Taulkinham, Tennessee

 

Bobby Valentine drove down from Sacramento last week.

He texted me asking if I'd be down to chill with him and a bunch of people I'd never met in Long Beach. Last time he invited me out it was with some of his cousins in Hollywood. Funny night. 

But Katy would be there, and the last time I saw her we made McNuggetinis in the backyard and laughed for what seemed like the entire night about everything and nothing.  

"yeah dope.  lmk eta"

Bobby's the kind of dude who constantly cracks terrible, awful, pretty-super-perfectly-the-worst jokes and then revels in the one that lands to such a degree that it makes that one bad, too. He's someone I can't imagine with a girlfriend, though I've never known him without one. He is at all times incessantly and always taking candid photos of his friends mid hang, like a proud mom on prom night.  

Later he assaults you with some terrible shot of you eating a pineapple when you thought no one was looking.  

 

"I've never been to Huntington Park. What are we close to?"

 "Watts. Compton." 

He nodded but I knew he didn't know what that meant.

 "So what's the plan, Stan?"

 "Just chillin. My best friend Jason who shares a birthday with me will be there, and his girlfriend and ..."

 He went on to name like ten people and I realised I wouldn't be home until the next day.  At times like these it's best to resign yourself to the experience.  

*************************************************************

I had hit it off BIG time with Armando, but I wanted Kyle to like me the most. His red face and nervous expression inspired deep trust in me. He was like this sassy southern woman in the body of an angsty and awkward comic book nerd.  He wasn't drinking and that made me like him more.  

 "What kind of white are you?" I asked him at some point.

 "Basic," he said with absolutely no shade.

 "Like Polish? Irish?"

 "That's way too ethnic."

 Armando laughed and lifted me off the chair to dance.

 "He's like Napoleon Dynamite white, girl.  Like cigarettes and casseroles." 

 Later, when they would go off to their room, Katy would tell me about the night they met, and how minutes after saying hello they locked themselves in a closet all night.  

"I mean. Those two hoes don't seem like a match but, yeah."

 "Don't be racist, dude."  

She grimaced and drank the rest of my drink, which I was secretly grateful for.

 

  *************************************************************

The next day felt slow.  I wished I had a car to drive myself home, but it was nice listening to Katy sing Copa Cabana while she made breakfast.  

 "Missed you," she said handing me some Cholula for my eggs. 

Jason said he thought Katy hated all women. 

We ignored his comment and ate our shared plate with happy mouths, her pale freckled face disappearing the fluffy yellow pillows into it at lightning speed.

"Yo, have you guys seen Wassup Rockers?" He stood up from his burrito to say this.

"It's so fuckin sick."

...

When I finally got home, Angel was sitting in front of the air conditioner trying not to die.

 "Love that fit for you, seriously."  

 I smiled and rolled my eyes. She had picked the dress out in the store for me two days ago.

"You're cute," I told her and she proceeded to tell me all about this dude she called the love of her life.

 "This is it," she had me scroll his Insta and he seemed so legit that I couldn't lower my brows.

"He's even a Cancer.  

The only thing is, I have to figure out what to call him."

"His name?"

"No, I can't.  It's Ronald."

"What do his friends call him?" 

"Ronnie. Sometimes Ron."

"Don't you think a bad name is interesting? Like it seems perfect that this person who you're into has this one glaring peculiarity."

"I cannot. I will not."

Poor Ron, was my thought.  His name is about to change and he doesn't even know it.

"Keep scrolling," I crawled onto the air mattress next to her.

"Keep talking.  Just low."

I put my head on her stomach and fell asleep to the sound of her acrylics tapping on the screen.

 

 

 

 

 

I can't believe it's not beauty

So this kid I knew once told me it's a widely-spread idea that you can't make art out of happiness. 

"It's flat. It's fucked," he gestured across his neck with one finger. 

"You know why, too. Happiness is this thing most people don't know even when it comes. Definitely can't discuss it." 

 Wow, I thought. This guy's dumb but I like the way he talks. 

Still, he pointed to something that is relevant - Do we as people run to fictionalize and mythologize our pain in order to transmute it into something we can use to move past it? 

Obviously yes.

Boring though.

More difficult and worthwhile to make those moments of glimmering beauty be borne into perpetuity.  

You ready yet?

There's a coffee shop in Portland called Cathedral.  It's near the UP campus and right next to a little dive bar called The Portway.  This past Sunday I sat next to the bookshelves there in a big chartreuse wing back.  The books are arranged according to jacket color, and while browsing through yellow I spotted a copy of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.  I grabbed it off the shelf and thumbed it, remembering someone I know had been reading it before pilgrimage.  

