Tag: dating

The Counselor -or- The Lead and How to Swing It (It’s Not Unusual)

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am an INFJ, the counselor personality. So, my interests are naturally human relationships and sociology. I asked Carol to scan web sites and blogs to find the most common questions people have about romantic and non-romantic relationships. I have been through so much emotional pain that has made me resilient, so I thought I would extrapolate that into teaching mode, talking about concepts and not confessions.

  1. What are the signs of a healthy romantic relationship?
    • Relationships come in seasons. Things won’t always be hot and heavy, so the sign of a healthy relationship is that you communicate well whether there’s excitement or not. Communicating well will bring the hot and heavy back around, because there’s nothing like feeling someone is genuinely interested in you. I think, particularly for women their emotions bring them around to sex, and with men, sex brings them around to emotions. So, the healthiest part of a relationship is being good friends, because you want to be together whether the package comes with sex or not. This is true in many, many poly relationships because not all partner support is built on romance. Ace couples deserve the benefits of marriage, too, because they’re still taking care of each other to that extent.
  2. How do you maintain passion and excitement over time?
    • You don’t force it. You let the seasons naturally present themselves. However, you can’t lose your connection altogether. Marriage and intimacy counseling is good whether you get along or not. Just because you like each other doesn’t mean your communication and intimacy can’t be better over time. Not everyone who goes to marriage counseling is in crisis. Some of them are preventing it from happening.
  3. What are effective ways to communicate needs and boundaries to your partner?
    • Sit by yourself until you have clarity over what you need to express. Too many people start conversations without knowing what they want to achieve, getting off topic, and dragging every fight they’ve ever had into it. You can’t get needs addressed without the other person hearing you, and anger is counterproductive. It leads to more resentment than it will ever be worth unless your goal is to end up apart.
    • After you’ve sat by yourself and organized your thoughts, you’re going to have to put on your big boy britches and actually tell other people what you’re thinking without sideskirting the issue or moving the goalposts. You do that by being more in tune with yourself, not a need to change someone else. That doesn’t work. If your goal is to make your partner what you want them to be, you have a shitty partner. We all have agency. We all own our stories. None of us serve at our partner’s pleasure, which straight women have been told for far too long. Women excuse away other women’s abuse because it’s historical. You lose the marriage, you lose money and status. That is still true. Men are generally better off after divorce because they earn more and have the ability to move quicker because of it. For women, it often takes years of saving up and planning while their husbands leave them with black eyes. You cannot remove them from a situation they’re handling poorly. You can only remove yourself. That’s why you have to know what your goals are. If they don’t match someone else’s, it’s not an equal partnership. And by “matching,” I mean wanting the same things out of life so that there is no need to want to change someone. For far too long, women have been hospitals for broken men. Now, I can make my boyfriend rise to my standards, but I don’t do it by controlling him. It’s just “if, then” statements. He can literally do whatever he wants as long as we’re communicating. We are both committed to a long and happy relationship with out all the trappings of bullshit that come with a Serious Relationship.™ We’re figuring it out as we go along, and communicating at a level I’ve never had in a relationship before because I decided two things, thanks to my relationship with Supergrover:
      • I will never date anyone dumber than me ever again, and by dumber, I mean emotionally. I have always dated people that were brilliant logically and it was explosively good for about 15 minutes until we could not relate to each other. Although, I will say that because Dana and I are both neurodivergent, we had the healthiest relationship of them all. But we stopped communicating and spiraled out.
      • I will never tiptoe around anyone. Either you’re emotionally available, or you’re not and I will find someone who is. I don’t mean in a moment. I mean “if you tell me I’m a priority and yet I’m constantly not, I don’t believe you.” I have made the commitment never to believe anyone’s words ever again. I believe actions. If they tell you they’ll call and they mean it, nothing will drag them from calling back.
    • The connection to Supergrover is that we got out of an enormously vicious toxic cycle because our dance of intimacy was one partner being anxious and one partner being avoidant. So, to reassure me, Supergrover would tell me that all was well. Yet not actually being available to me made it feel like a truth and a lie at the same time. I have no doubt that my signature is sewn into her heart. Me not being a priority doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me, but I have the choice with what to do with my energy as well. I will no longer feed people who don’t feed me. I am lucky that Supergrover recognized it and stepped up with grace and humility. It is just becoming more and more true, the quote from Anne Lamott…. “grace never leaves you where you were found.”
  4. How can couples navigate differences in values or life goals?
    • There are the same concepts in psychology that there are in medicine. The answer is “it depends.” I would recommend going into marriage counseling the minute you propose/accept. Seriously. There are REAL issues that couples never discuss before they get married, and here’s one that most people don’t think of, and it’s more important than people think- class and income disparity. It doesn’t matter so much how you handle money in the current day and age. Your views on money and marriage come from your first family. You need to shift from “me” to “we,” and it’s a hard concept to grasp because compromising with your siblings probably didn’t go all that well…… at least when you were little. It’s amazing how often in a relationship I become the annoying older sister who can’t be wrong, because I’ve dated mostly women. It’s my dynamic. Women are drawn to me because I have the magnetism of a preacher…. direct and settled in myself. Most women aren’t, so initially it’s an attraction and then it’s them tiptoeing around me because they think I don’t want them to take up space. That’s not true. I just couldn’t communicate my ideas effectively because I was bad at communication and bad at social cues.
      • I will never pick up what you’re really saying if you try to sugar coat anything, because I can tell a white lie from the real truth in a New York minute, because I can’t imitate social masking, but I can recognize it in other people. I will drag the real truth out of you. In my relationship with Supergrover, the fake truth was “we’re fine.” The real truth was “your words feel like pricks on my skin.” The Neosporin was “I am better off when I don’t read you, and better off when you do. I get something out of it whether you paint me in a bad light or not.” She’s so beautiful to me just for that one line alone. I don’t think anyone will ever say anything to me that will mean more, which is why I have to write it down. This is not a memory I ever want to fade. We were unhappy. Now we’re not. There were almost 11 years between unhappy and happy, albeit interrupted with genuinely happy moments. I haven’t heard from her in a few days, but it’s probably just because she’s busy. I sent her a letter this morning because I told her I wanted her to have something to chew on when she was waiting for a flight or a meeting to start. Now that we’ve started calling each other “Carmen” and “Player” (she liked that analogy, because of course she would like a red fedora and trench coat rather than Supergrover’s cape and helmet.
  5. What role does trust play in sustaining a romantic relationship?
    • It’s more important than people think because they don’t really communicate about vision and values when the relationship begins. Therefore, they have no idea what their partners are going to see as betrayal or not. If you break someone’s trust, it also depends on what kind of person they are. If they’re good at conflict resolution, then it’s possible to work it out. It is impossible to work with someone who refuses to hear you. So, word to the wise, don’t break anyone’s trust because you can’t see the consequences coming with a map and a flashlight. Documents are logical; people aren’t.
  6. How do you establish and maintain strong friendships?
    • I just realized that I talked mostly about Supergrover when she fits into this category. She just gets lumped in with my romantic partners not because she has ever been romantically interested in me, but because our communication level is that intense. It’s amazing how deep you can go with someone without crossing that line, and I am furious at all the bullshit I had to overcome to know that, because it didn’t come from me. I view us more as friends who love each other like literary characters. Anne Shirley and Diana Barry (OMG. “bosom friend” I CANNOT.). Anne and Shirley are indescribably close, but when they say “bosom friend,” it’s not a queer connotation unless you just need to see yourself in literature………………………………………….
  7. What are the boundaries of a platonic relationship?
    • The first is that if one friend develops a crush on the other, don’t tell them. Crushes tend to happen in what’s called “New Relationship Energy,” when all your senses are on overload and you’re waiting for their contact while going stupid in the middle of a restaurant waiting on a text. If you really like this person in a sexual way, evaluate it for a very long time, because it often takes time to realize why you would and wouldn’t be right for each other without the haze of rose-colored glasses. I’m not saying that friends to lovers is a bad story. It’s bad to have an immature crush, because if it’s someone with whom you want to go the distance, telling them very early destroys the friendship more often than not. Either they think you were only in it for sex and have been playing them this whole time, or it’s just too awkward now. Caveat Emptor, although my experience is that if you wait it out, sometimes the feelings are mutual because you actually have the intimacy there to expand. Sometimes you don’t fall in love with a person’s face. Sometimes, someone becomes the face you love because of the amount of intimacy invested.
    • Everything emotionally intimate in a relationship happens when you’re doing something else. There’s not that awkward “what do I do with my hands” moment when you’re flipping a house together or whatever. If you want to know people, invite them to do a DIY project. It is an excellent testament to how well you communicate….. one way or another…………
  8. How can you support a friend going through a difficult time?
    • It depends. What kind of difficult time are they going through? How close is the friend? Have they lost a friend, have they gotten a serious illness…. all of these things require different responses. The one thing that people need is continuing friendship, because you don’t get over the people in your life that you lose….. mostly because in something like a serious illness that friend is going to need support much longer than a friend with boy problems.
    • I feel like I handle this most effectively by triage. Who is in the worst situation at the time? My priority is always going to be Zac unless Supergrover and I start being friends in real life, because otherwise, she wouldn’t need me to show up and help (although I did get major brownie points when a storm ripped up her house and I offered to go bust my ass. It’s what lesbians do when they like a girl. I feel luckier than most, because by reading her words all the time and not talking to her has just reinforced that no matter what kind of relationship it is, this girl in particular is worth liking. I hope we can get to a place where we can consistently flip each other shit without raising actual ire. We really are too funny for this world (“I have reading glasses……. AND THEY ARE COOL” “You keep telling yourself that, buddy.” 😉 ).
  9. What are the keys to a successful business partnership?
    • Don’t lie to each other, ever. Learn to work through conflict no matter how bad it get, because you won’t know what to expect up front.
    • Actually care for each other, so that one person is not trying to take more than their fair share of the profits by hiding it with the accountant. This is a huge one. I wouldn’t go into business with anyone I didn’t trust with my life before I got famous. I may never get famous, I’m just saying. Don’t pick your friends when you’re already rich. People who are millionaires and billionaires aren’t the first people I’d put on the list regarding trust. For instance, when I said that if I did ever make it big I’d open a non-profit, I’ve already asked Lindsay to run it…. not someone who would constantly undermine everything I was trying to do, whether it was financially or damaging my “brand.” I don’t even know what that is yet, it’s just PR speak.
    • A business partnership means to me that two people co-own a company. The first rule is that your team is not less important than you. If you are a dictator, employees will leave. They’re tired of toxic work environments, and the owners set the tone. Dysfunctional work relationships don’t last any longer than dysfunctional marriages unless you are absolutely unhireable somewhere else.
  10. How do you balance time between romantic partners and friends?
    • I’ve made my life so quiet that there’s not a million people competing for my attention so that I can pay better attention to the people that really matter. Bryn,. Supergrover, and Zac all have equal airtime, because Zac and I aren’t that serious. I spend most of my time talking to my girls. I prefer to have a few close relationships than many shallow ones.
    • I will never let a friend feel like I’ve ditched them for romance unless it’s an emergency. Again, triage. If I’m hanging out at Supergrover’s and Zac is in a bike accident, that’s a ditching. Zac wants to go to Target and is whining that I’m always gone? Tough shit.
    • People cocoon with their partners to the point of excluding their friends. I’m for spending time more equally with people so that if one of them “breaks up with me,” my entire world doesn’t walk out the door. I still have a sense of normalcy to my day. I am not saying that any of them are going to leave, I’m just talking about relationship dynamics overall. If you put all your eggs in one basket, what happens when it drops?

Gratitude Journaling

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I just caught a dog rifling through my trash can, so I am not feeling particularly good about myself right now. I didn’t know that the dog was smart enough to open the trash can himself. I shouldn’t have doubted it, and I can’t get him to clean up the trash, either. So, I cleaned it up…. by myself…. again.

I’m not bagging on David, my housemate. I am bagging on Jack, who is a useless housekeeper. My coworker needs a visit with HR for a performance improvement plan. I don’t know how to keep a dog out of the trash except getting a different trash can or keeping the door closed all the time. I’d rather just train the dog, but again, Jack is very smart. You have to get right up in his face before he will even begin to think you have half a brain. So, we’ve been working on “sit,” “heel,” and “bring Mama a Diet Coke.” That last one was a joke that Heather Armstrong (Dooce) wrote about her dog, Chuck, the former Congressman.

I’m trying to keep Heather’s name alive because she’s a part of the zeitgeist, but no one has influenced the direction of this web site, because Supergrover and I both loved her once upon a time. It was the same for me- I fell out with reading her when she got on the influencer bandwagon, because like my beautiful girl I thought it lost something when Dooce stopped getting so real. There was no more Dooce (a typo she used to make while typing Dude), no more Asian Database Administrator (probably good she took that one out), no more dry humping and Sprite.

Sometimes I feel like Dooce is gone and I got the best of the best and you just got me. I keep trying, though. I’ve just realized that what I thought was Texas old guy is actually Utah blogger, apparently, and I know her writing well enough that she would be pleased by this. Unfortunately, I never got to meet her. We just ran in the same circles. If I had an hour with her, I’d ask her about blowback.

I’ll ask her about the friends she lost, and the friends who came to take their places. It’s something for which I’ll always be grateful, and I’m glad she came up in my mind while I was trying to say “I’m not in a very good mood, so I need to find things for which to be thankful.” I count blessings, every single one. It keeps me from thinking that I am failing all the time, because I recognize when I have a win.

I continue to be thankful for my house, and even Jack. He continues to be “my dog,” and he’s as lovable as every dog ever. If he’s ever missing, I know he’s in my bed as far under the covers as he can go. He’s shaved almost to the skin right now; when the wind is blowing in from the windows he shivers. It’s how I like it, because it’ll be 55F outside, but I’ve got a sheet, a blanket, and two comforters on top. I think I’ll be okay.

At the same time, when I take sleeping pills my body temperature goes way up, and having the windows open keeps me from sweating because of them. There have been a few days, though, where I woke up and thought I lost three pounds because I’d shake the blankets off, it would be too cold, then I’d pull them all back…. All night. It was glorious, let me tell you.

I’m grateful for a comfortable place to sleep, and a room with so many new possibilities. Neither my lamp nor my shelf with a light came with light bulbs, so I ordered some retro LEDs. They look like they’re from the early 1900s. I have a floor lamp without a shade, which is why I thought it would be nice with the bulb exposed to go decorative. I am hoping that I will have enough light, because each bulb is 60w. I wanted higher than that, but I couldn’t find any yellow bulbs that came in 75w or 100. I do not like the bulbs where they take all the yellow out and it leaves a slightly blue glow on everything. I do use 100w white bulbs in my bathroom because I want to get dressed in the most unflattering light possible. That way, when I get myself fixed up, I will look better when I leave the house. It’s good to have goals, anyway. 😉

I’m grateful I have a bathtub again. Hayat replaced our bathtub with a stand up shower long ago, so it’s nice to be able to sit and relax when I want. I liked the stand-up shower, too. I’m not knocking it. I just had trouble shaving because I am terrible at balance. It’s not that one was bad, it’s just that with a bathtub I can also sit in lavender and eucalyptus salts.

I’m grateful to still have a garden. David is the gardener, I’m just the enjoyer. I’m going to have to put some lavender out for me, because I’ve talked many times about talking to the bees. It’s real. I don’t mean that they can hear me, necessarily, but that it does make you feel better to talk to them.

I’m grateful for DC. There are limitless possibilities for beauty here. There’s kayaking, biking, hiking, sailing- basically everything I could do in Portland is also right here. The two cities mirror each other in lots of ways when it comes to layout. That’s because people in DC do not think of Arlington as the same city, but if you look at it from the sky, it looks the same as Portland being divided by the river north to south and Burnside east to west. We are a bridge city, and I can’t wait for Bryn to see it from the air. The only real difference is that when you land at National, there’s not a long airstrip parallel to the river. If the pilots at National can’t stop in time, they’ll fall into the Potomac.

Seem to remember something about that in the news when I was a child.

Zac says he has never met a person that loves this area as much as I do. Zac has never left and come back for any real length of time. I wonder how it would look different to him if he’d lived here in his early 20’s and then traveled all over. I missed the Potomac because the Willamette is always cold. Always. I cannot remember a 4th of July in which I was not absolutely freezing my ass off. I once drove with a housemate up to Mt. Hood for lunch (we weren’t skiing that day) and it started as we were driving home. It was June 27th. DC is the beauty of a city with a river running through it that is also not 54F and raining 280 days a year. I love Portland a whole lot, and I would move back if I had to do so. It’s just not my first choice for a number of reasons, and the weather is at the top.

