Moment Magnitude

Bruce Willis Mac 'n Cheese

Last month I conducted business over a late lunch in a favorite neighborhood hang: Cafeteria.

Cousin T. is its unofficial mayor. Open twenty-four hours, I've been there all hours of the day and night. When I've gone there with Cousin T., it's as if we are dining in "our" family restaurant.

I ordered a side of their mac 'n cheese (my favorite), and assembled papers and documents with my client. We were talking when Simone leaned in to my left side, and asked, "Excuse me. What do you think of the mac 'n cheese?"

Without missing a beat, and without looking up, I responded, "It'll change your life."

And when I turned my head, I cam almost nose to nose with Bruce Willis.

"Okay," he said. "I'll order it."

He, and this gorgeous brunette woman sat at the table just next to us. I looked over to my client, and tried to gesticulate while mouthing the words, "That's Bruce Willis (!)."

My customer joined us and I managed to focus on the transaction at hand, mindful the whole time of the party dining just behind my right shoulder.

I looked up at the faces of the people sitting at the table across from me. They looked dumbstruck and stared agape at the table behind me.

I turned as the waiter served Mr. Willis his mac 'n cheese.

"Excuse me," I said, "You got bacon. Bacon on your mac 'n cheese."

"Yes I did." I saw a flash in his movie star eyes, the look we know from the mega roles he has headlined.

The waiter interrupted. "Oh I'm so sorry! I'll get you bacon the next time." (Such a doll.)

My client, customer, and I completed our transaction. In the back of my mind I knew I had to seize the moment. I remembered something. Something from two decades earlier.

Mr. Willis and company were paying their check. When he finished, I turned to him and said, "I have to ask you something."

He looked at me. "Okay..."

"I have to ask you about...Sam Shepard. I saw you perform in what was it...?"

"Fool for Love. It was Fool for Love."

Yes it was."

"You're one of the privileged few."

"I am?"

"Yeah. That show ran (x number ) of performances, and let's see, (another x number) of people saw that show."

"And I was..."

"And you were one of them. That show got me my agent. It changed my life."

"You were incredible. I'll never forget it. I've wondered about that performance." (This was before Moonlighting.)

He smiled, and before stood, I asked, "So. What did you think of the mac 'n cheese?"

He leaned toward my client. "It's criminal. It makes you want to do crimes. White collar."

He walked around our table and introduced us to his girlfriend (very beautiful, great smile).

"Are you buying and selling something something here?"

My client smiled at me.

"Well, yes. I represent real estate in the Hamptons."

"Do you have anything in the Caribbean?"

We laughed.

And then he looked at me with intent. "You are going to be great at this."

For what it's worth, I got my first commission check this week.

The Endless Pool of Tears

The Endless Pool of Tears.

That may not be a direct quote, but it's at least close to a line I read in Mary Edwards (I wanted to write Ellen, that must be a Catholic upbringing hangover, unwelcome) Wertsch's book, Military Brats, a book my father gave me (fraught) that I used in therapy some fifteen years ago. Among other things - but that's a whole big-ass episode in my life about which I may address or not.

But that endless pool. While my violent, controlling, rage-aholic father, who started out as military, somewhere getting scooped up into covert activity under the aegis of National Security (NSA today), wrecking havoc on my childhood - and my Irish twin brother's (although I expect he is still less likely to admit as much) prevailed upon me to become adult before experiencing my own childhood, here I fucking am.

I've been clean for a long while. It used to be that I would break down in these uncontrollable periods of tears, sobbing racks, animal howls, torrents of tears, most often thudding my head again the steering wheel of my car, after a night out with friends, one drink too many, in the back of my mind grateful that no cop car caught me, parked, and free to let loose all the pent-up pain, rage, and fear in a flood of salt water.

It happened tonight. And I let it. I was present in my pain. I allowed all those tentacles of tangled pain wrap right around the firmament of my psyche.

All I could think of was my sister, when she was maybe three or four years old. I was pushing her on a swing. We were living in Germany. I think I remember that she wanted to go higher - something about which my mother warned me - but my little sister was never very fond of me (preferring my brother), and I wanted to please her. I think. I pushed harder.

(What the fuck is that weird feeling I get in my hands when I write that, godammit?)

I pushed her higher.

And she fell. On her face, Her bottom teeth almost perforated the place right below her bottom lip. Panicked, I picked her up, I know she was crying, screaming, and hauled her back to our house. I don't remember much after that. I I'm sure my mother took her to the dispensary, where she was stitched up, injected with penicillin or tetanus or something, and that was that.

