Grandma

I lost one of my life's best friends the other day, my grandmother. She was 85 years old, and when she died, I was told her eyes got very wide and she looked afraid, like she wanted to fight it. Though there is no autopsy being performed, the cause of death is likely an aneurysm in her stomach that dislodged itself from coughing and shot up into her heart, causing almost immediate death.

She was 80 very tiny pounds when she died. She was as small as a pea, her body nothing more than bones and skin. She had once had beautiful C-cup breasts. Not a bit of that remained on her chest, she was as flat as a child. She had once had a beautiful smile. No longer able to wear her dentures, she was toothless and unable to speak (and the bones under her gums were wearing through, painfully). She breathed heavily, chuffing through her mouth with little moans and noises like she was trying very, very hard to say something, but couldn't do it. That idea upsets me more than anything, that she was too weak to speak and had things to say, but couldn't.

I had been there, at her side, holding her hands, smiling into her still-beautiful face, with eyes that were losing their ability to see in those last hours, clouding over and unable to focus. Her left eye would hold your gaze, her right eye often rolled up into her head. I can't be sure she could even see me. But I kept smiling, giving her as much love as I possibly good with my touch. Because my love for her couldn't possibly wane in the face of her death, her very visible, increasingly clear death. But there was a moment where I shut off, and needed to care for myself. I had had two hours of sleep, and seeing her literally die wasn't going to enrich my life. I was going to have to drive five hours home later, and I needed to get some more rest. So I held her tight, I kissed her cheek, and her forehead, and I told her I love you, and I went back to the hotel room I was sharing with my sister and brother in law.

Not ten minutes after I arrived there, my sister called to tell me she'd died. I hung up the phone and smiled again. "Good girl," I said aloud, and went to sleep. She'd been in so much pain. The last words I heard her speak much earlier that evening (it was now just before dawn) were "What else can I do?" She said this several times. I told her she had nothing left to do, that she was loved, and if it was time to go, she should do that. Then she asked for my mother, and my mom and I sat together with her, trying to convince her to eat something, because she had medication sitting in her empty stomach, and that was the bulk of why her belly hurt so. But she refused. She'd been having diarrhea, so I imagine she thought she'd only add fuel to the fire on that front, if she ate. Not that she'd been able to eat much at all.

She was my last living grandparent, the person I'd always been closest to in my family, and just a really good friend my whole life. She championed my singing and my writing from the very second I began singing and writing. Frustrated that I had stories to tell and couldn't yet write (but could read), I would dictate to her at the age of four. The first was called Robbie The Hummingbird, an origin myth story about how hummingbirds got their colors. I would often put together entire concerts, make fliers, and charge admission at the door to "shows" in the first bedroom in my grandparents' house. I remember one was Bruce Springsteen covers where I made up music on the pump organ and sang his lyrics along to them, disregarding their original melodies. Admission was a nickel. The only person in the family who was guaranteed to be there was my grandma. Everyone else typically continued to watch sporting events in the living room.

We hadn't been very close in the last few years. There had been a major rift in the family with my mom and my uncle that grandma lived with that I had nothing to do with, but as a result, guilt by association, we lost touch. In addition, as she'd gotten older, she'd become gossipy and kind of a brat sometimes, plus while she still had her own house, she was doing things like letting the dish sponge get moldy and using it without realizing it... I am not designed to handle these kinds of things. Everyone else in my family has a medical background, it doesn't faze them, but I can't handle the infirm. Not in a caretaking sort of way.

But I don't regret the time we lost. Like a friend you haven't seen in many years that you find you can just pick up where you left off, my grandma and I were like that.

It fucking hurts though. If Chris and I hadn't broken up, I wouldn't have the closeness I have with my immediate family that's come the past couple of months. But, if we were still together, I'd have someone to go through this with. Friends and family aren't the same as a partner, and all of this makes me miss him so much. And maybe he'd be an asshole right now. Maybe he wouldn't be able to be supportive. Maybe he wouldn't figure out a way to be with me through this. Maybe he'd just shut down. Maybe it's all for the best and happening exactly as it should.