The only pro here would be getting to live in the same city as my best friend, because the position has been filled- end of story. That being said, occasional video calls and visits are fine. I do not have a need for Bryn to move here or me to move there. If so, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I just can’t think of a good reason all our time needs to be in person.

There are moments, of course. You don’t move to your partner’s or your best friend’s city because something is happening. You move there to be available if it does. That’s because even now when something is going on with Bryn, I can’t help but want to jump on a plane. Therefore, I’m not sure I’ve ever been more surprised than when she said she was jumping on a plane to get to me. It’s getting so exciting thinking about her visit, and it’s already the 25th. So, not many more sleeps. I’m grateful.

I’m grateful that both Bryn and Dave want to see SPY so it doesn’t feel like I’m strong-arming them into going there on my account. I live here. I can go any time I want (and do). We haven’t decided what we’re going to do all days, and I know they’ll probably also want time to themselves. We just need to talk about dates so that I can send Zac an invitation. I live and die by Google Calendar.

Zac’s acceptance is not mandatory, I just want him to know he’s included in the fun and he’s said that he does want to meet Bryn. So, now Zac will have met one friend I met in high school and one I met my freshman year of college. I’m glad I can bridge those gaps in time, and it makes me happy that Zac is going to learn just so many “Borum-isms.”

I am grateful for “Borum-isms.” It’s a specific cadence, and I will pick it up instantly because it’s not based on accent but rhythm. Bryn’s dad said something so incredibly profound that I’ve remembered it for over 20 years…. “the hardest part of teaching is remembering what it was like not to know.”

Bryn also reminds me of Arya Stark, and I don’t have to squint. But by that I mean she is take charge alpha dog all the time, which means that she is strong and firm, but also the most loving person in the room because the alpha’s job is to manage the whole pack by seeing their needs and helping them……. serving, not owning……. as opposed to whatever the fucktard morons think it is this week.

In some ways, I’m grateful for guys like that because it reminds me of Roy Wood, Jr. who said that he appreciated businesses with the confederate flag outside because then at least you had a tip it wasn’t going to go well for you. If someone is advertising on the internet that they want a “tradwife,” they probably mean that they want someone who will take all their bullying all the time and call it Biblical. Therefore, there’s no confederate flag, but there’s a big waving red one.

I’m grateful for the ability to see red flags and work on them. I see them in myself by rereading my work. Throwing words on a page and seeing what they look like once they’re outside you gives you enough separation to say “ok, that’s good…. but that’s bad.” Not the writing, the way I behaved.

I am working to find peace within myself, so don’t think I don’t notice when I’m angry and figure out a way to resolve it in myself. I think I have. My tone is completely different than it was a year ago. A lot of it has to do with Supergrover finally telling me what she really wanted. She wants peace and rest, I assume for both of us. Maybe one day our paths will cross again, but I doubt it. I require something she does not have, which created the initial attraction to each other in terms of energy. This is because she has something I don’t, which is pragmatism and logic. In some ways, our personalities are exactly alike. In others, they are diametrically opposed.

But leaning in through all of that made me who I am today, and I’m more confident in myself as a result, and grateful I ever got to meet her at all. I am so angry that what she chooses to highlight in our relationship is all the negativity and not our incredible potential for joy. Maybe she already has these things with everyone else but me, and it’s because I’m a shitty friend that I don’t have these things with her and I’m whistling Dixie because no one else ever has a problem……. I would tell her the same thing I told her when she said she was giving up Diet Coke. “Yeah. Uh huh. Keep talkin,’ sweetheart.” No, wait. It wasn’t about Diet Coke. That was another day. And now I’m laughing my ass off, but that joke is above your pay grade.

I think the thing that makes her spit nails is that I’m right. What I realized through my mistakes is that I didn’t have to sit in them just because I’d made a long time making them. That my history with her meant a lot, but not at the expense of my own health and happiness. It’s not because I wouldn’t have done it. It’s because I expected her to pull her weight. I would have done anything for her, but I realized that she didn’t feel that way about me, and it was stupid to think that, in retrospect. I did not feel that way every single day. I recognized her hurt and talked about what happened often, but she never took the bait and opened up to me so that I could better understand her. I thought, “I am going to end up giving her absolutely everything I have and she’s not going to notice in the slightest.” I’d listened to the whispers and the screams long enough.

I’ve said this before, but I did not get angry that she was also angry. I was furious because she refused to tell me anything that gave me any headway. All I could do was talk about myself when it was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I also didn’t always want to talk about her, as if I was mining her for information. I wanted an easy give and take, the strength and comfort of someone I’d known for a very long time.

There was every reason to stay except having a feeling of safety and security when we talked, because it was missing for a very long time. Any attempt to lighten the load was wrong, so I didn’t get tired of her. I got tired of how I felt about myself. She says I’m “a lot.” She has never really grasped that she’s a lot. That for everything she’d like to change about me, there’s something I’d like to change about her. What I cannot get her to see is “this is me. Take it or leave it.” And that’s what we’ve both been trying to say to each other for years, mostly at the top of our metaphorical lungs. I have found that it is much more fun to fly with a dragon than to be touched by its fire.

I’ve thought for many years that if I did ever see her face to face, that I would go mute. That she’s the only person I know where that would happen. It’s not that I am not interested in talking, it’s that I would be completely overwhelmed before the conversation began. But I know us. We both know how to make each other laugh. After a few minutes, it wouldn’t be weird. One of us would say something to break the tension, and the spell would be broken. This person that we’ve each built up in our heads will be gone, and it will seem like we’ve never met.

Here is something I also know. I will never know how much of my e-mails she’s taken in until I hear her talking around other people, because I know what I’ve written. I would know when she was quoting me and when she wasn’t, and I would never say a thing. It wouldn’t mean as much to her as it would to me.

I do know that if we were at the same party, one of two things would happen. The first is that I’d be telling a story and get a detail wrong, and from across the room I’d hear, “THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED. This is how it happened…..” The second would be her seeing someone else mistreating me because despite how she feels about me at any given moment I know she’d eat off their legs.

What I mean about getting a detail wrong is that all of the sudden she becomes very, very familiar with absolutely everything I’ve ever said when she is irritated. When she’s irritated, she quotes me back to me. How much she’s irked is inversely proportional to my joy at watching her quote me, because the more angry she is, the more likely she is to do it. I don’t do anything to irk her on purpose, I’m just saying that after a fight, when I feel calmer I go back and reread everything. I notice style, structure, all of it. Even when I’m devastated, I still find beauty in hearing from her at all because I rip her off mercilessly. Without my e-mail history, I am so much dumber, I promise you. I hope that in some ways she feels the same, because my dexterity helped her when her own words failed her. It’s something I hope she knows, really- that wherever she is in the world, my heart is with her. That’s because everywhere I go, her heart is with me.

So, even if she was trying to avoid me at a party, she’d never make it. We don’t have any mutual friends so far, and I’m not interested in making them…. mostly to protect the innocent.

I also know that no matter what, as long as I don’t start going with the crowd, she’ll still be in my audience. I know that when she told me that Dooce sucked now and she wasn’t going to read anymore and I told her it was her job to tell me when I should retire because she could just re-send that e-mail.

Come to think of it, that’s what would happen at a party. She’d hear me use a joke or two I’ve told in front of her and then we’d be picking up the end of each other’s sentences because we’ve both heard them before.

We could also have a lot of inside jokes that other people wouldn’t get, but we’d be falling out. For instance, me being the president of Overthinker’s Anonymous not because I am smarter, but because president is a public-facing office.

I think part of me hoped she would join Lanagan Media Group, because she would be great at both writing and podcasting if she had the bandwidth. She told me that she was always looking for what to do in her next career, and I think part of me hoped she would say “writer,” but I didn’t push. I got her stuff to help her in her own direction. She’s talked about writing before, but in a faraway sort of way. The bits of her story I’ve gotten to write because our lives overlapped are unique and beautiful. I know she thought it was unique. One out of two ain’t bad.

I feel like the way autism logic works, people think you’re much more negative than you mean to be because neurotypical brains are used to hearing things in a certain way. There are patterns to neurotypical speech that contain social cues. Autistic people can imitate them, but they cannot understand them. However, not being able to pick up social cues is only one of the criteria for autism. You do not have to have every single one to “prove” you’re autistic. For me, it’s a mixed bag. I do not recognize social cues in a person based on what they are thinking, but from the millions of faces I’ve seen before that looked exactly like that when X…… or when my parents described people’s emotions to me without meaning to…… I started understanding speech very, very early. Therefore, I have overheard things and ruminated on them for years before I understood them. But it’s because I’ve ruminated that I have accurate heuristics for the most part.

It’s easier to social mask when you’re hearing phone calls regarding pastoral care, because if you’re the pastor’s kid, you’re learning how to talk to people while they’re upset…… and mostly at each other. For instance, people who need marriage counseling, etc. But of course there’s a lot of people angry with you, too. Mostly over the things you’ve said.

Being a creative is being a creative. Preaching and writing are two separate skills, but they are two ways of expressing the same ideas. With me, it’s readers who don’t come back. For pastors, it’s church members who inexplicably disappear. Therefore, I am used to an ebb and flow in size and don’t get wigged about stats. I check them, but I don’t focus on them. The only stat I really like is how many flags I got that day. I like how far my site goes. This week, the leaderboard has been Africa- hello to South Africa and Ghana.

OH! South Africa!

Speaking of which, I started watching this YouTube channel called “Flipping Johannesburg,” and it’s incredible. It’s tempting to move to South Africa in some ways because land and resources are so cheap. I could build my own house or purchase one in disrepair so that I could have more land for cheap and more room to overhaul. The last house I watched on “FJ” was 800,00R, which is about $40,000. It was a U-shape with everything from a garage to staff quarters to a huge pool in the middle. I am certain that it took a lot of work to get it where it is today, and also a lot more Rand. Because of this, I am grateful that when I cannot go to South Africa, Flipping Johannesburg brings it to me.

And finally, I am grateful for Zac. He and Oliver, who is a dog, have made me feel more at home. It’s so much fun to have two hiking buddies. It’s nice to have someone to hold onto when I walk. It’s exciting to see him when his car (Antimony) comes over the hill to the Kiss and Ride. Yes, that’s really what they call the place where you pick up and drop off.

If he gets there first, he’ll park. If I get there first, he barely has to slow down and I’m on his way home, anyway. It makes me feel good that he’s relatively close to the Metro so it’s not a big imposition to drive me around. He also knows that all he has to do is say “I’m busy” and I’ll Uber. He does it just to be sweet to me and I appreciate little things. Like, how it is problem to worry how I’ll get around? It was Sam’s whole deal, too, except that Zac (for some disastrous reason) thinks that I am a fully functioning adult and doesn’t have an issue with saying “God, I’m slammed. Meet me at my house.” Therefore, Sam never got to see that I’m a perfectly capable adult. She drove me around and sulked about it because she offered and then regretted it. So, of course the easy thing to do would be to stop offering to drive me around so that I don’t have the choice to say yes or no. Because I can feel energy very well and if you resent that you have to come get me, I’ll know it. I feel it like a scar on my skin.

I would only need a car if I moved from the DMV metro area and out into Virginia or to the eastern shore. With a combination of bus, train, and/or Uber I can get anywhere. I just need a little bit more notice. This is great because if you call me and say you want to do something short notice, I probably won’t want to do it, anyway. I am bad at transitions and like to have my calendar planned out in advance.

Therefore, I am limited to staying in the city because I don’t want to lose excellent transit without a car payment and insurance. A car is just another place for me to let stuff accumulate. I’m not sure I used my car for much more than a high speed crap wagon.

“High Speed Crap Wagon” is my new band name.

I’m grateful.

In Which I Just Wander Around, As Per My Normal

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I got a new haircut today. I’ll probably end up posting a photo because I’m not actually sure that many of you know what I look like. I was growing my hair out, and it looked great. However, it was a sensory nightmare on my ears and neck. I’ll probably not grow it out again, because I have learned absolutely the hard way that getting it shaped once in a while is not the answer. Like, not military short. You’ll see. Right now I’m writing on a coding notepad, so you’ll have to wait until I post this in the JetPack app and hope I’ve remembered. I’m not so good at the remembering, but I will certainly try.

I also ordered a few things for my room, like two prong to three prong adapters (the house is old), and some lamps because the space has great windows and lots of shade. Therefore, when I want it bright in here, I have to provide my own lights. One of them is a shelf where I can store “The Doggy Lama,” a small statue I’ve got of a dog in Buddha robes. I’ve also got a few other things I’d like to display, but I don’t know the measurements on the shelf. If it’s really small, I can display one of my autographed Henri Nouwen books. If it’s a little larger, I can display something by Team Mendez and “The Unexpected Spy” by Traci Walder. I have a ton more intelligence books on my Kindle, and I only keep hardbacks that are autographed. Everybody wants thirty bookshelves until moving day. Choose wisely. Normalize making the number of books in your Kindle library your status symbol instead of breaking your back trying to move a library. Trust me on this one. I do not have many paper books at all, and that’s by design.

I’ve been through two house fires so far, so it’s really important to me to be able to buy another electronic device and just re-download my books. I bought a copy of “Argo” on Amazon for the same reason. I also bought a copy of the miniseries “Hillary” off PBS……. right before they started offering it for free. I should also mention that this miniseries is not about Hillary Clinton. It’s about Edmund Hillary. It is very, very cool and if PBS got my money, no worries. I like them.

The last thing I bought was some drinks, because I’m trying to get out of the habit of drinking soda (and have been for years). I did get some mixins with caffeine, but also a ton without so that I don’t drink caffeine all day long. I’m kind of that way with caffeine, anyway. If I get enough sleep, I only need what my friend John calls a “maintenance dose.” For me, this is a cup of coffee or two cups of black tea with milk. Two cups of Stash English Breakfast is pushing it, but I don’t care. We all have our vices. 😉

So far, it’s really working out in my new house. Colin is endearing and so is Jack. He sleeps with me, even during the day. Like Oliver (who is a dog), he just likes to be near me when I’m writing. I’m also his official carer because I’m getting such a deep discount on rent. I figure walking a dog every day is worth $400/month. It’s very, very nice only sharing a house with one other person, because Colin is also an introvert. Therefore, I don’t hear him talking, listening to loud music, etc. It’s perfect, because neither do I. If I want to watch something, I have great headphones. Sensory deprivation has been wonderful for my mindset, because nothing was wrong with the other house, it was just louder than it is here.

I did get a fan, though. It’s not expensive, it’s just necessary because there’s no ceiling fan in this room and Zac said that if we tried to install one, it might open a hornet’s nest in terms of the ancient wiring. So, I improvised and got what is essentially a swamp cooler. It functions normally, but you can put water in it.

Zac’s housewarming gift was the beginning of a bar. There’s some Amaro, Wild Turkey, cocktail cherries, two kinds of bitters (because he knows I like them in soda water), and I think also some vermouth…. but that might just be something he left here. I can’t think of a reason to buy more alcohol than I already have, because I drink so rarely that it’s not like having the same cocktail over and over will be boring. The cocktail cherries are especially good.

In fact, I might just save it for drill weekends, because I’d like to have something on hand for Zac and I’m more interested in soda/water anyway. Oh, and Bryn and Dave will be here in May. Considering the size of the bottles Zac bought, I’ll definitely be able to give them some of whatever they want. 😉 Except the cocktail cherries. I’m betting those will go fast.

My dad’s housewarming gift was a sherpa blanket and a box of snacks which I am happily sharing with Colin. There’s all kinds of things, from Airheads and Laffy Taffy to Pirate’s Booty and Cheez-Its. That will be gone almost as quickly as the cherries.

Eventually, I’d like to get a small television to put above the layette closet. It just can’t be too big, because the wall curves up toward the ceiling. I just need a stud finder, and if I don’t say I’ve already found him, I have failed at the most standard dad joke of all time.

For those just joining us, he’s my boyfriend Zac. Zac is owner of Oliver, who is a dog. What’s really funny is that because I always say “Oliver, who is a dog” on my web site, it’s entered Zac’s lexicon as well…. whether he’s writing an e-mail or speaking.

