It’s been so long since I had a first day at something that I do not remember exact details. So I’m going to give you an amalgamation of what I remember from my first days in DC. Believe me when I say that this is a love letter to the city, because DC is the one that got away, the one I long for, the one that makes me feel complete. I cannot decide if DC has spoiled me for anywhere else, or if I just need to stay in Baltimore longer… It’s not that it doesn’t mean as much, we’re just not there yet.
My original introduction to DC was a trip when I was eight years old. We went to the White House and the Capitol, me dressed in the world’s most uncomfortable clothing- a lace dress. I’m fairly certain I had a matching hat. To think of myself in this getup now is amusing….. But it definitely showed me the rhythm of the city. Formal, dress up.
It was in my eight year old mind that the seed started…. “I wonder what it would be like to live here?”
I moved here with a partner, and she was not into me. So, when the relationship ended, I didn’t know what to do. I left DC when I really didn’t want to, I just didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t take time to make friends outside of my relationship, so I went home to Houston and eventually moved to Portland.
But I never forgot about DC.
That first week in Alexandria was full of driving past the Pentagon and the monuments, mouths agape. We thought we were the luckiest people in the world until September 11th.
September 11th, 2001 was the real first day of our new lives, because everything was different. There were 18 year olds with automatic machine guns all over National when we tried to fly home. Security was a nightmare, but we made it.
I suppose the life lessons write themselves after something like that, but the thing I remember most is the resilience of the city and the communal support/love in the air.
So don’t give up on me, DC. I’ll see you again. I’ll never let you get away for long.
Most of my audience is overseas, so they actually wake me up most days now. That’s because my watch starts getting notifications before my alarm goes off, generally regarding the entry from the day before. I sometimes start writing right away, sometimes I go downstairs to grab a cup of coffee first. But this audience is my first thought of the day because the Pavolvian urge to grab my tablet and keyboard when someone likes an entry is ingrained. I’ve been on WordPress a lot longer than I’ve done Facebook, but it’s that kind of vibe.
This morning, I wrote out the title of the entry, then promptly decided I needed something to drink and by the time I got back around to picking this back up, hours had gone by. It’s ADHD in a nutshell. Every new promise in the morning must be followed, even ahead of the five promises you’ve already said you’d explore. I have a lot of new beginnings because I have trouble finding middles and ends. ADHD is particularly talented at making you feel like a dumbass. and being a writer is a way to cope. Having a record of what’s happening is a way to keep track of progress… or not. Writing is such a wonderful tool to give yourself therapy when you can’t afford it or can’t get a doctor right away. Even when you do get a doctor, they still can’t spend more than an hour a week with you. Getting better takes so much more effort than that.
People wait to do therapy until they’re in a couple, and I had a thought about that. “If you don’t have time to fix yourself, why do you think you have time to fix someone else?” I’d rather be healthy before I get in a relationship because it keeps conflict to a minimum. I don’t have a problem saying what I mean and meaning what I say. I can give what I require.
I don’t have time for people who don’t have time to fix themselves, because it makes them want to fix me. If there are problems in our relationship, it’s not always going to be 100% my fault. I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who is so defensive that they think it is because they cannot acknowledge their own humanity.
It’s good now that I know what I’m looking for, because maybe I can avoid that trap in the future. I seem to enjoy people who don’t emote, probably because I don’t want to deal with it….. while also being frustrated that they can’t deal with my emotions, either.
Looking for healthy patterns in which we both have each other’s backs is very important, as well as taking all the lessons I’ve learned over the last 10 years and not making the same mistakes. I have a clean slate in this regard. I am no longer holding onto the past as if I can make it better for the future. I am realizing that those are going to be two very different things and the trick is not to be threatened.
I am threatened by everything, to a certain extent. I already know I don’t fit in most places, and I am sometimes fearless, sometimes a wallflower. I make room for all of those moods, but I don’t expect everyone else to do so…… which is mostly why I write my reflections here. Then, they’re just an open secret because if the people involved want to see how their characters are playing out, they’re welcome. But they’re not required, and I will write them out just as easily as I wrote them in.
The writing reflects life, not the other way around. When I talk about knowing where I’m going on this web site, I’m talking about knowing what emotional changes I have to make within myself because so many times I’ve reread things I’ve written and thought, “that probably sounded better in my head.”
I’m still reeling that my beautiful girl thought I wrote her as a flat character, when I can see every emotion I’ve ever had about her in these pages, more in the words you don’t read.
The urge to write about her has faded except for batting cleanup.
I never could get through to her that her good parts and her bad parts come together to make her the purest person I’ve ever met. That I didn’t hate her for what she’d done, I made my life bigger to accommodate her. That I was in it for the long haul if she was, because I had prepared.
She thought I was saying that I wished our relationship never happened, and I cry at that thought even now. In trying to make it better, I made it worse.
That doesn’t mean my thought process was wrong, it means that she didn’t get the intended message. I’m not sure how it got turned into the complete opposite, but that’s not my call. I don’t have to love it, I just have to live it.
What does feel good is knowing two things. The first is that I cannot un-know or un-say anything. It might lead her to look at my writing in a different way when temperatures aren’t running so high. I do love her in a way I cannot even understand, it runs so deep. But I will have that whether I have her or not, so I have not lost anything in the transaction.
I told her that I poured my love into the character because I could not pour it into her. She has said too many times that she does not accept it. She doesn’t really accept that I have a different reality than her, so I cannot expect her to understand her way around the whole problem. I cannot even do that.
But what I can do is make sure that she knows I was never coming from a place of destruction. That we had to be in the shit for a little while to create something new that we both would enjoy. Like, why should she be the only one that gets to make fun of me and Michael? I am sure that all three of us could make each other laugh with witty retorts.
I just don’t hold out hope for that dream anymore. I told her that if she started acting like she actually forgave me, then she’d be allowed back into my circle. If not, I will know I just chose the pattern I love the most. That it was always about trying to find someone to please. I know that is true on my end, and she has a choice to make as to whether she tells me how she feels or not. So far, the answer is “not,” but I do not think this is a permanent state. Mostly because life is long and it isn’t over. I know that if I’ve been able to keep up these wild and crazy feelings for 10 years, it has never been a game to me. I do not believe it has always been a game for her. I believe as she does that no matter what, we have a past, present, and future. We just have different ways of getting there and cannot seem to jump into the chasm where objective truth is found.
But there’s another part of our relationship that has nothing to do with her at all. Over the last 10 years, she has not only become my real friend, but the one that puts me in the mood to write. When I say she’s my muse, it’s that she’s the one that when she says it’s a good line, I can take it to the bank and cash it. She’s gotten me published professionally by being my editor for the last five years. She’s told me that she’ll edit my book if I wanted, and I know it was a bad career move to walk away from that, but there was so much more to it than that.
It’s because editing my book is her love language, and that part of our relationship is as strong as epoxy. That glue holds us tight. Where we fail is speaking in my love language, because communication is a two-way street. She thinks that I’m the only arbiter of what friendship is and isn’t. I don’t think of it as that at all. I think that I lay out my thoughts and feelings and she thinks she can’t argue with me, get me to see things differently, change me as easily with her words as I change her with mine. I just didn’t think it was fair that we always spoke the way it meant the most to her, and not the most to me.
I think she thought that I needed her to do something so far out of her comfort level that she just didn’t have time and didn’t want to try. The opposite was true. Could you just change how you talk to me when we do interact? I am tired of you thinking that I am goading and provoking you when I am asking for your input? You think I’m asking for too much when you don’t understand the question.
Because she lives in my ink and talks inside my head, echoing in my chest, she’s part of my lifeblood now. I can feel her words coursing through me when I receive them, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re sweet or angry. They are all small pieces of artwork in a tapestry…. or one of those landscape photos made up of individual faces.
She has a beautiful face. It’s the one I look to for love, and have for years. I cannot do that if she doesn’t want it, so my work now is to take everything I’ve written about her and look at what I do want from it and what I want to leave.
What I know is that you can’t change anyone else with your own words, and you need to be prepared for relationships not fulfilling you and not worrying so much about getting out of them. Yes, everything feels new, but in a good way. A life where I am free of past mistakes in their entirety, and not because I wanted it that way.
As Kristina Mahr has said, “I took the tags off this love before I knew I was sure I wanted it. No, that’s not right. I took the tags off this love before I was sure you knew you wanted it.” I know for sure that even if my beautiful girl was interested in women, we would make horrible partners to each other. We cannot even make our love languages work with deep female friendship. I do think we could make friendship work, but because we have distance from each other. I can’t tell a partner to go home, but I can tell her. ๐
That’s because she would understand implicitly that we are both interested in socializing until the battery is dead. Please leave by nine. A group of people is a “no thanks.” We joke that I am the president of Overthinkers Anonymous, and she is the VP because president is a public-facing office. I still can’t get over that one, it’s so funny.
My last witty retort to this was “what a day. Need to find a meeting except there’s only one chapter and it’s really only us. We’re not friendly, Bob.” I said her real name, but “we’re not friendly, Bob” is a quote from my favorite Robin Williams movie, “RV.” You just have to see it to believe it.
Anyway, if you are also a member I will be holding a drive in late September. We’ll pass the hat for dues and coffee. No Folgers, and I get to make it before every meeting. “Leslie, you have one job.”
The point in all of this is that I learned a lot, and God I love her more than anyone or anything on earth, mostly because I’ve had 10 years to get used to the idea. She knows she’s it for me, in some sense, because even when she’s not in my life, she still lives in my ink.
