things i wish people had told me a really long time ago

1. on that moment someone says to you it'll come when you least expect it:

(or, another favorite, when you stop looking).

these expressions are the equivalent of someone saying it'll be in the last place you look, when you've lost something.

which is to say, correct. but also asinine.

of course it's the last place you look. which might also be the first, and how can both those things be true? it might also be the second place you look or the four-hundred-and-sixty-third place. there's no telling.

2. when someone asks why you didn't like a particular man who had great affection for you, your response need be nothing more than a simple because.  

because. period.

one word.

that response is wholly enough. affection given freely (which is the only way it can be given) does not mean you must reward it or reciprocate it. hell, you don't even have to be flattered by it.

but if that word alone does not suffice, how about this: because i didn't. 

because because.

because i didn't like his laugh and i didn't like his smell. because at the end of our third date my only thought was please don't let this man kiss me, please don't let him touch me. 

the body knows. it always knows. and it'll tell you. but you have to listen.

a man's affection (or rather, any romantic partner's affection) is a starting point. a fork in the road. the absolute minimum of what must be expected. and if you choose to walk in the other direction, so be it. a man's affection is not a life raft, nor is it a fainting couch on which to collapse. to accept or not is your choice. and you need not explain that to anyone.

3. sometimes you just need someone to pass the lonely with.

and that is okay.

affection can be real and true and good and going absolutely nowhere.

some men will highlight your loneliness. draw attention to it, make it worse. their hand on your knee a distancing thing. and some men will raze that loneliness with a single glance. these are the men who will reveal themselves as home in the span of a night--in the length of time it takes to drink a glass of wine. these are the men who you will move mountains for--they are rare and remarkable and between the two of you a sort of alchemy takes flight.

and then there are the men who you want to kiss--the men you want to adore, but will never fall in love with. so kiss them. and go to breakfast with them. let them buy you dinner. take them to the movies and ruin summers with them.

people speak in directives about love. love entirely or not at all. take the whole of it or none of it. nothing in between.

but the thing is, sometimes the in-between is really good. it  is something-else-entirely and sometimes something-else-entirely is entirely right. for a time, it is entirely right. rich and fertile practice ground. a meaningful passing of the time.

sometimes something-else is the comfort of a man’s arm wrapped around you—the immediacy of its warmth and touch, but nothing else. it is not home and it is not the promise of home. but it is nonetheless healing and restorative. and it is your choice.

and that's okay.

man, i wish someone had told me it was okay a good long while ago.

you do not have to live your life according to the prevailing opinions about love and making a life. you have only to be ruthlessly honest with yourself about what it is you want and what it is you'll accept one-day-at-a-time.

attraction and expectation.

Sitting in Court Street Grocers today, a turkey club the size of my face on the table before me, I kicked Kim under the table.

Kim and I have the same taste in men.

Taste: a personal preference or liking.

She looked up from her sandwich to me to then where my eyes were glued. He was tall with dark hair and a full salt and pepper beard.

We've gotten good at alerting one another when we find a man attractive. Gentle nods of the head, not so subtle elbows into ribs, and from there the two of us mostly just stare.

There are subtle discrepancies here and there--where she loves an Italian, I'll lean toward the Spaniard, but often we find ourselves stealing glances in the same direction and groaning as two grown women sometimes do when reduced to little more than hormones and awe by a good looking man.

When the full-bearded-man with his rolled jeans and broad shoulders finally left our viewing area leaving us to the sandwiches at hand, I asked Kim, Do you ever think we've had that effect on a man?

Attraction: the act or capability of attracting // the gravitational force exerted by one body on another. 

On the subway tonight I began to think about attraction--about what it is I'm most attracted to and if that thing--that unnamable thing can in fact be named and conjured and spoken aloud.

And then I began to think about how if I attempted to write (or okay, let's call a spade a spade, blog) about attraction than Anonymous would be sure to skewer me because heaven forbid a woman knows what she wants--physically or otherwise. So we can then add knowing-what-we-want to the list of things women are not encouraged to do, which I'm pretty sure also includes aging-gracefully and the-right-to-vote (which this last one I thought we took care of in 1920 but I came across a tweet today which led to a blog and apparently it's a thing again) and can we then take a minute to talk about how it's women that are holding each other back? How each and every last one of us does not proudly admit to being a feminist is simply beyond me. I am a feminist. This does not mean I burn bras. This does not mean I hate men. This means I think women have a voice and an unparalleled strength and a unique set of gifts. Women have birthed empires. And if you try to use religion on me and start talking about your god versus my god and how it's the Lord's will that women submit to a male authority then I will simply lose my shit. I mean, I will. I will lose my shit right here, right now, right over all that's to follow. Because the whole your god, my god thing is enough to make me end the conversation right then and there--it's entitled and possessive and wholly small in a way that seems so very against the spirit of things.

