Nevertheless, She Persisted

I've been in New York for six months.  I have gotten two part time jobs that I like.  I've worked an unpaid internship for an internationally known theatre company with a huge name. 

All of that is great.  It's amazing.  I've accomplished all of that in six months.  And what's more, I've gotten interviews at well known companies.  I've made some good friends.  I have a social life like I never had in Iowa.  I have a relationship I'm really happy about.  I love this city.  I have seen so much art.  I have been to so many museums.  I am doing really, really well. 

It isn't enough.  I'm trying.  I'm earning just enough every month to cover my rent.  Not my phone, not my food, not my transportation, just my rent.  I'm still paying for my entire life in Iowa- Internet, electricity, mortgage, car...  I still have half of my savings.  In theory, I could live another five or six months like this.  Which means I'm in trouble in two.  I have to have a solution, or at least a plan, in two months. 

Work at Trader Joe's, says a girl I work with.  No.  I won't do a job I could have done in Iowa.  That's the same as saying that I've failed, and I might as well go back there.  I have to be doing something that fulfills me.  I have to be, or I've failed at the very reason I came here- to do work I love. 

"I won't let you fall," he tells me.  Which is so different from, "What am I supposed to tell you?  I can't help you," that it not only goes a long way towards fixing my crappy mood, it reminds me exactly how far I've come. 

Something will happen.  Something always does.  I'll figure it out. 

If I Could Work My Will

I'm tired of Christmas and it's only December 9th.  Miracle on 34th Street makes more sense in the actual, literal context of New York City, where Christmas is everywhere and wholly insincere.  It's a marketing scheme, that even Macy's embraces by putting a giant lighted, "Believe," in Herald Square in November.

Believe in what?  Tourism?

I'm jaded.  I also haven't liked Christmas for years.  Sometimes, I want to.  I want to decorate and do for others I care about, but my efforts never seem to go the way I think they will, so, I stopped.

It's snowing today, which makes it both better and worse.  It's giant, sappy Christmas movie snowflakes because this city is so humid in the wintertime.  I know the answer to this is to feel however I feel and be OK with that.  Expectations and I have a weird relationship:  some of them I arbitrarily care about very much. 

Not Even the Elephant Knows How It's Done

My dreams are full of magic.  Vanishes mostly.  A card will only disappear in your hand depending on your perspective.  Turn your hand the wrong way, and the audience will see it.  You have to know what the audience can see to know that they can't see.

There are seven kinds of magic, everything else is just combination and variation.  The metamorphosis is just a vanish and a reveal, no actual change occurs.  The secret is in how well someone else believes it.  Restoration tricks rely on duplication and misdirection.  Water can become wine if you know where the wine is hidden. 

There's a certain irony in getting out of a relationship with a liar and immediately finding someone who made a business of deception. I trust perhaps too easily, but that's the only way. 

A magician tells the audience it's all an illusion.  It's up to you to figure out how it's done, and that's the game.  There are rules, and the magician will explain the rules, but not the secrets.  And that's OK. 

Not Me

The entire Internet has been going through the Me Too phenomenon, women (and occasionally men) posting about sexual harassment and abuse and men apologising and saying they didn't know. 

I have nothing to offer.  Unlike the entire rest of the female population, I've never been abused.  I was followed for less than a block on my way to school in third grade by a guy once who walked behind and asked me if I was a good girl, but that's the extent of it.  I'm not a victim of anything; I wasn't even afraid because we'd been warned about him and I made it to school.  I didn't even think about it again for years. 

This kind of movement has always had the effect of making me think there's something wrong with me.  I'm not normal, I haven't been abused, I'm not a victim. 

The assistant stage manager yesterday relayed a story to me.  The set was in place earlier this week, and after rehearsal, she went to walk a particularly complicated actor exit path.  The production manager was in the space, watched her and told her he wasn't comfortable with her doing what she was doing.  She explained that it was some of the blocking in the show and she'd come down to check it on the set, what about it was unsafe?  He explained a couple of details, and asked her not to do that. 

The ASM passed this information on to the director, who was perturbed by this.  The next day, the director came to the ASM and said, "The production manager told me it isn't a problem."  "I'm telling you what he told me," she said.  "Why would he tell you one thing and me another?" asked the director.  "Because I'm a woman."  And the director stopped, she told me, and his eyes got wide and he realised that not only had this not occurred to him, his question made it sound like she had lied to him for some reason, whereupon he apologised for everything.  "Don't be sorry," she said, "This is this industry for me.  Don't be sorry, be aware." 

And she tells this to me like this is something I understand, that I experience, that I recognise.  By and large, no.  I spent a semester working for a technical director who I hated for reasons that were entirely related to his ability to do his job, but he was also sexist.  Years later, when I understood that telling women to smile was a thing men did, I remembered he did tell me to smile once, and I shot back, "I'll smile at your funeral," whereupon he shut the hell up.  Then there was the gay, tenured professor from the year I spent in grad school who found out I was married and, on the first day of class, asked when I was planning to be pregnant.  "I'm not."  "That's what they all say, you wait."  He'd once been married to a woman and had two children.  Presumably, that's his bitter backstory showing, but I don't know.  He was a dick and a terrible writer, and hated everything I did, but that was the extent of the actual misogyny. 

A friend from high school always tells me that she envies my ability to not give a damn about authority and people who treat me poorly, that I stand up for myself.  And maybe that's the difference, that I don't experience this not because it doesn't happen to me, but because I don't categorise it as, "men harrass me because I am a woman," but, "hey you, stop being a jerk to me."  Because I've gone up against more women who have made it clear they think I'm a liar, and a threat to them- most of my teachers were women. 

I could suppose, like Blossom did in her op ed, that it's because I'm not pretty and I don't drink and because I'm smart, and sometimes I do (though, generally not aloud and in public to strangers, because, gee, Blossom, people are going to take your words way out of proportion; it ceases to be self-deprecating when the New York Times publishes it) but I know that implies that the inverse is true of victims of sexual harassment and abuse, and it isn't. 

So, Not Me.  And maybe the question is simply, "when?"

Everything's Coming Up Milhouse

About two months ago, I met a guy for dinner in Union Square.  We've sat down and as we're talking and going over the menus, he observes that I'm from Iowa, where I'd lived almost my entire life, and I haven't been in the city for very long, "Am I running from something?"  "Isn't everyone?" I counter.  I decide to tell him, because the conversation up to now has been good, and if he can't handle it, well, I know now.  I tell him I was married for ten years, and it's this point that our server comes over to ask if we're ready to order.  I've barely had time to look at the menu, never mind figure out what I want.  Sometimes I have an idea and I can make a decision if the other person goes first, but that's not going to do it here. "No," I say to her, "Come back."

From the other side of the table, he tells me later, this story looks a little bit different.

He asks me if I'm running from something and I look visibly concerned, and I think about it for a minute and make the decision to say, "I was married for ten years."  The server, who has been eavesdropping on the conversation from behind us almost from the moment she realised this was a first date, immediately comes over to rescue me, "Are you ready to order?"  So now I have the opportunity to order, change the subject, forget about it and move on in the evening.  She's doing me a favour.  And I, in response to her, snap, "No!  Come back."  I do not need rescuing, I am going to tell the story and I'm OK with that.  The waitress is so shocked by my reaction that she gets another server to take over our table, because she just can't with me anymore.  "She's tough," he thought. 

I did not recognise the second story until it was told to me.  Yes, I noticed that we had a new waitress later on, but I did not put it together that I'd smacked down an opportunity to be rescued from a difficult line of inquiry.  It's not even part of my thinking, that I would stop talking about something that might be uncomfortable once I'd started telling it. 

She is tough, she just doesn't always notice it. 

Yes, And?