It’s an antidote to the darker grey sides of life to be able to laugh together as hard as we do:

Leslie: I need to talk to a queer man about lighting.
Zac: I’m not that kind of queer man.
Leslie: I didn’t think you were, I just thought you might have access to one.
Zac: Well, I probably do. Besides, you’re the worst lesbian ever. You didn’t even get a U-haul.

Now do you see why it’s different when bisexual people date bisexual people instead of straight? Same cultural references. I have never been interested in a man who was also a “Friend of Dorothy,” and he’s probably even old enough to know what that means. 😉

He’s just become so dear to me in the smallest of ways, because he’s the type of person that likes to sit in his backyard with his dog and so am I. He says he’ll take me to do anything I want to do, he’s just not very good at planning. So, find a thing and we’ll go. Guess what I don’t do? Ever find a thing that’s worth leaving Oliver.

I was also very touched when Zac showed me a picture of the Easter eggs that one of his other partners had made. There were the names of all the partners on the eggs, and I was so touched she thought of me that I cried.

I’ve also cried a lot for Zac. He really opens up to me, and given what he’s been through, we don’t exactly have the lightest of conversations. It affects me, but in no universe do I want him to stop thinking of me as his safe space. I just don’t want him to think that his stories don’t matter, that I am not holding them in my heart and wishing the best for him. It’s not about trying to own him. I’ll never do that (or have the ability, as it should be). When I think of Zac, I don’t think of him like my fountain pen or any possession. I possess him the way I would say “my neighborhood” or “my coffee house.” I do not require or desire his complete and total attention. I do not need to be smother-mothered. I do not need to have a violently jealous partner. Too many people do.

I just tend to explain because there’s so much wreckage around the way society talks about polyamory…. as if it’s different than people who are in affairs having multiple partners and their partner doesn’t know it. It is different, because it’s totally open and honest.

But let’s be clear:

A lot of the people who condemn polyamory in public are devastating their husbands and wives with their affairs, possibly multiple. It doesn’t show that they care about their partner’s emotional well-being or sexual health. You will absolutely bring about devastation and think you’re better than me (or any other poly person). You’re not superior. You’re just an asshole who hopefully is only temporarily not being caught, because you are wasting your partner’s time if they’re mono.

I would never have suggested to a partner that we have an open relationship. It was easy to start an open relationship because I wasn’t seeing anyone. I never would have explored dating more than one person at a time if it meant saying to someone that I wasn’t happy with monogamy and we should change our relationship to reflect that. The relationship hardly ever survives, because the partner who didn’t say they wanted poly either feels pressure to say yes or devastated that they have to say no, because once a person decides that they’re poly, it’s not likely that they’ll ever agree to monogamy again. So, announcing that you’re poly generally destroys everything. So many people use it as a stop gap measure to try and stay together before completely giving up. In my experience, that has never worked.

And besides, I don’t have more than one partner, and I’m not looking. I just think that I’m wired for poly not because I have to date more than one person to be happy, but because it doesn’t bother me to let my partner be whomever he wants to be because why do I get to control what he does? He was up front and honest with me about what I could expect from hom, and it was completely acceptable to me….. because not only do I not care, I don’t have time to start. My life does not need to be taken over by worrying where Zac is every moment of every day.

There’s a joke in the poly community that I’ve been laughing about for like a year. It’s “polyamory is just three introverts passing around their extrovert so they can read their books in peace.” The other truism in marriages is that men ask for open relationships and the marriage falls apart when they see that they are not marketable……. but their wives are. All of the sudden things don’t look so hot when you’re the one that wanted new experiences, and so far that experience has been watching your wife come home from something fabulous while you’re always left on read.

That’s rough, buddy.

Honestly, it’s reclaiming the matriarchy, and it’s fucking beautiful. Then, you watch them try to crawl back on their knees to shut the relationship back down because they didn’t know Cindy Crawford didn’t want their dumb ass.

Then, the joke’s on them, because all of the sudden these women are having fun and they don’t want to go back to feeling unappreciated and undervalued. After all, it was their husbands who said they weren’t enough, right?

Or, the husband begs the wife to shut things down. She does. He doesn’t. It is always a double standard, like men saying their wives can only date other women because that’s not threatening. It happens so often it’s called the “one dick policy.” If your male partner does this to you, that’s not what poly even is. You love who you love…. within reason. One partner can veto another before they start dating, but for this to be healthy, it’s not saying a person is off limits, but a group like mutual friends or the other’s work colleagues, etc. Just common sense not to make your partners’ lives more difficult than it already is.

The one reason I say I’m poly even though I don’t have any other romantic partners is that Zac is friends with me on Facebook. Therefore, my friends see pictures of him with other people and it looks like he’s clearly on a date. That’s because he is, and I do not want anyone’s guff about what a shitty boyfriend Zac is because he’s running around on me. You know, if he was running around on me and we were also friends on Facebook, you’d think I would have broken up with him by now. 😉

I would be more upset if Zac watched an episode of “Slow Horses” without me. That is clearly “sleep on the couch” behavior. We’ve both been good, though. I joked with him that it was easier to wait than it was to pretend I hadn’t watched it. 😉 If you have Apple TV+, don’t sleep on it.

Speaking of Apple TV+, I also really love “For All Mankind” and “Acapulco.”

Anyway, the point is quality over quantity. When we’re together, we block out the rest of the world. We just don’t spend all day, every day together and I think that’s healthy. It’s basically the only way I haven’t gotten myself into a relationship that got too serious, too fast. It’s nice to stay in the dating stage permanently, because I’m finding out that I have less time to spend with partners than I want, anyway. This is not to say that Zac’s opinion doesn’t matter. If he wants more tme with me, it’s not like we can’t discuss it. I’m just saying that I am not on a relationship escalator and I like it. I don’t have to say things like “what are we?” Well, I do, but only in terms of prioritizing time together, not whether or not we’re solid. Not my words, but important…. a relationship elevator, not an escalator.

However, if I do meet someone else, I also want them to be wired for poly because Zac and I have been together long enough that I don’t want another person to try and control my time, either. This is because I do not want one person to be completely dependent on me for all their emotional needs and vice versa. Even if you are monogamous, you will never get everything you need from your partner only.

But don’t worry. If you don’t make time for your friends, they’ll go away. Cocooning destroys relationships, because when they end, you look up and you don’t actually have any friends you’ve talked to recently. Your entire world walks out the door and you have to rebuild your emotional support system from scratch.

It’s not that I’m against monogamy. Obviously. I’m monogamous right now. It’s that I like the fact that Zac can’t and won’t ever tell me who to date, what to do, what to think, what to wear, etc. If he doesn’t like any of these things, he doesn’t have to. If I have multiple relationships, my job to be a good hinge and recognize everyone’s discomfort, because in those instances, it’s 100% because I wasn’t a good communicator.

When you start learning about polyamory, you start learning about communication. Being partners with multiple people isn’t for sissies. In order to open up to multiple people, you have to be stronger at communication than you do when you’re monogamous. You have to be proactive so that problems don’t come up in the future. Because you’re learning about communication, you improve all your relationships overall. Your friends & family reap the benefits of you learning how to be open, because if you don’t, you’re going to wreck more relationships than just the one.

I would also never interrupt a date with one partner to go and rescue another unless it was an emergency, and even then we both would rush in, because I’m not dropping you at home if it’s an emergency. None of Zac’s partners would have a problem with this, and I need it to be the same way with mine. I do not need perfect harmony. I need basic respect and kindness. Even now, it’s not perfect. We all have our limits and Zac manages them well. However, because everyone knows when Zac is available to them, it’s not like there’s any bad blood. We’re just not mutual friends. We do get together for all call parties at Zac’s house, but laughitng together at a party a few times a year does not a mutual friend make.

You also don’t stop feeling jealous. It’s just that now, it’s your responsibility to find out why you’re jealous and be able to pinpoint what would fix it. If you can’t articulate those things, boundaries are unclear and everything falls like a house of cards. We have so many checks and balances, though, because Zac’s house is neutral ground. None of his partners live with him, which solves a lot in and of itself.

There’s a lot of checking the story you’re telling yourself and making sure it lines up with what your partner’s story is as well. Silence is every bit as detrimental as fighting, because if you don’t know what someone is thinking, you’re probably thinking the worst. And, the longer the silence goes on, the more the stories you’re telling yourselves differ.

I love that Zac is part of my story now, and that he’s the type of partner that doesn’t ask for the whole book.

Here’s another bright spot. I remembered the picture.

The Importance of Being Earnest

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday, I started an entry about the whole move. I didn’t finish it before midnight, so I was going to finish today. Then, I decided I just wanted to start fresh this morning. I got an amazing night’s sleep, something I desperately needed. I will also be taking a bath in eucalyptus at some point. I’m not miserable, I’m just not young enough not to hurt after a move.

Although technically, I did all the packing. Zac moved. By the time he got to my house, I was completely toast because I’d stayed up all night trying to get everything ready. By the time Zac arrived, all we had to do was throw the totes in the back of the car. However, they were a bit too heavy for me while I was exhausted. So, Zac wins the award for being such a thoughtful person and taking over so I didn’t have to bust ass again.

What happened is that I was trying to fold my futon into a couch, and the mattress was upside down and backwards to be able to do that. There’s a special hinging system in the mattress so that one part of it has to be on the seat panel. When I flipped it over to the mattress side, I wrestled it all by myself and didn’t see the “this side down” tag to avoid this problem. So, on Friday night I turned my legs and arms black and blue trying to make more space in the room for sweeping, etc.

The futon and I fought. It’s not easy to admit when you lose to an inanimate object. However, in the end, I did get it done. It was a victory after all the sweat and bruises. So, again, I was glad that Zac could see I was wrecked from lack of sleep and exertion. I honestly believe that the pain is not all due to age. I really fucked myself up, but what other choice to you have in those moments? Where the only answer is “figure it out,” and the problem brings you to tears. So you cry and do it, anyway.

When we were finished with moving, we decided to watch Slow Horses and order pizza. Then, after we’d eaten, Zac pulled out a small box of cannoli, a delightful surprise. He’s been my rock through all of this, and I know for certain that if he’d had the bandwidth, I wouldn’t have been packing alone, either. That’s because it’s a huge give and take. We both get demand avoidance, meltdown, and need to call each other because neurodivergence, what the fuck?

It is a misnomer that autistic people know exponentially more about our disorders than neurotypical people, because we have the lived experience. This ain’t necessarily so, because data is not lived experience. We are as confused and mystified by our behavior as anyone else around us. That’s because I’m self aware enough to know when I’ve hit a wall, leaving my my mind divided in half, doing odd things and trying to figure out why.

Is it that I’m an INFJ and naturally introverted? Is it meltdown, burnout, demand avoidance, anxiety, depression, hypomania, CPTSD, etc.? Those are a lot of heuristics to consider, so managing myself in terms of patient care doesn’t always go so well.

As I was telling Bryn the other day, “when you treat yourself as if you’re the best doctor you’ve got, you probably need a second opinion.”

I need more psychological support than I’m getting, because I need an autism specialist- both for working out problems and the process of creating values and visions.

I am always about “values and visioning,” because that’s language from the church in terms of creating a mission statement. It works personally as well as it does in groups. Therapists aren’t just there to help you overcome your problems. They also help you when you’re stuck career-wise and don’t know where to go from here. Mostly, that involves talking to yourself until you figure out that you have always had your own answers, you just need to be guided to them.

If it helps, I think of my monologue here as therapy, so maybe you can think of your therapist as your raw blog entries. You’re just saying them out loud to the one person who actually knows what to do to help you emotionally suit up for a healthier future.

“Half this game is 90% mental.” -Yogi Berra

In terms of finding that for myself, what I have learned is that being on my own for so long has made it where the bare minimum effort on Zac’s part looks enormous to me. Just the fact that he does things like pick up income due to our income disparity is huge. This is because it says “I want to do this thing with you and I enjoy your company so much that I would rather pay for you to be there with me than worry you’re not going to be able to swing it on your own.” It doesn’t feel like chivalry, but…. not going to lie…… yes, it does. He just only sometimes feels that way. Most of the time, it’s just that he recognizes his own white male privilege. It’s one of the best conversations I’ve ever had in my life, because it was so comforting to see that he wants his only goal in life to make his world better. This doesn’t just extend to me. It extends globally.

Zac’s small kindnesses are so endearing, because it’s not about all the chivalry. It’s remembering things I say and respecting my words as equal to his own. I have not known many men like this, because most of the men I’ve known who date women think their opinion is superior because they’re the provider (generally). When women become the provider, men often get jealous enough to derail their careers. I remember one instance on reddit in which a woman was making bank in her field because it was so incredibly niche and had a lot of sensitive information. He interviewed for a job at one of her competitors and she had to divorce him immediately because he forced her hand. It looked too bad in her niche field to even date a competitor, and this woman had been married a long time. She told him all of this before the interview, and he did it anyway.

I know intimately that I will never have any of those issues.

I have also learned, and I think I’ve written about this before at some point, that it surprised me how little difference there is between dating a man and a woman when both parties are queer. Dating a straight person generally leads to keeping them insecure and anxious that you’re going to leave them for the same sex. There’s still such a cultural stigma on homosexuality that two things are running concurrently. Jealousy and homophobia are best friends when you want the worst possible outcome. On the flip side, gay people think of you dating the opposite sex as betrayal. Frankly, I understand and respect this outlook, because it seems like we’re watching you embrace the thing that oppresses us. There is also no world in which gay people don’t treat bi people like they’re “not queer enough.”

I will give you an example. I surf dating apps just to see who’s out there, and I am astounded by the number of lesbians who have on their profiles “no men, no bisexuals.” This basically comes across to me as “Irish need not apply.” No one ever thinks of bisexual couples who are in the system have the best ability to change it. Since we’re more accepted, we have a bigger platform. I think it’s shitty to use heterosexuality as a shield, but I don’t think it’s wrong for me to date men, or treat other women like trash because they have. It’s really hard for me, because that attitude is friendly fire. I need gay people to hear that in 7.1 Surround Sound, and the bisexual community is over it a “fuck you” amount. Straight people who have this constant insecurity that we’re going to leave them for gay people, gay people have this constant insecurity that we’re going to leave them for the enemy.

🎶🎶 One of these things is not like the other.……… 🎶🎶

I get it. I really do. I don’t have to agree with you, because that’s not my problem to solve for you. Bisexuality has nothing to do with cheating. Cheating is cheating. Bisexuality has nothing to do with polyamory. You’re either wired for multiple partners or you aren’t. They are two separate mindsets/skills. Therefore, that does not have anything to do with sexual orientation, like we’ll die if we don’t have both.

All bisexual people are saying is that their partner’s equipment is a non-issue, it’s not a barrier to a romantic relationship. They are NOT saying “I’m incapable of marriage.” Whether they are or they aren’t is a separate conclusion from attraction.

However, with Zac I don’t feel invisible, and that’s what happens to bisexual people in heterosexual relationships. We both look queer as a three dollar bill, so we don’t exactly exude heterosexual privilege when we’re out and about. I realized that dating a bisexual man was not losing my connection to the queer community with my partner. That it’s important to share whether you’re in a heterosexual relationship or not, because we’re on equal footing when it comes to being oppressed by the system. It’s amazing how often queer cancels out white in a racist theocracy, theocracy being the key word here.

I am tired of the Bible being confused with the Constitution. It’s gone on long enough. I’m tired of atheist hate of Christians because we deserve their hate so much….. In America, Christ’s actual messages have been mangled into a religion he could not support.

If you dare to judge me, you are a Roman, not a Jew. Period.

That’s because Jesus was on the side of the oppressed. American Christianity would make him vomit. It’s tinged with racism because slave masters would use Bible verses to keep their slaves in line and justify their monstrous behavior………..

Not counting on the fact that the slaves would empathize more with the minority who was beaten and killed just like them. That it was religion that gave them enough courage to stand up and fight for freedom. If you are straight, white, male, and cisgender, you don’t see with striking clarity the horror of the situation……….

That Jesus was under the exact same constraints that Americans are now. It’s just that the conservatives weren’t Republicans and Democrats, but Pharisees and Sadducees. Same software, different case. Therefore, white supremacists do not see the irony in being the people who oppress others in his name, repeating the cycle for 2,000 years. Conservative evangelical faith does not see the liberation in the story….. sometimes through thoughtlessness, sometimes through malice. The thoughtlessness is because people who aren’t oppressed don’t need liberation theology. They don’t need to feel inspiration from the fact that a minority was murdered by the state.

