a chance they won’t even be the same race, because we didn’t use one donor. We chose based on education. Both donors majored in math- if I’m going to be of help in the homework department, it’s not there.

My doctor has noticed that I have left the conversation and that I am off in my own little world….. and when I get home, I’m going to blow up someone else’s. Oh, wait. I’m not going to need to go home to blow up someone’s world.

Kathleen is at work softball, but my mom and dad aren’t.

Kathleen is at work softball, but my sister isn’t.

That’s three whole ass phone calls to jump up and down and say “it’s twins” before I go home, because I know how my parents and sister are going to react. I cannot predict my wife, and I stopped trying long ago. I’m surprised she didn’t want to quit trying to have babies at all. She’s been distant lately, but I don’t care. The entire world fits into my tiny 5’2 frame.

I’m not in it for her reaction. I’m in it for my kids.’

It’s not that I think she won’t make a good mom. I don’t think she makes a very good wife, but she’s what I’ve got and I’ve made promises I intend to keep. Besides, I don’t really have to pay attention to her if I don’t feel like it. I have better things to focus on than who she’s screwing this week. If it makes her happy to have boy toys over a real relationship, I can only go with the flow. I cannot change her behavior. I can only change mine.

If I didn’t have to tell Kathleen I was pregnant, I probably wouldn’t. I wanted the real deal, and I got it….. but having everything costs something. If I had it to do over, I might have chosen differently. Now, it’s all a matter of dancing with who done brought me. I am only asking her to hold onto more hands when she twirls.

My doctor says “you’re not even really here anymore, are you?” I apologize and say, “I absolutely was not, but I am now. How do we do this?” She tells me to cut down on the pizza and beer (I found this banana cove one out in Fairfax…) is non-negotiable. I look at her and say, “I can understand why babies don’t like pizza, but why is beer a problem?” She laughs because she knows I’m joking and we start making a diet plan.

It will all go to shit later. I know it will. Kathleen and I do not have the emotional fortitude to fight through something like this. But right now? In this moment? She’s going to hear the most important words of her life and I get to say them.

“Sweetheart, I went to the doctor today…… and we’re going to need to do a lot of shopping. I’m not pregnant with a baby. I’m pregnant with two.”

She will look at me with the same wide-eyed wonder I gave my ob/gyn.

“Are you sure?”

Describing the Color Choice

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Part of the reason my entries about the woman I call “Supergrover” is because she won’t answer a lot of basic questions about herself, and yet I have access to her heart in a beautiful and unique way. I got in through the back door in the hacker sense of the word, because nothing would ever have happened between us if we hadn’t kept to staying out of each other’s real lives.

I realized a few days ago that I had burned down the entire house on mutual friends. However, I wasn’t being encouraged to do so in any way. It was my reaction to her words, always. I cannot describe what she or anyone else went through at that time in our lives, and so far I’ve been handed more confusion than answers.

The closest I’ve ever gotten to feeling secure is “someday, perhaps” and “also. Thank you.” She’s quiet when she’s sincere, and those words echo just as much as the ones that hurt me. There is no possible way that she does not come across as a 3D character, and I will not believe it. I cannot write both the entry she referenced and a letter to her husband telling him to be good to her because she wouldn’t let me be good to her as well. If I can think those thoughts, why can she only accept the dark ones as the truth? Why can she not see that I am woven into her like The Impossible Girl, the one whose DNA is spread within The Doctor’s. I got there by only being her inner monologue as well. Our similarities show in our writing. One thing touched me deeply, and she said that I portrayed her as flat as if it’s not a wheel with many spokes. I told her that if she took every entry from March until now, she’d see the many different spokes in the wheel. That I remembered every one and wrote them all down.

You cannot think someone is worth nothing and a villain if you’re willing to go toe to toe with her husband and have it out. Who does that? Someone who thinks there’s no such thing as “the friend zone.” It’s better when we’re in each other’s lives than it is to be apart. I’ve written about that pain in exquisite detail so that I don’t forget a moment of it. There was a passion and drive within me to have her in my life at whatever level she could accept me into hers, but then it became about the cost/benefit analysis of living in so much confusion. I told her it caused anger and issues that needed to be resolved. She didn’t want to resolve them. At no time did it mean that I became that person who wouldn’t safety net her through anything. I am still her red telephone, and what I know is that Bryn and Zac would not deprive me of her, because they’re always rooting for me to succeed. I just would have to balance Bryn’s needs as well, because I cannot abandon her after the ways in which she’s made me grow. We have the ability to have a very deep and meaningful relationship because we have lived in the same place. We were raised by the same “parents.” We both lived to tell the tale. She’s my partner in terms of the one I’d want you to go to if something was up with me where I couldn’t be contacted. That’s because she’s the only one I’ll talk to when I really need to reach out. She feels the same way about me.

Just because you haven’t gotten married to someone doesn’t mean that loyalty and confidentiality mean less. That my vows to my friends are less important than the ones I’d make to a partner. I look to Bryn’s face for love because I can. I would look at my beautiful girl the same way if I thought she thought it was a privilege to be let in. But that power imbalance kept both of us from really laying things on the table.

Oh, the stories we could have told. Stories that are both true and factual. I still have the picture in my head of a photo shoot I want with her, and I hope it makes her laugh if she remembers what I’m talking about. Let’s just say it involves gender role reversal and leave it at that. I’ve checked with me and her husband absolutely wants this picture, too.

To think that I want to paint her as the villain when I’ve poured out everything in terms of how I feel about her makes me lean on the memories that make me laugh.

Here’s the best one of all. In ten years, she has never sent me a voice mail of her saying her own name. I say it like it sounds. She says it the way she likes it, but I can’t correct it and I’ve been saying it wrong the whole time.