I agreed to meet a guy and immediately after realised that he was painfully boring.  This is a guy I've conversed with for nearly a month, and the entire conversation pretty much follows a pattern where I make a statement, he either agrees with me or is confused/insecure.  If he agrees with me, he hasn't given me anything else to go with, so I try a different statement with a question attached to it.  If he's insecure (this happens every time I mention something even a tiny bit outside his comfort zone, which I'm discovering is pretty narrow), I throw him something that's a little nearer on the spectrum to what he might be comfortable with.  Repeat.  He hasn't really brought anything but his own insecurities to the table.  But I didn't notice the pattern until after I agreed we should meet him.

Enjoying and continuing a conversation for its challenges, when the goal is to determine whether you like the person behind the words, is something of a problem.  I can talk, indefinitely, about nearly anything, forever.  I'm the terrible actor who has forgotten that conversation is subtext, and you only talk because you want something.  Talking to me is probably like talking to a sentient search engine.  Google doesn't need anything from you, it can find it for itself, all it needs is you to agree to let it look.

I am not buying succulents.

Gentrification

I spend a lot of time documenting a New York that doesn't really feel like my experience.  I promised co-workers that I would keep them updated, and send pictures.  I had also fixed on the story of me becoming a tour guide, because that felt less crazy to people than theatre.  So, to that end, I have an Instagram that I keep updated with... a version of my New York experience.

More and more it feels like someone else's experience of the city. The other day I found myself outside Bryant Park, staring at a building I'd seen back in March and thinking, "Oh, that's the Empire State Building."  Then I turned the corner and saw the Chrysler building.  I have walked down these streets.  I've been all around the park and the library multiple times; I *have* to have seen it without noticing it.  So this time, I took the photo and posted it, pretending that I hadn't seen it before.

Beyond that, though, the New York in my photos is shiny.  It looks bright, clean, coloured in purple, green, blue and yellow, and friendly.  It looks like a tourist would want New York to look.  There's one image of Prospect Park, in Brooklyn, that I find particularly funny because it looks beautiful, because you can't really see all the trash on the ground and you definitely can't smell the fact that the entire area smells like pee.

I think if I were to actually photograph the New York I see, it would mostly be concrete and chrome, railings and garbage bags.  The dirty once-white of the inside of subway stations and pavement so covered in gum it looks like a Dalmatian are more what my days look like.

I moved, and was worrying about explaining the new place, because it's in a neighbourhood that historically would have made my mother panic to even know existed.  I currently live a block from gentrification.  The food stamp centre and the job assistance place are juxtaposed with expensive cafes with brunch menus.  If I walk two blocks west, places try to identify themselves "not quite the thoroughly gentrified neighbourhood next door."  If I walk two blocks east, I can go to a Family Dollar that reminds you every 60 seconds that the premises are being monitored.

I'm not sure how I'd photograph that if I could, but I know I don't really want to share it, yet.  They can wait for the hopelessness of winter in the city to set in.

The Names of the Roads

I'm sitting in the basement of a Victorian gothic castle, once a Greenwich Village courthouse, now the Jefferson Market Library.  Before that, I found Washington Square Park.  The history I learned about the founding of our country never mentioned New York as often as its influence is found here.  The names of the people who gave us America are embedded here, in a way that my Midwestern geography, familiar with landowners and governors and post-Civil War heros and politicians did not prepare me for.  I expected tributes to robber barons, Rockefellers and Astors and Carnegies and the legends of a city that grew up in the 30s, when nobody else had anything.  And they're here, but Jefferson, Washington, Lafayette, Hamilton, Franklin, those are the names on the streets and the buildings and the parks and the monuments.

Greenwich Village has something I haven't seen much in the city, even in greenspace:  flowers.  I've seen florists and produce markets and the occasional hanging basket, but the plants here grow out of the ground sometimes.  It feels like a different city.  I've heard that "city of neigubourhoods," phrase used to describe other cities, but it actually means something here.  When you come up from the subway, you can tell there's a difference, even if you don't know where you are.  I frequently don't know where I am.  

It matters more where you're going.  

Location, Location, Location

"You are a total badass!  You've never been here before?"
"Nope."
"And you have a job and you're looking for a place-"
"Part time."
"That's so fucking amazing.  Nobody does that.  People, like, crash on a couch with a friend for months and try to find work.  So, did you just graduate from college?"
"Hah, no."
"...Grad school?"
"How old do you think I am?"
"Oh, no, no, I'm not gonna guess that."
"I'm 33."
"Holy shit girl, you look, like, I mean, I guessed you had to be 23, but you don't even look that-"
"Yeah.  The 20 year olds I work with have no idea, and I'm not gonna tell them."
"Well, I'm 30, and I've never done anything that brave."

She lives in a decently nice apartment in a slightly sketchy part of Brooklyn.  It's not bad, but it's not where I'm living now, a neighbourhood with fancy restaurants and old Greek ladies that reminds me a little more of Toronto.  The Brooklyn neighbourhood feels like New York in the movies (which is ironic because New York in the movies is frequently Toronto).  It's more than I want to pay, but it's an enormous room, has a dishwasher, laundry in the building, she doesn't care about guests (if I ever had any, this room would be big enough for them) and the commute to Manhattan is a little better.

I had an offer I liked better, two theatre people who have worked on stuff I've wanted to see when I read about it.  Smaller room, further away, less expensive, but theatre people.  They reneged after a friend decided she would move to the city in September after all.  They're willing to let me sublet for August for pretty cheap.  I asked if I could let them know Tuesday.

There's another place I'm set to look at on Monday that's one I think I'd like.  It's in the area I'd rather live in, about $20 a month cheaper than the big room in the sketchy place, and might otherwise be a good deal.

I'm not going to move in to the really cheap place outside Brooklyn's Chinatown.  I understand that a lot of Asians started wearing face masks to combat swine flu and they became a fashion statement, but I think if I had to walk through Chinatown on the regular, I'd want to wear one, too.  Imagine the smell of hot garbage and fish markets alternating for over 12 city blocks, and more cigarette smoke than I've encountered in the entire city so far.  There are some other questionable things about that place, but the smell on that walk is not something I would get used to.

I got a couple weird messages from a guy I'm pretty sure is a terrible broker, but I messaged a friend who lives here, "Is he just bad at his job, or am I gonna die?"  "I'm pretty, pretty sure you're not gonna die."  "Thank you."  I do OK when I don't listen to my mother's anxieties, but the times I do...

I'll be OK.
"Hey, if it doesn't work out and you find someplace else, keep being a badass."
"I try.  I'm just sorta casually a badass."

Assumptions

"How long have you worked here?"  

"Almost three weeks."

"It must be nice to be inside today, instead of out on the ships."

"Oh.  I'm from Iowa, it doesn't bother me."  

"Iowa.  How long have you lived here?"

"Three weeks."

"Three weeks!?  And you already have a- three weeks.  From Iowa!  You must just be-" (vague gesture indicating I'm overwelmed)

"I'm from Des Moines, so..."

"Oh.  More progressive, then."

This is the line of conversation I resent.  It turns out the only thing I'm offended by is the assumption I'm an inexperienced, small-town conservative.  I'm tired of having to explain I'm not basically racist, that diversity is not new to me, that I've seen skyscrapers.  Sure, it's different, but mostly in the prices and transportation.  

I don't feel brave.  People keep telling me I am.  I'm just doing the next thing.  It occasionally feels really, really stupid, but not scary.  Some of the details are alarming; the things I'm not thinking about because if I did, I would be afraid.  I'm occasionally nervous, but something will happen.  It always does.  

The Ragged Edge of the Universe

Noticing I had tabs open for housing on Craigslist, jobs on Playbill, and dudes on OKCupid, I thought,  "If I can just solve these three problems, I'll have a life at the end of it."

What do I have now?

A life.  In transition.  

Which I think I'm more OK with than I think.  I *like* figuring out my own problems.  I like having this much going on.  I mean, the reason I'm here is because I was bored working four jobs and devoting all my time to the one the most draining and the least artistically challenging.  

