love awfully

today marks the beginning of the phase of active barfing. she watched me leap from my seat and sprint up the stairs and called after me to see if i was okay. oh, mama, oh, mama. she perched on the tubside to my left and softly touched my shoulder. it's okay, mama. it's okay. i think i frightened her and her reassurance was only partly mine. it all came rushing back as it came rushing up. extended breakfast hours spent trying to keep something, anything down, him outside the door, yelling, yelling, yelling. next time maybe you won't be so quick to spread your legs. hope it feels good.
this is different. it is not 1996.
i don't know why i trusted him. i need to talk to him today. i need to make it stark that i am finished trusting him, that i'm sorry i did so in the first place. things need to be more in my hands. history taught me and i blatantly ignored. foolish me.
the movie was terrific crap, but i spent most of its 2 hours near tears. damn hormones; how they're melting me. how can i represent the dominant sex when i can't keep it together for more than five minutes?
the movie was sappy and saccharine and overthetop, but it made me think about love, generally, and in the many ways it more specifically totters through my life.
his 26th birthday. i don't know what's happened to us. i think i had an illusion of our closeness. i demolished our relationship and, upon resurrection, began realizing that much of what impacted me most strongly about him was probably never there. i am realizing that most of him i don't really know. and that's threatening. i'll never understand his intentions.
i have worries for the summer. we are not effective communicators from afar. i think, in some ways, our relationship is the opposite of theirs, which frightens me a bit. one shoulder-occupant says to stop fretting about something that's months away, largely intangible. the other says that anticipatory time permits prevention. argh.
cold, cold, cold, cold, cold. i've become such a winter pussy. i would never have thought this cold in montana, would never have noted the heaviness of my coat. it would have to be many degrees colder.
we want to go ice skating. maybe before he leaves again.
ice skating with him in new york was incredible, when we still had a bond, exactly 3 years ago, after we'd stuffed ourselves silly with his family, after i'd fallen in love with his family and their unpretentious ways. he was so good. and she was such a complainer, such a petty freak, the way she can often be, unable to seriously consider skating anywhere but an outdoor pond, offended by the commercial enterprise of her beloved childhood activity. he and i had fun without her and, for a moment, i thought we had something lasting. i don't know what happened. i crossed a line. he adopted a preferred personality. and we slowly drifted out of each other's lives.
he wrote me and shocked me last night. i didn't expect to find his name in my inbox or click to view his uneducated, very him, writing on my screen. he doesn't seem concerned about deployment. but he's never open with me unless i have him in front of me, bonding with me, for a good hour or more. then he'll relax, then he'll start to tell me what he really thinks and feels. it must be so hard for him now, trying to hide the real him from everyone around him. it must be so hard for him now to have to constantly match the machismo, to never be able to admit that he really, one day, wants to be a dad, and a good one, a husband, and the best kind. that he really believes in love, that he craves love more than idle fucking. he must feel so alone. before he was transferred and he was here to visit, i caught a glimmer of the real him, which he had carefully tucked away to protect from the judgmental eyes of his friends. his friends who i wanted in body bags just to keep them away from him. he is so impressionable. and, even if he's an adult, i don't think he should get to choose his friends. he can't pick anything but the worst. i want to establish some sort of ongoing communication, at least until he leaves. i want to be a safe place for him again, like i was that night when he finally decided to stop drinking himself sick and sit down to face me seriously, to recreate us outside the common ground. it's been almost 2 years. maybe we can have a quickie electronic recreation that's worth enough for me to be his outlet at least as long as he's still here. god, it scares me. i don't want to read his stats in the paper.
he's on my lap, nudging my arms, demanding love. and other more mundane tasks are screaming to be done. i need to call her. and i need to eat. again.