To this day, I feel culpable. There's no getting around it.

My sister is dead.

Every so often, these sharp images come at me, so fearsome. That endless pool of tears wells up to the point where I can barely see through the windshield of the car as I drive home.

These days, I am less inchoate. These days, I say "I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry..."

Not that it makes one lick of difference.

I get out of the car, eyes swollen, and I look up at the crystal clear night, the stars so clear out here in the country. I can see all the way back in time, universes ago.

I know that it's just a roll of the dice. This consciousness, this fucking self-awareness, in all its glory, in all its agonizing responsibility, drives home the intrinsic thing: There is no god.

But it's hard.   

Lemonade

I am dead tired of making lemonade.

Not only lemonade, but lemon chiffon and/or meringue pie, lemon curd, lemon custard, lemon squash, lemon anything-else. I'm done with it.

This year, 2007 threw bucket-loads of lemons at me. And I am fearful and hopeful at the same time, because while the year is winding down, more shit could happen.

To wit, a fast recap (not dispassionate, not at all, not an iota):

Early in the year, the IRS audited me. Corporate for all my professional life, the first year out as an independent, and whammo. I pushed back, the claim is in appeals (abeyance, a moratorium), so I am not dwelling on it as much. The sum might amount to $4 or $5K. It's not a lot, and that's not the issue. It's the principle of the thing.

In spring, Jake passed, after more than sixteen years of cat life. Aida, his litter mate-sister passed more than a year earlier, and although I allowed him to slow down in his old age, without veterinarian intervention (I have doubted that decision often, even when I counter it with the knowledge that the vets would have injected him with needles, placing him in an intensive-care, metal cage - and that would have been worse), his little body withered away until he fell into a coma.  He breathed his last, collapsed on my bed, as I whispered the stories of his life. I miss him every day.

My younger sister, 39-years-old, was diagnosed with breast cancer, stage four. And before she had a fighting chance, her husband carbon-monoxide asphyxiated her, their innocent five-year-old daughter, and himself in a double-murder-suicide. This happened on September 7, and made the front page news for a handful of days in Portland, Oregon. All I know is that the dysfunction in my family saved me this time. I hadn't seen or really communicated with my sister in, I guess, ten years. I never met my niece. If I had, I would be writing this through a medicated haze. As it was, I self-anesthetized the first week after it happened. Did the tragedy mend other rifts in my riven family? I have no hard evidence yet. I have exchanged some conversation with my brother, who acted heroically, traveling to Portland with my father, making identifications at the coroner, collecting some of my sister's belongings from the scene.

I do know that my mother's and stepfather's hearts are broken, and the best I can do is to spend time with them, no mean feat in these cash-strapped days.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, my car was stolen. My beloved 2001 Audi S4 Avant (the bi-turbo engine, limited production, no longer available), was taken from right in front of my building in Chelsea. The police weren't positive, but I was. I checked my EZPass account. For those who do not have these indispensable windshield devices, they allow drivers to pass through toll booths without stopping. The toll is electronically recorded from the windshield device. Women have caught cheating husbands from reviewing their EZPass accounts online. I think a reference was made to such an activity on an episode of The Sopranos. The moment I checked my EZPass account, I saw that my car had been taken between four and five in the morning, to Newark, also known as "cop shop central." The car was targeted. Just last night, a Maserati, several BMW's, Volvos, Range Rovers, and an Escalade were parked on my block. I am shit-out-of-luck, and playing the GEICO paperwork-waiting game. The interim courtesy rental has been a 2008 Pontiac Grand Prix (not worth the hyperlink, trust). The very first car I owned (in high school) was a 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix. The irony is not lost.

A week after the grand theft auto, my bank called to tell me someone was using my debit card to make peculiar online purchases. The identity thief spent about $100 before we closed the account. The bank will restore the money, it's just more paperwork. The thief ordered a Tupac CD, an XBox game, VistaPrint business cards with my name and some gobbledygook data - an incomplete address, a science fiction book, some other services. Some of the goods and notifications were mailed to my NYC address (even though the address was incomplete). Bizarre. I attempted to return the merchandise, without much success, but I did notify my bank.

One company, who sent skin care products called Hydroderm, accepted the cancellation, but allowed me to keep the products. I have to say, this stuff feels much better than the Hymed line I've been sampling recently. (I doubt that any cream reduces wrinkles, but I like when a skin product feels and smells nice.)

