Tag: Music

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

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What is your favorite hobby or pastime?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First and Second Chair

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

In what ways does hard work make you feel fulfilled?

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

I was also 13 years old.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am fulfilled.

Second chair no longer exists.

I Don’t Have Favorite Children

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

What’s your all-time favorite album?

The Eminem Show, Eminem

In order to know why it means so much to me, you’d have to know the circumstances in my life when it came out. Maybe six months before, my wife had slept with two of her coworkers in one weekend while I was out of town, and I know that because she called me while I was still away to tell me that and break up with me. I was not feeling particularly kind toward women at the time. I couldn’t get angry, but my music could. Eminem literally became the paramedic healing my emotional wounds, because his pain stood out to me. I am Stan yet I have wonderful boundaries and I don’t care he didn’t write me back. 😉 I hate to do this to all my other favorites, but this one takes the cake.

That anger went away quicker than it would have on its own because through someone else’s eyes I could see that my pain was valid in his artistic expression……. when to put out my own was worse because I protected her when I shouldn’t have on my blog and only told my closest friends how bad it got. I can look at either one of them and they know which person I mean when I say “Sgt. Fucktard” and both of them will fall out with laughter, because now I can laugh about it, too (such a pity that neither live in DC now).

I barely even remember her name is Kat anymore, and that’s for the better. Karma was good to me. If she knew what I knew about what happened to me, she’d be too jealous to be happy, and that would be true if I’d never published anything at all, especially blog entries. It’s a beautiful thing when you meet someone that is worth your career. It puts everything into perspective really, really fast. The love of my life isn’t out of romance, it’s that she has a space in my heart no one else can have or will ever duplicate because I have to lose the master.

Also, this part of “Cleaning Out My Closet” made me stronger: “have you ever been hated or discriminated against? I have. I’ve been protested and demonstrated against… picket signs for my wicked rhymes…” It felt a lot like blowback from my web site because I have never been protested against by more than one or two people at a time, but it felt like hell because my first reaction was always to pull the plug; I wanted to please them and my career said “people think you’re a good writer. If you want to be able to do this for money, you have to keep going. Dooce didn’t become Dooce overnight and you won’t become Leslie Lanagan that fast, either.” Eminem slowly gave me the confidence to push away people who don’t like being on this blog and gather the people who tolerate it, even if they don’t outright love it.

I felt like Supergrover felt like she was in some sort of hostage situation, that I was writing about her to provoke her so she’d have to be stuck with me, yet didn’t get that my feelings would naturally go away if I wasn’t focusing constantly on her. This is, in fact, not our situation at all. She’s acting blind when she shouldn’t or can’t.

She’s my first thought every day, nearly every moment because I accidentally went from a blogger to a journalist in 15 seconds flat. It’s not as cool as it sounds, but yes it is. Both extremes are enormous, and I cannot cope with the downside alone. I shouldn’t have to ever and it’s a gift she can’t or won’t give. I feel that by letting me into the little things, I have more material to protect her because I have a bigger library of analogies to protect her identity publicly, because she might not freak in my personal life (although she very well might, too), but there would be hell to pay if it leaked here, and she would be well within her rights and responsibilities to hate my guts. I don’t protect her like a lover. It’s so much deeper than that.

I’m neurodivergent. Rambling like this at parties just doesn’t happen. I am literally using my quirks for me rather than against thanks to having the strength to stand up for myself. It’s just that now, one of the friends I ramble about is the least likely to need or want it. So, I cut her loose off and on to see if these feelings will go away and they never do, because either I’ll apologize again or she’ll drop in and yet won’t. Three word e-mails most of the time aren’t going to cut it and she’s avoiding it and blaming it on time. It’s a conversation we desperately need to have in a situation where we can’t have it. Given the option, I’d choose her over writing every time, mostly because she’d never ask me to pull the plug unless this was a real problem and not a possible one. She thinks I’m entitled to my stories even when they’re all bullshit, but doesn’t realize they’re all bullshit because I’m doing the very thing I need to do. Even when I’m angry.

Especially when I’m angry. Right now I’m angry that she doesn’t see that she opened up herself to having a right hand ring out of necessity and by blowing up each other’s lives and not talking about it, the right hand ring burns us instead of tempers. She thinks I should get over it. I think I should think through it with her brain and my heart, because that’s how we show love. She does the thinking, I do the feeling. She would rather have a root canal than acknowledge what she’s done and move on from it, because it seems to me that I’m activating guilt where it doesn’t belong by needing something she doesn’t deal with in herself and also needs desperately. We could support each other, but we don’t. That ship, in some respects, has crashed against the rocks because of a Siren, and now she’s having a heart attack. Because she doesn’t have time to heal me and feels guilty, because she thinks I’m asking for so much more than I really am.

I don’t need to have chocolate and coffee with her every week, I need her to acknowledge that she’s the Earl Grey in the box, the one most people sleep on and I adore because she didn’t sleep on me. I am not the person that when she comes to work all this out, I heap guilt on her. I express needs and that’s what she reads, so she doesn’t respond like a mama wolverine when she’s the issue, but God help everyone else. There are a couple people in my life that if they became mutual friends, they’d regret it. I would have looked forward to seeing that in person. Something equivalent to “surely you do not believe that this person who is a mental bag of rocks is worthy of you?” Probably everything I would have felt about her husband until I realized that he was perfect for her and I was wrong. I have never been convinced that we would be even close to happy as partners, we’re just connected by chance. The enlightening that she found her person would have been a good day, too.

Lesbians totally have a straight guy side to them in terms of possession and jealousy because we’ve been taught to act that way by men. Not that they’ve straight up told us that, they’ve just modeled it for centuries. In my head I’m Anne Lister without the hairstyle. It’s unfortunate that Supergrover married a man on purpose and a gentleman jack by accident with loyalty, because now she has two guard dogs that probably wouldn’t always agree with each other (but I’m certainly willing to have that fight as it is so worth having).

The Eminem Show had the same effect on me that my mother’s cemetery has on me now. It gave me perspective on the fact that more people than me were in pain much worse than mine. It helps me now to release pain in the situation with Supergrover, because I will never be jealous, but always possessive where she’s concerned. She hasn’t made the connection that she needs me to be possessive. I see something she doesn’t. It sucks.

History repeats with music, because it also contains some of the tracks she likes. I’m naturally gravitating towards it. One of the things I remember from our first few years is listening to that album again because some of her favorites are ones I usually skipped, but became beautiful to me because she loved them. I am listening to this album because I have the right to that much anger and I feel same type pull that makes me crave her words, while she thinks I am telling her that I regret meeting her when I need her to open up. I am doing my best to curb my enthusiasm, but it cannot go away so it won’t. I am the Impossible Girl because I have to be wound into her whether I want to be or not, because it’s for life, even by accident.

It’s an album, a presentation. I haven’t bought any songs separately.

I bought the album, so I go to all the concerts, waiting for a Piccardy Third that might never come. We’re in the middle of the rap battle, not the delight of singing to Hailie. I look forward with hope because to not is not being me. When we resolve, so does the chord.

If and when it does, get ready for “the most feared duet since me and Elton played career Russian Roulette.”

A Lot More Than People Think

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 4 Comments

What brings a tear of joy to your eye?

I cry a lot.

I’m the most tenderheart bear you will ever meet in your entire life if you could, because first of all most of you aren’t American, much less close enough to see me in real life. Secondly, I said I cried a lot. I didn’t say that anyone saw me do it.

To be honest, most of my tears fall when we’re talking, because your side of the conversation isn’t in the room.

I wasn’t always this way. I used to cry in front of people all the time… mostly because I’m a musician and there are certain chord structures that control my tear ducts. If a dissonance resolves by dropping the bass so that the resolution expands deep into your chest, my physical reaction often includes tears. If it is a choir singing a capella, I can pretty much guarantee it.

I have even fallen apart in rehearsal.

There is really nothing like a basso profundo standing behind you, projecting a low E into the center of your back. I’m a soprano, yet basses make me happy. There have been moments I’ve wanted to cry during a performance, and luckily not because it was a train wreck (usually). Sometimes, the beauty of a moment descends upon you and you really don’t have a choice.

I had a conductor speak to this once, and it changed my life by helping me put on a game face. When we (the choir) are singing, it’s not our job to have a reaction. It’s the audience’s turn to have a reaction.

After that, touching moments during a concert were not for me to enjoy. I hadn’t paid for a ticket.

Writing brings tears of joy as much as music does, because I’ve already said that I cry when I’m writing to you. But there are television writers that can flatten me way faster than I can destroy myself. I have cried at long distance commercials, Hallmark movies, and knives “made for my family by a Boston silver smith named Paul Revere.”

The tears of joy started falling while typing out the last line.

Making My Own Space

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life?

What really helps me is a place of my own. I think about it all day, every day. About how in this house I have one. It is my space and no one is allowed in without permission. There is no social expectation on me to share my bed with anyone.

When Dana and I moved to Houston, not long after I realized that our house was huge enough for Dana and me each to have our own rooms, and I set it up that way. It didn’t have anything to do with my relationship with Dana. It had to do with the fact that we seemed to be exceptional at everything except sleeping next to each other. When I moved into my own room, I slept deeper than I had in years, and it made me a convert. One of the things you can do to make your relationship better is to sleep in separate beds as long as neither one of you are taking it personally. Dana definitely did take it more personally than I did, but also rolled with it, so at this point, I don’t know if my needing space was good for both of us or not. If It was too selfish, I apologize. Cosleeping is just not going to be a part of my life going forward. I have to take care of me in this way or I do not function well.