Hmmm. Okay. So... I seem to have gotten off topic.

Derailed: to have left the rails. 

Attraction.

I went on a date with a guy recently. A lovely guy. Charming and kind. A guy that my girlfriends were convinced would surprise me and sweep me off my feet in a slow moving kind of way. But a guy that I knew after the first date was not the guy for me.

But why everyone asked. And I groped in that language-less land.

Because. Because, because. Because I just know. 

But how do you know?

To Tom I said, because I didn't feel safe and protected with him. And Tom, bless him, knowing when to press and when to simply listen, said, if he wasn't able to convey that within the first date then he probably wouldn't have ever. 

Which is not to say that he was a man who could not convey that for many another woman--he most certainly was and will--of that I am sure.

Feeling: an awareness or impression. 

Sitting next to him at the bar I was aware of his body. Of how I felt it no further than an inch beyond him. And how there have been men in my life I've felt the force and wind of from across the room. Their scope penetrating me in an altogether different way. Attraction. A meeting of small force fields. Some aware of others, some not. Some compatible, some not.

I struggled for weeks to tell him why we weren't a match. And in the end I was not terribly honest and not terribly courageous and I became a very small and ugly version of myself as I tried to push him away.

There just wasn't a spark, Tom said a few days after my fumbled attempt. Where you with that word when I needed it? I replied.

Spark: a quality or feeling with latent potential; a seed or germ.

Spark. It is either there. Or it isn't.

I want to feel enveloped by a man. I want to feel absolutely challenged. Valued for my size and femininity and flagrant feminism. And yes, I want him to have moved past the roommate-stage of life, the constantly-high-stage of life, the video-games-till-two-in-the-morning-every.single.night. stage of life. I want a real, gown-up Man--the capital M kind of man. And I will not apologize for that. I want a man prepared for a life with someone else. Prepared to fight and compromise and sweat till the sun does rise. I want him to know his worth and respect me for mine. And you know what? At twenty-seven I feel like these are things I have the right to want, and to say I want. Because I'm coming to the table as a more fully formed person. Because I grew up by myself, without a partner. Because I've been on a lot of bad dates and gone out with a lot of wrong men and moved past the sort of heartbreak that threatens a forever-sort-of-haunt. And so yes, I have certain expectations of myself at this age and of a partner at this age. Moving forward I have certain expectations. To not have them would be immature and irresponsible.

I might fall in love with a man who is none of the things I say I want. Who is so very much not what I ever expected. But I'm more skeptical of this now, as I age and know myself better. Details may change--where he's from and what he does and if he actually has that much coveted salt and pepper beard--but the core of a man who knows himself is a constant sort of thing.

This desire for a man and the specifics of this desire--of two people meeting and jointing together in a union where neither person loses himself in the other--well it feels like the best sort of attraction.

A feminist's dream.

on calling the guy. or not. and the best advice yet given..

a day shy of turning twenty-three my mother gave me the best advice of my life.

i was just out of college, the month was october, the weather was heaven here in new york--or just outside of it, in montclair, nj--to be exact--something tells me this retelling needs some exactness--a level of precision.

it was night and i was sitting on my mother's bed and we were talking about a boy. and i use that word deliberately--at just-shy-of-twenty-three the male in question was still very much just-a-boy, as i was just-a-girl.

this boy and i had been talking and messaging and beginning something-or-other and it was ever so thrilling--as it is when you find some version of the right person at the right time and there is even a hint of that nameless affection that cannot be pinpointed or dissected or explained away.

but we had hit some sort of wall. and there had been an exchange of words that wasn't terribly clear or terribly kind.

and it was nearly my birthday and i hadn't heard from him.

so my mom listened and then looked right at me and asked: do you want to call him?

and i just sort of stared at her for a moment, thought about it, took a breath, and revelation: you know, i don't. and that was that. and i've never looked back. i've never wished that i did call or did try harder or done any one thing differently in regards to that moment in time.

that question: do you want to call him? was so simple and so easy and so very much the point.

none of the well, i've called twice now or i've not waited a sufficient amount of time since getting his last text--no rules or regulations or impossible to follow tenants as handed down by the dating-gods (also known as other-girls-flailing-in-much-the-same-fashion). just a simple: what do you want?

as i'm getting older i'm coming to realize the simplest advice is usually the best. the path of least resistance, the most efficient--go figure!

want to act well? put the brilliant playwright's words into space. just speak the language. that's it.

want to lose weight/be healthy? stop with the counting and measuring and time-tables. eat actual food and move your body when you can.

want kindness in your life? show kindness to others.

want to talk to the guy? take a chance and pick up the damn phone.