I will look forward to the day when I can take all these life lessons and pour them into someone who wants them…. including her, but she has to show up. I’ve learned to celebrate the people who do. It’s why I think of Bryn and Zac as my partners in crime, both of them, because they serve different roles and I’m happy this way. Maybe it will change, maybe it won’t, but I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth.
I feel that it’s important to take guilt off of everyone when they don’t show up, and just do my own thing. I cannot make other people’s calls for them, especially on the telephone.
Tell us about the last thing you got excited about.
My friend Laura contacted me yesterday to ask if I knew anyone going to the march tomorrow. I said, “first of all, I didn’t know there was a march tomorrow. Secondly, if you’re inviting me, I’ll come.” I don’t know Laura at all. She’s a Facebook friend of a Facebook friend. We’re both the nerdy Biblical scholar type…. she came up with one of the best lines ever…. I said something about Jesus being hilarious and she said, “it’s a dry humor….. they’re desert people.” So, if Laura is inviting me to anything, I’ll go. In fact, the last text message I got from her was “boarding. Talk later.” I believe she is coming from Boston (Logan) to DCA.
Her mother and aunt are also along for the ride, and I’m looking forward to meeting them as well. It’s been a long time since I just lightened up and agreed to do something outside my comfort zone. I don’t even know what I’m protesting today, but I mean it.
In case you’re wondering, this is what Bible nerds do. Jesus was marginalized, a person of color murdered by the state. Jesus taught women when it just was not done. He gave away free health care to poor people without asking whether they were his countrymen or not.
One of the biggest moments in Christianity is often overlooked, and it is the key to unlocking my faith.
It’s when the woman comes to Jesus to ask for a blessing and he says no. She says “even the dogs are worthy to gather crumbs at the Master’s table.” You can see it register on Jesus’s face. It’s written straight, but that thought process must have cooked his noodle. Jesus changes his mind. From then on, he is not just the savior of the Jews. He is the savior of the gentiles as well. Now, I know we cannot make this lesson look perfect in today’s world, but we can make it look like the miracle it actually is. Progress was not a one-way street. Jesus was changed by those around him, too.
That’s what I’m doing. I’m allowing my thoughts to be changed by those around me, because I know that no matter where I’m going today, it’s not going to be somewhere I don’t like.
The only thing I know at this point is that the march starts over by the White House, 17th and something. I have looked through the Post trying to find a link, but I got nothin.’ I am willing to be led because I trust in my friend. What we’re protesting is almost secondary to a day out in the sunshine when the high is only 89 degrees and not 104.
I get angry and sullen on this web site because it’s the space where I’m allowed to be that when I feel it. Sometimes I don’t think I do a good job of expressing when the world flattens me with wonder. I am going to walk where Martin Luther King, Jr. and Raphael Warnock have walked. I’m going to walk where Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug walked. I’m going to walk in the footsteps of other people advocating for desperately needed change, because that is what my faith calls me to do. It doesn’t tell me how to vote. The stories of Jesus do that.
To see Jesus as he of “the cross and the lynching tree” instead of “awesome cosmic power, itty bitty living space” is to understand that he didn’t change anything by revolutionary acts on a grand scale. He and the people around him decided what was worth fighting for, and decided that was more valuable than fighting amongst themselves.
Coming together for a common purpose is what groupthink does when it’s pure. It just so rarely happens when people are determined to believe they’re the main character instead of seeing the cause that way.
I love things that help me remove my ego, because with protests, neither Jesus nor I have any dog in the fight except letting people who don’t have voices be amplified. That the least powerful among us should also get what we need from a corrupt government.
He was also pro-government to the level that people needed to interact with it. Of course you should pay your taxes…. “render unto Caesar,” just don’t let the picture of the man on that coin be the one who holds your soul.
It’s not the last thing I’m excited about. That concept is what excites me about everything. There is a way to both fit in and stand out. It seems that Washington, DC is the best city in the world for it. We are gathering for a common cause, not a common person. We are changing each other collectively instead of making a person’s picture the authority on our lives.
I already did the writing prompt for today, and it didn’t really bring up anything great for me. I don’t know that this entry will, either, but I have a lot on my mind and figured this is the one place where I can just ramble about nothing to see what happens.
It’s 7C/74F with a 44 percent chance of rain in Washington today. The District is gorgeous when it rains. Drivers are no good at it, but the storms themselves are strong. I might even get to see a few lightning bolts, which means either run down to the sunroom when it starts raining or hide in my bedroom. The storms look beautiful through the skylights right up until they don’t. I’m not generally scared of thunderstorms, but there have been a few that really haven’t been pleasant. I’m used to it, though, because we have the same type flash flooding in Houston that we have here. It’s better to be entertained by storms, because we of the Mid-Atlantic and Gulf Coast are only given one commandment…. Thou shalt deal.
The carafe on our Cuisinart coffee machine broke, so Hayat got us a whole new system (I don’t know why, it’s just cool). I am way behind the eight ball on this whole pod system thing, and Keurig is the biggest brand name for them, but this Cuisinart has a regular-sized carafe on one side and a place to make single mugs of coffee/tea on the other. I thought I would miss not having the hot water heater, but I don’t because I can just put Stash tea leaves in the pod instead of coffee. It’s every bit as fancy as the one I used while I was house sitting for Thomas, it just doesn’t have Bluetooth to be able to “order” from upstairs. It’s ok, though, because the coffee maker will only do about three tall mugs’ worth before the water needs refilling.
I’m currently brewing Amazon’s dark roast, and I have to say it’s pretty tasty. I haven’t tried the disposable pods because I know they would solve the ADHD tax of having to clean out the coffee maker and terrible for the environment. I think I’ll just keep buying my own when I can find the best brands available for the money on my own. If I’m shopping at Starbucks, I like Komodo Dragon best. If I’m shopping on Amazon, I have several choices. I lean toward store brand dark roast, but Cafe Bustelo is just as cheap and that’s what they use at all my favorite Cuban restaurants. My only rule is that I do not prefer light and medium roasts, but I will drink them if that’s the only thing available.
I really like coffee because it’s so comforting to wrap my hands around a mug. The one I’m currently drinking from is copper. I can’t say that it makes the coffee taste better, but it feels good in my hand. When I buy coffee mugs for myself, they’re usually large with a big handle so that the mug doesn’t feel unbalanced. Nothing feels worse to me than a mug where the handle isn’t big enough to support the weight of the cup.
It’s a sensory issue thing, just like Bombas socks and American Giant hoodies.
I’m also taking a lot of acid reducer because I don’t want to live without spicy food. It’s really the thing that’s handling my congestion, because even with taking Sudafed PE, it’s not completely knocking it out. As a singer, it bothers me when my entire facial mask is full and I can’t breathe, because allergies are the quickest path to laryngitis when your throat is so raw from having to deal with the crap invading your face.
My favorite thing right now is a scrambled egg sandwich with butter and hot sauce.
With all the talk about Hawaiian pizza lately, I bought one just as a vehicle for ghost pepper wing sauce. I got extra cheese and shredded parmesan to bake on top. Maybe that will be dinner today, but I still have some butterscotch pancakes left over from making a batch last weekend. Easier to heat up something I’ve already made, and these pancakes are divine. The butterscotch chips that end up near the surface melt into the butter, and it’s decadent. It’s cake that tastes like a pudding cup. Millions of school children can’t be wrong. ๐
I am all about trying new things these days, obviously. I found a meme the other day that reminded me of Zac….. “remembering the day I kissed a beautiful twink in Brighton because she thought I was a lesbian.” My comment on the meme is that my partner is male and that is our exact description. It makes me laugh out loud that when I dress in what I call “girl clothes” or “ho clothes,” we look depressingly heterosexual. When I’m all dyked out in a baseball cap and jeans, it’s a whole twink/bear mood…… except Zac is clean shaven.
It’s okay that sometimes we look depressingly heterosexual some days, though, because there are days when I just feel depressingly heterosexual. It’s a whole mood. It doesn’t have anything to do with my orientation. It has everything to do with playing into the well-ingrained enculturation of heteronormativity. But Zac and I can share that without it being weird. If I feel strange, I can just tell him that.
Besides, he gives me street cred when I’m writing about intelligence because no one trusts a reporter, but everyone trusts unconfirmed chatter. ๐
However, none of the stuff I write about is unconfirmed. Zac cannot tell me things directly, but he can point me in the right direction. If I find news articles that back him up, I’ll talk about it here. If I don’t, it’s something we need to keep between us until I can verify he’s right. It has nothing to do with Zac giving me information he isn’t supposed to give, it’s that if I write about intelligence here, I don’t want to spread misinformation.
I don’t link to news stories, generally, but my facts are easily verifiable when I use them because I’m talking about current events.
For instance, we’re talking about the Republican party intentionally trying to elect a criminal worthy of a high crimes and misdemeanors charge, a clear and present danger to the United States both foreign and domestic. You cannot let Hillary Clinton’s wisdom, former SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON’s opinion because she was in the room, fall by the wayside. That two-bit sheister is at least a Russian Useful Idiot if not a full-on asset. There has to be a reason that Trump was comfortable extorting Zelenskyy, and now he’s a hero to most Americans, blackmail forgotten. Don’t let him forget.
The Republicans need to face the fact that if they reelect Trump, they’re going to sell Ukraine up the river if the conflict isn’t over by then.
