The Fall & Bad Dates Before Bed (And Val Kilmer & The Mini Deer)

Last night's dream brain produced the following:

Washed up on the shore, floating in the water of some large woodland lake which felt Lake Superior-ish, fifteen or so dead mini deer (think about six inches tall) plus one regular sized deer, their legs chopped off, their stomachs lacerated with short, deep cuts. I spoke with the forest creatures, who were all afraid; "Who did this to the mini deer?" "Well, you know about Val, don't you?" said the forest creatures' spokesperson, a large, upright rodent-like creature (capybera?) with a white belly. I nodded, and looked at my human companion (who had heretofore been the forest creatures' translator, until they realised that I was not in need of an interpreter and then won their trust), "Yes, Val Kilmer. He's in town to do an episode of Law & Order: SVU." The forest creatures' spokesperson nodded, "Yes, we think he's done it."

I investigated the situation, finding that the regular sized deer had been found like that and was used as a prop in the episode, but that Val had an alibi (he was shooting) when all the other, miniature, deer had been murdered. Val Kilmer was not responsible for killing any of the deer, mini or no.

The mystery of who had so brutally killed the mini deer remained unsolved.

This dream segued into a large house, where I lived with a woman who represents many qualities I'd like to have; physically athletic of build, with olive skin, dark, wide eyes (doe eyes? This idea was not unnoticed even in the dream), effortlessly beautiful, stylish, confident.

(It should be noted at this point that I had a date last night that went very, very wrong; the first two hours were fine, even great--talk of our various approaches to various art mediums, life goals, how we'd watch any movie starring Vincent Cassel or Vincent Gallo even if they were largely featured stapling papers or watching paint dry, tattoo ideals, my pulling away entirely from Facebook and text messaging, which he soundly commended and said he respected, and the various strangenesses of people we know mutually.

It was after I'd said I'd just watched The Fall with a friend, and had made dinner at his place that things took a dark turn. He asked what my relationship was with this friend, and when I explained we'd dated but had broken up over two years ago he started to grind his teeth. He went into a lengthy monologue about how his brother [his twin] had just broken up with his girlfriend of six years and how he [happily] felt he'd had a part in that because she was a "cold bitch" to him and "bad" for his brother. This segued deeper into how this girl withheld sex from his brother and that it was probably because she was cheating on him and didn't want "two cocks in her holiest of holies". His language veered consistently toward crass and I calmly expressed my discomfort at it which only incensed him more. He said something about how I'd "already told [him] about everyone [I'd] fucked" [untrue; we'd talked about one person we know mutually that he's been aware I dated since the night we'd met, and of the aforementioned friend] he couldn't be "worried about all my exes showing up at my door" when he and I were together and when I said that 90% of my male friends are exes, his eyes quite literally bulged at the news. Conversation continued to grow darker and it ended with him informing me that he'd been attracted to me but there was now no chance [as if any interest in him lingered other than in psychological case study on my end at that point], and he then spat out several invectives including belittling all the people we know mutually [insinuating some of them had herpes, implicating that I probably did too] and calling me a bitch, then said that he "disagreed with almost everything" I'd been saying including distancing from Facebook and texts. He quoted Oscar Wilde to this end. He seemed to want to make me feel pointless. I found myself acknowledging the futility of the situation and despite feeling actual fear [there were two points at which I thought he might hit me], I laughed lightly and told him it was time for him to leave. He told me to "continue with the popularity contest" [a reference, apparently, to my earlier statement to him that I have little drive to make myself successful artistically, unfortunately, despite having made many helpful connections the eight plus years I've lived in Minneapolis] and got up from the table. He went to the bathroom. Then he stood at the bar, awkwardly, for a couple of minutes. I busied myself signing the credit card slip for my drinks and didn't watch him go.

To his credit, and oddly, he stated several times that he knew he was being an asshole, and when I said that he was behaving a bit crazy, he agreed with me. He seemed incapable of stopping himself once he'd gotten started. He never raised his voice, and was polite to the server when he asked for the tab. I told him he seems to have a hair trigger when it comes to trust and jealousy with women and he agreed with this too. And yet he was still conveying to me that his action was my fault.

