I'm not getting any I'm not getting any I'm not getting any I'm not getting anywhere.

And oddly enough, right now it feels fine.

Perhaps for the first time in my life I understand that staying in one place doesn't necessarily mean I'm not also moving forward.

It's a peculiar sensation. Some old wounds feel like they're healing, finally. I'm taking some time.

With the onset of spring I've been digging in the dirt, turning loam, pulling out roots and rocks, working side by side with a man I look forward to seeing daily. He has this manner about him, solid and serene, placid even. But beneath the surface there's live wire energy, frightening in its intensity, like he has it reined in and carefully controlled. He's brilliant and kind, looks sexy in overalls, has a great shy smile, and he cooks.

I've started heading for his place after work, and I help him with his tasks in exchange for dinner. We're doing a good job of being just friends, a curious unspoken mutual development, although the flirtation is sometimes hot and heavy and when I get home at night I rock myself to sleep thinking about what I want to happen. I wonder who will evenually take the first step of seduction, wonder how it will all follow.

We had an interesting moment the other evening before dinner. We were working outside, and for some reason we both stopped and looked at each other. My mouth said, unbidden and uninhibited, much to my surprise, like I was talking in my sleep,

God you're handsome. How is it possible you're single?

Which elicited a shocked look, a smile, a pause, and the earnest reply,

Have you seen yourself? You're beautiful.

Which made me blush.

And the moment passed, we were both embarrassed and he cleared his throat, but it's nice to know the attraction is mutual.

Maybe he's waiting for some indication from me that physical contact would be appreciated. Although, on the other hand, I must admit the absence of physical affection is making me highly aware of some pre-existing emotional issues.

I'm not so preoccupied with him, not driven to distraction, not worried about it, and this gives me time for sorting through a lot of crap in my head and heart, figuring out what needs figuring. I've played out all the shoulda woulda coulda, and now I'm moving beyond, into accepting that the past is the past, unchangeable, but also finished.

When I get there I know he'll be waiting for me.

When a body knows a body already and meets it less than halfway, I see no real point in continuing the path. There is something in the wind, perhaps the phase of the moon, but I’m unwilling to connect on any level. Erase the subliminal, stop the second-guess, I want to know the bottom line, and with him I can’t see it. It makes me wonder if my whole relationship with him was just on the surface, something we simply did rather than something we both felt. That’s the part that still hurts. When I saw his face again, when he wrapped his arms around me and told me it had been too long, I found myself conceited and disbelieving. Too long? Yes. So long.

It can be awkward looking and speaking to a person you thought you knew, who in some ways you know too well. I burned my tongue on my hot coffee, and every subsequent sip reminded me to be cautious and reserved. I’m sorry I had to be that way with him. But the thought of letting him back inside my heart, of letting him once again have the power to hurt me as he did, remains an unacceptable risk. I’m sure my nostrils flared and my smile was sharp and crooked and did not reflect in my eyes. A worry crossed his familiar beautiful curved brow, I know your looks, that worry line said. But then he chose to ignore it, attempting to force the situation into an amazing yoga backbend, but I had already bent too much, and refused to apologize for my lack of flexibility.

We said the necessary things and kissed cheeks, drank our cups of coffee while our faces hid the thoughts we really thought. I was highly conscious of how my teeth clicked together when I said certain words. My denial still echoes in my ears. I did not give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry, and I didn’t cry until I unlocked the door to my little house. The tears were not of sorrow but of bitterness, and they tasted like copper. It's done. There is no return.

One two buckle my shoe
Three four shut the door
…And lock it…

Once again the day of exaggerated expectations has come and gone. And the man who claims to love me? didn’t send me anything, didn’t even call, although in his defense I did work twelve hours yesterday, and he's travelling in different time zones. Jake is en route home from South America, making his way leisurely through Costa Rica, lollygagging around the Caribbean, probably doesn’t know what day it is. Supposedly he’s headed for Texas and from there flies into Portland on the 19th.

He seems to suffer a serious level of disconnect, some definite mental problem. The few times I’ve talked to him, he makes it sound as if this wayward journey were simply a vacation, as if he didn’t just up and leave everything and everybody. I have been discussing him with a long-time friend and colleague who treats mentally ill patients. She tells me he sounds schizophrenic, but she obviously can’t diagnose him with just my emotionally-charged spoutings. At any rate, he’s returning in three days (one two three, I keep looking at the calendar with this crazy mixture of dread and anticipation). He asked me to pick him up at the airport. I told him I'd think about it.

In the mean time, I’ve made the acquaintance and friendship of a new fellow. He’s of the strong and silent variety, and has eschewed his scholastic and literary accomplishments for a life of greenthumbery, and that's not a proper word but it's what he calls himself. What's your profession? A greenthumb. He owns a little blueberry farm complete with chickens and goats and dogs and cats. He came in to the free clinic three weeks ago for a tetanus shot, and we later encountered each other at the nearby deli. We shared a table and talked as though we had been best friends years ago and discovered we still have so much in common. Since then, I’ve eaten three wonderfully enjoyable and very comfortable home-cooked meals with him.