It's nice not having to smile and nod to everybody on the street.  I like not being expected to make small talk with the cashier.  I really like the minute that New Yorkers just decide to tell you their whole life story and they don't scimp on the details.  In some ways, I think my personality is probably better suited here, where I can turn on Iowa Nice when I need to, and the rest of the time it's OK that I work in service industries and actually don't care that much for humanity.  

Every day is an adventure in doing something I'm afraid of.  Today's was going out after dark.  I rode out to Brooklyn to see an apartment.  It happens some places in Queens, but in Brooklyn, a lot of the train lines are outdoors and elevated.  Came out of the tunnel and, since I happened to be sitting by the window, saw the Statue of Liberty lit up in the harbour.  A ways off, but I hadn't seen it before and was not expecting to.  I still don't live here.  

I need to re-read The Great Gatsby.  I never understood why they drove so much when they were in New York.  The subway was that old.  Now I understand, they were *way* out in Queens, where a car is the fastest way in to the city, and also, rich people don't ride the subway.  

I'm in the way of being Nick.  Older than he is.  Nearly older than Gatsby.  But alive, and without any past I'm reaching back to.  And I'm no Daisy, and don't want to be Jordan Baker.  So Nick.  Except I'm not likely to meet the man who fixes the World Series.  

Or maybe I will.  The place I'm in now, I Googled the guy, because of course I did.  He's a mildly famous musician.  The guys I see on OKC have written books, travel the world with the intention of saving it, and do a lot of otherwise wild and vaguely intimidating things that leave me out of their league.  

Only inasmuch as even with my resume inflated, those things didn't even matter much in Iowa.  If you want to be somebody, you have to do the work.  There are just as many opportunities to be nobody here, but there are a few more to be somebody.  

Live from Lincoln Center

I wonder when my feet will stop hurting.  And then I realise I keep taking these 10 mile or more forced marches across the city and go, "You're in charge of the itinerary, you know.  You don't have to see three things in vastly different parts of the city every time you have a day off, you know."

I think if I don't go out when it rains, if I don't try to walk everywhere, I won't be prepared for winter.  

I need this to work.  I need to realise it's going to feel like it isn't working for a very long time.  Which is fine, actually.  If I have to keep doing things, I can't get bored.  

The city has no "backstage."  No alleys for garbage collection; the subway runs 24/7 so it can't shut down for total system maintenance; event set-up, tear down, they don't close, just set up barricades.  The only places you can't go, it seems, are behind pay walls.

Oh.  Wait.  The entire city is backstage for a group of rich people who have never seen it like the rest of us do.

New Yorkers don't wear flip flops, which I like.  They sit in the shade on a 75 degree day and complain about the heat and humidity.  They expect you to cut them off, to interrupt, to explain your problem is not their problem and they can't help.  I've heard so many times, "well, I don't know anything about that," when if they'd let them get to the end, they know perfectly well how to help, they just don't want to.  So when you let them talk, you hear a lot.

I've never travelled anywhere I couldn't wait to get back home from.  Home is mutable.  So people who ask me, "Do you like it?  Do you miss home?" how do I say, "It doesn't matter if I like it, this is home because I'm here."  

Defeated by the R Train

I hate screwing up public transportation.  Hate it.  I have no one to blame but my own inability to read and follow instructions and, generally, I believe I'm pretty good at that.  So when I get lost in a train station I've been in before, going a way I have gone before, I hate myself for it.

And a little mistake becomes a big one quickly.  Ride one stop too far and you can't always get back.  Walk three blocks in the wrong direction when you're tired and you're twice as exhausted.  And you can't just give up and decide you live here now, because it doesn't work that way, you have to keep going, you have to figure it out.  And when you already feel like you've lost the public transportation game, and it's only going to be harder now you've started losing...

I'm trying to move.  In two trips this time because I can't carry it all alone.  I have to be at work at 1pm.  I started this journey at 9:30 and am not half done.  I will not be making it to work on time.  I hate this.  I hate this.  I hate this.  But I will do it anyway because I don't have any other options.

Decrease the Surplus Population

As a consequence of an extremely long bus trip with really only Twitter to keep me company, I wound up reading a lot about politics and the health care plan.

Here's my question to the insurance companies losing money on individual policy plans: Are you losing more than you are otherwise making, or is the amount you are losing a negligible percentage of profits? Because here's the deal, if I make $11 an hour, and I know that $2.50 is taxes, $5 dollars is rent and utilities, $1 is owning a car, and another $1.50 is debt, I need the other dollar to eat and buy clothes and <strike>otherwise stimulate the economy</strike> live my life. OK? I might be able to toss you sixty cents, maybe, but if you want $3? I can't do that. Change up any of those variables and tell me where I can find that $3. Because I think to do it, I have to make $14.

So, health insurers, are you making 11 dollars an hour and can't give sixty cents to the people who are asking for it? Or are you making $20, putting money in the bank and thinking, "Damn, I could save a lot more if I wasn't spending $2.10 <strike>buying all that avocado toast</strike> supplying people with health care."

I get it, you want to make money, you're a business. Maybe it's because I work in non-profit... OK, it's totally because I work in non-profit, but I feel like if I were in a position to lose a percentage of my income on something important to me (like, the health of my members?), that doesn't hurt me. So when you tell me you're losing 3 million a year, I can be sympathetic to that... if that's 6% or more of your income. And maybe it is, but you're not telling me that, you're telling me you lose 3 million a year. If 1.6 million Iowans, or their employers, are paying an average of $500 for their insurance, you're making 800 million. It's awesome that over 680 million goes right back to providing care. Awesome; I really hope you're working with drug companies and medical providers to make sure that those costs are reasonable for you. Because nobody should have to pay an outrageous amount for health care.

Running Out of Time

In a fit of, "what if I need to wear not-pants after I move?" I tried on a skirt that I bought in college.  I wore it to run box office for Rocky Horror, and may have worn it once more.  It looks better on me today than it did when I was 20.  I think I feel better about myself than I have since I was 19.

I have four days.  There are a million things I haven't done.  I will do them.... Tomorrow.

When I sit down and think about it, I know everything is going to be OK.  Because even if it isn't, I have the power to make it OK.  I've done it before, I can do it again.

I've committed myself to two projects: Instagram the experience for people in Iowa who will care for approximately a week and a half, play a D&D campaign run by the only friend I know I have in the city.  I'm going to wind up owing him a lot, I think.  Both of these are part of a larger commitment to learn the city and make friends.  Say yes.  A lot.

I'd like to write.  Actually write.  For the theatre?  Except not by myself and not a script.  ...I want to *make* theatre, but writing's the most valuable contribution I can make to that process until I stop being a chicken.

Burr's willing to wait for it.  Hamilton's running out of time.  I like to think that I vacillate between the two of them, but, I'm not.  Neither am I Angelica.  I'm...  tense.  My jaws, my shoulders, my thighs- it's pretty bad.  If I relax, do I lose my grip on myself?  Do I give in to the voices telling me this is stupid?  Maybe.

This! Is! Athens!

My best friend marvels at my ability to travel.  "I don't know anybody who packs as light as you do," he says.  If I can't carry it, I don't need it that badly.  For 5-7 days (in the urban wilds of Toronto, because let's be honest, camping would look a little different), I pack in a regular school backpack and the WWII musette bag that I use as my usual bag- clothes in the backpack, everything else in the bag.  It's great, I don't have to check a bag and I can maneuver public transportation in rush hour without being that asshole with the enormous bag.  Wheelie bags with handles are great in airports.  That is the only place they are great.  

Moving struck me as a challenge.  This time, the laptop has to come, and so should at least two pairs of shoes, clothes for all weather and possibly towels.  The usual bags were not going to suffice, but the ability to manouever by myself was imperative.  The largest bag I could find, without wheels, that fit within Greyhound's luggage requirements and carries like a backpack was a GI duffle.  I went down to the army surplus store to check it out.  Normally, I need to visit a product in person before I buy it (this is the specific reason that I don't own any very expensive sex toys, too).  The shop was out of almost every single type of bag when I went to look, but since the price was ten bucks less than the list price online before shipping, and even that was a lower price than I'd seen on any normal civilian travel bag, cheapness beat out.  