All of this is a damn shame, of course. He's a very, very physically attractive lad with perfect fashion sense [last night's outfit: pea coat, light long sleeved v-neck tee with navy stripes with a white thermal shirt layered underneath, dark grey jeans with belt, and tan loafers]. He's about 5'11", slender, but not thin, with slightly shaggy dark hair, intense blue eyes and thick eyebrows. By and large, he's a darker, Slavic-looking version of Lee Pace [a fact observed while watching The Fall earlier]. And until things took their dark turn, we were aptly flirtatious and got along quite well [it should also be noted that we'd kissed several times at the bar on two previous occasions, but in our relative sobriety last night were enjoying flirtation mixed with the proper kiss pre-cursor of staring briefly at one another's lips instead of actual kissing]. It seems charmingly fitting that the entire time we were being serenaded by live music called the Bookhouse Trio doing string/brass versions of Twin Peaks songs at Café Barbette, a candlelit and intimate setting.

A damn, damn shame.

And, in writing this out, I now feel less completely shaken by the experience. So, I shall commence with the dream [if you're still with me].)

This girl and I were not friends, just housemates. I'd just slept with The Mexican Who Does Not Want Me (a frequent topic of this blog, who at this point I am over but apparently my brain likes to use him as a dream archetype), and I think he lived with us too. Knowing what was going to happen, I went upstairs to clean and hours later, I found them together lying naked under a blanket. I attempted to explain to them why this was a little fucked up, but they just laughed coy, post-coital laughs. Things jumped to TMWDNWM coming downstairs with a slightly decomposing, bloated rodent corpse, which he said his mother had found in the ducts. He looked at me pointedly, as if it were my fault a thing like that had gone unnoticed. (His mother, notably, died recently.) The girl took this corpse, and we determined that it was a ferret. She skinned it, and we found that it was possessing a biomechanical jaw (I recently injured my own jaw with an electric drill). Through an elaborate process, she removed the bones one by one for me and placed them in a bowl. Then she replaced each bone with a metal, mechanical counterpart. I could smell that the ferret's flesh was rotting. I got the impression that the end goal was to bring the ferret back to life.

Dream jump to a Gothic architecture version of The Fall's Labyrinth of Despair (where everything had a blue tinge like we were in Underworld) and me being a 22-year-old me in Paris; long dark blonde hair, ankle length beautifully tailored black wool trench coat, Doc Martens with black jeans and black sweater. I was being chased by a very strong vampire (who feels like a proxy for last night's date); there were trickeries with an elevator, and when I finally reached the highest point of the Labyrinth, where, in The Fall, the woman trapped there realised she could only escape by jumping and therefore killing herself, I jumped and found that by grabbing the voluminous lower portion of my coat and flapping, I could fly. The vampire was bound to the Labyrinth of Despair and thus I was free of him.

I landed safely on the ground, next to a very nice dog I know named Oxford (who, incidentally, could also fly). Oxford is owned by a pretty incredible fellow I was dating briefly a month ago. Ox and I went off down the path to find him, together.

Scrabble-less

This gal can't play Scrabble anymore. It was such an intrinsic part of mine and Andy's relationship, it feels like a betrayal to engage in it with anyone else. He beat me every time of probably a hundred games in a year, excepting four. He was a shitty loser, blaming bad tiles or a failed strategy for his loss, which pretty much made my wins moot since it had nothing to do with my own skill and everything to do with his lack of it, obviously. But I went into every game with him knowing that's the way it would be, and I didn't play to win, I played to play with him. Because it was two, three, four hours of listening to records, sipping coffee or wine, with breaks for lingering love looks and smooch breaks.

He's got in his custody our Scrabble score book, which has the scoring of each one of our games since mid-October, 2009. Sometimes, while the other would be taking his turn, the other would start a drawing, and we'd take turns adding to it. The book is full of our insane doodles, some sweet, some creepy, some a commentary on the relationship at large. Last we discussed the book, post breakup, he said he'd been playing Scrabble with friends, but hadn't, and wouldn't, use the book with anyone else. I hope that remains true. In that book, and its designated use, and the fact that he's still got it in his possession, even though we currently cannot bear to be around one another, well, in that book is something akin to hope.

I miss Scrabble so much. And by Scrabble, I mean Andy.