of course, there are always exceptions. sometimes it's not so easy. sometimes it takes a little more work. sometimes you can't just pick up the phone because there's been too much time and too much heartache and something in your gut is telling you that you must wait.

but maybe sometimes it's as easy as doing what you want. following that gut feeling that says yes or no--that gut instinct so unrelated to pride and pomp.

because at least then you're owning you're own experience. at least then you make the rules and it's easier to live with the good or the bad that eventually follows. because you did what was right for you. and that's no small feat.

maison.

even as it was happening there was a sense--a need to remember and record everything.

the first thought as he approached me--oh, yes, that man. that he sat on the stool to my right, i on the left, my purse hanging between my knees. what i wore, what he wore--plum pants and the scarf my mother gave me after wearing it for too many days in a row; a black button down and thin rain jacket, his pants rolled just at the cuff. what i had to drink, what he had--some sort of white wine and heaven, help me, i haven't a clue.

i wanted to remember how he drank me in, his eyes moving so slowly, so unapologetic in their journey. how we both sat facing forward--facing the bar, just close enough to let our shoulders gently brush, one against the other. the first moment he tucked my hair behind my ear. and then when he did it again. the moment he took my hand in his or that split second eruption incited by his palm on the inside of my thigh.

i wanted to remember what we talked about--where we'd traveled, where we most wanted to go. India--i'm pretty sure he wanted to visit India. and how in that moment, i believed if he opened his hand he might reveal the whole of the country to me--how India sat on and then wetted my lips. how we spoke of what brought him here, what brought me here, and all the years between our arrivals. the gentle roll of his tongue as he spoke, the sublime cadence to his english--belying another life, another language, another world. how he lit up like a boy when discussing his brother's soon-to-be visit--how they would bike everywhere. that first moment i watched as he disappeared behind his eyes to some place i wasn't allowed to follow. and then when it happened again.

i wanted to remember the color of the night and the sense that we were standing on something more akin to the backdrop of a film than a busy brooklyn neighborhood. the moment he first turned and kissed me. and how easy it was. easier than anything. water. how perfectly natural--deliciously natural it felt. how as he kissed me his hands ever so gently rung round my face--pressing hair out of eyes and tracing the curve of the bone. how i laughed, telling him, it mostly didn't ever come easy the first time. how i felt as though we were both teenagers, making out street-coner after street-corner on our way to the subway. a parade of soft first kisses trailing behind us. the sort of little breadcrumbs that i sure as hell hope Gretel grew up to enjoy.

even as it was happening i knew it was the first date that all others would be measured against. that a sort of line had been drawn in the sand: all before this, and all to come. and that, much as didn't want there to be, there would be other first dates, with other men. that the whole night was already pregnant with a sort of loss. that probably we'd see each other once or twice more, that if we were lucky or brave or both a bit more daring than our natures suggested we might make a solid run of it, a good attempt. but that sometimes, much as you hope it might, an easy first kiss, and nearly perfect first night does not mean there will be life beyond those things. sometimes it just is. that moment. that one, spectacular evening in which you learn ever so much more about love and yourself and what lies on the other side of that line.

falling out of it.

It strikes me that no one really talks about falling out of love. We speak around and about the moment something breaks. We speak of betrayal. Of the line that divides before and after. But we do not talk of how if often happens just as you fell in into it: slowly, steadily, decision by decision, gentle realization after gentle realization, unfolding and unfurling.

I suppose it is a restructuring of sorts. An alchemy of transforming memories from sharp shards to heavy, rounded stones that you then submerge in the murky waters of doubt. How it is second look after second look, choosing to put an end to the excuses you once made on his behalf. Excusing how he remembered nothing. Not a damn thing. And how that made you feel small and unimportant. How there was that time standing in front of the fridge that you watched as he pulled out a bottle of white wine. I don't know when this was opened, he had said. I don't know if it's still any good. How in that moment you chose not to say: It was two weeks ago. With me. You opened it with me, two weeks ago. His non remembrance, a betrayal. A small line. And your silence.

How you must decide to no longer gloss over the fissures. How you allow the angular nature of the narrative to elbow out a new story. More true than before. And less true too.

Because you know why he couldn't remember and you can't fault him for that. Sadness does funny things. Tricks of light and the mind and its memory.

The thing is--what keeps resurfacing--is the memory of that time he fell asleep his full face pressed up again the side of your cheek and you weren't sure how he could even breathe. It was such an act of defiance on his part. An act of affection for a girl who never slept all tangled legs and arms, but kept to her side of the bed. And for that little rebellion alone, you will love him. But you must choose not to love him now. So you tuck that away. For a later day when your own face is pressed into the valley of a different neck. Not better, but different.