If Zac and I were on a relationship escalator, the thing that would work in his favor is that he has a huge house with many bedrooms and absolutely no expectation for me to be in his. I am betting that neither one would turn down the other’s invitation, however…….

That’s the difference. Right there. Even in a couple, you need to carve out room to still be the two individuals you used to be.When I could sleep better, I could handle having the rest of my identity being leslieanddana. It wasn’t the relationship I objected to. It was the cultural norm, thinking that there was something wrong with me because I didn’t want to sleep next to her every single night. So, I looked it up. Lots of couples suck at sleeping together, and sleep is too precious to waste.

Not cosleeping is dating energy. It’s as fresh and as hot as you want it to be… But that is my answer. It is not everyone’s. I’m not saying it’s the right way, just my way. At this point in time. I am both too young and too old not to know what’s coming down the pike. If I say never again, the next person I date is going to have a toddler that likes to sleep with his ass glued to my face. Never say never.

It has nothing to do with the way I feel about my current life… and everything to do with the way I sleep. I get night terrors, and I’d rather be alone. They don’t happen often, short and intense. I don’t think I’ve been with Zac long enough for him to see one, because if he did, he would have said something. That’s because I see him so rarely that sleeping next to him is a treat, not an obligation. If we were closer, the novelty would wear off. I can make it work for a night here and there, but in negotiating living with another partner, I need to know it is not demanded of me unless there are extenuating circumstances like a toddler sleeping with his ass glued to my face.

Although now I’m getting old enough that my partner’s kids would be teens/20s or there would be an age gap between us. Not that I am complaining about either thing. It’s just reality. The only thing of which I am certain is that if I do have children, I will not birth them. I know I am physically capable of carrying a child at 45 or 46, but I have no desire at all. Just put it in the negative numbers.

Thinking about the one thing I do every day- being safe in a space of my own- lets me branch out to an enormous degree. My thoughts can run wild because there’s no one to interrupt them (although interruption can be a good thing when I’m going down the wrong road). Being alone allows me to be a better writer because I am living in shifts. I am reacting and reflecting. To take away a space of my own limits rumination, certainly, but it also curbs creativity. I don’t just bitch in these sessions. I’m trying to figure out what’s signal and what’s noise.

For instance, I got a Facebook meme THIS MORNING bitching about the U2 album Apple put on their phones once. That was in 2013. As if that is the worst problem in your world….. to get FREE MUSIC (and if you didn’t want it, you could just delete it).

When I listened to that album, I found one of my favorite songs, “Every Breaking Wave.” Of course my favorite song of 2013 came from that album, but knowing why is above your pay grade. That’s an inside joke, and I know who will laugh when they get here. People who have real problems just roll their eyes at stuff like this, and that’s a large part of the joke.

I remember the conversation surrounding it- not funny until we ran the conversation into the ground a hundred times. Basically it was all about perspective. There’s conflict all over the globe, as well as hunger and a thousand other problems, but you’re cranked up because you lost maybe 150 MB on a 16 GB phone. What the fuck ever.

I have two paths of thought regarding this. The first is that there are so many problems in the world. Why is this something they remember over 10 years later? Alternatively, most people don’t like to get vulnerable. Bitching about U2 is infinitely easier than walking into your own valleys of vulnerability. Even then, I said something along the lines of “honey, I get it. The world is fucked up. But more today than yesterday?” Said person was also using the surface level to express fear and doubt about much bigger problems.

At the time, I was sort of going through a thing vicariously through someone else. A friend of a friend had been murdered. So, of course the U2 album was going to set them off. It was the right thing at the right time to blow off some steam.

It wasn’t that the world had become worse. Ours had.

I think about those kinds of memories all the time in the name of putting them down. I wake up every morning and reassess the day before, and it has been habit for 20 years. Although I haven’t always posted daily. I’m on my 61st or 62nd day of that, trying to get it ingrained as a habit. I was going to talk about writing every day vs. cosleeping, but two things about that. The first is sleeping alone informs everything else. I could not do what I do without rolling over and accessing my tablet first thing. The second is that I already have an entry called “This,” It asked about my collections, and these entries are it for me.

They don’t take up space. In my room.

And now, without further ado, the best thing that came out of the worst thing that Apple has ever done, apparently:

Commence Smiling

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

List 30 things that make you happy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Going to Be Okay…. Eventually

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Write an open letter to your 15-year-old self.

Sometimes you see a writing prompt and you know it’s going to hurt. I’m going to be blessing and releasing a lot of pain. It’s not going to be easy, but I hope it’s going to be worth it.

Dear Leslie,

You are my precious, precious child and I wish I could protect you. You’ll learn to protect yourself, but it will take so long you’ll lose hope. Just when you think it’s never coming back, you’ll find the woman of your dreams. It’s not what you think. She’s safe. Do not fear her. You’ll know her by her suits and crap for work. She will hug you so tight all your pieces will glue back together. Please don’t be too jaded to let her. There’s going to be a lot more pain before It Gets Better. Love her to the best of your ability- it’s for life if you can learn to be kind even under stress because sometimes………..

Things Fall Apart

You need to learn about the Civil Rights Movement. I know you know what it is, but dig deep. You’re already thinking big thoughts. You want to be the Martin Luther King, Jr. of pink people. In some ways, you already are- but in order to be great, you’re going to have to find a way to be strong. You already know this, but I’m not sure you know how much. Those big thoughts will never go away, and you have a stunning ability to write and speak in a way that people will listen. The hard part will never be getting others to believe in you. The hard part is getting you to believe in both of us.

I know you’re fragile and broken. I know you don’t recognize love unless it destroys you. Just keep writing to deal with pain, and start taking Tylenol before school. The one thing I can tell you about the future is that we find out Tylenol also dulls emotional pain. The next three years will be the hardest of your life so far, and I’ll be 46 soon if that’s any indication. You’re going to grow in so many ways, but everything you know right now is not everything I know, and I cannot change anything because you are a child. It’s not our call yet. I know you don’t feel like a child, haven’t for a long time. But Leslie, you are…. even if this letter doesn’t convince you.

I know it will be hard for you to accept it as reality, but it is true. It will be true for a long time, longer than you thought possible. Just hang in. I cannot give you anything more specific, because if you don’t go through the hard parts, you won’t get where I am now. It’s all going to be okay if you can learn to walk through fire.

You are capable of leading your people, but you need to protect your energy until it’s time to step off a ledge. You will feel in your bones when it is time to jump. You’re a superhero, but no capes. it is very good advice. Live in the now, darling. It will be Incredible, and you think that being Incredible will come later, and it will in some ways. In others, you’re already the bravest person I know.

Being “out” at school is one of the most courageous things you’ll ever do. You will not be at your schools long enough to see what you’ve done, but it matters. People still talk about it as if you’re some sort of hero…… and yet, you’re just trying to survive. Stop listening to her music so you can hear your own. If you work hard, you’ll be as good as she is. There is no doubt.

If you work harder, you’ll be even better. Maybe don’t go to PVA for trumpet next year. I think you’ll have more fun in choir. Just don’t be a soprano. Be an alto if you want to survive. I know you already know this, but it bears repeating. You will turn out to be a lyric soprano, but it’s not your personality. Just “cigar and vodka it down” (that was a joke). Your inner diva will come out regardless when the right teacher comes along. You’ll be able to sing to the heavens while you’re in hell.

I can picture you walking the halls of High School for Performing and Visual Arts with your Walkman, because Jason Moran said that you needed to listen to everything and he had a Walkman, too. But only you and I know that it’s not jazz on the tape. It’s her.

I know this is the biggest heartbreak you’ve ever had, and there will be so many more. Some will be older, some will be younger… but if you’re not careful with picking a partner (this is a future word you will like), you’ll be exactly where you are now. Jumping up and down for an approval that will never come because of what has happened over the last two years. This will happen over and over until your person arrives, and even then it won’t go all that great. Just keep hope alive. With enough courage, you’ll gain a lot of respect. It’s just that no one will tell you that until years later. You’re going to think people don’t care about you, when in reality you’re their hero.

I need you to do something for me. I need you to take better care of Lindsay.

This is critically important. Tell her you love her in both words and actions. Protect her while you still can, because later on it’s her turn and you won’t want to feel like you haven’t done enough. You just don’t know how she’ll save you, and if I could tell you I don’t think you’d recover from the happiness. Through her, you’ll get to tell Jimmy Carper about the clock radio under your pillow, the story every teen in Houston has for him.

I know you’ve harbored a lot of pain. This is one of the things that will go right. She’s the best thing about your life. I know you already love her. Make sure she knows it goes to 11. If all goes according to the same plan, you’ll look up to her. Literally. I’m sorry, but you’ve grown as much as you’re going to grow. You’re going to be in her shadow, but I also know that you already know that’s where you want to be. Her shadow is The Grand Prize Game.

You’re going to get the new bike, Archway cookies, the Bun bars, AND the photogirrafic pimento.

