Susan tells me that learning to use my power is about learning what I want and how to put it out there in the universe. Not that I'll know the particulars of what I want, but that a basic idea will yield basic results. Well, she's right, and I know that by now. It seems like I put something out there, get something back-- almost as I wanted it-- and then change my mind on the wisdom of said choice. Or I lose faith in that decision.
I had posted something about wanting a combination of each of the men I've dated rolled up into one perfect being right before Jay called me. I know that "perfect," as in 'without flaws,' doesn't exist, but I'd like to think that there is a man "perfect" for me out there somewhere. A precise amalgamation of all that I liked about each guy I've been with. I really like Jay and think that he's certainly got all that I'm looking for, at least what I know of him, but I'm suddenly thinking that if I'm close to finding him here, what downfalls of each will be wrapped up in the package? I'd be freaked out about this all if it didn't feel so right, so simple and easy.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Part II
I hang on to the excitement long enough to imagine sand in soft sheets and hands held in the dark. And when I am able to let go of this and breathe in deeply again, the thoughts rasp hard in my throat. Harder than breath jagged and dry during long run on an ankle still physically pained. Two miles on that is nothing compared with run-away mind on emotion.
Did I really imagine that this cross-country venture would be a good idea? In that split-second of decision making before agreeing to visit, did it even cross my mind that it might not be such a good idea? No, and that’s why I ran with it, full steam ahead. For once, it felt right and I didn't even question it.
“Mars, I think you should come out here, really. I have this ticket you can use, let me get online and see if there are restrictions on it.” He had said it before I knew what he was saying, and as the metronome tick and tock of a tongue to teeth thought echoes across the miles, I listen to him think out loud about this wild idea.
I am sprawled on my couch, readied in shoes and tank top for a run on the beach before the sun goes down. A dusky circle around the water and back. I am planning on getting outside and enjoying the light before it is consumed by the night. But he has different ideas, this spontaneous, light-hearted boy on the other end of the line, and somehow, I’m becoming convinced that they might be good ones.
“Aw, I don’t know. I don’t want to use your ticket.”
“no, see, you could come out here as soon as you get done fishing with your dad, and it’s round-trip and, wait, when are you going fishing?”
His earnest consideration for my trip home jerks me back to reality, and I’m once again wondering what is happening, what has happened to me in the past couple of days.
When I met Jay it was Christmas, and we were at his parent’s house drinking his dad’s home-made wine. Mr. Latore had spent the past 20 minutes showing me each and every piece of his sprawling 20-year-old collection of holiday houses and stores, complete with running water and lights and singing angles. “See, and over here, over here, this is California. This is where Jay and his guys are at. See those homies?”
The elder Latore is funny and kind, eager to show off his landscape and happy to have friends and family around to do it for. Jay and I had talked in the corner about myspace, music, I don’t even remember what else. And later, at the bar, we sat together and talked about Long Beach, and music and travel and how it all fit together into our respective dreams and goals.
When we left the bar that night, I driving my boyfriend’s car, Jay riding along in his best friend’s back seat, I thought back to something Sean had said to me earlier.
“We’re going to meet my friend Jay tonight, I think you’ll like him.” He had said this walking up to Jay’s house in the suburbs.
It hadn’t meant anything to me then; of course I’d like him. I liked all of his friends. But when I met Jay I understood exactly how he had meant it.
In high school, and then college, and even afterwards, the guys I dated were free spirits. The kind of guy who my best friend Nate used to call “fun guys” in jealous condemnation of the drugs and sex and fun I shared with them. They were the kind of boys who got me to go to Alabama in the middle of a semester without telling my parents and without a driver’s license and without any money. The kind of boys who convinced me to pierce soft, feminine flesh because similarly located soft male flesh had been thusly outfitted. They were tattooed, or pierced, and constantly hitching up jeans or strumming imaginary bass riffs in odd moments of idle handedness. Baseball caps turned backwards or knit beanies scrunched down low capped dark, perfectly curled hair and flipped it out in adorable waves around the ears. I hadn’t met a guy exactly like this since the last Jay I had met. And I had liked him, too.
“So. What did you think,” Sean had asked as we walked to his car in the crisp dark.
“Um, yeah, I liked him. He’s exactly the kind of guy I used to date,” I say, honest to the end. “Why not?” I thought to myself. “I’m dating Sean, it’s not like me saying this guy is cool is gonna get weird.”
And it didn’t, not then. And it hasn’t, yet. But as the momentum of my decision to spend a week in Long Beach with this man I barely know catches up to me, I’m wondering just how weird it’s got the potential to get, and the excitment of days past has turned into some sort of knotted tangle in my stomach and legs and chest.
Did I really imagine that this cross-country venture would be a good idea? In that split-second of decision making before agreeing to visit, did it even cross my mind that it might not be such a good idea? No, and that’s why I ran with it, full steam ahead. For once, it felt right and I didn't even question it.