While waiting for it to come in, I've been assuming that the total capacity would be something on the lines of a laundry basket.  I picked it up this afternoon.  I can fit two queen sized blankets and two pillows in there and it's still not packed full.  I've been collecting cookie boxes from work for the last two weeks (they're brilliant, they're about 12X7X9, which means that they're cheap to ship and even a five year old can carry them around) and assuming that I was going to need more than ten, but if I can get a full wardrobe in that bag, all I have to pack are some kitchen stuff and heavy winter stuff.  This is good.  

It feels like this is going to work.  

Show Me the Money Shot

One of the least desirable things about the men I have sometimes sexted was their need to send me a picture of their cum.  They all seemed to accept that I wasn't going to send them anything, and respected when I said that I did not need or want to see their dicks, but somehow, most of them would wind up sending me that photograph.  

Was I supposed to praise this?  Was I supposed to be turned on by this?  I'm about as thrilled by ejaculate as anyone who has ever tried to clean glue out of a paintbrush might be- aka not at all.  It's thick, slippery, difficult to clean up and it smells pretty bad.  

A friend explained that it's sort of like proof of pleasure.  This still didn't make much sense, unless you've beaten a personal distance record or filled a Dixie cup, or something, I'm not sure what the motivation is to share this achievement.  

Until today, reading an article about the history of money shots.  I don't watch video porn.  I'm not a voyeur and the idea of watching other people have sex doesn't do anything much for me at all.  So I've seen less than an hour's worth of typical porn.  Turns out, this is a trope in porn to signify orgasm, pulling out and cumming on someone's face.  I can definitely understand how someone could construe that this was important to share.  

I've not explicitly mentioned that I've been screwing around with a poly guy online.  I don't know what else to call it, but screwing around is pretty accurate.  It's fun and keeps me off balance in more ways than one.  

Today, I raised a concern that relates to my ex.  I should have realised when I couldn't bring myself to say, "I don't want to think that I'm preventing someone else who deserves it more from the opportunity to experience your orgasms," that probably I didn't need to say it, but, I'm not there yet.  

My ex-husband frequently indicated he didn't want anything to do with me physically.  I always accepted this, reluctantly, thinking, "OK, he doesn't want to do anything, he's tired, he works hard, that's fine, I am mature enough to handle this, I will check in with him next week."  Today, I pose the question to the poly guy, "I'm not preventing you from having sex with anybody else?"  And it hits me like a sack of bricks.  Of course not.  I don't even need his answer; as soon as I asked the question, I knew that's not even the situation.  The idea that his orgasm is the only reason to be sexual with somebody else must be incredibly foreign to him.  And it was.  

Nickels and Dimes

I haven't even left yet, and I'm lonely.  Tonight, I was talking to a friend in Canada and another in LA and realising that even these two relationships are going to change.  Everything is going to change, entropy demands it, but this time is going to be faster and more thorough than others.

I spent what would have been my 11th wedding anniversary sitting in a park in Toronto deciding to move to New York.  Thirty days on, that decision will have been acted on so thoroughly that I will probably have to spend it in a park in New York simply for the symbolism.

Three months ago, I spent 6am in Times Square, and 24 hours later, I was at Younge and Dundas.  A place like that, when you're almost the only one in it, and the screens repeat and the sun rises, feels small.  That was the first bookend; the moment in Toronto, frustrated as always at trying to figure out how to make public transportation work for me when I am too tired to function, when I thought, "You can do this.  You got on a bus to New York City yesterday and went there.  You can get on a bus to go another couple miles.  You drove all the way from Iowa.  In a car.  That you just bought because you didn't die on the way up here.  How did you become the kind of person these things *happen* to?"

A friend said, later, when I mentioned this, "You mean how did you become the kind of person who does things like that?"  She has a point, but I still feel like all my decisions are the result of being pushed in the right direction, and I always feel like I stand still for too long.

It's June, but feels like the end of August with 90 degree days and 60 degree nights.  Summer nights smell like irresponsibility; all of the leftover scents of the day under cooling asphalt and dew.  In August, add the sense that time is rapidly slipping away.  And so it is.  In June.

The Greatest City in the World?

I think it's relatively well-established that I am not in to food, alcohol, night life, spending money, crowds, or cities.  So of course I am moving to New York City.

Why?  Well.  I have to go someplace if I want to even have a chance at doing the kind of work I'd like to do.  Anywhere else in the world requires dealing with traffic or crossing an international border, so New York it is.

I'm giving myself three months to find a job.  If I can't do that, I'll move back home in the fall and apply for grad schools.  If I can't do that...  I'll admit defeat and get a shitty job and live in Iowa for the rest of my life and admit that, no, I don't have what it takes to be an artist, and the best I can be is unhappy.

Hopefully, I can find something to stay solvent, spend the summer learning the city and get a tour guide license, which should make me more employable or possibly even self-employable.  The sheer number of museums and theatres means that I have plenty of opportunities to turn in applications, so eventually, someone might be interested in hiring me.

Actually, with the knowledge that I am probably absolutely going to hate living there, this will be the push I need to get me to apply to everything in Canada.

More from The Dreaming

It’s Toronto, in the summer.  I can tell from the palm trees as I get off the plane, from the heat on the streetcar.  Turning the corner to home, a yellow stone building on College and Spadina, I stop when I see a dark haired man playing the guitar on the sidewalk.  He catches my eye and smiles, “Welcome back,” before starting Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Buy For Me the Rain.  He has white teeth and bright green/blue eyes, the guitar is red.  

The song is for me, I realise as he plays.  I know him.  I surprise myself when it’s over.  My intent to kiss him on the side of his face is foiled when he turns to catch me.  The smile in his eyes tells me to stop being shy and predictable.  We’re the same height.  I catch my breath, close my eyes, and wake up.

To Me

Summer sun and shimmer,

Asphalt stretches away,

My eyes on the horizon's edge

But I'll come back someday.

Black ribbon stretched out flying to a coast

That I may never see,

Leading down the ways I've never been to

Who I might yet be.

Afternoon and shadow,

On through the fallen night,

Then stars will wink and blink and die

While I still seek the light.

And if I lose my road, there'll be no map

To show my way,

For dreams are built and burnt as fast

As night becomes the day.

To You, Whoever You Are

Sunlight slants through silence,

Miles and hours slip away.  

There are questions in your eyes,

But there is nothing I can say.  

There’s nothing I can give you

But the people I have been.  

The wild and weary work that’s

Done when reality sets in.

The pain of life so big

It can’t support itself is real;

Escape to dreams, but know

This is not how to learn to feel.

You can’t be my always,

But please be my just for now.  

With quiet understanding

I know you could show me how.

I don’t know where we’re going

And I don’t know what we are,

But take my hand and maybe

We could still get pretty far

Before the shadows gather for

The storm that’s yet to come.

Maybe we’ll go on until

This golden day is done.  

The Land of What Might Have Been

The last three days have felt like there's a string attached to my heart and brain that runs straight down through my body.  At intervals, and without any warning, something yanks on the end of the string and drags my entire nervous and circulatory system out through my crotch.  It's reminiscent of when you go over a bump in the road, or through airplane turbulence, or when you're lying in bed on the very edge of sleep and feel like you've just fallen twelve feet, except for the much lower center of concentrated energy than usual.  It's not a recommended way to go through life.

I'm not sure how to make it go away.  I don't really know that I want it to go away, except that it's distracting to have to reconstruct your insides a thousand times a day.  I know what started it:  three or four sentences, all as tame as the raciest parts of your average middle school YA novel.  But they set off depth charges.