Spoilers. However, I cannot tell you how much joy will come out of your pain. It’s coming out right now in this letter. That’s because you’ll learn how to look over your life as I have, like you’re doing right now. It’s going to change your life. Lean in, and enjoy the ride.

You’re just not there yet, but already know you’re a disaster in the PVA hallway- a ticking time bomb that’s about to go off….. but I checked with me and it’s still okay for you to tell your nemesis to go to hell. Remember that nemesis rhymes with emesis. Do with that what you will.

You’re going to vomit up emotions until you’re dry heaving, and then you’ll keep on doing it because you don’t know how to stop. You already have a good friend, though. Dianne is safe. You’ll love her more as the years go by, and realize you were on the wrong track. The extra N means that she is a better person, even if you can’t imagine that’s true.

She’ll pick you up in her little green Volvo and it will change your life, in what you think are small ways, but here is the secret to life. The small things are the big things……. because she knows what you refuse to acknowledge at home- and think you’re hiding at church. She will hear the distress in your voice when no one else does. Love her to the moon and back. Love her until you think you just can’t and then love her a little more. She sees you, Leslie.

Look for the people who see you. Always. I give you permission to walk away from anyone. Protect yourself, but not so much you can’t receive love.

If you keep that in your mind and keep writing, you will go places and see things you never thought you could. You’ll meet people that define you, because you’ll love yourself when you’re with them. Cut yourself some slack. You’re a pretty great kid. It’s okay to love yourself, too….. even when it seems selfish.

The only thing I would suggest is that when Dana invites you for Easter dinner, go.

Love,

Me

The Letting Go Show

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I said something about a Supergrover playlist the other day, that she reminds me of the color green, new life, new earth, etc. But what I needed in the moment was to release pain before I could enjoy everything again without anger or resentment. Here is the list.

  • She’s So Mean, Matchbox Twenty
    • Her clothes are on the floor and my records are scratched, but she’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
  • I Believe in Love, Indigo Girls
    • When we tried to rework all of this, each to our rendition, painted blindly in a corner, lost for ideas blinding fishing for a compliment or kindness just to bring us into view. You could not interpret me, and I could not interpret you.
  • Unwell, Matchbox Twenty
    • I wasn’t crazy, I was unwell. She’s hell on wheels in a black dress, but not by choice.
  • Hold On, Wilson Phillips
    • This is a direct result of the movie “Bridesmaids,” and it is completely responsible for making me cry and blow my nose at red lights.
  • Nobody Knows, The Tony Rich Project
    • It’s everything you can’t say, because no one wants to hear it.
  • Pink Triangle, Weezer
    • It’s the quickest way to make me sob with empathy at Rivers’ plight, because I would know nothing about the reverse….. #eyeroll
  • Not Your Fault, AWOLNATION
    • I yelled at her for so much that didn’t have anything to do with her, and that’s where I’d start if I got to meet her on the ground. Just “I’m sorry” all over the place. Alternatively, there were other times when I felt she was doing the same thing to me with no hesitation or apology. It cuts both ways.
  • Despacito, Louis Fonzi and Daddy Yankee
    • This is probably the most controversial song on the list because I loved it based on the idea that I was blogging the most innocuous things about her because no one else would think they were important and the narrator talks about writing on her body. This is what happens when you decide a song is about someone and ABSOLUTELYFUCKINGNOT fluent in Spanish. Dude is a creep, and my thought was beautiful because she was writing our story on my shoulderblades as well. I still like it, it’s just not a mutual story anymore. The ink on my skin I got from the amusement park is fading and when it goes, there’s no re-entry. I will not let people tell me one thing and do another. I want to hold your hand while the ride lasts, and if you decide to jump, my emotional support can’t depend on whether I’m happy about it or not. It can’t depend on getting things I want that you don’t, and vice versa, trying to convince the other we’re right. Relationships aren’t supposed to be THAT much work. You aren’t supposed to find dealbreakers once a week.
  • Superman, Eminem
    • This is only when I’m really angry, or I skip it. She was the equivalent of “I’m not fazed, I hang around big stars all day, It’s not a big deal to me anyway… you’re just plain old Marshall to me.” I was all “girl, you run that game. First off you don’t know Marshall. At all so don’t grow partial… that’s ammo for my arsenal.” Great at first, a shit show later. I could never recapture her attention even though I wanted to rescue her.
  • Love Game, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar
    • The chorus makes me laugh my ass off in this context. “Have a blessed day.” I am the little fuckin’ Ferris wheel and I have no shame.
  • Business, Eminem
    • I desperately want to know what it would be like if Dre and Em were us. She would drop me like a sack of potatoes in a rap battle. You can do that when you have ten years of blackmail. Alternatively, I’m cleaning out my closet.
  • Closer, Nine Inch Nails
    • It’s not about her. It’s the cry of The Timeless Child. It’s perfect when you see it in the context of abuse.
  • Dope Nose, Weezer
    • This has no particular meaning, just a good beat to make me feel good….. even if it is a little “Peter Gunn.”
  • This Could Be the Start of Something Big, Count Basie
    • I can’t not hear brass like that without thinking of her. She’s too quick. I should have put this as the intro track.
  • Church, Lyle Lovett
    • She should have joined me at National Cathedral if she wanted to see me fly like a lead trumpet. Not getting to see her face while I was riding on a high C makes me sad. She has heard me on a recording and all I have to say is that you didn’t even see the best part yet.
  • Til the Sun Comes Up, David and Devine
    • The video says more than the song.
  • Paper Bag, Fiona Apple
    • What it feels like to struggle with ***gestures toward everything***
  • Hit Me Baby One More Time, Bowling for Soup
    • Chad Michael Murray played me in a movie. It is every bit as embarrassing as it sounds, thank you for noticing.
  • This mashup. It’s too cool to describe.

I Am Already Changing Modern Society

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What would you change about modern society?

I am already holding a mirror in front of society, because my microcosm represents everyone else. People read me because if it’s true for a hundred people (my on the ground reach), it will be true for a thousand. If it’s true for a thousand, it is a good indication that everyone will find something they can relate to written by me. That’s because I’m a bisexual man wrapped in a lesbian’s body, a minority who is trapped in the majority (I’m white), with spirituality and religion weaving themselves into the themes of my life.

I am always spiritual and seeking an audience with God. I am sometimes religious. I enjoy church and miss it, then go back and see why I don’t go anymore. It’s not that I don’t believe in organized religion. I believe in it so much because it has the power to change you if you let it. It’s just different for me because I don’t find God there anymore. I find God in other ways because I know how the sausage is made. It’s like being a musician and a line cook. Everything changes once you’ve been on stage, sat in the orchestra pit, and worked in the kitchen. I enjoyed being a lay preacher of all the jobs I’ve had in church, so I lay out my thoughts here as if I was preaching.

Every entry has a thread of that preacher persona running through it because I’m making connections through a library of images collected from every piece of media I’ve ever consumed. Very few entries are so stream of consciousness that I forget to tie it up at the end. It is short sighted AND impressive that every entry I write is one shot, hit post, go back and fix typos. When I go back and read something from five years ago, I am astounded at how quick I am at writing sentences that will flatten me emotionally and other people say that as well. My marriage entry, the one that was shared all over the world, some of them celebrities? It took about half an hour.

My blog is the very best example I can give you in terms of why I was terrible at school until I got to college. It all looks like the ADHD kid who stayed up all night trying to finish a paper. In college, you can do that because there is no daily homework to be checked. English and Language Arts didn’t eat my lunch, but remembering to turn things in sure did.

Blogging is how I know to use my ADHD superpower. I have been capable of thinking very deep thoughts and writing them down since I was a child. I have not been so capable at remembering the minutiae of life. I can best be summed up by Rhythm of Love by The White Ts, because this is a conversation that makes me laugh in terms of several relationships where I’m this man……..

My head is stuck in the clouds,
She begs me to come down,
Says "boy, quit fooling around."

No one likes a dreamer. Even fewer like what happens when our creativity is cut off or managed. Russian and Chinese TV is an extreme example of it, but it’s the best illustration I can think of at the moment. They are held back by strict standards. I would be lucky to find some.

I tell people I like the view from up here, and their constant quest becomes telling me why I’m wrong. I don’t write because I’m talented. I write because no one will ever understand themselves without being able to read themselves later with a dispassionate eye. Journaling is so important whether you let others read it or not. I am glad that’s the message the church instilled in me that stuck. Praying gets your ego out of the way, but it will creep back in when you think about a situation in retrospect and you can’t fact check anything. If someone tells you you’re being unfair, you have no way to check and see if they’re right. You won’t know when you need to yield, and dollars to donuts you won’t figure it out immediately because it takes so long to convince you that you might, indeed, be fallible.

You develop a more acute sense as to whether people are listening to you, because you have concrete examples of where you did and did not take in love or justified anger. If you grew up in a family that doesn’t fight and you’re terrified of it, that’ll be something I need to know up front, because I know it will make you run from every conflict for all time and to be gentle. Also, to learn when you’re running too much of the time and decide whether I want the relationship to continue. I can stop doing your emotional work for you at any time when you refuse to show up.

