and the baby will not be a cat

“I found out today that the baby will be a boy. How do you feel about that?” I ask both of them, but I’m looking at Sophie.

Sophie’s thrilled. “I feel great. I always wanted a brother, especially a teenage brother.”

“He’s going to be a baby, not a teenager.” The default position of motherhood is hope-dasher/porter and splasher of buckets of cold water.

“I know,” she says, “I’m just saying a teenage brother would be perfect. But a baby brother is good too. I’m so excited!”

“Lola, how do you feel about us having a baby boy?” This is quicksand. I can predict the contents of her reaction but not the precise details of her reply. But I know it will be…remarkable.

Lola sighs elaborately. “I really wished we’d get a cat.”

Of course she does. This is going better than I expected. ”But we’re having a baby, not a cat. And F and and I are thinking his name will be Theo. What do you think about that?”

“Theo rhymes with Cleo. How about Cleo?” Lola offers.

“We had a cat named Cleo before you were born, Lola.” Sophie says, helpfully/unhelpfully.

“We’re not naming your brother after a cat,” I say. I’m quite firm about this.

“Then how about Leo?” Lola asks.

Again with the hope-dashing. Mama, thy name is pessimist. “The baby. Is not. A cat.”

————–

Lola has since reconciled herself, delightfully and with great anticipation, to the species of baby that will soon populate our home and our lives. Now she greets people not with “Hello!” but with “My mommy has a baby in her tummy and it’s a BOY!”

August 16, 2011 | filed under: Love, Uncategorized | tweet it, baby

6 people have we need you too.

know thy purpose

I looked into the face of faith – and grief - and it was beautiful.

And it was awful.

It is awful. Indescribably.

But she -  a family friend and mother of a young man who drowned last week at a lake just 50 feet from shore, 50 feet from the eyes and arms of his waiting wife and five year old son  – held my gaze and told me that in the days before his death, he was joyous, so joyful, filled with joy.

“He told me he knew his purpose. He knew what he was supposed to do. He told me he knew his mission, why he was here.”

He had a family, a son, a wife, a life.

And, finally, a purpose. And that gave him joy.

And it gives his mother peace.

She has faith he is in a better place. And that was his purpose.

And that’s probably the truth: knowing and declaring our purpose is a form of heaven.

But  discovering, admitting, acknowledging, accepting and activating our purpose is not a mystical process. I suspect most of us know what we are here to do, but we tamp down that audacious vision because it’s not practical, or no one else has done it, or who are we to do it?

Or, how do we do it? How is that thing even possible?

It’s one tiny task, one insightful inquiry, one compelling truth at a time. As my sweetie says of commitment, it’s not one grand decision that alters the sweep of time (though that resolution can be a crucial ingredient), it’s the daily decisions. It’s the decision to wake up and get up every day and do it, even though you’re tired, it’s hard, and there’s no glory (yet).

And that thing might not be externally glorious. You might never be lauded for it. There are millions of working poor living heroically, honestly, persistently, without applause. There are frustrated, frazzled parents who get by on next-to-no cheerleading.

But doing your best by your family is magnificent. And that can be a purpose.

That’s a truth I’ve been fighting about myself. I’m a blazing feminist and all-out champion of women owning themselves, their ambitions, their careers. I’m lit up by stories of women CEOs, pioneers and trailblazers. But all I want to do is adore my partner, raise my babies, and write (preferably best-sellers, but any form of writing for an audience will do, marvelously). I don’t take business or money or even career that seriously. I’m serious about developing my craft but that’s a minor occupation in comparison to my devotion to my man.

And that feels like a shameful thing to say: that I am, at heart and with primal purpose, the woman whom, in my twenties, I despaired of, criticized, and tried desperately not to be. Motherfucking Betty Crocker. With a pen.

But that’s who I am. Lover. Mother. Writer. And knowing that is knowing my purpose and there’s expansive, directive clarity there.