not black, but gray and drizzly friday

so sick. mornings are growing increasingly less bearable, which makes me think two, two, two and what the hell am i doing.
giving of myself, testing my soul.
i hope our stilted conversation signifies nothing more than our not being accustomed to phone communication and my being completely exhausted. i hope it's not a window into this summer. or beyond. i just remember the six-week hiatus and the single phone call that seemed to disappoint him and prevent him from trying again. and i hope we can get to a better place telephonically.
physicality can't be all we are.
what will he do at the end of the summer? where will we be and how?
i dreamt about it last night: him, me, future, commitment, projection. it was a disaster. reality, please be more merciful. love can be such a greedy thing, its gauzy motivations so self-serving.
she says she's barely making it on our salary and her only steady bills are rent (400 less than mine), cable and cell phone. kinda makes me feel better about my situation. though not much.
bills are piling up that can't be paid for two more weeks. groceries are depleting that can't be replaced in as long. i make it by and i'm thankful for that, but i'm not doing so stresslessly. i need to find a better way to deal with the two of us financially. mostly, i think i need a steady second job. or i need to write and sell.
black friday: everyone's shopping today. even if the notion of plunging into holiday crowds didn't inspire me to hermit myself misanthropically away in the woods, i wouldn't be able to buy anything anyway. $30 only goes so far. how is it that i was living with greater ease before i had a job?
my subconscious echoes the escapism i am seeking. i want to flee this country before the commercialization gets too heavy. i don't want to be here for the holiday madness. i am such a fucking scrooge. i don't want to see any of it, the frantic shoppers buying shit no one wants or needs, charging it to their department store accounts, the pseudo-cheer forcefully cloaking the stress of the season, the child molester santas charging 20 bucks to grope kids' asses while they smirk behind phony beards at the camera. i need to get away from this place. i need to get out of this town. it's been too long since i was on a plane. i need to escape substantially more than once a year. for that to happen, i need my rock to sell. or my writing to complete and improve itself, then sell.
time alone with her is exacerbating my swarthmore fever. we need to get out for a bit together. i dreamt last night of a newer jaunt to barcelona. only it wasn't just the two of us and i was less financially sound than before. but we were away. and it made all the difference. i need him back in my life as my guardian angel, lining my pockets, issuing some security. the apron strings weren't hard for me to sever; they never did much for me anyway. his purse strings' disappearance has been a bigger blow. i love what he did for me, the opportunities he allowed, but i somewhat resent his instilling a false sense of stability, which disintegrated promptly on june 1.
nearly 8 months and almost to the point at which things began to fly to shit with him, under similar circumstances, though with even fewer resources and at a younger age, a more childish stage. maybe this time things won't fly apart. it's so hard to be on the other side of my six-year defense: more smitten with him than vice versa.
i hope he completed his exam so he can come play with me for part of the day, though i don't know what we'll do. rent free movies while he drinks beer and i muse and stuff my face to stave off nausea. he wants to take us out, but i cringe at the thought of his paying. he has expenses of his own, and no job. in montana, making 2g's a month would be heaven. i'd have savings AND disposable income. but, in montana, there's minimal research, so i'd likely be out of a job, waitressing at 4B's, serving him coffee and pie when he visited his grubby friends and came in late and high with unbearable munchies. and i would just gamble next door all the time, hoping to strike it rich and consequently losing all my meager money. 12.50 an hour is more than many people make. I don't know how they live.
anna quindlen had a strong argument and a good point, but i don't know what difference it's going to make. maybe exposure is the first stage of solution, but i wanted it overtly, explicitly detailed, a powerpoint presentation of how to change our world, close the gap. if i weren't feeling poor, would i care?
god, i hope so.
his number on my caller id. it has been so long. i need to track him down and reconnect. i need to experience us now and see what's changed. we haven't seen each other since he scarved me against the wind on the way to the crimson moon.
date with her today to see a movie i don't particularly care about seeing, but it gets me out of the house, out of my head. date with her this afternoon to see him and admire how he's grown since the spring, hear his first year tales, simultaneously envy his intellectual stimulation and relish the fact that i don't have his mounds of work.
maybe he'll call tonight and we'll be better together. maybe he'll be less reserved and i'll be less sensitive and sleepy. maybe he won't and i'll finish my book and force myself to write. or maybe he'll be here and i'll fall asleep in the middle of our conversation and apologize all over myself because i am becoming crappy company.