Also, if Trump is a UI, that means we have no idea how many Russian intelligence officers are affecting American voters through the cunning use of other people they can sucker into working for them, unwittingly or not. I do not think that Putin wants war with the United States. I think he has a vendetta and wants to take us over from the inside. We have not done a great job stopping it from happening. There are probably a thousand people just like “The Americans” embedded in Washington alone.
Just like we probably have a thousand case officers on the ground in Ukraine.
I have said this before, but Zelenskyy is my age, a creative, and absolutely brilliant. I have a dog in this fight because I will be crushed if anything happens to him. It would be tantamount to killing Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Martin Freeman all in one.
“Servant of the People” is just one of the reasons Putin is as dangerous as Trump. If you embarrass either “leader” on television, it will not go well for you.
I’m not asking for things to be perfect around here. I just think that we’re trading national security the longer Republicans hold onto the myth that Trump is capable. He is. He is capable of turning the United States into one of the shithole countries he proclaims to hate, all by being tightly controlled by the Kremlin. Does this sound like anything a SANE Republican would do given the hysteria toward Communism in the 80s?
Trump is not even capable to the level of a Reagan or a Bush. That’s why if he’s reelected, he’ll be perfectly happy to let other people run the United States, no matter what it costs. They don’t even have to live here.
But trust me, they do.
Everything going through my head feels random, but at the same time, my feelings are focused on world issues and I’m not lost in my own problems. I am done ruminating about a whole bunch of things that have made room.
Perhaps it’s good that my feelings truly are random, because they stop me from hyperfocusing and losing myself.
I mean, if I have a movie star name, I should at least grow into it.
How would you describe yourself to someone who can’t see you?
If there is anything I have learned over the last eight years, it’s “stop trying to describe yourself to someone who can’t see you.” It is wasted energy because they’re running on deduction and inference, and skipping over what you’re telling them. It is also true that people see what they want to see. Know when you’re not it, and celebrate the people who show up.
I was reminded of that by my favorite author, Jonna Mendez. However, if I hadn’t started with her late husband’s books, we never would have met at all. It is so beautiful to me that my first favorite spy/writer introduced me to the second…. and he thought she was just as beautiful inside as I do now.
She made my heart overflow with gratitude when I sent her “The Spy in the Room,” a blog entry where I talked about seeing her live at the International Spy Museum:
It was so validating to have someone who writes professionally really take in who I am and what I do. It changed my perspective and my self confidence, because she saw me in a way that no one ever has.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy compliments from readers. I really do. They’re so valuable. At the same time, there’s something about meeting your heroes and them saying they think you’re on the right track.
The reason I’m posting about this is it’s actually a screenshot from four years ago today.
It humbles me to stand next to greatness, and for a few minutes, I really, really did. She thought I was perceptive because the entry talks about the armor you put on when you’re in grief.
One of the things that makes me frustrated about this time in my life is how crazy this must all seem to the outside world because I canโt be any more specific that I can right now. It doesnโt make any sense why an Internet relationship would make me react this way, and I canโt give you any more than โif you knew, you wouldnโt think I was crazy at all.โ Nothing in my life is as it appears, I can only show you what I can show you. I need to protect my beautiful girl as much as Iโm protecting myself, and these entries are just for me. They are written so that I can tell what kind of progress I am making, but not telling her story. Please remember that you are missing at least 50%, and I am comfortable looking like a total wack job in front of the whole world. All I can do is rest in my belief that no one elseโs opinion matters. Youโre just looking at my reputation.
I am looking at my character.
If you cannot see the difference, then youโre probably not introspective. When you dive into yourself, you see the difference between what others think of you and how little it matters compared to whether you can look in the mirror every day. How othersโ opinions donโt pay your bills. How no one else is going to save you, so you have to find ways to save yourself. Itโs a tangled web Iโm weaving. It looks from the outside like Iโm a fly, but I built this web by hand in a rainstorm.
The fact that thereโs a chunk missing doesnโt make me feel good, but itโs not my work to sit with that. Itโs my work to look at what happened and why. I feel like itโs an important storyโฆ. Critically so as we slouch toward a digital society where everyone lives and loves like this to some degree. Also, itโs an important story, but not unusual. It is to people who havenโt lived on the net since โ99, maybeโฆ. If you look up โgeekโ in the dictionary, itโs just a picture of me and Wil Wheaton.โฆ.. where was I going with this?
Itโs not an unusual story, or at least, it doesnโt begin in an unusual way. Our deal was to be confidantes. I love women, so that kind of shit made me catch feelings (an inconvenient truth). She loves women, too, but not in the same way. She caught feelings, too. They just didnโt match, and yet that doesnโt mean her feelings are lesser than. There is no such thing as โthe friend zone.โ Either you love someone and want them in your life, or you donโt. If you think otherwise, grow up.
I have always felt this way. Itโs just that as my life starting spinning out of control, she was the unlucky recipient of shit rolling downhill, and it wasnโt pleasant for either one of us. She kicked my ass, daily, in a way that truly hurt for all the right reasons. I was in the hospital for a few days because I couldnโt get in to see a regular psychiatrist quick enough to deal with acute suicidal ideation, and it was my beautiful girlโs idea. Just move under your own power. I did, and Iโve never regretted it.
I havenโt regretted it to the point that think her strident, no bullshit personality could have saved other people struggling with depression as well, because depression uses the very best lies against you to make you powerless against your own thoughts. No one loves you. Youโre too much. Youโre so much no one will ever love you. No one will ever be able to put up with you.
I find it interesting that her words made me go to that place sometimes and lifted me out of it in others. It all depended on what my disease wanted out of me that day, and it was relentless. Neurotypical people want to save you, and there is no way to do that. Itโs not that theyโre incapable. Itโs that they donโt know how to fight brain gremlins, and if we already feel like you think weโre too much, weโre not going to help you or even let you know what they are.
I got to that place with my beautiful girl. When she cut off her emotions from me, it didnโt feel safe to open up to her anymore. We werenโt dealing with our mutual brain gremlins anymore, which made me feel like a freak show most of the time. Sheโs neurotypical, which means that even our brain gremlins are different. But that doesnโt mean hers are less valid. It didnโt feel safe to have a sounding board that was just me talking to myself, because for as much as I got out of workshopping my issues, what makes me feel safe in a relationship is mutually diving into things. Feeling supported as well as supporting others. She supported me and wouldnโt let me support her, so I always felt like โthe younger one.โ I have bipolar and ADHD, which leads a lot of people to attribute my behavior to immaturity, when in reality, itโs just different. You donโt get the same behavior out of people who literally have no idea how to function in society.
Itโs exhausting to feel like youโve given 350% to something and it still looking like youโre in kindergarten because everything went wrong at once because of some fucking brain chemical or another. At night, Iโm not relaxing. Iโm paralyzed with indecision and it reads as lazy.
Hereโs why itโs so much effort to be alive. I have to remember to do everything. Nothing becomes habit, nothing gets easier. The morning routine is hard every day. It does not โget easier once you get used to it.โ Ever. You spend the same amount of energy on every task, every day.
Because Iโm not just ADHD, my bipolar and anxiety remind me all the time of just how unacceptable that is, and itโs not something I can change. I just have to manage it. If I designed a house, it would have all my shit where I could see it, because my mind doesnโt store where things go. My mind doesnโt store the memory of where I put things, even if it was just a few minutes ago. I have very little peripheral vision, so I can drop something next to me and spend 20 minutes looking for it, because where I thought the thing dropped is several feet from where I thought it would be.
If itโs not one thing, itโs your mother.
Speaking of my mother, itโs a shame that I didnโt get to have the relationship I wanted with her until the very end. I think all the time what it would be like to have my mom as my beautiful girlโฆ. The one I look to for love because I canโฆ. The one whoโd die to protect me and Iโd feel the same. I would never have traded one relationship for the other. Itโs just a type of female friendship that my mother and I would have enjoyed.
Iโm not sure that I mentioned what it was like seeing my aunt Nancy at my grandfatherโs funeral. It was my fatherโs father, and I knew in less than a second that she hadnโt come for her. Of course Lone Star, Texas is a tiny town and they knew each other, but she was bringing my motherโs spirit even though it was the other side of my family.
I choked up and tried not to cry the minute she started talking. She could have read the phone book and Iโd be sobbing. Thatโs because thereโs about the same age difference between my mom and Nancy as there is between Lindsay and me, so their voices are for all practical intents and purposes, the same. That voice is still in my head days later, and Iโm glad that she comes to DC all the time. My cousin Nathan is a doctor in Alexandria, VA, about 40 minutes from me.
My aunt still has a house in Lone Star, very near my grandfatherโs on Starlight Lake. Our family has agreed to all chip in and keep the Lanagan house so weโll be neighbors even if Iโd originally come to spend time with my dadโs side of the family.
Hereโs the thing about Lone Star, Texas.
It doesnโt seem ideal until you realize that with a fast internet connection and being able to buy land for a dollar, itโs not so bad. Iโd never want to be that isolated full time, but I get it. If I could get an affordable lake house somewhere, thatโd be the end of it for me, tooโฆ. It just wouldnโt be in Texas, and Iโm not sure there are any lakes in this area where the houses arenโt a million dollarsโฆ. Wait. Scratch that. They were a million dollars in 2001. Now theyโre seven.
The great thing about buying land is that if you didnโt have a lake before you bought it, you can just put one in. ๐
(Oh, that would be so fun. Iโd love swimming in water with actual fish.)