I think I can sense an improvement coming with the new year. I will be renting my loft out for a while, it can pay for itself until I can refinance and drop the payments to a manageable level. I took an apartment in the East End. I plan on coming back into the city once a week, stay with many of my dearest and wide-ranging group of friends. Soon, I'll be driving some kind of other car - I allowed myself to muse a bit. Which make or model?

Tomorrow I travel to New Mexico, to spend the holidays with Mom, let her be Mom. We'll pass into 2008 in each other's company.

Crowded House

Right out of college, I landed my first book publishing job. It was far from glamorous. I was a college textbook sales representative, a "traveler." (Sounds like the Tinkers, almost.)

But in the big-ass, ten-day, corporate training, we RCGs, Recent College Grads, bonded. It made sense. Most of us were used to a tight circle of friends in college. Once graduated (or "granulated," as I like to say - I know I picked that up from someone along the way), many of we - okay, I - felt lost, adrift.

Those training sessions (editor after editor explaining book after book, sales managers declaiming Features! Advantages! Benefits!) made our eyes cross. We were used to taking drugs (okay I was), staying up, cramming for exams or papers, and hammering down to the city to hit Studio or Xenon or Mudd Club (or even Crisco Disco) and staying up for three days together.

After college, that tightly-knot group dispersed. A vast change. The ground shifted beneath my feet, and it was not the subway.

Substitute corporate training. Or a long way around to tell the story of my new best friend. She was from Southern California, and could not be more different than the snobby little New Yorker that I was (and oh, I've changed so much).

We were roomed together. I know the reason now why we became my friends (despite my air of superiority). She was open and kind, an all-around great gal. We laughed our asses off over Maalox one night - I cannot remember now why. But more important, we were music nuts. We loved music, loved live music, contemporary, cutting-edge music. Heck-fire (her words), her boyfriend was a musician, worked at KROQ, the "new music" station, the sine qua non of cool, in Los Angeles.

She turned me on to Split Enz, a new wave band from New Zealand.

A few months later, I visited her in the greater Los Angeles area (my family passed through California when we moved back to the States after living in Okinawa five years during the Viet Nam war...) for the first time. She lived in Long Beach, but we did everything I could have imagined. And we went to see/hear a lot of live music. We were - there's only one way to say it - music whores.

Pylon at The Pink (or was it The Roxy?).

A Flock of Seagulls opening for Squeeze at some place in LA - open air concrete seating like a Greco-Roman coliseum, but not the Hollywood Bowl, maybe a site on one of the area college campuses.

Split Enz opening for Elvis Costello in Irvine (I think - maybe I dreamed that when we ate mushrooms and went to see Blade Runner at the local movie house).

Which brings me to Neil Finn. Neil and Tim Finn, the brothers that fronted Split Enz. (Trust, all this was better than Human League, though by then, "Don't You Want Me," had opened the flood gates.)

Split Enz split up (sort of) and re-formed as Crowded House. Huge: "Don't Dream It's Over."

And now, kaboom. Crowded House has reformed, now in the summer of 2007. Their brand new disk dropped today. They have a new single. It's getting airplay out here, on the East End of Long Island on WEHM, the station that is so similar to the one-stop shop for all New York New Wave back in the early 80s. My god, that station played Depeche Mode into the ground. I have to believe that Depeche Mode succeeded in the States, in part, because of that station. Goth kids in Nassau and Suffolk, a million years before Columbine, just not shooting each other.

But heck-fire, Crowded House is on deck to play live at The Beacon in NYC on August 8. That's less than a month from now. Do I have the stones to get tix and go?

I picked up two Neil Finn disks when I lived in Boulder. One All, and 7 Worlds Collide, the latter of which features Eddie Vedder, Johnnie Marr (The Smiths killer guitar-player), and Radiohead's Phil Selway. I have been playing both almost incessantly for a couple of months - driving around out here in my car.

I think it's amazing. I listen to "Wherever You Are," almost once a day.

(Oh, and I think Modest Mouse sounds like <but may not be the new> Lloyd Cole, or XTC, even, while I'm at it.)

What If Scenario

I say to myself sometimes, "You gotta love an epiphany."

I made a hypothetical comparison and revelation in the past week. In my exhortation for an Eraser, I have since taken the time to muse over a handful of "what-if's."

What if I allowed myself to enter into a situation wherein I would be open to sexual intimacy with someone new? (It feels imminent. I had two dreams in which I was being held in a loving embrace. The word "loving" seemed to hang in the atmosphere.)