I see so much on the Internet about how women are not hospitals for broken men, and yet we are. We so are. Men can’t emote for the most part and you become their entire emotional support system within three months flat. It’s not because they’re not capable of having multiple relationships so they’re not putting everything on you. It’s that they won’t emote in front of anyone but you. The best thing you can do is encourage your partner to go to therapy and get their shit handled. You cannot do anything more. You can only notice when you’re not seeing results and move on. You get to decide how tired you’re going to be from getting your needs constantly ignored while they think nothing of trauma dumping while not being able to take it when they dish.

Men, 99% of the time it’s your fault. Period. End of story. You were not socialized to do anything but be angry all the time and it’s a lifelong battle to be whole again. It is not that you are generally wrong in your beliefs. It means that you are really bad at communication because you fear other people so much. If you open up to a woman and she breaks your heart, then what are you going to do? Who do you tell about those feelings? Why do you need another emotional support person/rebound right away? You can’t handle your emotions on your own. Everything stems from that one issue.

You can’t handle a household, either, because you weren’t taught those skills because why would you ever need them? Your mother’s frustration doesn’t mean shit to you, Holmes. She’s not going to be there forever to wipe your ass, but she loves you enough to do it even though you’re ungrateful because you’re not taught to look around and notice women’s contributions to your life, either.

You need to be able to communicate your needs and wants so that we don’t have to take care of you physically or emotionally. If you want a woman to cook and clean and raise the children and stay home all the time so you can be with others, you are free to be that for someone else. I’m not playing. There are going to be certain times when you’ll submit or I’ll walk away, and you’ll have those dealbreakers as well. It takes a tremendous amount of work to be in any serious relationship, and men are treating all their relationships with women as if they matter so much less. That’s because their way of doing everything is better according to them. I don’t have rights because I shouldn’t need them, etc.

If I wanted to get my tubes tied, in a lot of states I’d have to marry Zac to get my tubes tied, because I need my husband’s permission…. and then we’d have a marriage that didn’t mean anything to either one of us, I just needed health care.

This has no place in society at any time.

My happiness and survival shouldn’t be dependent on whether I’m working, and I don’t mean whether I can be lazy or not. It’s whether I can afford health insurance on my own or walk away from a job with really good benefits because my boss is a walking nightmare.

Proving that you have a disability severe enough not to work is a nightmare for many people. That’s why you have to get a lawyer and it costs money to be different. It is severely ableist and makes people live check to check because it’s not enough to generate savings. The one thing that’s sacred about disability is that they can’t take it away from you and make you dependent on your own money again. In order to live paycheck to paycheck, there cannot be an end in sight. A gap will drown you immediately.

If you have to go to the ER without health insurance, you will almost certainly be fucked for a number of years. You have to pay a lot of money to get Band-Aids and ibuprofen, because women’s pain doesn’t mean as much as men’s to doctors. They’ll think nothing of prescribing another white man enough oxy to down an elephant, but you’re suspicious or needy for being hysterical when you’re in pain.

They need to cut that shit out if they’re going to say Tylenol and Advil are strong enough to compete with narcotics after surgery and/or childbirth. It will work in the days and months after, but never immediately. That’s not your first call when you’ve sliced someone open, ever, unless the patient is an addict and are self-aware enough to know they need nerve blockers instead.

If you can’t get narcotics after a serious injury that all people with eyes can see, your arm’s off, you’ve cut your bleeding leg off, etc., it is not merely a flesh wound. Your doctor’s just an asshole.

Ibuprofen is right out.

I am not pushing for giving out oxy like Tic-Tacs. I am saying that narcotics have a time and place, and that place is in the delivery room, the ER, and the recovery room. It takes more than your hospital stay to heal, and most doctors are very concerned that Karen is going to become a frequent flyer while ignoring Chad’s warning signs. Chad gets what Chad wants. If not, it’s time to call Daddy.

Daddy will think his daughters’ lives are worth less and not with words. It will play out in actions. Boys get condoms and a later curfew because their dad is just as excited about the loss of his son’s virginity as he is, while shaming the women that provide the outlet.

The whore/madonna complex is real and it’s deep.

Either we’re the ones that wipe your asses or the dirty sluts who will actually sleep with you.

It’s why I’ve dated women so long. I don’t have to deal with your bullshit. I can live around it.

Here’s the take home message that really ties the room together:

Modern society is only going to change when men realize that they’re just as emotionally needy as everyone else, while blaming women for being hysterical. This will not change in my lifetime. I can only get more men to see what it’s like for women from an outside perspective.

It’s the difference between getting the ticket to La Boheme and playing in the pit. We’re just “the help.” It’s the same issue with media. You love Succession and Archer while shitting on arts grants. All of it stems from having your creativity and humility quashed.

In order to change society right now, start getting there faster and keep up.

“When my coach said ‘you run like a girl,’ I told him that if he picked up the pace, he could run like a girl, too.”

– a paraphrase of Mia Hamm

Wordless

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What is your favorite genre of music?

I am the one that provides the words.

I need music to flow like water around me. I love the word “soundscape.” I love how composers and writers make love to each other, birthing individual creativity that feeds the other.

Probably one of the reasons the partners I’ve had haven’t been creative (except Dana). I thought it was a good thing that we were so different, because we were feeding each other. Now, I realize that nearly every relationship I’ve ever had with a woman became based over time on division of labor. They’ll do all the thinking if I’ll do all the feeling.

I was comfortable with my beautiful girl’s availability because it was no different than any relationship I’d ever been in with a woman except the relationship I was currently in. That does not mean I choose wrong, or that I’m a bad person for not getting rid of the Internet relationship. There’s several reasons I couldn’t do that, and even when I realized it was necessary, it was too late.

I can’t remember which entry I was reading where it became clear, but I know for sure that I am trauma bonded to this woman and perhaps it just didn’t present for her in the same way. That’s fine, and I don’t expect anyone to have my experience. I was just reading over what I’d written when it hit me….. “that’s a trauma bond.” You need her so bad it physically hurts? That’s a symptom.

If she doesn’t have an itch on her skin when she thinks about disconnecting from me, then of course we are not the same. I wish I’d thought about that years ago. I should state for the record that I am not saying she caused trauma. It’s the opposite. She came into my life while I was experiencing acute trauma, and sat next to me while I took my own medication. No one who sat with me at that time isn’t bonded to me in that way, it’s just not as extremely loud and incredibly close.

I think the itch on my skin is thinking that I am too incomplete within myself to do life without her, but that’s my trauma talking, not my personality. Even she would be surprised to see how vulnerable I really am, because I don’t write from that place often. It never left my mind that she’s older and wiser, so be on your A game. Seeing her as younger comes from getting to know her inner voice. I care for that child as much as I care for that adult.

I betrayed everything I believed in because my disease started managing me. I don’t think I came back to myself until I moved to DC and had been here long enough to feel stable. I had to get away from Dana, and I had to get away from Houston. Our relationship looked so much different without those two things, and I was grateful. This is because I moved to Houston with Dana because she wanted to teach, but then when we got there, she didn’t do anything until she had to.

So I was managing my career and all kinds of PTSD triggers everywhere I went. It was unsustainable, especially the day when I learned that my new therapist’s office was a couple streets over from…. That house.

Getting out of Houston so that I could be myself again might also have been the answer to saving my relationship with Dana, but I don’t think anything could have done that. We got into a pattern where she’d check out on her phone, I’d decide she wasn’t interested in interacting, and e-mail my Supergrover. It wasn’t a big series of fights, just more that when we each looked up, the other was busy, so we assumed we could just keep on doing what we were doing. We woke up months later and didn’t have much of a connection anymore. The reason that a straight girl did not and could not have had any culpability in this is that if Dana and I had made more time to be emotionally available to each other, we would have been okay. We just stopped communicating.

Just because Dana was jealous didn’t mean anything my beautiful girl did to contribute had purpose. Dana chose to get angry at the wrong woman.

Actually, she forgot to get mad at two women. She should have destroyed me, and also herself…. Because I am betting that she does not think of herself as checking out and not caring, and how that might affect my relationship with her.

Because if I tried to engage her and it took more than a few minutes to get her to engage, I gave up. Maybe it was too fast, but I don’t have patience for saying “just five more minutes” when it comes to a video game and I am offering to take off your clothes.

Gay or straight, Supergrover whooped Dana’s ass, and here’s how she did it. Dana didn’t start acting like I had serious value until Supergrover noticed I was brilliant.

So, everyone can think I’m the bad guy until I’m dead. I don’t care. But the relationship started to fail before I shot it out of its misery.

In a perfect world, I would have seen another woman looking at my brilliance and thought, “oh, that’s sweet.” It’s not a perfect world, and she’s hot as shit…. Therefore I lost mine.

I was the one that tumbled out of reality, because at that time in my life, reality bit (if you’re my age, you wore out that disc. It’s probably scratched to shit yet still in your parents’ basement somewhere).

I just wish that I’d used music to help me more than I did. I wish I could have drowned out both women so that I could hear me more clearly. Perhaps my need would have been filled by something healthier, cleaner.

Music definitely would have helped me move on for good, but even that was confusing because I did have a relationship with my beautiful girl. Tenuous, but there. It was a note that grew up to be a symphony, because I love dissonance in the right chords.

