Category: Words

When I want something and I don’t want to pay for it,
I walk right through the door.
–Jane’s Addiction/Been Caught Stealing

Once upon a time I had this boyfriend. We broke up.

I was not happy about it. I tried to hang on to him, pathetically, by offering various sexual acts. Well, mostly the same one. Never mind which. I can’t really blame the guy for taking advantage of the offers any time he was in between girlfriends. Not a lot of guys of a certain age would be willing to turn someone down, and he didn’t. I imagine he felt like he was getting something for nothing. He probably had no clue about how I felt about it, and I certainly have no clue if there was any sort of emotional toll on him from it.

I didn’t think it had any sort of emotional cost to me at the time, either, but I was wrong. It gradually wore away the little self confidence and self respect I had. And, again–I do not blame him. I offered. He accepted. He didn’t do anything wrong. Eventually, something happened that made me angry enough to tell him I never wanted to see him again. It wasn’t true, but I knew I needed to say it.

He complied with my wishes. I hoped he wouldn’t, but I needed him to. Maybe that cost him something. Maybe he was relieved. I have no idea.

Everything you choose to do in life has some sort of cost associated with it. Sometimes you know what the cost will be ahead of time. Sometimes you don’t. The cost might be financial, but it’s just as likely to be physical or emotional.

I know pretty much what the physical cost will be if I drink 6 shots of tequila in an evening. I might not sleep very well. I’ll probably be a little sluggish the next morning, but I’ll feel fine. If I drink 10, I’ll probably puke, fall down and wish I was dead the next day. I normally drink accordingly.

Financially, If I only have $100 to make it to payday, I probably won’t buy that $400 pair of boots I’m in love with. I know what they cost, and I know ahead of time that I can’t afford it. It’s not terribly complicated to figure out financial and physical cost. It’s not always easy to choose wisely, but it is pretty simple.

Emotional cost is so much harder. For one thing, you are more likely not to know what the cost will be. You can trust someone who turns out to be fantastic, fall in love, be married for 60 years and have a wonderful family. Or. You can trust someone who turns out to be Charles Manson, kill someone else’s family together and end up in prison. Different costs.

You have to figure out how much of yourself you can afford to give, and if someone deserves it.

And when to stop.

If to stop.

And all without even knowing what the costs have been or will continue to be.

Each situation has to be navigated on its own, and there’s never a price sheet posted.

It’s all a balancing act, and I think we’ve all noticed by now that balance is not one of my native talents.

So I’ll keep trying to figure it out.
I don’t think I ever really will.
I’m not sure I’m even supposed to.

I think I’m supposed to just keep working on it.

The only thing that ever made sense in my life
Is the sound of my little girl laughing
Alive and happy in the summertime
–Everclear/Songs From An American Movie, Pt. 2

One of my favorite memories is of a book club weekend at the beach. There is a substantial amount of drinking that goes on at the typical book club weekend, and this was no exception. The typical Saturday goes something like this: wake up whenever you do. Have coffee. Maybe put a little somethin’ in it. Maybe a little somethin’ more with the second cup. Have a few more. Then a beer with your mid-morning snack and lunch. Then people who are napping types, do that while others walk on the beach or catch some sun while reading. More beers or cocktails as the afternoon wears on. Then dinner. The plan that day was to meet at K’s house where we would (drink all afternoon) cook dinner together. Several of us went over early that afternoon, and the others decided to take a nap and come over a little later. For some reason, I wasn’t drinking very much. I was alone in that. I wasn’t completely sober, but I’d only had a cocktail or two. I was sitting at the kitchen bar watching two of my girlfriends attempt to chop veggies for dinner, while another looked for something to snack on.

They had been partaking of some herbal therapy in addition to copious applications of wine and beer.

They were….well…not being very efficient.
They were chopping in slow motion.
Chop…..chop…..chop…..one slice at a time. A slice about every 5 seconds. Very carefully. Trying very hard to be in full control. And these are both women who know how to operate a knife pretty damn well.

I was glad that they’d started chopping so early, because at their rate the Evil Jungle Prince was not going to be ready for hours!
I kept sipping my drink, trying to hold in a laugh. Glad to be where I was.