thankstaking

i wonder what they're doing today. five years since i've given thanks holt-style. i wonder if they even bother to cook anymore or if they succumb to chaos and ignore conventional tradition as they do with other special occasions..and pretty much everything else.
she's rammy. holiday does for her what crack cocaine does for others. she can't stop jittering.
i wish he'd come down to feast with us. i can't shake the image of him alone in his cramped room, surrounded by dense briefs, eating cold turkey from a rumpled brown sack. i'm not one for overdoing holidays, but i wish it were like last year, minus the barfing. i wish he were here laughing with me, bullshitting with me, mocking the world with me. i could use a dose of his brand of refreshment. i don't know when i'll see him next. maybe he'll let us visit him and offend his pretentious classmates in the spring. when i'm good and massive and he can rub my big belly and be baffled.
it's two, i think. i suspect his karmic notion's correct. they refused to do the ultrasound yesterday and i shot daggers at the nurse that she mumbled in my ear would have had her curled bleeding on the floor if they'd been real. i momentarily pined for the mutant power of shooting shards of sharpened steel from my eyeballs. our population might experience a sudden, rapid thinning. and she suggested i get annoyed easily.
this holiday is for them, reeling in my tummy, begging for more food. they will love today's indulgence. today's purpose is purportedly to give thanks, but i intend to take and take and take and cram every ounce of my taking into my drooling, edacious orifice.
she told me yesterday about their play at school, what her teacher tried to convince her was the true story of thanksgiving, the multilated history she digested: pilgrims and indians were good friends, mama. such bastardization. perhaps i should write the teacher and offer my services for a quick lesson in reality: killin injuns 101.
i wanted to watch him yesterday as he boarded his plane and got worked up, wanted to watch him grinning at the idea of opening his downloaded files and playing loud moaning to his appalled but remarkably aroused fellow passengers. i wanted to watch him greeting his parents, interacting, dealing with himself alone in the dark of their quiet house. i wanted him here today because, damn, the puzzle was hard and i ached for him alongside me, replacing my hand with himself. i like to feel him coming inside me now: a definite perk. like him surging hotly into me, dripping coolly from me, like my body liquifying similarly beneath his.
thanks that i have are for making it through my days, paying my bills, if barely. i have a job, though i loathe it, where so many people don't. thanks that i have are for my bubbly, brilliant baby. she is such a shining ray in my life, years later still my major motivation. thanks that i have are for the strength i've acquired through the muddling puddle of my world. he calls my life a soap opera, says he loves to hear from me because i've forever got interesting bits to report, and i appreciate the incessantly emerging intrigue of my realm. thanks that i have are for their presence in my life, the surrogate backbone they so frequently provide. when i need support, they're mostly ready to offer it, unprejudiced, which is massive. thanks that i have are for his presence in my world, all the firsts he's brought me over the last almost 8 months, all the nexts that are to come, all the distilled pleasure, all the swimming confusion, all the repeated reassurance, all the bedhead, bodyheat mornings. falling in love with him has allowed me things i thought i'd never have, because i thought i wasn't capable; i couldn't be gladder that he's proven me wrong. thanks that i have are for the sun shining against the cold blue sky today, the grittiness of the pear skin stuck in my teeth, the purring of the sleek one and the froofy one cuddled near my seat, the reliable blue bullet parked behind my apartment, the unabashed outpouring she'll have for us later today, the jokes he'll crack, the way he'll relentlessly tease me and make me laugh myself to tears, the size and quirkiness of a family that i love madly despite the distance, the newfound speed of my internet connection, the warm laundry spilling from my dryer, the intense bonds i feel to him and him and him and her and him and her, anna quindlen's article this week and the way it made me think, this blog and the people who dutifully read it, the options for 2005.
so much unrecognized gratitude, so much good in my oft bemoaned universe. i'm thankful for today and its inspiration to dive down and dredge it up, for the opportunity to take it out and place it. this is something i should explore beyond november, beyond vague notions of gratitude for abundance and opportunity. the subtleties have such power.

hungry hungry hell

i must resolve not to peer at the backs of things i'm eating. i can't be bothered with caloric content; it's not my fault that i scarf. i'm growing baby (babies). lasagne last night and ugh. i was truly convinced that, within moments, i would emit an uncontrollable, unending gush of steaming, chunky vomit all over him, me, the cats. face stuck in a cup, waiting to hurl and this is totally voluntary.
i'm glad for my spearmint chewies. i need about 12 pounds.
i don't want anything with flavor. chocolate is aversive today. peanut butter, too. and cheese, fruit, spices. i want everything so bland, so dry, so useless. i want everything devoid of substance to go down quickly and absorb the waves. watch me start eating the papers on my desk.


i wrote so much and it was somehow deleted. what the fuck? perhaps i'll have energy to post again later. presently, i'm too deflated.

infant, child, adult, dead.