And how falling out of love now is learning to accept kindness from others. From the man who does remember--the man with a memory that rivals yours--the terror and excitement this incites. From the man who takes the time to respond despite his busy schedule, who fills the mornings with an offer of coffee or tea. The man you sleep soundly next to because you're not afraid that at any moment he might disappear.

image via.

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email wilybrunette@yahoo.com for rates and info. 

dating mojo. or something like that.

i have this pair of earrings. not terribly exciting. little diamond studs. but i love them. they're practical--all purpose things that for the most part i can sleep in without them poking me in the neck. 

when i dated a guy a few years ago, one of them came loose while we were making out (like teenagers) in the middle of his living room. i quickly took it out, put it on a counter, and forgot all about it--other more pressing matters were at hand.

and for the rest of our relationship i'd ask him to remember to bring the earring and he'd say that of course i'd be over again and i could get it then and on and on until we broke-up. 

and you know? i'd be damned if i didn't get that earring back. 

(remember? i posted about it here. it was awful). 

for a long time i knew exactly which stud it was that he had held onto for so long. somehow it seemed important. 

in the next few months i found an almost identical pair at a fraction of the cost and quickly snapped them up. 

and time moved on and i lost track of which earring he had had and then i lost one from the original pair and one from the backup pair and was left with two studs that didn't quite match, but still, i loved them.

they got me through a lot. 

and then this fall, i lost one of them in the crevice of another man's couch. and the same day, lost the other somewhere on his bedroom floor. and it became this thing--this joke between us. 

those earrings are still lost somewhere. and somehow i'm okay with that because it was never really about the earrings it was about the guy, and the guy from the fall, well, i was okay with him having my secrets and my earrings. i knew he'd protect both.

but just a few weeks ago, when i found the same pair in anthropolgie on sale, i snapped them up, because not only are they still great earrings, a girl's gotta get her mojo back. 

and more earrings means more stories. 

fault lines.

sometimes i'll catch your half-smile. out of the corner of my eye. and it'll call to mind, something else--another moment, i think.

and without even realizing it, i begin to swim towards a memory. through the blue, light refracting in water. and it feels just beyond my reach. always beyond my reach.

a tip-of-the-tongue memory i cannot place.

and it is then that i think i must have known you in another life. in many before this one. that we've been tied together so many times. that each separation has confused and muddled the line where you end and i begin. that each separation has seen you carry parts of me away, with you, into other lives and worlds. and i've taken some of you. and in missing you now, i'm missing those parts of myself. those bits you absconded with when last we met.

i'm wondering now if we may not just get it really wrong in this life.
but if we haven't done brilliantly in some before.
or may not do better in many to come.

i may be at a loss. i may be feeling a loss. but i need only unearth and draw upon the parts of you i snuck away with. wholeness. holiness.

perhaps the memory i'm swimming towards is something ancient.
perhaps it hasn't yet been made.
perhaps it'll be another half-smile that'll restore and return me to myself.

what's in a name

it hurt her to hear his name said aloud.

to have it hang in the air.

it was a physical pain, as real as the splintered wood of the chair poking the back of her leg.

the sound of it snagged her breath. made breathing shallow.

you don't get to say it, she wanted to say. it's not your name to say.

but nor was it hers.

and that was what hurt.

that she had no more right--no more power--than that half-stranger across the room who had released it into the air--that half-stranger who mistook the easy smile for the whole of the truth.

that he was not hers to love or know or think about. that she might never say his name and have him hook her round the hips in pure ecstasy just at having heard it uttered by her perfect lips, in her own imperfect way.

that she might never see him again, know him again, love him again. that all that would be left would be his name hanging in the air, uttered by someone else.

so yes, the pain was real.

about those love letters...

i've been thinking a lot about love of late--of what a love story is,  what it means to love, to be loved, to love one's self.  and then this arrived in my email (from a lovely reader named meg) and i sent an email back immediately asking if i might share. so a huge thank you to meg for her lovely words and gift it was just to send them to me. 


Meg,


The love letters to your future husband are going to be helpful, later in your life when you might forget these times, or when everything is so long past it becomes a memory of a person you used to be and a place you used to live.
 
For many years I pined and longed for my one-true-love and I looked for him everywhere.  Every city, every coffee shop, every low-lit bar.  Looking back, I kept looking even when I was with a boy I thought was the one-true-love.  This should have been a red flag, but I ignored it, despite it's bright color.
 
One day, I stopped looking.  I forgot about it and thought of other things.  I planned to leave, move to New York and live an exciting life with the friends who were waiting in Manhattan and Brooklyn for me to finally leave the Midwest behind.
 
I found him:  I found my one-true-love.  I didn't quite know it on the first or even second introduction because we were surrounded with people, friends, and acquaintances in loud places.  Finally, we went out together, alone.  Our big, loud, funny personalities were quiet and careful with one another.  
 
