Tag: lesbian

We’re Trapped and We Should Lean on Each Other

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been thinking about relationships with men a lot lately, because the one I have with Zac is the gold standard now. This is because in terms of men who know how to be emotionally available to women without losing masculinity, watching him a master class. I am picturing him having a very busy day and hoping this makes him smile and relax for a minute.

This is because Zac is everything I want to be, and I’m not sure he even knows it. I am quietly learning to accept that I’m nonbinary and pansexual not because of anything but wanting to make sure the horsepower thrills me before I buy the whole car. Alternatively, I want someone I can grow with, so that the shell stays pristine in my mind because I was there when they started looking at cherry pickers.

I’m not going to change my pronouns, because gender expression means nothing to me. People say all kinds of things to get my attention and it’s always the tone of voice that matters. What I mean is that I see such a difference in gender with the way my mind presents in stream-of-conscious thought. I was raised to be a preacher’s kid, and that is an acting job. What other people do not know is that if you are born into a family with a public facing parent, you have been accepted to a company to which you never applied. People deal with this in different ways. I deal with it by being a wallflower in person and Anthony Bourdain here.

When I say I’m trying to be Anthony Bourdain, I mean it. I have taken on his writing style because it’s useful, and I do that with every writing voice I need. When I write about the kitchen, I need his authority, because we are roughly the same level. I am not treating him as Anthony Bourdain, star of Food Network, Travel Channel, and CNN. I am treating him as my boss who is like every boss I’ve ever had. I know him. We’ve met. Here’s what Anthony would tell you if he was here.

I am so proud of Leslie I can’t breathe because she had the balls to dress down a chef when he put knives in her sink.

That’s because he knows that he is fallible, possibly more than everyone else the way that doctors who acknowledge their humanity will tell you that you actually don’t want a shot from them, they’re terrible at it because they don’t do it all day. You want an ER nurse.

Bourdain was not a great chef, and I don’t know that because I’ve judged him on his food and talent. I know that because he told me that in Kitchen Confidential. He told me that he was a journeyman line cook who rose through the ranks to become chef, and that resonated with me because it said to me that Anthony didn’t have anything I didn’t.

I am awed by his humanity, and that is what makes him divine.

The relationship I have with Anthony in my head is very much like any of my Internet relationships except the possibility of meeting on the ground was cut short by an enormous amount of time. What I do know is that we would instantly bond. It wouldn’t take a drink. That’s because I’m already in Anthony’s tribe….. a tribe that would have both of us.

Relating to guys on that level is just what I do. If we’re in the same tribe, we bond and it’s on like a house on fire. When I bond with men who are in relationships, I become “The Girl Whisperer,” and I don’t do anything but let them talk it out. They know what they want. They just don’t have the clarity to see it.

Alternatively, here’s something hilarious. Lesbians act like men and they fucking hate it. They write it off as us being militant and angry, but never at the fact that we are matching style and structure. Some of thinking that lesbians are angry means they can dish but they can’t take it. They’ll start to feel things they can’t handle because no one has ever taught them to feel anything because of our childhood socializations. When they start to feel things they can’t handle, that’s when the rage starts.

When your protector mode runs up against mine, everyone else is going to see some shit.

Nowhere is this more evident than a lesbian and her father in law. Her father doesn’t think I can take care of shit, and he will tell me that daily in thought, word, and deed even after 25 years. The best I’ve ever gotten from any girlfriend’s parents is mild annoyance at my existence. Whenever I tried to change that pattern, it ranged from “you’re the girl that made my daughter gay” to “you don’t have the right to an opinion here because I’m her father and I don’t understand lesbians so I’m just going to have to assume that I’m responsible for her until she dies.” Fathers don’t even assume daughters can take care of themselves, so why would they think I am capable of doing something his daughter isn’t? The truth is that we do have trouble taking care of ourselves because the system isn’t built for us. Even if laws have changed, attitudes haven’t…… and if we act mean about it, that’s our problem. We should have just laid there and thought of England.

So, as a writer, I never believed that I could take care of anyone until I got some kind of deal going, and I was realistic enough to believe that I needed to support myself if I wanted to be a blogger. It has just taken an enormous amount of time to be able to figure out how I can do that, because eating and writing are equally important as much as I might think they’re not. My ire does not lie with writers who are kidding themselves. Sometimes people do go off on a pipe dream. My problem is that when creatives say they’re willing to work for peanuts so they have time to do something else, that’s not seen as valid because I’m supposed to be accumulating wealth every second of every day.

I have an idea big enough to attract comic book artists, movie directors, and other writers. In the right hands, it’s worth millions and I know what I have. If I take my focus off of it, I need to sell the idea. But then I face having my idea executed badly. I want to be free to be there for the whole process. To write the book and see if readers like it. To accept a movie deal if it is offered. To make my friends last forever as their fictional versions. They don’t think of that when it’s just a blog. But they’ll damn sure know if they were in something like Black Panther.

My job is to believe they could be….. and it affects my relationship with men to an enormous degree. I’m not the dog they need to kick, so I teach them pretty quick not to come up in my yard unless they’re willing to let me hold the leash.

With Zac, I just get to be myself, and we both trade off holding Oliver’s leash when we’re on the same hike.

0930 and 0530

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What time do you go to bed and wake up currently?

If it seems like I’m really old, I’m going to be 46 on my next birthday. Sometimes I feel old, sometimes I feel like three little boys in a trench coat. Waking up so early doesn’t come from anything but being able to be creative in a much more solid manner, because morning is when I write best. I always write something that early, even if I don’t publish it until later because I’ve taken a break and we still have shit to discuss.

Just yet another reason my beautiful girl would have dumped me in a heartbeat. Don’t poke the bear.

And yet it would be worth it because I didn’t settle for fine. I got hit by lightning.

It’s not lost on me that someone else has to deal with her when she wakes up, because fuck. That’s what he’s for. We both had different roles, and in retrospect it’s the best thing that could have happened.

I am really annoying at 0530 to people who don’t have a circadian rhythm that wakes them up naturally and they feel good. I have learned over time that it’s the best time to write because I can sit quietly until everyone has had coffee.

It helped me to get past what she didn’t want to think of him as an ally. I’m so thankful to him in ways he’ll never understand if she doesn’t tell him that. It would have been a big moment for us to look at each other and understand. The fact that I didn’t get it says everything to me about what my beautiful girl meant in terms of friendship,

For her, I was a hot mess because she didn’t know me. She didn’t take the time to say “now that I’ve talked to you in person, you seem more solid than you’ve ever been. However you are now, you’re good.”

Meanwhile, if I continue the analogy of my sister being my first priority and not my wife, the baby’s needs woke me up every night.

And that’s the crux of the last 10 years. I could hate her for it, but I don’t. I’m letting her off the hook in a way she never let me, and to be the bigger person makes me happy….. mostly because I’m so much smaller. It’s not that she’s so much bigger. It’s that I am about as tall as a party size bag of Doritos and about a buck 25 soaking wet. She looks like a real adult with suits and crap and everything.

To let her off the hook is to release her back from whence she came and just feel peaceful about that. I can do all my emotional work here. She doesn’t have to look at it. But she damn sure will. She has to make sure I’m not a problem to be solved, because she knew I’d be a problem for her and she told me that very, very recently. Why I didn’t tell her I thought that was a dick move, I don’t know. But she thought I was trying to meet someone for the sole purpose of making her blood pressure boil, a running theme because she thinks I seem to do everything that way, because she’s being a jackass and not listening. Jackass is, of course, not a permanent state (estoy, not soy). So, she can think I’m a judgmental dickhead for all eternity, because I have a lot more pet names than that. I will never let go of “judgmental dickhead,” because that’s all she let me be.

The problem is that I very much wasn’t.

She had someone who’d absolutely bleed out for her, and reacted poorly to it. I’m guessing because she thought she’d heard this story before and used all her heuristics to tell her she was fucked.

The problem is that she very much wasn’t.

I loved her, she tolerated me, and she didn’t think that way. She thought that talking at me and sending me stuff was enough and to just shut up about it. That’s because she wanted to be a fan, and I wanted to be a friend. So she didn’t set down boundaries and acted as if I was out to get her.

I wasn’t responsible for what she understood, and yet, I stayed. Things eventually got to fantastic and then slashed into ribbons once again. That’s because we couldn’t solve the base issue. She’s a thinker. I’m a feeler. She doesn’t understand touchy feely crap. I don’t understand treating your friends as if you don’t have any.

For the last eight years, only her pain has mattered.

She made the choice to keep her pain away from me, so I couldn’t help her be less angry. I couldn’t call her out on being avoidant. I couldn’t call her out on playing games, because she insisted that she doesn’t do passive aggression or play games. She is firm in her belief, and then I get shit like “I don’t have time, of course, not good enough for you.” I never said that being busy was a problem. Her being a judgmental dickhead was the problem, because she’s every bit the asshole I am. The game was “how long can I get away from feeling guilty?” and “no, nothing is wrong. Someday you’ll realize I’ll tell you when something’s wrong.” Fuck THAT. No, you won’t. You’ve proven it for eight years.

She’s not the sort of person that looks too deeply at patterns, so we had the same fight eight times and she never noticed because she didn’t want to. In the beginning, she didn’t understand why I pulled back and didn’t talk to her for three months and called me on it and I said nothing, because I was in over my head and it had nothing to do with her. Every time we talked, it wasn’t a thought exercise. It was strengthening our bond and only making me want to dive deeper into her at a time I couldn’t afford it.

When I took my armor off about it, I told her that it was getting damn hard to look in the mirror because I felt so guilty. If I’d ever looked up polyamory, it would have helped. I am unsure whether it would happen again, but I was over the moon for both her and Dana. I have enough love in my heart for both of them, especially since I was married, so it provided a natural safety net until I spiraled out with bipolar bullshit.

It was navigating how much of me both of them could have that got difficult. Before that break, neither one of us went an hour without talking. It was the most intense relationship I’d ever had, because it caused such a struggle within me that made Dana jealous and her deeply uncomfortable. I was fucked six ways from Sunday, and the only answer was to disengage. I didn’t tell her all that at first. I just disappeared and it mystified her.

How she had no interest in learning why I felt that way, I’ll never know. Because even though she knew some of it, she didn’t ask any questions, either. She didn’t recognize that even if it was always platonic, I’d always need her. I’d always need her to look over my blog (it was only creepy when she was doing it behind my back), and I’d always need to be able to reach out because I’m a moron and she’s not. Instead of letting me go off the deep end, she could have helped create the narrative, because none of my shit includes how she felt. It’s only a guess.

I never felt like she saw the situation as the problem. She thought it was her. She moved me deeply, challenged me, made me want to fight together instead of each other. We were never back to back shooting out. We had guns on the table, pointing toward each other (I don’t want to argue about semantics, I just want the protein). She thought I wanted it that way, when I just wanted her on my six.

She didn’t seem to get that once the fight was over, all I wanted was to move on and let ourselves connect, but too much happened to make that a reality on both sides. If she eventually remembers who I am to her, She will not be received with open arms unless she’s willing to own her shit and give me what I need. In short, stop dicking me over and stop saying that you wish our relationship never happened because you have this wrongheaded idea that I also think it shouldn’t have happened.

I absolutely think that the relationship should have happened, I just don’t think we should have moved so fast. We excited each other’s brains, but she excited my body as well because she could. Not that she was malicious or held any culpability in my feelings. I mean that if I’d been straight, too, none of this happens. It didn’t happen because she said she didn’t want it and did, or did anything to promote that kind of behavior. I’m just not sure she was aware that she’d be playing with fire, even though I told her that and she still showed up…. so, okay. You’re not threatened.

She couldn’t see the forest for the trees, and that’s not her fault. She’s not enculturated the same way.

So, she’s telling me things that would spark anyone’s interest in her and was completely oblivious. That’s not her fault, either.

However, she could have helped Dana and me immensely if she’d told us she had a boyfriend already. I thought I was flirting with someone who was single, and then I REALLY freaked the fuck out. That is not my wheelhouse, and lesbian wasn’t hers, either.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that she thought she was protecting me, and it did. It protected me from seeing reality. By the time she lowered the boom, I couldn’t walk away for love or money. Still can’t in some ways. Obviously. I wouldn’t write about it if I didn’t care.

What has been good is seeing how much of my crap was harmful and not internalizing it as “everything everywhere at once is all your fault.” It wasn’t all fighting, either. Some of it was just miscommunication because for as much as we thought we knew each other, we were strangers.

For instance, it was idiotic to say she’d marry Brene Brown, and not because I wanted her to marry me. It was that she was kidding and straight women do that too much of the time while ignoring the fact that it would hurt me. Why wouldn’t it? If straight women want to get married, that’s fine. I don’t care. But qualify it. It’s not a marriage. It’s a Boston marriage. The difference is that Brene Brown will never invite her to metaphorical dick o’clock. And I know her well enough to know she’d think that was fucking hysterical, so I’m leaving it in even if she finds it.

Straight girls, stop doing that shit. It fucks us up.

That’s because now we know you think our marriages are playtime.

If you think that, then you’ve probably never seen what we want to do to you and how we know you’ll react. That’s because we’ve been with enough women who didn’t think they were bisexual before scream so loud the neighbors needed cigarettes. The fact that you want the Fisher Price version of that tells me all I need to know.

It’s time for them to throw away their fucking rainbow pins, because when push comes to shove, lesbian marriage isn’t real.

You’re not bad people, it’s just not funny. It’s taking something serious and making light of something serious, mostly because you think we’re just like you. That we’re besties who just happen to dig each other more than you dig Pam at the office.

If you believe that, you’ve never seen a butch work a room, and I am NOT talking about me. If I was, Zac would call bullshit and I’d get sued for false advertising. I do not need that today. ๐Ÿ˜› (But I do need Zac and Oliver.)