And faith.

Because we only have a limited number of days and years – my friend’s son only had 31 - on this earth, in this life.

Let’s live them well and fully. Divinely. With purpose.

August 15, 2011 | filed under: Love, Meaning | tweet it, baby

17 people have we need you too.

On Lowering the Bar and Getting it Out. A Giveaway(ish).

Lower the bar. That’s what my friend, His Highness of High Weirdness aka Matthew Stillman, wants us to do.

When he told me that, I didn’t understand. Doesn’t that mean lowering your standards? Expecting less? Offering less?

Dude. I can’t endorse that.

Except that’s not what he means. Matthew doesn’t want us to dilute our excellence or offer more junk, less jewels. He wants us to be more accessible. Lower the bar means loving more. Showing the world more.

I can’t keep it in/I gotta let it out/

I’ve gotta show the world/The world’s got to see

See all the love/Love that’s in me.

Can’t Keep it In by Yusuf Islam

And that’s what blogs are about. Lowering the bar. Getting it out.

Last year – and continuously, really – there was much noise and thunder about how blogging doesn’t make you money, business makes you money.

And therefore that’s what you should worry about: your business. Your plot to monetize and/or take over the world.

And: duh. Of course you should put mucho effort into building your biz. Of course the thing that makes you money – whether it’s your job, your art, your business – deserves devotion. Honour thy independendance and abundance, in whatever vehicle it drives you.

But. Here’s why I adore blogging and bloggers: because it’s not all – or only – about money. It’s about message. It’s about community. It’s about communion.

Penelope Trunk thinks one of the ways to measure Blog ROI is if it improves your sex life.

Holla.

I think you’re doing it right – blogging, sex – if it improves your life.

And your character. And those of other people, too.

And that’s what Matthew Stillman (and Yusuf Islam and maybe even me) is a-talkin’ about. Lowering the bar means making your mad and meaningful message accessible to everyone who needs it. Or wants it. Or wants to participate in the grand project of creation and self-actualization and community contribution but is busy surviving and doesn’t – yet – have $50 or $500 or $5000 to invest in learning how to do that.

That’s what blogs – and bloggers – do: share.

So if your blog isn’t making you money, don’t despair. That’s not really what blogs are supposed to do. A blog can be a podium, a platform, a stage on which to shine for as many lovers (and haters) as possible.

A blog can be an Acropolis. A sacred daily gathering place for people, ideas, discussion, debate, change.

A blog can be a salon. Your salon. Your living room. A coffee shop. Your kitchen table.  Historically, this is where ideas, worlds, governments and good times are schemed and dreamed.

And so, yes, let’s lower the bar. Let’s get it out. I gotta get it out.

Isn’t that what bloggers have been doing all along?

————————–

Let’s lower the bar. Let’s make it more accessible. Let’s get it out.

And that’s what I’m doing today: making a lower-the-bar/can’t-keep-it-in/gotta-get it out offer.

Until midnight tonight (I chose today because it’s Canada’s birthday, hooray!), every time a Red Shoe Blogger session is purchased, I’ll give one away, too.

If you book one, you can choose to whom your gift goes.

Or you and a savvy friend can pool your loonies (that’s Canuck-speak for “dollars”) and subsidize each other by buying two sessions for the price of one.

Or you can make your gift a scholarship and I’ll match it up with someone burning to walk the red shoe walk.

And with that gift we’ll show the world all the love – and blog genius and generosity - that’s in you.

And you’re not doing this alone. We’re in this together. For every four Red Shoe Bloggers booked-and-paid-for, I’ll not only offer the matching four free sessions, but I’ll gift another free scholarship session, too.

And there’s no social proof required. You don’t have to tweet it, facebook it, or even comment. If you decide to buy a session, just send me an e-mail telling me to whom you want to offer your gift session, and it’s on, baby.

Let’s get it out.