We tried a few places for dinner and drinks, but they were loud and obnoxious and we were too delicate.  We found a dive bar, we ordered gin and tonics, we talked and laughed.  We walked back to his Jeep and he suddenly pulled me into a doorway where we kissed in the twilight on a May evening, almost five years ago.  We both just KNEW we had found each other, finally.  Finally.  Finally!
 
I will tell you that you cannot quite imagine how or when or who it will be.  Remember, you may not know immediately, but when you know, you know.  It will alter the course of your life forever and you will never look back, or, if you do, you will be grateful for the letters you wrote now.  
 
And yes, you will talk to him about the jeans, or lack thereof.  If you don't mention it, he might just guess because he will truly know you in a way you were never known or loved before.  And he will help you, even if you cannot help yourself.  he will try to understand, he will be there, he will love you unconditionally.  
 
I just wanted to let you know that it is possible to find him.  And even after becoming a wife and a mother, owning a home and a minivan and a swingset, I look across the room at him and I think:  Finally!  
 
Best wishes,
(Meg)

a sunday lover.

there comes a point every night when i crawl or hoist myself into bed and in the space between bended knees and face flat into the pillow that i give thanks for the comfort of a bed that is all my own.

for anyone who has ever shared a bed--be it a single night or several years--with someone who's not quite right, you know the joy that sleeping alone can bring. the not-quite-right provides a perspective like no other. a glorious thing that perspective is.

someone recently asked me if i mind being single? what a silly question. well, i haven't yet met someone who makes me wanna to give up my current Facebook status, so no. i don't mind it. not at all. i'm pretty sure that i wasn't so snide when responding to him, but he was angling, and i was side-stepping. (and just in case you didn't know, i'm not the girl that feels the need to list any sort of Facebook relationship status at all. so there). and why does blogger keep capitalizing Facebook for me? maybe i want a lowercase f...

damn, this was meant to be a poetic and lovely post about sundays and the space between and the yearning for a companion.

let me try again:

i don't mind this single life.

not usually.

but sundays are different. sundays i feel the absence upon waking. it is on sundays that i long for a brunch companion. or someone to help me with the new york time's puzzle. someone for whom to make an extra bit of coffee. someone to fall back into bed around noon with.

a sunday someone.




one of my girlfriends recently said she was in search of a part-time lover.

i'll take one just for sundays, please.

written for FAIRYTALES ARE TRUE

last night i sat staring into my skim latte, my friend alex sitting across the long and narrow, wood-grained table.

what should i write about? i asked. (i do best when prompts are dangled before me like a bowl of pepperidge farm cheddar goldfish).

what's her blog about? alex asked me.

sarah's? i lit up. oh, well, it's called fairy tales are true, and alex, they just might be. because she's tall and gorgeous and blond and she's married to a baseball player and now they travel the world together from one exotic location to the next and she's going to end the obesity epidemic with her living kitchen and yes, yes i'm gushing (and speaking at an uncomfortably high volume), but i might just be a little bit in love with her (and maybe, just maybe my fairytale  {yet to come true} looks awfully similar to this).


alex responded, perhaps you could write about what the fairytale is like when you don't look quite so much like the fairy-princess. 


scoff. kerfuffel. plunk.

(eventual chuckle).

this was not a slight on my beauty but rather against my dark hair. my, yes, brunette hair. (and also a testament to how well and how long i described just how gorgeous sarah really is). alex quickly amended the statement when i pointed out disney princess after disney princess who was not blond: belle (literary goddess and my life's great role model), snow white, pocahantas, mulan (and of course, anastasia {thought technically she was dreamworks, i think}). alex then went on to point out that i look most like pocahantas (paler skin, of course) and maybe a little like mulan. keep in mind i'm a white, irish-catholic girl from texas. thing is, he's kinda right.

as for the fairytale portion, mine is yet unknown. well, that's not entirely true. for now the fairytale is one of me living by myself in new york city and taking the world by storm (and by storm, i mean figuring it out inch by pain-staking inch).

i love new york, i do (much of the time). but i can't stop dreaming of red vespas, breezy sundresses, and sandals against cobblestone. the careless curvature of intersecting piazza and street. small, sunlit kitchens with copper kettles and adjacent balconies. unprocessed foods and bright shutters against aging stone structures.

europe has my heart.

oh, to be european! to dress like one and eat like one and travel like one. to love like one! and just as soon as i figure out how i promise you this: i'll spend my days traversing italy and france, scotland and germany, austria and switzerland, with the man i've always dreamt of and nothing but a pen, a piece of paper, and the very best camera my grubby little fingers can get a hold of.