So, you can do all that in bum fuck, Texas, and nothing on Godโs green earth would tell me buying property there would work out well. I would hate the politics. Iโd hate the struggle. I left all that behind because Lindsay is strong enough to work with those people and try to get them to change their minds. I am a nervous wreck when it comes to that kind of stuff. In this case, I think it helps her that sheโs straight because she has more clinical separation than I do.
Maybe in ten years Iโll be grouchy enough to rejoin the cadre of Texans screaming to get their state back. Dallas, Houston, and Austin are tired. Get your shit together, Texas. I realize that in some ways, Austin is the problemโฆ.. but they have the same issue as DC. The government is conservative as shit, and the locals are actually smart.
Speaking of Texas, I reconnected with a high school friend from HSPVA that lives in The District, so heโs even closer to me than when he lived in Virginia. He posted on Facebook that he needed a house sitter because his regular one was unavailable, and even though we hadnโt talked in legit years, I thought, โthis is an Honors Band friend. You gotta do it.โ He felt the same way, so we spent some time together on Saturday. I met his partner, dogs, and corn snake. I think it will lead to more down the road, as we both have mutual friends here, as well as having gone to PVA, so our friends come through all the time.
I learned something I didnโt know, and thatโs always fun. My 10th grade science teacher gave Beyoncรฉ a C. ๐
I wasnโt there at the time. It must have been either the year I left or the year after, because I donโt remember whether B was two years behind me or three (yes, I am older than Beyoncรฉ. I was hoping you wouldnโt notice).
Since Iโll be in The District all week, Iโm looking forward to having a home base in the middle of everything. The house is indescribably close to the Metro, easier to walk from one to the other than drive because you can cut through parking lots. Itโs also a classic DC row house, just the perfect house Iโd have picked for myself had I wanted to live in the middle of the city all the time.
I do not regret choosing to live in the suburbs, because for what I pay, what I get is RIDICULOUS. I chose to have the smallest room in a GIANT house. I love having a real kitchen and not a shitty apartment galley. The only thing I would change is the stove- itโs electric and not gas. When we had to replace the stove, I asked if we could switch, but our kitchen isnโt wired up like that. No big deal. I have friends who will let me cook at their housesโฆ.. even if they have All-Clad, DANA. ๐
That is an old, old joke. Danaโs All-Clad set is heirloom. Her great grandkids wouldnโt have to buy new cookware, and I was there when they were new. It took Dana a little bit to trust me with them, and it became a running joke. Hereโs a story she doesnโt know. I invited a woman over to hang out while she wasnโt home, another cook so I thought she was sane. I told her that Dana would freak the fuck out if she used steel wool on the pans, so please donโt. I come in the kitchen and there she is, scrubbing the fuck out of our pans with exactly the thing I told her not to use. I didnโt care if she wanted to โget away with it.โ I bitched her out and weโre not friends anymore, mostly because she thought I was crazy for telling her what to do.
It was a โkeep my wifeโs name out your mouthโ moment.
Not in a mean way, like launching a bomb. In the way where you realize that you have absolutely said the thing you needed to say and it cleaned you out so hardcore that the tears actually stopped. When I am writing, I am the most vulnerable. I often cry when Iโm writing, the ablutions coming from my own eyes. I touch type so it doesnโt matter if the screen gets blurry.
It occurred to me that Iโve been looking at this wrong. If my beautiful girl is telling me that she doesnโt have time, thatโs why she thinks Iโm goading and provoking her. Sheโs not taking the time to correct the story sheโs telling herself, and hurting herself with my words. I know this because she could say the same thing verbatim, weโre just opposite. Sheโs only processing our interactions through the lens of whatโs going on right now. Iโm filtering her behavior through every interaction weโve ever had. Our perspectives are different, because she is seeing me as the person I am in this minute, and not whether my behavior is out of character or not.
She thinks I bring up things a second time in order to goad and provoke her, when Iโm repeating myself because itโs important and she hasnโt acknowledged. She has too much on her plate for me to expect that sheโd go back to an e-mail, because thereโs a thousand on top now. So, what comes across as context to me doesnโt translate.
Now do you see what I mean about wanting to clear up this crap in person? I cannot tell you how much fun we would have had if weโd only made the commitment to just be weird. Just have it out. Itโs going to be awful at first. Weโll get over it. Weโre fucking hysterical.
We would have owned this fucking city, and I know it. I would have done some very shady shit just to be able to show her my DC. Ashton Kutcher made me laugh the other day when he said that he just loved Jennifer Aniston, so he went up to her husband (Brad Pitt at the time) and asked him if he could take her on a date. That he would be very respectful and have her home by ten and all that shit. Brad laughed his ass off and told him to go ask her. This is the high comedy I was looking for. I would never in my lifetime do anything to make my beautiful girl uncomfortable, and that probably would have, but it made me go into the โI canโt even make any soundโ laugh. Iโm thinking about it again today, because he and I have a wonderful relationship in my head. Donโt think we havenโt gamed out what itโs like to be hers. Shit.
Heโs the face of God when I need a higher authority.
I cannot speak for him, but I think he decided a very long time ago that he was going to marry her cerebral circus, knowing intimately that he was the Rhoda and she was the Mary and that would never, ever, ever change. This is because sheโs the kind of personality that everyone who has ever loved her has felt this way within five minutes. After meeting many narcissists whoโve been like that, it was unimaginably beautiful standing up with someone who really was that genuine. That lovebombed because her love really was that big, it wasnโt a ploy or a game. Finally, someone who loved every bit as big as me. Someone who wanted to think big and didnโt think my ideas were crazy because she was in charge of lots crazier shit than my goat roping clusterfuck of a blog. I hope she felt the same way about me, but I am not sure I did enough to prove it. Thatโs because the story she was telling herself is that because sheโs so busy, I am unhappy. This is not true. She is not emotionally available, and I am unhappy. You can spend five minutes a year with me if youโre willing to go deep and actually catch up. She told herself that she was failing me, when there arenโt even words for how much my love and loyalty branches over her, as if to provide shade.
She doesnโt recognize wanting to hear her emotions and deepen our connection as my love language, or doesnโt want to open up. This is what felt the most nebulous. If you donโt want to open up to me, thatโs fine. But tell me you donโt want to open up to me so that I can leave in peace, because I have learned so much about what love is after so many years of learning what it isnโt. Those arenโt my words, but theyโre true and I canโt remember who said them.
Everything she told me I was doing was passive-aggressive, because since Iโd broken her trust, it was impossible for her to believe that my motives were pure. She got tired of me speaking to her the way I normally do because who even am I? Why should she even have to listen to this crap? Why canโt I just move on?
I did move on, but trauma triggers happen. Doesnโt mean I was trying to attack you when it did. I am emotionally intelligent enough to explain anything on earth. Thatโs when her thinking I was goading and provoking took an ugly turn, because it taught me that she really didnโt understand me at all because not correcting the story she was telling herself over the years made her think I was a dark character most of the time. Fair, but donโt keep me in your life if you think that. Go have your feelings by yourself. I let her think I was a dark character because I thought that sheโd realize how much time had gone by and snap out of it.
She didnโt, and it gave me a complex because sheโd do things like accuse me of trying to meet her friends just so I could get close to her. It was never even in the realm of possibility. Ever. She treated me like dirt and I let her, browbeating myself for opening up to her on a romantic level because sheโd be able to use it effectively forever. She could justify emotionally starving our relationship for years on end, because I wasnโt a priority.
That wouldnโt have even registered as important to me if she didnโt also love me like a house on fire and show me that, too. It was an unusual kinship, which I thought of as a unique, quirky platonic love story we could have sold for millions and she called it โthis thing weโve managed over the years.โ I should have ghosted her then, because Jesus fuck. That was harsh, even for her.
She never addressed the virtual/physical cognitive dissonance and didnโt even bother to respond when I called her out on it, a full eight years after Iโd broken her trust. Thatโs when I knew we were absolutely fucked and to stop trying. If she couldnโt even talk about her feelings or meeting up to try and change our reactions to each other, this pattern needed to die because we were both exhausted at trying to read the other one. Itโs just that because she wasnโt really seeing me, she was attributing behaviors to me that arenโt my personality at all.
I donโt think she realizes that every INFJ is thousands of years old. Every single one, from the time that they are born. If youโve read โThe Giver,โ I can think of no better analogy. INFJs are the Givers and Receivers of the world, the memories. I should never have let this relationship get to where it is now, because I feel like I should have recognized what Iโd done and why things would never go back. Every time our relationship started up again, it reminded me that I wasnโt enough. That I would never be enough. She didnโt see me as the same person, and a stain stands out on white fabric.
She would say none of thatโs true. Thatโs sheโs done plenty of things for me. And yet none of them were the things that would have actually said to me that weโd be all right. She felt like she couldnโt win with me, when I was constantly telling her what would work. My love language is words of affirmation. Hers is action. Because of the virtual/physical disconnect, I had to get creative, and I did.
She did the same creative and wonderful things for me, but we werenโt connecting the way that we had. We didnโt even use the same language. It felt like getting a cheap futon home and only having Spanish instructions, that we could have figured it out working togetherโฆโฆ.. but we didnโt.
Iโm going to have to stop saying Iโm going to stop writing about things, because I just realized that the ablutions are not the tears.
I am really bummed out. The National Zoo does not have giraffes anymore. Therefore, wherever Kevin the giraffe may be, it’s not DC. I didn’t stay very long- that’s the nice thing about Smithsonians. You don’t need to spend all day there to get your money’s worth. The cutest thing I saw was a sloth bear, because he was just trying so hard to make it up a staircase and the staircase just seemed angry. The snake was just funny…. slithering on the main trail like it was a lost tourist…. similar to the other crowd around me. This is the last Friday of school, and it seems like every kid in the nation bumped into me today.