Not only that, he wasn’t murdered for actions, he was murdered for ideas. He was murdered by a government who didn’t want the people to think.

“It’s people like you what cause unrest.”

So, when you think about it that way, if you are a Christian policeman with racist beliefs, you’re not actually being a Christian. You’re being a Roman.

You’re not the people for whom your sins were forgiven lightly. That’s because I’m betting it’s easier to forgive the whole world as an abstract concept than it is to forgive the people who are actively in the process of murdering you when you did it.

You are as worthy of redemption as everyone else, because grace and mercy are free of charge. But the more you exclude people, the more you separate yourself from the Jew you claim to adore while mangling his words into everything he didn’t say.

Where in the Bible do you find that Jesus would have accepted the behavior of people like Donald Trump? That is the real mystery of your faith, because your blinders keep you from seeing it. Your words and Jesus’s actions don’t line up, so how dare you think writing your own headcanon and retconning everything to support the crazy idea that Jesus would support war and greed, things like that is everything wrong with white church.

You don’t see the hypocrisy. You don’t see the discomfort you create, even in your regular followers because your services are so fear-based. Why do people have to say they’re a “recovering Christian” at all? Do you think that Jesus would ever want people to go through recovering from trauma given to them in his name?

It is the weirdest transformation in history.

However, a lie can get around the world six times before truth can put on pants.

I am trying to find the truth in it all….. wading through the bullshit of exclusionary Christianity that harms people all over the world and trying to decide what’s worth keeping. My biggest gripe is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so when most Americans think of Christians, they think of Evangelicals. My reputation proceeds me in the absolute worst of ways.

This is problematic because atheists think that all Christians go to some sort of fucked up Bible college and are fed all these bullshit ideas. They don’t think of Harvard, Yale, or Oxford Divinity School first. To them, The Archbishop of Canterbury and Joel Osteen have the same amount of education.

I know most of you know this, but for the record, I’m going to bet the Archbishop has more.

Most people don’t know this, but the former Archbishop, Rowan Williams, was really good friends with Christopher Hitchens. They have some marvelous debates on YouTube if you’re interested.

I think this is a good point because people like Williams are being left out of the conversation. That Christians are intelligent, but there is a war between people who interpret the Bible and people who take it literally. Unfortunately, the people who take it literally, as if the pen was actually in God’s hand, have entwined themselves with the Republican Party and are the loudest idiots in the room.

When people think of Christians, their brains don’t jump to Martin Luther King Jr. and Raphael Warnock. They don’t think of William Barber and Bernice King.

They don’t see liberation theology because they don’t need it.

Zac is an atheist, and he’s the kindest Christian I ever met in terms of showing actual Christlike behavior.

If an Atheist is a better Christian than you, that’s the point at which you need to decide which God you actually serve. Are you tapping into the universe, or trying to control it?

Are you a believer, or are you Pilate, washing your hands of the whole thing because hey.

He’s just a Jew.

And that is the importance of being earnest with ourselves about the Republican Party. We need to decide when we’re going to stop following the Sanhedrin and state that murdered him, or admit it’s been a good run..

The choice is yours.

Every Day Blogging

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It’s starting to stress me out that you can’t answer a blog prompt against, because I don’t really have a topic to start from each morning. Today wouldn’t have been a good one, anyway, because I don’t have any more morning/night rituals now than I did the first time around. The point still stands, though, that it was night to have a jumping off point and a tag everyone starts with every day, #dailyprompt and #dailyprompt-x, the number advancing every day. Well, since I have both tags for all of the prompts from last year, that’s why they already look like they’ve been answered this year. I’m sorry I’m on about this, it was just the main thing that kept me from being lazy and not posting something that day.

But yesterday wasn’t about laziness. I skipped yesterday because I was in burnout mode. I was more overstimulated than I’d been in a long time, because my schedule was all messed up. I needed time to recover and I took it. I slept, mostly. I am not as young as I continue to think I am.

If I have learned nothing from going to psychiatrists and psychologists over the years, it’s that medicine and therapy absolutely work and are valuable……… but so are sleep and sobriety. I don’t practice total abstinence from alcohol, because it’s okay to enjoy it once in a while. It’s just that if I am taking an antidepressant and drinking a depressant, I have not made any forward motion.

When I was in the restaurant business, I drank a lot more because that’s what we did after work. But, then after Dana got her DUI, we went to all these classes on medicine and alcohol (legally required for her, I just drove). It sent MY brain on fire. When I realized what was actually going on in my brain when I drank, I had a light bulb moment. It just didn’t feel like an every day sort of thing anymore.

Therefore, when I worked in a pub here in Silver Spring, I rarely drank. Occasionally I took them up on a beer, but they also had Maine Root Mexican Cola. That won nearly every night. It was a pub. None of the drinks we served had ice except for soda. With the choice of a room temperature beer or a cold soda with ice after a 12 hour shift on grill, it was a quick and easy decision. Give me the cold one.

I have shifted my focus into accommodating who I actually am instead of who everyone told me I was. Whoever I thought Leslie Lanagan was, I cannot say from before. I can only say that I saw the expectations in front of me and found all of them easy for a short period of time, and all of them untenable long term. I learned who my real friends were when I stopped social masking, and Doc was the first person who recognized it before I said it. “Do you think the authoritative part of yourself comes from you feeling more confident in confiding in me?” Yes, 100%. The more you allow me to be me without social masking, the more I want to talk to you. The more I want to open up to you.

I can only speak to the fact that the more I get to know myself, the more I learn how wrong I’ve been. Treating myself as perfectly mentally stable and perfectly physically able, just lazy and a drain on society has nearly killed me several times. I know that because I can only treat myself that way so long without realizing it’s not producing results.

Once I started being kind to myself, I could be softer, as well. That’s because I was living under everyone else’s expectations of what I should be able to do. I was not raised to be neurodivergent, and in some respects, not raised to even be fallible, either, because that is opening the kimono. The parish doesn’t get to live in the pastor’s house.

I didn’t “choose to air all of this out on my web site” re: Supergrover. I decided she wasn’t worthy of listening to my story anymore, because she’d told me she was tired of it. That did not mean there was no more story to tell. She just asked to stop listening to it. There’s so much context she’s missing, and what bothers me is that she told me that I’d aired some things she wanted to keep private, and in no way did I know any of that. When I started explaining, I went by the timeline of her e-mails, especially the ones where they said that her stories weren’t mine to carry anymore, that everyone already knew. She didn’t tell me any of it- no anger, no disappointment, no hurt, no anything. She just let it fester and wandered further from me. The thing I needed most was intimacy, but she didn’t want to give it to me. Not my call. It’s perfectly valid. But so is my hurt if that is her response. I am not saying that she did anything wrong. I am only saying that it is not her responsibility to have my reactions for me. If she wants distance, it’s just a different way of ending the game than I would have done it, but I get the same result and cannot be angry about that.

She says it’s a lot, that every letter is so dense. And at the same time, I don’t think she’d be as obsessed with reading my letters if they weren’t so deep and chewy. What brought us together has driven us apart.

Therefore, I went to my only other safe space in writing….. the part where it’s just me in my room, thinking to myself. I am writing these as letters to me in the future, which is why I cultivate this web site as what my friend Kristie called “my pensieve.” I am a really rare breed, I think….. someone who’s willing to let another person read their autistic mind in real time. I think it’s important, because generally, autistic people aren’t raised to be autistic. They know how their neurotypical adults handle the world, but they have no clue how an autistic person does it. And then add to that the large number of older women who are getting diagnosed now because it was entirely missed in their childhood due to having social masking beaten into them early. That social masking, those expectations, are what make an autistic person feel like an alien.

That’s because I am an aggressive taskmaster with myself, authoritative and stern without love because in addition to not giving myself empathy, I am a relentless perfectionist who doesn’t give a fuck about my feelings. I haven’t cared how bad I’ve made myself feel for not being perfect since I was born, because that’s how the outside world has treated me for years as well.

With autism/ADHD, you never “get it together.”

Answered

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m getting tired of the daily blog prompts saying I’ve already answered them, because I often have new ideas the second time the prompt comes around. Today, though, I’m glad I got nothin,’ because there’s been a change, and I really can’t tell you why. Magda decided that she didn’t want to move with me, and told Colin she wasn’t coming. I don’t know why. So, I was very scared that all of the sudden, I didn’t have a place to go, either, because I couldn’t afford to pay for both rooms all by myself. Colin said not to worry, that I could still move in, and my body relaxed. I think he hopes Magda will change her mind, but I have never seen it happen. I feel bad, that maybe we’ve done something to alienate her? But that’s impossible because neither one of us have had conversations since the last one we had together.

So, I have to stop worrying about all of that and just be glad that when my boyfriend arrives to be the muscle in the operation, I still have an address to point him.

That struck me as funny all of the sudden…… that if you never really thought you’d ever have a boyfriend, God laughs and you wind up with two. 😉 Two that know about each other, and aren’t threatened by each other………. very much like I wasn’t threatened by the idea of Michael for Supergrover even at the height of feeling absolutely waylaid by an arrow to my Achilles’ heel. We had two completely separate roles in her life, and I was incredibly far away. He was on the ground. It’s the same now. Daniel is incredibly far away. Zac is on the ground. Neither of us should expect the other to be monks for years on end, and that’s not what poly is, anyway. It’s not being able to divide love up between more people, but to love multiple people 100%. That gets tricky in terms of time, but not feelings.

I have never told Bryn that I loved her INSTEAD OF Supergrover (nor told Dana I loved her INSTEAD of Supergrover, or vice versa), so I wouldn’t do it to anyone else. Bryn doesn’t tell me she loves me INSTEAD OF Dave, and I’m glad because again, two completely separate roles in Bryn’s life. W

e’ve been through so much together, more than I’ve been through with either guy, she’s been through more than she’s been through with Dave. I just don’t care whether it’s a yellow string or a red one, if you’re connected to me, you’re important. My time is just as sacred for my close friends, and always will be.

It helps that The War Daniel is in the Navy, because since his classes are online that does open us up to him being able to visit on standby. As long as I have a way for him to watch wrestling on Wednesday nights (God help us all).

Colin has cable, but he’s interested in cutting the cord. I wish I still had my old computer. I’d have a media center set up for him within the week, because I already know how to cut the cord effectively. You can have everything, including a DVR, for the cost of a cheap computer. Well, I suppose the DVR also depends on how good the signal is from your antenna, but the point stands. I can also install Kodi (media center software) on my FireStick with a little bit of hackage.

And yet, all of that is a story for another day because for right now, it’s about how to fit all of my stuff into my new moving boxes. I want to pack everything except for the sheets/blankets and some clothes. Boxes stacked in here will be easier to keep clean and neat should we have visitors. The visitors are by appointment only, but I’d like to mitigate my ability to be me as much as possible.

No one was here to rescue me on this one. I had to do it all by myself. I had to reach out to people and tell them I was interested in looking. I had to be brave and make phone calls, which seems ridiculous and yet Gen Z just went, “oh my GOD, are you okay?” I ended up in a wonderful situation with more space than I thought I would get (at first, I’m sure someone will move in). The other thing is that I get to stay in my neighborhood, and it turns out that’s pretty important to me, too. I’m a Marylander now.

That may not always be the case, as I love Virginia, too. I just feel that it’s easier for me to own my space up here. I will never run into anyone I don’t want to see, and that covers a hell of a lot of ground. You cannot imagine how relieved I was to learn that there’s a Waffle House on my side of the river, as poorly as that trip turned out.

It is definitely time for a change, but not one so big that I meltdown and burnout in a cycle until I relearn my surroundings. I wanted to avoid all of it, and I think I’ve managed successfully…….. because did I mention that Colin lives two major stoplights from my current house?

Wrestling, though? WHAT WAS I THINKING?

Every Day Carry

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What are three objects you couldn’t live without?

I wear my CIA baseball cap most days. Zac knows this. First of all, it was a present from him. Second of all, it’s my comfort item in his absence. It’s a great baseball cap, too, but also it reminds me of him. We don’t get together that often, but I think of him all the time and vice versa. I love that he sends me pictures of himself every morning, pictures of Oliver (who is a dog), and random memes (mostly regarding making fun of religion or linux or both). All of those things are important, and yet not a sensory thing like a piece of clothing.

I wrap up in my Outlander plaid at night. Bryn knows this. It’s not branded, it’s just what I call it because Bryn sent me a Scottish plaid when we were both in the middle of inhaling the book series (I like reading, she likes audiobooks). It’s green and meant to remind me I’m loved- it does, and it has for many years because it was in the box of the first things Bryn sent me when I got here.

I like iced coffee better than hot, so I brew the coffee at night and pour it into a cup with ice in the morning. I got the cup when Supergrover sent me a large gift certificate and told me to have some fun on her. That was long ago, and it’s an every day carry.

Supergrover does not know this.

I was thinking about “choosing to air all this” afterward, and all that really made sense to me is that she was okay with step one, but forgot about steps two through ten. As in, if she started being aggressive in step one, then why would I think she would want to know steps two through 10?

It’s a weird dichotomy, because I think she really did want/need to hear the things I said after we parted, but because every conversation between us made me think she wasn’t interested, I picked up my toys and went home. I tried to take up as little room as I possibly could, because if I tried to emote, I was met with either “I’m too busy” or “you’re too needy.”

She thinks that all of this is her fault, that I have said all of this is her fault. Then, she copped to everything I said she did and apologized for it, then reamed me out for telling the world I was unhappy about her doing exactly what she was doing.

wtf kind of bullshit is that? 😉

So, when her response to me was as angry as I’d ever seen her, I met her with joy. When you get the gift that you’ve been asking for for SEVEN YEARS, you don’t complain about the wrapping. She emoted. She broke down and told me what was really going on. That’s what I wanted. If I had responded with more anger, it would have been moving the goalposts and saying her response wasn’t happy enough. She doesn’t need to be happy with me. She needs to tell me the truth.

But I want her to be happy with me. I just don’t want to be the only arbiter of our relationship. I need her to take up space by telling me how she’s feeling and not covering it up, running away from her emotions, making me do a lot of emotional guesswork that makes me set off land mines I never knew were there.

She’s never opened up about the tender places in her that I couldn’t see, that I really wanted to….. for instance, she said that she has had the chance, countless times, to stop what she was doing and respond. She didn’t, and takes responsibility for that. I could have been an asshole and said “how dare she?,” but the take home message was “I think about you all the time.”

If she’s willing to show up like she did the other day, she’s welcome every day. I don’t want to hide anymore. I don’t want to feel like a secret anymore. It doesn’t feel like a secret anymore, because when she gave me a clear picture, I could see for miles.

I told her it felt like she owned herself, and I loved her. None of this is all her fault. There was no preconceived plan, just fools rushing in. I’m just not the only fool, for very different reasons.

So, she may not have known that “her” Starbucks cup is the one I every day carry…….. because it’s just one of the things I would have told her if I thought she’d wanted to hear it.

That’s what this has all been about. When did we both just stop taking up space and trying not to offend each other?

It is, as she says, a story for another day.

Yesterday’s Prompt

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What bores you?

Now that I’ve had so many days posting in a row, I’ve missed a couple. One was due to two things. The first is that I was exhausted. The second is that it was Galentine’s Day, and I chose to spend my time focusing on my sister (that was 13 Feb). The second was yesterday, because the prompt was “what is your favorite drink?” Now, I could have written about Dr Pepper Zero YET AGAIN, but I include it in so many entries that I didn’t think it needed its own.

Except to say that if you go to Waco, Texas, you will find both the Dr Pepper Museum and The Fort House. My paternal grandmother is a Fort, and it’s the story of her family. I believe those two things are related, because I never saw my grandmother drink anything but Dr Pepper and occasionally, sweet tea. She was sure that it had medicinal properties, and who am I to disagree with my grandmother?

In terms of what bores me the rest of the time, it’s things like RTFM (reading the fucking manual) with software, because I’d rather just play around until I break something. I don’t like reading EULAs (end user license agreements) because I know for damn sure that Facebook, Windows, et al are going to do exactly what they said they wouldn’t do, they’ll just hide it in the background.