"Mental Gymnastics" is the name of one of the chapters.  I didn't read it at all, just stared for a long while at those two words side by side.  

Memorial weekend in St. Cloud, James, Ruthie and I were talking about the mental gymnastics we all perform regularly that prevent us from being who we want to be.  James referenced catastrophic thinking.  I nodded my agreement on that one maybe a little too quickly.  Ruthie said she constantly thinks that when she hangs out in a group of three the other two will fall into a romance and leave her behind.  Very specific fear, dude.  Did this happen more than once?  

"What's yours?" they asked.  Lol, you're not ready for my cartwheels is what I thought.  I wowed them with my verbal gymnastics and changed the subject.

I'm in Olympia right now.  It's the 3rd of July and I know James's family just got home with a ton of groceries for tomorrow.  

They're a real and good if not somewhat dysfunctional bunch.  His dad is a member of the NRA.  His mom is my aunt and sister and cousin and girl I've always known to share all the little feelings and experiences I had as a girl who grew up the same way.  His brother Josh looks up to him and holds onto him like a port in the storm that is their family life.  They've held onto one another really.  But Josh is 19 and that is sometimes the most obvious thing about him.  Their youngest brother, Jakob, is pretty freakin cute.  He still loves his dad in a way that is only possible when you don't quite think of your parent as a person yet, but as a hero, as an unshakable example of what you wanna be someday.  Jakob also looks pretty much exactly like James and if I find it eerie, I can only imagine that James finds it so disturbing he'd rather not say.

Tomorrow's my dad's bday.  He'd always say, "All those fireworks are my candles, and America is my cake."

Every year he'd bring out a cigar and take the entire day to smoke it.  Most of its use was lighting the fuses anyone else was too nervous to light.  He'd crouch down carefully and swiftly back away.  

Now I'm thinking back to Solstice.  Was that only two weekends ago?  

At some point Mike and Andrew and some others walked to the gas station and bought a bunch of Black & Milds.  

Steve had just shown up when I got a phone call from Mike saying, "Alex wants you to come out and watch her smoke.  We're on the porch."

We were all a little faded by that point, so I used it as an excuse to partake.  I'm sorry to say that it tasted great.  The smell and the smoke felt like chocolate, like vanilla, like smooth and sweet air kissing my lips and my tongue and I knew it was death but I kept going.  I thought of him and his pens perpetually in his shirt pocket.  His black hair and his brown face showing so much delight every summer breathing in this tobacco.  I get this, dad.  This makes sense.

Tbh tho, I never wanna do that again.

These Days

The paint color I chose is called "Cactus Blooms."  It's bright and cheery and reminds me a bit of what it looked like when I poured that packet of orange jello onto a pot full of elbow macaroni when I was 10.  

The spot on the wall where James punched a hole is swollen and raised - a cubic foot-sized stress hive that will forever stand out from the rest of the room, forever say "What do you think happened here?"
Forever.

And we sanded it so hard.

Where to go from here?

What to say about it now?

Summer is upon us, and James Austin Henderson is gone.

The question poised before me at the moment is whether or not to recount all the gory gore?  

Maybe it's best to start at the end.

Last Friday we were fugitives.  

I awoke with a hell of a headache from having those fifteen staples put in my head the night before.  Worse than that was the feeling alluding to a suspicion that no one believed it was an accident.

"You got a real winner there," Mike said after I told the story.

In the darkness of the morning, standing in the kitchen with that grim smile and cold look in his eye, that instant he may as well have been holding a can of Coors and threatening to put the fear of God in me unless I could learn to close my goddamn legs, girl.  

The meeting called to tell us that James would be exiled was happening in 40 minutes and I had blood in my hair.  No time to shower.  

This really is dark, but don't be a bitch about it.

We were sitting in the campus ministry office, a place where so many great conversations had happened. The idea that these peach-colored walls would be witness to this awful hour was both absurd and fitting.  All kinds of things happen here.  Once the news was pronounced, Nora and Mike inched away from me in their seats.  Beth asked us to share our thoughts and it was almost more than I could take.
Mike said he was relieved.  Rebecca agreed.  Andrei was and always will be in all ways Andrei.  

We were told not to tell James by text, call, carrier pigeon or telepathy.
"I want to go home.  My head hurts."

A chaperone was offered.  I declined.