Do they really think that women’s sexuality is that tame? It’s wild, hair pulling passion, and I’m not going to tamper that down for her or anyone else, and I don’t mean in terms of pursuit. I mean in terms of understanding that if you’re an ally, you don’t know shit. Stop pretending you do.

It wakes me up at 0530.

No lol

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Are there things you try to practice daily to live a more sustainable lifestyle?

I have no idea what this means outside of Oregon. In Oregon, there’s infrastructure for sustainability. In Maryland, it is “good luck, God bless.” I want to talk about things I do to sustain my own life.

Being a writer has changed my perspective on everyone and everything who isn’t me. I will make them me by inhaling, life as ink on the exhale.

“Life as ink on the exhale” is the perfect phrase for all of this.

“Writing is ink on the exhale” is a better sentence than I’ve written in a while. I should quit for today. ๐Ÿ˜‰ I realize this is extrapolating data from an incomplete set, though, because I can never explain in a catchphrase how experiences go in and ink comes out. I can’t tell you who and what and why is most important that day. The only reason my beautiful girl pops up so often is that as I’ve said before, she’s my muse. She’s the ink. What is sad about that is the absolute confusion as to why it’s the last bottle. How do you cope with not knowing whether someone even wants to meet you or not, yet tells you nothing’s wrong and you’re the only one who ever trashes anything. I have lived long enough to know that I am only trashing the relationship she wants with me. I can have the relationship I want with her on my own, and in a lot of ways, it feels the same. To me, that is also trashing a relationship……. letting starvation rule over your compassion.

I did not want to be in a relationship that was starving, particularly one that had flourished. The problem came in when I’d wronged her and wanted to be forgiven, because she never got over how it felt to be hurt by me. She could forgive me, but she couldn’t open up again…… at least, not for years. Then, she started to loosen up and I hadn’t been so profoundly happy in years. I invited her to come with me wherever I went in the world, dreaming pie in the sky- and told her to bring her husband, kids, dogs, books, wtfever. I felt safe enough to say something like that because she was opening up emotionally.

I don’t know what would have happened with that train of thought, because she never told me what she thought and I got tired of living in grey area. I would have given her an organ. I never got a fraction of that level of emotion from her, and I’m supposed to believe I’m the one that trashes everything?

What I have to remember is that we don’t know each other. We have created characters for each other that live in our heads, which may or may not be 100% accurate. Absolutely none of that stopped me from giving her access to everything. Just everything. She’s the only one to whom I’ve ever given editorial control of this blog, and the only one that knows the code that unlocks my phone. I have never done this for anyone else, ever, and I will never do it again.

I didn’t give her either of those things to impress her. I did it to make her feel comfortable. I did it so she would know I was listening.

As I listened, ink on the exhale traveled the spectrum, inventing colors as it soaked into the page. I am now strong enough to look at her e-mails now, and I saw something that jumped out at me. She said something about how I thought she’d wronged me, and she’d read it wrong. I said that I had wronged her. Another time, she got mad at me for “the lies you (plural) tell, and that’s not like you (personal) at all.” She thought I was calling her an actual liar, and I wasn’t. I thought she had told white lies about a few things to protect my feelings, and “the lies you tell” is a classic South Texas way to say it, but you’re not talking about a specific person. You are talking about a nebulous “you.” She lit into me, and I told her I was sorry I had attacked her with grammar. In my head, I was screaming. Why would a writer decide to emotionally roast me over the coals like this? What the fuck was wrong with her freshman comp? I thought I had made my point overly clear by being sure to note grammar on both kinds of “you.” I was wrong.

I never understood why she thought she wasn’t good enough for me. Not ever. I hated the way she treated herself in front of me, as if I was a dictator and she was hell bent on pleasing me and angry that she just couldn’t do it. I am certain that my actions facilitated this, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t want a different outcome. I tried to tell her that she was beautiful, perfect over and over, an ostinato to drown out her disbelief.

If she thought she disappointed me by not also being sexually fluid, it would have been helpful for her to say that. If she thought she disappointed me because my standards were so high, it would have helped to ask me what they were. I have never known feelings this intense, but in the way I’d feel if my sister was my first priority, not my wife. She has never disappointed me a day in our lives, and she never did until she felt like she was being picked on and didn’t have enough stamina to hear me out. She thinks I don’t have enough stamina to hear her out. I do. It’s just that what’s coming out of her mouth is total bullshit, and not because she’s a liar. It’s that she hasn’t dived into the wreck. She’s going to own herself the way I have here, and it’s going to be magnificent. You know you love someone when you can see them coming into themselves before they do, and fighting you so hardcore that you know you won’t be there at the finish line. For me, that moment became clear when I realized that I should be more concerned that she has lost me. I am not nothing.

I cannot know her feelings on the matter, yet I also cannot treat myself as if I’m so disposable no one will notice.

I’ve had enough of that, and it’s not sustainable.

Things I’ve Learned About Pain

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Part of me has never been in love before, and never will be without truly divine intervention. This is because for as much as I’m afraid of someone hurting me, I am also afraid of hurting them. I know I can make and keep healthy friendships. I have resolved enough in myself at least to do that, and I never have to worry about finding another friend in my life, because I only need one. The position has been filled.

I worry about everything, and overexplaining is a trauma response. When I absolutely shut down this thing we’ve managed over the years, I told her I’d realized that every fight was like this one. I’d say too much, she’d say too little, and on and on and on. Birthday present, Christmas present, fuck off, judgmental dickhead. There’s a problem and I won’t tell you, I just won’t speak to you for weeks or months.

The pattern was sick and twisted and I made it happen. Therefore, I needed to make it unhappen. She told me she didn’t know a damn thing about love in the very beginning, and when I decided to teach her, it was perfect. We were tracking together like white on rice. I just didn’t teach her to love me in the way I could hear it, but not for lack of trying. If anything, I was Mozart’s “too many notes.” I commissioned an SATB arrangement for every issue we had, and it was ridiculous. That was the quickest way to divorce for me, and she helped my marriage fail in her idiocy, not malice. She broke me, and she doesn’t know it. But that part of it wasn’t about me.

Learning to recognize where I was in my polyamorous haze of a head, where I was loved romantically and platonically- yet in my brain, there was no difference in priority. For instance, if your wife and your mother are hurt at the same time, you prioritize based on how serious the injury might be on your mother’s part, because your wife comes first. Always. You made that vow when you married her. At the same time, Dana couldn’t fault me for loving my beautiful girl intensely, either. She loved her family just as much and would have said exactly the same thing. Actually, she never did anything to prove to me that I was more important than her family. Nevermind. Bad analogy.

So, when Dana and I broke up, I had absolutely no need for a replacement. I’d been hit, and it took years until I fell in love again, and it is no fucking coincidence that he was the biggest motherfucker I could find trained to hit the nuts off a gnat with several different kinds of weapons. If you think dating men didn’t have anything to do with that fight, fuck off. I’ll be looking for that kind of protection forever. Why do you think Zac is so important? He’s not just interested in intelligence so we get along on that level. He will fuck you up if he thinks you’re going to mess with any of his friends. He just doesn’t because he wouldn’t start a fight, but he’d end it.

Trying to decide if that’s enough pain for today, because I am in it now. Just looking at everything painful and deciding how to let go of it. I feel like everyone is seeing me through the heuristic that I’ve been in love with a straight woman for ten years and that’s the only reason I haven’t gotten married again. That’s a double fuck you because most women who have been HIT BY MEN wait a long time to get married again, too. So what’s the real issue here?

I am terrified of women, and my beautiful girl is goddamn lucky I didn’t run from her as well. She’s as physically intimidating as Dana, just in a different way. Even more muscular, which should have turned me on and instead felt like a risk.

Because there was no chance in hell that we would actually be domestic partners, I could interact with a woman from hundreds of miles away. That’s fucking close enough. I think it is absolutely perfect that we’ve never met and yet I feel like a Doctor Who companion because we’ve “traveled together” long enough that she knows my original hair color……… and I know hers. That she doesn’t dye it, it has changed colors over time because women age like fine wine. Men just tell them they don’t.

I would do unspeakable things to Helen Mirren with the proper permission, preferably in writing and notarized. She is the perfect example of getting better with age, because she’s another person who doesn’t give a fuck what you think. She started out as a carny. You can’t scare her for love or money.

Where am I? What’s my name again?

I have to interrupt my pain signals and thinking of beautiful women is the easiest way to accomplish that goal. Therefore, when I’m writing, it often surfs up and down in my subconscious as I touch pain and back off….. again, overexplaining as a trauma response. I realized I could just roll with it because I am not focusing on the people who read every day, but making it feel lie you had to be there or you missed it. You have to read every post rather than dropping in once. I just have to be interesting enough not to lose the ones who are bored, and right now they can take a right. I’m going through a thing here, man. Back the fuck up.

I swear to Christ, falling in love with my beautiful girl is probably the first time I’ve ever really been in love before, and absolutely no disrespect to anyone I’ve ever dated. You didn’t do anything wrong, and I loved our time together. It’s that my perspective changed. I wasn’t in a narcissistic train wreck of a relationship that started years before I had a girlfriend, and I’d only been dating Ryan for a few months. It was the first time I really saw myself, and I fell in love with me…. the me in love with her.

When I realized that I couldn’t have that romantically, but she’d show up for me anyway, I was on board. I don’t care if my only job is to bring her a Diet Coke when she wants it. Seriously. Just hit the button, baby girl. I treat her like I treat my sister…. seeing her as both older and younger as well. She’s older in some ways, I am in others. Lindsay is a lobbyist, I’m a writer. She’s in front of people all day, I’d rather have dental surgery. The differences are striking, and they’re not the same as with Stifler’s mom over there (she has a son and I’m not stupid- though if she reads this I will have a black eye by morning………. “why would you say something so controversial, yet so bold?”). But just because they’re not the same doesn’t mean she and Lindsay aren’t the same archetype. Lindsay would definitely be Stifler’s mom if she had a kid. There’s no doubt in my mind.. I also know that she would be pleased to know she’s still that hot at 40 (we’re almost six years apart- my 46th is Sept. 10th).

It feels good to get back to the kind of humor we used to share instead of there being topics that are off limits. I could never have told that joke in front of her now, but when she sent me a recent picture, I did say “wtf? You wake up like this?” Like, fuck me. Just let me be the swamp witch in our relationship because all the other women are. Bet.

The fact that she thinks it means something now is ridiculous, so let her. If my other friends think I’m serious, I’ll remind them how I have spent months detailing why this relationship is deceased, pining for the fjords, met the choir invisible, fucking snuffed it. I feel like ten years is enough stories to keep me going. I don’t need more if they’re all going to be like our last few interactions. I don’t care if she thinks I’m the devil, because having a friend who is a writer and blogs all the time and you support them in every way possible until you don’t like what you see in the mirror? I get why she can’t be identified. I don’t get why she cares what people think. I just have to respect it.

I can quote chapter and verse why I shouldn’t write about her, and yet none of the things I said before I broke her trust mattered. She automatically assumed that once our relationship was over, I’d google tattoo her. No. I gave a google tattoo to a woman who abused me as a child. If we’d gotten into it as adults, equals, she would have deserved the same protection. It was the hard line of keeping her secrets and protecting other little girls. I chose the WRONG ANSWER for 23 years. So, anyone who thinks I gave that tattoo lightly can take a long walk on a short pier, but I hope you choke on your words first.

This relationship is different. For the first time, I knew what it felt like to love someone with wild abandon, not worried that our relationship was toxic. I am worried that we set up toxic patterns through the nature of the Internet, but never that we are toxic people. We have issues to work on, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. Or, it didn’t until she said she had a problem, I handled it, I asked her to talk about her feelings, she dumped me. I went apeshit because her first reaction is to run always. I thought we were finished with that shit. I’ve told her abandonment is my trigger a hundred times, and not one goddamn one mattered. She did it twice in like a two month period. I wasn’t the only one who could accuse the other of being done and not done, bombing everything. Every accusation was a confession.

I wasn’t out because I couldn’t forgive her. I was out because I don’t respect her, and won’t until she uses some of that big dick energy to say she’s ready to work on the problem, because that’s what it’s going to take. Turning her words back around on her, “looking inside yourself isn’t for sissies.” If she grows emotionally, she’s welcome. But I won’t stand for someone treating me like they wish the relationship never happened. She stomped all over my worthlessness loop every day for years, and I fucking aged. That’s because she made sure to tell me what a mistake she’d made in befriending me in the first place. I just kept thinking “well, that escalated quickly.” She always thought of herself as the protagonist. Never looking at her behavior from the outside in her writing made it look like she had never hurt me at all. I’d stood there and slapped my own face.

Surely she’s not that stupid. Surely she has a concept of her role in things from my view. Surely she’s taken in how I feel about things. Surely she’d spent time in her mind running over my questions.

I only ran away from her when I couldn’t read her handwriting.

Home

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Iโ€™ve been thinking a lot about what I want โ€œhomeโ€ to look like, because where I live now is literally it. I live in a huge house in a great neighborhood and Iโ€™ve been here long enough that I know all my neighbors and the family I rent from actually likes me (most of the time). Giving that up is a hell of a lot, and this room isnโ€™t big enough to rent to a couple, nor do I want to add another person to this house at all.

I waffle between living in the middle of nowhere and over a bar in the city, but thatโ€™s not the important part. I need to think about how I function, because the common denominator in every relationship is me. Just because my beautiful girl paints the picture that I acted like a victim doesnโ€™t mean itโ€™s true. It means that she heard my story and I wanted her to write her own. In my story, Iโ€™m the protagonist. In your story, you are. I donโ€™t get the story where youโ€™re the protagonist unless you put it in my hands. That does not mean that I do not have speculations about my own behavior. I am harder on myself than I am on anyone else, so to actually hurt someone to the point it was painful to even talk about rebuilding was my worst nightmare. I mean, I talked plenty, but I never knew what she thought, felt, or wanted. Then I realized it was probably nothing. That she put up with me because she had to, in some sense. If that was wrong, it was her job to tell me I was wrong. She didnโ€™t, so I donโ€™t think I was.