And what if the nature of that intimacy proved to be passionate, erotic, and afterward sustained, with easy and affectionate physical intertwining of arms and legs, buttocks and abdomens, breaths in ears, lip prints along the back of necks, the curling of one body around the other after vigorous and sweaty exploits, finally exhausted, naturally accepting the hand that caresses a back, a hip, then finds its way curled against its companion's chest, resting on the sternum, above the slow and steady beat of a heart?

(The Good G might say, "So did he use his mouth?" I could well imagine that. And my response, affirmative.)

Then, after the afterglow, after the return to the hectic quotidian pace of life, what if the forehead-slapping realization hits: A new lover could be different from the last lover?

Night and day different.

The former took so much, and toward the end, I let him use my body ill. Throughout it all, he was not generous with his sex, a stingy lover, and yet it seems to me now that he wanted so much...else.

What if, however, a new lover could give so much, and ask for so little in return (outside of the place and time of passion and intimacy)?

If or when that happens, now or soon, in surprise (or not so) circumstances, how wonderful would that be, even if it was just the one time?

Last night, with two friends, I was laying on my back on a boat dock, staring up at the night sky. We picked out constellations and a planets. The wind kicked up a little. The breeze swept across my face, a whisper, a hint.

 

H-O-7-7-Y

When I was three or four years old, just learning my letters, starting to hold a pencil (a new, more grown-up instrument than crayons, though I loved crayons for decades), I wrote my name: H-O-7-7-Y.

"Aitch, oh, el, el, wye," I would say. I printed the letters, all-caps, box-like, and admired the symmetry. They looked so right.

We lived in Okinawa. In fact, we lived there for five years, from 1963 to 1968, during the Viet Nam war.

My young mother suggested to me that my "L's" weren't quite correct. I am pretty sure I either protested, or ignored her. In my mind, I knew that they way I wrote my name was the right way, there was no brooking the argument.

It was only when I started kindergarten that I had doubts about my "L's." The teacher told me my letters were not letters at all, that they were sevens ("Count with me, one two, three..."). I had to admit, in my child's mind, that my letters were indeed, sevens.

Over a few days, I noticed how the other children wrote their letters, and I noticed too that I was the only one writing sevens instead of L's. And then, I doubted myself.

I tried writing my name a new way: H-O-L-L-Y.

I didn't love it right away. The bottom line of the new letter sat on the lined paper, making it stand out less. It didn't look as perfect, but I chose to stick with it.

I think I was embarrassed, for a four-year-old. I didn't want to appear to be too weird. My thick-lenses, magnifying eye-glasses (cat-eye style, of course) made me look strange from the rest of the children. I has been stuck behind Coke-bottle eye-glasses since the age of two.

So I talked myself into accepting H-O-L-L-Y, into preferring it, convincing myself it was okay.

But for a while, I dug in my heels. I was a stubborn little kid. I had to make the change, internally metamorphose, before I allowed anyone to tell me what to do.

Funny, I still behave that way today. Sometimes. 

Brother, Brother

I returned to NYC - full-time - late in the summer of 2004.

I drove from Boulder, across two-thirds of the country, and planned to arrive at my loft the same time as the moving van - to off-load.

Since the movers would take five or so days, I planned to stop and visit friends and family along the way, before I turned up outside my hometown apartment door.

It turned into a pleasant mini-odyssey. I stopped to see a fabulous (and I do mean fabulous) long-time friend in Chicago, a former-favorite assistant in Pittsburgh (married, with a baby, a lovely husband and home, all of which she deserves), and I hoped to stop in to see my brother and his family on the Jersey Shore, before I swung north and home.

All went swimmingly, until I got to my brother's.

A bit of backstory. My brother and I are less than a year apart. I was born in January, and he in December of the same year. Eleven months apart, true "Irish twins."

After I completed kindergarten - the school system determined I was of the correct age to attend but my brother was not - my mother prepared me for the first grade. Apparently, the school system's age designations shifted, and my brother was put into the first grade with me. In essence, he "skipped" kindergarten. Nevertheless, we entered and remained in the same grade for the entirety of our elementary and high school education(s).

Although we are not twins, I suppose we developed some degree of non-verbal communication. Our childhood was not an easy one. I make light of it now, and say that we were raised like wolves. We fought a lot, but I know I always had a deep care and concern for my brother, even if I rarely articulated it.

When he was very young, he had repeated bouts of strep throat, and as a consequence, as many bouts with big, penicillin-filled needles. He was just a little boy, with a tiny, bony butt, and shoulder blades that stuck out like a newborn bird's.

Bacterially, I possessed the hardier constitution.

But he grew stronger and bigger than I - and he pummeled the blazes out of me, often for the slightest insult - in my opinion anyway.