"I want to go home now."

I didn't have to break any promises I didn't make; he knew by my face.  

Things happened fast after that.  

We found ourselves on his bed sobbing around 2:15 p.m., after having returned from the Markoe House where they informed him he would be leaving the state by 9 o'clock that night.  

"I don't know how to do this day," he was facing away from me with his head on my chest.  My hand kept wandering up to his eyes, checking for tears.  The truth was I didn't know how to do it either, but I would be damned if I let this be the last thing he did before he left.

In the span of an hour and a half we had purchased him an alternate flight, decided to continue with the plan to stay at Ruthie's family cabin for the weekend, and booked a place for the night.

Nora and Conor came promptly at 4 with boxes and it was all I could do not to grab him by the hand and run.  We packed instead.  Packed and made excruciatingly stupid small talk.

"We think someone in the house pees in the shower.  Gross right?  Oh yeah I can send those photos to him later . . ."

That night we were invited to the Novitiate. The day had exhausted me, and mass and dinner had long since been over, but it felt like I had to show.

Thank God for Patrick Fisher - he can always be counted on to get it without making the egregious social misstep of asking what's going on or oversharing anything going on with him.  He poured water and laughed his lovely, loud, goose-like laugh.  

After a while the night felt stale, forced, and sad.  Maybe it was just me.  But no.
We all had stories we couldn't tell each other.  Not then anyway.  I threw up a hope in the air that there would be a time for it again, and with that I retreated to the car where James had been waiting.
We flew.

Our Airbnb was in Midtown.  There's nothing good to say about it.  I was glad the door locked.  

One thing I've always admired about James is he doesn't feel averse to things others can't handle.  Though I couldn't lie down without placing my sweater on the bed first, he plopped his face right onto the pillow and fell asleep as best as one could when kicked out of your own house and told not to return, even for your things, ever again, and definitely not when any other living person is around.

St. Cloud was great.  

More next time.

Day 6 (Posted upon discovering in my Drafts)

We had our silent retreat at the Jesuit Novitiate this past weekend.  It felt good to sleep -though Rebecca and I were banished to the downstairs dungeon for women.  What you lose in sex, however, you more than make up for in croissants and time to read.  Their tea selection is less than perfect.  It's a metaphor.  

Serious though, I luxuriated in the quiet space I had with my teapot.  Yes it was mine if only for the weekend.  The sunlight, the Tao Te Ching, the sub-par overly epiphanal journaling, the super boring very white neighborhood, all of these added up to an intensely enjoyable time.  

They say the human brain goes through some changes when under stress.  For months now the left side of my head has ached intermittently throughout the day.  Alarming, yeah?   That pain was gone at the Novitiate, and in its place were other struggles.  Catholicism was renewed for me through Ignatian thought, and I could feel myself almost fully accepting it.  Almost.  

***

We had a talk with JVC about the crazy shit going down at Jack Morris House.  

James broke a glass, though even after that it is difficult for me to think of that as the most egregious thing that's gone down.  

 

Go back and tell the truth

One afternoon in Texas James and I were having a talk near the river.  

I grabbed his hand, "You know why the Jews never pronounce the name of God?"  He didn't.  He gave me this look from the side of his eyes, his face turning into a wall ready to bounce whatever I had to say back.  Ready to keep himself from getting hit.

"To name something is to have power over it."  

I've stayed away from even the prospect of breaking down my ideas about Mike.  Tbh I've stayed away from him as a general rule.  Part of the story I've told myself is that it would hurt James, but there's something else going on.  I think I don't like what Mike does to me.  I'm done with not naming it.

When we got back from Texas Monday night I could feel some heavy shit brewing.  A lot had been felt and not enough had been said and James, James was sick of it.  I couldn't put my finger on it, but it was overwhelming me.  

Then on Tuesday after dinner James decided to talk to him.  Rebecca Jane came and sat with me by what seemed some sweet sort of instinct.  We inhabited James's room in silence like I imagine nervous fathers-to-be do the space outside a restroom where pregnancy tests are being taken.  After a while James appeared in the doorway smiling, "Yes, hello?" He wondered why we had taken residence in his room.  Rebecca left as smoothly as she had come.  I asked how it went with my face.  He kept smiling, "It didn't go well, I think."  That wasn't what I thought he'd say.

It'll be fine, I kept repeating.  It'll be ok.  

"Yes, eventually," he stared at a point I couldn't place on the ceiling.  

The next day everyone but James stayed home from work, and I went after Mike.