“Mars, I think you should come out here, really. I have this ticket you can use, let me get online and see if there are restrictions on it.” He had said it before I knew what he was saying, and as the metronome tick and tock of a tongue to teeth thought echoes across the miles, I listen to him think out loud about this wild idea.
I am sprawled on my couch, readied in shoes and tank top for a run on the beach before the sun goes down. A dusky circle around the water and back. I am planning on getting outside and enjoying the light before it is consumed by the night. But he has different ideas, this spontaneous, light-hearted boy on the other end of the line, and somehow, I’m becoming convinced that they might be good ones.
“Aw, I don’t know. I don’t want to use your ticket.”
“no, see, you could come out here as soon as you get done fishing with your dad, and it’s round-trip and, wait, when are you going fishing?”
His earnest consideration for my trip home jerks me back to reality, and I’m once again wondering what is happening, what has happened to me in the past couple of days.
When I met Jay it was Christmas, and we were at his parent’s house drinking his dad’s home-made wine. Mr. Latore had spent the past 20 minutes showing me each and every piece of his sprawling 20-year-old collection of holiday houses and stores, complete with running water and lights and singing angles. “See, and over here, over here, this is California. This is where Jay and his guys are at. See those homies?”
The elder Latore is funny and kind, eager to show off his landscape and happy to have friends and family around to do it for. Jay and I had talked in the corner about myspace, music, I don’t even remember what else. And later, at the bar, we sat together and talked about Long Beach, and music and travel and how it all fit together into our respective dreams and goals.
When we left the bar that night, I driving my boyfriend’s car, Jay riding along in his best friend’s back seat, I thought back to something Sean had said to me earlier.
“We’re going to meet my friend Jay tonight, I think you’ll like him.” He had said this walking up to Jay’s house in the suburbs.
It hadn’t meant anything to me then; of course I’d like him. I liked all of his friends. But when I met Jay I understood exactly how he had meant it.
In high school, and then college, and even afterwards, the guys I dated were free spirits. The kind of guy who my best friend Nate used to call “fun guys” in jealous condemnation of the drugs and sex and fun I shared with them. They were the kind of boys who got me to go to Alabama in the middle of a semester without telling my parents and without a driver’s license and without any money. The kind of boys who convinced me to pierce soft, feminine flesh because similarly located soft male flesh had been thusly outfitted. They were tattooed, or pierced, and constantly hitching up jeans or strumming imaginary bass riffs in odd moments of idle handedness. Baseball caps turned backwards or knit beanies scrunched down low capped dark, perfectly curled hair and flipped it out in adorable waves around the ears. I hadn’t met a guy exactly like this since the last Jay I had met. And I had liked him, too.
“So. What did you think,” Sean had asked as we walked to his car in the crisp dark.
“Um, yeah, I liked him. He’s exactly the kind of guy I used to date,” I say, honest to the end. “Why not?” I thought to myself. “I’m dating Sean, it’s not like me saying this guy is cool is gonna get weird.”
And it didn’t, not then. And it hasn’t, yet. But as the momentum of my decision to spend a week in Long Beach with this man I barely know catches up to me, I’m wondering just how weird it’s got the potential to get, and the excitment of days past has turned into some sort of knotted tangle in my stomach and legs and chest.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Part I
It dawns on me somewhere between his third exclamation mark and the second message I get from one of his best friends. I know that the two are “porn buddies,” friends who have a pact that if one dies, the other removes all traces of pornographic material from the former’s life before friends, family and others can find the porn and lose respect for the deceased. I know this about them, because I was dating the former when I met the latter.
And I know that what I am about to do is considered taboo and stupid and maybe even scandalous in some circles. Kind of like owning and admitting to watching porn in polite society. And I’m guilty of having done all of the above before.
“I have some porn of Jay’s. Will you take it to him when you go see him?”
He has been skirting the issue in our last couple of conversations, but now I know that Sean knows that I’m going to go see his friend in a couple of days. I knew, of course, that Sean would be involved in this somehow. Jay did, after all, have to call him to get my number before he called me. I just didn’t know if Jay had happened to tell Sean that he wanted his number because he wanted me, or because he wanted something else.
“Jay liked your blog about Thailand,” Sean had said in that first conversation, that first one we’d had since I returned from Thailand. “Must have been some hot steamy Thai action?”
Sean wouldn’t know if there was hot or cold action if it was in his lap—or maybe only then—and he certainly never would have taken the time to read my blog and find out.
“You could say that,” I said, deferring. “Did you enter the limerick contest?”
We banter about limericks, the way in which he did secure the part of my heart that hadn’t immediately labeled him a sleaze ball. But that was a while ago, last year, in fact, and since then I’ve gotten poetry from other boys, equally empty to me, yet somehow meaningful in its creator’s capacity.