I call her all kinds of nicknames because I can’t say her fucking real one.

Now that’s describing all the colors. She’s not a villain. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met in my life, and I don’t understand why she thinks she isn’t.

She is my red and my violet. My whites, greys, and blacks.

I paint my feelings as fact, but never once have I used PhotoShop to make it prettier, or to crop something so that the framing looks better…. like I have that good an eye naturally.

It’s all a spectrum. It’s all an ADHD mess. The temperature of our relationship centers on hot with drive to reconnect, not hot with passion. It never will. But painting my feelings as fact shouldn’t go unnoticed here, either.

I love her, and I won’t apologize for it anymore. I don’t even care if she believes it. I know it to be true, and I cannot be held together by one entry alone. I hope, for once, she’ll focus on this one.

It’s one of my favorite colors.

Whatever It Is, It Isn’t Enough

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s the most money you’ve ever spent on a meal? Was it worth it?

I am a cook, therefore I cannot afford to eat all the places I’d really like to go. Since my sister can afford to treat me, she does. But that’s not how I spend money on food and drinks. I lay out serious cash at the grocery store, because I can make food exciting by making a dish, then making a completely new dish out of the leftovers. I buy things at grocery stores that most people just think, “it’s too much work.” I will roll sushi at home. I will soak beans overnight so that I don’t need the convenience of cans. I will wash rice. I will do all the things it takes to be an awesome prep cook so that I’m comfortable on the line at home as a solo act.

The only thing I don’t do is buy meat at the grocery anymore. It’s fine if I’m eating out at a restaurant. I just don’t like wondering if it’s going to spoil, or the whole process it takes to thaw things without cooking them. I don’t want to leave chicken in the sink with water dripping down because my housemates will either get soap in it or try to clean it up. I have had them throw away things when I went upstairs to get my phone.

I think the most money bit comes from having the “keeping up appearances” marriage first. We ate a lot of money trying to be social with our ExxonMobil friends. We went to bars and restaurants that cost a lot, but we never really got anything substantial out of them. There’s only one thing I remember from that time in my life with clarity. It was a brewpub out in Fairfax that made banana clove beer. The combination of lightly sweet banana (not artificial) with Belgian spices made my palate sing. This was before I met Dana, before I went to her mini culinary school. The palate was there, I just wasn’t putting energy in to the right direction.

Meeting Dana brought a lot of things together. The above paragraph is why we would have had a lot of fun in DC together. The thing is, though, I had to get away from her to become a better person, and I hope she feels the same way about me- that we are both wonderful people, but we do not need to be together to know that. We’ve checked.

It would have seemed less weird to the outside world if we’d moved to DC together, but the plan was always to end up here eventually. It’s an adventure we wanted to go on together, and when we split, I still had fire in the belly to do it.

It made it look to the outside world that I was chasing a girl, and I did nothing to help myself out there, but I just didn’t care. It wasn’t worth the energy to figure out how to care about so many things that were beyond my control. Getting the girl in the end would have been nice, but it wasn’t necessary. She and DC are not synonymous in that if I’d suddenly taken off to a city I knew nothing about and the only thing other people knew is that she was there, I’d allow everyone to raise eyebrows at me. Clearly that’s insane.

But when you’re presented with a move that will solve every need including getting the girl? We’re getting somewhere. That’s because there was never any pressure on the relationship to succeed. Washington is big enough to hold both of us, even at full strength.

I stopped thinking about food a few paragraphs ago because I’m still reeling after getting an e-mail from Supergrover that I don’t know what to do with. I’m just spiraling out in my little neurodivergent head because she is bound and determined to wall off and let me know she thinks I’m not that great a writer because I paint my feelings as fact and everything is all about me.

This is my web site. I don’t project feelings onto other people unless they’re interacting with me and I am trying to explain it. No one else in her life has made any move to get to know me, so what they think is all her business and none of mine….. but it would be my business if I knew what she was talking about.

I am only an authority on me and what I perceive.

What I perceive is that prepackaged food holds no nutrition, and very few people are willing to create a dish without shortcuts.

Wash the rice. Soak the beans. Dice the mirepoix.

The most expensive ingredient in food and relationships is time.

It Has All Become Uninteresting

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that.

I have scoured the news, and I cannot find anything on the surface that fascinates me. I am obsessed with hearing the real story on the news, then mining my resources for details. Zac and John (Fot) are my best bets for chatter about international relations and cyber warfare. John also worked with me at Biddy McGraw’s, so I ask him for a heard on things I write about the kitchen. Both he and my former chef, John-Michael Kinkaid, are both great about critiquing my work when it relates to something we went through together. When I’ve surpassed those two things, it’s off to the library or the spy museum.

What I am saying is that the story isn’t the story anymore. It’s how we got here. The former president being arrested is uninteresting. Why it took so long? We’re getting somewhere. I don’t mean the current rounds. I mean why did SDNY have to have 36 counts of something before they built a case? They’re the reason he thinks he can get away with anything. They waited until there was an exponentially larger amount of evidence than needed to convict.

The cost of food is rising. It generally does. That is not interesting. What is interesting is why. Are there crops failing in other parts of the world? Why do we not have the infrastructure to grow our own crops? That’s where the real story begins.

Why have the Republicans decided that the only thing they can do is say no to Democrats? That question is uninteresting. The interesting question is why they are so unsure of their own policies working that they don’t put anything forward? Why are Democrats doing the work while Republicans run out the clock?

Why have Republicans stopped caring about our standing on the world stage? Why aren’t they interested in what our allies think of us? I would venture to guess that they think the United States is the beacon of hope it once was. That’s because they stopped listening to our intelligence agencies when the former president told them to do so…. in front of a wall meant to honor case officers who had died in the line of duty.