It wasn't easy. Our father was of a capricious, rage-filled nature. He was gone often, but when he was home, I know that a knot of tension and worry kept me on guard, on watch. Although we misbehaved as any kids did, sometimes - and without warning or apparent reason - our father would explode, and knock the crap out of us. My brother got worse than I did. And I hated it - I was the wide-eyed tearful witness, helpless to defend him, or myself. And terrified. There are episodes that I remember, that I will not forget.

Still, as an adult, my brother and I grew close, I think as adult siblings do.

Over the years, I have found it easy and enjoyabe to sing his praises. We were both voracious readers, but I made a career out of it. He was more musically talented than I, and a natural athlete. I was more obviously competitive than he - in my pursuits (academics, socially, high school musicals up to my senior year, college admissions, a college scholarship), and I know I probably irritated him when I cheered him at his high school track meets, questioning the results, wanting to understand the nature of his races.

Still, we were both hell-bent on escaping our "crazy family," as he called our parents. I went off to university, but not before he one-upped me, and took off without notice. He was only seventeen years old, but had packed his room clean - and was gone.

I recall he told me, some weeks later, that I couldn't leave him there "with those crazy people." That's a line he was able to use on me again, decades later, when my mother called us together for a Christmas celebration. I didn't want to go, but my brother persuaded me. Mom had moved to New Mexico by then, and my brother and I spent a couple of days hammering up the steep hiking trails of Sandia Mountain.

By then, my brother was well on his own road to success. After a years-long stint in the Arizona (call it his college-equivalent), he returned to New Jersey, and pursued two life tracks. One was his own residential carpentry-building company. The other was bicycle racing. He succeeded at both, on the local level.

He also went through a series of long-term monogamous girlfriend relationships. Some of these were fraught with "sturm und drang." One early debacle resulted in resentment between us, and I resolved thereafter to never get involved. The serial romances continued, through a first, disastrous marriage and divorce, through a few more women - before his present marriage. He fathered a daughter at the age of forty. I doubt that the marriage has been easy (given his behavior pattern), but I do not doubt that he adores, is crazy about, and loves his daughter.

For some wacky reason, he ceased communication with my mother. He gave me flimsy, unsubstantiated reasons, once - but hey, that's his issue, not mine. And yet I know that the limited interaction with her granddaughter causes my mother anguish - which seems so unnecessary.

Despite these challenges, I still always thought and spoke so highly of my brother. His business has grown exponentially - in accordance, in part, to the absurd growth in real estate value anywhere within one hundred miles of New York City, and especially anywhere close to the Atlantic ocean and adjoining waterways.

At the age of forty-seven, he is a paragon of athletic fitness, and looks some fifteen years younger. In many ways, he resembles a certain uber-famous movie star, who has starred in a series of wildly successful films about casino and art thefts (no, it ain't Clooney, guess again).

Somewhere along the way, his values seem to have grown more conservative. Money can do that. September 11 did that to some.

I have remain steadfastly skeptical. I lean left of center, but I understand and value the worth of a dollar. Perhaps NYC Democrats are like that - in any event, we seem to care about our city first, and we understand that we are different from the rest of the country, liberal or reactionary-right. I prefer to question authority, to use my own mind, to query, to take little at face-value. I am not a fan of the present U.S. government leadership - and the truth will out, as it does. I suppose I am more Aristotelian in my thinking - I want my nation's leader to be super-smart, someone whose mind and character I can respect. Like so many others I have had to wait - and it will be a full eight years gone.

Because we were raised overseas - in Okinawa during the Viet Nam war, and in Germany, close to the Czechoslovakian border during the Cold War - I have an innate respect for the U.S. Armed Forces - the people on the ground, doing the hard, terrible work. If I have developed an intolerance for anything, it is that, in war time, the people who suffer most are women, the elderly, and children. I am no fan of war. I don't care if academics can argue about it's historical necessity. Bah.

Why this tangent?

Because, when I returned from the West, when I visited my brother and his family, he instigated a conversation over dinner that turned ugly. The presidential election was looming. He asked me what I thought of John Kerry, and I responded that I was concerned the American public would not embrace his wife - she seemed too European-aristocratic for mainstream voters.

I do not know why or how this angered him, but he went berserk in an angry, neck-vein-throbbing tirade about how we had to support this president, how he loathed liberals, how we had to support our troops, etc. I admit, after I attempted to counter the assault with reasoned questions, that I tried to mollify him - to calm him down. A knot of tension had sprung forth in my stomach.

To this day, I do not believe his rage and anger had the slightest thing to do with politics.