he's so feeble, so awkward. he hugged me and leaned his musky, soft, loose skin into me to kiss my face and i couldn't help slightly recoiling. i don't know what it is with me and old people. since she died, i've been unrelentingly bothered by them. they are decaying life. she was decaying life, but i didn't see it at the time. all i saw was an old, lonely woman who couldn't do much for herself, who loved telling me stories and asking me about girl scouts and school, someone who always had some little treat to offer me, never got annoyed with my incessant coming around to plop on her plush and dusty antique furniture. then i walked through her wrought iron gate, bounded past her roses (the same ones i stole to dry in containers only to find, months later, that they hadn't dried but rotted fittingly) and ant-infested peonies to shove my stubby finger into the familiarly chimey bell beside her intricately carved front door. and no one. three days later, her face was in the paper. she had died. and i avoided the house i'd loved, walked the other way around the block, didn't want to think of her just suddenly not talking, staring, the way she sometimes did, only dead, not just pausing to recollect herself.
ugh. i'll bet her body reeked.
they're getting old, too. it's been so long since he didn't have a full head of white-ish hair. his back is bothering him. he's having trouble seeing. he's decaying as much as he's denying. she's getting old. i wonder what she looks like now, how much saltier her dark fro must be by now. i haven't seen her in so long. it must be hard for her to age. she used to talk about the things she'd do when she was an old woman. i wonder if it's dawned on her that it's time to start them soon.
she will never have an old mother. at least not one she regards as particularly old. by the time i'm old, she'll be on her way out, too. maybe we'll be friends. maybe we'll have stayed friends all along or will by that time have resolved any differences we'd had. maybe we'll go for perms and blue-dyes together. maybe we'll have little ratdogs to tote around together.
more likely, we'll subvert old womanhood. we'll be rambunctious and ridiculous. we will dye our hair the brightest blue, not just spritz ourselves with the conventional faint indigo tinge. we will drink like fiends and paint wildly. we will walk our snarling pit bulls around the park. we will get some wicked tattoos and sing loudly in the street. we will be a riot.
if we're still speaking when we're old.
he said he thinks mothers and daughters have more conflict than do fathers and sons. he thinks that, for whatever reason, fathers and sons can more easily put aside their problems and resolve to interact functionally anyway. i'm not sure i'm entirely convinced. i've seen too many men in their twenties, thirties, forties still begrudging their abusive fathers. our conflict arises from misunderstanding. neither of us particularly appreciates the other, so we simply limit our interaction. she needs me to need her in ways that i don't. or to need a man in my life like she felt she needed a man in her life long after she'd surpassed my age and supposed wisdom. i hope that an enormous rift doesn't suddenly sprout up between us. although i'll never be the old woman who she'll hold to rock to sleep in a chair, i still love the image of love you forever. i still want us to replace the pictures in the book. i still want to consider her my baby when she's 50 and i'm 65.
people do weird things with their aging parents, i think because they're as bothered by old people as i am. no one wants decaying flesh around to look at every day. no one wants the constant reminder that some day it'll be them, going slowly senile, shitting in their depends. no one wants to watch the people who raised them and cared for them for so long deteriorate into creatures unable to care for themselves, so they shut them away in small rooms with pictures of family and collages of tattered magazines and they visit them weekly if they remember and inquire about bingo and wallet-making in the rec room. but probably, for all the discomfort that it would bring me and that it obviously brings others, that's how it's supposed to be: we are supposed to care for our elders when they are no longer able. it's karmic in a way.
i wish i hadn't cringed when his wizened hand touched my face, his wet lips puckered towards my cheek. i wish i'd thought about what he must have been like when he was young, how women may have wanted to date him, what an incredible father of energetic little boys he was, what a strong, sturdy, sexy man. he has not always been so old, so shaky.

complicating relating

there's more honesty, which is something. didn't exactly instill the relief i had expected. conversely, i'm more agitated, more concerned with the desertion qualms than before. "sounds like your dad's in your head," she sighed. not my dad, my life. years i need to transcend. the barrage was more than i could handle. it sent me into a spiral of tearful fears until i found myself utterly immobilized by the heavy future threat. i'm glad they talked to me. i just wish it hadn't been like that, two against one, stultifying.
she told me a story about a head injury today that made me think of his blackened face dangling from the tree. she told me how he fell, how his head sounded on the linoleum floor below and it made me think of his skull echoing against the pavement when he dropped from the tree. i remembered feeling frantic, grabbing his ankles and jerking them as hard as i could. all i could think was that he needed to get out of the tree. he needed to not die hanging limply before the other two. he was fine, or mostly, though it took awhile for him to completely find himself again. it doesn't sound as though this will be the case for her friend, who is currently comatose.
he asked me today if i was writing. "at an impasse." my generic response, which means nothing to me or anyone else. just my way of avoiding acknowledging that i really have an incredible amount to do and that i am mostly ignoring it.
i should call him. not because he'll motivate me, but because i wonder about him, how he's doing, if he's still en route to a degree, or if he's abandoned the pursuit altogether. he will understand the need for a fabricated obstacle. and maybe the commiseration will inspire me out of my slump, maybe recognizing glaringly in him what i'm denying in myself will be enough of a kick in the ass. i should call him. i miss being closer friends.
it's funny that i wrote about marriage. i used to never think about marriage. relationships of all flavors are fascinating me lately. maybe because i'm bristling at tastes of my friends', identifying interactions i definitely do not want. i do not want to be in a marriage that i find unfulfilling enough to make every man who walks through my door while my husband is away too enticing to avoid coquettishly toying with them. i do not want to be in a relationship in which there is a chronic power struggle like theirs, which i imagine marriage would only exacerbate. i do not want to be in a marriage with someone who can't meet my multi-dimensional cravings, with someone who sates me solely in bed.
i used to never have a vision of myself as a married woman. increasingly, the image seems less foreign, less aversive and this is a somewhat disconcerting awareness.
he seems happy with his marriage, even if he's frustrated by his child, even if his wife works late and long hours, is absent 90% of the time. just one more thing to admire about him. such optimism. i wish i had half.
she called today to inquire and wanted to say congratulations, but stopped short and asked me what she was supposed to say. she doesn't feel congratulations are in order because she doesn't think i should be on this path. she talked about her pregnancies, how deflated she felt after each birth, how hard it was for her to get back on her feet, to feel stabilized, full. she said she fell apart having her babies outside her body. she imagined the summer will suck for me. and she offered her support.
i am so lucky.
he told me to be more appreciative, less bitchy as we laughed over the egregious letter and he twittered with glee for having brought it over to show me. he told me i need to realize what it takes for a man to stick around through my nuttiness. he told me i needed to remember what a huge burden this would be for any partner.
but he said he liked my abnormality and cited my uterus as an example. i will be mindful of treading heavily on him. but i must also be mindful of those two small words, five letters, eight strokes.
she's angsty today, craving attention. i need to find a better way of relating. she is the center of my world. resentment at the core could only rot the rest.
he's angsty, too, though i don't know what inspired it. resumed consistent communication, reminiscing, something. i can't imagine. i can only eagerly await whatever he has to say and hope that he'll feel comfortable saying it, hope that he'll see that i'm not interested in awkwardness or hard feelings, that they have never been part of my plan....