But I can't ever know. My heart aches and I miss my grandmother and I miss Chris. It's been almost three months now. It feels like an eon. I can hardly remember what he's like.

My grandmother was cremated. I wish I'd have known this. I went into accepting that her death was coming with the understanding that I'd see her in her casket. I feel a little robbed of this, but I am at least going to get a little keepsake urn with a bit of her ashes in it. That's better, I suppose. She'll always be with me, but now I can have something tangible.

Okay then. I've got a dozen things to do. My home is as much of a disaster as I ever would allow it to be. I should do something about that before it actually makes me ill.

Thoughts on An Uncomfortable Dream

Time will tell if anything does bloom again with Chris. I never had happy dreams about Andy after we broke up, because, even as I held on to the love for months afterward, I already knew he didn’t love me as much as I did him. I already knew there was too much about him that wasn’t compatible with me, that the level of insecurity he made me feel for not being smart enough, well-read enough, interested in the right music enough, was never going to make me feel comfortable and safe. Those were things I never felt with Chris. I worry he felt that from me, though. There were several instances where Chris had little outbursts of insecurity, citing me being “cooler” than him, already knowing all the right books to read, all the interesting music. And honestly, I don’t know where he got that, except to say it was already there. I don’t think it was coming from me. I don’t think I was fostering that insecurity, and if I was, I sincerely don’t know how. He introduced me to music I now love, to books I now own, to ideas and topics of interest and movies. He was my equal partner on all fronts, in my mind. So much so, it was exciting in just the simplicity of it. A partner, on the same level as me. 

But, he wasn’t all sunshine and kittens. Far from it sometimes, but I love him in spite of this, because that’s what love is. Chris has a persistently dark persona, in spite of the love and kindness he wants to project. Corner him, he’ll lash out with cruelty without a thought. Fight him and he’ll insult you. Do something he doesn’t like, and he won’t be constructive in the way he tells you. He called my hair frizzy several times (hey, sorry bud, years of bleaching and dyeing have given me some damaged hair, and it being long for the first time in over a decade, I’m having to relearn how to manage it. Plus, the whole time we were dating, I was using an “organic” conditioner that didn’t do shit for me other than dry my hair out and make it feel weird. I’ve since moved on to something cheaper, and vastly more effective, but thanks for making me feel defensive about it). He essentially told me I give bad blow jobs (but condescendingly told me I “make up for it in other areas” after I told him that was a shitty thing to say), and insinuated others had been lying to me when I told him that was malarkey as every dude I’ve been with in the dozen years before him writhes with ecstasy and remarks loudly and often that mine are the best they’ve ever experienced (and, notably, a couple of exes have literally asked me to give tutorials to their exes, who are mutual friends; weird, but actually, not as weird as it might sound, since ladies do really want to give great head). The fact is, he likes the kind of blow job other men don’t, in my experience. No variation. Just up and down on the shaft, consistent, with increasing speed, preferably no coming up for air or giving the jaw a break (claiming that because he goes down on you for such an extended period [and with a skill level I would say is precisely on par with my blow jobs, if he actually liked the kind of blow jobs I give], you should happily return the favor, not understanding that licking a pussy is a different beast, where you can easily take a moment to swallow and close your mouth for a moment, than having a solid object between your teeth for minutes at a time). Essentially, a porn blow job. Which is what all girls start doing (and usually hate doing, for good reason), but quickly learn is not what makes a man happy. Variation, incorporating the hand, licking, teasing, taking the balls in the mouth, kissing the inner thighs, wending the tongue around the head, sucking, and yes, at the end, consistency, briefly, to the finish. But instead of accepting my assertion that he was the anomaly, he told me other men must be lying to me. Right. 

I mean, that’s fucked up. Really fucked up. He has a cockiness, an arrogance about his sexual abilities and his art-making that are borderline nauseating. Pair that with the previously mentioned insecurities, and it’s often difficult to know how to navigate him, because if you compliment something he knows he’s good at, he’ll just smugly say, “I know,” but tell him he’s awesome at something he’s insecure about, and he’ll make you feel like you’re lying to him.