I just love the neighborhood, though. It would be amazing to live on the main drag, Connecticut between Adams Morgan and Cleveland Park. Those houses are as small as condos and about four million dollars, and yet, it’s cool to think about living in the middle of the city…. until I’ve been there all day. I’m so glad I live in Silver Spring.
That sloth bear is actual footage of me walking around DC.
When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?
I take risks all day long. Up until now, Iโve been in relationships with women. Iโm 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. Iโm just not used to it anymore. It doesnโt feel natural like it used to. It feels like paint. So, Iโll 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 thatโs where skin problems start. I had horrible systemic acne as a teen, and fixed it with Accutane. Since then, Iโve just taken care of my skin. I donโt really have to do much- soap and water is just fine, as long as itโs not the cheapest soap you can find. Right now, Iโm using African black soap, which clears up acne naturallyโฆ. And yet, Dove works fine, too. All Iโm saying is that I chose to clear up the problem with pills rather than a multitude of creams that probably wouldnโt 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 wasnโt that bad until it was my lips), and my emotions were all over the place. I wasnโt on any psych meds at the time, but it wasnโt unrelated, either. One of the primary warnings is suicidal ideationโฆ.. probably because it makes you feel so bad that if youโve 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 youโre going through it, thereโs really no end in sight. It takes six months, at least, and if itโs bad enough, you have to do it twice. Youโre 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, โno, I am not pregnant. I am not planning on becoming pregnant.โ 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 Iโd never have a baby. Thatโs crazy talk. Keep in mind, I was like 19. I finally just started saying I was a lesbian, and it stopped coldโฆ. And then lesbians just HAD to have kids and make it normalโฆ.. God, you guys. ๐
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 itโs filtered through the fact that I only had to endure it for a short whileโฆ. 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 addressingโฆ. And that is a risk, too, just because I donโt like going to the doctor. I think I know everything. But as Iโve said before, being the best doctor youโve got isnโt 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 donโt have any connection to a medical family and doctors get pedantic with me right awayโฆ. Even when I say things like โI have Aleve at home and itโs not working. Could I try Celebrex?โ Then the doctor will say something like how I donโt need anything that strong and Iโll say โI donโt need a stronger dose of anything. I need both the Cox-1 and Cox-2 inhibitorsโ and all of the sudden a light dawns AND I CAN SEE IT HAPPENING. โOh, she wasnโt kidding when she said she came from a medical family. Maybe she does know something.โ
I am not here to give medical advice to anyone. I know my own bodyโฆ 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 doctorโs hesitation. No one is trying to scam you for narcotics, dude. I have enough issues. I donโt want addiction to be one of them.
Plus, Iโm an introvert, and I donโt like dealing with people. It is a necessary evil. So, if I am not in any danger and I already know whatโs going on, I can treat myself within limits. I donโt need to go to the doctor for bad allergies or a cold. I donโt need to go to the ER because dollars to donuts my pain wonโt be taken seriously and Iโll be given a prescription for 600mg ibuprofen when I CAN COUNT, thanks (regular is 200mg). The one thing I wonโt do is argue, because I donโt want to be accused of drug seeking behavior. That means even when youโre *really* bad off, no one will pay attention to you. Itโs The Boy Who Cried Wolfโฆ. Even when itโs not.
Itโs a risk to see a doctor because youโre 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 Iโm not dumb enough to insist thatโs what they should do. I grit my teeth a lot.
In fact, the one doctor who did think I was in that much pain didnโt 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 forceโฆ. 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 wasnโt 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). Iโm 45, and thereโs still a dead spot on the palm side.
Learning to cook professionally was a risk because I knew I wouldnโt be spectacular at it, Iโd just have a ton of fun. And I did. Even when I was injured, it was fineโฆ. Most of the time. I wonโt lie and say I was always Mamaโs brave little soldier, but in that kind of pressure cooker, losing your shit has to be in very small increments. Thereโs 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.
Itโs also a big risk to take a kitchen job, because thereโs 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 Iโm physically weak and forget a lot. So whose fault it actually was in each instance isnโt important. Whatโs important is that it was relentless. I couldnโt 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 failuresโฆ. 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 enoughโฆ. And it still isnโt, but you people are too kind.
I would like to take a risk and go sit with the bees, but I canโt today. They donโt like rain, and today it is big, fat drops. Iโm 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 theyโre better at multitasking than I am.
If I wear my blue hoodie, I am more attractive to them. I canโt decide whether I like that or not. Theyโre never aggressive, not ever. I just have to decide how comfortable I am with bees on meโฆ because if I make a bad move and it is misinterpreted, there is no โUndoโ feature.
Iโm 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 โOutlander,โ which makes me feel like less of a crazy person for doing the same. And Iโm a cook. The plight of the bees is mine as well. Incidentally, my favorite version of โFlight of the Bumblebeeโ 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. Itโs 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 Iโd been waiting my whole life to meet himโฆ. Just stifling his laughter at how long that must have been in all of my 15 years.
Itโs kind of fun being able to say that I met so many people at HSPVA before they were famous, because the part of them thatโs 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, โIโm a sound engineer for NPR.โ He said, โwhat do you do?โ I said, โI sling hash for a living.โ The fucking bartender said, โI thought you worked here. You didnโt tell me you were a drug dealer.โ The NPR sound engineer laughed until he cried.
I couldnโt even breathe I was laughing so hard, because this bartender was young enough to be my son. โSlinging hashโ 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 kidsโ table, right where I need to be just to soak up informationโฆ. 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 lieโฆ. Pretty great standing in front of a gaggle of groupies and talking to Robert Glasper when he says, โSHIT! You from the cribโฆโ Grabbed me and hugged me like Mr. Hattoxโs history class was yesterday and not 30 years ago. We didnโt 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 didnโt think either of us would look good, anyway.โฆ nothing to put on the refrigerator, anyway. I prefer it. I didnโt capture the look on Robertโs face when he saw a high school friend. That look was just for me.
I think Iโve 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 wasnโt sure if heโd remember me or not. He absolutely did, and I felt silly for wondering. I told him that Iโd written to one of his albums, Ten, for a year. He turned around to the whole band and said, โhey guysโฆ she wrote to Ten for a year.โ 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 โBlack Voices.โ It was hilarious because the โBlack Voicesโ logo appeared, and then my big white face with even bigger glasses.
Donโt get me wrong. I wasnโt 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 โsenior tune,โ where every graduating member of the band gets their own solo. I told him not to worry, that heโd featured me so much as a ninth grader that I felt like I already had mineโฆ and it was true. I remember one solo that went extraordinarily well, and he said, โLeslie Lanaganโฆ Ninth grade, ladies and gentlemenโฆ NINTH GRADE.โ
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 riskโฆ. 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 meโฆ. 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 didnโt, allowing myself to suck at something until I didnโt. 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 educationโฆ. 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 didnโt even do that until I was asked. No one really knew me, didnโt know where Iโd come from, and didnโt 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 Iโd only watched from a distanceโฆ. And as it turns out, Iโm 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 thatโs how I view this web site, too. Itโs a risk, but I know that the very worst entry I write, someone will absolutely adore. Something I like will languish, because people donโt think the way I do, and thank God for that. Otherwise, I would be preaching to an echo chamber.
Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?
I wish I’d had more empathy for all of my friends when they were angry and escalating. I shut down at mean words and will match you because I am no longer taking in information. I am too overstimulated and get brain race. If your words are angry in tone, mine will match it. I finally learned to say “peace out. I need time.” But if you choose to throw a match in response, I will go nuclear. You chose not to give me time so I didn’t explode for what, the thrill of it? Some words you can’t take back without significant work, and I’ve only just now recognized to stop trying when people aren’t interested. I ask them to stop doing what is hurting me, and then it ceases to matter what you think of me. I want to stop those emotional swings from happening altogether, because it might feel powerful in the moment, but it will hurt me forever. If I’d been given time to think about it, my response would have been different. I’d have had time to come down from physical rage.
I know life gets so overwhelming, and to pay attention to my emotional needs is exhausting because I talk a lot. On the flip side, I will cater to your every emotional need if you let me know what they are. If you don’t want to, I want to move on. There is nothing more painful than realizing that the season of a relationship is always set to Death Valley heat. It’s especially painful when you realize it at the same time, because both parties know that they’re hurting and there’s going to be so much left unsaid, because each one is emotionally injured in different ways. One from showing their emotions, one from keeping it all in.
Over time, the one that’s putting it all out there resents that the other one isn’t. This is because they get blamed for emotionally needing things or cajoled into thinking they’re crazier than they are, if at all.
The one that keeps all their pain bottled up either feels guilty or angry. So the cycle continues until the one who’s putting it all out there realizes that the person is always going to be locked up. That they’ll give the appearance of change and growth but their natural personalities win out. To an extent it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you can hear change happening, you can anticipate good things. If you’re shut down, you know it’s going to be a train wreck because you’re not open to hearing what the other person has to say, and yet still trying to maintain a picture. It’s the difference between only knowing someone to the extent that you meet people in public and not behind closed doors. This happens even in marriages, because it’s a familiar dance of intimacy to many, many people.