Too much had happened for either one of us to feel the same way about each other without work, and we decided for whatever reason that this was a conflict that could be solved by writing. In retrospect, it made things more complicated because neither one of us can read when it comes to the subject matter. How would our conversations be different had she ever put her arm around me? How would kissing each other’s cheeks and hugging tight have mixed up the equation? I go back and forth.

It’s not something I think about a lot, because it’s pointless except in determining that I don’t know as much as I thought I did. It’s just not possible for each of us to feel as much fear in person, because there’s more to grab onto in terms of context.

Because of what has happened, I am wary of online dating, because I know what a shit show it has become. I’m getting a taste of my own medicine in terms of not being able to deal with others’ emotions, because a guy who randomly reached out to me now thinks we are in a much heavier relationship than I do. I just tell him everything she’s told me and surprise, it works. So obviously I know that we were not on the same page and she was trying to fix it as well. Our approaches were just so different that they prevented us from seeing what the other was doing or even understanding it.

But it’s not the same situation. I did just meet this guy out of nowhere, and he started acting enamored after a couple of conversations that had legit nothing to them. Nothing was said that could have created a trauma bond, because I don’t talk to anyone about that unless I’m writing on my web site. I feel like people get enough of my problems if they’re fans, so I won’t talk about my issues unless people ask….. or with Zac, I’ll just ramble around until he finds a point. 😉

I am finding out that being bisexual has nothing to do with sex at all, ever. I have learned that I have dated few men not because I’m not wired that way, but because men legitimately have no clue about what women go through societally and are so damn condescending about it that some dude will say two things wrong and I’m like “block.”

To be fair, I haven’t specifically started seeking out men or women. I just connect with people. However, I notice how I’m being treated and overall, men treat me like I’m little and cute. Boy, I will fuck you up. Respect me as such.

It’s because men aren’t looking at me like I’m half a husband, and it is their downfall. I will never be “the little woman.” I don’t understand most social constructs and step all over them, so expecting that I already understand everything about male/female relationships is a mistake on both our parts.

When a trauma bond snaps, it feels like quitting caffeine cold turkey and then having to deal with the headaches. So, that’s a lot of fun as I negotiate being a new person. It’s why I feel like I’m not good at dating. I go out and I’m not focusing on them, but about how long it’s been since I had at least a goddamn Diet Coke. My body doesn’t feel right, and the one friend that’s always been there for me has taken a back seat…. When music could have handled the detox on its own. Music and I have been together since I was born.

My mother was a classically trained pianist with a degree in piano performance and pedagogy. My father played both classical and jazz trumpet, getting 26 full rides for college. Curtis, Juilliard, Oberlin, you name it.

I am what happens with “the Mozart effect,” but I’m not sure whether that’s a ringing endorsement.

Music has a way of focusing me that other things don’t, and I’m going to have to make a Supergrover playlist as well, because the music I needed to get rid of romantic feelings isn’t the music I need to feel calm. I’ll start with the color green. She reminds me of new life, new growth, new everything and the music should reflect it. I’ll have to go through my music apps, but it should start with something like “Sheep May Safely Graze” yet not exactly that because I’d be whistling it 24/7.

I just need things that are mathematically complicated in a major key.

Actually, that would be a good tagline for her, if there was one. Never have I met anyone with such a range of emotions that centered on light, often shining it into my darkness while I cleaned up. It was easier because I could see.

I listen to classical music a lot while I’m doing other things, because it relaxes my ADHD mind to have at least one plug filled. One less way for another stream of thought to interrupt.

That’s how I think meeting in person would have helped. Talking would have avoided all the traps of going down the wrong road too far before having to figure out an exit strategy, which as you can see is going really well. Obviously I’m not bothered by the situation because I never write about it. Eyeroll.

The writing prompt today reminded me just how much I cannot separate the music of my life from life itself. I am put together with blood and bones and skin, and yet that doesn’t mean music’s contribution isn’t there. Music is the invisible fourth wall providing structure…. So thick you don’t even have to have a stud finder. Just decorate it up, it’ll hold. Like concrete, music drips like water into all your softest places and hardens. Music that moves you will call you to you forever, and not everyone is attuned to your beat.

To turn that back on me, my rhythm changed and I didn’t realize how different it had become. I was a basic 4/4, with a new composer who only knew how to write time signatures by subbing in random numbers. Today, it’s a waltz. Tomorrow, it’s a march. Tuesday is experimental jazz odyssey.

I am living my life with the map on the table, knowing there’s no way to fit it back into the package.

Which ultimately leads me to my favorite song in life, and a story about my ex wife. I thought it was hilarious that the Indigo Girls were on tour, and Kathleen was late to the concert…….for the “GET OUT THE MAP” tour…….. 😛 😛 😛

The thing that stays with me from the first time I heard it until now is “I’m going to love you good and strong while our love is good and young.” The hope for that love is eternal, knowing a piece of it is in me. I can stop the itch on my skin, I can go back to my life, I can move on. But there’s never going to be a moment in my life that is bigger than “you think I’m smart? You? Really? Are you sure?”

The Commute

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What notable things happened today?

Bryn sometimes calls me on her way to work, which gives us about 15 minutes to talk (note to Bryn- let’s do this more). Today the notable news is that we’re both obsessed with Starbucks food. The coffee I can take or leave, but no one else has egg bites and Impossible sandwiches. Eggs and cheese are cheating on my vegan diet, but I only eat mostly plants, anyway. I’m living Michael Pollan’s advice…. “Eat food. Not a lot. Mostly plants.” I was also telling her that I liked Starbucks getting Trente cups because I’m a sucker for their iced tea. Just shut up and take my money. My favorite flavor is green because it’s a bit minty, but their black tea makes me smell numbers at that quantity. I get a breve, which is black iced tea, no extra water, Splenda, and soy or oat milk. It sounds weird, but you wouldn’t think so if it was a Thai restaurant, now would you? I think the’ve caught on to my idea, because now they’re selling iced London Fog lattes (Earl Grey and vanilla syrup).

We’re also working on bringing joy into our lives. That we are responsible for our own suffering because of our rejection sensitivity, but it’s something we can improve about ourselves by relating to each other. When I look at Bryn, my heart floods with gratitude. She’s the face I look to for love, because I can. She is also safe in loving me, because she’s getting me the me that has already made so many mistakes that I’m not so closed off to her because I see how that isolation affects her. I don’t want to make her think I’m doing anything that’s pushing her away, because when I feel sad, it’s not about her. I can’t ignore her needs, and sometimes they’re more important than mine….. like not encouraging her to believe that I’m being distant because of something she did. That’s more important to me than taking care of myself, because if I don’t make it more important than I will isolate based on what I’m going through when the situation isn’t even that bad….. I just think it is.

The story we’re telling ourselves is often skewed, because we’re so unkind to ourselves. We disconnect quickly out of embarrassment or self preservation, because it hurts to think about the ways we’re responsible for contributing to another’s behavior, or giving someone else negative consequences….. true whether you meant to or not.

We disconnect quickly because we’re so digitally oriented. Think back over the last 10 years. Are you quicker to anger because of the wall of separation between you and another person? That even though this person is close to you in real life, you have a desperate need to fight with people on the Internet, leading the charge into hell and forgetting that you are creating some awkward cocktail parties…….. because being right over whatever it is has become more important than empathy.

I don’t think this happened in any organized way. It is the nature of becoming digital. Too many relationships go up and down because of Facebook and Twitter, because everyone can see how you interact with everyone else. You’re not only taking into account how people treat you, but how you observe them treating everyone else. I don’t care if you have me a kidney 20 years ago. I will not let you get away with saying watching two men kiss gives you nausea….. and that’s why you’ll never go to a gay wedding.

Someone from my high school actually said that to me. He apologized and I’ve moved on permanently. I got an apology, but I want no future contact.

It’s the same kind of bullying I endured in high school, and it’s just noise. It’s chatter designed to make me feel awful about myself. Imagine being so certain that God is telling you that you need to tell queer people they’re going to hell. Imagine that message being preached to a church that has 40,000 members. Imagine that message going to all churches that have 40,000 members. Then imagine going to high school 15 minutes away from that church so its bitchy little mean girls all go there. I can’t think of anything more psychotic than getting into a performing arts high school and being homophobic….. especially if you were in theater. Even the straight kids are queer.

Probably because actors have to be two-spirited anyway. It’s the full range of human emotion.

I think it’s notable how fast I’m putting together what has happened to me over my life and how it is affecting me now. Being gay in Texas is a rough gig, and it always has been. I am not oppressed. WE are oppressed. We did not create the system that hates us, and we can’t really do anything about it due to the 80/20 rule…. That 20 percent of the population has to convince the 80% they’re right.

………over things that shouldn’t be legislated.

Thomas Jefferson is rolling over in his grave, because his ideas of conservativism was that the highest government in the land would be the equivalent of a school board. Just as little legislation as possible. He would be incensed that conservatives were trying to parent the whole nation. You don’t get individual freedoms if it’s perfectly acceptable to treat you as if your entire personality is a sin.

Sometimes I wish that the US had lost the Revolutionary war because the Commonwealth countries are so much more progressive than we are. I would deal with Boris Johnson a lot better than I’d deal with Ron DeSantis (I’m assuming he’ll be the nominee because more people are being convinced he’s an actual criminal every day. Hiding classified documents near water? Obviously he’s a genius….. we knew that when he looked directly at the sun during an eclipse. Don’t get me wrong. Hiding documents in your house is always wrong. But putting them near toilets and sinks is a special kind of stupid.