knot tying.

i need to find a functional way to tell them. i feel like they should know. maybe i'll wait 8 more weeks, end of the first trimester, when the baby will be more solidly present in both my body and my mind. i just don't need their negativity.
she crawled into my lap over sticky waffles this early morning and her thin, long limbs had me yearning for her pudgy babyhood, which disappeared so quickly, so sneakily. i wish i'd believed people when they told me that she would grow up fast. looking through baby albums, pictures of her small and red and newly born, pictures of her months-old and pudgy and chuckling, pictures of me exhausted, unkempt, struggling: such an incredible lot has vanished.
i told him about this space, which contradicts my original intent. i didn't want him to know about these ravings because i didn't want him to have to deal so constantly with my ceaseless outpourings. i was sorry for telling him because my detailings haven't always been nice and i furiously fluttered watching him focus on the entries, watching him read about himself. but i'm glad i told him because it caused some immediate clarification, because he told me he wants to know what's going on inside me, he wants to know what i'm thinking and feeling. as if that's not forever dripping off my sleeve.
and he wants to help. he said he'd been thinking that he needed to change things anyway.
he is so good to me and so surprisingly so. just when i expect he'll be really pissed. my only hope is that he isn't squelching his own ire or irritation to appease me and help me get to a better place.
i'm going to have to vigilantly work to not alter my sentiments because i know his eyes will see this.
the big article on marriage this morning in the week in review section of the paper reminded me of much of david meyers work on the satisfaction and gratification of community, partnerships, fulfilling interpersonal interactions. marriage rates are declining while the divorce rates among those who bother to marry are climbing. marriage has lost most of its significance, if it ever had much, and is now a pretty feebly regarded institution. it's so disposable to pledge your life and heart and soul to someone only to, with the protection of your well-written prenup, rescind on the whole deal weeks, months, years later. we are such an intensely individualized and hedonistic culture. if something isn't immediately pleasurable to the individual, there's always another wife or husband just around the corner. instead of investing the time and energy and gray hairs in the struggle to make things work, it's a whole lot easier (and socially respected, now) to simply can your spouse and hop on match.com to find a replacement. how damn depressing. not that i'm not glad for the possibility of divorce. there are certainly instances in which it is completely warranted.
but i don't want a divorce. when i marry, i want to marry for life. i want to commit myself to the person i'm with for good. if i don't think something is forever, or has great potential to last that long, i won't bother with i do. because i don't want a throw-away marriage. i don't want to recycle through a second, third, fourth husband. something about that just doesn't seem right. for better or worse, when i commit, i want to do it wholly, selflessly and honestly. i want the union to be about that: a union, something that impacts, involves and influences the lives, desires, actions, investments of two people, not one. perhaps it's naive or archaic, but i want to marry because i've found something in which i want to actively encourage lastingness, because i've found fulfillment, companionship, love.
i wish i could say that i thought they truly loved each other, but i don't. i think they have spatterings of affection. i think they mostly tolerate each other for the sake of making it through another day. i do think they need each other, whatever that means. i do know that they're committed to each other, at least insofaras they've remained married. she might be having an affair. if that comes to light, it will change my attempts to rose-color aspects of what is otherwise, i think, a mostly undesirable union. she has checked out of the marriage, for the most part, but that stems from having lost so much of herself in it so soon after their first encounter and for so long. now that she can't distract herself with babies and has grown tired of her older, less overtly needy children, she needs something else, something more, a gaping escape hatch from the dingy reality of her home life, her fragmented, tenuous, conflictual partnership. i don't want that to be me. i don't want to suffer in denial only to wake up twentyplus years later and realize i'm truly miserable, that not only do i not truly love my partner, i actually detest him and resent everything about him...from the way he flosses his teeth to the way he smells in bed.
i woke this morning slightly nauseated, needing to eat. this baby (babies) is (are)such a voracious one (s). feed me, feed me, feed me. i don't think he ever gets enough to eat. i'm not actively vomiting, which is pleasant and unexpected. i hope it lasts. there's nothing, NOTHING, worse than puking first thing in the morning.
waterfall today. i need to just hold her hand and walk.