"I'm gonna ask you on a date today."

He pointed at his chest and his eyes widened.

"Me?"  

"Yeah."

"Bet."

He seemed pleased.

But somewhere between my shower and his change of wardrobe he got cold feet. 

"Next time," I shrugged at him, trying not to let him see how relieved I was. 

Later on I was writing in James's room and he came up and asked to talk.  We talked.  

He admitted he thought I'd bring up James and he didn't want that.  We talked some more.  He downloaded his thoughts about the retreat.  Talked and talked.  Great, I thought.  This'll help.  

Last night I learned something about their conversation that made me so angry.

"I don't think I can forgive him for this," I realized how extra that sounded, even in the moment.  

Even with the specifics left out, like the color was left out of Raging Bull, the heart of this still remains - dark and throbbing and ineffaceable.  

I'm pissed.

Obviously sorry

I talked to Eric today.

We had an hour-long phone call in the middle of the day.  

"Yo yo what up," was how I said hi before he laughed.
"You say that in such a tone."

"Missed you too, boo."  

He's same.  So same. 

"She always asks me if she's fat, and she's like, very thin," I could hear the water running as he washed his dishes, slamming down the forks and spoons on the counter as is his custom.  "Is that what a relationship is?"

Shrugs, son.  I never had a boyfriend ask me if he was fat.

"Is it fun?"  I kept picturing his oddly small socked feet up on the coffee table.

"Sometimes."

He paused for a while.  His voice got quieter and clearer at the same time, "You gotta understand this about me . . . I spiral. I go into this deep hole and can't get out."  This is not bullshit.  I remember all too vividly.

I changed the subject to the one thing that's always fun for him.

"Tell me about the latest tattoos."

Immediately there was a light in his voice.  The E! Channel logo.  The Truth anti-smoking campaign logo.  Elizabeth's friend did a skull on his arm.  Fresh as can be, you know.

I told him about James's idea to get the word Excalibur right above his pubic bone.  "Yo I don't know if I wanna meet this dude," and I laughed at the idea that he would ever meet anyone I know now.

"Watch Beautiful Boy and get back to me." 

 Shake boo. Talk soon. 

If I had grown up in Pennsylvania.  If I had been born a dude.  If I had felt as inexplicably lonely and needed to tell everyone I knew about it.  We'd be the same person.  

There was that night last summer we had to stay out of the house to avoid getting yelled at.  We sat on the hood of a neighbor's truck and shared a coke.  

"Is he ok with this?" he meant us leaving him in the bathroom to throw a fit.  Maybe there was something else he meant, too.  I grabbed one of his cigarettes and pretend smoked it.

"Nah."  

We lay on the windshield listening to the buzz of the power lines and talked about River's Edge until it was safe to go back.  

I was just pretending to be a liberated woman

Wow this is truly magical, all this thinking.  

James is currently way way asleep with Frances Ha playing on the screen.  He loved Ladybird, so I thought we'd try.  I don't think it was a win.  He says he doesn't put his feet on anyone's lap while napping.  There must be a word for that.  It's one of my very favorite things to do.  

I can smell his feet.  There's something so sweet and comforting about body odor.  Like yes I'm here for this no matter what the smell.  But the smell's not so bad.  

This morning James and I were discussing the convo I had with my friend Joan, who he affectionately refers to as my Oracle at Delphi.  At one point she said, "But you don't like Mike," to something or other, and I was a little shook.  I know she's right.  It doesn't sit well.

The other night when James's friend Ruthie came over after coming out with us to Psycho Suzi's, the three of us sat on the bed and she was sharing her thoughts on all of us.  She kept comparing Mike to some guy she spent three years being in love with.  "I know this kid," she kept saying.  James had to go throw up at some midpoint in our conversation, and Ruthie continued to ask me questions and talk about her thoughts on our roommates.  

She soon rounded the corner on this one: "Does that mean you like Mike?"  Fuck.  Fuck no. I wondered if I should.  Would it be a good idea to have a crush on him?  Would it make my time here more enjoyable?  

I tried to muster some romantic feeling.  Nothing.  Sentimental attachment?  No.  Searching for anything just led me to wall after wall.  I'm sure I've spent time building each one up, some recently and some a long time ago.  The time I've spent figuring these feelings out is Z bud.  Gonna work on that.

*                                                                     *                                                                     *

Joan told me I should write things that inspire beauty.  

She told me to be water.  She told me that waves are wild and enjoyable and have a rhythm I should learn to mimic.  She said fire burns things to embers and ash.