I hadn’t wanted to talk to Sean since I returned, and I hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone, really, since I’d been back. All that had happened to me in Thailand—how could I explain? How could I talk about it, especially with someone like Sean, who never really cared about me in the way I needed him to when things were good, much less falling down around my ears like banana leaves?
When Jay calls me, the first time, I am clearing my apartment, moving things around, trying to say busy and focus the mind that screams and jabbers and jumps through thoughts like chimps above. The number is one I don’t recognize, and the voice is the same, in the immediate moment. But both are a welcome distraction from the boredom that has become my life post-travel.
“Mars? Hey, it’s Jay. What’s going on?”
I am stunned into silence, not really sure why he’s calling me, but assuming it has something to do with my blog. Since January he has been a faithful presence, commenting, critiquing, reading. He seemed especially interested and encouraging of a few of the Thailand blogs, and I’d even received the visual equivalent of schmoopy poetry postings. And I know he had to get my number from Sean. Torn between that interaction and what this one means, I stammer my hellos.
“Eeeah..hey, Jay. Nothin’ much,, man. What’s goin’ on with you?”
With Sean, always on edge to act and behave and look a certain way, I pulled out the dignified salutation of someone greeting a business client. With Jay, the easy slur of someone I used to be slips out. Our conversation is peppered with “dude,” “right on” and several vehement “no ways!”Somewhere around the 75 minute mark I end it and shake my head, laying down to think. There’s nothing to say, and no one to say it to, so I laugh out loud.
“What the hell?” I can’t stifle the laughter inside, any more than I can stifle the smile that is working its way across my face.
“What is going on?”
During our second conversation, sometime between the first exclamation and the last subtly-made point, I understand that Jay wants to see me, even if I’m not exactly sure why. There’s mention of “urgency” and “fun,” promises of calls and sushi in the future.
I lay on my bed and contemplate the hour over and over in my head. At a loss for words and guidance and seeking neither.
And I know that what I am about to do is considered taboo and stupid and maybe even scandalous in some circles. Kind of like owning and admitting to watching porn in polite society. And I’m guilty of having done all of the above before.
“I have some porn of Jay’s. Will you take it to him when you go see him?”
He has been skirting the issue in our last couple of conversations, but now I know that Sean knows that I’m going to go see his friend in a couple of days. I knew, of course, that Sean would be involved in this somehow. Jay did, after all, have to call him to get my number before he called me. I just didn’t know if Jay had happened to tell Sean that he wanted his number because he wanted me, or because he wanted something else.
“Jay liked your blog about Thailand,” Sean had said in that first conversation, that first one we’d had since I returned from Thailand. “Must have been some hot steamy Thai action?”
Sean wouldn’t know if there was hot or cold action if it was in his lap—or maybe only then—and he certainly never would have taken the time to read my blog and find out.
“You could say that,” I said, deferring. “Did you enter the limerick contest?”
We banter about limericks, the way in which he did secure the part of my heart that hadn’t immediately labeled him a sleaze ball. But that was a while ago, last year, in fact, and since then I’ve gotten poetry from other boys, equally empty to me, yet somehow meaningful in its creator’s capacity.
I hadn’t wanted to talk to Sean since I returned, and I hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone, really, since I’d been back. All that had happened to me in Thailand—how could I explain? How could I talk about it, especially with someone like Sean, who never really cared about me in the way I needed him to when things were good, much less falling down around my ears like banana leaves?
When Jay calls me, the first time, I am clearing my apartment, moving things around, trying to say busy and focus the mind that screams and jabbers and jumps through thoughts like chimps above. The number is one I don’t recognize, and the voice is the same, in the immediate moment. But both are a welcome distraction from the boredom that has become my life post-travel.
“Mars? Hey, it’s Jay. What’s going on?”
I am stunned into silence, not really sure why he’s calling me, but assuming it has something to do with my blog. Since January he has been a faithful presence, commenting, critiquing, reading. He seemed especially interested and encouraging of a few of the Thailand blogs, and I’d even received the visual equivalent of schmoopy poetry postings. And I know he had to get my number from Sean. Torn between that interaction and what this one means, I stammer my hellos.
“Eeeah..hey, Jay. Nothin’ much,, man. What’s goin’ on with you?”
With Sean, always on edge to act and behave and look a certain way, I pulled out the dignified salutation of someone greeting a business client. With Jay, the easy slur of someone I used to be slips out. Our conversation is peppered with “dude,” “right on” and several vehement “no ways!”Somewhere around the 75 minute mark I end it and shake my head, laying down to think. There’s nothing to say, and no one to say it to, so I laugh out loud.
“What the hell?” I can’t stifle the laughter inside, any more than I can stifle the smile that is working its way across my face.
“What is going on?”
During our second conversation, sometime between the first exclamation and the last subtly-made point, I understand that Jay wants to see me, even if I’m not exactly sure why. There’s mention of “urgency” and “fun,” promises of calls and sushi in the future.
I lay on my bed and contemplate the hour over and over in my head. At a loss for words and guidance and seeking neither.
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