Admitting things to myself.

Admitting things to myself.

I'm not going to write about it here.  Because these are notes for me.  I don't need to take notes on someone I'm happy to learn things about.  When I get down to the most vulnerable of feelings about it, I want to be his.  And I want him to be mine.  Not the physical.  That is simply a bonus (I think less of people who use the phrase “added bonus”. Re: “liking your own Facebook status”).  What makes me feel the most vulnerable is the feeling that I want to open things to him and tell him about the world when I feel it.  And I do.  And I just speak and feel and drink in the truth like chamomile tea and get nervous at the same time in those moments we are together.  These are the last things I'm writing about him because I'm going to learn to store it in here [I am pointing to my head].  A memory of slow dancing to Stevie Nicks’ Bella Donna makes me want him to try my mother’s collard greens.  Does any of that make sense?  Nikki Giovanni would ask if this were a silly poem… in that way she says “poem” reminding me of her, at times adorable, Tennessee accent.   And I would remind you that this is not a poem.  These are notes for me.  Notes for me to remember.  And these are the last things I'm going to write about here.  I am eating lunch the day after Thanksgiving, getting insulted by my family in the only way they know how, and thinking about when I’ll get back to see him.  And what song will be playing.  And how I found Sarah’s “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy” in a pile on my music room floor.  It’s scratchy, but it still sounds the same.  All of this is good.  This moment is wonderful.  And when I get down to the most vulnerable of feelings about it, I want to be his.  And I want this to be mine.

I've always been envious of Jessica Lange

On fear, perception, and American Horror Story.

Fearsome is what you may think of me. 

I have been told this before. 

Prone to rants to my therapist, these thoughts of yours used to trouble me. 

My being fearsome is more your problem. 

 

Trust me, it’s just the shoes.

Do I intimidate you?  What are you afraid of? 

Fearful.  Now, that I will never show you. 

I’ll make a sausage stuffing that will reveal so much to you, but you will never be told of what I am fearful.  Surprisingly, if we’d continued in the fashion we were styled (dinners, social gatherings, a happy hour, even the occasional coffee shop), I may have told you a few of them.

When I am an old woman, I shall wear black and call myself Fiona Goode. 

I’ve always been a fan of the macabre, although I do not enjoy scary movies.

This is a life of perceptions.  So, I am aware of what you think of me.  Meh.

Does her name have to be Queenie?

Top 10. A Day Late, and 6'5" in heels.

Saying it.  Top 10’ing it.  Leaving it all behind.

1. There are cinematic pairings that remind me of portions of my relationship with my sisters Melissa H. and Amy Lynn Z-H.  Sometimes I think of us as a spell-casting family looking for and navigating through love as if we were versions of Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock in “Practical Magic”.  Other times, and if we’ve remained seated through our first 2 martinis, we could be a ragtag group of unlikely bank robbers lead by a very fierce Queen Latifah in “Set It Off”.  Since I’ve met them, I have had visions of us buying a convertible and bringing utter havoc to some desert region of the country in a mix up of “Thelma & Louise” with “Too Wong Foo: Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar”.  If sisters we are, then sisters we be – as long as I am the Jessica Lange in “Crimes of the Heart” sister.  And maybe the movie hasn’t been written yet.  That’s for the best.  That would mean our story was over and had already happened.  I love these women.  And I respect, honor, and celebrate the thing we will always have.

2. Swimming in a sea of wonderful things to be thankful for over the past weekend, I was still involved in a small hit and run, and I’d like to clear it up now, once and for ever.  Mass texts, individual texts, emails, phone calls, Facebook wall-postings; all of these were used last week to send forms of impersonal well-wishings on TGives to many.  An old friend, who I don’t feel like naming (oddly) reached out to me via text.  The text read:

1. “Boo, I miss you.  I wanted to wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving and to let you know how thankful I am for you.  I hate that I haven’t seen you in forever.  This job is killing me.  Can we fix that soon?  When can we catch up?  I really miss you.  I can’t wait to hear what you did to Curtis and that other fool.”

                                               i.     I thought I had finished weeding through the gossip queens earlier this year.  Alas, a few are still swimming.

                                             ii.     Hopefully, this will be the last time I mention this highly insignificant (only in terms of social hierarchy) situation.

1.     It is easier to make a known “bad-guy” like me continue to be the “bad guy”, than to have the curtain pulled back on yourself to reveal the truth.  Curtis Wiley was caught in a lie.  He and I are no longer friends.  People can stop asking me about it.

3. I have a friend.  His name is Vinnie.  Brother.  Sister.  Best Friend.  Confidant.  Traveling Companion.   Fitting Room Advisor.  Question Asker.  Video Game Player.  Food Sharer.  We love to eat.  It’s probably best that no one ever follows through with our invitations to our annual trip to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, because the food shaming I feel an outsider would give us is not fair.  We’ve never ordered two meals each.  Never.  If you can ever eat yourself into a food coma at the table with a friend, a friend who will also undo his top button at the table with you, then you’ve found someone who is supposed to be in your life always.  30 days hath November, right?  Well, I’m not doing that ridiculous 30 days of thanks crap that people are doing.  I've never been happier to see December 1st.  There are too many days in the year for me to just section off one and dedicate to how glad I am that Vinnie is in my life.  The ledges I have stood perched upon (balancing ever so carefully atop my already shaky soapbox) have been not so scary knowing that he is in my corner, and I will always be in his.  And even if I do leap from said ledge, I know that somehow he’d make it down to wherever I landed and help to put back the pieces of whatever part of me was destroyed in the fall.  This bond is something to honor every day.