In spite of assurances that this is normal, it doesn't feel normal.  It's also new.  The guy I had a hopeless crush on in high school had the ability to render me shy and stupid merely by being in the same room.  I had a lengthy correspondence relationship when I was in high school, too.  It was conducted almost entirely by letter and was more chaste than classic literature because we didn't even have scandalous subtext.  Checking the mail was punctuated by intense anticipation, but, really, that relationship was more about trying to out-write each other than it was anything else.  My ex-husband was a series of conversations in, "I should not do this.  Well.  OK.  Why shouldn't I do this?  Because it seems like a bad idea.  Like you would know without trying it."  *tries it*  "OK.  Well.  That wasn't bad.  It was, in fact, pretty good.  We could do that again."  It was logical and considered and somehow I still managed to get it all wrong.

Is it because I know so much better where this kind of interaction can go?  I've spent not an insignificant amount of time typing way, way more intimate acts to strangers online, and the closest this resembles was the guy who, without writing anything below my shoulders-

Oh.  Of course.  When I was married, my experience wasn't even part of his thought process, let alone his actions.  Of course anybody who pays any attention to me is going to effect me.

A conversation today included this sentiment, "You mean you wanted to have sex, asked for it, but didn't get it more than once a month?  And you can have multiple orgasms, and not only would he not go down on you, he was out looking for other people to have sex with instead of you?  I hate this fucking guy."  Which is, reassuringly, not the first time I've been told that.  Fingers crossed.

#TheatreFam

End of year recognition for my high schoolers.  I love my kids.  We have 300 amazing students, and I get to be there to watch them grow and learn and make me proud of their best selves.  I get them at their best and challenge them to reach farther, because I know they can.  That's so much better than if I got a teaching license and had to try to educate all of them.  I'll admit it, I'm not interested in inflicting federal and state mandated stuff on the ones who don't want to be there, I want to share cool stuff with the strange and talented ones.

They're not just talented, they're good to each other.  Theatre was my family when I was in high school; 40 other weirdos like me who, when it came right down to it, all loved and supported each other.  This is high school, where everything burns hot and cold and every day can be the most important day of your life.  It was not the greatest experience of my life, but it was the most emotionally charged period so far.  These kids blow my experience away.  There were 400 kids in my graduating class and I didn't really know 80 of them.  These 300 kids cross all grades and include freshmen in two separate buildings and they're family, too.  They show up.  And not only do they show up, they are genuinely there for each other when they need to be, and that is so cool to watch.

This year, they were given the opportunity to nominate each other for an award for those students encompassing passion, dedication, kindness and selflessness.  Four students received the award, and we read out the nominating letters written by other students, and gave their names.  They wrote mature, adult recommendations -heck, recommendations better than many adults write- describing their peers.  And they weren't allowed to be anonymous.  To have been a writer of one of those letters says just as much as for the recipients, because that means at 16, 17, you have to step outside all of the high school stuff -rivalry, jealousy, pettiness- and look with respect for a peer and individually represent all that the entire group embodies.  And hey, they're speech kids, they have the words to express their commendation.

My first freshman class will be seniors next year.  They are an incredibly strong group, stronger than the two classes before them, and I have loved watching them take on new challenges and surprise and amaze me.  Freshmen are such kids, and then they turn around and show you what they can do.  And I might not be there to see what they do next year.  In fact, I probably won't be.

That kills me.  All of the great things I get to do are great, but they don't sustain me beyond love of the work, or love of the people.  I love the trust and autonomy that I have at the high school; at the little community theatre; in the tours I give.  So tonight I have to say to the head coach, "I might not be back," and she says, "Full time theatre work?"  "If I can get it; I've been applying."  "That's what happens to the good ones.  Well.  I want you back, but if I can't have you, tell me as soon as you know.  You'll be so hard to replace.  Any of you are, but you'll be hard to replace."

That kills me a little bit, too.  I was in agonies my first year, I didn't know what I was doing, there was some other way I should be doing things, they didn't all make it to All State, they can't like what I'm doing.  Then I figured it out, nope, the kids love me and they were growing, and that was all that mattered.  Since then, it's been great, and there's not a lot of recognition of that, but I don't need it, I see it in the kids- they reinforce that I know what I'm doing and that I'm doing it right.

I *still* think of the middle schoolers I worked with a decade ago, for a year.  I marvel at the teachers who cycle through students year after year after year, because that's a lot of lives to touch, and forget.  And I love that this is theatre.  They call themselves High School Theatre Fam.  There's a hashtag.  And it's true.  The good theatres are families.  Moreso than my own relatives, theatres have been my support and haven; the people who are there for me.  It happens over and over again.

I should know not to worry.  Wherever I go, there will be a theatre, and there will be family there, and my only job will be to find it.  Or make it.

Anne of the Thousand Days

I've been legally divorced four months today.  May 31st marks one thousand days since I ended my marriage.  Looking back, I discover that I knew it was over about six months before I finally ended it.  I didn't recognise it at the time, but reading my words now, I see how much I struggled to acknowledge that I'd already made that decision and needed to follow through on it.  

Who am I now?  I've learned a lot about what a relationship should be.  Still learning, because, really, I've researched and thought a lot.  I may finally be in a place where I could be in a relationship.  I've started to notice what I miss about having someone else in my life.  

I know I can live on my own.  I know I'm an independent person, and I have a much better idea of my needs and think that I can communicate them better now than I could at nineteen.  Of course I should be able to.  Nineteen year old me and twenty two year old me do not want a visit from current me.  Sixteen year old me and I are back on the same page.  I think she'd probably listen to anything I had to tell her.  I know she would tell me to stop being stupid and take an opportunity if one comes along, and that there is nothing left to be afraid of, because everything you thought might happen pretty much has- you got hurt, you had a lot of terrible sex, you made really bad choices and alienated everyone around you, again.  It's like high school only with sex this time.  Now that you know you actually like sex, don't worry about the rest of it, move on.  

She's right.  She's also kinda stupid, but she's sixteen.  She knew her limitations and also knows that I don't have any I'm not creating for myself.  

Last week, in a conversation with my ex husband about his future and his options.  I think he's in a slightly better place than he was, or he's finally learned that I do not want to hear hopeless whining about things that are within his control if he'll just do something about it.  So I ask, what was so bad about me that he had to go looking for sex?  

And he's intensely uncomfortable with the conversation.  He's completely inconsistent in his answers.  I still don't know whether he lied most recently, or lied the other times I've tried to find out why he felt the need to do what he did.  It turns out, it doesn't matter.  It's enough to know that he's still not able to address the situation, "I can't believe we're having this conversation."  "If we'd had it years ago," I say, "Things could have changed."  

He thinks that, no, if we'd had the conversation, if he'd talked about what he needed and wanted, I would have left.  Which does finally tell me what I needed to know- he never trusted me with his sexuality.  He was happier believing that he needed me more than he needed to tell me the truth about what he needed.  

That's for him to deal with someday.  Even as he was saying it, I knew he didn't realise what he was telling me.  Clearly, his sexuality is that big a weight on him, and I hope someday he figures out how to manage it.  

It's nice to recognise that if I met his exact clone tomorrow, I'm not going to make that mistake again.  Good to know.  

The Wanderer Above a Sea of Mists

Gothic spires silhouetted before a lurid sunset, darkened terrain and flashes of supernatural mysticism inhabiting the deeper levels of my superstition.  A thick scent of ozone.  Torrid, hopeless, sublime subjective natural landscapes mirroring personal doom.  This nightmare world, spreading beneath the distant stars on the infinite horizon, cutting through the shadows inhabited by the indistinct shapes and symbols of all the things I have ever dreamt.  Where everything is iridescent purple mirror shine, a black mirror where things look out that never looked in, or looked in once and were trapped, twisted to reveal what they are.

All that's necessary to reach the stars is to cross it.

The eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg as they look over the grey Valley of Ashes, the hopeless space that separates us from the green light, from the hopeless gay parties that never end, the dangerous and fascinating people who can make anything happen, for a price.  Gatsby stands on his dock, reaching back to a dream he'll never re-create.  A midwestern story.  A story of being so fundamentally fed up with who and what you are that, desperate to become anything else, you become a symbol.  A warning.