—————-

PS This offer was inspired by Red Shoe Blogger and web developer/designer Leah Shaver (Amanda and I have been recommending her to our Red+Purple clients who need gorgeous sites while Amanda takes a work break to have a baby), who dreamed up and did this very thing all on her own. Leah booked a session for herself and then bought another for a friend. Lovelovelove.

PPS In the first iteration of this piece, I referred to Yusuf Islam as Cat Stevens. And then, afterwards, while I was listening to his oeuvre online, I realized the magnitude of that wrong. How is it that I can so clearly see that it was racism when 1960s mainstream media continued to refer to Muhammad Ali as Cassius Clay…but that I haven’t been according Yusuf Islam respect by calling him by the name he has chosen? There comes a time when you tell the world who you are. With names or postscripts.

July 1, 2011 | filed under: Love | tweet it, baby

2 people have we need you too.

infatuation is fine cheese but if you want forever, marry a cautious cheesemaker

My dude threw down some serious wisdom last night.

Here’s a metaphorical recap…

Imagine you’re a rat in a cage and mmmmm mmmm mmmm you’ve just discovered that when you press a magical lever, you get a morsel of cheese – only it’s cheese soaked in love and pixie dust and endorphins and mother o’ rodents it gets you HIGH.

So you keep going back, cranking that lever and licking those morsels.

You’re floating. You’re delicious. It’s delicious. The whole undamned world is delicious. Colours are brighter, the air smells like flowers. All you can think about is that lever. That seductive, entrancing lever. You cannot get enough of her.

Because of course that lever is your girlfriend. She is the dispenser of good feelings. She makes your world go ’round. You adore her because she makes you feel great. Gifted. Lifted. In love.

But, over time, the cheese starts to feel a little crumbly. It’s the same cheese, soaked in love and magic, but it’s the same cheese. When you eat it every day it loses the aroma of novelty and possibility that made it so bewitching in the first place.

And this rat-cage-lever-love trajectory is what plagues modern marriages and partnership.

But this isn’t a story about novelty and boredom. This is a story about transactions. About how we North Americans view our partners as pleasure-providers. As dispensers of good feelings.

And about how we often value the feelings over the other person. We value the impact our partners create rather than our partners, themselves. We marvel at the things our lovers make us feel  rather than behold the wonder of the extraordinary web of water and flesh and lifesparks and experience and possibility that is them.

So when the intense, gorgeous, rainbow feelings fade – as they do when you argue, change diapers, check your dwindling bank account online, rush the kids to soccer – we’re think – feel – it’s over.

And then, if we’re behaviourist rats addicted to the pay-off (side note: this is why behaviourism is so impoverished and Lianne Raymond is the antidote to Dr. Phil), we go looking for the next lever. Some more magic cheese. The high.

Unmetaphorically: our relationships are premised on transactional payoffs. When they stop paying off, they end.

My dude and I both know a lil’ something about this. We’ve got a couple marriages and domestic partnerships between us and behind us. And while I’m impetuous and romantic and prone to leaving my apartment for a first date to never ever again return to my own home, he’s cautious –  and I was tearfully, fatalistically, dramatically interpreting that cautiousness as reluctance, lack of commitment and a whopping absence of faith in our future.

But.

It turns out that he might be a little more committed than me because he wants us to do a something that is both wise and revolutionary: he wants us to go slow and deep. Learn to swim in the waters of each other so we can survive the rapids and float forever. Get to know each other. Cherish each other as people rather than as the dispensers of good cheese.

And that’s something. ‘Cuz good cheese is mighty fine. Just ask my foodie friend Heather who several years ago had a still-smoldering argument with her mother over an $11 sliver of Parmesan. They didn’t speak for weeks. True story.

May 18, 2011 | filed under: Love, Meaning, People | tweet it, baby

13 people have we need you too.

love is ugly

epic post alert.

This post is so long that it requires a table of contents.