James said both fire and water are necessary for life, and that an excess of either would be destructive.  

Things aren't exactly great at the JV house right now.  They're not awful, I suppose.  Andrei has been a little bit nicer recently.  I really think it's because he's had more focused attention from Mike and Rebecca.  He was starving.  He's perpetually starving, I think.  James and I have not fed him.

I told James today as I drove him to work that there is something fundamentally off about my relationship with Mike.  I recognize that the idea I had of him in the beginning is a fabrication on both our parts.  The perpetuation of this dynamic hurts James, hurts Mike and it stands that it would hurt me, too.  My feeling was that I didn't want to be bothered to change this because I deemed him fine as he was.  Sure we wouldn't have a deep connection or be able to talk about many things, but I was ok with that.  Am ok with that Tbh.  I'm not ok with James being upset all the fucking time.  There is a whole world to unpack in why this dynamic hurts him so much, and I won't do that here.  

A few days ago I watched a video in which someone breaks down 500 Days of Summer as a bildungsroman rather than a tragic romance.  The video claims that Tom fails at loving her because he never pays true attention.  To love is to pay attention, is what James loves to say.  And just because he took this sentiment directly from Thich Nhat Hanh doesn't make it any less true.  To love is to observe, to learn, to put into action what you learn.  Love takes hard work and a stayed hand and faith all at once.  

I don't love Mike.  

My mother always used to say there is no merit in loving someone who's easy to love. 

Sweet love, renew thy force

The most California moment I've had so far happened the day after I arrived.  Liz and I were walking around Larchmont looking for some breakfast.  The pervasively clean wood and white walls behind every clever geometrically designed coffee and juice place were giving me unreasonably calm vibes.  Every moment I could feel the kale and ginger absorbing into my thoughts and producing a psychological glow.  She laughed at me and said, "God, is Minneapolis really devoid of all this shit?"  I said of course not.  There's another thing I can't name.  "What?"  Ugh.  I can't name it, dude.  She laughed.  Then all of a sudden there it was in front of me.  

A small daschund-like puppy had wandered into the middle of the street, and his owner, a girl with a blonde undercut and yoga pants, was trying to get him back on the sidewalk using a kind of Responsive Classroom approach, "Dart, you're in the middle of the road.  You have to move back here.  Just walk over.  Come over."  Strangers were huddled and problem-solving.  "Does anyone have any food?" No sooner had those words been pronounced than the girl had a long piece of jerky in her hand given to her by a passer-by.  When Dart had safely made it back to the sidewalk, a woman wearing an Aztec-patterned open tunic and, yes, yoga pants embraced the owner of the dog, smiling widely and saying, "You're great.  You're so great.  Everything's ok."

Waking up in Los Angeles is kind of like staying in a dream state for an hour or so after getting out of bed.  It's so warm and the sky is so beautiful that there really is no reason to think you're awake.  The colors coming through the window wash the room in a feeling of lazy optimism.

I've been pretending to be Elizabeth's roommate this week and it's been sweet.  Having never spent this much time together I previously thought she was endlessly patient.  Undyingly giving.  Where is her line?  Her family of course.  Bonding experiences abound.  

Imelda came by and brought each of us a (no joke) 2 liter bottle of Cuervo.  Like what?  In an attempt to make lemonade out of tequila, Liz made us a raspberry lime cocktail that tasted like ... poison?  Gasoline?  Garbage?  Yeah garbage sounds right.  Lol.  We drank and soon abandoned it for the limoncello Brett made.  Then we had some Theraflu and took a quiz that pinpoints where your accent originates down to the city.  We = Turnt the eff up.  Incidentally the quiz was eerily accurate.  

The first night I was here Daniella offered me some coke.  Wow.  Flashback to the year right after high school when I was at her house and she offered me some coke.  Still said no.  Some things never change.  

​

Still as great as it is to not have to wear a coat outdoors in December, there's something missing from this place for me now.  

Maybe simply living outside of California for a while made the world expand.  It includes more than it used to.  Whatever it is, the tangible life force I felt in these streets and in these buildings has shifted.  It's somewhere else now.  I'm not sure where exactly, but it isn't quite here.

I'm too tired for epiphanies at the moment, but there is something profound to be said here.  Something truly meaningful.  Let's pretend I said that.

Goodnight.

When stingrays are most human

I just woke up from a crazy dream.  

It's 4:47 am and Rebecca is already showering.  This gives me a chance to write it down.