...

It's 3 a.m. and I cannot sleep. I find myself mostly fine all day, excited, hopeful at the opportunities which surely await me, one day, soon, which will once again alleviate my stresses and find me going to sleep peacefully.

But when my head hits the pillow, and darkness comes over my computer as it too attempts to sleep, I just start sobbing. Quietly, if Lief is home, loudly if he is not, for sobbing silently has less a purging effect than just letting it all loose. And then I fear the couple upstairs will hear me, and I stifle myself once again.

I have genuinely not ever felt more alone. I could rattle off fifteen reasons for this, but it would hardly elucidate the situation any more than simply saying that I feel really, truly alone. I have, in the past, felt that the Universe has ceased to be present, and even then, felt less alone than now, for there was hope. Hope which is scarily absent. Instead of my usual get-out-of-this-mindset-mindset, which is that things always get better, I've realised a bone-deep truth, and that is that things always get worse again, too. Thoughts of offing myself are less and less what they've always been, which is, impossible, but comforting. Instead, it feels like something to sincerely work out a plan for. A contingency. Because, truly, I haven't got it in me to weather another swipe like this, like it seems to be, on all levels. I've no lover, no prospect of a lover, and most definitely, no prospect of anyone who wishes to keep me as their confidante and lover for the rest of our lives, have children with me, grow old. My friendships are in varying degrees of disarray, and with Andy being the only person I've allowed to see me vulnerable for some time, I'm ill equipped to even try and discuss anything with anyone. I feel that in person, with people I care for, I come off distant and cold. I feel I've worn out my welcome, and that it is best for everyone if I just don't try and reach out.

And there is the matter of my lack of job, the again ruinous state of my finances, which so precariously relied on the job I was quite easily terminated from, without warning. A job I loved, a job I really, really needed. In the dark, when I try to sleep, it's this fact that causes the sobbing more than any other. I wrote letters to my former manager and one of the owners. Neither has been met with any reply. I find this so rude, and hurtful.

I just can't do this anymore. I'm just hoping having written this, I can maybe fall asleep. I've got to get up in five hours to go to my parents' to work off a small sum advanced to me to pay bills, where I'll face guilt trips and badgering instead of support and love.

Killing Two Birds With One Blog

The goal of late has been to write one blog a week, and make one piece of art per month. Well, I've made two pieces of art this past week, and this blog is three days late. Ah well. I am very happy with both, which is a giant milestone since there has not been a whit of creative energy in me for the past six months, maybe more. Worse, these are pieces fulfilling obligations to lovely, patient people; i.e. they were paid for last...JANUARY.

Housewife, Sans House or Husband

As my brownies-from-a-mix were baking (sub olive oil for vegetable oil, add peppermint bark chips) just an hour ago, a thought occured to me:

Perhaps I am not meant to have a career per se. Perhaps all this beating my head against the wall, all this existential ennui is just silliness, like women in the middle of the last century getting Home Ec degrees at Brown to pass time until they got a husband. Maybe I'm just biding my time until marriage.

Of course, this is complete rubbish. Well, except for the minutiae which are not. Facts:

I am an incredible cook.
I keep a clean home.
I am organised, and detail oriented.
I am terrific with children.

In short, I could quite excel at being a housewife.

That is, were it not for a persistent gnawing at my gut for change, for personal control, and the fact that I know ennui, existential or no, would not fully abate, then I could quite excel at being a housewife.

What I could be, though, is a woman who works from home in the sort of job that would not need to be relied upon wholly for stability, or to do something in which I was relatively autonomous. Carpentry, I think, could fulfill this need, both as personal fulfillment, as well as providing finances to the home.

I think a lot about marriage. I just got out of a serious relationship, or at least a relationship which seemed more serious than any I'd been in previously, and most definitely one I'd wanted to turn toward marriage, and thus am currently in no position to be handing over that level of commitment to anyone. And yet, when I am out and about, I'm looking at people no longer as potential playmates, but as partners. Given my lifestyle, there is a dearth of options.

A friend joked last week, "You're going to have to spend a lot more time at Target Field."