The former president’s path to power is the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to our nation in a very long time. People gave into their basest instincts after a black president ran the country successfully. His biggest scandal was a tan suit. Racism that was quiet got its volume turned up to an enormously frightening degree. Where racism goes, so does homophobia and transphobia. The story is not that we had a black president. The story is how so much of the country reacted to it.

The story is not why Joe Biden was elected. The story is why Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren weren’t.

The story is not why Joe Biden is great, but why Kamala is the most unique individual in our nation’s history. If Joe runs again, I know it’s because he knows that if he dies in office, he will create history and no one will have to vote on it.

The story is not Michelle Obama’s arms, but girl…… we all know it ought to be.

Oh! That’s a news story I can connect to me, indirectly. My friend Giles is married to a lawyer that used to work in the Obama administration. Therefore, my friend Giles has seen Michelle Obama’s arms. The fact that he did not write me a two page essay on the subject is his only flaw as a friend.

Probably more interested in his husband’s arms, but whatever.

I like thinking about the Obamas, because they’re a few public figures I’d actually like to meet….. but not in a formal setting. I mean that even though they only live a few miles from me, they’re so famous we’d never run into each other at the grocery store. I have learned that if you really want to meet your political heroes, it is really damn hard unless you were there during the campaign.

As a writer, I feel this intimately and I do not argue with it at all.

If you have to tell someone to carry the bricks, they’re not the ones to be building with.

I hope it’s how my sister feels about me, that I cannot give her everything she needs to be physically safe and sound, but I am caring for her heart. She is my news story at least in Texas every day of my life.

When you see on the news that a law involving trans kids is up in the Texas legislature, know that my sister has a vast network on the ground working to make sure that it doesn’t even get out of committee. They can’t always do it, but no one talks about the people that do that kind of work. Those people who walk into the dark so that they can bring the light……

The story is the law that passed regarding a bathroom bill, excluding trans kids from sports, etc. But that is uninteresting. The story is how close the vote was, and how much it took to get even that.

Always look for the story, because it isn’t on the surface.

Life happens when you’re doing something else. In order to get the facts to line up with the news, you’re going to have to make every story relate to you. The hardest part if you are an American is tuning out all the messages that say you are already the best because you are an American.

Some of the greatest American patriots who ever lived worked for governments they couldn’t stand.

But that wasn’t the story.

I Had Enough in a Good Way

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I learned something today because Supergrover came to me to say that she’d read all that she needed to read- and said that I cast her as a villain. Nothing about why I call her Supergrover, why she’s my beautiful girl, why she is light and dark in one gem. She sees me as writing her as flat, when I think of her as a spectrum. I almost quit writing, because I thought, “if I can’t do her justice, what hope do I have of anyone else? She’s lived inside me for 10 years.” It hurt like a bitch, because she focused on one entry where I was angry and not any of the others. Not the letter to Michael. Not the entry where I said I thought she was the face of God. She sees what she wants to see, and I cannot fix that for her. I do not want her to see herself as the villain in my story. I want her to see why it was so important for us to have met at all. If someone is determined to misunderstand you, let them. There’s no changing their minds.

I didn’t do anything but think about that letter for hours, like I knew I would. But I realized that she proved my points on a number of levels. Nothing said “I’m really sorry you’re hurting, let’s fix it.” By the same token, she thinks she’s the villain in my story and a flat character and her personality shows across my stats. I wasn’t lying when I said that she was the Aunt Voula. She will be your favorite. When I write about her, I feel so deeply that you will, too. Some of my best work that has connected with people came from me looking at our relationship for everything it is worth (still worth?).

I told her to keep reading. Keep absorbing.

I need her to know that what she said in her letter didn’t clear up anything, and also made me feel bad for needing anything… while at the same time having so much empathy for her situation that I overfocused on it. I didn’t need the primer on what she was handling emotionally. I could recite it, chapter and verse. I needed her to trust me, love me, see me.

She did not see me. She saw her in the most negative things I wrote and not in the most positive. That is not my call. I have never and will never love anyone like this again. She is unique, perfect in her imperfections, and I will always wish that things had ended differently. If she’s willing to listen, I’m willing to talk. What I don’t want is to end up in the same place next year.

I got a haircut today. The hardest part was not sending her a picture.

But I did hear from her, and despite everything I am in love with her words. It doesn’t matter what they are, because they bend and challenge me.

She lives in my ink, in the spectrum of color that has defined our relationship. I am sorry that she only sees in grayscale. I don’t love this. I miss her terribly. I just can’t anymore, really, because when I miss her I place hope in something that I think is there? There should never have been a question mark. I told her point blank that I feel helpless about the situation, not that I am painting her as a villain. That I’ve owned everything. I cannot do anything more or better, and she will not lay out her thoughts and feelings so that different patterns can emerge.

I hope for our sake that they begin, but love does not depend on the recipient. I get to love her whether she loves me or not. Even if it doesn’t mean anything to her, it means everything to me.

I smiled down at that e-mail for a long while, knowing that no matter what came of it, even nothing at all, I had done enough work within myself not to get rattled. She focused on thinking that she was a bad character.

I didn’t tell her she’s everyone’s favorite.

Commence Smiling, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

Now that I’ve eaten, I realized I would like to continue talking about nothing. Things that just make me happy whether I’m trying to answer a WordPress writing prompt or not. I can make anything into a happy thought given time and space, but here are the things that make it easy to love life.