Love is Ugly

Announcing the TEN winners of the Red Shoe Blogger Digital Strategy Sessions

Check out the Love Sparks Blogging Festival

One More Thing (for everyone who wanted to win a Red Shoe Blogger Digital Strategy Session)

PS I love you

———————–

Love is Ugly


There’s a dark side to generosity. Most of us (one hopes) are taught to give to those “less fortunate than ourselves”. That’s noble, altruistic, charitable…

and hierarchical.

We’re taught a one-sided charity. We’re taught that the rewards reside in giving, in being privileged enough to give; and that magnamity and magnificence flow in one direction: from the offeror, with the offer.

For a long time I believed that to love was to give and I bathed my beloveds in acts of kindness and charity.

But I rarely, if ever, asked for help, even when I desperately needed it. Unless I had no choice.

Late one afternoon I was stranded on a bridge that, just moments earlier, was the scene of a horrific, multi-car, fatal accident. The bridge was shut down. I wouldn’t be going anywhere for hours. And the daycare closed in thirty minutes.

And I was sick about having to call my friend for help. She’d have to drop everything, pack up her two kids, and dash to the daycare right now and then she’d have to feed all of them dinner. Such an imposition.

I had no choice. I had to ask. And I worried about it all the way home.

And almost every day was a day like that. I was a newly separated single working mama of two kids under the age of four. I worked, I took care of the girls, and when I wasn’t at the office I was essentially housebound. I had no after-work-hours childcare. I had no money for babysitters. I did, however, have family and friends living within a four block radius of my home.

But I couldn’t ask for help.

Because my defense – my shield against the failure of being a single mama in the midst of married coupledom – was to be seamless. Perfect. Superwoman. Need-free.

And at the same time, I was generous. I’d take my friend’s son for the weekend when she was working night shifts at  the hospital. I’d offer advice. (I love to offer advice.) I’d write projects for free. I’d work extra hours and not bill for the overtime. And I loved doing that. I loved – and love –  it when people let me in to their lives.

But if anyone offered me what I offered them, I was wildly uncomfortable.

I couldn’t let anyone in unless everything was perfect – which meant I had to keep everyone at arm’s length. Which meant, in times of trouble, I retreated. Disappeared. Cut contact.

Then, last October – after a year of a lot of growing up – I got sick. I collapsed. I was hemorraghing on the bathroom floor at 4am.

And at that moment, flat on the tile, bleeding, in overwhelming pain and on the verge of passing out, I still worried about asking for help. Even calling an ambulance seemed a touch histrionic.

But I couldn’t faint on the floor for my four year old to find me in a pool of blood.

So I called my sister and my friend Heather. Heather drove me to the hospital and my sister scooped up the girls and carted them home. Heather stayed beside the emergency room bed until 7am when I convinced her to go.

After she left I bawled hysterically and unceasingly until noon.

I sobbed through exams and needles and tests and a nurse stroking my arm saying I know honey, I know.

I cried because I didn’t want this to be happening. I cried because I didn’t want to be there. I cried because I was alone and in pain and I needed help and I sent help away.

And the woman in the bed next to me bawled all day, too. She’d just left the hospital four days earlier after a four week stay. She’d had part of her intestine removed. She had two little kids at home. She had a business she was tending to on the phone. I’d hear her make very composed calls organizing her employees to cover her absence and then I’d hear her sob with her entire body. I heard the doctor tell her she had an infection at the surgical site and pneumonia and still I heard her beg him to send her home. He left to consult with another doctor, and I heard her cry, hard, and say oh god I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here.

We sobbed and spoke in concert. That was what I saying and praying too. I didn’t want to be there, and part of my grief and hysteria came from the not wanting to be where I was.

Naturally. I was in the ER. No one wants to be in the ER.

And somewhere between the pain and the percocet I realized: most of my emotional anguish comes from fighting what is.

I was in the ER. I was sick. I needed surgery. Nothing would change those immediate circumstances. I was fighting the wrong dragon. I was fighting reality.