freudian disaster

"seems like i answer this question all the time." he looked away, stonily, the way he does when he's irritated with me, when he's trying not to get pissed. i guess he does. i guess i fish. most of the time, i don't know where it comes from, this sinking feeling of utter doom. maybe we're together too much. maybe it has to do with starting to type in my blog address and instead finding www.adultfriendfinder.com, which can only bode negatively for our relational future. maybe it comes from my knowledge of pregnancy and its physiology and his inexperience. maybe my past with the man whose baby i was actually having has colored my anticipation of how this man, whose baby i am not having, will respond to this pregnancy. i don't know why i squirm so not securely. i'm a catch. by now, i should know that.
he can't contain himself in the presence of others; he urgently needs to impress them with his chivalrous ways, with how utterly, dumbfoundingly helpful he is, how lucky i am to have him. here, different story. i guess that's how it goes. people are only authentic when they're comfortable; possibly, though, i've allowed for too much comfort...possibly, i've suggested such low-maintenance that he feels no compulsion to do anything. which would make it my fault.
i need. i need. i need. i need. i need to inegrate two small words more intimately and immediately into my lexicon.
the article flipped me out, i have to admit that, even if it makes me feel crazy. am i not supposed to read the paper, for fear of finding something in it that suddenly destabilizes my entire existence? should i avoid all written word to ensure that there's no inclination that this could not be the scenario that calls for a weird little dwarf, skipping through my bedroom, nudging our intertwined naked legs to call our attention to his brightly lettered sign: happily ever after...? and although i want to be stable and although i realize that i don't need him to make my life complete, i might find it somewhat crushing to realize this has all been a big figment. or rather crushing. my vulnerability sky rockets and my stability inversely plummets.
oh, that they were less negatively related.
last night in my mind he parked the car and left me among marauders to be gang-raped or worse. last night, he shut the door and walked away and his face morphed into another's. last night, i didn't know how not to scramble, especially with all of them, leering, drooling, hungry, prying at the doors and windows. i was too alone, too outnumbered.
terribly transparent. freud would tear my ass to shreds.
bit barfy today, especially later in the afternoon when i hadn't eaten in some time. sensational sex, though, despite the symptoms. crossing my fingers that this lasts, that i'm similarly sexy and sexable as my belly swells.
he emailed me to tell me that he loves me and trusts me and is somewhat accusatory, but glad i'm having his baby. my telltale heart is beating out of my chest. i need to find a good, safe route towards outright honesty.

double vision

it wasn't a blue-line kind of test. it was a one or two line kind of test. and there were two. i could have sworn i was hallucinating. that was not what i'd revved myself up for, not what i'd expected. no more purgatorial pondering. but, lord, i'm knocked up again and numbers are not yet clear.
i am having flashbacks. this is motivating memories that i wasn't aware i had. like cramps with him in his geo metro that i called his marshmallow car, the one that smelled perpetually of taco grease and too much air freshener masking chronic chronic. like buckling over from the pain, thinking i was about to bleed something crazy, demanding he find me midol and fast only to, two weeks later, not bleed and wonder what the hell was going on.
the same purple-handled white plastic urine stick. the same result. and suddenly i wasn't in her bathroom, comforted by the fact that they do love and care about me. suddenly i was alone. in the musty mall bathroom, inhaling stale air as i counted down the three minutes it took for my piss to creep across the panels, display the ominous result. suddenly, i was lurching in the stained toilet, banging against the door of the stall, unable to dam the flood down my face, racing back to the music store to find him and tell him the unwanted news. suddenly, i needed something to hold onto, because i needed him not to be slamming his face into his steering wheel and screaming obscenities in my head.
this will be a journey. i knew that, but didn't expect this. i didn't expect to go all ptsd when it started to be real. i didn't expect everything inside me to blur and race and threaten me so much.
what will he do? this is such a bizarre test of our strength. he seemed excited, but i can't speculate about its longevity. i can only hope it lasts. which is a somewhat ridiculous hope. this could potentially prove incredibly informative. an unexpected, unconventional window into later.
she: medication? her teacher seems to think it necessary. she says the behaviors are inhibiting and that it's a disservice for me to remain inert, convinced that the problems stem solely from her bombastic and loveable personality, convinced medication will drastically and undesirably alter the development of her beautiful brain. not performing to potential, she said, look, she has learned almost nothing since the year started. it's not that she can't. it's that she's too distracted.
whattodowhattodowhattodo...................?
i could call him and talk, but he only depresses me, aggravates me until i wish i'd been born under a different star, different time and place, different life.
i'd so much rather sleep, dream, set my vision straight, dispense of inner shock and awe.