And I know it had nothing to do with me.

I suspect that my brother resents that I am unencumbered by my personal family responsibilities (there is, ahem, a downside, but on balance, I do prefer my choices and my freedom). I suspect that he has, unwittingly or not, taken on aspects of the dreadful nature of...our father.

I stayed that night in my brother's house, after he mumbled downward into relative quiet (just like our father would do after a rage-attack). I shared a bedroom with my then four-year-old niece. I awoke in the middle of the night, to see the little girl thrashing and babbling in her sleep. Sleep disorders, hmmm, surprising?

My brother's wife remarked to me after he lost his cookies, "I have never seen him go off on anybody like that - except on me."

Holy shit. That could not be good.

I know from my own personal work, that if I place myself in a situation that is not safe for me (emotionally or otherwise), then I will remove myself from it.

And that's exactly what I did. For all my brother's smiles and niceties the following day, I had placed a call to my one-and-only high school girlfriend, who lived in Princeton with her two boys, a girl, and her adoring husband. She bade me come stay with them directly - and we had a glorious time, catching up, hanging with her (first and foremost) and her kids.

I made it to the city and my apartment on time, my heart slightly heavy, but ready to press forward into my future.

I have had minimal to no contact with my brother, my sister-in-law, or my niece.

My mother told me just last week that she learned that my sister-in-law is moving out, with my niece. My brother and she are separating.

I am not surprised.   

Painter's Pants

I'm moving East for the summer.

Yep, over the course of next month, I'll be trundling essential stuff to a charming house in the East End, renting from and rooming with one very droll British gal.

I'm not relinquishing my NYC home. Never. But I plan to sublet it to downstairs neighbors while they undergo renovation.

I'll write stories from out there, which I've done essentially anyhow for the past two summers. I'll be blending two lines of work, but more about those in later posts.

After our handshake conversation, my roommate-lessor-to-be and I chatted about, well, men. I remarked that I happened to notice a couple of builder-contractor fellows in a delicatessen on Main Street in Bridgehampton. From behind.

She replied that she is fond of the sculptural appearance of men's derrieres. (Good girl, that.)

The fellows wore tan, canvas, cargo-style pants. Utility pockets, tool-belts, thick-soled boots, heavy jackets over thermal underwear (it was still chilly two weeks ago when I was out there last).

A familiar look among the year-rounders out there. A familiar look at the north Jersey Shore, too. My brother is a builder - of ridiculously enormous homes in Monmouth County - and that tends to be his work attire.

It reminded my of our high school days in the mid-1970s. The style among the cool boys was painter's pants. White painter's pants, close-fitting below the waist and butt, then somewhat baggy, with generous-sized pockets, and loops attached to the side seams. Construction workers' pants.

Some fellows wore denim versions.

Heck, I think I even owned a pair or two, rebel, pot-smoking, class-skipper that I was during the latter half of my high school career. And Oshkosh overalls. Never mind the National Honor Society - I wanted to be cool - and I think I was finally, by the time I was a senior.

The boys looked good in those britches. And the fellows today look just as good.

I think that may be the, ahem, diversion for this upcoming summer.

Alchemical

A week before my period, I get emotional. I still do.

I used to think that one ovary was the angry ovary, throw-knives angry. My temper would trigger fast, the heat would rise up my neck, and I would struggle to "stay - in - control."

The other ovary would be weepy. I would cry at almost nothing, at Hallmark Cards television ads. Pathetic.

The angry ovary is on hiatus. Anymore, I get the weepies. I cry at the drop of a hat. It happens mostly when I am by myself (preferably) watching gooey television, any romantic film on cable or Masterpiece Theater, renditions of anything Austen, Bronte, Copperfield, or James.

I'll watch such weepies on purpose. I like the way it feels. It reminds me how hard it is to be in love, of the endless yearning and hopefulness.

"I cannot live without my life, I cannot live without my soul."

Right. My big brain knows that obsessive love doesn't work. The couple of times I was the object of obsession, it felt like a vise encircled my neck, and that it was tightened to the point of suffocation. I was good at running away.

Except for the handful of times when I obsessed. Right after a breakup. It's as if I went into shock, my brain slowed, and I did irrational things.

Even today, when I recall some stupid behavior, I blush from embarrassment. And then I chuckle. I've learned how to forgive myself, and I've learned how to keep those nutty impulses in check. They never last anyhow, and for all I know, they might be healing.

Comedy equals tragedy plus time.

Sometimes, one other feeling lingers. The feeling of waiting, of the belief that the real thing will someday come along and grab me by the shirt.