I also think it’s great he lost the E. Jean Carroll case, because that judicial standard says that it is more likely he’s guilty than not. This is different than a criminal trial, because “beyond a reasonable doubt” is a higher standard than a “preponderance of evidence.” The best example I can give of this is FBI and CIA. FBI collects data that has to stand up to scrutiny in a courtroom. CIA has no law enforcement capability. They collect data and return it to Congress and the president. Therefore, their information only has to be analyzed in percentage of sureties on outcomes. To me, that is the difference between judicial standards in American courts as well, because nothing in intelligence is beyond a reasonable doubt. Those issues change like a CNN stock ticker.

It’s too quiet in here. I put on the soundtrack to Argo The theme in the bass is about to drop, and that’s the best feeling I get with my headphones. The bass of the strings….. omg…. Fabulous. Although my favorite track is “Hotel Messages.” Hard to describe, just listen to it. I’ve been trying to learn the whispered rhythm for years.

Second favorite is The Mission, but Hotel Messages is all you get because I want you to actually watch the movie. 😛

I know the score intimately because I had to memorize it to get it out of the way while I’m writing. I don’t want to think about walking bass, suspended chords, etc. I had to do all that stuff independently, otherwise you’d just get an entry full of bad music theory with my third grade education on the subject. No open fourths. Rules are made to be broken. That’s kind of my limit.

I love movies about intelligence set in the Middle East, because that kind of music fills me up. The melodies are haunting because they’re not using a Western sense of chord structure. It’s also different hearing Middle Eastern music with a full orchestral arrangement vs. a couple of people.

Argo was all written by a composer named Alexandre Desplait, and he’s done a lot of movie scores…. But all middle eastern spy movies have that vibe. The music in Syriana, Beirut, Three Kings, etc. is just so complex. Speaking of which, there’s a great documentary on Amazon Prime called “The Sounds of Bond” or something like that, and it’s incredible. I like Bond music, too, but it is secondary to my love of strings moving to the notes you don’t expect.

The one thing you get with American music that’s not so prevalent in the East is a good Picardy Third. It’s the term for when a piece is written entirely in a minor key, but switches to major for the final chord of a line or piece. “Coventry Carol” is a great example of this.

Comparing Hotel Messages to Coventry Carol and the difference between how scales are used is apparent.

So, just another reason to love intelligence. The soundtrack to their lives is better than everyone else’s.

Notable.

Am I Being Punk’d?

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?

I take risks all day long. Up until now, I’ve been in relationships with women. I’m genderqueer on the outside, genderfluid on the inside. Stepping out my front door is an act of courage, and not cowing to the demands of what society puts on women is another. I do not owe it to the world to put on makeup.

It might not make me look like a drag queen, but I certainly feel like it sometimes. I’m just not used to it anymore. It doesn’t feel natural like it used to. It feels like paint. So, I’ll still wear some (occasionally), but only mascara, eyeliner, and a bit of lip gloss. Jeremy Renner was a makeup artist before he was on camera, and he said something that made sense to me. All you need is to frame your face.

I have cut foundation out entirely, because that’s where skin problems start. I had horrible systemic acne as a teen, and fixed it with Accutane. Since then, I’ve just taken care of my skin. I don’t really have to do much- soap and water is just fine, as long as it’s not the cheapest soap you can find. Right now, I’m using African black soap, which clears up acne naturally…. And yet, Dove works fine, too. All I’m saying is that I chose to clear up the problem with pills rather than a multitude of creams that probably wouldn’t have worked, anyway.

After a time, it became impossible to control my acne with just topical applications, and it was a risk taking Accutane at all. There were horrible side effects- bone pain in my back and legs, dry skin (which wasn’t that bad until it was my lips), and my emotions were all over the place. I wasn’t on any psych meds at the time, but it wasn’t unrelated, either. One of the primary warnings is suicidal ideation….. probably because it makes you feel so bad that if you’ve been on it, you know that some days death would have been a welcome relief rather than trying to stand up fifteen minutes in a row.

In the end, it was worth it and I would do it again. But while you’re going through it, there’s really no end in sight. It takes six months, at least, and if it’s bad enough, you have to do it twice. You’re basically trying to kill all the oil glands in your face. It works, but it is a bitch and a half.

It was most embarrassing having to say to people so often, “no, I am not pregnant. I am not planning on becoming pregnant.” No one was being mean to me, the effects on the baby would have been that severe. But of course, it tapped into my worthless feelings because I knew I’d never have a baby. That’s crazy talk. Keep in mind, I was like 19. I finally just started saying I was a lesbian, and it stopped cold…. And then lesbians just HAD to have kids and make it normal….. God, you guys. 😛

I was completely obsessed with myself, but not in terms of vanity. I hurt all over, from constant headaches to backaches to period cramps being ten times as bad. That kind of constant pain wears on you, and I was waiting tables at the time. Just pain on top of pain.

When I think of that time in my life, the pain resurfaces, but it’s filtered through the fact that I only had to endure it for a short while…. Maybe a year. But I know chemo patients who have had it less rough than that.

Now, I have really good skin, but other problems with my health that need addressing…. And that is a risk, too, just because I don’t like going to the doctor. I think I know everything. But as I’ve said before, being the best doctor you’ve got isn’t a ringing endorsement.

And the truth is that I hate going to the doctor because no one knows me in Maryland. Outside my little Texas bubble, I don’t have any connection to a medical family and doctors get pedantic with me right away…. Even when I say things like “I have Aleve at home and it’s not working. Could I try Celebrex?” Then the doctor will say something like how I don’t need anything that strong and I’ll say “I don’t need a stronger dose of anything. I need both the Cox-1 and Cox-2 inhibitors” and all of the sudden a light dawns AND I CAN SEE IT HAPPENING. “Oh, she wasn’t kidding when she said she came from a medical family. Maybe she does know something.”

I am not here to give medical advice to anyone. I know my own body… and I am perfectly fine with OTC pain meds 90% of the time. If I was asking for Tylenol #3 or Vicoprofen, I could understand a doctor’s hesitation. No one is trying to scam you for narcotics, dude. I have enough issues. I don’t want addiction to be one of them.

Plus, I’m an introvert, and I don’t like dealing with people. It is a necessary evil. So, if I am not in any danger and I already know what’s going on, I can treat myself within limits. I don’t need to go to the doctor for bad allergies or a cold. I don’t need to go to the ER because dollars to donuts my pain won’t be taken seriously and I’ll be given a prescription for 600mg ibuprofen when I CAN COUNT, thanks (regular is 200mg). The one thing I won’t do is argue, because I don’t want to be accused of drug seeking behavior. That means even when you’re *really* bad off, no one will pay attention to you. It’s The Boy Who Cried Wolf…. Even when it’s not.

It’s a risk to see a doctor because you’re working off a thousand assumptions that have nothing to do with you. The doctor is running heuristics on my pain as easily as I do with emotional situations. However, I have never had a doctor be compassionate enough to see that I needed more than over the counter medications and I’m not dumb enough to insist that’s what they should do. I grit my teeth a lot.

In fact, the one doctor who did think I was in that much pain didn’t go to medical school in the United States, and therefore, could hold my hand and do little else. I had a housemate from Nigeria, Franklin, and one night I was cooking for us. I managed to slice into my finger while cutting a raw sweet potato, and the knife came down on my finger with force…. To the point I was scared to cook for a while. Franklin said later that he should have taken me to the ER because I needed stitches. I told him he was right, but that I had enough experience in a professional kitchen that it wasn’t an emergency. It was Tuesday.

It took forever for the finger to heal, but luckily, no nerve damage. The only nerve damage is from before I was a cook. I was 16 and still living in the parsonage when I sliced my thumb while cutting a lime for my Diet Coke (yes, I was 100% That Bitch). I’m 45, and there’s still a dead spot on the palm side.

Learning to cook professionally was a risk because I knew I wouldn’t be spectacular at it, I’d just have a ton of fun. And I did. Even when I was injured, it was fine…. Most of the time. I won’t lie and say I was always Mama’s brave little soldier, but in that kind of pressure cooker, losing your shit has to be in very small increments. There’s no time for anything else.

The job that came with the best perks was working in a restaurant at the Portland airport, because I had a badge that let me walk directly onto the tarmac. It was refreshing to go and take a break and watch the planes, which you can do in an airport restaurant because you can look at the loads for the day and tell when the pops are going to be.

It’s also a big risk to take a kitchen job, because there’s always a definite start time. Good luck finding the end.

I had a love-hate relationship being the last one out, because the last one out is the first to get blamed in the morning. Part of it was petty day crew/night crew bullshit. Part of it is that I’m physically weak and forget a lot. So whose fault it actually was in each instance isn’t important. What’s important is that it was relentless. I couldn’t win either way. So, whether you believe I am the best cook or the worst, it still sucked to walk in to a laundry list of my failures…. Particularly when another cook told management that I was the one who left something out, and he did. I took the fall for his raw chicken sins.

Being a writer is a risk. People think I flippantly post things, and I sweat blood. I had to get into the habit of hitting post as soon as I was done with an entry, because to wait was to let imposter syndrome set in. Nothing would ever be good enough…. And it still isn’t, but you people are too kind.