Even the thoughts she had about me were none of my business, and thatโ€™s kind of where I draw the line.

I am not in the business of reading minds and trying to anticipate needs, because I have been a people pleaser my whole life. All of it built up so that I could not do it anymore. I would become a shell of a person if two of my friends needed different things and I could not do both at one time. This is because I am devoted to my friends, and disappointing anyone ruins my day to an absurd level. I now have two modesโ€ฆ. Going completely silent in a conversation so that I am making sure to take in everything you sayโ€ฆ. And hiding from everyone because I do not want to tell you what my needs are and for them to be ignored. If I donโ€™t have relationships, no one can be disappointed or hurt.

Thatโ€™s just no way to live life, to stop interacting because youโ€™re afraid. You cover up that fear in all sorts of ways, from isolating to covering it up with the mask you wear in public.

I donโ€™t want to be moving mountains when youโ€™re not even really sure you want to see me again.

I am really in a bad way because the relationship with my beautiful girl was so off it was crazy, and I went a very long time without even addressing it. When I did, I was putting out nastiness. Every flaw was mine because I wasnโ€™t trying to shed light on something dark. I was trying to guilt her, hurt her, provoke her, whatever choice words she had for me that day. So problems would continue to fester and Iโ€™d suffer the weight of it because Iโ€™m the one who thought about it more.

It was just tiresome because I thought, โ€œwhy do you think Iโ€™m trying to guilt you? Iโ€™m the one who hurt you. Even though we have problems, that doesnโ€™t mean theyโ€™re all your fault and youโ€™re a terrible person who can never do enough for me.โ€ I just didnโ€™t talk about her side of it because I wanted her to do it- to tell me her feelings so that both of us could write to each other without any of that crap. But the longer it went unresolved, the longer I was treated to โ€œIโ€™m not enough.โ€ I had to break contact not because she actually wasnโ€™t enough. Because she wouldnโ€™t do the work to get through the dark part of the tunnel. She didnโ€™t think that resolving anything was worth it, and that superficial was great. It just wasnโ€™t what I signed up for, and would have been wonderful had we either always been that to each other or worked though enough that I was comfortable doing soโ€ฆ. Because the message I received so frequently was that I was just stirring up shit for no reason at all.

Thatโ€™s because she didnโ€™t have a problem. I did.

We told each other things that both changed and enriched our lives, and it would have been nice to have that be a lifelong gig. But our approach to conflict was completely different. Iโ€™d lay out thoughts and feelings, sheโ€™d respond with annoyance or anger. Iโ€™d respond in the same tone, and what I originally intended to be a heart to heart conversation where we both walked away feeling better turned into the biggest fights known to god and man. Weโ€™re both writers. We fucking play for keeps.

It was too much. I couldnโ€™t handle the thought that I was hurting her, and I couldnโ€™t find a way to write that wouldnโ€™t. Instead of addressing our real issues, sheโ€™d pick me apart and push me away.

I got tired of this pattern always repeating instead of just having the damn conversation so we can move on. There was no moving on. There was constantly irritating each other because we werenโ€™t really talking.

Things got dramatically better, then dramatically worse. When we hit the maybe, sixth time when Iโ€™d been accused of blowing up everything, I was done. Seriously, what does it even mean to blow up a relationship when it seems like only one of us is participating at all?

The biggest break to me was not telling me that the guy she was dating when we met that wasnโ€™t serious was now her husband, because I felt like that was a very, very basic piece of information. Itโ€™s not a relationship when I donโ€™t know the first thing about you anymore.

She quiet quit.

I was loud. I wouldnโ€™t have been bent out of shape if sheโ€™d just told me she didnโ€™t want that level of friendship anymore, that Iโ€™d been relegated. Then, I wouldnโ€™t have put as much energy into writing to her at all. Iโ€™m not trying to communicate with anyone who doesnโ€™t want to hear it. I lost all my remaining hope and confidence when she said that she wanted to throw all my e-mails away. Whether she meant it in the moment or it is still true, it felt like being put out with the trash.

What gift do I possibly have that would be worth anything but my words?

It just didnโ€™t feel like home anymore.

I donโ€™t want to fight against the tide. I donโ€™t want to be foolish enough to think I can change anything. I donโ€™t even want to emote. Iโ€™d rather get through grief on my own, because itโ€™s a hell of a lot better than being told Iโ€™m just putting out nastiness. I donโ€™t want to send you a letter telling you how Iโ€™m hurt, and for you to ignore it and say itโ€™s all crap, itโ€™s all designed to provoke you. Itโ€™s not provoking you, itโ€™s getting my needs met, too.

I started realizing that nothing mattered. Iโ€™d never be able to regain lost trust capital, Iโ€™d never be able to relieve her guilt (still, about what?), Iโ€™d never be enough. Iโ€™d always be too much. Itโ€™s a lot, to be thought of as too much.

I wasnโ€™t too much in the beginning, and no one told me what changed. I had to guess.

And what I guessed is that I was in too deep to ever be the kind where we just send a hello every once in a while. I wanted to be hers. Not in every way possible. Just that person you go to when you canโ€™t go to anyone else. I knew that on some level, sheโ€™d never agree to that. Iโ€™d broken her trust in a major way.

I still hoped I was redeemable, though. I wasnโ€™t. I was lost somewhere in the Dagoba system of my mind.

This is because for all the wonderful conversations weโ€™ve had over the past few years, nothing has been more than orange juice glass deep. This is not because both of us donโ€™t feel deeply. She felt how she felt without me. I feel lost now, and yet somehow found. I saw that something needed to change or I would continue to hide from everyone, thinking I was too much.

I didnโ€™t want to read her mind. I wanted to read her words.

It felt like home.

Anger Management

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am often so poor at controlling my anger when typing, because my mind works faster than my mouth. Because of this, it often takes me a bit to respond, because I need time. I would rather sit in an extra second of silence than stammer and sputter my way through a conversation. When I am the most angry, it’s when I’ve isolated the most and only use my keyboard as my voice, because I forget to add in as much love and humor as I would while watching someone’s face.

Because when I sound angry on the internet, I’m not. I’m scared. I feel powerless and alone, taking on your emotions to an enormous degree without being able to express the ways it moves me in ways that don’t sound like I’m nitpicking, because anger is a PTSD response. I often don’t even realize I sound like I’m nitpicking. In Daniel’s case, it was a double edged sword, because on video and the phone, he could tell how I felt about him. What he couldn’t see was my alarm. I was trying to get him up to speed on a lot of things very quickly, most of them having to do with escalating fears for Cora’s safety and how we could protect her as a family. It had to start with her family not hurting her, first.

Everything he was going through changed me as I navigated what I was doing emotionally in response. Anxiety I’d felt for years mixed with anxiety I’d felt for weeks, and on top of it my new mother love created powerful fear that I could not do enough for her. I could only get Daniel to understand that I needed him to change. I could not get him to see how freaked out I was, how I needed him to look at what the situation was doing to me and not just assume I was trying to reprogram him. I was walking with him in a world he’d never had to think about until his daughter transitioned. I also wasn’t saying that he wasn’t doing the best he could. I was saying “we need to do more,” which he heard as “you are a failure.” I can’t go back and undo anything, I can only explain that he was very certain I was wrong and asked me to walk back some of what I’d said, even though it was true. I’d just done a lot more work on my white fragility. I even said, “I’m not picking on you because you are a racists. White people are racists. Period. It’s baked into the system.” To me, it’s all the same struggle. If you’re talking about one, you’re talking about them all. It’s all about getting respect.

White people think they’re hilarious when they say something the way a black person said it as if their impressions are cute and won’t said people be impressed at their astute mimicry? Sometimes, it’s true. I used to imitate Chris Rock all the time, but stopped when I found out that it wasn’t received in the way it was intended. The joke was about OJ Simpson. Some people thought the joke was the way I was imitating him. So my conversations with Daniel would run the gamut on this topic, me thinking that I was getting him up to speed and him feeling constantly guilty and irritated. If we’d been talking on the phone, I would have changed subjects a lot more, able to notice when a subject should drop. But at the same time, I didn’t say anything wrong. I said how I felt. I didn’t watch my tone because neither did he. I let him gut me with an axe over and over and over, and called him on it so he would stop.

He didn’t. He said some really, really terrible things on the way out. Stuff that will stick around in my head and make me wonder what happened with me for years on end. I don’t know why he didn’t see that I was taking on his pain as much as my own, and asking that he carry his load when it was all mixed together. He also broke up with me by text, and even that was okay because I knew what kind of pressure he was under to get himself well. I am left with a lot of pain that doesn’t actually belong to me, because I agreed to carry it.

I don’t like to believe that I was too harsh, and at the same time, I know it’s true. I don’t like to believe that Daniel was too harsh, but at the same time, I know it’s true. If he couldn’t see the enormity of what I was giving, why would he see that he needed to give me anything in return? Some words of encouragement would have gone a long way toward resting my fears that he heard my alarms. But that’s my best hope for what should have happened, not my expectation. People are going to react the way they react, and I give myself that same right. I think he also really needed someone to blame for all the guilt he felt and I was a great target because I was calling him on his bullshit at a time he didn’t want it….. and couldn’t ignore it anymore, either, if he wanted to be with me. I don’t regret standing my ground because ultimately it would have devolved into him feeling like I was trying to reprogram him all the time when I was trying to teach him. I needed him to let me be the subject matter expert on this one because he wasn’t queer. I already let him be the subject matter in other ways. This one was mine.

I am left shaking in righteous, Christ-like anger because I wasn’t trying to hurt Daniel. I was trying to liberate Cora.

I am right, and I am wrong….. all because I wasn’t looking into his eyes, searching them for what was real. How would this conversation have gone had we had more ways to express love and fear? With coping mechanisms that allowed us to open up?

I think I want that. He’s in my dreams, always. But then I go back and read our old letters and think “it’s going to take so much work now, because there’s so much more here than I thought.” And it’s not because I don’t want to do it. It’s because I don’t think he does. I don’t think he’s brave enough to admit that though I was wrong with my tone, nothing I said was inaccurate. He does lead a charmed life because of his straight, cis, white male perspective not because he is never discriminated against in terms of his skills and what he can bring to a job. His path to employment is not hindered by his skin or his sexual orientation. That he thinks it is while having a bisexual fiancee and a trans daughter is completely laughable. And that’s probably what felt so pedantic….. that I’d spent years and years studying this stuff and he was in 101. I didn’t have the patience to stick with 101 AND have a trans child living in NE Texas where I was afraid for her physical safety.

They’re problems in which both of us would have to be extraordinarily vulnerable, and say that we were both right and wrong…. but for different reasons than we think. Daniel is so wrong in thinking that I don’t have empathy for him. I absolutely do. I just want the same in return, and feel cheated when it doesn’t happen. If you want me to be all in, I am, but I can give what I require. I need patience, but it’s more than that. I need the people closest to me to see when I’m panicking and asking why so that I can release the pressure valve. Sometimes, it’s society. Sometimes, it’s between us. Sometimes, it’s between me and someone else and I don’t want to talk about it, I just want you to let me cry. What I don’t want you to do is think that I am being panicked for no reason at all. Just because my problem is big in this moment doesn’t mean that yours aren’t big to me the rest of the time.

I am programmed to think of everyone else first. So please believe that if I have a problem I believe is worth talking about, it really is. I am a people pleaser by nature, and would rather stand there and apologize for my existence most of the time.

It was a big deal to give up my label as a lesbian, because traditionally bisexual women are thought of as untrustworthy. We are not more untrustworthy than anyone else. Lesbians also have no problem screwing you six ways from Sunday, only a few of them enjoyable. (And straight girls are just the top shelf you can’t afford). Humans are not remotely clever in the ways they screw people over, and to get cheated on hurts no matter what. To cheat on someone hurts no matter what. We all go through it, all the time, male or female, mono or poly.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t a big deal to change what you’ve always known is true and haven’t because of flat embarrassment…. mostly because the stereotype for bisexual women is definitely not “I’ve been with women my whole life until now and I’m old.”

That lesbian label for me fell apart when I realized that I could love myself better when I was with him, that I didn’t want to fight him. That we were fighting each other because we were both in the shit, both intimidated, both directionless because it was too much to take in all at once and be comfortable at the same time. The flip side of the coin was that I chose it. I chose to be there and I was punished for it, and I’m sure Daniel feels the same way.

It’s just a shame that when he felt punished, he didn’t also keep in mind that I would have turned him out. The fact that he would have done the same to me definitely kept my feeling punished at bay. It’s hard when you can’t change the direction of an argument by unbuttoning a button…. and does it matter if it’s yours?

Many, Most of Them Mine

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

This is going to sound like the most conceited thing ever, but the quotes I live by the most are my own. This is not because I count on them to tell me what I’m doing right, but what I’m doing wrong. I can hold myself accountable for my actions, publicly, and I am hugely capable of dealing with criticism given enough time and space. I can’t say that I never feel rejected, because it simply isn’t true. I react because I don’t take time for myself and really figure out what I want to say. My trauma reflexes work faster than my superego, where everyone should be able to operate. I go back to id over and over because I’m in survival mode. If I am writing down what I am feeling over time, then I can tell when I’m solidly all id and need to protect my energy, because giving more emotional energy to myself so that I can fly under my own power is the most important thing on earth. That’s because in order to get rid of my rejection echo chamber that turns everything from a simple mistake to life-ending crisis, I can never, ever count on external validation. I have shown that I am willing to run my life based on what other people think, and it doesn’t pay off for anyone on earth. I am not special.