  • Spring and autumn make life bearable. Neither deals in extreme temperature (yet). I love jacket weather because I don’t like summer clothes. I’m always too cold once I go inside.
  • If you are going to come to The District, it is best to come in Spring so that you can experience the monuments and the cherry blossoms at the same time. If you don’t come in the Spring, every tourist trap gift shop and museum will have something that looks or smells like a cherry blossom……. but not really. Not a digital reproduction in the world compares to standing next to a tree.
  • If you are going to come to the DMV, it helps to learn about us before you get here. There’s a culture to the Metro. There’s a culture to DC that everyone ignores because they’re just trying to hit tourist spots. Learn where politicians and reporters come to dine and just be quiet. Soak up information, don’t start fights with your political rival. You’ll learn more the less you say. Learn about gogo music, wings and mumbo sauce, Frederick Douglass’s house. Washington is covered in African American history, and especially as white people we should be silent observers. Their voices first, our empathy. You’ll learn more the less you say. Like chasing a story, it is your witness that matters, not your will.
  • Even trying to find wings and mumbo sauce (I like fried rice on the side, some people like fries) is a step in the right direction, as is going to have a half smoke at Ben’s Chili Bowl. Ben’s Chili Bowl was the African American History Museum before we actually got one. There are pictures on the wall that are just unbelievable, but you have to look. REALLY look. You have to read the captions that aren’t there, because white people do not have the right to ask those questions. Introduction to someone’s pain is an invitation-only event.
  • Washington is the only city for me that contains real connection to the Revolutionary War, and not because other cities didn’t participate. It’s that Washington is where we keep the memories. Washington is a treasure trove of news, stretching back to before the country began. I remember the first time I drove into Alexandria and read the charter. It was established 30-odd years before the Declaration of Independence I would imagine that Silver Spring is the same way, because Baltimore was established in 1729. We just kept creeping toward each other, which birthed The District and in a lot of ways, me.
  • I woke up the morning after my 24th birthday and the whole world had changed. I was still young enough to have a child’s reactions to it all. It was too formative not to count. Plus, it really helped when I moved to Portland when I learned that people were suspect of George W. and therefore me, so I just started telling people I was from DC….. at a time when that was the lesser of two evils. It was either that or to tell people that I understood their hesitation and their crap wouldn’t work on me because I’d had to put up with him way longer than they had.
  • Molly Ivins made me happy because she put words in my mouth that I sorely needed. It was good to make fun of him, and she knew all the best ways. He WAS born with a silver foot in his mouth. He DIDN’T compare to someone like Al Gore, a successful senator by his 40th birthday when on W.’s 40th birthday he realized he probably had a drinking problem. Molly didn’t think that the loyal opposition was wrong all the time, necessarily. She just believed in picking the smartest players in the game. Bush’s only play was that his vice was smarter than he was….. who was also evil. Molly made dealing with all of that better. Molly saw that my life was hard and why.
  • Shane Harris makes me happy. When I’m not sitting in the middle of the Spy Museum with six books open on the floor, I could on him. He’s the National Security desk at the Washington Post, so even though I’m not working in his time period, I learn how intelligence says things to the news. How do I get to the real story when all we get on the news is “senior intelligence officials indicate” and not how they got there.
  • Jen Psaki makes me happy because she and her department handle news as well, like hearing “White House officials indicate” and not how they got there. It’s all connected, because intelligence is given to policymakers. I have found that the more I research, the more I get bored and then find an AHA! moment. I am not chasing James Bond around town. The reason true spy stories seem so exciting is that the real story is often too boring to film. Just trust me. But when you hit a gold mine, you really, really hit one. If you live abroad, try it in your own country, especially if you’d like to come here. The easiest path is to tell CIA information that they need. If you get a job working for us where you live, you might end up here quicker than applying for a visa. Your mileage may vary. See web site for details. No promises. But if you’re already interested in spy shit, anyway, it’s a good move. I promise that you cannot make yourself love it. But that’s for operations. They also need just as much support staff as everyone else. My cousin James painted offices. Since Foster and James worked for CIA, I would have been involved somehow, too, because I was taken with Foster’s story from the time I was born. However, since my genetics dealt me a losing hand in the mental health department, I never tried. But like most people the right age to have obsessed over The West Wing, it would take dragging me away. I couldn’t be involved in intelligence, but they don’t have those restrictions at State, which is often the same job from a public and private perspective. It all fits together, it’s all one puzzle, they all play a role. The only thing I’m not interested in is military, because I want defense to be clever. I watch Doctor Who. I have standards.
  • Doctor Who makes me so happy. I am proud to be part of a tradition that has lasted decades. I am proud that they taught me to love the whole world at once, that every person has a story, and they all matter.
  • It makes me happy that I have proven my story does matter, because I write it exactly the way I want, say exactly what I want, and people find it interesting. I do not have to be less. You have allowed me to be my whole self. Thank you.

Commence Smiling

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

List 30 things that make you happy.

The thing that is making me angry right now is that I cannot find a way to do an ordered list, and the way the instructions are worded, the software won’t do what it says it will, either. No, you cannot just type a one and a period and the list will automatically begin. So, I don’t know if there are going to be 30 or not. Decide it’s 30 when you get bored.

Disco and Rosie are the dogs I cared for all last week. They’re both adorable and hilarious. Both of them have elongated toes, and once I massaged their feet, I was not allowed to slow down or stop. Paw massages were very popular with Rosie when Disco would let me give her attention. Paw massages were very popular with Disco as long as I gave Rosie no direct eye contact. Learning their quirks made me very, very happy.

Bluetooth coffeemakers make me happy, and I didn’t know that until I got to use one while housesitting. Very cool to make your order from the app upstairs and come down into a professional coffeehouse. The only drawback is that it makes one mug at a time. I can just picture my partner and me racing to wake up five seconds before the other one to ensure our order is made first. The interface was like Starbucks Mobile. It didn’t add milk, but you could choose coffee/espresso/Americano and how bold.