I wish I had known how bad it was for me long ago to engage with people who weren’t emotionally available, capable of receiving and giving large emotions. So many times over my life I haven’t walked away fast enough. In particular, it was a big mistake to be with Kat at all. She was so abused, so young, that even though I was, too, our trauma was not on the same level. She was a wire monkey, blaming me for anything and everything that went wrong while just being affectionate enough to think we had a future. Then, while I was at my mother’s wedding, she slept with two of her male coworkers, left me, and married another man entirely like three months later. I wish that I could have avoided that happening altogether, but my heart went out to her quickly. I have been the Lanagan Search & Rescue and the Build a Butch store all in one.
It just reinforced the tape that I was worth nothing, that I’d been so horrible to her that’s why she left. It took years for me to figure out that I could have avoided that pain by recognizing the pattern faster and not letting her get away with shutting down as much. It wasn’t serving either of us to stay together, because she didn’t know how to handle my large emotions and she didn’t know how to handle hers, either.
Dana did, but only up and to a point. Her trauma was on a different playing field than mine, but she thought she was over it… yet still had the same trauma reflexes as me. We abandoned each other and we meant it. When we both calmed down, we regretted it. I just regretted it a lot more, and allowed her to have access to me even though she’d already made the decision to leave and just hadn’t told me about it.
I thought we had a chance at so much more if we worked on ourselves and at the same time, knew I couldn’t look back. I’d been forgiven to the point that she kissed me on the sidewalk where anyone could have seen, and it was a ruse. I know this because she made sure to tell everyone else what a project I was while I assume, trying to keep me calm. She didn’t have to do that, because it was an even worse gut punch. I was in a bad place, and feeling coddled made it worse. I did everything I could to convince her that she was capable of more than she was giving the world, that she needed to be a storyteller and get back to theater or teaching. We both numbed out too much and made each other laugh without talking about our real issues. She became a wire monkey and in some sense, she had to be. She didn’t want to take in any more information. She was done.
I am taking responsibility for my half and saying that yes, I am a complete train wreck of a human being, but it was never your job to fix me and I wouldn’t put that on anyone else. I would rather someone stop interacting with me than keep that vicious cycle going.
My entire world hung on two words when I put it out to my beautiful girl that we should hang out, and if you’ve been reading, you know what they are. “Someday, perhaps.” She became a wire monkey, and in some sense, I made her that way. She wasn’t ready, and it was okay. I said the ball was in her court, and nothing changed for years. She felt like I was picking on her, and picked me apart in return. I felt like I was handling both sides of the relationship at all times, responsible for provoking her and responsible for fixing it and responsible for making sure it never happened again. Trying to figure out what was making me come off like the irritating jerk she thought I was, because nothing was ever going to normalize without rethinking meeting in person. It’s a different pace, talking. I never could have said anything I told her that was personal if I thought she didn’t want to hear it; I would have been able to see her eyes when we talked and judge whether she was really open. I grieve for all the lost opportunities to give her a love of cooking.
The worst part for her is regret. She’s made every opportunity to tell me that she regrets ever meeting me because she’s told me personal things about her- while still being curious about my life. Treating me like her secrets weren’t important to me made me feel worthless. She picked the right person to tell, and I wanted to prove it to her. Then, I broke trust, and I earned everything I got afterwards and wouldn’t have blamed her for anything that happened after that. I didn’t expect this relationship to last almost ten years, but I was exhausted at feeling like I was the wrong person to open up to because sure as shit I wouldn’t change. Except I did. She doesn’t even realize how much work it took for me to forget the pain of loving someone I couldn’t have in order for me to make a joke like that. How much I sat in it until it didn’t hurt anymore so that when she dropped in a propos of nothing, I wouldn’t react. I wouldn’t hope for more. But the longer it went on, the bigger I hoped.
It felt like she was a priority, and I was an option. It made our relationship go up and down so fast it was like a new brand of roller coaster…. mostly because I thought the best way forward was straight through, and her route was around the city. Sometimes you’re just stuck in front of the Pentagon for a while, and then you move past it and the monuments just get more stunning. But if you don’t realize that I’m going to the Lincoln Memorial, and I don’t realize you’re halfway to McClean, we both miss the beauty of each other’s experiences.
Just like I’ve been stuck in many, many other cities.
Hereโs 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 โupload a lot,โ and I get it. I just didnโt know the space limit was so incredibly low. Iโm searching around for options, and most of them rely on using my desktop, of which I am not a fanโฆ mostly because Iโm 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 didnโt. 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 โPVA (no judgment, itโs 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 โAdvanced Diploma.โ The band was gearing up to go on all these trips my family couldnโt afford, and it was an easy out to drop band because I knew I couldnโt sell enough fertilizer to pay my own way. Yes. Really. They asked us to sell shit to people.
I dropped choir because I didnโt like the new director coming in, because I knew other people that had her and it wasnโt my bag. I was not a โshow choirโ person. I do not think that if you can sing, you should automatically be capable of dance as well. I liked great repertory, and pop music wasnโt 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 didnโt care about Britney Spears. I loved Bach and it showed.
For the record, I care about Britney as a listener. Sheโs great. I just wouldnโt sing her stuff unless I was doing it as a joke, because I couldnโt pull it off where people would take it seriously. Itโs a totally different type of training.
I think Iโve said before that Beyoncรฉ left HSPVA because she didnโt want to be classically trained, and that I continue to be devastated that it did not work out for her. But same vibe, weโre just opposite. She didnโt want to learn everything Iโd been taught about being able to blend into a choir, breath control specific to that kind of music, etc. Itโs a lot. By the same token, I didnโt 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 Iโd only be a cheap imitation. I donโt 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 theyโd been stealing from the drawer. Iโm 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. Itโs 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, โhow do you think I feel? You didnโt get me anything.โ The proposal rocked, thoughโฆ.. that I had 99 problems but a itch ainโt 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 youโre 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 gratefulโฆ 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 thereโs less room for a mistake.
It doesnโt 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 thatโs changed is that I call myself out as I am, bisexual, instead of telling the world Iโm a lesbian while not thinking that way, because that label wasnโt 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 didnโt see coming that I didnโt know I needed was dating a bisexual man. That way, we still have all the same cultural references, though Iโm older and have more insurance. He doesnโt care whether I look high femme or butch because in one outing, weโd look depressingly heterosexual and in another, itโs a whole bear/twink mood without all the lights, drum & bass, and Ecstasy.
To stop joking, weโve both been bullied for being queer. That trauma for him is a different playing field, because mine is rooted in embarrassment. Iโm either gross and wrong or a plaything given to men, because why wouldnโt women being with women be nothing but a male fantasy? Why would women have agency in this society? Straight women donโt 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 arenโt all Kat, when it was 2000, or even Meag, when it was 1996. Itโs 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, itโs horrible that they want to be female, their tormentorsโ perception and not realityโฆ.. but seriouslyโฆ. As if being female was the worst thing that could happen to a personโฆโฆ helloโฆ. All connected. Except men donโt 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.
Itโs 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 weโd gone to meet some of his friends, and someone did that thing where they looked around before they told a gay joke, and I wasnโt 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 didnโt want to upset the apple cart when I was meeting my boyโs 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 didnโt know what to do, and I was scared.
So now I can look at that and say Iโm in a better place because Zac has probably been there. Heโs 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. Heโs the head of the queer group at his intelligence agency. I donโt 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 Carreโs 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 Iโm pitching the afternoon game. Now do you see how weโve inverted the binary? From the outside, Iโm the butch and heโs the femmeโฆ. And no one would ever guess that we were into each other unless we werenโt holding hands or being cute to the point of nausea (our MO most of the time).
Editorโs Note: I learned that it was important on the train Thursday, when a young girl at the Franconia Springfield Metro said, โI want to be CIA, too.โ I told her that I wasnโt CIA, I just had cool friends, and to call me when she got there. ๐
โGrown up like usโ is emotional shorthand for Zac and I having to deal with the perils of being queer from a very, very young age. Zac entered the military under โDonโt Ask, Donโt Tell.โ At the same time, Iโm not dating a gay man and heโs not dating a lesbian just for kicks. Weโre 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 donโt learn that you are brave and unique until someone tells you. In the moment, youโre 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 couldnโt blackmail me anymore, and they couldnโt get away with anything more original because they werenโt 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 closetโฆ. To save my fatherโs job according to my mother. My father didnโt care. He knew me. Weโd 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 didnโt give me a setting. She gave me the main character.
In terms of hurting me, all of the panic Iโd 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, youโre 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, Iโd woken up feeling a little miserable and bloomed at school. It wasnโt 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, โ92, 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 sharpโฆ. 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 bandโฆ. And if Jack Lucas had been there, he would have been SO PROUD OF HIS STUDENTS.
Editorโs Note: I also went to St. Martinโs Episcopal as a teen, where I was unimpressed with President George H.W. Bushโฆ.. 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 friendsโฆ. And I am laughing so hard that I canโt 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 โfree,โ and Dan Kovaly hits the fucking *cymbals.* I was just as self-deprecating then as I am now, so I thought it was absolutely hilarious while still mortifying. Later, my mom and dad brought me my favorite food, cherry chicken from Ruggles. We got to eat lunch together in the commons, and it was sad that there wasnโt 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. Itโs one of the core memories that made me who I am.
This meanders because one story leads into another. Good luck. God bless. Here’s the audio if you’d rather stream/download.
The weather I enjoy the most depends on where I’m located. In Portland, it’s the summer, because it’s not always hot. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat on the banks of the Willamette on July 4, absolutely freezing, and once I even drove down from Government Camp in a blizzard (Government Camp is the small town at the base of Mt. Hood where you rent your skis or snowboard). That being said, I have a place in my heart for dark and gloomy weather. It’s just that I need it much less often. When it is dark and gloomy here, I just tell people it’s “Portlanding.”