The Most Dangerous Game

In 1997, Conor Shenk introduced me to Japanese Rock.
In 1998, I found Renaud Martin in a Japanese Rock chat room, in a discussion about the Cure.
Renaud Martin introduced me to Clan of Xymox, The Legendary Pink Dots, and Einsürzende Neubauten.
In 1999, I read Venus in Furs.
In 2001, I went to see a band called Venus in Furs, in Fargo. I fell instantly for Tom Haugen, a member of the band, and gave him my phone number. A couple of days later, he called, and amongst other conversation topics, he asked me to tell him about the posters on my wall. One, of Nick Cave, sparked the query, "Is he smoking? Is he handsome?" (the answer being yes, to both) which remains a favourite quote to this day (another great one of Tom's, out of context: "Thanks for the pants news!")
Tom introduced me to 16 Horsepower, to the New Yorker, to ecstasy, and deepened my interest in Tom Waits. We shared a love of Einstürzende Neubauten, of literature, of arguing--he was the first to accuse me of arguing in "lawyer speak". He was a terrible, and incredible boyfriend. Passionate, literate, astoundingly beautiful in vocabulary, both in conversation and writing ("Your scent lingers to function as an invisible periapt, I never wish it to disseminate." He also wrote the phrase which seems to continue to curse me, "You emanate permanence, a permanence I have brazenly taken for granted.") He was also a petulant addict who I was fairly positive would end up dead one way or another before his 21st birthday (he was 19 at the time). He has since proved me wrong, and continues to be a close friend, recently giving me yet another couple of quotes for the book; "You're the perfect woman, though I would prefer you were a little more domesticated," and "You're autonomous as fuck."

In my head, this is an example of the timeline of my development. When I seek to remember dates, events of import, places I've been, I rifle through the catalog in my brain, and this is how the continuum is set up, and it is largely based around people I've been involved with romantically. Yesterday, I was accused of having my identity being completely tied up in my relationships, or more to the point, identifying myself solely through these relationships. There is truth to this, and it makes me feel defensive, so I find myself writing this here in order to sort out the facts. Mostly, I find that while it may not be the conventional way to store information, there's also nothing unhealthy about it. I'm not identifying myself through these relationships as much as I'm noting how one event/symbol/life lesson feeds into the next, and that, frankly, I'm a terrific romantic in all areas of my life, behaving very religiously toward all things I find dear. I don't discard any memory, and I take life's winding road and all the treasures along its way very, very seriously in regard to that. What is more serious than love? Were it not so serious, the great canon of word and song would be reduced to a mere trifle.

June 2010, I met Jorge Castro. As we ordered our respective whiskeys, moments after meeting (I saw him at a party across the street, waggled my finger at him for being a man who trims his glorious chest hair, then told him he was to come to the Herkimer to have a drink with me), we found out we shared a birthday (though he's three years my junior).
Jorge's half-Mexican, muscular, hairy looks paired with his drunk, tattooed, stoner ways were made only more impossibly attractive to me with a gentle North Carolinian twang in his voice. Already a year and a half deep into one serious bender post-Dan Kane heartbreak, I jumped headlong into even more chaos revelry with Jorge, made all the worse by the fact that despite him only being interested in getting laid, he was also a kind gentleman (Southern breeding will do that to you), so the bond had some knotty ties I had considerable difficulties disentangling myself from--a fact those of you following these writings will recall as the point this blog started from, excepting a one-off blog in the 2007 Dan-times. One such bond with Jorge had me immersing myself full-time in Kings of Leon, who made me feel a closeness to the things Jorge had to offer but wasn't offering me, without being as obsessive as I really was toward him at the time. Tattooed, chaotic, hairy southern boys who drink too much = a downright Pavlovian response. Somewhere in this, catching Sex on Fire or Use Somebody on the radio at least three times a day, in this summer of Leon, I consciously decided to seek out a lad who looked like Nathan Followill. And lo, not even a week after this, in the middle of August, 2010, there was Andy.

So, Andy, if I didn't think this way, if things were not catalogued on this romantic continuum, where one experience feeds into the next, almost seamlessly, and most definitely beautifully, I more than likely would not have stared at you for two and a half hours, so frightened by your beauty my normally forward, cocky self could find no footing. I would not have seen you again two weeks later (because I wouldn't have noticed you two weeks before), and I would not have drank enough Canadian to bolster my faltering ego, I would not have allowed myself to just jump in with you and really let a series of failsafes falter.