I think one of the things that bothers me about the internet relationship is that because it was all written word, all the time, the punches felt so much harder. I’d hear whatever she said in my head constantly, and focus on the ways I wasn’t serving her by being her friend, because I didn’t get the reaction I wanted. I think that’s because she was unwilling to notice we had a problem and face it head on. When we’d get the most angry, we weren’t even seeing the other. We’d go into id jointly and severally. Or, I thought we were, anyway. I think this because she never thought she could do enough for me, either. We had that same worthlessness loop inside us because I felt horrible that we had problems at all and wanted to move past them, she thought I was being a drama queen and making it worse than it was.

It was even worse when she’d get offended at the smallest amount of teasing her ever. I don’t mean the big things that actually were offensive. It was even offensive to joke about our city mouse, country mouse existence. To not even notice that your reaction probably comes from something bigger than that always came across to me as “I don’t care how you feel.” When I told her how she was coming across, she’d change the subject. It didn’t matter if she changed how she treated me… to her, that is. I wanted to know it was going to get better in the future, and the only way to do that was to talk about it. You can’t build a relationship with someone who always sees conflict as the other person trying to hurt you, which we both said to each other on multiple occasions. We hit the same triggers in each other all the time. What wasn’t getting better was either one of us turning them off. Now that she didn’t fit into the mold of friend I needed her to be, of course I was out. It wasn’t because I couldn’t be that for her, it’s that I couldn’t be that for her anymore. She’d told me too much for me not to be absolutely wound into her the way I’m protective of Bryn, Cora, and Lindsay. When I say that just because she was chronologically older than me and it not meaning anything, I mean that I am older emotionally because I was allowed to grow that much more early on. In fact, she’s never had a big sister, and I have a feeling that went into our demise as well. Once we had one fight, she couldn’t see me as trying to protect her anymore. Being stern with her the way I would if any of my babies had problems- trying to say what I felt in a way that would help them without seeming judgmental. And stern is even the wrong word here, that’s just how I’d describe my writing because I can’t hug someone while I’m only writing to them.

I can’t tell them all the times that tears have been running down my face in empathy, and at the same time, knowing that if I don’t say what I mean and mean what I say, then I won’t get what I need out of our interactions, either. I can’t tell them how much they mean to me if they’re not looking for it. All I can hope for is that my words matter to them enough to go back and hear the message they missed in the middle of the mess. She thought I was ragging on her, I thought I loved her more than life itself…. but how can someone take in that message if they’re determined to believe that someone is hurting them, or wants hurt for them?

What I’m learning is that every time I go back to this topic, I hurt a little less because it’s a shallower well of injury. I care so much less about the outcome that I’m able to do the emotional work more objectively (I hope). I am trying to explain what happened so that I understand where I’m coming from. To acknowledge that I’m an angel and an asshole. That I am capable of every emotion in the spectrum. Sometimes I use my power of empathy for good, sometimes for bad, but generally when my propensity for bad decisions comes out, it’s from trying to get approval from someone else.

It bothered me that it pleased her to be thought of as the mom in my life, not because she became my mother, but because I’d describe her mother love as that feeling inside me when it was good. She’d cut and paste those lines into an e-mail and tell me she loved them…. while also not letting me talk about problems we had on that level, either. I took the good with the bad, loving her whole spectrum of emotions and respecting all of them. Hers were even bigger than mine if she looked at them that way. I chose to focus on her superego, she chose to focus on my id. I don’t blame her for that in the slightest, because I barked up the wrong tree. But my god is it easy to see how I got there.

I am not letting myself off the hook, nor her. Because for all the up and down, hers are the quotes I live by…. even the tiniest.

Sausage, bacon, light mushrooms.

I Amโ€ฆ

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Describe something you learned in high school.

Hereโ€™s the link to the audio. You might have to download it into your own media player or the Mega app. SoundCloud wants me to pay because I โ€œupload a lot,โ€ and I get it. I just didnโ€™t know the space limit was so incredibly low. Iโ€™m searching around for options, and most of them rely on using my desktop, of which I am not a fanโ€ฆ mostly because Iโ€™m not really using SoudCloud to increase the popularity of my blog. The audio is just a convenience.

High school is divided up for me in two segments. The first is that I spent my freshman and sophomore years at High School for Performing and Visual Arts as a trumpet player. The second is that my junior and senior years, I didnโ€™t. I went to a regular American high school. I was still in the music program, though. My junior year I was in varsity choir and varsity band at the same time, the first in the history of the school to do so. I learned how to be in a marching band. My symphonic band was better than the one at โ€˜PVA (no judgment, itโ€™s just true).

Then, my counselor suggested that I drop one of my music classes because if I took Microcomputer Applications, I could get what was called an โ€œAdvanced Diploma.โ€ The band was gearing up to go on all these trips my family couldnโ€™t afford, and it was an easy out to drop band because I knew I couldnโ€™t sell enough fertilizer to pay my own way. Yes. Really. They asked us to sell shit to people.

I dropped choir because I didnโ€™t like the new director coming in, because I knew other people that had her and it wasnโ€™t my bag. I was not a โ€œshow choirโ€ person. I do not think that if you can sing, you should automatically be capable of dance as well. I liked great repertory, and pop music wasnโ€™t it (for me). If that sounds persnickety for a teenager, remember that I was a classically trained singer from being in an adult church choir since I was 13.

I didnโ€™t care about Britney Spears. I loved Bach and it showed.

For the record, I care about Britney as a listener. Sheโ€™s great. I just wouldnโ€™t sing her stuff unless I was doing it as a joke, because I couldnโ€™t pull it off where people would take it seriously. Itโ€™s a totally different type of training.

I think Iโ€™ve said before that Beyoncรฉ left HSPVA because she didnโ€™t want to be classically trained, and that I continue to be devastated that it did not work out for her. But same vibe, weโ€™re just opposite. She didnโ€™t want to learn everything Iโ€™d been taught about being able to blend into a choir, breath control specific to that kind of music, etc. Itโ€™s a lot. By the same token, I didnโ€™t want to learn the proper breath control to sing whatever it is the Star Spangled Banner is now in professional football. Whitney Houston doing it in four was the high point. ::looks pointedly at other pop stars:: No one will ever be her, and I knew that Iโ€™d only be a cheap imitation. I donโ€™t want that for me, or anyone else. Do what you do and make it count.

Since my dad had left the church, I also got a job in hopes of getting my own spending money. I was 16, so no one thought anything of screwing me over to save themselves, like making me pay things back when I was short on the register when theyโ€™d been stealing from the drawer. Iโ€™m bad at math, so of course it was all my fault when the drawer was missing $50 at the end of the night. Of course it should come out of my paycheck. Itโ€™s what a teenager owes a national corporation, right?

I would never sue them over lost wages, but I would get a kick out of it if they sent me a product and swag box if someone is reading who thinks such a thing could happen at the company. I once proposed to Zyrtec on Twitter and told them they were paying. Then, they later kidded me about forgetting our anniversary and I said, โ€œhow do you think I feel? You didnโ€™t get me anything.โ€ The proposal rocked, thoughโ€ฆ.. that I had 99 problems but a itch ainโ€™t one.

I worked for SuperCuts, and in this instance I am not talking about the company. I am talking about the sleight of hand with my own team, not every employee who ever worked there. I mean, I was great at my job in retrospect. They had me, so youโ€™re definitely safe in giving them as much money as you want. I still look back on my time as magical because things that are commonplace today were introduced while I was an employee, most notably, American Crew (for which I am gratefulโ€ฆ white people pomade). I think the Paul Mitchell Tea Tree line came out then, too, a total game changer. It was also amazing learning the jargon of how to tell people I want my hair cut so that thereโ€™s less room for a mistake.

It doesnโ€™t always work, but it helps.

By the time I graduated from high school, I had set myself up for life in terms of my opinions on everything that is still true about me today. The only thing thatโ€™s changed is that I call myself out as I am, bisexual, instead of telling the world Iโ€™m a lesbian while not thinking that way, because that label wasnโ€™t something I gave myself. I just have to be louder about being bisexual in a heterosexual relationship than I would if I was actively partnered with a woman, because you can see it with every kiss.

The one thing I didnโ€™t see coming that I didnโ€™t know I needed was dating a bisexual man. That way, we still have all the same cultural references, though Iโ€™m older and have more insurance. He doesnโ€™t care whether I look high femme or butch because in one outing, weโ€™d look depressingly heterosexual and in another, itโ€™s a whole bear/twink mood without all the lights, drum & bass, and Ecstasy.

To stop joking, weโ€™ve both been bullied for being queer. That trauma for him is a different playing field, because mine is rooted in embarrassment. Iโ€™m either gross and wrong or a plaything given to men, because why wouldnโ€™t women being with women be nothing but a male fantasy? Why would women have agency in this society? Straight women donโ€™t even have it.

Men harass me by seeing me with my then-wife (Kat, in this example) and asking us to kiss in front of them, or come home with us, or any number of things that hurt way more than they would have if it was original. Those examples arenโ€™t all Kat, when it was 2000, or even Meag, when it was 1996. Itโ€™s all picking at the same scar every day of my life, because I heard about it before I experienced it. Being an empath made me experience that trauma before it was direct. I felt it on my skin when it happened to my friends.

For men, itโ€™s horrible that they want to be female, their tormentorsโ€™ perception and not realityโ€ฆ.. but seriouslyโ€ฆ. As if being female was the worst thing that could happen to a personโ€ฆโ€ฆ helloโ€ฆ. All connected. Except men donโ€™t stop with horrible comments with other men. It often leads to outright violence and death. I only say this because it happens to men more frequently, but violence against lesbians exists.

Itโ€™s a shared understanding, a shared library of images that create empathy. To me, it is especially important because the one thing I really hated about dating Matthew had nothing to do with him at all. It was gaining heterosexual privilege for the first time and rebelling against it hardcore. I remember one instance weโ€™d gone to meet some of his friends, and someone did that thing where they looked around before they told a gay joke, and I wasnโ€™t the picture of volatility you see here.

I said nothing, and just felt all of it. I know now that I should have ripped the dude a new one, but I didnโ€™t want to upset the apple cart when I was meeting my boyโ€™s friends the very first time. I was also like, 24, maybe 25. I was older than Matt, but still a child in my eyes now. I didnโ€™t know what to do, and I was scared.

So now I can look at that and say Iโ€™m in a better place because Zac has probably been there. Heโ€™s just as out and proud as me. On Wednesday, I noticed right off that his nails were painted teal and he was wearing flowy pants. Heโ€™s the head of the queer group at his intelligence agency. I donโ€™t know how he sees himself, but I see him as George Smiley if he had grown up like us. (Smiley is the protagonist in John Le Carreโ€™s most famous series about MI-6.) I showed up in a black t-shirt, jeans, and tie-dyed pattern Crocs. I later put on a navy hoodie and my CIA baseball cap- some of you will remember that was a gift from Zac because he has the badge that allows you into Langley, but not the capability to escort visitors. I wear it almost every day like Iโ€™m pitching the afternoon game. Now do you see how weโ€™ve inverted the binary? From the outside, Iโ€™m the butch and heโ€™s the femmeโ€ฆ. And no one would ever guess that we were into each other unless we werenโ€™t holding hands or being cute to the point of nausea (our MO most of the time).

Editorโ€™s Note: I learned that it was important on the train Thursday, when a young girl at the Franconia Springfield Metro said, โ€œI want to be CIA, too.โ€ I told her that I wasnโ€™t CIA, I just had cool friends, and to call me when she got there. ๐Ÿ˜›

โ€œGrown up like usโ€ is emotional shorthand for Zac and I having to deal with the perils of being queer from a very, very young age. Zac entered the military under โ€œDonโ€™t Ask, Donโ€™t Tell.โ€ At the same time, Iโ€™m not dating a gay man and heโ€™s not dating a lesbian just for kicks. Weโ€™re not playing at anything, just being the most authentic versions of ourselves.

I have always been that in some capacity, but I have graduated. You donโ€™t learn that you are brave and unique until someone tells you. In the moment, youโ€™re just doing what you have to do to survive.

In high school, I learned that I would HAVE TO be unique.

My freshman year, I told one person I was gay and by the end of the day, everyone knew. In retrospect, it was the best decision I ever made, because any bullying that came my way was tiresome. They couldnโ€™t blackmail me anymore, and they couldnโ€™t get away with anything more original because they werenโ€™t that clever.

Because I was moving out of the gay neighborhood in Houston to a suburb where everyone knew each other, I went back in the closetโ€ฆ. To save my fatherโ€™s job according to my mother. My father didnโ€™t care. He knew me. Weโ€™d met. But guess which message I heard?

Being in the closet for a school year was amazing and gave me the worst panic attack of my life. Both of those things were true. I would not have wanted to miss the chance of being in marching band, would not have traded my conductors (Mr. Matysiak and Mrs. Bueller [really]) for anything in the world. I would never have wanted to miss learning that I was not only a singer, I was damn good at it. I stood on the shoulders of giants, and my mother accompanied me through it all, literally.

She played the piano for my solos no matter what she was doing, and in seventh and eighth grade, she played for all my friends, too. This was not a small feat, as most piano accompaniments for solos are orchestra reductions. So, my mom hurt me a lot, and she also came through in equal measure. Not only was the piano our lighthouse when we were ships passing in the night, she left it to me in her will. She didnโ€™t give me a setting. She gave me the main character.

In terms of hurting me, all of the panic Iโ€™d been feeling that year came to a head when my senior best friend asked me to come with him to his prom. He was literally on the way to pick me up, my hair and makeup done to perfection, when I melted down physically. It caused a monster reaction, a rash, shortness of breath, everything- so the doc came over and gave me a shot of Depomedrol and off we went.