nebulous

last night, we fell asleep to what he called improv gamelan pinging against my windowpane. this morning i woke to the purring of his uberaffectionate cat above my head, feeling him erect against me, snoring, wanting to linger, languid, wrap him cozily and groggily around me for the rest of the day, but she had to get to school and, well, this job. arizona or nyc, he asked, would i be willing to relocate to either, he imagined not, but what kind of dodgy, quasi-meaningful question is that? he said no reason, just wondering, just thought he'd ask. sometimes i need to be the drill on pi boring into his brain, extracting the mystical compound that makes him say his characteristic unexpected, unelaborated bits. this morning he told her to have a good day and hugged her while he thanked her for her note of two days ago, the note that rocked my world. she loves him. and i need an impenetrable bubble, a masters of the universe forcefield to suddenly descend, for everyone's sake.
today is one of reckoning. i'm trying not to anticipate. i'm trying not to care. he said he'd come back to be there for the results. another unexpected sweetness. blue line or no, the sun will rise tomorrow. i can't get swallowed by possibility. and tonight will be an interesting 20 minutes of insight into her academic and social persona, which could be fulfilling or devastating. again, wonder is worthless.
michael jackson. is anyone shocked? all that should be remarkable is that it's taken this long. ten years and how many boys after the first accusation..................every time i think of him, i can't shake the image of her first sighting, his face, moldy with fearsome facial hair, mangled from too much scalpel sculpting, filling the front page of a tabloid in the grocery store. so vivid: her gasping, pointing, wide-eyed, what IS that? he is some piece of work.
eminem. generally, i'm quite the fan. i love his '97 bonnie and clyde, superman, stan. he elicits some lovely controversy and, although he plays it for all it's worth, there is something to be said for that. and no one can dispute the fact that his lyrics, brimming with double, triple, quadruple entendres (however offensive), are pure brilliance. although i find the recently released lyrics from his less talented past nothing short of utterly abhorrent, there's a sympathetic twinge. lord knows i've done some shameful things.
we're supposed to have so much of it, shame. sex is supposed to be shameful and secretive. we're supposed to blush at lascivious remarks. we're supposed to abide by the cultural spectrum of acceptable behaviors and attitudes and attire. women are supposed to be coy, quiet, captive sexual beings. not loudly roar, not come like freight trains, not post personal ads overtly requesting males interested in lengthy, mindblowing cunnilingus. outrageous expressions are supposed to be shameful. we are supposed to walk on eggshells, careful not to piss anyone off, careful not to trod on any special interest groups. the prism of instilled shame twists according to special interest group, but it's all essentially the same: shame for eating animals, shame for wearing wool, shame for asian fetishes, shame for voting republican, shame for being too leftist with waist-length dreads and little career direction, shame for the extra ten pounds, shame for superficially trying to shed them, shame for being assertive or unkind, shame for being too submissive, shame for wanting to fuck your boss, shame for doing it, shame for driving the six blocks to work, shame for laughing at racial humor, shame for wrinkles and gray hair, shame for drinking too heavily, dancing too provocatively, laughing too hysterically, needing too desperately.
but what if everyone were shameless?
must be a middle ground somewhere.
she did a lovely job this morning, but scrambled to keep up with them as they ran over with notions of masochism and alcoholism and sexism: the boys talked loudly about booze and porn while the girls talked more somberly about appreciating physical pain. she was not where they were and she didn't know how to get there, so she squelched them, new topic, because she didn't know how to help them. i thought maybe that i could. i thought maybe what they really needed was not a bulging book full of curricula specifically designed to heighten their life satisfaction. maybe they just need someone to listen. maybe they just need someone to care, someone who won't freak out when their ideas seem askew, someone who will just listen and accept them for who they are: fourteen and trying to find a foothold.
knocked up needs to be completed. knocked up needs to be more powerful. knocked up needs to scream loudly to the world. and it needs a male counterpart, which might be the next project. observing these kids, for all their obnoxious ways, for all their feeble attempts to be revered by their peers, for all their disgruntled rejection of education, might prove a more useful tool than i'd thought.

P: Porn, Precision, Pressure, Promise.