(of course if the end days happens before this--and in new york, it's set to happen this saturday--i might be in trouble).

for now i toil away here in the states, living a charmed but often lonesome, little life. you see, i'm still waiting for the prince to arrive on his impressive white horse and whisk me away.

waiting is not quite right though. i am a modern girl in a modern world braiding my rapunzel rope one goldspun (brunet) strand at a time.

(and this is where baseball comes in). lately it feels as though i'm on the brink of something. on the brink of a new life--man, pen, camera and all. this feeling is persistent and nagging and all-together wonderful. and so the thing i keep coming back to, my touchstone words are these: if you build it, they will come.

and so i'm building. and dreaming. and sending up prayer after prayer that my fairytale comes to fruition. and i have this sneaking, wonderful, little suspicion that it just might. despite, or maybe just because of, my long, dark locks.

okay, i'll go first.

i peeled off the tights in such a hurry. there were holes in the feet and my toes were poking through and i was embarrassed. so i got out of them, fast as could. no show of it, just off.

there was so much i didn't want you to see. because if you saw, well then you'd know everything. and i am nothing if not deeply prideful.

i dreamt a few nights back that i reached for you. we were sitting in a car. a car? headed somewhere. and i reached my arm out to cup the back of your neck--that sacred space between shoulders and tufts of hair. but i couldn't quite reach. you were just past arm's distance.

i did that. i get that. i kept you there. i reached but never let you get closer than the span of my wing. and i would turn over and roll away because i didn't want you to think i needed you. it was casual and i was cool and i was fine, so i responded to everything dismissively and carefully navigated your questions, revealing nothing, all the while keeping to my side of the bed.

because, well, to reveal reveal anything would be to reveal everything. and i was nothing if not afraid.

i know you saw how my cheeks flushed. and watched as i averted my eyes again and again--not wanting you to catch the half-glints of a secret shame. and there were all those terrible jokes i told just to keep the levity?

self-preservation.

to imagine a world in which you might care for me was impossible. it had been so impossible for so long that it was simply a luxury i couldn't afford. the cost would be too much.

so instead i'd keep myself awake at night just to study the outline of your face, the curve of your back, the color of your skin, how you shifted and moved as light angled its way into the room.

the thing is... no one tells you about that moment--that moment well into the night when you get up to use the bathroom and you spend a minute in there--breathing, water on the face, studying yourself in his oversized, knit shirt and then you open the door to return to bed, and yes, he's still there and he's still asleep but his arm is reached out to the empty space where you were just minutes before. and you climb in--and he pulls you in. into him. all without ever really waking.

his awareness of your absence. no one prepares you for that.

there have been others, of course. other stories. other half-loves. triumphs and tragedies of this fragile heart. and it was early on that i came to accept i'd never tell you--you, the first man i ever loved, those three words: i. and love. and you. my love for you would simply be. it would shift and change and recede. and it would fill me up. and i'd move on. to the next. we all cope. we all adapt and adjust and accept.

but there was this sense, this desperate, ne'r talked of hope that we might cycle back and, then what?

i. and love. and you.

i. and love. and you.

i love the way the avett brothers put it. everything aspires to music, doesn't it? the ands there giving the words room to breath. so very shakespearean.

an older gentleman recently said to me,

you're too tall. but other than that you're delightful. 

well, sir, did you ever consider you're too short?

and yes, i am delightful, thank you.

words and time.

words were dangerous around him.
because they were so few and they meant so much.

he placed his open palm above my knee but below the hem of my dress, let it live there for a moment, feeling the shape of my thigh through my thick, black stockings.

i like you in tights, he said.

oh god. time. awareness. the awareness of time.
i took a quick, sharp inhale.

how is it possible he knew me before i wore little more than tights with skirts or dresses or ill-fitting sweaters--anything oversized to cover a ballooning body in the throws of a disease? how is it possible?

six years.

seven.
eight.
four.
years and years and years.
two months.

time. countless breaths marking time.

and he was there before. but not during. not really. and so much has changed and passed and morphed. and for each of the worlds i've traveled through, he's traversed his own.

and we know a little.
but not so much, not enough

and we don't use our words terribly well. we talk in the space of silence. willing nearly impossible interpretations.

and there's been so much time. but not enough, really. not enough.

but he knows me. words or not. six years or not. seven, eight, four, years and years and years, two months, or not. he knows me.

more time.

tip-of-the-tongue.

i got off the A train at 181st street around midnight last night.

from the train platform to the entrance of the street is nine stories. you can choose to take the stairs or long escalator up.

i hurried off the train last night, toward the towering, long escalator, and found myself in step behind a taller man, blond, dressed in an impeccable suit. and walking behind him i thought, this man reminds me of someone.