In truth, I've had some of those shirt-grabbing moments.

I thought I would describe a handful, but one in particular is doing its every-few-months lap around my memory. (Except for another one, a funny guy I knew turned up at my apartment while I was painting...picked up a brush and helped me finish. Okay, there are others.)

They tend to be Erasers.

The one I remember happened maybe ten years ago. I was finishing a mid-summer ecological science conference in Snowbird, Utah. A scientist himself (geologist), he had just returned from lengthy field research project in the high deserts of western China. And he popped into Utah for a long weekend. We had a history by then of a couple of days here and there around the country. We lived on opposite ends of the country, in so many ways, yet we managed to get together now and then.

Push pins in a map of the United States: Georgia, Massachusetts, Nevada, Washington, D.C., New Mexico, Utah...

We hiked up a Snowbird mountain together. We started at 8000 feet above sea level, summitted at over 11,000 feet, took the ski tram down, and wound up in the middle of a belly dancer festival on the Snowbird resort grounds.

Never mind the belly dancers (Mormons?).

I remember I had the time of my life, not so much for our easy and funny conversation, but more for his way of always making me feel like I was the only person in the world who mattered.

I also recall that he had an altimeter and thermometer in his wristwatch. Plus, he could describe the geological history of the montane region just east of the Salt Lake basin. It was as if he was reciting Shakespeare's sonnets to me.

The last time I saw him was maybe five years ago. He had a girlfriend and I had a boyfriend. We all met for dinner. At one point in the conversation, I remember he still had that twinkle, and if we had been by ourselves, something else would have happened.

In that, our desires and energies were well-matched.

We talk every now and then - usually when he is on a long drive somewhere in the great Southwest, heading to another research trench-digging site. He always has a good story.

Or a sad one. A few years back, he had his heart broken for what sounded like the first time. It took the piss out of him, and it took time too. (I broke my own a couple of years later - as hard as I ever have, only for me, it took less time that time.)

He could be married now. 

But whenever I recall our times, I smile. I have no regrets.

Someday, maybe I'll get lucky. Maybe a roll of the dice will present another such person, who "poof" will be there before me, and grab me by the shirt.

Only maybe I will see him, and pay more attention.   

Why Not Me

I didn't feel disparaged until I received Tennis Pro's voice message.

I was sitting in Dulles airport, awaiting a late connection to La Guardia when I noted the message on my phone. I had taken less than forty-eight hours to zip down to Melbourne, Florida, flying in and out of Orlando. Why the connection (even though Jet Blue has become less the airline of choice these days)? Because I opted to use some of my United Miles, and United does not fly direct from NYC to Florida, at least not often.

No. As it turned out, the flight crew down had mucked with the on-board coffeemaker, and it took almost an hour either to fix the pot, or file the necessary paperwork. The coffeemaker.

I was nearly asleep in my seat as it was, since I had risen at six a.m. to take a seventy-five dollar cab from Melbourne to the Orlando airport. The Jamaican driver told me that he raised goats, but not before he held forth that homosexuality was not normal, that gay men preyed upon boys to turn them, that a man's penis does not belong in another man's rectum. That last bit is verbatim.

I couldn't depart The Sunshine State fast enough. I'm sure Anita Bryant would have been oh-so happy. Glory-be. Her legacy thrives.

Back to TP's voice message. Here are the words:

"I just wanted to tell you that I enjoyed having you down. I know it's probably not, um, who knows, not exactly what you had in mind, but I enjoyed your visit. And that's it. It was all fun. Kind of short, though. It was a little too short. So you are always welcome here, and hopefully you'll come back and see me again. Ciao."

My first thought was this: How many ways can I tell you to have a nice day? Right. Ciao.

How did all this come about, I wondered. True, TP and I remained in telephone contact since last September. And true, I found the conversations enjoyable, most times laugh-out-loud funny.

As this winter hit its sub-freezing stride, I felt like a shut-in. I've taken to calling the five or so extra pounds, my winter pelt. I'm wearing layers of clothing, my nose, finger tips and toes perpetually cold.

TP suggested more than once that I come down to visit him, and as the temperature hovered around 25-degrees Fahrenheit for weeks on end, I made the decision to hop south. A flash-extremity-warm-up.

Truth be told, I am not a fan of Florida. I've been many times over more than two decades: Tallahassee, Gainesville, Orlando, Tampa, St. Petersburg, West Palm Beach, Jupiter, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami. Heck, nearly everything I had was stolen out of a rental car in South Beach some twenty years ago. I can be such a snob, but after that, I've not cared for the general population that inhabits or frequents that state.