In terms of apps that are watching you for possible malice, I’d pick Tik Tok. It’s bad enough when my own government wants my information, much less China. I’m so terrified of the Chinese government that I don’t even want to go there. I know it’s beautiful, I know the people are nice, and I know I’d be thrown in jail with one blog entry or YouTube video, because I would use all my American freedoms to say whatever I liked, forgetting that I am not, in fact, in America.

I am sure that there are all sorts of tips and tricks for surviving a trip to China as an American, but I’m not interested. I’d rather go to a country where I’m already allowed to say what I want to say. So, basically, China bores me because I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything real about my trip until I was safely back home.

I’d rather go somewhere my writing is not threatening, which leaves out Russia, but I’d love to go to Ukraine when the war is over. I got a taste of it through watching “Servant of the People,” and so if it was possible, I’l like to meet President Zelenskyy as well. He’s such a great writer. I wouldn’t want to talk to him about politics, but about how he created his mom, dad, sister, and niece for the show, plus his cabinet. It’s such a funny sendup of all politicians, and you should watch it if you have Netflix. At least the first season is up (in Ukrainian with subtitles).

Foreign movies and TV used to bore me, but not now. I am one of those people that will sit there and scroll on my phone, losing the immersive experience of watching television- but you can’t do that with foreign movies and TV because you have to read the subtitles.

Speaking of foreign shows, I also love Mr. Brain from S. Korea and Osmosis from France. Mr. Brain is on Apple TV+, and Osmosis is also on Netflix.

Mr. Brain is a doctor that learns to transplant one person’s brain into another, but he starts with himself… building up….. so of course he eventually has human memories from other people. However, one of the funniest was when he crossed himself with a cat. I think that was because the cat saw something about a murder and he needed to see the cat’s view. There were….. side effects.

Osmosis is one of those classic sci-fi shows where someone has invented a scientific way for you to find your permanent love match. It just feels a little different from the French perspective- not so formulaic…… and boring. To be fair, I’ve watched all of Dr. Brain and all of Servant of the people, and I’m only on episode two of Osmosis. So, caveat emptor.

Finance bores me because I do not understand the first thing about money except “don’t spend it.” I could live on that principle for the rest of my life, because I say “bore,” but the reality is more complicated. Even reading a textbook or a web article on finance leads to autistic meltdown and burnout. So, I approach finance with the best of intentions and then slowly feel like my body is breaking down. The boring part is just looking up the articles that I need. Once I find what I’m looking for, the panic attack starts.

I do not think I could answer a question about a single thing regarding bank and finance because I get lost at simple terms like “amortization.” I have found that it is not a case of fear, necessarily. It is a case of my autism saying, “nope. We don’t do that.” Demand avoidance is real when your nerves feel like they’re catching on fire and you cannot function.

The fact that I ever thought I could be a good partner to anyone is frightening because I now realize that I had to lean on them far too much. I also don’t know what to do about that, except trying my best to get into a program for autistic people that helps me deal with meltdown and burnout appropriately. I am nowhere near the only person that shuts down when talking about complicated things. It’s just that for me, the complicated things are logical and the easy things are emotional.

I think that’s why I’m solidly on the polyamory train, because I do not want to be in the position of leaning on one person all the time. I am a lot. I know it. My partners/friends become bored/frustrated with me easily and need a break. The only person who doesn’t get a break from me is me, and I wish that was the case as much as they do.

It’s interesting being the only INFJ in my group of friends, because I come off as intense even when I don’t mean to be. To me, they are poignant questions that need to be asked….. but not necessarily questions to which I need answers. They do. I have started saying something important to Zac, because I do not want him to feel like I am prying into his life at all. I just want him to know that he’s loved and supported. So, I say things like, “rhetorical question that I don’t need you to answer, just chew on it.” I hope it’s working well, because I don’t want to ever put him on the spot, and if these were questions about me, then I would expect an answer. But they’re not. They’re things I’ve listened to that have happened at work, social functions, etc. Therefore, it’s okay to ask the question. It’s not okay to expect an answer when it’s not my bag.

I just want Zac to the best person he can be, and I know that in some ways I am helping. He was the one that told me that I inspired him to start writing every day. The cover picture on my author page is the chalkboard painted wall in his entry way, and his handwriting that says, “You Should Be Writing.”

He took it down, so I wrote “You Should Be Writing” the last time I was there. I would like to believe it stayed more than a day. 😛 TFW someone is calling you out…….. and that worked both ways, otherwise his handwriting wouldn’t be my cover photo.

I did experience a moment of success with demand avoidance. My dad told me he needed a file I’d created for him and when I checked my hard drive, it wasn’t there. So, I recreated it for him within the hour. This is all while I was battling a stomach bug, and it was no small thing to be able to transition from upchucking to sitting at my desktop with a trash can next to me. But I did it. A small victory.

When I think back on how bad I wanted to be Supergrover’s partner, it’s now embarrassing because I thought I was on top of the world in terms of being able to do the thing. As in, of course I could manage a partner, kids, a job, and the fast and furious pace of a suburban mom. To be fair, I would have gotten a lot more support from her kids than I would from her or Dana (in the past) and not because her kids are around. She may or may not be. But I would have supported her like Dana, and it wouldn’t have been enough. That’s because both of us were bad at ignoring things and not making lists. It’s not laziness, it’s a genuine disability if you’ve read any neurodivergent book ever.

I also think that I would have been stuck in the same repetitive pattern, because people who are cut off from their emotions aren’t generally cut off in one way. I can tell you the exact moment I realized it, seeing something posted on her social media. But I can’t be specific. I can only say that I’m so glad she’s straight…. JFC. I would have been in over my head from day one.

I think the difference is that she has worked with neurodivergent people in many different settings, so perhaps she would have caught my autism faster than I would have in person. And then it would have been off to the best doctors available because not only did I need help, so did she. When I want to be with a partner, I make the promise to keep myself strong for them. It is not their responsibility to “fix me.” She might have told me the doctors I needed, but after that, I’m on my own. I need to show whether I can fly under my own power.

The only reason she didn’t catch it in me first is that it’s hard to tell over e-mail. Basically, we couldn’t get to a place either of us liked because of the gap in communication.

I’m determined not to do that with Zac or anyone else in my future, because it has gotten me nothing in the past. It touches me to my core that he’s just as honest with me. He asked me if I would come and help clean his house because he was going through a thing I also go through. I got there and he was very apologetic, and I said, “Zac, if it was my house, would you be there?” Of course he would. I’ve just never asked.

So, not much bores me it seems. Humans are interesting, and an endless subject because there are so many of us.

And I hope that in laying out how I work, you see yourself here, too.

A Place for Us…. Somewhere, a Place for Us

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Write about your dream home.

I love musicals. I couldn’t resist.

My perfect house would have enough space for Zac and me to spread out when he’s there. It’s the one thing I don’t have. I’d like to be able to host him, but I also like that coming to his house is a completely different vibe than my house and it’s nice to get away from it once in a while. However, we don’t have to spread out much. Right now we’re both in his office playing on our computers. There’s a pork butt in the Instant Pot. We’re both looking forward to “Slow Horses.” I also got him my favorite Shiraz (Yellowtail- there’s more expensive, but not sure about “better”), a heart-shaped box of chocolates with a rainbow flag on it, and a card that’s going to take him a while to read…… because as I told him, I could probably write you something better than I could buy.

And that’s all I really have to say about that, because we had a prompt like this not long ago and I told the story of how I’d rather build my own relatively tiny house because I’ve watched hundreds of hours on YouTube on both construction and sustainability. I know for certain that I could get by on a Jackery and a cell phone. I know for sure that I could sound knowledgeable in front of a contractor or carpenter.

You’ve got to check out Bourbon Moth, Perkins Brothers, and foureyes furniture.

If money were no object, Perkins Brothers would build my house and the other guys would be responsible for all my furniture.

On that note, it’s “Slow Horses” time.

The Food Doesn’t Matter

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

What’s your favorite thing to cook?

Before we get started, I just wanted to tell you that I am willingly using my iPad today because oh my God. I refuse to code in anything but a monotype font. It has been 15 years since I’ve used anything but “Droid Sans Mono.” On my Android, I still do. That being said, when I dug into the app iOS app “Koder,” one of the recommended fonts was……. wait for it……… Helvetica. I’ll take a screenshot of the app so that you can see its ultimate superiority over Arial, the font that was so good Microsoft made a knock-off of their own…….. instead of buying the font from the actual artist. Seriously, fuck them. They did what people do to artists all the time. Although perhaps Steve Jobs had a non-compete with the artist so that Microsoft had to rip off Arial. I will be finding a documentary on YouTube shortly.

I absolutely loved the doc “Helvetica,” because it shows the artist, and just how many street signs are made with it in how many countries (it’s a lot). But, even still I had to justify switching from monospace. I had to sit there and justify it for a little bit. In the end, it was “you’re a writer…. you don’t code that much, anyway….. bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. I just love fonts an autistic amount. And now I’m sitting here looking at the way I’ve loved Macs since I was 18. I had a Mac SE in my room in high school, and it was my favorite computer ever because it’s the last one I had that didn’t connect to the Internet. I want a computer from 1990, Zac just bought a word processor and called it a day.

Word processors don’t have Helvetica. But maybe e-Bay has a Mac that old. On second thought, I’d rather have one of those old as shit Mac laptops, because even though they’re much heavier than a normal laptop, I’d rather write with the computer in my lap as opposed to my desk. My desk chair is crap and I don’t want to change it because nothing modern would match. In the end, I might give in because I really do like sitting at my desktop, I’ve just gotten used to lying in bed with my tablet and keyboard in my lap, because I’m 10 times more productive that way and both my tablets have everything I need to work and play.

One of my readers said that she felt anxious I responded to her in a blog entry. I did it so she wouldn’t be intimidated by the length of the reply, because it wasn’t personal at all. She said something that stuck with me, that she’d been married for decades and we had completely different outlooks on relationships. I thought that was so universal that it was a blog entry all on its own. That yes, people do have different outlooks on relationships because there are so many permutations of human behavior that nothing in this life is a binary.

She’s not wrong, and neither am I. And I’m pointing it out because of the stigma that comes with ethical non-monogamy. I like what Jada Pinkett said on the matter. “Will is his own man. He has to make choices that make it ok for him to look himself in the mirror.” She made the point that she doesn’t control his time, and that’s how I feel about Zac. I do not get to dictate what he does while he’s not with me. I’m just here to receive him, because he offers me so much solace even when we can’t be together all that often. He’s cooked for me, and of course it’s always fabulous. That’s my boyfriend cooking for me. I’ve talked to him many times about cooking for/with him, but he says that he’s just always had this outlook that you could for guests. I am so thankful he’s not impressed I’ve cooked professionally.

“Food is hospitality. When you reject someone’s food, you reject them.” -Anthony Bourdain

Which is why my favorite meal to cook is never about the food. The food doesn’t taste gorgeous because of something I did as a professional cook. It tastes better depending on who’s at the table. I don’t celebrate the people who aren’t here, I value the ones that show up. It’s taken a lifetime to learn, this not yearning for someone who isn’t here, because again, that goes back to 14 years old. I made people priorities when I was only an option, and could even see it and not give up.

I have deep and abiding abandonment issues from my emotional abuser, probably why I lived in Portland for so many years. I had to prove to myself that she wouldn’t abandon me, and found out when I got there that was not the case.

With Supergrover, I don’t know what would have happened if I’d kept my big mouth shut a lot of the time, but I do know that her hotheaded anger fed mine. My dopamine and adrenaline went through the roof when she snapped at me. I don’t react well to that, and neither does she. But I can count on one hand the number of times she’s apologized for her own words, because it’s so much more convenient to believe that I am the sole cause of everything. I have no doubt that she’s telling people that I’m the most toxic person she’s ever met, because she couldn’t take accountability for shit when it was emotional. I know she’d send a fully armed battalion to remind people of her love if she thought someone was hurting me. What she cannot do is take in that I feel the same way about her. We just don’t have the same love language, and I became fluent in hers- acts of service. Over time, she became less and less interested in mine, words of affirmation. I would tell her that I felt bad she called me a dickhead all the time, and then all of a sudden I was enormously impressive.

So, in a lot of ways, I feel that we could have fixed a lot with one night where she was my sous chef. She’s a very good chef. Horrible line cook….. which means that what I wanted was being able to tumble and roll in those roles.

This wouldn’t be appropriate for us because we’re not a couple, but it illustrates a point.

One of the things that therapists do in age gap relationships, because they often become a big damn problem, is to ask the older partner if they ever lay in the younger one’s lap. If the couple says no, then generally they’ll make them do it in the office. Over time, the older one views themselves as wiser because of course they are, but not about everything. The problem becomes the older half parenting the younger, making their relationship a strict power dynamic rather than one that’s fluid.

She couldn’t lay in my lap. That’s all on me, but that’s what we lost that made me push her away. I didn’t like feeling that my letters were making her feel guilty and not knowing it for weeks on end. I hated that she always relied on her own instincts to figure out what I was saying, and she was often wrong. I have no doubt that telling me she’s “read through many lines” means that she’s read through the wrong ones because she had no context and didn’t ask for clarity so that I could reassure her that I wasn’t attacking her. She assumed I was attacking her, so we never got back what we lost.

Here’s why it’s such a shame. I told her that I was French-trained, but that I’d had friends who were Japanese-trained and either works well. She said she didn’t know the difference, so I sent her two pictures of me holding a knife over a cutting board and wrote “French” and “Japanese” on them. She said she kind of uses a mix of the two, and one of the things I would have told her if we’d cooked together is “there is no such thing. You’re holding your knife wrong. Here, let me show you. “Spider on a mirror, Supergrover. Spider ona mirror.”

The. Food. Doesn’t. Matter.

P.S. Look upon my beautiful font.

Helvetica

Diving Into the Tech

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 6 Comments

Write about your first computer.

I think there has only been one time in my life that I shared a computer with someone. My dad and I had a desktop in our apartment after my parents’ divorced, but it was easy because we were never using it at the same time. Here’s the one thing that was really funny…. I was running late on a paper for English, and I knew I could bang it out easily and be on time for class. So, I ran out of school at like, 11:00 AM and flew home (it seemed).

Then, my dad walked in for lunch and was genuinely surprised to see me not at school. The cool thing was that he saw I was working and just left me to it. He knows me. We’ve met. We only work exactly the same way. The adrenaline of the moment makes us write better. I do not remember a time when either of us finished a sermon before 0200 on Sunday morning. He just said, “are you skipping a day?” I said, “no, I’m late on a paper. I’ll be back by 1:00.” And that was the end of that.

The reason I remember it so clearly is that I was under a lot of pressure. I wasn’t doing well in school except for Microcomputer Applications, English, and Creative Writing (where’s the lie?). Math and science have always eluded me except in seventh grade, when we had a “group project” and I turned all autistic on it, writing down everything the teacher said so that my notes and lab calculations were correct.

He took me aside and said, “I gave you a higher grade than everyone else because it was so obvious that you carried everyone else on your back.” For instance, I would say that Lindsay did marginally better than me in Con Law thanks to me, because she had a transcription of every class. And yet, those are the only two classes in which I was any good (Con Law and Life Science).

I went to the city-wide science fair twice, and I don’t remember who came up with the ideas, me or my dad, but it wasn’t like he did the work for me. I just took his idea and expanded it.

In seventh grade, it had something to do with how dyes are carcinogens. It takes a very, very, very, very long time, but both blue and red are toxic, making grape Kool-Aid one of the worst things you can drink all day, every day (I do it a little bit now that it’s sugar free).

In eighth grade, it was all about car safety, but I don’t remember exactly what it was about…. maybe seatbelts? I don’t know. By then, science was the bane of my existence and my dad helped drag the project out of me. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in doing work. I wasn’t interested as much in the subject, so my mind wasn’t completely taken over with facts…..

It wasn’t grape Kool-Aid. Let’s not get stupid.

It wasn’t until I was in 11th grade that there was even a class called “Microcomputer Applications.” Because I already had techie friends, I figured out that we were networked with the middle school Lindsay attended. So, my first order of business was to “hack into” Lindsay’s user account at her school and leave a letter for her in her home directory. “Hack into” is in quotes because you had to know the person’s Social Security number. Yes, they were that stupid in the 90s. It was all new. This would have been 95-96, and I didn’t even have an e-mail address until the second half of my senior year (I gave up music altogether because I couldn’t graduate with an “Advanced Diploma” without moving my schedule around to accommodate MA and study hall.