There is a very young man staring at me.  His face is glowing with sweat.  His eyes are hazel.  His hair is brown.  From here on out I realize that although I am the girl in the dream, I am also the dreamer.  I refer to the girl not to myself.

I know you.  He smiles.  His eyes dash and dart madly around her face.  His hair seems animate and is blooming above his head like flames.  When their faces come close together there is an electric charge like the most amazing static.  I know you.  You know me.  He smiles and his eyes fill with a wave of emotion that she can almost see on the surface, but the part he keeps to himself is an entire universe.  Their noses almost touch but the sensation of electricity pushes and pulls, pulls and pushes so that the space between them is somehow more exciting.  I know you, too.  I knew you.  You're a memory.  Her hair long and almost black.  Her skin bronze.  He brings a gun out and points it at her head.  What are you doing? No!  His face is pained and panicked.  I have to, he says.  She notices there is an entry and exit wound on either side of his face from which he is bleeding.  He moves the gun to her mouth.  I have to.  This is just a memory.  You're not real.  They have my son out there and he's waiting.  He can't breathe and I have to do this to get back to him.  She can't speak while the gun is in there and he knew that.   He can't take it anymore and removes it.  I am real.  I know you.  His eyes are freely flowing with tears now.  Sting rays are most human when they tear apart the flesh of their prey.  He says.  It's a game.  No a test.  The memory of this girl he loved back when this was the only love he could conceive of, or his 13 year old son - who any day now would arrive in that place where his first love would fill him with this same sweet memory to hold onto and come back to long after they lost track of one another.  I have to.  

After he shoots her he wakes and finds that his son is gone.  The rest of the dream is about the man looking for his son and feeling the loss of this girl in his memory.  He can't remember her, but he knows there was something to remember that he was forced to give up.  

I am not sure what this dream means, of course.  I haven't analyzed it at all yet.  More than anything I thought it would make for a pretty fun if not melodramatic movie.  Maybe Chris Nolan or Dave Fincher would direct?  

The father-son stuff made me think of Cormac McCarthy.  It doesn't take much to make me think of him though, that's true.  The first lines of The Road seem to be always sitting and waiting in my mind for the moment when I want them:

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out and touch the child sleeping beside him.  Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before.  

Time for work.

Cupid hit me with precision

Weird night.

I rear-ended someone.  Slamming the breaks = crash.  Ok ok.  There's a fact I won't be forgetting.  

This morning seven girls plus Kevin Davis came into my office for the gender reveal.  Silly as it sounds I almost cried when Elvira said, "Let the nurse open it!"  What an honor.  There are two videos showing me lifting the lid to a small golden gift box and immediately covering my face as everyone in the office screams.  Seven high school girls plus boy plus me can make a lot of noise, let me tell you.  

It's a girl!  Jenny seemed disappointed.  

"It's whatever," she said as everyone hugged and cried, cried and hugged.  She's so tiny, when I went to hug her it felt like I was bending down to hold a grade schooler.  

"It's not whatever, it's great.  It's going to be great.  This is so good."  I kept smiling and embracing her, but there was no word for great or good or dope or sick or tight that seemed to fit or work.  I never conceived of wanting to have a kid in any real way, and I never put much thought into preferring one sex over another.   In my mind it always just seemed like fear, but I don't think that's quite right for her.  

The way she acts and the things she does amaze me all the time.  She reminds me of Daniella and Griselda and Imelda (Dang I just noticed that) and lots of other girls I've been lucky enough to call friends in my life.  There's something specific about the combination of face and voice and expression these girls possess that makes them strong, beautiful and, in Jenny Perez's words, real bad bitches.  I always aspired to be one, but I think it takes a certain willingness to surrender that I have yet to cultivate.  Here's to surrender.

And here's a bad bitch being painted by Diego Rivera.

She said it best:  "Soy mas cabrona que bonita, y mira que soy muy bonita."

I read once that Juan Gabriel secretly bought this painting and now it's sitting in an apartment somewhere in New York.  Hoard that diva art, queen.

*                                                                            *                                                                                *  

Last night we watched Phantom of the Opera.  I am so shook that I went this long without having seen this before.  The music was all familiar, and it now seems to me that the only reason for anyone not to like it is just to not have seen it yet.  

This weekend is Chicago.

Connor had told us a while ago that this one takes place above JVC offices.  Sounds kinda whack but I'm picturing the party happening in what I'm 100 percent sure is the radio station taken hostage in the movie Airheads.  I'm also picturing lots and lots of red felt hats. 