Instead, what I ought to do was fight to be okay, right now, right where I was.

I told myself to accept the pain, to breathe, to feel every twinge of my battling body. I tuned in instead of trying to block it out. I marvelled at my own resilience. I suffered; I hurt; but I wasn’t fighting myself. I was fighting for myself.

After hours and hours, the hospital sent me home. No space in the Operating Room. No beds. No room in the inn.Surgery would have to wait until tomorrow.

And when I got to my house - I still felt ashamed and guilty for needing my sister to ferry me home – I was alone. My girls were safely ensconced at their father’s house.

And this time, even though it wasn’t an emergency, even though I knew could get through the night alone, I asked for help. I told my loverloverman – who, at that point, was my former loverloverman and to whom I wasn’t speaking – this:

I’m sad and scared and I’m having surgery tomorrow.

He said, I’ll be right there.

And he was.

And, after I hadn’t let him see or speak to me for a month, he climbed in bed with me, kissed me and stroked my face. He gazed into my eyes adoringly and told me, as I lay wan, sweaty and shaking with pain, that I was beautiful. He held me and caressed me and hugged me and kissed me all night and every time I turned to him, he was awake. He didn’t want me to be alone for a moment.

He made what should have been the worst night of my life the sweetest. I was awash in his love and protection and stunned that he desired me even in my most bedraggled, unsexy, pain-wracked, suffering state.

And later, while I was in the Operating Room, he took my car and cleaned it inside and out. I know he was just trying to do something – anything – sweet for me.

I had surgery. I recovered. And while I was recovering, my man-who-wasn’t-my-man, friends, family and even my children’s father had my back unreservedly. Enthusiastically.

When I thanked Heather for her 4am service, she said: “I’m your person.”

When I thanked my children’s father, he said, “You’re the mother of my children. We’re a team.”

When I thanked my sister, she said, “Of course.”

When I thanked F, he said “You didn’t have to go through this alone.”

And, much like the realization that sliced through the pain and the percocet, a new understanding – a harrowing, of-the-marrow knowledge – cut through my fog of mortification at being dependant and unable to stride through emergencies unassisted.

Love isn’t only an offer. Love is reception and invitation. It means being able to receive. Truly loving and inviting people in to your life means letting them see you in all your glorious misery, in the midst of dirty dishes and unfolded laundry and sometimes pain and pools of blood.

——————-

and all of this is to say thank you to

for lovingly inviting me into their virtual houses. Yes, darlings, you won a Red Shoe Blogger Digital Strategy Session.

(Expect an e-mail from me today to line up our schedules.)

And thank you to my friends/judges Desiree Adaway, Tara Gentile and Amanda Farough for working through the long list of candidates and making the selections.

—————

PS Did you see the image at the beginning of the post? That’s the badge for the Love Sparks Blogging Festival by Jasmine Lamb (All is Listening). Check it out.

————–

Oh, One More Thing…

to EVERYONE who commented on my “this I know” piece,

If you want a Red Shoe Blogger digital strategy session, let’s do it like this:

pay what you can.

Really.

The usual price is $100 per session, but since you loved me up, I want to love you back. Tell me what works for you and IT’S ON, BABY.

———————

Finally:

lovelovelove to you on Valentine’s Day.

And always.

February 14, 2011 | filed under: Love, Red Shoe Blogger | tweet it, baby

25 people have we need you too.

The Previously Undisclosed Secret to Parallel Parking (and, quite possibly, lasting love)

Parallel parking is my super-sexy-secret power.

Using only my wits, a manual transmission and a steering wheel, I can maneuver a thousand pounds of metal in and out of spaces so small they should require a can opener.

And I can do it consistently. With crowds of people watching and cheering. With the guy I want (always) to impress (always) in the car.

True story.