Since my dad was at work, I had my own computer for the hour I was supposed to be in study hall, so basically I was the original “WFH.” I’d do homework a little bit at night, but mostly rushed it in study hall so I didn’t have to stay up until past midnight AND do a full load the next day.

The thing about my high school, and many others, is that teachers in your grade do not collaborate at all. They do not give a shit if they’re giving a high school kid six hours of homework a night while also expecting them to function during the day. Even if I started my homework after “Jeopardy!” at 1600 and “Animaniacs” at 1630, that still left me doing homework until midnight because I had to take breaks to eat, spend time with my family, and if I remembered, pee.

I also didn’t really have time for friends until late, because with my parents being divorced, I needed my own spending money. So, in addition to all that studying, I was a receptionist at SuperCuts. Sometimes Meagan (or Meagan and Tony) would come and pick me up from work and we’d go to Starbucks or Chili’s.

Back then, SBUX was new and basically the only bar for high schoolers. My first date ever with Meagan was that she picked me up for school and we went for a coffee run on the way. I am amused at myself in retrospect because I had never heard of a “Frappucino,” and I love being marketed to, so that’s what I wanted.

Meagan said, “are you sure? It’s December.” I didn’t pick up what she was saying because I didn’t know the word “frappe,” either. I’d never been north of the Mason-Dixon line (then), and she’s Canadian, not fluent in French but enough to have had a secret language from her kids until they started school….. why I’d be so happy in a Mexican-American family where Mom speaks English and the kids are all Big Macs and Coca-Cola, Spanish is lame.

Wait, Coca-cola is a bad American example…. Mexicans are Coke addicts and it’s a big damn problem. Fabulous documentary on YouTube. Even “beisball” is a bad example because Mexicans love it, too. Maybe our differences lie in apple pie and apple empanñadas. This paragraph is really making me miss Houston. If you look at the demographics, we don’t have an overwhelmingly Mexican population. I meet people from Central and South America all the time, but I haven’t met any Mexicans (yet).

If I find a pocket, that’s where I’d like to live. I’d get to practice my Spanish, if they needed it they could practice their English, and because I’ve been to Mexico so many times, we have some of the same cultural references…. especially since both Mexicans and I have had kitchen jobs. I’ve never worked in a kitchen in Texas, so I’ve never worked with Mexicans (Portland is so white the best representation is our hip-hop station. Another good reason I got out.). I have never worked in a kitchen where I didn’t have to speak Spanish, or learn words for things in Spanish on the fly because cooking moves fast.

It’s just again, Salvadorans, Hondurans, etc. I think what I’m missing is that the Mexicans I have met have such a strong connection to Texas. Therefore, more cultural references than I have with South America because even though the kitchen is common, our upbringings aren’t.

The worst time I’ve ever felt in the kitchen was because I broke a cultural taboo that I didn’t know was there. I couldn’t tell whether the dishwasher thought I was being a white entitled bitch or truly being horrible to him, but either way he couldn’t and wouldn’t explain what I’d said was wrong. We were practically besties before and never talked again, and because of the language barrier (I’m nowhere near fluent, especially if it’s not “Texican.”), he got pissed about giving me information at all- why I’d hurt him- and I got hurt because even if he opened up to me, I could only understand part of it.

It was a bad situation all the way around, because what I did know is that I said something about his mother. I know I deserved what I got, I just didn’t know that he wouldn’t take it the way an American would. “Yo Mama” jokes have been famous since the 80s. That’s why I think he was genuinely hurt- he had a cultural norm I didn’t.

I tortured myself over that for months, because I couldn’t explain and he didn’t want it. I did the best I could….. a very sincere, loving, “I am so sorry. I didn’t know.” And in fact, I still don’t know what I said that irked him, and it’s years later……… and still painful.

But other people don’t have to forgive you, and that’s okay. It’s on you to let go of guilt and move on. It’s how you get more resilient over time, because people walking away hurts less when you realize that first, you don’t get to decide how hurt someone else might be. You don’t get to decide how much apology is enough. You have to know when progress is being made and when you’re banging your head against the wall. Because getting to the point where you’re banging your heads against a wall means that you’re actually both hitting your heads against the wall and something’s got to give.

If you know what makes you happy inside yourself, your intuition will tell you which relationship you’re getting…. are you getting the one in which progress is being made, or are you getting the one where you’re spending time and energy on a relationship where the other person is “just not that into you.”

Speaking of which, I saw a meme that made me laugh. Someone had set up two books in a bookstore and snapped a picture…….

“God is Not Mad at You” -Joyce Meyer
“He’s Just Not That Into You” -Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo

Aside from the fact that I use the singular they for God, I couldn’t help myself. I needed that laugh. I’ve also loved Joyce Meyer for years, because I don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Plus, she has the same way of preaching that I do…. a female voice who projects with authority because so many men complain about hearing The Gospels and the sermon in a woman’s voice.

I feel like Joyce Meyer and I are Erik and T’Challah. It’s not that she doesn’t have a point. I’m not trying to take anything away from her audience. I’m only saying that in this case, she’s smart and also The AntiLeslie.

And, to be honest, I’m pretty sure she’s been married to a man for a long time, but she reminds me of “Suze Orman” on SNL…… “it’s ALL. ABOUT. THE. Jackets.”

The reason I don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater is that my dad was more conservative theologically than me, but not Joyce Meyer. His line about this was some dumbass came up to him in the “God Quad” at SMU and said, “I was a Methodist until I got saved.” My dad said, “I was a Baptist until I learned to read.” My dad has never been a Baptist, but Texans don’t let facts get in the way of a good story.

What I also mean is that I grew up listening to all this stuff because my dad didn’t generally use headphones. I got used to the sounds of the men’s voices, Fred Craddock’s in particular because he’s just about one of the most soft-spoken preachers you’ll ever meet…… who can also punch you in the gut emotionally with half a line (he was liberal for the time as well, taking care of the population of Appalachia).

Here’s the highest compliment I can give him, because it will make sense to the people that hate Christianity. He was a Jimmy Carter Christian. The kind that prays for you and then builds you a house…… because that’s how “thoughts and prayers” are supposed to work.

I also learned to love criticism of The Bible, because I was interested in studying it even when I didn’t feel all that moved spiritually.

It’s something I learned from Gordon Atkinson, a Texas preacher who became such an amazing blogger that he left the church to write full time. I think he’s doing books now, but here’s a link to his archive. I don’t normally put hyperlinks in my work so the past can stay past, but these essays run back to 2002.

Because the essays aren’t organized by date, I’ll just have to tell you what I learned from him rather than linking to that entry specifically. I was already in a mood, and I found a minister who was struggling with the same thing I was…. how called he felt, his imposter syndrome…. how sometimes he loses his faith when he’s doing hospital rounds and has to rescue himself, etc. I wasn’t doing a hospital rotation, but it’s something that I knew I would struggle with as well if I went the pastoral route.

Incidentally, the reason I didn’t go into ministry is the same reason I didn’t become a therapist. I can’t manage my own problems. That gives me two disadvantages. The first is that I will be constantly overwhelmed by other people’s problems and continue to not work on my own…… because it’s a monotropic thought process to think of other people first, because you like it. What says avoiding your own emotional work by pretending that other people’s problems are more important than yours?

When you start taking up room in the universe, you realize just how much you’re not getting by not asking for it. This is because once you start working on yourself, you know when you’re kowtowing to someone and afraid to take up room, or whether you’re trying to make progress. When the other person is receptive, that’s truly healthy. When your issues cause anger and frustration in them, that’s when the toxic cycle begins.

It actively says to the one who brings up problems that theirs are unimportant. Only the person who is completely shut down is allowed to need things. That’s because the person who expresses emotional needs and gets ignored tries even harder not to make the other person angry, because the last time they brought up an issue, all hell broke loose.

This cycle can go on for decades, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s with your first family or your partner and kids. Plus, there’s a lot of resentment and anger that boils under the surface when one person lays out their issues, and the other person seems receptive…. but “seeming” and “actually” are two different things.

Here is What I Know For Sure.™ In my relationship with Kathleen, if I brought up a minor problem, like housekeeping, she’d step all over my ass. When Dana started doing things like that, we spiraled out… mostly because at the time I was in it up to my ass and I didn’t have much patience. But what I learned is that when someone starts shutting down, that’s the end whether you like it or not.

Now, I have a lot of patience and if I expressed unhappiness about anything in my relationship with Zac, he wouldn’t just say “we’ll talk about it” and forget. He’d either remember on his own or send me a calendar invite to talk, either an audio/video call or in person.

That’s what I mean about it being the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had. I don’t have a partner who tries to kick the can down the road on hard conversations.

Speaking of hard conversations, I made a mistake because I was typing too fast. I am not Zac’s newest partner, but because I’m not around much, people think I am. We are also not cutesy in front of our friends, we are cutesy when we’re out on the town, which mostly means making people want to throw up in the grocery store.

The conversation was surrounding how, since we aren’t cutesy and aren’t together all that often, how do I fit into your life and what’s your bandwidth? That’s a hard conversation to have, because I was terrified that he’d say he was overwhelmed and we needed to break up because I live so far.

My logic was 100% upside down and backwards. We’re good for life as long as we stay where we are, with which I am completely comfortable. He’s just as dedicated to me as an orange string as I am to him. I need his friendship as much as his romance, at which he is very good.

He might not think so, but what really sticks in my mind as romance is remembering things I say. When I said I liked Bullet Coffee, he got me an immersion blender just because.

Editor’s Note:

In case you’re not familiar, Bullet Coffee is a tablespoon of grass-fed butter, a tablespoon of coconut oil, and very, very hot coffee in the blender. The official recipe is the tablespoons of oil and butter with 80z of coffee. I like Cafe Bustelo best. The reason I like it so much is that it provides all my morning calories and brain food at the same time, so 8oz of coffee is enough to start my day.

He sees when I’m struggling and likes helping out, and I don’t mean monetarily…. although he is sweet about telling me to put whatever I want in the cart at the grocery store and Trader Joe’s because he knows that I’ll want to have food and drinks at his house that I’d buy at mine.

The latest was kidding him about me being fake irritated that he was out of Dr Pepper Zero and he actually stopped by the store on the way home and bought a 12-pack. He had a million other drinks I could have chosen, just nothing sugar free.

Well, that’s not true. He has a Soda Stream and I love putting in a bottle of still water and turning the carbonation up to hell.

I also like soda with hard alcohol, fresh fruit, juice, etc. and it’s so great that it tastes fresh from our water. But juice, I think, is one of the worst things for you on the planet if you’re not drinking the kind sweetened with Splenda. You can ask your doctor if they think Splenda is bad for your child, but what you cannot ignore is that all juice is mostly sugar.

Just like restaurant food is mostly animal fat and butter. You get to choose whether you want that rich a meal, and also if way more fat is worse than way more sugar.

I would also rather eat my daily allowance of calories than drink it. So, that’s why I drink diet soda or the drink mixes you add to water bottles. When I drink alcoholic drinks, I tend to use seltzer as a mixer, and even with non-alcoholic beer, you have to be careful. They’re sometimes less calories than a real beer…. sometimes not.

My current favorite drink mixes are an import from Mexico and it’s only, like 10 bucks for 44 drinks…. take that, SODA. They’re sugar free aguafrescas. Both the lime and the piña colada flavors blow me away, because they’re not really sweet. The lime tastes like the real limonada you’d buy on the street in Enseñada…. and yet, not as good as Sunkist Lime, tbh. The piña colada tastes like real coconut water and a little bit of pineapple. It feels like being in Mexico 16 oz at a time. I have such fond memories.

Plus, other countries have laws around dyes that we do not. What I have noticed is that Mexican drink colors are not loud. Given my 7th grade science project, I believe this is for the best.

And through all of this, you may be wondering why I’m changing topics a lot. It’s that in my entries, I’m a gardener. I don’t pick and choose what’s important to say and what’s not. The plot reveals itself, I cannot predict what it will be because in order for the writing to change, I do. I start at a subject that’s not too deep and dig down until I feel comfortable enough to let go.

And now we’ve arrived at that moment, what I’ve avoided saying for almost a hundred paragraphs now. One of the biggest roots of my trauma, my first case of PTSD, was walking into my room and seeing my precious first computer melted and mangled into my desk. I’m autistic, always have been, and computers are one of my special interests.

Given the way that I use the internet for writing now, you can only imagine how much I lost in terms of text documents….. and I saved everything on hard drives and floppies, but of course I didn’t have any on me. They couldn’t have been, because I had to rush out of the house too quickly to grab anything, because my room/office was already full of smoke.

The bad thing from that time was twofold. The first is that scanners hadn’t been invented yet, nor e-mail (outside of the military), so there were no pictures to save that way. The second is that I didn’t think of my files as important back then. Apparently, I didn’t think pictures were important, either, which happens when it’s the choice between saving memories and black smoke chasing you down the hallway. I did not see anything burn.

The fire started in the attic, so of course I smelled the smoke, but luckily I do not have any trauma of actual flame.

I think that’s why the image of my first computer is burned into my brain. In the moment, I did not have time to take in the horror, and I was all alone. My mom and Lindsay were shopping. My dad was delivering communion to the shut-ins. I called the fire department from my next door neighbor’s house dressed in Snoopy pajamas, black pantyhose, and heels. This is because I was getting ready for my first church dance. I was wearing the nightgown until my hair and makeup were done, so I was also sporting hot curlers.

I got to make up for that missed dance later, and even met someone I really liked… but it was just a sweet crush on both ends because he was a little bit older. It was the type relationship where we realized we would have been good together, but the timing was off.

That was an excellent night because it took me a while to get over being the only one who knew our house was burning down for a while. In fact, my mother drove up to the house surrounded by police, fire, ambulance, the whole bit and thought I was dead.

It was a very good moment when she realized I was standing right there in the neighbor’s yard, still having nothing to change into, but she knew why. She was the one that was going to help me with my hair. The worst part is that it was December and I didn’t have a hoodie. The best part is that it was NE Texas, so it was still 50-55 degrees. Uncomfortable, but not unbearable.

That fire was so memorable that it literally appeared in the Naples paper for 30 years under “On This Day” (Dec. 20th). I believe that’s because it affected the church just as much as it did us.

In those days, less so now, you moved from parsonage to parsonage instead of buying your own house. Because of the housing market and ministers retiring without many assets (nor a place to live), the UMC started giving people living allowances separately from their salaries so they could work their own way up in real estate and have a place to retire.

I am sure that it was difficult for the church in that moment, realizing that they needed to rebuild an entire house. I never got to see it. We rented until we moved to Houston. My friends John and Linda have told me it’s beautiful. I believe it. It was the most majestic house on its street before.

From what I have heard, they just took it down to the studs, because the outside was fine. It relieves me because my favorite thing about the house were the Greek columns out front. It was the best house ever, and looked above a minister’s station in life even before it burned. But we drove old cars. There were no BMWs to match the vibe.

I do believe that it was easier to buy a parsonage that large and beautiful because it was bought in Naples, Texas. In DC, that house would be worth a quarter of a million dollars, especially because of our big front and back yards.

In DC, you’re lucky if your yard is bigger than a postage stamp.

I can say now that living in Galveston and Naples were some of the best years of my life, because I was young enough that things weren’t complicated….. except for being physically weak and mentally strong. The kind of thoughts that you’re hearing stream-of-consciousness now are the same way I processed emotions as a child.

Which is “try to take up the least amount of space possible and maybe no one will notice how weird you really are.” Here’s a for-instance, and it does have to do with computers.

I went on an interview in Portland once where I was going to be a contractor, not a full-time employee. The representative from the agency who got me the contract was trying to give me a “pep talk” before the interview and said, “I think when you walk in, you should announce the problem you have with your eyes because it’s noticeable enough to be distracting and you could make everyone uncomfortable.” When I told Lindsay about this yesterday, she wanted names and numbers.

She was going to sue the pants off this guy until I told her that it wasn’t recent enough, so I don’t remember the name, nor the agency.

Funny enough, I walked in and owned the room. I got the job in 25 minutes. However, the employment agency would not let up on me about my disabilities and “making other people uncomfortable,” so I fired myself and moved on to a better fit at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU).

We lost our funding for that project, so that’s when I moved to cooking. Dana was having a blast and I couldn’t stand being in an office anymore. I wasn’t the best cook, but I’m not the best office employee, either. In fact, I’m a much worse office employee.