he called me a P in an email today by way of explaining the scattered nature of my world. which is probably as accurate as anything i may have wagered. i am scattered and nonsensical and mostly incoherent, but it's unlikely to change so i'm left with little to do but embrace it. he said he felt old, too old, and it pained me. i remember big wheeling with him down the dusty dirt of lynn road, climbing over fences with no trespassing signs, feeling free and adventurous, alive. i remember stealing vegetables from the backyard neighbor's garden, eating them in the doghouse, tingling with guilt but loving the green pepper membranes' slickness in our hands. i remember late-night tag, freely frolicking around our block and those immediately surrounding. i remember mystery at marple manor on the commodore 64, when we weren't yet ultra-involved in academics, but still enjoyed a little neural stimulation. i remember starting high school, needing him. i remember how they teased him because they couldn't believe i was his sister. we were such opposites. and yet, for all my social gregariousness, for all my adorable 14 year-old looks, i desperately needed his support, his approval, his reassurrance that high school wasn't the disaster that it seemed. (but it was) i remember waterslides and shared instability and waking up to find his guilty hands on my tits. because sometimes i guess it's hard to be 16 and not want your sister. i remember when he left. and how i felt like he was the one of the horde with whom i was closest. for all our conflict, the realization was somewhat chilling. we had so much, so little in common. it's hard to think of him as grown up. but then it's often hard to think of myself as grown up. it saddens me to think that he feels old. i know what old feels like and i can imagine it only gets worse. i want him to feel young and free. i want him back in the days of running without caring around the familiar lawns. but i don't really know if he was ever so careless as i. he was always more concerned with the world and its consequences than impulsive i could ever manage to be. which, in part, is why he'll have an income and i'll spend my existence chasing pipe dreams, wishing to be something that i'm not, something that no one else can totally understand.
watching mounds of melony breasts and thrusting, shaven cunts last night on his computer made me wonder what has happened to our world that all things sexual have to exist under this shroud of artifice, that no one really wants the real thing, that the real thing has to be altered to be palatable, it has to be plasticized and controlled, it has to be hyperbolized beyond belief, it has to be morphed into something so fantastical that no one could really take it seriously. and this we view to get ourselves off, barbied-out anatomy.
like he told me, gruffly, when he complained that he didn't understand my generation and its pornography infatuation, it really doesn't make sense. it's visual stimulation, certainly, and that i understand because it gets me going, too, but it's completely fictional. which i suppose is a slice of the intrigue. it's safely dripping.
gray again today, but warm. i can't figure out how to dress her. i feel like such a shoddy mother, dragging her out of the house to meet the bus in a flimsy hoodie when it's frigid and dragging her out bundled to her eyeballs when it's warm. one might think i would learn to check the air before clothing her. i need to get more precise in my life. nothing is ever straightforward, nothing is ever clear. i rarely know my trajectory, even as i'm speeding, stumbling, staggering down it.
so much pressure about money and success and finding where i fit, which has always been my problem. i'm such a misshapen cog. and indecisive, which isn't going to work. i must decide by wintry senescence's end. i must start thinking about quantifying my intelligence all over again by filling in scannable bubbles on pricey paper. i must start thinking about the fact that i am sorta old and that i do need a path, that the pressure isn't entirely misplaced. someone's gotta pay the bills and she's not legally allowed to do it. i need to take lessons from him on how not to be such a pervasive P, lemme have a little J somewhere in my life, just long enough to get things straight.
looking toward the future always makes me cringe because hypotheticals, as we've established, are the ruin of me. somewhere there's promise, even though the economy's in shambles and the educational system is a joke and she will never learn anything of any value if i leave it entirely up to them, even though i don't know two years from now where i'll be or who i'll be or how i'll be and i don't know what will become of us, when all i want right now is the promise of happily ever after: that fairy tale tease that must occasionally come true. i want to know that something, anything is global, stable. i crave some sense of certainty in my choices. the road not taken. i just don't want to be forever looking backward, turning my enjoyment of life to a crumbling pillar of salt that will disintegrate and disperse purposelessly at the slightest breath of wind.

acerbic

i am setting up this blog from my office, where i've been reeling all day, struggling against the increasing pressure of stomach lining in my throat. the taste of bile is getting rather old. he blogged for awhile and his words made me roll my eyes, but my frustrated sighs were louder, oddly, when he removed the blog because he claimed it was too controversial to support his budding career. he feared his blog would become the surreptitiously released steamy sex tape of his universe. and he couldn't bear scrambling hilton-style for defense; although, i suppose it's more legit for him to be concerned than it is for someone like paris. i am sort of dreading thursday and the decisiveness i know the day could demand. i would like the line to be blue so that i don't have to smash and stomp what i've worked so diligently and delicately to erect. i would like the line to be blue because i would like to see her face when i show her what my urine's done, even if the blue-line future might prove fraught for our relationship and maybe increasingly stressful for me. transcendence. that's what i told him when i explained the whole scenario. that's what i'll have to locate somewhere inside the muddle of my motivations. there is a reason i wanted to do this in the first place. i digress. i have begun this blog to provide myself a sort of masturbatory cathartic forum. i need a space to vent that will therapeutically allow me to approach the current topics of contention without driving him crazy by flowing too furiously into his ears or making myself insane by keeping it bottled until it seeps, i burst. i am too preoccupied today with the imminent results of the test. anticipation always kills me. it's a good thing i'd go straight to hell, if there were such a spot. lingering in purgatory would be the, ha, death of me. like anticipating his departure--he tells me not to worry about it now, it's still so far away, he could get hit by a bus tomorrow and then what would i do? but. the anticipation, the unknown, the potentiality, the big fat fucking Maybe is what does it, probably more than the event itself. thursday, the test will show me a result and i'll respond accordingly. solidly. today, i'm left to wonder about the result and that's what gets me scrambly, leaves me spongily waffling. other points of contention that i'll have to leave today because she called needing my immediate attention:
1. the response to the massachusetts gay marriage decision.
2. this job continues to eat me.
3. this new revelation i have about her orientation, all the articles i've been considering, all the theories that have flitted through my mind without really coalescing.
4. it is so gray, so dank.