But J. Alfred Prufrock knows there is nothing to stop us, with the evening spread out against the sky, except for a million realities, doubts and fears, the things that keep us from ourselves, our hair, our faces, life and death, and do we dare?  There will be time later, so wait, turn back.  Know that mermaids sang, but not to me, for human voices wake us, and we drown.  Because life is talk, and death and work and sleep and doubt, and more than that, the certainty of doubt which reminds us we are not infinite, and should we dare, time will turn us back to coffee spoons.

Extension

I'm lonely.  I live in a house that's been in my family over 90 years.  My brother lives in the basement, my parents live in town.  In spite of this, I'm looking for a home and a family.

I've been doing it on my own for a year and a half.  I'm good at it.  I'm *really* good at it.  I have the freedom to say, "I want to do this," and do it.  And when that plan doesn't work, I try the next thing.

It's tiring, though.  It means having an inexhaustible ability to start over.  It means being able to do it on your own.  And sometimes, a lot of times, I break.  I'm lucky to have friends who will let me complain about whatever the latest new and insane plan is.  Do one thing each day that scares you.  Do six impossible things before breakfast.  Oh, and do everything else, too.

The days I can't do it anymore are the days I want to disappear so far inside someone else I can't see me or my problems anymore.  Which is what I did in my marriage.  His problems were bigger, and became mine.  How much easier it is to forget yourself and worry about someone else.  As long as you don't care who you are.
These days, I want to be me.  I'd like to be me with somebody else.  To be able to say, "hey, this is too much for me right now, can we do this together, or can we do something else for a minute and then remind me to go back?"  I don't really want to disappear, I just want a hand.

The reason humans can do mime is a function of our brains.  When you do a physical activity, portions of your brain light up as they work.  When you think about doing that physical activity, when you're just sitting in a chair, your brain continues to light up in the same exact ways.  It doesn't matter if you're doing it, or thinking about doing it, or pretending to do it, your brain turns on the same places. It still learns, it still creates the circuit, improves it.

This is why they say touch is one of the strongest things we can do.  Because it lights up our brain and connects us, and the memory of that experience is like recreating it.  Wanting someone to give you a hand isn't a metaphor.  It's literal.  It's the need to reinforce that someone is there for you.  And that's how your brain creates all those chemicals that are side effects of human connection- happiness, love.  So when you're out of them, you can find them by thinking of them.  And that makes the hard things not so hard.

That's how it's supposed to work.

Are All Music Teachers As Dense As I Am?

Another message from my ex-husband, he wants my help.  That was our entire relationship.  He wouldn't do something, or couldn't do something and at the last minute, I would be expected to fix it.  Every year, his portfolio review would come around, and at 1am the day before it was due, I was sitting up printing and gluing and correcting text.  I edited all his papers.  I practically did all the research and wrote them, too.  

This time, I told him no.  I am not going to continue to do favours for him that I know will never, ever be returned.  That's not friendship, that's not nice, that's just using me to get what he wants and I had the opportunity to do that while we were married, why would I do it afterward?

It's not just him.  I scroll through my Facebook messages and realise, with a few exceptions, people only contact me when they want me to do something for them.  "Hey, I bet you know," "Could you look up ...?" "Give me an idea," and I do.  Sometimes, when they've gotten what they want and say thank you, I say, "Hey, we should do a thing," and they say, "Yeah, yeah, sounds great."  And it never happens.  

I wonder how to change this, but I suspect that it involves being a person that I'm not OK with being.  

A Better Fate Than Wisdom

You're not an unintelligent person.  You have a wide range of sex-positive vocabulary and tolerance.  You understand that relationships are built on more than sex:  communication, respect, trust, intimacy.  However, there are certain things that still have you turning to Google like a 12 year old.

Last night, talking with a guy online and he talks about one of his favourite ideas about date night, and, as I'm thinking it sounds like one of the sweetest things I've ever heard, he quickly explains that it's just when he's feeling low-key, not, like, going all out.

"That's a lot fancier than my experience."
"What's your experience?"

I cannot bring myself to say, "When you're allowed to eat inside the fast food place rather than having to go through the drive through and eat in the parking lot," so I say, "For his birthday we went to a chain steakhouse.  My birthday always fell during a show, so we never did anything."  And he takes a very long time to type, "That guy sucked."

I know.

"No fun dinners?  No going anyplace fancy?  What would you do if you could?"

In this moment, I realise I need a girl.  Luckily, a friend is still awake, "Hey, what are dates?"
"You like theatre.  Theatre is a date."
"No, theatre is work."
"A date is a thing you like to do and would like to do with other people."
"Ah.  Got it.  Thank you!"

I explain that adventures and conversation are pretty much good enough for me.  "Oh, flirty-type dates.  Cool."  While the conversation moves on, I'm still left wondering what the heck he means.

This morning, I ask for clarification from another friend, what the heck is flirting.  He does eventually answer in a way that makes sense, which I appreciate.  On the way there, I'm left with another comparison I don't understand, "the difference between kissing and making out."

Which, after he disappears, has me on Google all afternoon trying to figure out exactly what this means.  Eventually, I ask my brother, "Teenagers in the car right before the alien/monster/ghost/murderer gets them, what's the word for that?"
"Umm.  It's usually just the scene before the title card, I don't know.  I can look it up."
"No, not the trope, the thing the teenagers are in the middle of."
"Making out?"
"Got it.  Thank you."

That's something I've done maybe twice.  Over a decade ago.  All things at any point after had to lead to his orgasm.  He always said no to anything else.  No means no, right?  No means you shouldn't question it, if it's OK with you, just do it.  Besides, if you say no because you'd rather do something else, and maybe do that later, the whole process will just stop.  Who knows when your next opportunity is going to come along?  So, OK, take what you can when you can.  What does normal even look like?  Why did I let this be OK?

Or, more to the point, why do I still have so much of my self-worth tied up in this?  And why does the only way to change this involve being braver than I feel?

You Remind Me of The Babe

We'd had the conversation before we were married.  I didn't want children.  He was OK with that.

The second year we were married, I got a job in a portrait studio at the mall.  I started in September, and went through my first holiday retail season.  I was sick with the flu for most of November.  Around Thanksgiving, he was the one to notice.

"Have you...?"

I had to check the calendar, because I hadn't had time to think about it, but, no, I hadn't.  Stress always messes with the cycle and so did being sick, and I hadn't been particularly regular all year, and anyway, we always used condoms, so.  No.  There was no way.

As the first week of December ended, I started to worry.  I was working part time, he was in grad school, we were doing OK financially, but not great.  Pregnancy was not only something I did not want, it was incredibly stupid.  That was the month I found out the nearest Planned Parenthood was two hours away, in Saint Louis.  Having always lived in towns that had them, I was suddenly at a loss.  What would I do if my fears were real?  Would I drive all the way to Saint Louis, or would I have to find someplace local?  Or what?

So I ignored it.  I was wrong.  I was sick, I was stressed, I was not pregnant.

New Year's Day brought some of the most horrible cramps and bleeding that I have ever experienced.  There was a lot more... stuff than usual.  Sure, it'd been ten weeks, but also, it'd been ten weeks.  I can never say for sure what that was, but I have my suspicions.

During that same long week, when I felt like my insides were trying to claw their way out of me, he said to me, "I hoped maybe you were."

I still remember how terrified I was in that moment, the certain knowledge that we were vaguely aware of the exact same possible situation and holding opposite points of view.  I was too scared to even write about it at the time, but I remember.

As spring came, he started bringing it up, more and more.  We should have a child.  I would be a great parent.  Didn't I want to have a kid?  I asked for three years to think about it.