And if those things hadn't happened, I wouldn't have now learned that a feeling of cosmic certainty must not mean shit, nor would I have spent a year hoping you'd just chill the fuck out and allow yourself to love me the way I know you can instead of whine about the terror of having someone love you that knows you're the one, and I certainly wouldn't be listening to Kings of Leon right now, a sweet feeling of bitter irony in my gut.

I love(d) you as best I could, and you failed me, and failed us over and over again in your entitled (yes, there's that word again) way, in your stupid belief that an emotionally, intellectually fulfilling relationship that functions happily is best kicked to the curb because you are incapable of looking at what you have in any real way, choosing instead to focus on the deficits. You are truly playing a very dangerous game with love, with me, and the simple fact that you'd do this, still in love with me, still wanting to do things with me, to enjoy things that we enjoy, but feeling you somehow deserve more, that there's some reality out there, outside of us... Well, fuck you.

Fuck you.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Sock It To me.

I'm getting older. This becomes apparent not very much in my form--thankfully, I'm sporting a hotter body than ever (albeit slightly squishified in the midsection compared to last summer, but once I get the punching bag up in the garage it'll only take a few sessions to be bikini-ready again) and I am always assumed to be about 24 years of age. These things are highly agreeable in the aging department. No, how I feel mildly offended by men I don't know speaking coarsely or just using overtly blue language with me before they know a single thing about me. Specifically, this comes working at a bar; approaching a table full of half-drunk men in their 20s who are dropping f-bombs more than any other word, I want to admonish them soundly for their language in front of a lady before I ask them what sort of domestic swill they'd like to ingest. But would it make any sense to them? I'm feeling that the understanding of this is rapidly slipping in those currently younger than 25.

Who would have ever thought that once a gal reached a certain age, she'd want respect. The curious thing is, outside of those brash f-bomb dropping men, I'm getting it. This may be the most telltale sign of all regarding my aging. It's not that anyone calls me ma'am now, but that a certain level of courteousness has crept into my social interactions. And maybe it is just as much me, my personality, as it is my age; I feel now I no longer need to apologise for my actions, I do what I wish, and I will not be repentant (this comes also with an inherent lack of doing things I should need to feel apologetic for, of course). My tolerance for putting up with other people's day-to-day bullshit is at a low. It all feels a little chicken or the egg. I am still the brassy, mostly unfiltered woman those who know me (hopefully) love, but somehow, in the growing pains of the last two years, a distillation process has also occured which finds me getting what I want from people with minimal fuss (and also finds me offering compromises with minimal fuss).

And these last two years, well, that is perhaps another thing. It's only become clear to me the past three or four months what it's been about. A chain of events put me into a chaos spiral which was ultimately incredibly beneficial, but lost in the whorl of it, it was hard to see a way out. A failed relationship, loving, tender, flawed, came to a necessary end spring of 2008. Hindsight shows me that up until approximately five months into my current loving, tender, flawed relationship, I was battling with the fallout of that failure two years ago. A two year bender came in its wake, both Liquor and Dick. Couldn't really get enough of either, and neither (or none) of it was right. I met Andy and still none of it was right, despite Little Brain Voice telling me it was. I was ready to be done with the bender, but a little more chaos was in store. I think once I reached the point of complete financial ruin, it all became clear: This Is Not What I Want. Of course, I'm a long way off from realising anything I do want, but it feels like I am making strides toward where those things exist. I'm making enough money right now to have myself almost debt free by 2012 (just in time for the apocalypse, wherein debt will not matter, hee haw). The student loans will remain, to the tune of about $5,000, hopefully down from their current standing of nearly $15,000. I'll have paid off my credit cards, my car, all outstanding small debts owed friends and the like. Once the student loans are paid, that frees up almost $700/month which can go toward a downpayment on a house. Or a lengthy move to Tennessee. Or both. Things with Andy continue to be difficult, but I know he's the one for me. It's odd to be in a relationship that's toeing it's strongest period more than 10 months in.

All things are always in flux, but it does feel that a future I want is on the horizon.