but i couldn't put my finger on it. couldn't dislodge it from that proverbial tip of a very real tongue.

it started to drive me nutty, who does this person remind me of? it wouldn't come. there were murky images and half-formed thoughts, but still, even now this morning as i sit with my coffee, a lit spiced egg-nog candle just off to my side, i haven't really a clue.

the strongest thought or sense or notion, is more that it's someone i've yet to meet. not the man i followed behind, this really has nothing to do with him, it's that he reminds me of someone i've yet to meet.

nonsense.

and yet.

not.

i don't know.

it's been happening a lot lately. this pervasive feeling that i have exciting news to share and then thinking, well, what is it? and coming up blank.

everything feels so on the cusp. just over the ridge. beyond that next hill. so close--closer than ever before.

but what if it's not?

you know when you've can hear a really great song in your own mind? and it sounds so good rattling around up there that you attempt to sing it aloud. it's clear as a bell to you, perfectly crystallized, but when it comes out, oh dear, hideous. the journey between your mind and the mouth, the surfacing that has to happen, it distorts, mistranslates.

i feel like that's where i am: a song surfacing. coming through water for air. on the way up, so very near to the surface. but what comes out, well, that has yet to be seen.

it could be nothing short of disaster.

or not.

i don't know.

i just feel like i'm nearing the end of this nine-story-long-escalator. and as for my sense of what's waiting at the top when i get off? murky, half-images, at best.

enough.

as a girl i fear.
as a woman i doubt.

and i wonder if these are hallmarks of my sex?

i am insecure. i second-guess. i worry and wonder and spin tall-tales, fabricate nonsense, pull from from thin-air. i make myself small, diminish my own worth and power. i relive memory after memory until they are worn dull from overuse, from being taken out too often, exposed to the air and error of misremembering.

and then i think that perhaps what makes me a woman is the co-existance of all these things with a deep-seated sense of how i could, given the chance, transform the world--so potent and reaching is my strength.

i've been worrying a lot lately. so much so that at times i can feel my chest closing in on itself--constricting breath, creating a needle of pain.

and then a few nights back, from that deep place of sleep, i had a dream in which i lived through the very thing i'd obsessed about and mulled over and doubted might ever be. and before i knew it was just a dream, while it was happening, i stepped out of myself and spoke. the deepest, fullest, truest part of me--the bit closest to divinity, spoke:

enough. it said. enough of this nonsense. the next time you begin to worry. the next time doubt creeps in you must remember this moment, this moment right now. you must look at what's happening before you--to you as evidence. that's what you want, right? tangible evidence? well, there it is. that is my gift to you.  so stop. enough. be better. 


and then i woke. transformed. knowing the very deepest part of me trusts in my worth--in my right to desire and the pursuit of such.

so, enough, then. be better.

the illicit cigar

palma.

that was the name of the cigar he got from the bodega on 84th.

he didn't like the looks of it. didn't like the green wrapper it came in. didn't trust the easy packaging. but the man behind the counter had become impatient, weary of his blond, curly hair--his earnest face. so he got it. rather than deal with the man's ire, he looked up, shrugged, said, fine, okay. 

palma.

i stood off to the side, watching. he threw a smile my way and i took it. turned on my foot and walked outside into one of those crisp nights marking summer's end.  i liked that blonde hair. liked the way the curls cut across his face anytime he looked down.

and i didn't mind the wrapper... i just liked saying the name: palma. liked how the l into the m felt in my mouth.


palllmmmma.

he got the cigar and i got the ice cream (pistachio nut) and into central park we went. found a sloping hill, set off from the path. and perched on my knees i watched as he lit the thing, the palma.

i feel like i'm fifteen, i said. a slow smile. a soft laugh, a long, deep breath of smoke.

i'm not sure what prompted it. i must have told him about my only act of teenage rebellion--smoking cigars with the boys on the elementary school soccer field. night painting morning, that final year of high school--all of us knowing we'd be going soon. leaving. that those nights would be among our last.

perhaps that was the connection. that after so many years in new york he was leaving. and so a cigar it was: an ode to youth and a calculated impromptu of a goodbye.

just after meeting, a goodbye.

funny how timing works that way. how it is elastic and ever-moving and mostly ill-advised.

one final night: a prelude to nothing. a demand of the present--that we be there--right there, in that moment. two figures on a grassy hill, one cigar (one illicit palma), backs pressed into the grass--into each other, drinking in those few stars the manhattan skyline will allow.

no expectations, no plans, a single cigar and the promise of very little sleep.

my wish.

this is what i want to say to you:

just for tonight, let's be happy.

just for tonight let's forget about all that's come before. gloss over the fissures, smile from that small store yet untouched by sadness. just for tonight let's take a cab home, sit close and revel in whoosh of summer's fading air.