That was the first time that I learned everything can be fixed before school, youโ€™re going. It only backfired once. I had the flu, and Tamiflu was YEARS ahead in the making. If it had, I would have been going to school without spreading it. To be perfectly fair, Iโ€™d woken up feeling a little miserable and bloomed at school. It wasnโ€™t a big deal right up until it was.

Actually, that leads to a really funny story. One of our parishioners while I was at HSPVA was a Republican judge, so I went to their convention in like, โ€˜92, before they were complete nut jobs. While I was there, I bought a button down that was made of real American flag material, and the colors were very dark. It looked sharpโ€ฆ. Or so I thought. I was really sick on my birthday, and nothing would have stopped me from going to school that day in my new threads. I get there and first period was bandโ€ฆ. And if Jack Lucas had been there, he would have been SO PROUD OF HIS STUDENTS.

Editorโ€™s Note: I also went to St. Martinโ€™s Episcopal as a teen, where I was unimpressed with President George H.W. Bushโ€ฆ.. and thrilled to meet a former Director of CIA (of course). Therefore, it always thrills me that Jonna Mendez managed to fool him, because of course now I know we have mutual friendsโ€ฆ. And I am laughing so hard that I canโ€™t even breathe right now.

Those motherfuckers broke out in four part harmony, because they were musicians. They could sing their parts blind. Then, they get to โ€œfree,โ€ and Dan Kovaly hits the fucking *cymbals.* I was just as self-deprecating then as I am now, so I thought it was absolutely hilarious while still mortifying. Later, my mom and dad brought me my favorite food, cherry chicken from Ruggles. We got to eat lunch together in the commons, and it was sad that there wasnโ€™t a Happening that day.

Happenings at HSPVA are code for what would now be called a flash mob, probably. You never knew when they were coming, and it was always unique no matter which art area was on showcase. Itโ€™s one of the core memories that made me who I am.

Back in high school.

Roots

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What Olympic sports do you enjoy watching the most?

Link to audio.

This is another story that goes all the way back to my very first girlfriend ever. Her name is Meagan (I called her Nutmeag.), and sheโ€™s so Canadian thereโ€™s probably a moose in her driveway right now. The way we met is mildly interesting. My 11th grade best friend was friends with her, but I didnโ€™t know Meag at all. I just knew of her.

My senior year of high school, she ended up in my English class. Her desk was diagonal to mine, and I cannot tell you how many hours I spent staring at the back of her head, wondering if she liked me.

I had to wonder because Dr. Hudel Steed, our English teacher, laid down the law. This class is going to be hard as shit, get someoneโ€™s number. I had an opening on the first day of school to meet her, so I knocked over three desks to get to her. Why wouldnโ€™t I? My best friend had vouched for her character. She was already in.

I also didnโ€™t know what kind of gift I was opening when I walked through my front door and the phone was already ringing that afternoon. She was desperate to ask a pointed question that she thought was veiled, and I knew it even then. She wanted to know if it was safe to come out to me, and the question was โ€œwhy do you wear pride rings?โ€ I could sense where she was going and said, โ€œIโ€™m gay. Do you have a problem with that?โ€ She said, โ€œno, Iโ€™m a Melissa Etheridge fan.โ€ From that day forward, my life was never the same in too many ways to enumerate. Our first kiss rendered me absolutely helpless, the way a first kiss is supposed to feel. It was Princess Diaries all up in that shit.

Therefore, I love Canadian everythingโ€ฆ. Including Roots, a clothing brand that offered to make the kit. One of the pieces was a pork pie hat, which Roots sold separately to customers. I bought it, and brought it with me on a cruise to Mexico years and years later.

The hat was for cold weather, but it was Spring Break in Enseรฑada. The Pacific Ocean is cold even when temperatures are three digits. I was standing on the deck looking down at the pool when a woman came up to me and pointed at some swimmers. She said, โ€œsee all those people down there? Weโ€™ve been wondering what kind of athlete you are for 20 minutes.โ€

So, of course I turned around and yelled โ€œIโ€™m a SKIIER!โ€

I also learned that while Meagan might not think my impression of her is dead on, no one noticed I wasnโ€™t actually Canadian. I could have spoken in my own accent, but I didnโ€™t. I played that character for all it was worth and oh my God thatโ€™s why Tony and Jonna Mendez are my favorite authorsโ€ฆ. Itโ€™s all coming together now. THATโ€™s why I love the Argo script so muchโ€ฆ. โ€œCanadians donโ€™t pronounce the second t.โ€ โ€œNo one will know that.โ€ โ€œIf you are caught, they will find someone who knows that.โ€ OMFG. I wanted to know if my cover as Meag would hold up when when my constructive criticism thus far had been โ€œitโ€™s good youโ€™re still trying.โ€ For the record, itโ€™s โ€œTurrono,โ€ frequently spoken so fast it sounds like โ€œTron-o.โ€

I just learned things that were deeper than mere mimicry, like when Canadians tend to say โ€œehโ€ and when they donโ€™t. Itโ€™s not just being able to imitate someone, but to understand the things that have informed why they do them. To understand how to say โ€œhouseโ€ and โ€œmouseโ€ like I was born in Alberta while also understanding that it is annoying as fuck when people ask if โ€œyโ€™all have Christmas on the same day.โ€

But what do I know? Iโ€™m just a dumb athlete. ๐Ÿ˜›

Callbacks

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Whatโ€™s something most people donโ€™t understand?

I have an international audience, so trying to think about this question on a global scale is intimidating. Iโ€™m not sure thereโ€™s anything I would say โ€œmost people donโ€™t understandโ€ with a sample size that large. So maybe bring it down a little?

Or perhaps make a large, sweeping generalization?

Neither seems like a good idea. In terms of a writing prompt, though, Iโ€™ll โ€œdance with them what brung me.โ€ I will say something that I think is true, and then in the comments you can tell me Iโ€™m wrong. Thereโ€™s no way I wonโ€™t be, because again, too many people to think I have much to say on this subject.

Most people donโ€™t understand their personal history and just how much it informs their present and future. There are callbacks of enormous proportion, themes that run through your life, even thoughts in your head. I was reminded of this in โ€œSpare,โ€ by Prince Harry, just in the way it was written. Heโ€™d explain something, and there would be a line in it that would connect to something else, and when that memory came up, heโ€™d use the same words.

The most touching was โ€œI will keep you safe.โ€

The funniest was, โ€œa Biroโ€ฆ wowโ€ฆ.โ€

Now that Iโ€™m 45 and my friends are all over the map, older and younger, these callbacks occur daily. With some, itโ€™s recalling things with people who were there at the time the words/thoughts occurred. With others, itโ€™s that they werenโ€™t there and saying those words is a way of including them in an inside jokeโ€ฆ especially the stories that arenโ€™t really letting them into something funny. Itโ€™s explaining a piece of history, local or global.

So many things in life follow you, whether as friend or enemy.

For me, a big one is homophobia. If you say something homophobic, you didnโ€™t just say it to me in that moment. Youโ€™ve unleashed the holy hell of every time it has ever happened, no matter how benign or traumatic. You are tapping into my memories personal and institutional.

Most people donโ€™t recognize the patterns their family uses to cope. Theyโ€™re not all dysfunctional, and I would never say that all patterns are bad. Itโ€™s just hard to do a thing and see its effects later and want a different outcome while also not changing any of your behavior because it will rock the boat. So people donโ€™t think about their families in the third person omniscient. They donโ€™t rise above the minutiae and look at the larger picture.

I am making a generalization about the world, but through my own experience of being the interrupter of those patterns, whether I wanted to be or not. Iโ€™m just the girlfriend/wife. I am automatically the problem because Iโ€™ve asked questions that interrupt the thing theyโ€™ve been doing for 25 yearsโ€ฆ. And it is deeply problematic because it doesnโ€™t matter whether those patterns are hurtful to me or not. Iโ€™m not โ€œreally a part of their family,โ€ so what if Iโ€™m hurt?

After all this time, I can say that homophobia and โ€œnot really being a part of their familyโ€ was inextricably interrelated. I didnโ€™t have the clout of a husband. If youโ€™ve ever dated me, this still doesnโ€™t out your family in the slightest, because itโ€™s happened every time Iโ€™ve ever dated a woman for more than a month.

I see what happens when other spouses in the family speak up, and realize that my position is secure. Nothing is ever going to change because I said something. Fathers and mothers in law will respect their daughterโ€™s husband a hell of a lot more than theyโ€™ll ever respect me. Thatโ€™s because they view our relationship as a continual sleepoverโ€ฆ. But of course, thatโ€™s not what theyโ€™d say in public, because that would be homophobic.

In private, itโ€™s things like โ€œyou guys can stay at our house now. We have a room with two twin beds.โ€ This was from a father that was very concerned that we werenโ€™t married and didnโ€™t want us sleeping in the same bed because of itโ€ฆ. Even though we were domestic partners- at the time, the closest you could get to marriage. It was a slight we didnโ€™t deserve for something we couldnโ€™t change.

So, after Iโ€™d stuffed all that down for years and years, I went off at said parent because Iโ€™d tried everything else. It wasnโ€™t my finest moment, but it wasnโ€™t theirs, either.

This has also happened more than once. With one, my wife was in lockstep with me. With the other, it was their whole family against meโ€ฆ even though my problem with them was how they treated their daughter and I was trying to stand up and protect her.

Sometimes people donโ€™t recognize patterns.

I am not Jewish or Catholic. I donโ€™t try to guilt people into anything. If youโ€™re reading something Iโ€™ve written and you feel guilt, thatโ€™s on you. I lay it out there and Iโ€™m not shy in doing so. What you do with โ€œmy intelโ€ is up to you. I have what I hope will happen, and the solid knowledge that people rarely react the way I think they will.

Homophobia and family dynamics conspired to make me want to be quiet about everything. It was probably the whole goal, to make me scared enough that Iโ€™d ruin a relationshipโ€ฆ when in reality, a relationship that makes you constantly afraid to be who you are doesnโ€™t deserve to survive.

My callbacks are now making me stronger. I am old enough to have an opinion, and mine is just as important as yours. I will not let people tell me to do less, think less, feel less. Iโ€™m just not capable. I have to find friends who just live and let live. They donโ€™t feel the need to save me from being me, and arenโ€™t threatened by large emotions coming at them.

Thereโ€™s also something to be said for relationships being work, but not like sticking a round hole in a square peg and hoping it will miraculously fit if you just beat at it long enough.

You step outside The Matrix when you realize that not wanting to give that much energy to a problem is valid. For instance, floating above the argument and watching it, seeing if the same one comes up over and over and over, and how many of your solutions work and how many are a stopgap to kick the can down the road a little further.

Not wanting to give energy to fixing a problem, for me, is seeing that the other person is either minimizing a problem or refusing to acknowledge there is one. I am also the person that gives a relationship time to grow and mature. Not giving energy to a problem is not something Iโ€™d say about a relationship that was a few weeks old. But if youโ€™ve had the same issues for ten years, thatโ€™s a different thing altogether.

I also donโ€™t start a relationship seeing red flags, ever. This is because all people have problems, large ones. Why should I expect you to be different from me in that regard? The thing I love so damn much about Daniel is that he knows heโ€™s a mess. He laid it all out there. The only thing I count as a red flag is what people donโ€™t tell me and Iโ€™ve had to find out on my own, worse when itโ€™s a conversation that we needed to have in private and another sprung it on me at a party.

If a person is open, honest, and willing to learn, there are no red flags. Thereโ€™s only a set of problems we need to deal with together. But thatโ€™s my perspective, perhaps not yours. Some people do want to weed out what they think is troublesome ahead of time. Itโ€™s valid for them. To me, no person is irredeemable if they are aware that they have huge flaws and are willing to do something about them.

If you are certain that getting help wonโ€™t do anything for you, then thatโ€™s when Iโ€™m out. Itโ€™s not my job to fix you. Itโ€™s my job to hear you say you need help and to support you while youโ€™re getting it.

In effect, exactly what Daniel did.

He knows USG (United States Government) fucked him up, and to an extent can point to exact dates and times. He gets my respect for being that self-aware. He doesnโ€™t have red flags. He has trauma reflexes that people see as red flags.

I suppose if thereโ€™s anything I could posit as โ€œsomething most people donโ€™t understand,โ€ itโ€™s them. Most people arenโ€™t willing to sit in the discomfort of self-discovery. Itโ€™s not comfortable learning that you are judgmental, selfish, angry, or capable of hurting others. Itโ€™s not comfortable thinking about how and why you do it so that it doesnโ€™t happen anymore.

Itโ€™s the whole reason why people ignore their callbacks.

Music and Silence

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Hereโ€™s a SoundCloud link so you can listen rather than read.

One of my favorite pieces of music is โ€œ4โ€™33โ€ by John Cage. People think that it is four minutes and 33 seconds of silence, and thatโ€™s minimizing its power. It probably doesnโ€™t make sense on a recording, but live, itโ€™s incredible. The piece is not written so that the silence is the point. No. The music is the environment of the room in which itโ€™s being performed. Every time itโ€™s programmed, it looks a little different.

It also puts classical music on its head. Other pieces require you to be quiet. You still shouldnโ€™t talk, but the music is in movement- dropped pens, unwrapping a cough drop, patting a toddler on the back. Iโ€™m generally cold, so my contribution is generally rubbing my hands like itโ€™s the start of Totoโ€™s โ€œAfrica.โ€ Admittedly, it is โ€œcheating,โ€ because I am the rhythm section of something thatโ€™s supposed to be completely random. I feel like the ringer in the crowd. Again, silence is not the point. I have had people tell me to stop. The problem is that I am not a ringer on purpose. I really am that cold. More than once have I been called โ€œLeslie No-Blood.โ€

Cold, though, is relative.