I still have the document I started.  May, 2009.  It's a list of names, calendars tracking when certain milestones would occur for various dates of birth, information about labour and delivery and decisions I'd made about the circumstances under which I would agree to this.  In 2012, I'd said, "OK, let's start thinking about this and taking the steps we need to make this happen."

My dreams were full of dead children.

I wouldn't find out until 2014 that he'd been sleeping around since October of 2009.

When I found out, I said, "You've been doing this while I've been trying to decide if I should have a child with you?"
"You said to give you three years, and then nothing happened."
"First of all, at the end of those three years, I said to you, 'prove to me that we can afford this, and that we can live a life that will be conducive to introducing a child and we'll do it,' and that never happened.  Second of all, you didn't even wait six MONTHS before you started having sex with other people.  Please don't lie to me about your motivation.  What if we had a five year old now?"
"I probably wouldn't have done it."

It still makes me absolutely petrified, the idea that I could have had a child I didn't really want, but had been willing to consider having with him anyway.

I wonder if that was the change, if he decided he needed to tick another box on the traditional life goals check list and when I didn't want to contribute to that, he decided not to be with me anymore?  I don't know.  It's another one of the many, many things I never get to know about whatever our relationship and marriage were.

Why did I try to trust someone who didn't deserve it?

Hieroglyphics? Let me be Pacific

There are a lot of tastes that I'm sensitive to; bitterness is hard to tolerate and pre-cum might as well be broccoli extract.  The moment I made that discovery (well, after I stopped gagging and uncrossed my eyes), I proposed options:  we could buy flavoured lube; he would have to be willing to try to return the favour; or we could not do this.  I was over-reacting, apparently.  He'd had lots more partners than I had and I was the first to have that particular reaction.  Since I was also the only person he'd been with who hadn't done it before, I must be the problem.  "You've tasted yourself, then?" I asked.  "No."  "Since I'm the only one familiar with both of us, I don't think you get to judge what my tongue knows."  This never changed.

So we tried things.  That would be the first and last time we ever used lube.  I think the tube is still in the box of other stuff he was too scared to take to his parent's house when he moved out- some VHS tapes I've never seen, a pile of old porn magazines and print outs and his hentai comics I read once.  It would be over a decade before I knew that lube shouldn't have glycerin in it, or parabens, and I'm willing to guess this has both.  However, the fact that it was cheap, not-so-body-safe lube was not the problem.  I liked it, it was enough to mask the taste and that's all I asked.  He didn't like it.  I never got an explanation why, but, OK, we tried that, he didn't like it, so we'll stop trying that.  But he still wanted blow jobs.  

We tried flavoured condoms.  I preferred this to lube because it was the only way I could achieve a Mortal Kombat fatality.  He didn't like it.  This was a sensation argument, it didn't feel the same, and since it wasn't a pregnancy risk, it didn't feel worth it to him.  OK.  We tried that, he didn't like it, we'll stop.

I kept trying anyway.  I thought maybe I could get used to the taste, and I can't, which means finishing isn't an option.  He was OK with the compromise.  This was the only thing he was willing to admit that he liked, that I was good at.  I think now, though, that it's because if he came, that was the extent of his participation.  He claimed a refractory period of anywhere between 15 and 24 hours.  My subsequent reading on this subject suggests that he is either a liar, or he's an outlier.  Wouldn't it be funny if, in the midst of all the other lies, this one was the one, odd truth?

He wasn't interested in giving, just receiving, and never tried.  That's not to say I didn't ask flat out, or make strong hints, or otherwise make it incredibly easy for him to try, but there was always an argument.  "But I'm tired now."  "No, I don't think I'm going to like doing that."  "No, I'm a guy, I don't *have* to shave, but maybe if you did..."  "No, I like how it looks, and I like that you did, but I don't think that will fix it."  "Get off my chest, I can't see what you're doing."  *shrug*

It's a question I see on Reddit from time to time, and that I see in articles about self-love and stuff, "What makes you feel sexy?"  And I always wonder what that's supposed to mean.  The definitions are basically, "erotic or sexual self confidence," and I think this may be as close as I can get.  I carry around the knowledge that I'm inexperienced, not very good at the things I have experience in, and I'm not attractive or overtly sexual.  But in spite of the taste problem, I like giving oral.  It was the only thing I could do that elicited any kind of clear reaction, and when you understand you're basically terrible at anything, to know there's one thing that's appreciate even if you know you can't do it "right," it feels powerful.

So Long As I'm Dreaming

Dear Theatre Company,

Hello! I have been an admirer of your work for some time and, in light of your up-coming tour, am interested in serving as an intern with your company for the summer.

The theatre I am most passionate about creating exists beyond the proscenium. It begins in census records and old newspapers, in myths and legends, it is performed in canoes and in cafeterias and asks the audience to actively participate in the experience. I challenge myself to work outside of the confines of the theatre structure while utilising dramatic structure, analysis and research in creating works that show multiple perspectives rather than tell linear stories.

In various professional capacities, I consistently demonstrate effective communication skills and show initiative in intense environments. I have served as a professional stage manager, technical director, dramaturg, director and playwright and could bring all of these skills to a small tour. I am an ideal collaborator:  organised, punctual, take direction well, and can create a detailed itinerary. I have some familiarity with the particular style of work you do and can offer an extra set of eyes and hands throughout the tour season. I also possess a valid driver's license.

I am most interested in the process of coordinating and carrying out an extensive tour, as well as learning hands on how to create and sustain an audience through marketing and social media. I would be excited to watch how a touring performance evolves and changes as it travels, and in learning the ins and outs of working with venues to implement a touring performance.

While I understand that yours is a small company, I would like to assure you that I am willing to accept an unpaid internship. The experience and potential contacts to be gained through this unique opportunity would be compensation enough, and I would be prepared to cover my own expenses for this time, as well. I already possess a background of research, analysis, creative impulses and a background in theatrical skills. I ask, through interning with your company and providing excellent assistance, for the opportunity to focus, experiment, discover new ideas and practices to see what more I am capable of bringing to the conversation.

If this partnership seems beneficial to you, I would love to speak with you more about my unique qualifications and strengths.  Thank you for your time.

Hero of My Own Story

When I was seven years old, I remember walking across the playground at school and suddenly thinking of myself standing on an endless yellow-green field in a high wind, the sun is warm.  Some moments, you know you'll remember.  This was one of them.  And that memory comes back to me.  Because it wasn't imagination, necessarily, it wasn't something I was pretending.  My memory is mostly narration, but sometimes I get recurring images that I'm not in charge of creating.  There's another one of an endless purple universe all shot with silver streams of light.

I don't know where they are, or where they come from, or what they mean.  They're vivid colours, but a world that I can't recreate like a picture, because I can see all of the horizon at once.  The field is one I've come to think of as my own character establishing long shot in the movie (except that it's definitely an impossible crane shot).  I just don't know what it means.

Since I don't wonder what the words in my head mean, this probably means that I'm primarily a logical thinker, and the images I generally get are the result of words, and these unbidden ones are the way visual thinkers experience the world.

I always identify with the protagonist.  I didn't know for years that not everybody does.  This explains why I keep waiting for the universe to remember it decided I was the chosen one.  That's a slight exaggeration, but, really, get it together, universe.  I've got things to do once you let me get through all these momentary obstacles.

Put a Spare Bulb in My Hand

At one point, I determined I was going to have to get used to the fact that I wasn't going to feel the way books and movies told me I should feel.  On the basis that I'd lived 18 years on this earth and never experienced it, it followed that there was no such thing as fireworks and the other uncontrollable elements of love, attraction and passion.  I was a silly, romantic, dramatic teenaged girl to hope that it did work that way and I needed to get over it.

How better to practice this than with someone who I didn't really find attractive, but who seemed to be vaguely interested in me?  Because that friendship was getting difficult to have.  He wanted to be in a relationship with me, but he wanted to be friends with me, but...  Something had to be done.  I'd been carrying on a ridiculous long-distance, correspondence relationship with a guy from Chicago, and determined that I would rather have the bird in the hand just to see what would happen.  