While this is a big thing, it’s also something that can be rewired with the right conversations and patience. He either doesn’t get, or isn’t interested in, the fact that this behavior is incredibly off-putting. And now, even though I don’t think any man has lied to me about my blow-job giving abilities, I feel insecure because I realize it’s now possible I could run into another man like him. I am basically afraid to get physically intimate with anyone at all, for several reasons. 

And so I won’t. Because right now is very firmly about rewiring several things about myself, and understanding why I do them. Therapy, friends, drastically reduced drinking, and avoidance of the more obnoxious, “party lyfe” sector of those I know.

Tonight, I’m having a ladies night. The new Ryan Gosling flick, A Place Beyond The Pines. Then dinner. Then maybe something else. I’ll only have a couple of drinks. I’ll laugh and hug and cheek kiss my ladies.

Even that, in and of itself, is a marked change from a few months ago. I am not constantly on the prowl these days. I don’t look around for the cutest dude in the room. And if I do sniff out the cutest dude in the room, it doesn’t really matter. In Louisville, I spend quality time with my friend’s brother (seriously, friends, stop telling me to date your brothers), who is patently adorable, big of nose, hairy, music-obsessed and smart and kind and interesting (also, a baby of 26, natch, which likely has a lot to do with my physical disinterest. In a recent conversation with a friend, we posited that we’ve gotten to an age where younger men must SMELL different, because there’s an honest aversion to them, no matter how attractive they are). I value his opinion of me, and wish to get to know him better, but I didn’t have anything more than the acknowledgement of his attractiveness as a response. I didn’t flirt, touch him unnecessarily, though I feel sure it would have been well-received. I just enjoyed getting to know a new person, as we sat on the couch together, showing one another YouTube videos (introducing him to my favorite Pulp song, Death II, which he’d never heard, despite being a huge Pulp fan, and following it up with live Pulp footage that convinced me Pulp wouldn’t exist without early Scott Walker, and then showing him the videos for Jackie and Montague Terrace in Blue, which thrilled him because the music is great and he recognized I was right about Pulp) ‘til 4:30 in the morning, and smiling to myself as every couple of minutes, he inched just a little closer to me on the couch. Instead of letting anything happen, I bid him goodnight, and went to bed.

In short, I’ve got work to do. And I’m doing it. As for the dream, Andy is not a part of my life, I don’t wish for him to be, and if we ever meet again, I hope it’ll be nice, and that we’ll hug, and we’ll continue our day, appreciating that we still have affection for one another, but that is all. I once told Andy, in the dregs of our breakup, that I hoped we’d find one another at a sunny 4-way stop at some point in our lives, and we’d nod at one another with respect, and see what happened afterward. I still want exactly that, knowing that to “see what happens” is only to see if we can be friends.

I never had happy reconciliation dreams of Andy after he and I broke up. This is the fifth or more I’ve had about Chris. Some people treat this love as if it’s no different than others I’ve had, now. They tell me I’ll move on, that something else is on the horizon. And maybe it is. During some intense girl talk recently, though, a friend that met Chris said she sniffed out that they have very similar, “artist” temperaments, and, comparing him and me to a relationship she had last year that terrified her and caused her to push back in fear with distance and not a little anger, treating him like he was acting “crazy” and too intense, ending it and subsequently sleeping around for the rest of the summer... Now she’s in a “stable” relationship that isn’t ultimately all that interesting to her, and in the last couple of months, she’s been considering that previous relationship that scared her, realizing how much of a connection she has to him, and that there probably is yet something there to be explored, when they’re both single again. She says maybe I should keep Chris in the back of my head. Move on, as much as I can, but keep the love, if I can. Because, if he’s like her as she suspects, he just needs a great deal of distance from everything that frightens him about me. Namely, that I love him as I do.

That was always the plan. Until it’s not. The world will find something else for me if that’s what’s to be, as it always does.