Jason Moran makes me happy. The last time I saw him, he told me he was planning on doing a Duke Ellington concert in DC. I told him he was a brave, brave man. Then, Saturday I got a brochure in the mail announcing that the time has come and the concert is this season. I believe it will be a hit because Jason will do the homework. No one leaves a Jason Moran concert sad they didn’t see someone else. The last concert I attended was the 25th Anniversary of Black Stars. Sam Rivers had passed, and it was still one of the most moving things I’ve experienced at the KenCen.

Robert Glasper makes me happy, because he does concerts here that also blow my mind……. and at the same time, we’re both the geeky jazz kids who stood behind Jason Moran just to watch. A kinship was born in our teen years from sitting together in history and also watching a master at his craft. Jason could do something as a high school student that most professionals can’t. He could speak with authority. If Jason said something about jazz, it was true. Period. It wasn’t because he projected that…. it’s that we could all see that he was a subject matter expert and we were kids with instruments. His virtuoso didn’t start with being on the cover of Jazziz and Downbeat. It started with walking the halls of HSPVA with not a single moment unaccounted for in terms of bettering his jazz education. When he wasn’t playing, he was listening. When he wasn’t listening, he was teaching us how much we could learn if we listened. If he runs across this, he has my undying devotion for introducing me to Oscar Peterson, and realizing I needed to listen to Miles with different ears. So, seeing Robert is a reminder that we both aspired to do great things by watching someone who already had things handled.

The marvelous thing that has come out of ending the Internet relationship is that I’m not spending energy crafting pages for her. I’m spending energy crafting pages for you. It’s not that hers were more or less intense, it’s that now my energy feels so much higher because all the information is going in the right direction. If I could be a great writer in a sandbox, I could be a great writer on the world wide web. The difference is how much to personalize something. With blog entries, I’m always looking for the thing I’ll want to remember about someone 20 years later. Everything matters, good and bad. I own everything that has happened to me. Blogging feels much more like an episode of one of those podcasts where you have to read your journal. It makes me happy to know I’ll always have a time capsule.

It makes me happy that those things I’ll want to remember often jog people’s memories and take them to where they need to go. I hope it matters that you can clearly see how much people mean to me even when they aren’t acting all that lovable. That I do remember the little things, and I write them all down. I heal myself by not forgetting the moments I loved you so that I have a place to go when I feel weak. My writing makes me fall in love with you when I think I can’t. I am a better partner and friend because of my web site, not in spite of it.

It makes me happy not to hold myself above like a sky god watching ants. I am a deeply flawed, scarred individual and I take myself to the mat as often as I can so that my wounds don’t become infected. It makes me happier that Zac and Bryn understand this.

It makes me happy that I was able to create boundaries with them on what I could write and what I couldn’t, but that wasn’t just it. They respected me enough to see why writing was important to making me a better person. I thought it was really sweet when Zac said that he should be a bigger fan. It was in no way true that he should be, it pleased me that he said it.

Washington makes me happy, has always made me happy. I came here the first time when I was eight. That awe and wonder is still present. I cannot land at DCA after sunset without crying when I see the monuments. It has stopped happening during the day. That’s just exciting.

Taking off at DCA is a trip in and of itself. That’s the happiest I’ve been as a speed junkie. The incline at takeoff to avoid federal airspace is the most expensive roller coaster ride on record.

Cooking makes me happy, as does gardening as I watch more and more DIY. I wouldn’t want to get into gardening for a living, like selling produce or plants, but I would like enough yield to feed myself. I get the whole commune thing now. I don’t know that I’d want to do it, but I get it. See “gardening for one” for details.

Food makes me happy. It would be a blessing every day to pick out my own chilis, for instance. I could wait to pick them until they were truly ready, caramelized just by age before I take out the seeds and roast them, making sugar dance on hell’s tongue.

Shaving makes me happy. It’s one of the few rituals I remember to do on a semi-consistent basis. I’m into it. I have the soap and the brush, and I watch YouTube videos. It’s surprising how many tips for getting a great shave on your face also help you get your legs that smooth, too. I had to study up because I don’t have a bathtub anymore. It’s just a shower. Shaving is not the same when you can’t soak in the tub for 10 minutes before you start cutting.

Walking makes me happy because it means I can eat what I want. I don’t have to worry if I want three slices of pizza for breakfast because after three miles, it won’t feel like enough. But that’s only when I’m not appetite suppressed. The rest of the time, I’ll have three pieces of pizza for breakfast and not eat the rest of the day.

Speaking of which, I do need to eat breakfast. I’m sure there are 30 ideas here, even if I couldn’t find the ordered list button.

You’ll Have to Define It, First

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Describe one habit that brings you joy.

People with attention deficit or autism don’t create habits. There is nothing in our brain to create subroutines and keep them going. Every task takes the same amount of energy as learning to do something the first time, from brushing your teeth to remembering to take out the garbage on Wednesday nights because trash day is Thursday. Trash day seems insurmountable to someone with time blindness.

There is a meme going around Facebook that addresses this. “The problem with 10:30 PM is that it is one minute before 2:30 AM if you’re not careful.” The way time slips away at night for most people is how time works in neurodivergent people all day long. It’s relentless. We live and die by our calendars and task lists with alarms, because otherwise we’d have no real sense of the month, day, or year. It my mind, it has been six minutes since my mother died and also years.

Memories are arranged by importance, not when they happened. Time blindness was actually a good thing in one case. The way I was treated during my childhood melted away and I stopped thinking about it at all. It just failed to register. Every bad memory I have of ages 12-36 is not locked away anymore because it doesn’t have to be. None of those things can create a reaction in me unless I let it.

I will dig deep into them for resolution, but that is only to make the present me a better human being. It has nothing to do with trying to resolve those memories to make anything better for them. Too much has been done for there to ever be reconciliation, and if being sorry was ever childhood abuser’s intent, she would have come to me long before now. She said she was sorry, but I don’t believe it because her actions didn’t line up. I had every right to make her jump as high as I wanted, so when she proved that she couldn’t even do the barest minimum, it was okay to be done.