We were going to breakfast at my favourite joint in Fort Langley - ohhhh, the evil omelettes, ohhhhh the wicked weekend line-ups – and parking in that ‘hood is almost always a challenge. But lo! there was a spot. A very tiny spot, and a very long line of traffic behind me.

I lined up my passenger door with the driver door of the car ahead of my spot, backed in until the curb was in the middle of my rear view mirror, continued reversing while rolling the steering wheel the other way…and I was in, and tight to the curb too.

It was spectacular. I was spectacular.

And my newish man smiled at me and said Wow.

That was seven months ago and I don’t remember if we had sex that morning (of course we did), and it’s probably inappropriate to say if we had sex this morning (of course we did!), but let’s assume this driving lesson does indeed instruct.

The ability to parallel park can get you laid.

And maybe even loved.

January 6, 2011 | filed under: Love, Sex, Uncategorized | tweet it, baby

10 people have we need you too.

There Be Dragons…and Procrastination IS a Fire-Breather

Am I treasure enough for you to face your dragons?

Lianne Raymond wrote this to me – to all of us – in a comment a month ago and I’ve been thinking about it and quoting it ever since.

(Even last night. F quoted Rumi - “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it” –  and I quoted Raymond and really we were saying the same thing.)

Let’s be clear: I’m not much of a dragon-slayer. I’m a lover, not a fighter.

Mostly. Unless a stranger says cutting, nunyobiznaz, implying-I’m-a-trashy-mom things to me at the end of How To Train Your Dragon. And then I’ll go there, bitch.

(‘Course afterwards I’ll weep and write ~2,500 words about how badly I feel for calling another woman a bitch – and still think about it six months later.)

So when it comes to demons, dragons, and fears, my usual strategy is to snuggle them into submission. Make friends. Cuddle.

Because here’s what I think: my fears and my dragons are part of me. They are me. To banish them, fight them, or slay them is to to start a war – the thing you attack always fights back – to destroy myself. It is like an amputation. And fear, like limbs – all of which I’m firmly attached to – has a purpose. Fear is a professor.

So I’m keeping all my bits. Even the scary, fire-breathing ones.

Like procrastination.

I procrastinate in three ways: I delay making a decision; I delay responding to people (usually because I haven’t made a decision); and I delay doing.

And, as I wrote to Kareem yesterday, the first two procrastinations cause me – and the people who need me – problems. But the last way I procrastinate is, I’m convinced, simply part of the creative process. Another word for it is incubation. I grow and warm an idea until it springs fully-formed from my head. (Usually at the last possible minute before a deadline.)

I wrote Dave about this recently:

How can I stop procrastinating when there’s such a reward for it? I could work on a piece like a dentist on a bad tooth: poking and pulling until it is a bloody mess…or I could wait until that piece, like a loose tooth, is ready to fall out on its own. Which it will, inevitably – and with a lot less pain, drama and wasted hours in the chair.

To be sure, I do both – push and pull pieces and allow them to fall on their own when they’re ready (and then I polish, shine and carve those calcifications. This is also known as “editing”.). But, I think, letting them come isn’t procrastination. It is  parthenogenesis and that’s not a new process for creators. Athena turned out all right.

So that part of procrastination – it just occurred to me that procrastination is in fact a three-headed dragon – and I get along just fine. I simply need to find a way to make peace with the demands of the other two.

Mostly, they’re hungry. We’re all wild when our stomachs or our souls are empty.

And that’s what my last piece was about: commitment. Choosing. Deciding. Cutting – not myself, my limb, my fears, my essentials – to heal, not hurt. Facing and feeding my dragons so I can keep them fat and happy. 

Because, after all, we belong together.

October 28, 2010 | filed under: Love, Meaning, People | tweet it, baby

14 people have we need you too.

discovering a delicious new fear. yum.

For the last several years – scratch that, forever - my Big Fear about people, love, friendship, relationships has been this: Will this person hurt me? How do I protect myself? Should I get close to this person knowing he or she may later decimate me?