I would like to take a risk and go sit with the bees, but I can’t today. They don’t like rain, and today it is big, fat drops. I’m not sure I would love it out there, either. But Magda has grown lavender in the side yard or at least a year, and the bees love it more than life itself. I just wanted to clear it up that we do not have a hive. I have not had an audience with my queen. I just know all her loyal subjects, who listen to me as if they have nothing else to do because they’re better at multitasking than I am.

If I wear my blue hoodie, I am more attractive to them. I can’t decide whether I like that or not. They’re never aggressive, not ever. I just have to decide how comfortable I am with bees on me… because if I make a bad move and it is misinterpreted, there is no “Undo” feature.

I’m just glad that we have a safe space for bees in our yard, because I feel emotionally connected to them in more ways than one. Claire talks to her bees in “Outlander,” which makes me feel like less of a crazy person for doing the same. And I’m a cook. The plight of the bees is mine as well. Incidentally, my favorite version of “Flight of the Bumblebee” is twofold. The first was hearing Wynton Marsalis on a recording. The second was hearing Clark Terry do it live in a master class.

Speaking of which, I love meeting famous people. It’s always a risk, but it pays off. I come away with an interesting story, some of them interesting enough where the famous person will remember me, some not so much.

I could tell that I tickled the hell out of Wynton Marsalis when I told him I’d been waiting my whole life to meet him…. Just stifling his laughter at how long that must have been in all of my 15 years.

It’s kind of fun being able to say that I met so many people at HSPVA before they were famous, because the part of them that’s not famous is what I like best.

One of my favorite random conversations happened at the pub where I worked before the pandemic. I sat down at the bar for an ice water and a shift drink, and asked the guy next to me what he did. He said, “I’m a sound engineer for NPR.” He said, “what do you do?” I said, “I sling hash for a living.” The fucking bartender said, “I thought you worked here. You didn’t tell me you were a drug dealer.” The NPR sound engineer laughed until he cried.

I couldn’t even breathe I was laughing so hard, because this bartender was young enough to be my son. “Slinging hash” had a different meaning in his world.

Moving to DC was a big risk, but it paid off because I get to have these conversations all the time. I am permanently stuck at the smart kids’ table, right where I need to be just to soak up information…. And not filling my ears with hot air. So much more interesting to talk to people who make the news than watching it at night or listening on the radio.

Also, not going to lie…. Pretty great standing in front of a gaggle of groupies and talking to Robert Glasper when he says, “SHIT! You from the crib…” Grabbed me and hugged me like Mr. Hattox’s history class was yesterday and not 30 years ago. We didn’t take a selfie that time, but I think I got one on the next tour. By the time I got to talk to Robert after the first time I saw him, we were both exhausted and I didn’t think either of us would look good, anyway.… nothing to put on the refrigerator, anyway. I prefer it. I didn’t capture the look on Robert’s face when he saw a high school friend. That look was just for me.

I think I’ve said this before, but I knew Jason Moran back in the day better than I knew Robert Glasper, but yet still a risk to go and talk to him because I wasn’t sure if he’d remember me or not. He absolutely did, and I felt silly for wondering. I told him that I’d written to one of his albums, Ten, for a year. He turned around to the whole band and said, “hey guys… she wrote to Ten for a year.” I was so honored, because it meant something to him that his music fueled me, and meant something to me that he thought it was important enough to tell the band.

One of the big risks I took in high school was attending Summer Jazz Workshop, where I got integrated into the Houston jazz scene. My one claim to fame is that I was the trumpet soloist when my band was on a local television show called “Black Voices.” It was hilarious because the “Black Voices” logo appeared, and then my big white face with even bigger glasses.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t a prodigy at trumpet or anything else. I just decided to take a risk, because getting to be in the band at all was the point. I remember Doc Morgan, my jazz director at HSPVA, saying that he was going to miss me getting to do the traditional “senior tune,” where every graduating member of the band gets their own solo. I told him not to worry, that he’d featured me so much as a ninth grader that I felt like I already had mine… and it was true. I remember one solo that went extraordinarily well, and he said, “Leslie Lanagan… Ninth grade, ladies and gentlemen… NINTH GRADE.”

I peaked too soon, but it was worth it. I got the experience of a lifetime before being thrown to the wolves in marching band. That was its own special kind of risk…. But at least I only fell in rehearsal once. That is because I was marching backwards and either I ran into a bass drummer or he ran into me…. Unclear.

It was physical and alien, made torturous by the Texas heat. I do not regret the risk of staying in, of feeling embarrassed until I didn’t, allowing myself to suck at something until I didn’t. Being in the marching band was required to stay in the symphonic band, and came with a free trip to San Antonio, where we were presented The Sudler Flag, honoring the best of Texas music education…. And since my mom was a music teacher, she was already at the (Texas Music Educators Association, or TMEA) convention and got to hear me.

The last huge risk (huge) was preaching at Bridgeport, and I didn’t even do that until I was asked. No one really knew me, didn’t know where I’d come from, and didn’t expect anything. Sometimes, I was on fire (according to me) and sometimes I sucked (also according to me). But the thrill was becoming experienced at something I’d only watched from a distance…. And as it turns out, I’m like every preacher in the world. The sermon you think sucks is what everyone remembers, and the sermon you thought was gold is straight trash.

So that’s how I view this web site, too. It’s a risk, but I know that the very worst entry I write, someone will absolutely adore. Something I like will languish, because people don’t think the way I do, and thank God for that. Otherwise, I would be preaching to an echo chamber.

A risk all its own, and one that never pays off.

I Am…

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Describe something you learned in high school.

Here’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 “upload a lot,” and I get it. I just didn’t know the space limit was so incredibly low. I’m searching around for options, and most of them rely on using my desktop, of which I am not a fan… mostly because I’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 didn’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 ‘PVA (no judgment, it’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 “Advanced Diploma.” The band was gearing up to go on all these trips my family couldn’t afford, and it was an easy out to drop band because I knew I couldn’t sell enough fertilizer to pay my own way. Yes. Really. They asked us to sell shit to people.

I dropped choir because I didn’t like the new director coming in, because I knew other people that had her and it wasn’t my bag. I was not a “show choir” 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 wasn’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 didn’t care about Britney Spears. I loved Bach and it showed.

For the record, I care about Britney as a listener. She’s great. I just wouldn’t sing her stuff unless I was doing it as a joke, because I couldn’t pull it off where people would take it seriously. It’s a totally different type of training.

I think I’ve said before that Beyoncé left HSPVA because she didn’t want to be classically trained, and that I continue to be devastated that it did not work out for her. But same vibe, we’re just opposite. She didn’t want to learn everything I’d been taught about being able to blend into a choir, breath control specific to that kind of music, etc. It’s a lot. By the same token, I didn’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 I’d only be a cheap imitation. I don’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 they’d been stealing from the drawer. I’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. It’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, “how do you think I feel? You didn’t get me anything.” The proposal rocked, though….. that I had 99 problems but a itch ain’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 you’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 grateful… 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 there’s less room for a mistake.

It doesn’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 that’s changed is that I call myself out as I am, bisexual, instead of telling the world I’m a lesbian while not thinking that way, because that label wasn’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 didn’t see coming that I didn’t know I needed was dating a bisexual man. That way, we still have all the same cultural references, though I’m older and have more insurance. He doesn’t care whether I look high femme or butch because in one outing, we’d look depressingly heterosexual and in another, it’s a whole bear/twink mood without all the lights, drum & bass, and Ecstasy.

To stop joking, we’ve both been bullied for being queer. That trauma for him is a different playing field, because mine is rooted in embarrassment. I’m either gross and wrong or a plaything given to men, because why wouldn’t women being with women be nothing but a male fantasy? Why would women have agency in this society? Straight women don’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 aren’t all Kat, when it was 2000, or even Meag, when it was 1996. It’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, it’s horrible that they want to be female, their tormentors’ perception and not reality….. but seriously…. As if being female was the worst thing that could happen to a person…… hello…. All connected. Except men don’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.

It’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 we’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 wasn’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 didn’t want to upset the apple cart when I was meeting my boy’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 didn’t know what to do, and I was scared.

So now I can look at that and say I’m in a better place because Zac has probably been there. He’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. He’s the head of the queer group at his intelligence agency. I don’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 Carre’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 I’m pitching the afternoon game. Now do you see how we’ve inverted the binary? From the outside, I’m the butch and he’s the femme…. And no one would ever guess that we were into each other unless we weren’t holding hands or being cute to the point of nausea (our MO most of the time).

Editor’s Note: I learned that it was important on the train Thursday, when a young girl at the Franconia Springfield Metro said, “I want to be CIA, too.” I told her that I wasn’t CIA, I just had cool friends, and to call me when she got there. 😛

“Grown up like us” 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 “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” At the same time, I’m not dating a gay man and he’s not dating a lesbian just for kicks. We’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 don’t learn that you are brave and unique until someone tells you. In the moment, you’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 couldn’t blackmail me anymore, and they couldn’t get away with anything more original because they weren’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 closet…. To save my father’s job according to my mother. My father didn’t care. He knew me. We’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 didn’t give me a setting. She gave me the main character.