Our relationship was virtual in that before the Internet, there were letters and calls. Even with both of those things, you’re not really living the same reality. You’re fitting each other into your real lives…… except it cost me money I didn’t have. There was no such thing as long distance calling across the country for free. I didn’t even have a cell phone until I was an adult, so my parents knew who I was calling because they could see the number on the bill. I think they thought that making me pay the money back would make me quit calling. They did not understand the game. They did not understand the trap. They did not understand being willing to die before you’d tell a secret.

It is my habit to treat everything I know with that kind of security because it was ingrained when I was 12. It doesn’t matter how the secret makes me feel, even if it is toxic I have proven that I won’t say a word. It made me who I am for richer or for poorer. In some ways, I’ve kept secrets that have made me sicker. In others, it makes me powerful enough to be someone like Bayard Rustin, who knew all MLK’s secrets and lies. If I’d go so far for the wrong woman, just think of how far I’d go if I met someone like Martin?

Olivia Pope completed me because I saw her as having to manage the same secrets I did when I was a child. It was translated through the lens of politics, but to me keeping Fitz’ and Jake’s secrets was as difficult as keeping mine.

There was also light and dark. Keeping the president’s secrets was one thing because he was a public figure. Jake very much wasn’t. But one fed the other and Shonda Rimes healed me with a bit of media. Art imitates life, and it was so awe-inspiring to have that mirror.

My abuser’s public persona needed to be protected, and so did the dark undercurrent from everything else in her life. I knew that because I was a preacher’s kid. I’d been taught to be that kind of friend since I was born. Therefore, no one could get a word out of me and even though my personality changed practically overnight, no one noticed because I was already hard to predict being ADHD. I always had my head in the clouds to one degree or another. I am an INFJ, the pastors to the whole world at once. I am built for it, and all the things I don’t know cost me because I think I can take on way more than I can without support from everyone else. That requires someone like Bryn, who can deal in emotions as large as mine consistently because she knows I can offer what I require. Her secrets are mine, in some cases, literally. When Supergrover convinced me of what I’d been ignoring, I didn’t get to tell her that she helped another little girl, too, because I got to pass on the knowledge that her strange feelings weren’t strange at all.

There was a reason I became a frightened dog, not sure which way was up in almost every relationship of my life. I had so much to protect and nowhere near the ability to choose how. The secrets made me the alpha dog, given the responsibility of protecting the person and the path, but no support in how to do it. I think that’s because of the nature of the cycle of abuse. No one taught them how to react during trauma, either.

Support would be empathy that goes in both directions. No abuser tells a child thank you for keeping those secrets. No one notices when you’re saving their career. Therefore, as adults we know we need it. We know that a relationship is not equal when one person is the dumping ground emotionally for another………. because they’re so focused on themselves that they don’t think to ask about us.

It’s not that we mind being the emotional dumping ground, we’re asking for equal airtime. Reconnecting with Bryn reminded me why that was so important. That I couldn’t have a healthy, successful relationship until I’d been in a more serious one with her in terms of emotional intimacy because I needed to learn what a healthy relationship felt like before I could extrapolate that into a full-on romance with someone else. I even know that’s hard, because Bryn wouldn’t care if I slept with someone else, but she’d for damn sure notice if I ditched her emotionally for someone else. It would have to be a balance, because she needs to know that I have enough love in me that my partner will know how much you matter to me and not taking us as a package deal is in and of itself a dealbreaker. There will be times where she is way more important than you. Die mad about it.

I feel like that’s the way Zac loves me. That if something was up, depending on the situation there would be times when I was more important, die mad about it. But at the same time, I am also respecting the fact that he and I are not close enough to expect his attention the majority of the time and I am not asking him for that. I am saying that if I was in the hospital, I could call him from there because he would definitely want to know. That would be true whether we were dating or not. I don’t care about the dating as much as I care about the not, because a long term relationship isn’t built on romance. The cornerstone is knowing you’ve got someone who will be there for you in a crisis, big or small, because even if they can’t do anything to fix it acknowledge that they want to know. Acknowledge how big that is. Relationships take showing up, and people won’t if you don’t communicate that you need it. You’ll just feel stepped on all the time, and I’m telling you it’s your own doing if you’re the Type B who never says anything.

Not saying anything doesn’t allow our friends to respond the way we want them to. It doesn’t test anything. It doesn’t allow you to notice the way you’d be treated if you needed something, and that is completely fear-based. You’d rather not know until it’s so bad you can’t ignore it.

Choose not to stuff things down so that you can see if someone can give you what you require instead of constantly giving them what they need emotionally in hopes that someday will come because they’ll divine that you’re in trouble.

I moved heaven and earth to stand next to greatness because I could give what I required. The fact that she couldn’t is of no consequence, because I love it here. The main problem is how to get Bryn to think it’s her idea to move here. 😉

The thing is, people, I have that friend. I have that friend who would move heaven and earth to be near me if I needed her. Even if it damn near killed me, I’d do the same for her. It would be a lot. I’d have to live in the city where I chose to continue a very toxic relationship based on the one we had when I was a child. But her life is so different there that I could see it working out long term. I think it would be hell on wheels in the beginning as I grappled with being grateful to be near her and muting all the triggers that would reappear.

I was in a bad relationship the last time I lived in DC, too, with the same archetype of the woman I’m talking about when I call that character “Supergrover.” It was like trying to hug a cactus every day. I got a lot of negative attention…. It will pop up if you search for “The Great Raspberry Jello Caper” or something like that.