I will take being physically cold a lot better than someone being emotionally cold to me. For instance, caring about your reaction to my feelings more than you care that what youโ€™re doing is hurting me. At that point, I donโ€™t care what anyone thinks. It isnโ€™t right for me to keep saying Iโ€™ll go along with thinking that your feelings are more important than mine. Then, itโ€™s not a relationship. Healthy ones mean that sometimes my problem is more important than yours, and sometimes your problem is more important than mineโ€ฆ but no matter, weโ€™ll attack either and itโ€™s easier when both minds are on it.

However, if one person puts the other in the position of โ€œyour feelings donโ€™t matter,โ€ the relationship doesnโ€™t deserve to survive. Until now, I have been the person who already thinks her feelings donโ€™t matter. I will never again let it be reinforced by another. I have let people (particularly women) emotionally vampire me for years. They use me as their dumping ground because Iโ€™m willing to listen. I seemingly have a jackass magnet on my forehead, because nearly everyone Iโ€™ve ever met has wanted to tell me their life story whether I was interested or not.

One of my friends told me that I should be CIA because I was good at gleaning information. Iโ€™m really not. Iโ€™m just empathetic to the point of losing myself and people naturally let it spill because they feel safe. I donโ€™t create an environment to be The Little Gray Man. Iโ€™m just capable of saying โ€œthere, there.โ€ I have a feeling that if I *was* CIA, it would be under Napoleonโ€™s instructions: โ€œnever interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.โ€ Why go out of my way to get information out of people when theyโ€™ll just give it to me?

20-30% of the time, itโ€™s great. The rest of the time, people are quite invasive of my space and have no problem stealing my emotional energy without thinking I might want it back. People allow me to refill when I can talk to them in the same way. Itโ€™s just that most of the people who have talked to me (generally on the bus or train when Iโ€™m in public, anyway) have no idea that itโ€™s been 20 minutes and I havenโ€™t said a word. Not only that, they havenโ€™t even taken a breath long enough to give me an opening. Itโ€™s โ€œhello,โ€ big emotional dump, walk away. I allowed it because thatโ€™s what Iโ€™ve always been taught. Being good was not needing anything. Taking up so little space was a bad thing.

Now, I feel like there have been some instances of overcorrection, but I have learned something important. Extremely important. The only people that will test you on needing anything are the people who have benefitted from your silence. If they were getting something out of you being a friend, yet never speaking up, theyโ€™ll be so mad. Let them be mad. Theyโ€™ll either get over it or they wonโ€™t, and thatโ€™s not up to you.

Brene Brown says that vulnerability is showing up to a conversation without being able to control the outcome. I havenโ€™t allowed many of those people in my life because I didnโ€™t think I deserved them. It was natural for my feelings not to matter, so why wouldnโ€™t I let people steamroll over me as if I donโ€™t exist?

I โ€œall of the suddenโ€ seem very selfish for needing anything at all. Itโ€™s not that. Itโ€™s that when you ignore me, Iโ€™ll get louder because your ears are clogged. If you donโ€™t listen even then, itโ€™s time to pack up. I can only do what I can do. The one thing I have never been able to do before now is stop the bleeding. I would just let other people use up every emotional resource I needed to use for myself because obviously, they were more deserving of it.

I am not saying that I am always blameless for everything. Itโ€™s impossible. At times, Iโ€™m excellent at being the worldโ€™s biggest asshole with a God complex. My only point here is that I come by it honestly. If I tell you in plain voice how Iโ€™m feeling and itโ€™s ignored, if you donโ€™t mean anything to me, Iโ€™ll walk away. If you do, I will repeat what I said until you acknowledge. At this point, no matter how much I care about you, Iโ€™m out. If I am putting myself out there as someone who is taking care of you, I will go to extraordinary lengths to make sure we have equal airtime. If your idea of equal airtime is that we both spend the majority of the time thinking about you, I will call it early.

Before, I would just stuff everything down. I would spend years being unhappy because thatโ€™s what I thought I deserved. With the set of relationships Iโ€™ve been talking about in the last few entries, they are all people to whom I have spilled my guts. It wasnโ€™t that I didnโ€™t have a place to go with my feelings. The entire problem with all of them is that when I expressed the fact that there was a problem in our relationship, they wanted to minimize, move past it, or institute a monster avoidance policy.

Itโ€™s just not worth it to go into the minutiae of who did what to whom, but I will say that all of them benefitted from me listening to their problems, but when I spilled mine, there couldnโ€™t be a discussion. All the time they spent talking about their problems was good and wanting them to talk about our problems was bad.

All of the music would get sucked out of the room, leaving me in absolute quiet. I could think about our problems on my own. Laying them out was also problematic. Most people are intimidated by the depths to which I feel emotion. Most people donโ€™t know how they feel as easily as I do, and are not capable of putting it into words off the cuff. I have compassion for that, because INFJ personalities are only 9-15% of the worldโ€™s population. Very few people deal in emotions the way I doโ€ฆ. Meaning I am not arrogant enough to think that I am more emotionally intelligent than others. I can bring the receipts, but you wouldnโ€™t know it unless youโ€™re asking for them. People do think Iโ€™m arrogant, though, just for being me. I know how I feel and express it well. I am also female, which lends itself to my arrogant reputation whether it is true or not.

โ€ฆ.because men are visionaries whether they have the letters to prove it or not. I just have resting bitch face. Best not interrupt a man who canโ€™t tell shit from Shinola. He needs all the brainpower he can get.

Speaking of my arrogant reputation, it is non-existent to everyone except the people Iโ€™ve let have power over me and now want to be an equalโ€ฆ. Especially those who donโ€™t feel thereโ€™s a balance of power issue at all. Why would there be? If you already have it all, why would you give it up? Why would you complain when thereโ€™s not a problem for you. Both of us love you to pieces.

Women taking back their power always looks like arrogance, even to other women, because theyโ€™ve all been programmed to think we shouldnโ€™t need anything. Someone breaking out of that mold is not to be trusted. I think itโ€™s a large part of the problem in female leadership. Men arenโ€™t used to women demanding things, especially when their performance is poor. Theyโ€™re not bad at their jobs, you are a threat. Itโ€™s amazing how often HR thinks the same way.

I think the reason women in lesbian relationships are less willing to play is that they donโ€™t have to deal with menโ€™s shit at home. They are all at once the problem and woefully unprepared to deal with it on two levels. The first is that they donโ€™t understand why things are the way they are. The second is that they are powerless to do anything about it.

Even if I was the CEO, some of my male employees would think I was worthless at it because I got it through some type of nepotism, whether from my husband or the collection of men I had to sleep with to get the job. I like the second option better, because Iโ€™ve had so many relationships with women that the idea of โ€œsleeping my way to the topโ€ is just too ridiculous not to laugh. They donโ€™t put enough women loving women in power for that to be an achievable goal whether I was interested or not (Iโ€™m not).

Speaking of women loving women, someone called me out on my straight girl crush when I said, โ€œdonโ€™t think I donโ€™t know what I lostโ€ by saying, โ€œsheโ€™s straight. You were never in the game.โ€ Iโ€™m glad they called me out, because thatโ€™s not what I meant. I didnโ€™t mean that I lost a romantic relationship, because it was clear from the start that was never going to happen. I meant the complete idiocy it was to lay it out there in the first place, because then I was an untrusted entity and all the work weโ€™d done previously was down the drain. You would have to know how important friendship is to me to know how seriously I mean that. My platonic relationships arenโ€™t less important than my romantic ones. I feel deeply no matter what, which is why I only have two or three friends. I donโ€™t have the emotional capacity to lay out that kind of energy for everyone, so I donโ€™t.

What happens is, in effect, putting on a recording of 4โ€™33 and grabbing onto the music in the room. Itโ€™s always there, humming, pulsating, rhythm on fireโ€ฆ. But fire is quiet when couched between music and silence. I have to find it, though. Else Iโ€™ll just rub my hands in the cold.

All the Things You Never Knew

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

This is the most stereotypical thing you’ll ever read from the mind of women who love women. I mean, it is brutal. I will go into the lesbian falling in love with a straight woman HALL OF FAME. I just want to correct assumptions. I don’t need anything, I want it, and there’s a huge difference now that I don’t care if anyone likes me or not. I just don’t have enough time left to worry in terms of a second act. I will also not be recording this one because I can’t sit that long in this much pain, even though there’s glory, too. Maybe in a year.

You have trauma reflexes. So do I. I was taking everything you said as yelling at me and so were you. It devolved into madness and I was trying to stabilize. Future proof for both of us so that we could move the fuck on and love each other like we should’ve in the first place, when the connection was so explosive for both of us that it woke up everything within me. I paid attention closer, and I felt that was necessary because our story is a book series because I didn’t change all at once, like a magic wand. I changed because I did the homework and you sometimes would and sometimes wouldn’t, and that’s what hurt more than it helped…. and thank God I am not literally writing a book series on this. First of all, what a terrible idea.

You never seemed to realize that I was paying attention to you because I thought you could do no wrong, ever, as long as we were doing the homework as a group project, but we were just never in sync.

I’d say things like you and anyone you want to bring can be expats wherever Daniel and I are living, and you didn’t respond to it. I was always confused, and because I’d been in love with you, it caused me so much pain that I just couldn’t take it. I didn’t know if it was a good idea or not. I was scared to throw it out there, scared to say anyone you want, and I didn’t know how you felt about it.

I’ve always told you that I was just laying out my feelings, that I was writing like I was blogging. The way you reacted was frequently to feel like I was coming down on you instead of building our relationship, it had to be dead on brick by brick for a while. So that we could forgive each other and ourselves from some really deep shit and move on without those feelings constantly coming up to bite us, and I can’t think of a single problem we’ve ever had that didn’t escalate into thermonuclear war.

I loved you every day. All day. It will never go away, and I will love you until my last breath. Just because my trauma reflexes told me otherwise doesn’t mean that it was true. It was just true in that moment, that snapshot of my day. So many times I thought you lost your camera. Lost sight of the fact that it was for life because it had to be. There has never been an instance where I hashed out our problems in front of you and waited to see if I was correct. I wanted to know if I’d said something helpful or hurtful so that I could tell you what I meant if you had questions because you thought it was an attack and it wasn’t. That’s what I meant when I said that there were moments that shit had gone down at work and I was having a panic attack and neither one of us could handle the other’s emotions. We just turned on each other againโ€ฆ but never did we once go back to being ourselves, the ones that loved each other until we just couldn’t because we were the only people in each other’s lives where it was okay to go that deep because we’d been doing it so long we’d forgotten why small talk exists. It was intense and beautiful and fed me in all the right ways, but I never knew how you felt about it until I’d hit a trauma reflex and in the next few minutes whether it was verbal or in writing I’d feel like everything was gone. When I told you that, I was trying to goad you provoke you make you mad, whatever the story you were telling yourself and I told you that I’d done the homework. I fucking taught Microsoft Word to Brene Brown and I joked about it with you, but how in the hell could I have gotten this interested in resolving everything without her?

You didn’t seem to be curious when I was letting my feelings out about you when they were negative. You accused me of going into combat mode and stop hearing me and start fighting.

It was never me. It was someone else in the room, and I got that from a comment on my own marriage article. When we weren’t triggered, we each tried to bring light into the darkness and it always failed. I always had empathy for everything you were going through in terms of what you might feel about me laying out all my feelings, and you being so busy that you simply didn’t have time. I understood and waited in line. I’m still there. But if you choose me, know that love makes me as serious as a heart attack in a way I don’t want to be. I see how you’re struggling and I want to help you but I can’t if you don’t let me know what the problem is. Most of the tme, when you feel annoyed and angry, I’m just gardening. There are so many follow-up questions that you haven’t ever seemed to have time forโ€ฆ but again, I don’t sit in judgement of you. I lay out my feelings and you call me an asshole and before I can even take a breath I’m trying to find out why and when you’re doing it so that I can figure out which trigger I’ve hit and why. That way, I know not to do it anymore. When you don’t tell me what you were thinking and feeling about that, I get anxious because the only thing I want in the world is for us to enjoy each other and it seems like it is a thing that could happen and something it couldn’t and it’s confusing as fuck no matter whether I’d ever been in love with you or not when I have no idea what in the hell I’m doing to you when I write. Because then I could adjust, make it better, make it where you can lean on me again. But because you don’t see it, you see me casing and trashing the joint.

I couldn’t talk to you in a way where you felt loved and special because I couldn’t. My trauma reflexes would hunt me down and go for blood, and so would yours. But I didn’t want to be stuck in trauma reflex mode.

I wanted to return to the spectrum we’ve always had, which is that love wins. When I was teling you how I could love you and why, you ignored all of it and waited for your moment to gut me. There was too much pain and not enough teasing me.

I was trying to be funny when I talked about trading dick for a live-in chef and how you know you fucked up, but I was just flipping you shit. Your reaction was so hard core you are going to fuck up everything or that’s how I perceived it and spiraled out.

Do you really think that was about you? No, it was a trauma reflex kicking in. There was no apology phase except from meโ€ฆ the part where we hug each other and all is forgotten. I didn’t really think that was all you. I thought you were just having a bad day and I wasn’t the dog you needed to kick. They weren’t even there. It was the monster in your head and the ghost out to get you. I also know that I needed to be corrected, called out in love, but your way of doing it was to absolutely incinerate me when you know abandonment is my trigger.

I am choosing to resolve all of this shit if you are, but the longer you don’t speak the more it convinces me that you don’t want to do any emotional work with me when I told you there was no shortcut back to nice on this one and you showed up with such intensity that it made me lose my head for a little bit, dreaming about later in life when we’re all ancient, sitting on the back porch because you have nowhere to be and your kids are all grown and all that shit. It could be more if you were willing to move in my direction, but I don’t think it ever will be. I wasn’t focusing on you disappointing me, I was focusing on everything I needed to tell you before we were ancient, and I know that if you want to say it, you have to say it rightthefuck now because my mother went from having to wear a cast and being dead in the blink of an eye.