I’ll admit I’m attracted; I like the way he looks, and I like the way he looks at me. The most intimate physical contact we've had occurred when we were walking in his orchard and I got something in my eye, he brushed my lashes with his fingertip. I liked his fingertip's touch, I like being his friend, I like it that there have been no clumsy advances or fumbled attempts at seduction. It feels... respectful. Like we have all the time in the world. Like this thing that's growing between us needs water and sunlight, and let's wait and see what kind of flower it makes. He sent me ten red carnations that smell like cloves, which he grew in his little greenhouse, for Valentine’s Day. I invited him for dinner tonight.

I think Jake can find someone else to pick him up from the airport.

In terms of speculation and examination, in the face of emotional flood, I find myself akin to New Orleans, wondering where have all my signs and landmarks gone?

He called, and I guess I never thought he would, because I hadn’t wanted to think about him anymore. I haven’t wanted to think about his phone call; that was last Thursday. It has been stewing. I’m testing it now and I think it’s almost edible for rumination.

I recognized it was an out-of-country call, with that foreign crackle and shush of distance between wires, although I didn’t necessarily suspect it was him. I answered and after saying Hello? during that long-distance delay, before he could even say Hello back to me, my heart flipped right up and out of my mouth. Hi, he said, in his familiar voice, and there I was, gagging on this pounding throbbing slippery jellyfish of an organ, hang on a minute I think I am about to pass out.

He disarmed me with a joke about eating insects. He told me briefly about his adventures in beautiful lands and it dawned on me that his reasons for escaping to South America are now irrelevant, and pertain only to my own frame of reference.

I somehow managed to swallow and breathe, and told him I gave the ring back to his mom. Then all those should-have-said phrases and calculated attacks came out, I shocked myself with my calmness and seriousness, and I think I shocked him although he was expecting it. I imagined both our faces as if they were across a table, faces hurt by the other, pinched and pale and unhappy and guilty.

He stayed meek and quiet and did not defend himself. I growled and told him in fine detail how he had made me feel, and refrained from too much cussing, but at one point I recall most eloquently calling him a stupid shithead fucking fuck.

It was only after I was done, and when he started talking to me about moving on from where we had been, to where we could be when he returns, it was only then that I started weeping. It felt like the tears were coming from the pit of my stomach. It felt like I was raining.

He told me he loves me. He said he misses me. He begs my forgiveness. He returns in a month, and in that time I need to decide how to handle the thought that he’s coming back, and not just that he’s going to return, but that he’s coming back to me.

So for the past few days I’ve been walking around, half-seeing things, like I’ve stared too long at the sun’s reflection in a mirror and suffered a long-term retina burn. I don’t know what to think. It’s not so easy to forget how much he hurt me. I can forgive him; something in me suspects I already have forgiven him. But forget? No. And therein, I think, lies the issue of trust.

A big fat "FUCK YOU" to whichever twit with over-tweezed brows and airbrushed tan and plastic pink fingernails was whistling the theme song from Sesame Street.

He called.
He called me from Peru.
He called.

Apologies for the delay, for the complete and utter loss of anything remotely resembling a thought-pattern, all I can think is that he called.

I can't believe he called.

We laughed.
We cried.
I tore him a new asshole.
We cried.
We laughed.

I think I shit myself.

Gentlemen, start your engines.

It's not much of a race, but I am tempted to expound upon the idiocy of parallels one might imagine between self and automobile, the identification and personification as reflected in chrome and steel, and let's burn some rubber. Vroom, as they say.

There are six, a most unlucky number, and they all seem to find vehicular expression akin to the notion that clothes make the man. And just for clarity, clothes don't make the man, and cars simply make exhaust.

One little two little three little exhaust pipes, a lab tech a lawyer a political analyst, four little five little six more exhaust pipes, a banker a psychiatrist a building contractor. Shall we go for statistical analysis? One by one, assassination by list, here are the pansies:

The lab tech drives a Volvo, he's quirky and smart and has a green greasy sheen on his skin I find somewhat repulsive. Vegan, too, and such strict self-imposed dietary requirements tend to leave me asking Why? Video game junkie, definitely, and talks in slang and lingo more than I prefer. He's head honcho at the lab and can identify more types of foreign agents in a micro-slide of shit or blood or piss or saliva than anyone I know... but what, exactly, would we discuss over bland food and thrice-filtered water? How could I possibly have a relationship with someone to whom the word "shit" means his life's work?

The lawyer drives a brand spankin' new black with tinted windows BMW of course, and I suspect he is, in fact, an android. His hair does not ever move; there's no evidence it is not plastic, it always has the same shape and style, the perfect part, amazingly matched sideburns. I can tell he practices facial expressions in the mirror. He signs even the personal notes to me (be still my heart!) with "Esquire" after his name, and takes himself as serious as a heart attack. No funny bones in that body, unless it's Obviously Supposed To Be Funny, and then HA HA HA HA! he laughs like a puppet with the top of his head lifting up. He has a degree in history, too, and conversation can be interesting, but I fear an argument with someone trained to argue because then I'd get frustrated and have to kill him. Perhaps, then, it's a bonus that he gets bored with any conversation not centered on him, and he starts talking about his intelligence, his dog, or his recent golf game.