It was so different, though, because Kathleen and I were both adults. I could expect her to respond like I thought she would, or I could express needs and she’d kick my ass. It was unsustainable. I have chosen that relationship over and over, making them that if they weren’t that already.

It’s the pattern with which I’ve become most familiar, and I bring it out in people after having wronged them, then them getting very resentful that I need anything because the fissure has begun.

Bryn deserves me because she doesn’t expect me to be perfect, and I’ve tested her on that to an enormous degree. I have never intentionally tried to hurt her, and she knows that, too. It counts for a lot.

What I have learned is that Bryn is completely unique, and Supergrover is a dime a dozen. That’s because once a fissure began, the power imbalance was set for the rest of our time together. It was imperative for me to jump high because I’d found someone I could be as vulnerable with as I could with Bryn. That became problematic when I was vulnerable to her about her. I was trying to be tender and to heal wounds. She thought I was trying to load her up with guilt, make her feel bad, etc. and didn’t tell me that for a long time. I wrote her the longest love letter of my life, annotated with detail about why I wanted to help her. I wanted her to know that I really saw her. It was not a one-way transaction. I shouldn’t have said anything, because she just took it as psychoanalysis and that I was trying to provoke her.

I thought she was the sweetest person I’d ever met, and she liked thinking that I thought of her as a monster. It’s why I call her Supergrover…. that even when she acts monstrous, she’s still cuddly, furry, and blue. It’s the smallest part of her, the little girl I love.

It’s a habit.

The Library in Alexandria

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

What are you curious about?

Even when it was 2001 and I struggled through the aftermath of 9/11, I wanted to be here in DC. I don’t live in Alexandria anymore, but it is a library of images that I’ll never forget. I do not judge people on their reactions to that tragedy, but I do feel my own stomach turn when people talk about their reactions from hundreds of miles away when the pictures rattled on my walls and the fighter jets flew over my house every 10 minutes for days. The entire city shut down, because the Pentagon had been hit. People drove up to the site and turned off their cars to gawk. This interrupted drive time to an enormous degree, but I don’t remember anyone complaining. We mourned as one person, breathing through it (or trying). FBI and CIA had a fire in the belly, as did the entire military.

And then we went after the wrong person on purpose.

Soon after, I moved to Portland. It was a mistake that has now been long forgiven and forgotten, because I wouldn’t have met the one I needed to meet so that I could rest easy for the first time in years. I celebrate having erred every day.

Therefore, I felt a strong pull to come back, because I didn’t feel like I was in the middle of everything unless I could get on the Metro. I wasn’t here long enough last time to be satisfied. Washington is a city where you can look at a new thing every day and still not see them all by the time you die. Some things, you want to experience over and over. I could not do what I do if I didn’t have the International Spy Museum close, where I can sit on the floor with six books open like the store is my personal office (it is. Don’t tell them. Snitches get stitches.). This is because in my alternate history, CIA is part of it to an enormous degree, because one character is a political figure who has to make a choice to work with us or not in order to stop a war………………. or not. I haven’t decided because it would be infinitely realistic either way.

Both case officer and handler become those roles over time, which is why I need so much help. Zac is the only person I know that has any access to CIA at all. Even then, he knows so much more than he lets on. I lean into the gaps, taking the trail and following it to six books open on the floor at a museum.

I sent both the museum and Jonna Mendez (on the board) my idea for something that could fall under continuing education. I thought it would be cool if retired spies started a class for writers called Farm 101. It would be the entire experience from Day One to making it as the director. It would just be what it takes to do the job, not any actual specifics. I figured they might be able to do that because CIA already does outreach to screenwriters. My favorite intelligence officer in the entire world is the one Allison Janney plays in “Spy.” The shit she comes up with, like making her the most stereotypical white woman in the nation. Her pocket litter even identifies her as the “vice president of the gardening club,” and Melissa McCarthy says, “I couldn’t even be president?” I died for a second.

It never escapes my attention that it was Tony and Jonna Mendez’s job to make sure the pocket litter was accurate, and now I picture both of them up to those antics. They make me laugh because the picture is so clear. Jonna is currently writing her own memoirs, and what I want to know isn’t going to be in the book, I’m guessing, because I don’t care what she did with other people. I want to know what she did to her staff. This is because she talks a lot about men who refuse to dress as women, refuse to wear a mask, etc. I don’t want the book to be about operations. I want the book to be about revenge. Like, she didn’t have to make someone wear a tiny rock in their shoe, but it just felt right for no reason at all……….

She has said in interviews that she was a hardass.

That’s the part that makes me laugh the most. Of course she was. She was what all women in the military, intelligence, and politics are encouraged to be. They have to put away anything that makes them different. Tracy Walder bucked the system by carrying all kinds of girly shit, which made people underestimate her when she was actually an expert in counter bioterrorism. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t a sorority girl in college. So what if her coffee mug is pink? Who cares? Lots of people, apparently.

Tracy’s book is my favorite in my entire library because she made a style choice that no one else has. She sent her manuscript to CIA’s publications review board, and when CIA blacked out something, she left them in. They’d cut out parts of sentences, and it was exhilarating because you could figure out what they meant if you did the homework.

My favorite homework actually came from “Homeland.” I was confused about the creation of Space Force, so I went back to the show. Turns out, we may not need a special branch of the military for them, but ownership of the moon and its resources and having to defend against threats are very real. Whether it is true or not, our panic during the space race was that the moon would be armed with nuclear weapons by Russia. We need to increase our capabilities in space, but I believe that should be mostly intelligence-based, because we have no business building a military base up there. Keeping it staffed isn’t the problem. It’s what it would take to have comfortable facilities there with the intent to maintain them. My fear is that they’d create the atmosphere and the appointments on the cheap so that more money could go toward weapons, which is the same situation in the rest of the military. It’s not a big deal to spend money on weapons, but it’s looked down upon to spend money on boots, clothes, hats, and air conditioning.