The reason I got so deep into our shit is because I love you, not because I hate you. It’s not a flirting, blushing love but day in, day out hard work. You live for the highs, not the lows. I gave you a letter that contained all the things about you that I love, and it was ignored. I don’t need you to take everything and throw it all away, because that’s what you did. I don’t think it was intentional, I think it was just my own trauma reflexes talking because I constantly think you don’t care when you only respond to me saying shit that makes you feel horrible. You don’t respond to me when I’m telling you I’ve been willing to be devoted in a way that couldn’t be duplicated, and again, I think it came across as goading and provoking, because my trauma reflexes aren’t smart enough to back down. So while I have things to say that are hard to digest, that doesn’t mean that I’m trying to load you up with guilt and shame. It means I love you enough to struggle until it’s right for both of us. It’s just not right for both of us, or at least right now. You seem to me to be happy this way, and I don’t even have to be angry about it because I know it’s just you responding to trauma and not burn the whole world down. I didn’t know you didn’t know that, so when you’d accuse me of throwing emotional bombs and trashing everything, I wasn’t asking for that. I was asking you to take it away and think about it while you need to be apart from me. Recognizing that your time is worth so much. Recognizing that In the Beginning I would have done anything for a walk and talk. And you know I’d do some shady shit if you needed me. If you needed me I wouldn’t stop for red lights.

Your story is important, more important than mine right now. Mine will come later, and I want you to fucking be there. I have been singing through the pain, and you should know me well enough to know what a big fucking deal that is. It’s my trigger, and I was leaning in. To have you not even respond was excruciating.

And if that feels like me goading you, it’s not. It’s recognizing that when you emote, I feel it deeply. You’re my friend and I have been in love with you in the past, so our issues on both sides are deeply seeded, seated for maximum root system. I have never, ever been saying that you are wrong and bad. I was saying “I think you are wrong about this.”

I have so much crap in my life that it was over the moment you said “you made me.” I don’t need people who think that way. But I can’t break the connection. It feels weird, but it’s correct on both sides. The thing is a direct quote from “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.” “Just talk to her once and it won’t be weird anymore.” What I mean is about these topics. We only have to cover them one time and then we can move onโ€ฆ when our trauma reflexes aren’t constatly telling us that we’re disappointing each other. I am not you when I am with you and become you in some ways because some of your lines go through my head because you’re such an extroardinary writer that I can’t get over it.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m not allowed to have feelings about it. I would do anything for and with you if you’d just tell me how you feel. I am an INFJ. I don’t see the world as what it is, but what it could be. I wanted to build something with you, and when I told you there was a monkey wrench in that plan, you were silent.

Just like you, nothing intentional, whether it was bad or not. That’s what love does. It is a series of vulnerablilities, not all sunshine. That’s when we have to find it for ourselves, going back to a discussion when there’s not a chance we could change it, but doing something about the present. Feeling better and stronger in self esteem, being other aware and communicating, and I am not asking for you to be this way all the time. I’m asking for a tiny bit more than you can give, and that’s okay with me. I know why. We both need a step back. I also told you that you were welcome until I took my last breath, and then my trauma reflexes kicked in and it came across to me as “it’s always going to be this way. I’m always going to feel confused and lost when something big comes up, because you don’t spend your days in all that touchy feely crap.

Because if one comes out, they all do. That’s when it’s hard as fuck, but then it passes and you become more integrated. But again, only seeing through my own lens and not yours because I don’t know if I’m welcome in your life or not, because we both tell each other to fuck off at the exact moment we start getting somewhere.

But like I told you before, I’m sure you could get in touch with me if you wanted, but I have no idea whether you will or not. I’m not carrying a flame for you. I haven’t seen enough evidence that you’re willing to speak with me in my love language if I am willing to speak to you in yours. When I was telling you who I was, it was through my jokes and humor because that’s how I deal with enormous pain. Just enormous. I am totally cool with it now, But don’t think I don’t know what I lost.

Thus the jokes that make you cringe and let me blow off a little steam, just like you. We are so much alike in so many ways that it boggles my mind. Having you say that I’m painting my feelings as fact was rough, because my truth is my truth. I’ve been doing it the entire time. You only blink when our problem is about us. It is suspicious or angry. It feels like our emotions are struggling to get out.

You said “I trusted you” in many, many different contexts. Sometimes, it was because you felt like I’d screwed you over and I hadn’t. Sometimes it was because you really did trust me and it was fantastic or terrible depending on which issue we were talking about.

You thought I was trying to irk you in the most serious way possible and it didn’t calm you down that I told you I was laying out my feelings, that nothing I ever did would have anything to do with you, that my actions were my responsibility, not my obligation. That I was offering you love so profound you couldn’t even wrap your arms around it and your response was nothing.

That’s why I always knew what trigger I’d hit and when. But only after I’d done the homework and learned you enough to see you clearly. I could respond that way when I laid out my feelings, but if I hit a trigger in you, you immediately stopped seeing love and started seeing an incredible amount of negative energy. Why would I ever raise my voice? When I’m writing, it’s just stream of consciousness and I throw it out there to see what sticks, and the cycle continues because once our reflexes have calmed the fuck down, what I saw is that we loved each other with intensity, not that I was always ragging on you. That I couldn’t be counted on for anything but constantly saying we were done and not done. I know that’s not true, and I also know that you know it.

This is because I never knew if I was welcome or not. We couldn’t futureproof if our lives depended on it, and yet we need each other in a million different ways. You see it differently than I do, and it hurts so much that I’m just as miserable now as I was after my divorce and my mother died. I loved you that much that I feel that much pain. But what was coming across was that I was trying not to poke the bear, and you didn’t see that I was doing it because the lens through which you were reading was that everything was bad and this would never go away and why was I still on this?

Because we can’t move on until we fix this thing, this toxic cycle because that’s the hand we’ve been dealt and we have to manage the downward spirals, not assume that the other is trying to hurt them when it escalates. I have never tried to hurt you, ever, unless we were both in escalation mode. When that happened, our trauma reflexes made both of us scared of each other, when if we’d talked it out in person it would have taken a few minutes, but we didn’t. We chose to hash it out with seven percent of what goes into communication instead of just saying “I can’t with your writer personality. Get your ass over here.”

I don’t know where your anger is, but I feel it. Whatever we’re both fighting, it should NOT be each other. I told you that you could cry on my shoulder if you needed a place to go with your feelings, but I never knew if I was welcome to tell you that….. but we’ve been friends since Jesus was a boy.

Because you say nothing and I don’t want to live like that. I want to embrace my true authentic self, and I swear to Christ you’re always welcome in my life. If you show up BIG, and accept the love I’m offering and recognizing that we are just enough alike and just enough different and we both need to bend and sway instead of letting the tree disease.

You have no idea. None at just how much hearing your voice changed me. I got the idea that my voice was a mask long ago, and the idea to actually put it out there from you. The other thing I realized is twofold. The first is that hearing each other’s voices while we talked it out would have solved the problem nearly immediately. Secondly, not knowing you had a partner was brutal on many levels. Not knowing that you’d deleted everything led to the change you see now, but a huge fight in the moment because trauma on both sides. I tried to tell you that every day for too long and you never responded to it. I let you go because I was exhausted. I couldn’t go any longer without you being willing to engage in resolution and resurrection, and you focused on all the wrong things.

So did I, beautiful girl. I got the idea to call you that because that’s what I call Cora. It wasn’t trying to dive into history or anything like it, because I am stable enough to love you absolutely for who you are. You are a Doctor Who is a very bad patient (I can work Doctor Who into goddamn anything, just roll with it). The absolute only thing I ever asked you about that show even though it’s the biggest fandom in my life, you never told me how you felt about it, or if you even clicked the link. I thought you would do it because you love me, not the show. It was about Vincent van Gogh, and how someone didn’t save his life because he changed it, it’s that sometimes you can’t change your story.

Apt.

And you thought I was being a drama queen. It’s not that at all, it’s that your response was a trigger. When I told you that, you dismissed me. I never wanted to talk to you again in my whole life. But I made an exception with Daniel because he is important too. The reason the email telling you about Daniel was begging and pleading is because I told you that I never wanted to speak to you again and then found out that I hadn’t sent it. I didn’t want to trigger you.

I wanted you to show up, and you couldn’t or didn’t. Whether I know it or not is up for grabs, but that depends on you. Because whether I thought love was romantic or platonic, it’s been such an extraordinary experience, but you kept thinking it was terrible because our trauma reflexes constantly rubbed up against each other. When I told you that my letters were going to be received as me being an asshole whether I meant it or not, you had no idea what idea I was focusing on, and the idea has been she’s the most beautiful, most interesting, most puts my mind in hyperdrive person in my life so do anything to keep that relationship strong and healthy for the future. I am speaking with such love and trauma here:

“The longer you go without speaking, the longer I don’t think you want to do any emotional work with me.”

Your response was to show up big, and then when I emoted about you, you shot me to shit. It just feels like you can’t handle large emotions anymore, when to me that is actually the most valuable part of our relationship. That’s why I don’t wanna pay attention anymore. It’s that I feel like I am Putting everything out there , and you’re not. I am not your personal content creator. You are not my therapist. Both of those things are well established. However, you are the friend that agreed to listen. So am I. Nothing was ever a half ass threat to trigger you. I am sorry that you feel that way. How it comes across is you not taking my mental health issues seriously. When I told you that, you stepped all over my ass. I forgive you. I haven’t forgotten. This is because in that moment, you decided that your trigger was more important than mine. I even said that there are certain words that you say that send me into a blind panic, but you never asked what they were. Now you know.

I’m sure my response was sharp to you, and I was triggered.

To me, it was our love story and how it changed over the years to accomodate both of us. It was recognizing that I had my own demons where you were concerned, that I wasn’t ever being flippant or trying to hurt you, goad you, provoke you. This is what I am talking about in terms of a toxic cycle.

It was so much bigger than that to me, both including you as family and showing up big, but I would have shown up so much bigger than that. If you look at my letters through that lens, you can see it so clearly that even I’m frightened by it. I don’t know how to manage it.

And as I’ve always said, this is not about you. This is about me. I couldn’t stand that we were both in each other’s heads and hearts, and we couldn’t make it any better. Those things are both true.

I was crying when I told you that I had become the Lord John Grey you could love and not the one that you couldn’t. You couldn’t listen to “can’t you see that I am screaming for empathy and not with anger.

I’m also saying that I escalated. I hurt you. Screwed you to the wall. But we both needed to be selfish. Maybe this is a time of interim, maybe it’s not. But here’s what I can control. I can stop actively letting you into my life if you won’t tell me how I can be a better friend. You keep saying that you’re tired of letters that try to guilt you and it makes you delay writing back or putting me on the back burner.

Putting me on the back burner turned out to be a huge fucking stove. I’m frustrated that your responses are short and never about us. I know, beautiful girl, that you can’t. Both because of time and trauma.

We’re getting to the age where we need each other, but we’re not moving in the same direction.

If you want to show up big, it means taking “you made me” out of the equation, taking lecturing you out of the equation, all that. The spectrum is large. I have now had every feeling that can be described about you by now, and I’m still showing up even though it was really fucking hard. But as I told my friends, it was worth it.

It wasn’t my obligation. I could have gone on hurting about it forever and kicking myself, or I could ask you to compromise. Asking you to compromise was not the tack I should have taken, for many, many reasons.

Because my trauma literally lines up with yours. We irritate the hell out of each other, but it doesn’t mean there’s not something here. It means it’s gone until we can both fucking chill.

But to my mind, you’ll always be the one who stole my heart, and returned it stronger than it had ever been. I couldn’t have become who I am if you hadn’t been you. That’s the real story, and I felt like you lost the plot because I never knew yours. I asked you what you were doing, and it was just another emotional bomb where I wasn’t upset at all. I was genuinely asking “where are you, and where do you want to go.” I probably could have worded it better, but that’s what I meant.

In most cases, I could have worded things better because there was no context. You weren’t sitting with me, watching me write, asking questions when you didn’t know something, and me getting to tell you what I was feeling in my own tone of voice, so you know I’m not throwing emotional bombs. It’s a prayer of relief in the legal sense in that I am telling you where I am and where I’m going, and asking for resolution on the few things that still need closure. None of this is predicated on my gender or sexual orientation. It’s what having a relationship where both people are open and vulnerable means.

But again, you don’t have time for that and it is really, really okay as long as you carve out a tiny, tiny bit of tme to help me be less confused. You have the funniest bullet points in the known universe and I’m here for it.

This is the relationship where I’m willing to drop the funny with you. You have no idea what that means to me. I wore a mask through my entire childhood, trying to be funnier than I am, more polite than I want to be because sometimes I just didn’t want to engage. I never had the strength to dictate terms, and I’m not going to be that anymore.

Wanting to be liked has cost me so much, and so has not. But what’s different about not is that I chose it. It is mine.

I chose you. If you choose me, it’s on like Donkey Kong. If not, “may the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.” I really do love you with that day in, day out kind off love. It gives me more strength than you can grasp, and I’m not sure that you ever have.

You are fuel for me, because once the fire was lit, I put it out. It may not have been the way you wanted or enough for you, but please know that I have always loved you as a complete person, not for your body. That’s shallow and inconsequential. I lit a glowing campfire. It keeps us all warm.

This has been all about consequences on both sides of the equation, where I could hear you say things like “I am furious with you right now.” Because I know you won’t be furious forever, and I will wait as long as it takes if you’re thinking that this is accurate and you want to reach out, but if you’re going to take it as more negativity than love, you might want to clean your glasses.