Willamette Week makes fun of Portland all the time, and it’s so snarky, which in my book means hilarious, generally. Things like “welcome to Portland, home of the eight month November.” “Welcome to Portland, where even our black people are pasty.” Portland being cold and wet was a given, and it was really, really nice to be out of Houston for most of the hottest days there. The weather is so different you really can’t even compare it. Even the rain falls differently. In Houston and DC, we have rain showers that we call “toad stranglers.” It floods. Lightning strikes down trees. There might be a hurricane offshore, like on Galveston or South Padre. Rain comes down in tight bursts, like the clouds are holding the drops hostage and they’re struggling to get out.
In Portland, the rain is a blanket. It covers you, and for an introvert, we’re all about having a cover. If you don’t like socializing because it’s loud and noisy, that’s not its vibe. Its vibe is coffee or beer with friends in a pub or cafe with a little music to drown out things you’re not trying to hear. I think it’s because it takes so much time and energy to get out of the house in the first place. I did take my sister to “Way Bitchin’ 80’s Night” at the Fez Ballroom, but that was an exception, not the rule. It’s also not just my personality. It’s seasonal affective disorder working on everyone you meet. Everything feels heavier in the winter, from emotional problems to saving enough energy to do something after work. Most of the time, the weather didn’t clear up or get more intense. Just this constant drumbeat of sorrow because to my mind, it looked like God was going through a breakup 280 days a year.
In Houston, it’s winter. It doesn’t get cold enough for me most days, but between Christmas and New Year’s is lovely. I remember when I was in 7th grade, my friend Jess and I went swimming in Galveston. It was November. The water really wasn’t warm enough, but I assure you that the Gulf of Mexico in the winter is still warmer than the Pacific Ocean in the summer. I have never been swimming in the Pacific. I have waded into the water until I couldn’t feel my feet…. which means I lasted about 20 seconds before I was doing the full body convulsing shiver.
Sometimes I wish I’d just laid out the money for a wet suit, because I love the ocean. In fact, when I was thinking about moving to Houston back in 2013, I thought of living on Galveston first. I changed my mind when I realized the commute wasn’t worth it. Having the ocean a few blocks from my house was worthless if I was driving an hour each way to my job. I wouldn’t have time to go there. However, the setting and characters call to me occasionally, and maybe someday I’ll listen.
This is because my dad was an associate pastor at Moody Methodist, so I lived there for kindergarten and first grade. Some of my favorite childhood memories come from that church, that parsonage, and those parishioners. Plus, Lindsay had just been born, so it was my last gig as a solo act. Let me tell you about that, too. Preacher’s kids come in two kinds. I am one, Lindsay is the other. The first type totally gets into it, loves it. The other rebels and develops a wild hair. I’ll give you a hint. The first time I met my then-wife’s parents, I was wearing a t-shirt that said, “I’m with the band.” Guess who was *in* the band? I’ll give you another hint. It wasn’t me. I have always stood behind Lindsay, literally and figuratively. She’s the outgoing, bubbly one. I’m also a lot shorter than she is, and that is a blessing on its own, because I can hide behind her and glean information. She knows I’m not going to talk about what she’s working on, I just like Knowing Stuff…. especially since the demographic she serves is the entire population of SE Texas queers.
I am getting to the age where I can’t really help her much, because I’m stuck in 1990 queer, where it was a slur. I still get angry when straight people say it, and said as much when I thought it had happened on NPR. When it turned out that the woman who said it was a lesbian (Neda Ulaby), my response was “call me. For now, she is just my corporeally challenged celebrity girlfriend on the radio (you’re welcome, Dana).
Editor’s Note: That’s what Dana used to call Alison Frost of Oregon Public Broadcasting,ย with whom I had two dates, but we joked about it for YEARS ON END. I have never met Neda Ulaby, but she lives in DC, so it’s not impossible that we’d run into each other. Also, one of the funniest conversations we’ve ever had is “if you weren’t married to me, would you be a Fanagan?” She said, and I quote, “Yes. Of course. But I am married to you so I don’t have to be.” I laughed so hard that tears and snot rolled down my face. Well played.
Things have changed too much for me to see everything clearly, because I cannot see them without the filter of how I was treated and why it hurt. I do love that Galveston has a pride parade, though, because I can’t think of a better day than the parade, then swimming, then drinks on the beach. Speaking of which, I also love Capital Pride, because not everything centers around the parade. There’s also an outdoor market and all kinds of activities- like a coloring tent for littles. That’s the kind of stuff I never saw as a teen, and the first time I did, I started crying.
I am an earth sign, tied to the land…. Setting matters. Context matters. Why would it make me cry to see little kids coloring at a Pride event? Because when I was a kid, I didn’t know any lesbians with children. I didn’t ever think I’d be able to have a child, because it just wasn’t done. My frame of reference was having someone everyone else called my roommate for a hundred years and pretended to notice I didn’t have a boyfriend. Setting and context are also extremely important to a novel, so being able to recreate places I’ve lived, worked, cooked, and eaten are stored in my memory. Just like Harry Windsor, I don’t remember dates, but I will “recreate a setting down to the carpet tacks” (I’m reading “Spare,” and I’m about 10 percent into it. My heart has already broken at least six times. It went from TBR to mandatory when I found out that Harry had been in Kandahar when The War Daniel was embedded with his Marines.)
I could not finish my work in progress without going to Vietnam. For me, writing about a thing has to come from experience. The book just won’t be as good if I don’t actually touch the plants, feel the grass under my feet, hopefully go fishing or something else that lends itself to writing (my idea of fishing is putting the pole on the boat and waiting for something to bite while my notebook is in my lap). I don’t know what my favorite season is in Asia. I’m just going to have to find out for myself.
In The District, it is all Spring all the time. I love the cherry blossoms, I love the Tidal Basin, and next time Lindsay visits, we’re going to have to recreate a photo of us that we don’t have anymore from 2001. We’re holding hands and pushing on the columns because we are SO INCREDIBLY STRONG we can hold up the Jefferson monument.
Any gift shop you go to in DC will have trinkets with cherry blossoms on it, whether it’s Spring or not. It is one of the things that defines the city that has nothing to do with politics. The trees were a gift from Japan.
Spring is also where it starts getting warm, but not all at once. It’s incredible sweater weather in March, perhaps a bit of April. It’s when DC is at its finest, where you can take a long walk in all that beauty without your face melting off. There are some days in the summer that DC is actually hotter than Houston, and that’s a mean feat.
I have been to New York, London, and Paris. None of them hold a candle to DC, but that’s an unpopular opinion because the people that don’t live here don’t know its beauty, and the people who live here forget to take it in. For instance, the approach into DCA at night leaves me in tears every single time. That’s because you can see The Washington Monument, the Pentagon, The Lincoln Memorial, and The Jefferson Monument all at once. It’s overwhelming…. especially because I only named about 10% of what you can pick out.
I have a favorite drive here, though I haven’t owned a car in years (with public transit and Uber, I don’t need one).
It is going from my old house (803 N. Van Dorn) into DC. You *start* at the Pentagon, and there is no such thing as Philip Johnson’s sense of restrained monumentality. We don’t do restrained monumentality here. It is full-on pageantry. Even if you drive an Econoline, your van will still feel small. I feel small when I walk downtown (shut it), but not in a way that makes me feel small inside. I am awed by everything, the same sense of excitement I felt when my parents took me to The White House when I was Leslie Lanagan, Age 8. It feels amazing that I am just as in love with it now as I was when I first landed 37 years ago. That trip is the reason I moved here in the first place.
In 2000, when Kathleen graduated from UH, she got a job at ExxonMobil and they asked her if she wanted to start in Houston or Fairfax. I’m not sure that Kat had a preference, but I sure did. ๐ We were here for Sept. 11, and that changed me forever, but it’s not why I left. If anything, it made me want to come back because there is an institutional memory here that soothes me. I am at peace with all of it now, but I didn’t just hear about it. I heard it happen. The Pentagon wasn’t far enough away from my house not to have the paintings rattle. Seriously. It was so loud that I thought there had been a construction accident across the street. I was disabused of that notion when our neighbors came over. So many people were affected with deep grief, and I didn’t lose anyone I really knew. I am not here to say that I had the same experience as someone who lost a loved one. I am here to say it was scary AF. We had fighter jets flying over our house for several days afterward, just watching federal airspace, and I was grateful even though it was very, very loud.
I only remember the date because it’s been drilled into my head so many times, but here is what I remember on my own. The sun was brilliant that day, nothing but blue skies for miles. The leaves were beginning to turn in “our front yard,” in quotes because it was a rowhouse and the lawns weren’t divided.
I was sitting in my office, chatting with my friend Jim (former boss)…. then….. BAM!
Because I thought it was a construction accident, I barely looked up. Then Jim told me to turn on the TV. He had to tell me to turn on the TV because I was home sick from work that day. Kathleen had taken me to a tapas bar for my birthday (10 Sept.), wherein I ate bad mussels and spent the night after we got home in the bathroom. I slept in, then threw up some more. When the first set of fighter jets took off, I realized how alone I was.
I see DC now and am glad that I am part of the institutional memory it holds, because that was my first time in deep grief. I didn’t lose anyone except a passing acquaintance. The loss was not personal, it was my mirror neurons going off and feeling the pain of the city, stepping into its river and taking drink after drink. The beauty still arrived that Spring, as much as I don’t think we were ready for it. Beauty and grief don’t make friends in the beginning.