An Uncomfortable Dream

Saw Danny Boyle’s new film Trance last night. I want to talk about it because it pissed me off, but I suspect anyone reading this likely also wants to see the movie, and literally anything I might have to say about it will spoil some aspect of it. It is a movie that can’t be talked about with anyone who hasn’t seen it. 

In any case, the movie infiltrated my dreams, but mostly through set pieces, in a grand meld of the three main characters’ homes. And also, I suppose, through Vincent Cassel’s seductive vigor. I swear, you can get a nose full of his pheromones from the movie screen. He is, despite being many things I don’t normally find attractive (small mouth, aggressively masculine face, narrow head), probably the most potent symbol of masculine eroticism that I can think of. 

So my dream was set in a large, spacious, heavily tiled, modern home, like the homes in the film. Dark, but inviting. Lots of slate, glass tile, subtle lighting.

It was Andy. We were lying in bed together, fully clothed. He’d slimmed down a bit, lost the borderline too much doughiness of his midsection and accompanying fat deposits in the chest region (that were never actually too much, especially when he’d lay on his side and get furry cleavage. I always found that to be quite a lot of fun to stick my finger in, and we’d laugh) in favor of more toned musculature. I was enjoying feeling his form through simple jersey, he was solid, and warm. We had just reconnected, I was unsure of what I wanted, scared that becoming physical would be too much for me, but he suggested we take a shower together. I went downstairs with him, to the enormous, fully slate tiled bathroom, with two stairs you had to walk up to get into the glass-enclosed shower, which had, tellingly, multiple shower heads. He stripped down, and I admired his ass, but felt too shy to disrobe myself. Feeling frightened, I made an excuse, and nervously talked to him as he showered. I thought about his large, straight, prettily-perfect cock that always got so hard I’d joke that one could crack a tooth on it, just as he made some reference to it, trying to entice me to join him.

And then, by some dream trick, he wasn’t there any more, and I was alone in the room, steam from the shower still lingering. I called out for him, but there was no answer. I opened the still-closed shower door, but he wasn’t there. His clothes were gone, he was gone.

I sat there a while, my heart racing, feeling abandoned. I left the room, and went upstairs. He wasn’t in the bedroom we’d been in before. But the house was quite big, and there were many other rooms to investigate. All of which made me nervous, because I knew there were other women in the house. Perhaps he’d given up already, and didn’t want to give me time to figure out what I wanted. Maybe he’d moved on to another woman. 

All of the women in the house were immediately beautiful, in the right light, and this house was designed to always present that light. Women who worked as strippers, as escorts, as erotic masseuses. That wasn’t his type of woman, I knew, Andy prefers intellectual, academic, music-obsessed, earthily plain-pretty girls that you’d never notice in a crowd. A physically unfettered woman, who wakes in the morning the same as when she went to sleep. While I am quite intelligent, I am not academic, and while I am music-obsessed, it was never the right music, and while I am pretty, my prettiness is altogether too unusual to be his type. 

Conversely, the women in this house were over-sexed sea hags, who wake in the morning groaning like kracken, yawing sharply until coffee, cigarette, and thickly applied makeup were had, but one never knows what might draw a person to another, so I entered each semi-darkened room, afraid.

The women were fucking one another, viciously, animal grunts and growls, processed over-styled hair and too much perfume putting out puffs of product that made me want to sneeze, and by the third room, I’d found only one man in bed with them, a man I didn’t know. They all tried to get me to join them, even after they complained that I’d interrupted them.

Defeated, tired, I went down to a room I knew to be sex-free, a basement rec room, with florescent lighting and tan carpeting, where people were putting together puzzles, playing board games, drinking beer and laughing. It felt like a last resort, and even as I knew it was more likely I’d find Andy in the rec room, I needed to abate my fear by confirming he wasn’t with any of those women.

The room had about a half-dozen men in it and only one girl, who wasn’t one of the terrible women, and all parties were lazing about doing the aforementioned game-playing. There was a big, tan brick fireplace all the way at the back of the room, the kind one finds in crappy suburban homes built in the 90s. My eye was drawn to it, as I stood in the middle of the staircase down into the basement. No one looked at me, and I scanned the room, again looking to the fireplace, which wasn’t lit.