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Lots of time has elapsed on this one.

Today I went home early.  Angel and I had a long long phone call.  She's worried about choosing a school and place to live for the next three years.  California is where her family is, but Texas ... he's in Texas.  

"If I leave it'll really be over." 

I told her that unless he's dead it doesn't have to be over, but maybe it does have to be.
Does it?  I asked.  Silence.  She answered.

We talked about everything.  I told her I wish we could spend Christmas together.  "You know the high key saddest thing about you breaking up with him?  Not going to his aunt's house again with all that food on Christmas."  Real talk, sis.  We should call ahead and say we're just swinging by for a plate.  Of course it can be to go.  We gotchu.  

She told me about cups that are full and cups that are empty.  She said that even when we were growing up and fighting one another she always felt like we were ok.  Like whatever we were arguing about would ultimately fade and we would be left sitting side by side, one resting her head on the other one's shoulder.  

"This summer was bullshit," she blurted from what seemed like nowhere.  

"Yeah it was," I pictured her face getting scrunched like it does when she wants to cry a little but mostly hug.  

"I love you," we both said
and obviously fainted simultaneously from all the emotion.  

Bird with no legs

I think I have to hold off on Mike.

A lot's been going on and I'm not ready to put it down yet.

The other night I made a fortune teller out of one of the pieces of paper we had set aside for making origami cranes last Wednesday.  I quickly thought of some questions and challenges we could easily do together.  In a flash this one came to me: "Have the person to your right name your baby and tell us about his/her life."  That proved problematic, though I really enjoyed what Mike said about my hypothetical son George.

I suppose I thought it would be a sweet and fun exercise that revealed what people thought about one another.  What they'd be like as parents.  What they deserve and can handle and what other people wish for them.  Later on in the night I named a baby for James, but that's another story.  Another time.

After George, Rebecca Jr., and Mike's firstborn Victor were welcomed into the world, Andrei asked us to name a baby for him. He was near tears.  I really just recited the plot from One Tree Hill, and I'm sure he knew it.  As soon as the story was done I went upstairs, and Andrei proceeded to emotionally spill about his last girlfriend.  The idea that he'd be married and have a daughter who kept secrets from him and fell in love with the "wrong" guy stirred something up in him, I guess.

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When I first met Andrei at orientation he had a pretty thick Russian accent.  

This is something I forgot about completely until he reminded me of it about 

a month into us living in Minneapolis.  

"No you didn't," I remember saying in disbelief.  

"I always do that when I meet a new group of people," he said. "It's a test."

How does anyone know whether they've passed?  I wonder.

I think in Chicago I thought Andrei was odd, and I mostly felt annoyed by him.  

The other JVs seemed to understand that he was someone hard to be around.  

There was a general feeling of weariness whenever people spoke about him.

Somehow in the first few weeks I changed my mind.  Poof.  

Andrei became interesting and wow, how fun is this craziness?

I said something to James then that he never quite lets me forget.  

I won't say exactly what it is now since I don't think I believe it any longer, 

but the general sentiment was that I hate to be bored. 

At that time I created a narrative that painted Andrei as anything but boring.  

He told us that a couple of years ago his biological mother had been in a car accident and died a few days later. I immediately got this image of Yuddy from Days of Being Wild walking away from his birth mother's estate in the Phillipines.  Rejected.  Fiercely burning through the palm trees and stubbornly headed toward his early end.

Great story.  

But that story is only a distraction from the truth.  

Wong Kar-Wai gives Yuddy two love interests (if you don't count his mother[s both adopted and biological], which you should): the slight and sincere Su Li-zhen, and the loud and irreverent Leung Fung-ying.  They're both beautiful.

Two mothers.

Two lovers.

My sister.

My daughter.

My sister.

Yuddy talks about a bird that exists somewhere between reality and imagination.  A bird with no legs that sleeps in the wind and only lands once at the end of its brief and fast-moving life.  

If Yuddy didn't die young, he would eventually end up an aging, bitter, repulsive drunk who gambles and no longer incites lust in the women who sleep with him. We would eventually see all his sad insecurities become his daily skin.  He would become too difficult to look at.  Soon he would bore us.

Still.  He is self-aware enough to self-destruct.  He knows he can't go on forever.  He chooses the girl who can drown out the deafening silence.  He chooses a best friend who won't get in the way of his mistakes.

Where Yuddy is unwilling to accept a loss, Andrei is unwilling to forget it.