I understand chefs because I’m autistic and they’re direct. I don’t understand bosses and HR-speak, and I don’t mean it like I don’t understand telling an employee to fuck off in the middle of a meeting will probably land me in hot water.

I mean that I don’t understand the things that go on behind closed doors, the way the bosses talk about me, and how I interact with coworkers because they’re trained to bullshit around everything.

I know that a lot of people don’t know what it means to “synergize,” but I don’t understand the difference between overperforming and underperforming because so much of it is calculated on your behavior and attitude whether your bosses/coworkers’ impressions of you are correct.

I understood it better at ExxonMobil and Alert Logic, because ExxonMobil ranked you and you got “grades.” Alert Logic displayed metrics in front of all of us so we knew how we were doing. It was uncomplicated because it was based on numbers and achievement, not (always) nebulous office politics.

At Alert Logic, though, I found my people. Other linux geeks like me. At ExxonMobil, I was stuck with a very large amount of STEM autistic geniuses, and because I’m creative autistic, let’s just say *our quirks didn’t line up.” That’s because not everyone was autistic, but everyone treated me like their personal secretary when I was actually IT support.

Why yes, I have printed out e-mails for people because they wouldn’t read them on the screen. Thanks for asking.

The one time I genuinely offended someone was when I told her what a simple fix it was for her audio problem. I meant it as “no big deal,” she took it as “you’re stupid.” What happened was that she was trying to play something from her iPhone, and she couldn’t get the aux cable to connect. She thought it was an IT problem, so she called us and I responded.

When I got there, the audio was fine. The case was preventing the audio cable from going all the way into the phone. So, I told her that all she had to do was remove the case and she’d be good to go. It embarrassed me in front of everyone when she said, “you didn’t have to say that part so loud….” and looked butt hurt.

I don’t like my job when people think I’m actively trying to make them look stupid. I save all that for when the day is over and I’m blowing off steam.

It was a lot of fun sitting around with my linux homies to set us apart from users, and regale each other over the calls we’d gotten that day.

In those days, we got a lot of calls about floppy disks, and we had to tell them, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Your work is gone. You didn’t save it on a hard drive as well.”

Two reasons for this. The first is that floppies were not that stable to begin with. It’s what happens when you have a tiny drive with magnets in it and only a thin layer of plastic to protect it.

The second is that people discovered that the side of the computer was the same material as the side of a refrigerator, and hard drives worked the same way, except metal surrounding the drive instead of plastic. So, they’d stick the floppy onto the side of their computer and it would erase the floppy so hard you couldn’t even retrieve the file structure, much less “final_final_final_paper.doc.”

If you put the floppy close to the hard drive, then the magnet would interfere with it as well. Remember I worked as the lab supervisor at the largest computer lab on campus, then the next year was promoted to supervising the smaller lab in the Graduate School of Social work all by myself. Therefore, I cannot tell you how many students I’ve had where I felt like I had to stop them from not contemplating suicide over it.

As an aside, USB flash drives are more stable than floppies, but I only think of them as “transport media.” As in, I work on my desktop and transfer files over that I’m taking to someone else. I don’t use it as permanent storage except for on laptops and tablets that have microSD slots.

If I had to sum up my love of Android tablets in two words, it’s “MicroSD slots.” The Ten Commandments stone tablets will have an expansion card slot before the iPhone, and even the newest Samsung phones don’t have them for the same reason. If you need more storage, they’re going to charge you an arm and a leg for it by having the storage soldered onto the motherboard. You can’t get a 32GB phone and add a one terabyte card anymore. Apparently that is now reserved for tablets only.

The best thing is that Android .mp3 players are the same way. My little Sansa Clip can hold a 512 GB card, and what that means is that I can either have every album ever made, or a smaller library in lossless quality….. for instance, copying the .wav file on a CD directly to your SD card is going to take up way more space than even the highest quality .mp3. But on a large expansion card, you can do that.

Because Apple did the same thing with iPods that it does with phones now. No expansion slot. If you wanted more storage, it was more expensive. I think the plan was to go to phones in the first place. The iPods were the equivalent of Microsoft Solitaire and Minesweeper.

Those games were not included with Windows as fun. I mean, they were, but that’s not the point. The games were included so that you’d be interested enough to learn how to use the mouse.

You learned the interface on an iPod Touch that would connect to wi-fi, so that when SIM cards were added, it wouldn’t feel different. Everything that used to be in iPod Touch is on the iPhone now, and again, no actual room for your music collection unless you’re willing to pay premium dollars. Even on the iPhone Mini 12, which I still carry because of its size (the form factor was not popular and they don’t make them anymore), the cost difference depending on disk space was enormous.

Meanwhile, you can add an expansion card to a tablet in two different ways. The first is that it will be formatted in a way that other computers can read, so you can take the card out and plug it into your desktop, etc. The second is that it will format as a virtual hard drive which doesn’t leave that tablet. The difference is that with the card integrated into your tablet, it doesn’t see the difference between one drive and the other, so you can install apps easier, because if you run out of space on your tablet, it will start installing apps to the card flawlessly without you having to move things over manually…. and honestly, only some apps can run disks formatted to be portable storage because they’re integrated into the operating system. I think the last time I did it, I used App2SD or something like that, and it would tell you which apps could be moved and which couldn’t.

Now you can skip the middle man.

I have a 128 GB expansion card on my HD Fire because I don’t have to want to be dependent on my internet connection. I will always download movies from Netflix, Amazon, etc. rather than streaming them because I might start them at home and finish on the train.

Again, wandering off into nowhere because it’s easier than wandering into everywhere pain lives.

Like seeing my very first computer melted into my desk.

Any of Them, With the Right Person

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

What are your favorite sports to watch and play?

Editor’s Note:

This is another one of those rambling entries because I realized very quickly I don’t know shit about sports. But most of you love my rambling, so I know it’s probably okay. 😉

When I was 17, my crush was the goalie of the women’s soccer team at school. We ended up dating for a few months, and then she moved back to Canada, where she was picked for a college team that could get her to the Olympics. There are at least 10 different reasons why she left soccer after that, and I’m not entirely sure I understand any of them. But that’s not my story. That’s hers, and she’s a great writer so I hope some day she’ll tell it.

Yes, I did write her senior English final paper, but she used to have a blog, so I’ve forgiven her.

Also, I got a C on my own English final paper, so it made me feel good I got an A on hers (extraordinarily put upon, but still….). It’s not that I couldn’t have gotten an A on both. She’s neurotypical. She had the best notes ever. All I had to do was craft everything she’d already written down.

On the other hand, when I “write a paper,” I write them just like blog entries…. except I edit. I remember everything I read, so I am putting together sentences on the fly. My interest in a subject is directly connected to how fast I can craft a sentence on it without having to look anything up, because I’ve already read six books or whatever.

That’s why when the subject matter is interesting to me, the writing is tighter. The reason I try to remember everything I read is that unlike my first girlfriend, I do not have enough executive function to be able to pick and choose what I’m supposed to remember.

I inhale it all.

I think that’s what makes my blog entries interesting. I take in most everything through sight, and then write it down. My first girlfriend being a soccer player gave me a love for watching the game, because even when I didn’t understand the rules, I understood watching movement. It’s a ballet where the main characters are grass and blood.

I also think of dance as a sport, particularly those high school cheerleaders with the complicated routines and defiance of physics. In retrospect, I gained respect for cheerleaders by being in the marching band. We were all physically exerting ourselves at football games, and then the cheerleaders upped the ante with their own competitions in the off-season.

I only remember one cheerleader from my high school, JR, and he was my favorite because he was the only guy. Every cheerleading team needs a guy to help with the throwing and the catching. Plus, JR is straight. I can’t imagine it was a bad gig.

Many, many boys in dance and choir do it for the girls, and we appreciate it as long as they’re not creepy about it. I swear to God a tenor could walk into any choir anywhere and they’d be grateful to have him.

To me, singing is a sport, and I think only other singers would agree with me. If you don’t spend time training your body to get a solo-quality voice out of yourself, you won’t. This is because so much depends on your physical strength. You basically have to be able to inhale down to your feet and control the air so that it doesn’t all come out at once. That takes tremendous pressure on your diaphragm and breath control. You have to tighten down some muscles while keeping others loose. It’s a long process, and I think while not as demanding as soccer or ballet, we all learn the same types of breath control for being able to dance, run, and sing.

Getting winded on the field or the stage is inadvisable.

When I lived in Portland, most of my friends were baseball fans. I’ve always been a baseball fan in terms of going to games, but I won’t watch them on TV like my friends will. Without hot dogs and sodas at the ballpark, it loses a lot (to me). I don’t know that the Os would do well, but I’d love to see them against the Astros eventually. Now that they’ve moved leagues, they don’t come to Washington anymore.

In Portland, most of us rooted for the San Francisco Baseball Giants. I can think of one Mariners fan from my whole time there. Also in Portland, I was much more into football because Dana was. She never gave up her loyalty to WAS, but I love Pete Carroll and she respected that. I also love Russell Wilson.

In terms of basketball, I will watch LeBron James do anything, because he walks the walk. He gives so much charity everywhere he goes that it’s inspiring. And the way Dwayne Wade is raising his trans daughter gives me hope for other families.

Oh, and even before I met my first girlfriend, Ryan played lacrosse. He said something to me that I’ll never forget, because I wanted it to be memorable and it was, apparently. He’d just gotten home from six weeks of lacrosse camp (or maybe it was shorter, but I don’t remember. It was enough to completely change his body.) I told him that I liked his new look a lot, but it made him hug different. It sent the intended message. No matter what you look like, I love you, not your body, because he told me that almost 25 years later.

Again, we were unusual for kids. We were both old AF emotionally, so we treated our parents like in-laws from the beginning, us both calling the other’s “Mom and Dad.” I don’t know how my father felt about it, but a man worth paying attention to was paying attention to her daughter…. and being sweet to both her and Lindsay. This carried a lot of weight, and I knew it because she never treated any of my girlfriends that way. It was blatantly obvious.

But in addition to Ryan being sweet to my mother and sister, Ryan had an older brother I completely adored, because he and Ryan were so funny together. Inside jokes all over the place that I could join once I heard them.

Plus, I’ve always been the oldest and it was funny watching him pull the same stunts on Ryan that I pulled on Lindsay….. both before and after.

The funniest conversation I remember between Ryan and his dad was that Ryan had fallen off his bike, and was bleeding with road rash. His dad took one look at him and said, “geez. Is the bike okay? I learned later that being in a doctor’s house shapes you so much. Those kinds of retorts are par for the course.

And Caitlin once got her butt stitched up on the kitchen counter. That was before my time, but a legendary story. I believe I heard it on the night I went to her house for dinner, and we all came to find out that Cait had been picking the crab claws out of the gumbo all afternoon.

Maybe that’s her root. She likes working in restaurants, too. For Anthony Bourdain, it was oysters fresh off the beach in France.

I remember Cait being athletic, but don’t remember her formal sports. But our whole family likes watching the big games, even though we don’t watch every one. I mean, some of them do. Some of them are die hard Cowboys fans, and when I mentioned that I was a Cowboys fan she said the only way she could respect that was she liked Tom Landry. I told her that my memories of the Cowboys were mostly rooted in the 90s and it was okay to move on.

I’ve always rooted for the teams where I’ve lived except for the Nationals, because I don’t like the curly W on the hats. I do have one t-shirt that doesn’t have it on it, so it’s the only Nationals gear I own. I am much more partial to the Orioles, and when I lived here before, I was already a Giants fan. The Nationals are relatively new because we took a long break from The Senators (to our detriment, I think).

That also means that when I lived in Portland, I became a rabid Timbers fan, and even have a picture of me with their mascot somewhere. I didn’t really live in Houston when The Dynamo was established, and because Houston didn’t have an MLS team when I was in high school. I’ve always been a fan of DC United.

Everywhere my friends go that’s overseas, I ask them for a national jersey if they want to know what I want. I know there’s plenty of cheap knock-offs, so it’s not paying DC United prices.

Zac doesn’t follow sports at all, but he’s told me that he’d go to a minor league game if I wanted because he likes it better than MLB. So, we might do it, we might not because it’s a road trip to Hagersville to see the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs.

The first time I went, I saw them play The Sugar Land Skeeters, and I was just as excited to meet them as I was The Crabs. That’s the thing about minor league baseball. You can get into deep conversations with the players because they have more time to talk after the game and they’re trying to get their adrenaline to come down.

The reason I wanted a deep conversation is that I really wanted to know how Caleb was doing. He lives in Louisiana and commutes for The Skeeters, so they were in Maryland during the height of Hurricane Harvey and he’d already been through Katrina. Because I knew what was going on in Houston/Sugar Land, I wasn’t just talking to him; I was asking questions about his experience from the other side.

My sister was running the relief effort at the George R. Brown Convention Center. He said that because of the touring schedule, he hadn’t even had time to check it out- grateful he wasn’t there and desperate to see if his house and truck still were.

I wished him well, but what even he doesn’t know is that I got a fabulous picture of him right before he hit the ball out of the park, and I took a million to get that one shot from the time the ball was in the pitcher’s mitt. The ball is several inches in front of the bat and he’s in perfect form…. and even if he wasn’t, he still got a home run. I wouldn’t have known the difference.

I think one of the things I really like about Supergrover is that she’s successful at her job (I think) because she played so many team sports as a child/teen. She already had experience with collaboration and not lording it over people. Delegation when you’re the boss is key, because you cannot micromanage the work, you have to hire the right people- the ones that are self-starters and persnickety about details on their own. It’s not on your plate and doesn’t have to be because there’s a special bond between coworkers who are invested and those who aren’t, as in, how fast productivity goes down when the boss has left the office.

That will always happen in top-down situations because the boss is so exhausting. It’s not fun to be micromanaged, especially by a narcissist.

Narcissism leads to very problematic behavior, like blowing up your phone at 3 AM and being mad you’re not awake to serve them. No family thing is important enough not to miss work. Leave your family thing when I need you.

Because in the military and all the intelligence agencies around here, that is true and ironclad no matter how your boss communicates, which is why there has to be a lot of support from your family to do those jobs. There are going to be missed birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays whether anyone likes it or not. The chessboard is at stake, the one thing that really is more important than being with your family and you can’t argue with it in any place, at any time.

Support to all those people is doing enough work on yourself to be a complete person when they’re gone. For some people, that means moving back in with their parents when their spouse is deployed so that they still have a support system. Others rely on chosen family because they live on base, either here or overseas.

According to Jonna Mendez, you have a choice as to whether you tell your family that you’re CIA or not. That’s because you don’t know if your family/friends are going to find it easier to help you live your cover, or whether they’ll blow it. One thing that Jonna talked about in the event for “The Moscow Rules” is that she didn’t tell her best friend she was CIA for 35 years… and that’s because she told her dad and her dad was impressed, so he told all his friends….. the ones who had seen her face, already knew who she was, etc. The more people that can attach those things, the more “in trouble” you feel.

However, with the military and intelligence, you just have to accept that some things are above your pay grade and you can only know so much. Like, “I can call you on a sat phone, but I can’t tell you where I am.” It’s not that the soldier/case officer doesn’t want to help you understand, it’s that they can’t because it would reveal troop movements if the sat phone was hacked.

I do not think that we are preparing for war ourselves. I think that those secrets are being kept so that no one knows who’s watching and where.

I can connect all of this to “Argo,” because there’s an “Argo” illustration for every occasion. To have people know what your face looks like reminds me of that scene where the “face book” has been ripped to shreds, and they get at least 20 people to sit there and line up the strips so they can see the pictures again, trying to stop the houseguests from getting out of Iran. This is because the diplomats didn’t have enough time to burn all the classifieds before the Iranis rushed in.

Let me say for the record that I do not have a dog in this race. Both the Americans and the Iranis have done horrible things to each other. I can understand Iran’s frustration at us getting the Shah out before they could prosecute him. I understand that it put the United States at a distinct disadvantage because we cut off diplomatic relations, closing the embassy altogether at that point.

I believe that’s why people like Tony and Jonna are every bit as effective as sending “a fully armed battalion to remind them of our love.” That’s because we can prevent a lot of boots on the ground with the right intelligence, because then we can go after someone diplomatically/politically instead of starting a war.

It is so disheartening to have a president who’s blind to the plight of Palestine. It is so complex we need to withdraw support from both sides immediately. It’s not our fight. That’s one that’s been going on for too long for us to rescue anyone. The president needs to realize that in their case, the call is coming from inside the house. We can’t police this one. It will work out every bit as well as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and any other conflict we’ve entered where there hasn’t been a thousand years of fighting over that land.