Mr. Conservative psych-I-prescribe-highly-addictive-drugs-to-little-kids-to-make-them-more-tractable-atrist drives a new convertible Toyota Celica with all the extras. I have nothing to say to this man but he calls me daily at 3:15, and seems to want only to talk about the weather. He has a mini statue of Venus de Milo in his office, which causes me great personal umbrage, guilty as I am of being a former lingerie model who suffered digital amputation and decapitation. He flexes his jaw muscles a lot. No, I mean a lot.

The building contractor drives the biggest possible white Dodge Ram pickup truck imaginable. The truck compliments his big soup-straining pussy-ticklin MUCH too proud of it mustache, check the spelling, this is no moustache. He calls me at all hours using his company (HIS company's) phone. He carries a rifle in his truck, he got that rifle rack chromed, just to match the bumpers. He has a wide handsome brow and unfocused grey eyes and a strangely shaped gap between his front bottom teeth, visible most of the time from too much chewing tobacco sucked during elementary school. He brags on his boat. Vroom vroom, he says! He invited me to join him on the lake in his "backyard" for New Year's Eve. "We can get ourselves a goose." He does have nice hands, but, well, no.

The political analyst pundit butt-whiffer drives a green Range Rover and blah blah blah blah! I know him much better than I should; he's far too free and easy with me. Little does he know. He does Exxxxtreme Mountain Climbing, he goes UP the mountain, you see (he told me that). Right now he's a Republican, although he has changed political parties 5 times (he told me that. He TOLD me! What a dumbfuck). This man has a cocaine nosejob but he's "done with it" (he TOLD me!) and he's really fucking preachy about doing drugs, but he'll go to a party and then ask, "Who's fixing drinks?" and "Where's the booze?" It's most unfortunate my social circles ellipse with his because he tends towards touchy-feely. He has a Harley and hopes someday I will buy a helmet. He's good-looking and athletic and I feel like telling him he'd get more girls to go out with him if HE had an EXTRA helmet, but why should I? Dumbass.

The bank owner drives a new gold Pathfinder. He is a ski nut, does Exxxxtreme Skiing (he goes DOWN the mountain, you see, he and the political yes-man can belly-buck about superiority-- one goes up, the other goes down. Or maybe about S.U.V.irility-- they can see whose winch on the front of each box-shaped vehicle is stronger and more potent). He's tall, tall, tall, with the haughtiness AND bad-posture issues that go with most tall people. But he has great legs; some weird part of me wants to dress this prematurely-balding homophobe up in a slinky black dress and fishnet stockings and take him to smoky-glass candle-lit bars and drink Midori Sours until he's silly. Alas, he is a teetotaler, and really fucking preachy about drinking alcohol, but he appreciates a bowl of maryjane now and then.

Which one wins? If I'm the loving cup then not a one. In fact I'm more inclined to pair them together, the banker and the politician, the lab technician with the lawyer, and the contractor with the psychiatrist. Matches made in Heaven.

Burn, baby, burn.

Well shit where did it go? Where the hell did I put that silly little thing? My writer muse, I mean. Maybe he ran away again, like they all do. Need a better cage for that little bugger. While I’m at it, I should look for my libido, too.

I keep thinking about the time I accidentally put the milk in the pantry and the cereal box in the fridge.

~

A girlfriend of mine has a “fabulous new boyfriend” and I spent half our lunch date looking down while she was blathering (I do love her but she’s loopy about him and… well I guess familiarity breeds contempt) just so she couldn’t see the half-sneer on my face, denying myself the impulse to say, dripping with sarcasm, “Yeah, ain’t love grand.”

Is sarcasm the only dripping display of character? Surely wit never drips, nor does worry. Sarcasm just oozes that caustic bitterness all over the fucking place.

~

I had a date and I don’t think I’ll have another any time soon. It’s all just a bit more than I want right now.

You know you’re wasting time with a man (whose only intention is to sleep with you) when the hair on the back of his neck makes you queasy. It’s just the back of his neck, not even his chest, back, pits, or (gag) nether regions.

No, I’m not disqualifying him solely on the grounds that I’d want to depilate him. He had this truly annoying habit of rephrasing what I said, only louder, so the people at the table next to us could hear and think he was a witty conversationalist. It felt like I was playing the million-questions game with myself.

He also spent too much time reaching across the table and touching my hands, my shoulder, my hair, while making interjections about how stunning I looked, how he really liked my smile, little semi-sincere overly flirtatious gotta-get-laid superficial comments. My ego is plenty big; he was stroking and not even getting close to triggering it.

I didn't kiss him goodnight, didn't want to give him any encouragement. And when he asked, “Can I call you?” I shook my head in the negative and told him I’d probably be busy.

Busy looking for my writer muse. And my libido. And that lipstick I know I stuck in a coat pocket, but which coat?... And where did my keys go? I'm certainly not looking for any more dates.