And that’s when I saw him. Not Andy. Chris. Laying on his side, on the floor, just in front of the fireplace, wearing a polyester patterned shirt that was white, with blue and red print, clearly from the 70s. He was idly flipping through a magazine, which, if I’m not mistaken, was an issue of Highlights. Yes, the kids magazine. There were other books strewn about him, and they too seemed child-oriented, as in things from the late 70s, early 80s. Our childhood years. 

I cautiously walked toward him, and when he saw me coming close, a wry smile formed at the corner of his mouth, clearly in spite of himself. “Hi,” I said. He stood up, and remained a few feet from me. I motioned for us to walk outside.

We stood on the grass, which was not yet green, as spring had not yet come, next to a river that was barely more than a creek, but rushing with water. He looked at me, down at me, standing tall, but not imposingly so, and said he thought it was too soon that we were meeting, that we weren’t ready. But he still had that wry smile. Despite himself, he was happy to see me. Just uncomfortable, and confused. My heart was racing, but not with fear, just excitement. Andy wasn’t right. This was right. I recognized that the second I saw Chris. I wanted to kiss him, to touch his skin, but I resisted trying, because I knew he wasn’t ready. “We live in the same house,” I said, “I couldn’t avoid you.”

He acknowledged the fairness of this statement. “But I was looking for Andy, I thought we might be reconnecting, but it didn’t feel right. He lives here too.” Chris’s features darkened, just slightly, with a twinge of jealousy that couldn’t be helped. He made motion to his shoulder, indicating the length of Andy’s hair. “Long, dark, wavy hair?”

“Yeah,” I said, “with kind of a darkness around the eyes, a little sunken, Slavic looking.”

Chris nodded. “That guy.”

“But it’s not right. He’s not what I want.”

And we continued to stand there, awkwardly, uncomfortably, but understanding it was better than anything else.

Headed Home...

I have been in Chicago and Louisville for the past week. Chicago has three dear friends that love me very much, and though I don't really care for the city, being with them has been immensely healing. Last night, when I got back to Chicago from Louisville, the couple I'm staying with told me that to them, I'm family. The statement came about because when I was here early last week, a package arrived for them while I was gone. Amber asked why I didn't open it, sincerely. "You're family!"

This is the only house that isn't my actual family where there's a picture of me on the fridge, far as I know. I'm sitting on the bed in their guest room right now, the sheets stripped and drying just outside the door. I should have left nearly three hours ago. I'm just going to hit awful traffic now. But my gut is all in knots and I keep tearing up. I'm afraid to go home. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I don't know what the next few months hold for me, and I'm afraid.

I've been away for a week and it is the happiest, most content I've been for months. Since before Chris and I broke up. I had a week of adult conversations, interactions, situations. I went out, to shows, to bars, to restaurants, and no one was obnoxious, no one acted a fool, no one said any stupid shit to me, and it was eye-opening. I've thought for a bit now that maybe I'm really done with the party life. Like most things I do actually mean eventually, I think I've been saying this for about three years now. I want reasonable, adult people in my life. We can still go to shows, go to bars, go out and drink, but getting shit faced doesn't feel like me anymore. Fucking dudes who have appropriately thick bodies and the right amount of chest hair but are assholes doesn't feel like what I should be doing anymore. You'd think that would have occurred to me some time ago, and it did, about half-way, nearly a year ago, but, fuck.

I think I'm done. I want to focus on me, on healing all the things I'm holding onto that make me difficult to be close to (with the understanding that I am always going to be an intense, difficult person. I know that's who I am, and I don't want to be someone else. I do want some smoother edges, though). My other friend here in Chicago told me I'm much calmer than last we met two years ago. That means a lot to me.

Every year for the past three years I've gone on a trip this time of year that's put huge things into perspective and moved me forward a great deal. Memphis in 2011 pushed me toward forming my band. New Orleans 2012 made me realize just how many toxic people I was keeping in my life. I hope looking back around this time next year, it'll feel like something just as big was created from my travels.