If the military can’t handle taking care of soldiers for the rest of their lives when they’re on the ground, why do we think they’ll be any better about it in space? This is not the final frontier just yet, because we’re not ready. We need to stop pretending that we are.

it’s hard to acknowledge problems in space when there are so many problems right here. That doesn’t mean they’re not important, just secondary. We don’t need to give resources to other countries (in aid or defense) until ours is clean. It’s not that we shouldn’t collaborate, it’s that we have a history of working on a deficit while giving money to countries who can’t possibly pay it back. Now, we’re defaulting on our own loans and expecting the world to understand. I think some of that is valid even if it doesn’t do anything to move the needle. We’ve gotten respect from other countries by helping them out. They need to recognize that costs something. But they don’t need to excuse that behavior. They need to make it where money is money and politics is politics. I do not want money to affect diplomatic relations or vice versa.

Ukraine will never be able to pay off this war, even if they win. Too much corruption, too few taxes going to the right place. Zelenskyy is determined to change things, and for their sake, I hope he does. I’d really like to meet him if I ever had the chance. I’d tell him that I’ve spent time with his characters and that he’s a brilliant writer….. and what would it take to get seasons two and three of “Servant of the People” on Netflix? He is every bit as funny as Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

Being able to write intelligently about all of this stuff means everything to me, because I’m one of those people who wants to love the whole world at once. I can’t unless I actually understand both the pro and con of the arugument. If the Republican party was worth a damn in terms of not screwing over the American people by trying to parent them all, I wouldn’t vote liberal on every issue. I just have to get on the right bus at this point. That’s because there are absolutely no points on which the Republicans will bend. Even the most clever of them have shut down like a steel trap and act like they’re actively drinking Kool-Aid even though they know it’s poisonous and they can’t help it.

Being intelligent just can’t compete with that, because it works its way around everything that makes logical sense. It also reflects the values of the leader. Eisenhower was wonderful about actually caring what happened to poor people and trying to make everyone’s lives easier. Nothing like him has happened for the Republicans in years because they’ve locked him out of being elected. If I was a Republican, in 2016 I would have voted for John Kasich. He had the only platform I could stomach. It wasn’t about the best person for the job. It was about winning. It was about revenge, and it’s been going on since the country began. Both parties are so powerful that when one splits, the other wins. There’s no way for a third party to win, or there hasn’t been in recent memory. The Democrats are the same in terms of being electable. Speaking of recent memory, it’s surprising how old you have to be not to think of your childhood in terms of the president being a Bush or a Clinton.

That’s because they both played the game brilliantly from opposite ends of the spectrum. They liked Clinton because he was brilliant. They liked the Bushes because they got the tax cuts they wanted and didn’t think of much else. Things have deteriorated in government significantly with the advent of the Religious Right, because you can’t argue with that , either.

The presidency has become essentially the difference between someone who can do the job and someone who can make it look like they can do a job.

I learned just how interested I was in world politics when I went to see Masha (Marie) Yovanovitch do a book talk.

I was curious….. at the library in Alexandria.

Over and Out

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

I realized this morning that the fairy tale I’d been living the last ten years had come to an end. That it has been long enough now for me to get some distance and close the book. My beautiful girl has gone into the wind at my invitation, and I no longer feel any pull toward her in terms of friendship or protection. She said something about me being “hostile” now that she didn’t fit into the mold of friendship I made for her, and I’m sure they were sharp even if they weren’t meant to carry that much anger. What she didn’t seem to get was why I was acting that way. I needed her, and I thought I was more important than I was.

I will no longer apologize for having emotions. I will no longer apologize for anything that makes me tamp down my feelings to the level at which she can accept them. I will always be more than she’s ever thought, because she doesn’t seem to think of me at all.

We haven’t been in contact since March, and that’s not the longest we’ve gone without contact, but something about this time feels final. I don’t think she cares what I know and what I don’t. I don’t think she feels any pull to be near me.

I also don’t want to be in a relationship like that. I don’t want to go years on end jumping up and down for attention because I actually need it and have never been trying to goad her, provoke her, take her to task. She was hearing all of that through me expressing genuine need. Her life is just so busy that she attributed everything to me being on her ass all the time. There was nothing I could do or say that would change her mind. I am also sure that telling the world about her shitty behavior has helped us both to move on, probably because if someone treats you badly, it’s not okay to say so.

Meanwhile, it feels like she is emotionally immature to an enormous degree because she can’t get into a conflict without running, and she does that with spikes. I don’t want to feel like I’m trying to hug a cactus anymore. Her wire monkey schtick brings nothing into my life that doesn’t hurt, because when I open up to her, it might be good in the moment, but it will devolve whether I want it to or not.

She will not address bad patterns and change them to accommodate emotional health on either side of the equation. She is not responsible for what I understand, but no one could comprehend her story with the amount of information I was given. I felt like she half-assed her side of it just to keep me happy, but there was never going to be a happily ever after…. even though we definitely started with a “once upon a time.”

I feel like this chapter of my life is over, and I want to close the book. That being said, the nature of the conflict will never go away. I just won’t believe anything she says ever again, because the truth isn’t found there. It will be found in her actions.

If being my friend is important to her, she’ll have to show up. I would like it to mean knocking on my door, but that’s not necessary. If she actually came clean and told me how she felt and made her behavior line up, I would accept her back into the fold. It was not a bait and switch where I told her I would leave the door open so I could later slam it into her face.

It’s that I want our relationship, but not like this. I cannot let her reopen wounds and then react as if I’m trying to rattle her on purpose. She doesn’t realize how much my actions are in response to hers. She thinks that I make them up.

It’s easy to tell yourself that story when your side comes from a completely different book.

The End