4. I usually bring a book with me to make it through any sort of family, holiday function.  Last week I chose to read “August: Osage County”.  Choosing to read through that Act 2 dining room scene just minutes before Thanksgiving Dinner was, at first glance, not a wise decision.  Who could have imagined dinner would have gone so smoothly?  You don’t usually get your feelings hurt until lunch the next day anyway.

5. For someone who claims not to like people, I certainly do seem to like what I do.  There is a strange thing called "sympathy" when someone walks into your room to get on your table and they have an injury.  Pain and Stress, which are sisters themselves, show up in every fiber of our five minute meeting.  When I see your body relax on my table, hear you lightly snoring, or even see a slight smile on your almost sleeping face, I know I have done my job.  It is more rewarding than I knew it could be.

6. Don’t they all “shock the judges”?  So, why did you really post the clip?  And when can it stop?

7. She WILL show up to something if it’s free won’t she?

1. And stop liking/commenting on things from 3 months ago.  Girl, pick up the phone and say "Hi".

8. Erin Biddle-Sirop and I used to pound the pavement like feminist warriors.  Teammates.  Rebels.  Listening to the best music ever.  I just found a mix tape, and I’m going IN.

9. I see you using Instagram for porn.  I’m not judging you.  I just want you to know that I see you.

10. I’m taking a break from all social media.  I’m taking a break from all social media.  I’m taking a break from all social media.  I’m taking a break from all social media.  I’m taking a break from all social media.  I’m taking a break from all social media. 

1. I had to type it out a few times to make it sound true to myself.  It is unhealthy in a lot of ways.  I like music with instructions in it.  I’ve been pretty damn happy recently, and I’d like to follow what The System said in, I believe, 1987.  “Don’t Disturb This Groove”.  I won’t be deleting any profiles, and there are some things already scheduled to be posted, but these will be done by the end of the week.  I may even take a picture and file it somewhere.  Who knows?  I’m unsure what my rules are just yet.

 

2. I may write a bit.  None of this can be done without remarking that I will miss checking in on the people and things I care about in that way we all do on social media.  I will even miss the people and things we outwardly say we don’t care about, but continue to stalk.  I don’t care what you ate for dinner, or what your Christmas tree looks like, but sometimes I actually do.  There’s the battle.  So, who wins here?  I don’t know how long the break will be or what I will learn.  The “Hey, I can quit anytime I want” speech that most addicts give is all I hope to test for now.

3. If you need me, I’ll be available via email (remember that old nugget) at jjamesj@gmail.com or you could actually call me…if you have yet to block my phone number.

                                               i.     “If you need me, me and Neil will be hanging out with the dream king.” 

Central Park and other reasons to remove your blouse in winter

I think about the honest moments to create.  Then I realize I’m trying to create a moment, thus negating the honesty I wanted that moment to have.   I even found four different ways to type the previous two sentences.  I typed them, then deleted, then tried the next.  I also just lied.  I only found 2 ways, but I still tried. 

So much that we do (almost too much) is postured and planned.  Navigation is tricky and does require some thought.  The spontaneity of things is what grows less and less nowadays.  I can picture it in my head.  Even if it’s as simple as a thought of me sitting in a field in the middle of summer, my shirt off, my shoes off, playing with a blade of grass as it wraps around the bass of an imperfect flower.  My pants are grey, possibly linen.  I’ve taken my sunglasses off.  They are resting on my shirt, which gives the appearance of being folded while lying on the grass next to me.  The glasses were removed to closer inspect the supposed natural flaws of this beautiful (to me) flower.  I see a photograph of this moment in my head.  I conjure it.  I smell the flower so vividly, I am can almost put it into words (I often have trouble describing the smell of something good.  Words leave me.).  This moment happens by chance.  It is the perfect (again, to me) August day.  A Tuesday, perhaps, after a visit to my therapist on the Upper East Side, walking back through Central Park and the sun and the spirit and the heat and the joy and the emptying and filling up of it all moved me to lie in a field and take my shirt off to feel the sun beating down on my back and neck. 

Because I have conjured this and downloaded it to my biological hard drive, does that mean I have fallen victim to the posturing if I choose to recreate the beautiful photograph from my head next August?  I don’t believe so.  It is not posturing.  This is all too fast.  This world.  This technology.  These feelings.  How did that happen, by the way?  Is there that much technology and fast-paced flashiness, that our feelings have had to become more fleeting just to make due/amends with the barrage of passwords, and file sizes, and domain names, and security codes, and electricity that we must take in from around us? 

So maybe I’m just taking notes so I don’t forget.  That’s what notes are for.  If I choose to recreate this beautiful (to me) photograph next summer, I will be sure to let you know.  I will also be sure not to let myself think I’m forcing something, or posing for something or someone else.  And if I continue to be aware of these things, and take my notes (photographs in my brain), and do my homework (dealing with the electricity), who knows where I’ll be when the spirit moves me?  Secretly, I’m hoping to end up lying in a field in Central Park with my shirt off, looking at or for the perfect imperfect flower in my grey linen pants in the middle of a snowstorm this winter.