What did he like about me?  He didn't know.  Sometimes he'd tell me he liked that I put up with him.  Now, I think it was just that I fulfilled his needs in a socially acceptable way.  He told me often enough that I wasn't attractive.  Which made sense; I didn't think I was and I saw the porn he liked and two previous girlfriends.  I was unable to compete, but I reasoned this was OK, because I didn't think all that much of him, either, though I didn't make it a point to tell him.  

This is what love and relationships were like when you were an actual adult and not a book character, I decided.  That you tolerated each other and that was enough to call it love.  I am probably wrong about this.

I have a few good friends.  I absolutely rely on them, appreciate them, respect the work they do and the people they are.  They represent the best social relationships of my entire life.  I was initially going to say, "I know they're there for me when I need them, and when I don't actually need them, which is more important."  And thought, "That's stupid."  Then started doing the research and discovered, no, it turns out that the knowledge that you have support from someone is actually just as strong as when they actually do help you.  That's not stupid, that's literally the difference between a stranger and a friend.  

I think about Harry Harlow's monkeys, though.  It doesn't take much to make a monkey socially well-adjusted, you basically just have to feed them and expose them to other monkeys sometimes and they come out OK.  And you can do a lot to screw with a monkey before you damage its social functioning irreparably.  Even male turkeys have been found to respond to a potential mate that's literally a stick with a turkey head on it.  They prefer it over a headless body, suggesting that while turkeys may want to tap that ass, they'd rather see her smile.

So what's the difference between love and friendship?  Studies about friendship generally focus on how these relationships are an extension of yourself- that you are extremely likely to imbue a friend with the same opinions and perspectives as you have, because it reinforces the process of becoming friends:  recognising that there's something in this person that is similar to you.  The study of friendship is relatively new, and the studies I could find generally include pairs in supportive sexual relationships because these studies also look at primates.  They include the animal versions of friends, friends with benefits, and family relationships.  One of the studies basically stressed that fuck buddies, pairs who interact solely for sex and not at other times or for any other reason, are not friends.  And allegedly that's true whether you're a bonobo or a human.

So love and friendship aren't a whole lot different as far as the brain is concerned, but the creation of friendship seems to rely in a larger part on *existing* levels of oxytocin.  Oxytocin's the chemical behind eye-contact, physical contact and empathy.

I read that love is initially related to the creation of dopamine in combination with oxytocin and is, essentially, part of our lizard brain.  This process related to the same processes as fear (actual fear, not low-lying every-day anxiety, but fight or flight terror), but it triggers the reward center of the brain, the same thing that allegedly happens when we eat or have sex:  "Good job, you're surviving, keep doing this."  That's mostly dopamine, and oxytocin kicks in to say, "Hey, yep, lizard brain is freaking out right now, but we're keeping an eye on things."  Trust and happiness.  The process also has the added side effect of decreasing seratonin, a neurotransmitter that normally regulates moods and keeps human beings basically calm, stable, and rational.

Apparently, fireworks are a thing.  Chemically.

According to researchers (I could do the citations, but, c'mon, really, what is this, wikipedia?), many couples move on to a level where they regain their seratonin levels, increase other chemicals that create security and attachment, but the dopamine generally decreases, too.  But not in all of them.  There seems to be some correlation between long-lasting, positive relationships and levels of dopamine that are the same as in the early stages of the relationship.  Oxytocin and vassopressin, which is the security and attachment chemical, seems to be related to the process- if those two are higher, dopamine is also higher.

All that's bio-neurology.  It's all very well to say, "OK, my task here is to try to increase production of dopamine which will help create oxytocin and vassopressin and figure out how to keep creating seratonin, all of which will mean that I've got this sorted out."  The day they make a FitBit with an MRI and an app to let you scan your brain whenever you want, I am buying one.  Until that time that I can actually figure out what lights up my own brain and receive certain proof that it's working the way it's supposed to, more crude experimentation is necessary.  

Some Redeeming Features

In the interest of fairness, because I have been getting a little more David Sedaris than I'm strictly OK with.  In the words of Guildenstern, "There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said- no.  But somehow we missed it."  So, since I missed that moment, and I'm forced to admit that things happened as they happened and I didn't think most of them weren't actually all that bad until I opened my eyes to look around, some good things.

This one is mixed, because he actually hated my singing voice, but he never complained when we both sang along to duets at full voice in the car.  This is the only consistently unusual thing that was permitted, and since I secretly sing everywhere, I liked having the chance.

I liked the way he looked in black.  Which was fortunate, as that was nearly half his wardrobe.

While I think now that he was both initially surprised and then a little too appreciative that I'd never done anything with anyone else, he actually did a lot of that right.  He checked in, he asked.  I could say no, things could stop.  What I regret now was that I was in such a hurry to try everything that I didn't notice I wasn't getting much of an opportunity to backtrack until much later, when we got to the end of his list of interests.

The same was true the first time we had sex.  He had done research.  He really didn't want to hurt me.  We tried, and we did several things partly right, but I didn't know enough about my own body at that point to realise that it was going to take quite a bit to ensure I wasn't hurt.  Years later, when some of that initial pain kept recurring, I worked out what the problem was.  This is really, really too much information, but, the downstairs equivalent of a split lip hurts.  A lot.  And there are a couple things to be done about it (1.more often, 2. greater time and attention paid) but only once you realise that it's not *you.*

I said I was going to say good things.  All of the good things have these nasty other sides to them now.  Omit them, and the good things are still good, but, I can't see them without the others.

Because the next one is exactly that.  Due to his particular history, he happened to have a wealth of knowledge about sex shops, including the local laws regarding video booths.  I've been in three sex shops, all of them Romantix brand.  I dislike two things about the porn stores I've been to- the smell, and the fact that your average Spencer's gifts is a classier establishment.  And, really, those two things are related.  It's been years, though.  Now that there's a smoking ban, I'm not sure whether the smell would've gotten better or worse, because that seemed to be the root of it, cigarette smoke and cum.

It was the summer I worked at summer camp and he worked at summer stock about two hours away.  When you live in a canvas tent surrounded by tents full of children you can't use your cell phone.  And this was in the days before data plans and wifi, so the single computer with Internet means that you feasibly *can* get emailed at the camp address, but those messages will be printed off and put in your mailbox.  We'd been together a year.  Our downtime corresponded exactly twice all summer.  The second time, it was pouring rain, so rather than drive down empty gravel roads looking for a dead end, he drove to the college town where the camp staff would usually go on our nights off.

Instead of going to the movie theatre, we pulled in to the porn store.  He'd explained before that they had booths in the back that were supposed to be for watching videos, and were supposed to be single occupant, but because they had doors, they were useful for other purposes.  My "night off" was six hours long and a hotel not being worth the trouble, it was not difficult to convince me.

That was a little bit surreal.  Again, I don't think I'm actually an exhibitionist, because it wasn't about being seen -doors- which also meant it wasn't quite public; it was a very OK kind of different.  But it never, ever happened again.  After that, I could never get him beyond our bed.  I don't know why.  Later on, I asked, several times, "We have an *entire house* Why can't we try something different?"  He didn't know, which means he knew and didn't want to tell me.  Sometimes I think that anything I made it clear that I really enjoyed never happened again.

Ultimately, I think that's the total benefit, that because he was mostly vaguely ashamed of his own sexuality and experience, my exposure to it wasn't, "hey this is what I'm in to, are you in to it, too?" which would have been the big bundle of red flags that would have sent me running.  Instead it was piece by piece, this picture of all of what he was, so I had time between them to understand, process and occasionally justify every single one.  There was probably a better way to learn all of that, but this is what I've got, when I look back, the knowledge that he's going to remain a big part of my sexuality because he was such a big part of its development, and if I can't remember that not all of it was not entirely bad, I'm going to carry him around a lot longer than I want to.  At least until I get some replacements in.