In terms of hurting me, all of the panic I’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, you’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, I’d woken up feeling a little miserable and bloomed at school. It wasn’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, ‘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 sharp…. 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 band…. And if Jack Lucas had been there, he would have been SO PROUD OF HIS STUDENTS.

Editor’s Note: I also went to St. Martin’s Episcopal as a teen, where I was unimpressed with President George H.W. Bush….. 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 friends…. And I am laughing so hard that I can’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 “free,” 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 wasn’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. It’s one of the core memories that made me who I am.

Back in high school.

I Haven’t

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

How have you adapted to the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic?

I never needed to do anything for the pandemic. I’m an introvert homebody by nature. I also didn’t like wearing masks, so staying home was more comfortable, anyway. Everyone in my family has had it but me, and I still don’t have the last booster because it was too much energy to schedule when my risk factor was so damn low. I have the first three, though, and they did come in handy when my friend Robert Glasper (sat behind me in history in high school) came to DC and played “The Reach” (an addition to the Kennedy Center that focuses on hip-hop). It’s so fabulous. If I were to plan the perfect date, I’d want to go see Robert. Romantic, platonic, whatever. It’s a great place to sit outside and have a drink before or after the show, because the garden patio is just as much fun as looking at the art indoors. My last trip was incredible because it was one of my favorite artists on my actual birthday.

I also really, really like seeing Robert alone so that no one talks to me and I can just take pictures of him and the band. Last time he was on tour with Yasiin Bey. It was funny, I told Robert to tell him he was my favorite alien (he played Ford Prefect in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), then walked away and thought, “I’m a friggin’ Doctor Who fan. I’m an idiot.” The only person that he plays with that I’m desperate to see is Jason Moran, because I was actually closer to Jason than Robert. I get to see Jason more because he actually works here (still lives in NYC, but is also jazz director at the KenCen). I’ve just never seen both my guys outside of the High School for Performing and Visual Arts bubble.

I would even get the last booster for that one.

Seeing Robert was definitely the highlight interruption in my otherwise quiet existence, because I’d rather play with my characters or talk to all y’all than do much else. If you knew the main characters I was working with, you’d spend time with them, too, and there are only five people on earth who know the answer to that question. If any one of them talks, it will do an enormous amount of damage. This is it. This is my magnum opus, and I can’t think of anyone who would figure it out faster than my chef of an ex-wife. I’ve left breadcrumbs all through this friggin’ web site in hopes that she gets the hint. She just looms so large in my memory that if I succeed here, I’ll be able to trace it all the way back to “hi, I’m Dana.”

God, don’t you wish you knew which breadcrumbs were only for her? I bet you do. Maybe in 20 years, because I swear to Christ if the idea is executed properly, it’s worth millions. I can take that check to the bank and cash it, because three of the five are subject matter experts. Dana could guess all three with only three guesses given if she picks up what I’m putting down.

I’ve already put it in writing to The Five that if I get rich, so do they. So does Dana. So does pretty much everyone I ever knew because there’s no such thing as a self-made millionaire, even if it was just sacrificing giving gifts to your friends even when you really, really want to because they’ve been so kind to you.

For instance, one of the huge gifts that Zac has given me is his time. We’ve been dating casually for months (I only see him every few weeks and that’s fine with me because again, characters.), and his gift is not only his time, but his house as well. If I need a different office once in a while because I’m going stir crazy, he’ll leave for his office and “leave me in mine.” I’m not sure he sees it as a gift, but it’s more precious than gold. I think the one true thing I’ve said about this novel over and over is “it’s got spies in it.”

Zac is an SME because he works in a smaller agency than CIA, but collects raw data from all the intelligence bureaus we have. He’s not a spy, but spy adjacent (I think……….. you never friggin’ know in this town). That way, he can at least teach me unclassified jargon, because if he doesn’t know it, he can at least point me in the right direction. Neither one of my characters *start* as intelligence officers or assets/agents. I’m borrowing structure from Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile, an alternate history in which Picasso and Einstein meet at the Lapin Agile, a cafe in Paris. The book is their conversation.

It opens up all kinds of possibilities for me as a writer, because my story actually does start in Paris. As I’ve been telling Daniel, I’ll go with you everywhere, it’s just that the only places I have to live for a while are Paris and Ho Chi Minh City. The majority of the story takes place in Viet Nam, so I want to go there first on a 90 day visa. I’ve found a range of apartments, and there are huge ones in the middle of the city for $4-600/mo. I could get by on a studio for $200, but it’s better for me to have a separate office. If I’m going to have a work in progress that’s worth this much, I want a friggin’ door that locks when people come over. If you think I’m being paranoid, ideas are my currency. I’m the product. If this isn’t the right idea for me, it’s the right idea for someone, and Joe Hack is not going to decide to take a stab at it.

I’d sell it to “The Daniels” rather than keep it on my home computer if it was unsecured (speaking of which, they’re one of the few directors I’d even attempt to trust). Yes, I know that Daniel and Daniel are separate people, but if I can live with being “the girls” for almost a decade, they can roll with it or don’t).

Now do you see why the pandemic didn’t affect me at all? I’ve just rambled on for like 15 minutes and not even looked up.

And for my Ted Lasso fans, I didn’t even know I wanted Trent Crimm, Independent to be a Diamond Dog until he wasn’t. And yes, I’m just as much of a train wreck as Ted, and I’m proud of him because he’s doing the work.

We kept each other company during the pandemic, Ted doing work at his house and me doing work in mine.

Music and Silence

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Here’s a SoundCloud link so you can listen rather than read.

One of my favorite pieces of music is “4’33” by John Cage. People think that it is four minutes and 33 seconds of silence, and that’s minimizing its power. It probably doesn’t make sense on a recording, but live, it’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 it’s being performed. Every time it’s programmed, it looks a little different.

It also puts classical music on its head. Other pieces require you to be quiet. You still shouldn’t talk, but the music is in movement- dropped pens, unwrapping a cough drop, patting a toddler on the back. I’m generally cold, so my contribution is generally rubbing my hands like it’s the start of Toto’s “Africa.” Admittedly, it is “cheating,” because I am the rhythm section of something that’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 “Leslie No-Blood.”

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 you’re doing is hurting me. At that point, I don’t care what anyone thinks. It isn’t right for me to keep saying I’ll go along with thinking that your feelings are more important than mine. Then, it’s not a relationship. Healthy ones mean that sometimes my problem is more important than yours, and sometimes your problem is more important than mine… but no matter, we’ll attack either and it’s easier when both minds are on it.

However, if one person puts the other in the position of “your feelings don’t matter,” the relationship doesn’t deserve to survive. Until now, I have been the person who already thinks her feelings don’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 I’m willing to listen. I seemingly have a jackass magnet on my forehead, because nearly everyone I’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. I’m really not. I’m just empathetic to the point of losing myself and people naturally let it spill because they feel safe. I don’t create an environment to be The Little Gray Man. I’m just capable of saying “there, there.” I have a feeling that if I *was* CIA, it would be under Napoleon’s instructions: “never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Why go out of my way to get information out of people when they’ll just give it to me?

20-30% of the time, it’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. It’s just that most of the people who have talked to me (generally on the bus or train when I’m in public, anyway) have no idea that it’s been 20 minutes and I haven’t said a word. Not only that, they haven’t even taken a breath long enough to give me an opening. It’s “hello,” big emotional dump, walk away. I allowed it because that’s what I’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, they’ll be so mad. Let them be mad. They’ll either get over it or they won’t, and that’s not up to you.

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

I “all of the sudden” seem very selfish for needing anything at all. It’s not that. It’s that when you ignore me, I’ll get louder because your ears are clogged. If you don’t listen even then, it’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. It’s impossible. At times, I’m excellent at being the world’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 I’m feeling and it’s ignored, if you don’t mean anything to me, I’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, I’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 that’s what I thought I deserved. With the set of relationships I’ve been talking about in the last few entries, they are all people to whom I have spilled my guts. It wasn’t that I didn’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.

It’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 couldn’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 don’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 world’s population. Very few people deal in emotions the way I do…. Meaning I am not arrogant enough to think that I am more emotionally intelligent than others. I can bring the receipts, but you wouldn’t know it unless you’re asking for them. People do think I’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.

….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 can’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 I’ve let have power over me and now want to be an equal…. Especially those who don’t feel there’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 there’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 they’ve all been programmed to think we shouldn’t need anything. Someone breaking out of that mold is not to be trusted. I think it’s a large part of the problem in female leadership. Men aren’t used to women demanding things, especially when their performance is poor. They’re not bad at their jobs, you are a threat. It’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 don’t have to deal with men’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 don’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 I’ve had so many relationships with women that the idea of “sleeping my way to the top” is just too ridiculous not to laugh. They don’t put enough women loving women in power for that to be an achievable goal whether I was interested or not (I’m not).

Speaking of women loving women, someone called me out on my straight girl crush when I said, “don’t think I don’t know what I lost” by saying, “she’s straight. You were never in the game.” I’m glad they called me out, because that’s not what I meant. I didn’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 we’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 aren’t less important than my romantic ones. I feel deeply no matter what, which is why I only have two or three friends. I don’t have the emotional capacity to lay out that kind of energy for everyone, so I don’t.

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