It’s your brain that turned me on. I think that should mean something, because I may be extraordinarily intelligent and paint my feelings as fact, but that’s because I got to it through you. That I could dictate terms, that I could stand up for myself, that I could say when there was a problem and do what needed to be done to fix it.

It’s a bigger ladder to get to me now that I’ve loved you, because I’ve learned to compartmentalize and focus on what’s happening right now. And what I’m doing right now is thinking about direction, and I always have been.

Sometimes I want you to return with something beautifully written, because I know that when I receive it, I’ve gotten a letter from the one I love the most, and no matter what it says, it’s valuable. Even the ones that drive me up the wall, because it’s a tapestry.

It has torn, but I have thread. I have stitched it up before, and I hope I will stitch it up again. I take nothing away from what I have and haven’t done. My reflexes are deeply intrinsic and have nothing to do with you.

I felt like I owed you the homework, not because it felt obligatory, but because there’s nothing more in the world that I want you to feel except Leslie loves me and we’re all good, it’s just that when issues come up, she will irritate and anger the living shit out of you because you don’t garden as a writer, and it’s a problem that I amโ€ฆ except that I have always been this way, a thinker in longhand. Neither one of us are the people we met, and we’ve never had a do-over.

If there is a God of the universe, I got them by writing to you. Every letter was a prayer in longhand. Every letter was how I process emotion from beginning to end. You do that with your mind, I do that with my heart. Maybe we can learn how to think and feel together. We are so different in some ways. Being empathic is a rough gig. I don’t mean that you are not empathetic, I mean feeling the whole world at once. It’s not that great. I am constantly emotionally laden. Writing is to deal with all that Because it is a comprehensive response to life.

There was never a chance that you were going to believe that I could call you out and love you for exactly who you are simultaneously, as if my feelings aren’t as crazy, wild as yours.

I never, ever want you to forget that, because even if it’s over I would do anything to prove that your sacrifices are not in vain. Just because I have to do a thing doesn’t mean I don’t get to feel about it.

We both do the things, just in different contexts. And you can see that so clearly when I lay out my relationships with other people. I seem to write beautifully about everyone but you.

When you’re the one I choose whether you ever choose me or not.

You’ll notice that I didn’t say you were ever in love with me, or that we weren’t taking in different realities. Our frames of reference were different because I had to get rid of the trigger that said I had to be with you to open up like this. I don’t. I just need to love you the way you were made. We both have different ways of being in this relationship, and that’s okay as long as we make the effort to speak in the other’s love language and not our own so that things are exactly are the way we are now, both of us butt hurt over what would be nothing if our trauma reflexes hadn’t kicked our asses. I asked you how we could move on, no response. But I swear on a six pack of Bibles it surprised the hell out of me that I got a response leaving me with a brand new asshole like two weeks later.

Do you see what I mean? Instead of asking about context, you went off. If it was a different day, it wouldn’t have been you. I have ripped you new assholes with as much dexterity as you. We are both so brilliant. I remember when I told you that you were the Hemingway of e-mail or some shit, that you write clearly and beautifully even when you’re angry and my response is “I’m not pleasing her,” but that’s not me. That’s my trauma reflex.

And if we’re really, really being dead honest, if we take sexual orientation out of the equation you could have written this about me.

And it would be better than mine.

Jesus Comes Up a Lot

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Link to Audio Version

It’s always great when a memory from your childhood comes up and makes you laugh. This is from a Facebook status earlier today:

I’m staying in a hotel this weekend because we’re having our wooden floors refinished at the house. Two things about that. Apparently, there is a hockey tournament for littles going on, because it is crazygonuts loud when they’re awake. Luckily, I have three pairs of headphones that all go up to DEFCON OMFG. #SamSmith #Unholy Aaaaand, I forgot my good razor. I managed to get smooth legs from a twin blade without making it look like I have poison ivy. Ryan Darlington would be so proud. Ask him about it. I’m certain he remembers the story, it’s our “meetcute.” What I remember most of all is that my dad turned it into a sermon illustration. ๐Ÿ˜› ๐Ÿ˜› ๐Ÿ˜› I don’t remember what scripture it was “enlightening,” because I don’t remember a story in the Bible where Jesus shaved his legs.

Here’s the story since most of you can’t actually ask Ryan. I know that some of you can, but this is for the rest of you.

Editor’s Note: Shout out to Ireland, who beat the United States in my stats yesterday. It means a lot to me because I’m not Irish, but that’s where my family originally began. Also another shout out to the Irish. I say editor’s notes because of Diane (Jennings), who divides herself into her YouTube personality and who she calls “Editor Diane,” and those clips are even funnier.

When I was in 7th grade, I was a trumpet player. I was not a prodigy, but I was good for my age because my dad is a trumpet player and he was able to help me until I got a private teacher. So, in the summer between seventh and eighth grade, I went to band camp at UT Austin. All of the other girls were shaving their legs, and I had never done it before. I didn’t even have a razor. So another girl lent me one, and it was already dull. I had gashes under both knees.

This beautiful boy with curly blonde hair walked up to me and said, “Hi. I’m Ryan Darlington. You look like you could use a Band-Aid.” I laughed and he stole my heart. We were an unusual couple for kids- together for over a year. His parents are just as important to me as my own, even after thirty years.

I don’t want to write about the funny part without writing about the serious part, too. Another instance in which I chose someone to love that didn’t deserve it over him, when he was The One. I wore his promise ring for years, long after we broke up, because I liked the thought that he was with me even when he wasn’t in the room.

I was stupid enough to tell him I was gay, but not out of malice. Out of idiocy. If I had known then what I know now, I would have done things so much differently. I would have explained to him that I’m bisexual, but that doesn’t mean I need two partners. That means I need you to understand that my identity as a person is different than yours, and we’re going to have to hash it out over what’s acceptable behavior and what’s not, because my words tend to get me in troubleโ€ฆ.. “Sometimes you are very funny. Sometimes you are very not.” Tis true. I was a line cook for a long time, and sometimes it doesn’t occur to me that other people have never worked in a kitchen and have no context as to why I’m so outlandish and often don’t think of the consequences of what I say. It generally clicks in my brain that I am in kitchen mode when someone says, “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?”

The one friend I’ve lost to that disease that surprised me was a woman who owned a bar. Because of that one fact, the one I call “I didn’t choose the pub life, the pub life chose me,” I really began to look at the difference between indoor voice and outdoor voice. That I was actually hurting women and not joking with them like it came across to me.

It’s an experience I’ll never forget, because even though I lost that friendship, I will never in a million years stop loving her for what she gave me, which was new insight into my own behavior. It allowed me to do the homework. I have no idea if she still reads me or not, and it’s been so long that I don’t care. But it would make me happy to know that she knows I didn’t just tell her I was sorry, I changed my behavior for the better.

I can say that I’ve been changed for good without it being a double entendre.

I’ll sing that one line in the audio just to her, yet not to try and make amends to get something out of it for myself. I just want to tell her my truth. You did change me for the better, and it is permanent.

I continue to make mistakes and step over the line when it’s unwelcome, and all I can do is apologize profusely. But now it’s not a constant struggle between the language I use with coworkers and the language I use with friends.

It makes me happy to make other people laugh, and devastated when I’ve hurt them. I don’t want to be that person, ever. I’m also human and ADHD. Having your impulse control that fast and loose with everything and putting kitchen language on top of it is not new or interesting, because most of us are like that. ADHD, addict, misitโ€ฆ a kitchen is a tribe that will have you no matter what you’ve done or who you are. Believe me, that is a good thing. We all bust our non-neurotypical asses and have a great time doing it.

But speaking of impulse control, my rage went off once when I was a dishwasher. I verbally went for blood when my chef left both chef’s and bread knives in the bottom of the sink with dirty water on top so you couldn’t see them. You know what’s worse than being cut by a knife? Being cut by a knife that is soaking in bacteria. If I’d cut myself on a chef’s knife, it wouldn’t have been great. The serrated edge on the bread knife could have done so much more damage than that.

You really haven’t seen anything like a dishwasher dressing down a chef, but at least he had the humility to look embarrassed. He almost really, really hurt me, and he knew it. He stood there and just took it because he didn’t break a rule, he broke one of the biggest. In a kitchen, it doesn’t matter if it’s idiocy or malice if I end up in the hospital trying to get rid of whatever was in all that used food.

Like I’ve said before, when I don’t love someone, I don’t say anything. It’s not important. Every chef I’ve ever had earned my respect, but I didn’t like all of them. I’m only still in touch with two, the cream of the crop.

But that’s not the whole story. Cooking doesn’t drain my energy. I am excited and overwhelmed with possibility every single day, even if it’s just making the same shit. My nickname has been either “SpongeBob” or “Bob Esponja” in three kitchens running. The only time I’ve ever wavered in that kind of bubbly excitement was the day I had to go to work at 3pm when Anthony Bourdain had died that morning.

My chef/line cook friends leveled me with their posts, and I was in so much painโ€ฆ. and so much more when I got to my kitchen and no one really knew who he wasโ€ฆ and then Chef got there, and we looked at each other. We’d both been crying. No words, just a nod. Trying to talk was too much. By then it was 4:30 PM, when all the stations are mostly prepped and the dinner rush is trickling in before the “pop.”

Cooks live for “the pop.” We’re not cooks. We’re fucking gladiators doing ballet in front of a stove, an oven, an open flame grill, fryersโ€ฆ Picture Bikram yoga but for people under so much pressure they can’t breathe. That’s what makes the end of the night, when you’re breaking down the cardboard boxes and taking out the trash, feel like you’ve just won or lost a war.

You live for the W. Anything else is unacceptable, and we all know it. If we got in the weeds and ticket times were slow, we beat ourselves up over itโ€ฆ. or, we do at first. Over time, you learn that you can’t win them all.

Thankfully, I’ve won so much more than I’ve lost in every area of my life except cooking. I’m not sure that anyone understands my grief except other chefs, because I had so much trouble at work and it never occurred to me that I had too many physical limitations to work in a restaurant because I didn’t know I had them. I just felt incompetent all the time.

In another entry, I talked about the landscape smoothing over. It was the blessing of my life to learn that I hadn’t screwed anyone over on purpose in the kitchen, not even once in my lifetime.

The curse is knowing I can’t go back.

I wish I had listened to myself when I was young and been better about telling myself over and again that I could find a job in intelligence. I didn’t know that there were more options than C/DIA, because Foster was a helicopter pilot for both. And interestingly enough, I am learning about spycraft for a novel I’m writing. My interest in being CIA is equal to working for State, because it’s not about the spycraft. It’s about being able to travel. I think I would have been happy just about anywhere, but because theology is another great love of my life, I would have tried to walk every inch of MENA, State’s designation for Middle East North Africa.

Interestingly enough, one of my friends who works for the government told me that, and then a day later Lindsay said that her first boyfriend, Saeed, was from MENAโ€ฆ which I knew, but it was just interesting that I’d never heard a term before and it came up twice in two daysโ€ฆ.. But anyway, if I could find a safe place anywhere in MENA, I’d stay. I have too much to see before either I die or the Israelis and the Palestinians try to kill each other so hardcore that they also ruin everything important to Christians. I’m not hating. Both sides do shady shit all the time, I just feel ike it’s more justified for the Palestinians because they aren’t a recognized state and don’t have an actual military. Israel also has tons of American money pouring into it because of the Christian contingent in Congress. Jesus CHRIST this is not our fight, literally. Israel is not the one that needs help right now. If you think that the Russian army is overbearing and Israel is not, it might be a question you’d want to ponder further.

I know I do. I do not believe in Evangelical White Jesus. I believe in the historical brown Jesus posited by Marcus Borg, because it is absolutely insane to think that Jesus was the only baby born IN THE MIDDLE EAST and yet has French features. I’m bipolar. I know from crazy. This is it. There are stories out there about Jesus’s family escaping to France after the crucifixion, because Joseph of Arimethea had a shipping company. That’s how he was rich and powerful enough to get Jesus’ body back from the Roman government.

What would it be like to experience stories that are all true, and some of them actually happened in person? (Now you know how I picked the title of the blogโ€ฆ.)

What would it have been like to sneak away for a weekend in Turkey to actually stand on Mt. Tabor? What would it be like to sit on the shores of Lake Kinnaret (in the Bible, the Sea of Galilee)? My mom went once, my dad has been twice. When he came home, he made us an Israeli recipe for broiled fish with lemon, and it is one of the strongest food memories I have, one of the things that made me fall in love with it. Indirectly, Jesus made me a cook. So you can thank him or yell at him. Choose your own adventure.

Because of my focus on travel, none of my interest in spycraft started as recently as it seems. It started with a dream about my great uncle, Foster Fort. I was an older kid when I learned what happened to him, but he died in a helicopter crash in Somalia. The dream was wondering what it would be like to talk to a real spy. Ask him where he’d been, what he’d done (UNCLASS).

In 2008, when Argo came out, that was all she wrote. The movie was fantastic, and Tony Mendez divined that there would be people who’d want to know the rest of the story, so a companion book that told the real story was greenlit by George Tenet. The funniest thing is that the movie focuses on CIA and not the Canadians who helped us, so I have it on good authority because I’ve read it at least six times that it says “thank you Canada” about every five pages.

Then I thought Tony and Jonna walked on water because Argo was so good, and I’ve read every single thing they’ve ever published, and Jonna has a memoir coming out sometime this year. I’m so excited, because there needs to be a “sequel” to Master of Disguiseโ€ฆ. and I’m going to say it that way because Jonna had the exact same job as Tony 10 years later.

Which gets me thinkingโ€ฆ..

What’s my sequel? Where is it going to come from? I can only control so much, but I’m vulnerable enough to just let people and opportunities show up.

Like a blonde curly-haired boy who thinks I could use a Band-Aid.

Sunday Morning, Rain is Falling

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

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