(I criticized someone recently for his repeat performance of the come-here-go-away dance, but truth is I could give lessons in that particular shuffle.)

To deal with that fear – of rejection, of pain, of loss – I’ve decided (with the help of Bob Marley) that pain and hurt are inevitable, and to try to live so as to avoid them is to live very, very small. And phooey to small.

That’s how I managed my long-time fear. Then That Fear got sneaky and snuck in a new friend.

It goes like this:

What if I hurt him?

Let me tell you: I was surprised. This fear shocked me. The love renegade (c’est moi, Dear Reader), throwing caution to the wind, is suddenly…cautious?

All of this sounds very dramatic, and of course it is, but here’s the second part of the surprise:

This is a very good fear to have.

It means it isn’t all about me. It means I care.

October 25, 2010 | filed under: Love | tweet it, baby

9 people have we need you too.

this is for you

This is for you.

You, who I loved more intensely than any man, ever.

You, who fled a scary situation and flew tens of thousands of miles to stay with your family in Canada – the same week I did the same thing – and ended up in a house just a few blocks from mine, on a bus with me, on the phone with me, in a theatre with me, in love with me. Two weeks earlier we were on two different continents. Two weeks later we were each other’s world.

You, who a year later made me wonder, to myself and to others: who is this man? Did he change, did I not know him at all, was he always like this?

Your friend M – not C – answered me: He was always like this.

This did not give me peace.

You, who gave me diamond-and-aquamarine earrings and a ring – a ring I never wore and now hangs around my daughter’s neck – for my birthday months after we parted and months into your new love.

You, who I grieved like a death.

You, who when your friend – and mine – told you he wanted to be with me and asked for your blessing, said “Go ahead. She’s crazy. It won’t last.”

We had eight years and two children together just to spite you, you know.

You, who I hoped heard how pretty my baby was so you could regret she wasn’t yours.

I’m sure you didn’t regret it.

You, who did awful, unethical, exploitative shit after we split. I mourned those acts. I delighted in them. Confirmation was comfort. I worked hard at hating you.

I had to because I loved you.

I loved your ruthless hope, your Machiavellian understanding of love and war and daily life, your ability to save, sacrifice, leverage – no, catapult – yourself from social  level to level, your success-at-any-costs striving.  I loved your selfishness. I loved your selflessness. I loved how you offered me every single cent you’d saved so I could take a UN internship in Zambia. (I wish I had accepted both offers.) I loved how you told me you loved me – easily, sweetly, without hesitation, often – in three languages. I loved how you ripped my red skirt. I loved how we surrendered a year of weekends to sensuality. Our hours-and-hours of ease, passion, constant connection and touch is engraved in my mind as how it ought to be, how it was only once before you – and, in the ten years since, only once after you. Even now, that is what love looks like, to me.

And so I lovehated you. For a decade.

And then you e-mailed me and asked, Was I one among many or did I stand out as significant?

How could you not know?

You were significant.

You first flooded then drowned my heart. And, battling waves, I always wondered: Did he really love me at all?

And now I know, because as a grown man with nothing to gain (or lose), you told me: I really did love you but I wasn’t ready for you.

Really, ready, relief.

So I’m glad you called, and called, and called again. Now I no longer have to hate you.

But that’s also why I won’t  see you, not even for a snack or a sandwich: because, for an old-fashioned girl, lunch is a gateway drug.

September 30, 2010 | filed under: Love | tweet it, baby

12 people have we need you too.

First Comes Love, Then Comes…a (Possible) Capitulation. Let me know if you see a white flag.

Chapter 1

Dave:  I think you are a very old-fashioned girl at heart.