Since my mother died, I have learned to love picnics in cemeteries because they’re always quiet, serene, and a great reminder that there are more people grieving than just me. Gore Vidal is buried here, and I haven’t been to pay my respects. I intend to make change by hopefully stealing some of his talent since he is not currently using it.
Because Congressional Cemetery is lovely in my favorite weather here.
Last night, Edu made curry. I made a point of talking to her while she cooked, because I knew she would feed me if I stood there long enough. It’s not that I’m lazy and can’t cook for myself. It’s twofold. The first is that I would rather eat a Pop-Tart or whatever (crackers and cheese, etc.) and call it a day. Edu makes me excited about food.
She knows that when I show up, it’s because it smells good. This was shrimp, dal, rice, onions, chilis, and masala. Masala is any spice blend in India- garam masala is hot spices, but Edu had already added fresh peppers- gods the fruit was beautiful. Heat tastes so much better, fresher off the vine. The difference is stunning.
That being said, I am the type person that does like the thrill ride, but I need enough fat and sugar lining my stomach before I take it on. It also helps if the dish is very, very hot to cool it down a little. In India, that means plain yogurt or raita. I like both, but I could eat plain straight out of the container.
By this point, I don’t even know who I am. Like, what the hell even are these? Carolina Reapers. F ME RUNNING WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
I don’t think I’ve ever been so high in my life, and I’ve taken caffeine and Ambien TOGETHER. My bathrobe and my SpongeBob doll talked to me all night when I was 19. The story behind it is really innocent. I didn’t know that Ambien wasn’t really sleeping medication. It doesn’t knock you out in that way. It’s an amnesiac, and you basically go into a fugue state if you’re amped up on something like caffeine. There is one Canadian in particular that will know what I’m talking about quite intimately, because we once had a hilarious conversation in the middle of the night where he stood on his head because of the same combo….. and didn’t even remember picking up the phone in the morning.
I thought of myself as still dating Meagan platonically. I would say that she didn’t know that, but she did. She knew it was a big deal when she came to visit her parents, and she pulled out all the stops. I don’t think I’ve ever thanked her for this…. She even came home from college either in the second semester or the fall of her sophomore year. She took me to Starbucks and we had our classic high school date. It was so romantic, but only in an Anne Shirley and Diana Barry sort of way. I was extraordinarily observant of the fact that Meagan was never coming back to the United States under any circumstances. High school was it.
If there’s anything about my relationship with Meagan that still burns me up after all these years, it’s that my parents are still in Houston and hers aren’t. No more dates, even platonically. All hope is not lost, though. Here’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever done for Meagan in my life.
Meagan used to be married to a woman named Deah. Deah and I had our differences, but she was fully aware of how much I loved Meagan because I told her that all the time. I am sure she still looks back and laughs over how pathetically in love I was with my memories. Because you see, when I looked at Meagan, I didn’t see the capable & successful massage therapist, wife, and mother. I saw my little girl on a high school soccer field, the whistle blown and the game stopped……. and the forward who didn’t hear the whistle and kicked Meag so hard she went down. If you want to find my smallest place, the one where I feel the most emotion, just talk about that game. I dare you. It won’t be pretty. I ran down to the field and would have been able to get to her if I hadn’t been stopped. I looked around at the crowd. Oh, shit. Now I’ve confirmed her mother’s worst fears…………………
Deah, knowing absolutely everything there is to know about this, decided to surprise Meagan for her birthday one year (I forget which). Meagan was equally enamored with me in a first love kind of way. We’ll never go back, but we can still cry about how obsessed we were in 1996. So, back to Deah.
I was very, very surprised to hear from her. She said that I should come up and spend the weekend, because she wanted to do something big for Meag. Oh, hell yes I was in. That’s my girl right there.
Because here’s what those dates our first year of college did for us. The first one was AWFUL. I was still so upset about our breakup that I couldn’t really enjoy myself. I was jealous of the women she was actually romantically interested in because I had basically picked them for her by telling her about a college group that was queer on her campus, because I was thinking about transferring up to University of New Brunswick after I was done with junior college.
But that was just the first one. After I accepted that I was TX and she was NB, we were able to build on a friendship instead of thermonuclear war. As a result, she was my first girlfriend, and she’ll be with me until I take my last breath, because my memories are pure and beautiful where she is concerned.
Off I go to give my girl and I an emotional roller coaster for the weekend where Deah just got to sit and gloat at her awesomeness, which was entirely deserved. I really only remember two lines from that trip, one funny and one that hacked me in half.
I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, but sometimes when people are awful to you, you get an apology you never asked for and yet mightily deserve. She apologized for breaking up with me. That wasn’t new. It was the context. She didn’t apologize for being a bad kid. She apologized for not sticking around long enough to see what would have happened had we become partners as adults, because, and here’s the kicker. It made me cry……….. she thought it was something that we would have been very good at and she was sorry she never got the chance.
In what universe would that not take your heart and beat it within an inch of your life? Everything I had ever felt about Meag (and it was Niagra Falls) just rushed to the surface of my skin. Outwardly, I didn’t say anything. Inside, I was 18 years old, crying for myself and for all the missed dinners with our own kids.
I also had to get angry to get over it. My inner monologue ran thusly.
“HOW DARE YOU TAKE AWAY MY CHOICE! HOW DARE YOU NOT ALLOW ME TO FORGIVE YOU! HOW DARE YOU NOT TELL ME ABOUT SOMETHING LIKE THIS UNTIL IT WAS SO ENTIRELY POINTLESS?”
But that’s why she told me. It was pointless to her, so she didn’t attach any emotion to it. I am all emotion all the time, so it wasn’t tantamount to admitting to myself that I was still in love with her and I should drop everything and become Canadian right this very minute forever and ever amen, though the idea still doesn’t suck.
It was acknowledgement of death, grief, and loss. Our relationship has died. Our relationship has risen. (We haven’t talked in years.) Our relationship will come again. (See what I did there, Dana and Counselor?) Our relationship was just too hot to handle for a spectrum of reasons.
But I will never in my lifetime forget when Meagan and I were two peppers, and instead of being a third, Deah was the plain yogurt that cooled everything to the right temperature.
So, for a few paragraphs, I want to write directly to Meagan. Please be quiet and respectful. Take off your shoes in the house, my girl is Canadian.
Dear Meagan,
I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t introduce and close by saying “I love you.” The difference between you and all the other people I tell I love is time. It’s been 27 years since we’ve even kissed and held hands, but I love you more now because of those 27 years than I ever did as a mere child.
27 years of loving each other so much we couldn’t breathe. First because of attraction, then because of confidentiality, honesty, compassion. All the things that we really need in our friends, you presented them to me on a silver platter. 27 years where I would have literally died rather than watch you go through pain.
I am always yours, whether you need me or not. I will always love you, whether you need me or not. it’s been 28 years. There is nothing on earth I wouldn’t do for you. No boundary that would ever stand in my way. If something was going on with you, I wouldn’t even wait until we hung up to make my way to the airport.
Tony and I will be waiting in front of YOW with snacks and Starbucks. Get in, loser. We’re going home to Texas for some R&R with the boys. You can picture it, can’t you? You and me, John and Tony, O, J, T, L? It doesn’t matter that we’re not together. We’re good enough friends that we’ll fake it and make everyone crack up with laughter, because we aren’t a married couple, but we can sure as hell act like it. Surely I have enough practice at annoying the fuck out of you by now.
I love you,
Leslie
p.s. When I am chilis, you are plain yogurt. When it’s your turn, you be the Vindaloo. I’m yogurt. I’m cool.
I am editing this entry to tell you the funny story that happened on my trip to Ottawa. Meagan and I were setting up her living room like a coffee house so we could get that intimate vibe of talking with friends, and I made the tea. I was particular about the tea, because I’m particular about all beverages.
That reminds me of something I need to tell Sam…. hold please.
The way I make my coffee so good is to use the scoop that comes with the machine and take the time to level off every tablespoon. Use 1 LEVEL T of dry coffee for every cup of water. It will mellow out and be absolutely delicious if you use the same ratio with cold brew. Just set it up in the fridge at night and it’ll be better than anything Starbucks could ever dream of making. Give me Cafe Bustelo or give me death.
It’s not like Sam makes coffee wrong, y’all. It’s that I was in charge of it one morning and she asked me specifically what I did different than she did and I didn’t answer her. I mean, what are the odds that I walk into a relative stranger’s house and her coffee is the one I’ve obsessed over since I worked at Tapalaya, in Cajun fine dining.
We had our own delicious coffee, Cafe Du Monde, of course. I drank A LOT of it because it was coffee and and yet it was only half-caf because of the chicory. But there was a Cuban restaurant within walking distance of Tapalaya, so I don’t remember if Chef and I ever went together, but we definitely took turns getting Cafe Bustelo cups of coffee and lattes.
Speaking of half-caf and chicory, Cuban coffee doesn’t play. Two Bustelo lattes and you can smell numbers.
Back to Meagan and Deah and the living room and the tea.
Meagan asked me how I made my tea so goddamn good. I said, “I steep it for 11 minutes.”
Meag said something like, “what’s so special about eleven minutes? That seems oddly specific.”
Without even a hint of irony and not trying to be funny, I brought both Meag and Deah to tears.
I said, “I steeped it for 10 minutes and it wasn’t long enough.”
Stories That Are All True 