and if we have to go moment by moment, breath by breath we will--if that's all we can manage, so be it. if all we can do is the three feet in front of us, then we'll take those three feet together.

just for tonight.

just for tonight smile. just for tonight let me get a good look at those laugh lines ringing your eyes. just for tonight let me see how many times i can make you swallow a snort.

i could tell you it all gets better. i could tell you there's meaning in all of this and that the how are you's won't always feel like scythes cutting through fields of tall grass. and i could do my very best to reach in and pull you out--and i'd have some pull, i would, having been there before, a near native of the murky depths of that great, big blue. but it wouldn't be fair. there is a power in the floundering--the ocean salts do heal. so i won't try to. i'll head to the shore and go about the forward motion this life demands.

but before the floundering, before the blur, before the sinking and pulling, let's take tonight. to levitate. to be fifteen and carefree and pay no mind to what comes next. to kiss with the space between our toes--to hold hands and have that be enough.

the kiss. reprised.

it happened again.

the forgetting of how to kiss...it happened. again.

there was a kiss. a first kiss, of sorts.

he leaned in and i. was. lost.

i. simply couldn't. figure it out.

and that moment of not figuring it out stretched before me. eternal was that moment.

i can't give words to the embarrassment that rushed in.

this was a thing i could do at fifteen. and now here i was, twenty-five and...inept.

okay, in all fairness, it was not a thing i did at fifteen. i was eighteen when i had my first kiss. sitting in my father's old toyota camry. next to a wonderful boy by the name of matt who i had been going to the movies with (or occasionally sharing an ice cream cone with) for over a month before he asked if he might lean in and kiss me good night. it was on the eve of our high school graduation. he was such a good guy--probably one of the best i've known, which says a lot for him, and not much for those who have since followed.

but i digress.

so there we were. each in separate chairs. leaning in, ever so innocently, pressing our lips together. and i just couldn't seem to do it. and so i became horrendously self-conscious. and let out a laugh as i said, it's been so long. i can't seem to remember how. 

and he said what any guy worth his salt might say in that situation, really? i can't tell. 

and of course he said that. it was the perfect thing to say. the perfect thing to calm me and (let's be honest) the perfect thing to encourage me on.

but i wanted to shout, don't do that, don't lie to me. i know that you can tell, i know that you're surprised by my...lacking or whatever this is or who-knows-what...oh hell.

so i groaned and he teased me and generously let me get away with it. (this one is, in fact, one of the good ones).

but i'm not going to lie. i'm more than a little concerned.

because this go round i didn't really figure it out. this time fear and history and the little fragments of something broken got in the way and i. didn't. figure it out.

girl talk.

i'm not good at being a girl. or rather, i'm the worst of all things female.

all that stuff that guys attribute to girls--the things that drive men nuts about women--i embody them.

i think way too much. i overanalyze everything. i worry. i gravitate towards nuttiness. i get lost in my head. or at the foot of my bed (i've been lost for days at the foot of my bed).  i disappear inward. have unknowable, unwordable thoughts.

and i cannot say what most needs to be said when it most needs to be heard.

i sat with my best girlfriend alisha last wednesday. in a diner on ninth avenue. it was pouring. we rushed in under the cover of a single, red umbrella, slid into the dark, brown booth and began an epic and important session of girl talk:



dating is hard, i said.                               {profound}.

yes, it is, she replied.

i've had enough, i said.                         {it's  not been a terribly successful month}.

okay, she replied, the way i see it you have two choices, meg. you can be done with dating.  for the time being, if you've had enough, then sure, fine, okay. but you gotta get yourself two cats then. and every day after work you have to go home and feed those cats. and then you have to sit on your sofa watch some bad television and eat some unsatisfying ice cream. then you have to go to bed and do it all over again. 

don't mock me, alisha.


i'm not. i'm really not. i'm just being brutally honest. so you can do that. or can you soldier on. and accept that it's hard. for everyone, dating is hard. and we all struggle and we all worry and don't be so ridiculous to think you're the first or the last person to have ever had these thoughts--to have ever wanted to give up. 


alright. point made, i said, half-smiling, leaning back, reluctant to admit that i was lapping up her wisdom.

not quite, alisha continued on, you have to be hard on yourself. you can't go on one date and be satisfied for a month. you have to keep pushing and going and moving forward. you have to be courageous and hold yourself accountable. 






alisha is one of those dear no-nonsense friends (part of the yesterday's blogged about cocktail for happiness). and i'm trying really hard to hang onto all of her wise words this week.

claire (another dear no-nonsense friend) coined the phrase "cocktail for happiness" and suggested honesty is a part of the mix i forgot to list. i suspect she's right.

so courage and honesty...my two signposts of the week.