I also don’t know what Biden’s faith is telling him about Israel, and that’s bothersome as well. It is a damn problem, because all the Abramic branches are at war with themselves over this. Christians and Jews want to protect their holy places, and don’t understand that all Muslim holy places are in the same vicinity.

I am not sure that is the message Christianity and Judaism want to spread…. that Muslim lives are worth less.

Because that’s what they’re doing…. like it’s a sport.

Mr. Goodbar

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 4 Comments

What snack would you eat right now?

It’s so simple. Just peanuts and chocolate. Delicious and doesn’t taste cheap like a Krackle or however it’s spelled. I need the protein, because I haven’t had breakfast yet. It’s about 0930, so this is not unusual for me. I’ll get home around 10:30 or 11:00 and I have stuff in the fridge begging for my attention. If I’m hungry enough, there’s leftover pizza. We’ll just see. After getting all my medication back on track, I’m sick as a dog with nausea. There has to be a better protocol for me than this, but going through the rigamarole of trying something new can introduce more problems as you find out that something doesn’t work for you.

I’ve tried Prozac, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Effexor, and anything else you can throw at depression. Lamictal is the only thing that has worked in 20-odd years. So, I’d like something new that didn’t make me quite so ill, but it might take a year or two I don’t have or want to take. When you’re trying out different meds, it sometimes leads to mood and behavior that seems like you’re off them completely. For instance, Effexor can make you suicidal.

That’s actually a sore point between Dana’s old therapist and me. I thought she was a complete hoe bag. I can safely say they don’t interact anymore, so this story goes all the way back to like, 2015, maybe earlier.

When you are in a psychiatric emergency like your medication wanting you to kill yourself, you are stuck in the shit. You can’t see past your own pain, and someone has to step in because you literally cannot make that phone call by yourself. So, with Dana’s permission, I called her therapist and said that she couldn’t come to the phone herself (currently with her own head between her knees), and explained the problem. She’d just started Effexor and it made her nosedive.

She called Dana back, didn’t tell her to go to the emergency room, and told Dana that if she couldn’t come to the phone herself, then I was controlling and she was codependent. We can explore all that once Dana is out of immediate danger, but first of all, you’re Dana’s therapist and you don’t know me from shit or Shinola.™ I have experience with psychiatric emergencies both from watching myself with an omnipotent third eye, and being the one to take care of my friends when they cannot do things for themselves.

When you are in burnout, can you make a phone call?

I can, sometimes, but it requires a Mr. Goodbar. That I don’t have. I’m on the train back from Zac’s, so I could stop and get one. But I won’t. It’s better in my memory, when my mom and I used to split them.

I particularly need chocolate today because I’m sad. Through no fault of his own (TDY), Zac is going to miss the book signing for “In True Face.” Maybe I’ll just bring a cardboard cutout. 😛 I am sure he would love that. #eyeroll

If I’m lucky, maybe Lindsay will be free that night, because I doubt she could go to the thingme with me, but might be able to meet for dinner before or after. Preferably before, because I’d just be reading in the restaurant.

If I’m alone, dinner will be a Mr. Goodbar It’s my way of taking my mother as my companion instead of Zac. I don’t know how much she knew about spies (you never knew- she read a bazillion autobiographies), but I know she did know quite a lot about chocolate…… and peanuts….. and the fact that you can’t by the King Size because the ratio is off.

I might have come up with that last one myself, but I doubt it. Institutional knowledge seems to come out of nowhere when I take the first bite.

The Straight Truth About Queer Dating: The Leslie Edition -or- Too Weird to Be True

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Straight and queer people both suck when you’re bi. That’s because it’s all homophobic and for queers it’s internal because we’ve been taught to hate ourselves so much. It is offensive to cheat whether you’re male or female. The person you had an affair with shouldn’t matter, but it does. As if the fact that we’re bisexual means we’re purposefully going to screw you over later by dating men…….. because they are the enemy. No lesbian thinks you actually enjoy being with men. It’s all an elaborate intelligence operation where we’re trying to hit your most vulnerable spot when in reality we are just moving on with our lives.

No lesbian believes that a bi person can be monogamous, because they think that we can’t live without dick in both directions because no straight woman would believe that of a man, either. Cheating comes in all sizes and shapes, and is not personal. That’s your internalized homophobia, and you don’t get to control us if we break up. Not going to happen. To make it a requirement of your partner is ridiculous and you look really hateful…… and kinda stupid.

For instance, to me, Supergrover being wigged out that I was female and not male said homophobia to me, so I retreated and then couldn’t get her off my mind, so I lashed out to get her to go away. But she took it as that’s all I would ever do to her, all I would ever be, and we both missed out on something incredible……..

And then realized we were stuck in an impasse and I didn’t have a choice but to fold and prepare for a lifelong connection. I cannot ever cheat on her or leave her because she’s already found her life partner, so my gender shouldn’t have mattered. I should have known she was dating a man, but I didn’t. I should have assumed it from the beginning, but I didn’t. I’d never had a deep internet relationship that didn’t take away sexual orientation and gender out of the equation because after a while you don’t see it. I wanted to wait it out and hope because I knew I could appeal to her in writing better than I could in person. That we’d get over our issues faster and easier if I wrote them down- the neurodivergent urge to explain more and better, more and better.

So, bisexuals might cheat, but it’s not going to be about gender. We don’t cheat any more or less than you do. You know how I know this? I’m bisexual and I’ve dated both bi and lesbian women. Except for Dana, I’ve been cheated on by every single woman I’ve ever loved- because they wouldn’t want to, anyway, regardless of the gender of their partners. I do not want anything less than enthusiastic consent, and it would have been incredible to eventually be wanted in that way, but because it didn’t happen didn’t change me. It didn’t change how wonderful I thought she was, and sometimes it seemed like she thought that of me.

On my end, it would not have been any less offensive to Dana if Supergrover had been male (not sure I would have noticed, tbh, because she’s got the patois)….. but to some women it would have been more. That’s where the self hate comes in, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the bisexual partner. It’s your bag, not ours. I bring up Supergrover because it just shows that especially an emotional affair sees past gender, especially for bisexual women because women are naturally programmed to open up to people that open up to them. We’re raised to be fixer/pleasers, so when we don’t have to be, we connect on that level regardless of the other’s private parts.

It’s more important to be heard after the new wears off. Good sex can be found anywhere. Good communication is rare, beautiful, and precious. Choose that. It’s why I love Supergrover- because she’s absolutely who she is alt all times and I love all of her. But if you hurt her, she’ll never open up ever again. I’m wondering how that’s working out for her all around, because I get the feeling that I’m the only one she’s really honest with, either, so it crushed her when I couldn’t stop myself from being a dick to get rid of her by wigging her out a little more. It wasn’t a good plan, but first of all, it worked and second of all, it was 10 years ago and we eventually made our peace when my body and mind relaxed about our situation. What I knew for sure is that she had changed me emotionally in a way I couldn’t open up to someone else, so it felt natural to want that from her even if she didn’t want that from me. That’s fair. What hasn’t been fair is needing to talk it out and get closer while it’s also the most unpleasant option. I think she thought I was bullshitting her about this connection and just trying to get into her pants, but it was a symptom, not a diagnosis. I needed time to get over it, and I did, but I don’t think she believes it.

Because in the immediate moment, she deserved to be furious. I took my lumps. I didn’t deserve them for eight years until she finally said that I needed to look for friends that didn’t cause issues in me and she had no worries about what I was going to say…….

And then when I started telling the truth about my perceptions, she would change her mind and it would send me into a spiral. So, I have never been as obsessive as she might think. I have been trying to protect her while also processing our experiences and she picks and chooses when to be mad about it, scaring the hell out of me. I found what I was looking for about the baseball game. She’ll know. It’s unlikely all right. That’s her way of being an absolute dick to me now, and it would make so much more sense to you if I could explain the whole thing, but again, the most important pieces are the ones I can’t talk about, and she’s being paranoid and oblivious at the same time…… and when I say things like “I didn’t get laid, but I am certainly and surely fucked,” even those words don’t describe the pile of shit I walked into, but they’re the best I’ve got. I don’t give myself to someone else because I don’t want to do it.

We took each other to the mat and that’s why I think we’d have been all over each other for about two weeks and then emotionally destroyed each other. But that would have had to be predicated on her being single and queer, of which she was neither. So, being close enough for the relationship to flame out was a bad thing, and I couldn’t think of a faster way to get us there than sex. It messes up more than it solves…… and it did mess up everything because I opened my big mouth. And she had a right to know that I was going to write about it, so hiding it wasn’t going to happen.

So, I have a drive to be near her and available that I won’t ever give up, because I can take care of her emotionally in ways that other people can’t. Objectively, not subjectively. She just doesn’t believe it, and that’s okay. It’s a love that will last because it has to, and not in a way that I feel put upon. I’m just in touch with reality and what her news from home does to me. There’s no hard feelings, but I concede that the love is there if she wants it, she just really has to want it and I don’t think she ever will. I think that she thinks I’m out to get her, which is why my next partner doesn’t have to worry about her anymore. She thinks she’s doing the right thing by disappearing, and I hope she’s right. So far, I don’t think she is. I will never forget what I know, and she’ll always be threatened.

Would it make a difference to you whether you were having sex with the person or not once the relationship got to this point? That’s why I don’t think my gender matters. That’s why I don’t think hers does, either (though not getting to be the person that touches her ass is tragic). That’s why I don’t like lesbians who inherently think me being with men is offensive to them, on purpose like a “fuck you” because we have more power than you do. It’s never that we feel guilty and empathetic about that, but we can’t do anything about the system, either. All we can do is wear our queer flags with the rest of you, supporting you while you’re “so offended.”

I like Zac’s personality. I like Oliver, who is a dog. I like how I feel when we’re together, and it doesn’t bother me that he has other partners because I feel polysaturated at one person. I’m a writer. I don’t have the time or need to have someone around me 100% of the time like a caretaker in addition to a boyfriend, or needing to make sure he’s happy every minute of every day…. which is what a lot of lesbians see our relationship as being. That I’m willing to sell out. I am definitely not. I have had fulfilling relationships with both sexes. I think about what Ryan and and I could have been had I not been so influenced by the women around me. That it was a transition and I’d never feel the same way about men again. I don’t feel the same way about women that I did before I slept with them, either…….. #protip

So, will it hurt my next partner that they can’t have all of me? Of course it will. But they can’t have the rest of me if they can’t handle it. Poly means more jealousy, not less. You just have to breathe through it, and I’m good at that because writing is my lover. I’ve made promises to S-dog o’ Bling Bling due to what I do, and it’s important. But would it hurt more if I was a package deal with a man? To most of my dating pool, this is true.

The reason I’m so furious about this is because women advertise that they’re not interested in bi women, rejecting us all because of course we’re a monolith. I have an interesting case of poly love because I can’t let anyone else into my little bubble, my softest spot- which is why it hurts that I can’t talk to her about it anymore because she doesn’t have time or wants to avoid me. I do not know which, but I’m hurt either way so it doesn’t really matter. However, if sexual fidelity is the fucking only thing that matters to the self-righteous bigot brigade, all I have to say is that my next partner is none of your business. So, the fact that you’re walking around butt hurt because it’s a him (even if we’ve broken up, there’s still an expectation I date the same sex partner?). You don’t have the right to judge me on my next partner, because when our contract ends, you don’t get a say in my next relationship.

It’s all about making us feel like shit as much of the time as possible because they think we’re exploiting heterosexual privilege when we do it. But my boyfriend is bisexual as well, so does that mean heterosexual privilege, too? Perception is not reality. All it would take for Zac to get queer bashed is to be with one of his male partners in the wrong place at the wrong time, but we’re bad people because we’re privileged. I promise you that by the end I’m not standing in any. Straight women are freaked out by my being gay because they don’t really understand being queer. Lesbians are freaked out by my being bi because they don’t understand that men can be human as well. To be fair, they haven’t done a bang up job of proving it, but my boyfriend is bi so I don’t have the standard model, either.

That being said, just because Zac is perfectly perfect in every way, that doesn’t mean I’m going to get struck on the head by lightning the way I was with Supergrover. It’s a whole different thing, because I’ll never meet anyone like her ever again. But, behind every beautiful and powerful woman, there’s someone who has to deal with their shit. I just think it’s worth it provided she’s on her game as well. She cannot be supportive and frightened, because that doesn’t give me room in the relationship to be me. Right now I am waiting for all the stories I know to have been told so that she can rest easy in my memory, because she’s told me that’s what she wants so many times and reneged when she’s felt threatened…. basically, reaming me out until I adore her enough in print that we’re good again. I feel I’m only good for the adoring entries in which I extol her virtues. I could do that a Shakespeare amount, okkkkkkk…. but it wouldn’t be interesting because it wouldn’t be real. All people have problems with their family and friends, but we don’t talk about it. I do, because my honest voice is a good one. I am not putting myself out there and pretending to be anything I’m not. I am bisexual, but that doesn’t mean I’m not capable of being faithful. It just may not look like the kind of faithful your parents told you that you should want.

I’ve said it over and over so that you get when you see Zac and I out and about, you will most likely be confused rather than enlightened. We look like a heterosexual couple that really doesn’t fit in because we look like we don’t know we’re queer. Lesbians and gay men all think that they’re enlightening us by telling us that bi us just a phase, and we’re confused. No, you’re confused. We’re bisexual. It seems too weird to be true that gay people have a hierarchy just like black people. I don’t know what the word for it would be , but it feels very much like colorism, where I am judged on my sexual purity by how many men I’ve slept with. Even one in college is a black mark, on both sides of the equation because we’re all homophobic to varying degrees. Heteronormative bullshit is the default script, but we’re finding out the default script doesn’t work.

And that is all I have to say about that.

Frank Discussions

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Tonight is a Zac night, and we’re just hanging out. He’s doing some stuff for work in the morning, and I’m writing to you. Later, we’re planning on going out for dinner and watching “The Pigeon Tunnel.” I am so incredibly happy right now, because I can’t think of a better way to spend it than geeking out over my favorite boy, dog, and writer.

Because Zac is Naval intelligence, he was able to pick me up earlier than we usually get together (normally I go by Metro to his house, but Ft. Meade is a stone’s throw from Wire Ave. It’s not that Zac wouldn’t come to me, it’s that I have a lot of housemates and he doesn’t. Zac has a bigger social battery than I do, but we both like what we’re doing now…. I didn’t even know there was a term for it, but it’s “parallel play.” He’s working now, but he’s writing for fun later. We’ll keep doing this until we get hungry. Zac was given a fiction challenge. Genre is comedy, setting is a car wash, and the word he has to work in is “interest.” You cannot imagine the places my mind went when I heard those three things.

Having the setting be in a car wash was a trigger into something great. We started riffing off each other. I said that for me right now, when I hear that word I hear “autism” and “special interest,” so mine would be about a kid whose special interest was car washes and it would be a whole comedic essay on soaps, etc.

Then, I thought of something brilliant. Zac wanted to do something with robots, and I thought, “what if the robots were the car wash?” Like, the brush arm is talking to the sprayer or whatever. So, Zac comes up with this whole dystopian landscape like Fallout 3 where the cars don’t realize all the humans are gone.

I said, “if you’re going to go there, make sure that one of the cars is a hearse. I think it would be hilarious and tragic that he doesn’t know his services are no longer needed. Every day he gets dressed up, anyway.”

So, Zac starts thinking it over and I’m checking out at Safeway- thank God we were held up so long in line because we got a chance to flesh this out, ironically. He says that he thinks he wants it to be like a bartender and some customers. He has decided the hearse will be “Frank,”and I had a small meltdown in which I was all like, “awwww, you used my idea” and I straight up cried as I held up my Apple Watch.

We have to go, and as we’re walking out Zac says something and I have blipped since then, but the end was “….and after all, aren’t we all hearses in the end?” More tears, but good ones. I said something like, “God damn, Zac…. that was a good line.” He became very impressed with himself and he should be. This is why we work so well as a couple. We’d drive each other up the wall if we lived together because two writers in one house just doesn’t work. It’s a whole basket of crazy. So, I feel like I live this great life in my own little world in some ways, and in others I look like anyone else trying to have a good time………..

Because we’re all hearses in the end.