Yuddy doesn't want pity, doesn't want anyone to think of him as lacking.  Andrei cannot be satiated with endless amounts of people feeling sorry for the difficult things that happened in his life.  

The idea that he was a darkhorse wandering without a resting place made Andrei palatable to me.  It created someone I could like, respect, or at the very least be curious about.  The person he actually is is harder to live with.  His hurt and the damage it's done is obvious, heavy, and exhausting.

Late in the film Yuddy concludes that the bird with no legs didn't land at the end of its life, it was never alive to begin with.  He realizes life is hard for him because he lacks the ability to be alive.  He cannot grasp what it is to live.  

Before we left for Cleveland, Andrei and I had a talk in his room about the nature of our interactions. I asked why I trigger him the most.  What about me over anyone else in the house provokes such anger in him?

He said, "You have potential." Then he told me he only gets angry when he sees potential in someone.  He also shared that he was actively manipulating things in order to "edit" out certain aspects he decided were undesirable about me.  He was hoping he could change me to the point that I would become worthy of seeking a deeper relationship with.  He also said it was a big deal that he was telling me this.  That someone who wants to manipulate someone else doesn't usually show his cards.  

I wish I had anger for him now.  I don't have much of anything.

I want Andrei to be able to live.  I want him to see he can be happy without bringing others into misery.  Is there some socially-constructed ideal pushing me to want these things?  Is it true wisdom to cut your losses and move on?

Probably.
Maybe there's something I can't see yet. 

I have not yet learned how to joke that way

The night we slept on Lily's floor in Cleveland James said to me,
"You constantly narrate everything.  That's not normal."  Maybe. But thanks for the meta-op, babe.

We (everyone in the house) cooked an entire meal together yesterday while dancing.

Who says multitasking is impossible?

Well whoever it is was right, but how much attention is really necessary to make cheese and potato soup?

Mike gets so smiley when James and I dance to spanish music.

I admit everything blurs when a spanish song I love begins to play.  

Like in West Side Story.  

I am Maria. The music is Tony.  

No one is racist or in brown face.

Last night I told James everyone in this house matters.

Thinking about why warrants an update, because how I felt about each of them a few months ago has changed.

I'll start with Beks.

The Fall Day of Reflection I was grouped with her and Andrei to do a more intimate talk.

With the schedule the way it was we only got about 7 minutes apiece to say the most important and meaningful things.  Not ideal.

I told her that I felt judged when we first met, and that I was certain I was projecting my own feelings onto her.  She nodded knowingly and smiled.  

Her sense of humor has come out a lot more in the past month or so.  

I don't feel judged any more and that makes it so much easier to be myself around her.

She cares so much about doing what's right all the time.  I think that's part of what she feels close to Mike about.  Though Mike manifests this in a different way.  

A rub still exists between us on certain topics -mainly gender dynamics, I think.  

She has a strong inclination to defer to men.  I find that way of thinking so foreign because my dad never treated me like a "girl."  If the TV was on the fritz, he'd enlist me to help.  If a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie was on, he'd ask me what kind of sandwiches we should make. Even when I was a kid he took my opinion seriously, and I take that understanding with me into every conversation I have.  

Still, I know there is so much to her and I've only seen a small part so far.  

She's more open-minded than I originally gave her credit for, and more accepting of people's decisions and views.  I can tell when she doesn't agree or approve because she will nod and be very quiet, yet she doesn't make an extra effort to let me know she thinks whatever I'm doing or thinking is wrong.  I like to think she's still sussing out what she feels about life and doesn't want to give a final ruling on anything yet. We should all be more like that.

The other night we tried watching The Sound of Music.  I made extra room for her to cuddle up to me.  Eventually as she fell asleep her head made her way to my shoulder.  At some point I admired the Baroness's hair, "Her hair is so beautiful."  Beks answered from her sleep, "Thank you."  I laughed quietly and my heart jumped a little with what I think must be love.

I suppose I should point out the fact that I've been calling her Beks.  A while ago I asked if I could call her that, and she didn't seem keen on nicknames.  "I like Rebecca," she said.  Then one night Mike called her "Rebes."  I lost my shit.  "Nope. Nope. Nope," I protested.  Amidst our laughter she agreed to let me call her Beks.  My desire to do so came from a long wish to know someone called Beks, everyone knew this.  So I dropped it for a while, ruling that it wasn't fair or even fitting since it had nothing to do with her as a person.  

Eventually James and Mike called her Beks.  And so it was decided for us.

Mike, you're next.