K looked over at me, and asked me what was wrong.
I pointed at the Slow Motion Women’s Chopping Team.

She started to laugh.
She laughed so hard she fell down on the floor laughing.
She was curled up in a ball on the tile with tears running down her face, gasping for breath.

The SMWCT looked over and (slowly) asked us what was so funny.

K was still incapable of speech. Still laughing.

I looked at them blankly and said “yooooou twooooooo aaaaaare chooooooppppping verrrrrry verrrry sloooooowwwwwly.”

Huh?

They looked confused and went back to their chop….chop….chopping.
I took another sip of my drink, and looking at K, I lost it. Completely. There is something cleansing about that kind of laugh. Your entire body melts. You relax. You are happy.

You are totally in that moment.

More than anything else, laughing makes us human. All of the kinds of laughter. The rueful laugh, the bitter laugh, the polite laugh, the guffaw, the snorting laugh, the surprised laugh, the giggle, and the whole body laugh.

When I started this post, it was with a quickly scribbled note as is often the case.
The note contained a snippet of a song lyric about laughing, and this:

laughter. crucial. human
Why I write.
?

So when I was thinking about what I wanted to write about, I found this note days later and wondered what the fuck I had meant.
I don’t know.

That’s not quite true. I know that I wanted to write about laughter and how it is part of what makes us human.
Why I write?

I am not sure.

Either of what that part of my note meant or the larger question.
I don’t really write, I scribble. I scrawl. You can read it because a modern scrawl is typed very neatly, but it’s still a scrawl. There’s not much in the way of editing for the most part. It’s just kind of slung onto a page.

Why?

Sometimes I want to make myself or other people laugh. Sometimes I want to remember something, like K’s epic laugh that Summer day in Tierra del Mar. Sometimes I want to get it out so I can let go of it.

Words, like laughter, are part of what makes us human. And like a good laugh, words are a lot better when they are shared.
I hope.

Keep your head up girl
Keep your head up

The sun ain’t hard to see
Just turn off your TV
Everything around you
Is just part of every other thing, I’m a tree
–Imani Coppola/I’m A Tree

Just for the record, I am not a fucking tree.
I am, as John Merrick might say, a human being.
Not that there’s anything wrong with being a tree.
I like trees.
They are pretty and stuff.
I’m just not one.

I am internally divided about the whole idea of being one with everything. I like it as a theory–I think it’s sweet–but I can’t quite buy into it. It’s too precious. Nothing that precious can be true. Not in my world view, anyway. It’d be like a Precious Moments Universe.*** I’d get Soul Diabetes and die. Sweetly. I’d rather go out kicking just a little bit. Maybe biting. I like biting.

Though I don’t really care about the actual being dead, I’m not excited about the process of dying.
Just being dead? Eh. No big. My philosophy will be “Don’t care. Dead” at that point. Except that I wouldn’t have a philosophy anymore because, you know, dead.

My ideal death, in case you are wondering, would be to spend the afternoon hanging out in a bar exchanging secrets with a certain very beautiful girlfriend before going to a doctor’s appointment. She has to leave a few minutes before I do, so we give each other a kiss and a hug, and I have another drink. Which, by the way, I enjoy immensely. The kiss and hug, too. Coming out of the bar, a beer truck careens out of control and kills me suddenly and quite unexpectedly dead. I never find out about the painful fatal illness that my doctor was going to tell me about at that appointment.

My memorial service could be at the same bar, once they fix the front of the place where the truck crashed. I’d like that, if I wasn’t dead. If it could be the Lompoc, that would be ideal, but have it wherever you want. I won’t care. You’ll like it. They have beer there.

Yes, I’ve given it some thought.
Some.
A bit.
Quite a lot.

It’s not like I really get to pick.

I bet trees don’t get to ponder their own mortality. Wait, is planning my favorite way to die the same as pondering my own mortality or should I be thinking how to make my life more meaningful in the short time I have left or something? I’m probably doing it wrong. Again.

I could accept being a human being who is part of everything, while remaining most definitely not a tree. Or a rock. Not that there is anything wrong with being a tree. Or a rock.

I really do enjoy being me though.

***Precious Moments Universe would be a good name for a band.
We are all just fine the way we are.