Kelly: You and I have come to a very, very similar conclusion. I had an epiphany on Saturday about that…I went to a steamy, sexalicious party and although everyone was hot – really hot, gorgeous in fact – it left me cold. I looked smokin’, I was happy to prance around looking cute, but I didn’t want to touch or be touched. I was utterly unapproachable. I should have gone to a regular ol’ night club and posed. Instead, I fucking scampered out of there early because I was eager to keep chatting/phoning/emailing/sweet-talking my Church boy. And just seeing his face on video – God Bless Skype, for real – made me wetter than watching people fuck in front of me. And I realized: oh hell, desire is a love thing for me.

Kelly: So I surrender. I am what I am.

Dave: Maybe you can let your hair grow back to that beautiful brown color?

Kelly: That could happen. I’m contemplating red right now, however. So tell me what you mean by “old fashioned girl”?

Dave: Monogamous and faithful.

Kelly: Yep. We are totally on the same page.

Dave: Commit to who you are, the right men will show up. They will even become attractive.

Kelly: This is why I keep fucking up: because I’m not honest ‘bout who I am. I want love or nothing.

Chapter 2.

Dave: What about all the feminist theory?  Can you fit it in?

Kelly: Ms. Hidary nailed it: “My pussy burns in the feminist hall of shame because I want to be someone’s girl“.

Dave: I figured that was the line you’re going to highlight.

Kelly: It’s fucken brilliant. And “the last goddamn kaiser roll in the bodega” is so much rarer and more precious than diamonds and jewels…I’m giving up recreational sex.

Dave: Good.

Kelly: I can’t handle it.

Dave: Most people can’t, neither men nor women. Some people, both men and women, can handle it just fine.

Chapter 3.

Kelly: I have no frame of reference or experience with not sleeping with someone right away. Every single significant relationship I ever had started with a bang. Literally.

Dave: Try just hanging out instead.

Kelly: Yeah. Old school.

Dave: Go floral.

Kelly: What? Floral?

Dave: I believe you mean “Whut!?”

Kelly: Are you recommending I wear floral prints?

Dave: Yep. Wear a dress.

Kelly: I almost always wear dresses.

Dave: Nothing says “Lady” like floral.

Kelly: Gack.

Dave: Even Paris looks like a lady in floral.

Kelly: Dude. I have no doubt that I present myself as a motherfucken lady. I only hooch it up for special occasions. I am just built in such a way that no matter what I wear, I’m kabang!

Dave: High neck. No v-neck.

Kelly: The problem isn’t my clothes. It is me. I’m competitive. If I want someone, I must have him. And he will capitulate pretty easily in the beginning.

Dave: Whether he is worth wanting or not?

Kelly: Exactly.

Chapter 4.

Dave: How are you going to protect yourself and your man from your natural, feminine destructiveness?  Your inner Kali?

Kelly: I think I need a pretty strong man.

Dave: Oh I know that.

Kelly: Yes. But I don’t tend to date them. I’m attracted to them. But I date the pretty boys.

Dave: But even a strong man who truly loves you is going to be helpless at some point.

Kelly: True. And I have destructive tendencies.

Dave: Yes you do.

Kelly: It is the inner Kali and the artist.

Dave: And insecurity.

Kelly: Artists have to burn shit down or they can’t create anew, but it is a colossal waste of energy, frustrates momentum…I’m kinda hoping maturity is the answer.  We simply tend not to divorce the older we get. That’s why our national divorce rate is actually declining right now: because our population is aging. So I’m hoping age will work in my favour – by the time I get married again, I won’t have the energy to incinerate it. That, and I’ve already burned and been burned so often that if I do manage to be in the kind of relationship I desire, I’ll treasure it – and him – enough to take care. I’ll protect it.

Kelly: It isn’t a coherent strategy, but it could work.

Dave: It could. I hope so.

Chapter 5.

Dave: See, I’m in an interesting position here. I don’t want to see you get hurt, again. But I also want to see you find That Man.

Kelly: Oh honey, that’s my favourite position.

September 24, 2010 | filed under: Love, Sex, Sex and the Suburbs | tweet it, baby

12 people have we need you too.

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