It had been years, and I figured that TP, a born-and-raised Melbourne native, and one entertaining fellow, would offer a couple of days' respite.

Our summer fling has offered diverting, memories (heck, summer flings have built-in expiration dates). However, I haven't been feeling particularly sexual - my dream-state has been very active this year so far, hurrah - and I expected to be reserved in that sense. I am aware that TP has regular assignations with more than one woman in his home town. He conducts private tennis lessons on his carefully-groomed clay home court. Yes, his home, with its pool and spa, and separate separate guest room(s).

I made it plain that I did not want to get in the way, be underfoot, that I would be content to rent a car, do my own thing...

Nope. TP sounded very enthusiastic about my visit, said he would fetch me from the Orlando, and that we would go down to Palm Beach the next day. I comprehend now that he wanted to show me some highlight places in the story of his life.

Which was fine. Conversation was easy. Kicking back and inhaling is a surefire way to relax. I made no physical move, nor did he. at the end of the first night, we turned in. I took the guest room.

The next morning, we drove south. What can I say about Palm Beach? The median age seems to be about sixty years old. Most of the men were attired in pleated-front, knee-length shorts, polo shirts, and penny loafers without socks. Um fellows, the Reagan era was twenty years ago, y'all. The women were dressed in various iterations of Lilly Pulitzer.

I cuffed-up my jeans, and tried to break in a new pair of clunky Michael Kors sandals (blisters, natch). Attired thus, with a simple, "shrunk" tee-shirt and Longchamps handbag, I felt more stylish than anyone I saw (alas, my Manhattan snobbery).

Worth Avenue's line-up of luxury-brand stores are versions of the same luxury-brand stores here in the city. Generally, however, I did like the older Spanish-Mediterranean architecture. The Breakers is a lovely building - the antique furniture, carpets, tapestries, and chandeliers are gorgeous, no argument. I did like The Seafood Bar, the actual bar, which housed tiny, living sea creatures. That was cool.

The chock-a-block mansions that line the oceanfront avenue would be obliterated if struck full-force by a hurricane, Saffir-Simpson Level Five. And they would most likely be rebuilt by their wealthy owners.

I did wiggle my toes in the sand. The sea was a deep turquoise, different from the steel blue I'm used to.

On the return drive to Melbourne, two sightings of local fauna intrigued me very much. Along the Interstate, TP pointed out a flock of wild turkeys and a family of wild pigs (!). Cool, that.

Once back at his home, I sensed the unspoken awkwardness between TP and me. And I lacked the inclination to discuss anything other than trivial amusements. We stayed up too late that second evening - I had to be up and gone to catch my return flight. Did he make a feeble attempt at intimacy? Maybe he did, but when he bid me a good night, I went off to the guest room. Again. (I learned last summer that he is not the sort of person with whom one actually sleeps.)

It has been a while, but a nasty pit in my stomach started to roil. The old separation anxiety. I lay still and took several deep breaths. I tried to think back, recall other times in my life when I felt the same. I wondered, should I have organized a longer trip? Was I missing out on something? I thought of some of the men in my past, some who left me, some whom I left, and realized that my internal upheaval was trivial. I gradually grew calm, but sleep was fitful.

A thought entered my mind, in the form of a question, "Why not me?' Indeed, why not. Why not me? Why would I put myself in a situation that is fruitless, and therefore safe? When will I allow myself to be open, when will I allow myself to venture a significant person into my life?

As for TP's voice message, or the conversation we had afterward, I wondered a bit more. I have known men who have claimed that they want (need?) me to be in their lives (somehow). It's almost as if my friendship, once given, serves to validate them. I could be wrong of course, but if I'm not, I wonder why that should matter. I don't flatter myself that I am so special. I know I can be a good friend, the best kind of good friend, in fact. Sometimes, though, it feels as though I allow such affection to be co-opted and used. Sometimes, it seems as though I get so little in return. Is TP another of this kind? Would it be such a stretch to imagine it to be so?

I was taught once upon a time, to pay attention to that "used" feeling. When I was a child, I was raised to expect cake, and what I got were crumbs. I was admonished, I was supposed to believe that the crumbs were the cake. Much later, I've come to understand the difference. I have to remind myself that I am worth more. It's difficult. I'm better at it today than I was some ten years ago. 

Will I ever make a return trip to see TP? I cannot say.

In this meaningless world, where chance and probability are physical law, all I can do is pay attention and do my best - the hardest and most rewarding endeavor - every day of my life.