Turning 30 on a three-day weekend

I am sitting on the front porch beside my little herbs and tomatoes, trying to play the Fender (hereby officially dubbed "Kilgore"...what? I believe in the naming of guitars) Zach got me for my birthday, and listening to the wind push aside so many glorious trees. It sounds like it feels good to be a tree when the wind blows this way--they can laugh and sigh simultaneously. Remember all those moments at which you laughed until you cried, and then wiping your eyes afterwards and just having a good sigh? Yeah, I don't remember them specifically either, but I know they felt really, really good. I imagine that's what it feels like to be a tree in my yard this morning.

A hummingbird just perched on the front porch post, checked me out, and flew off. There are so many small, incredible moments in life that no amount of writing or singing or speaking will ever be able to describe or even catch up to. Every gust of wind makes me sigh again, and in the strong updrafts, soaring forward, even buzzards look beautiful. Yes, buzzards can soar. If I judged most people by their diets, they wouldn't have a much better image than an airborne leper colony of scavenger birds.

So I'm sitting out here on a much cooler day than I expected it to be--granted, it's still morning, but something about Memorial Day weekend just feels hotter--listening to the trees sigh-laugh, watching Virgil take it all in, stroking Kilgore, and trying to take a look at myself. It's a hard thing to do, not only because of the rising sense of shame and desperation borne on the back of all my thirty years of living and laughing and fucking up pretty often and having no idea what I'm doing or where I'm going, EVER--but also because I can't quite get a handle on how to fairly observe me. Damn you, ego! I'm getting another beer.

Thirty. Half my life ago, I moved to Arkansas, which really feels like the point at which I began to experiment, somewhat too boldly at times, with the idea of becoming a real person. Part of me remembers my childhood as though I was a deeply feeling, deeply thinking entity throughout it and experienced things perhaps more sensitively and intensely than others, but really, the telescope of memory refracts reality. Aside from all of these little revelations I attempt to have about my own identity across the course of my life, I feel certain that so many details have escaped me. How does one really observe anything about anything, ever, let alone oneself in an objective light?

If I had to take me in at a glance right now, here's what I'd say (a GLANCE, mind you):

I'm thirty years old. I work at Wal-Mart headquarters as an administrative assistant, which is the highest-paying job I have had that didn't involve nudity. I have 9 years of higher education under my belt, but no Master's to show for the last four. I live in Bella Vista, have two cats and a dog, and I met my soulmate a little over a year ago; we're trying to make a life and possibly buy a home and some property. I smoke regularly, and I certainly drink more than is recommended by any physician and most normal people. I'm getting kind of fat, I'm out of shape, and I hate my boss.

See, why did that all come out badly? If the devil's in the details, I think he's just as predominant in the generalizations, too. Because really, I have never been this close to happy in my entire life. I still panic and make horrible mistakes regularly, and quite often I want to give up--whatever giving up involves, from shooting myself in the face to just quitting my job out of sheer and total frustration with my prick-ass, idiot, conservative Christian boss, but...I'm happy. And there is really no way, ever, to describe the moments of my life that do make and have made it MY LIFE all these years. Here are a few moments that make my human experience a glorious, irreplaceable, extraordinary thing:

Taking off my sandals and walking barefoot, weeping, on a broken foot, to the Temple of Apollo at the Oracle of Delphi--realizing when I arrived that everything that seemed strangely wrong and painful about my life could just stay there, and I didn't need to take it with me. I left so much suffering on a sunny mountainside in Greece.

Mustering all of my compassion and courage to put Andre to sleep before he began to really suffer from his cancer.

Falling completely in love with a little black puppy far sooner than I expected to, being convinced my heart was broken and I wouldn't want anything dog-shaped in my life for years afterwards...his little tail, thumping the ground, and the way he ran straight to me as soon as I called him "Virgil!"

A bengal cat in a neon-green diaper trying to eat my face as I gave him his pain meds after a bleeding issue during his neuter. Realizing that I was completely in love with this very special, very smart, very strange little tabby, and that no one was going to tell me I couldn't take him home. Him riding in my lap to and from work every day for weeks, and him sleeping behind the computer monitor when there were no guests to greet.

Flirting with this cocky guy at Radio Shack, getting back in my car and trying to put the keys in the ignition, looking down, shaking my head, and saying "Wait, what the hell; why can't I leave without walking back inside and finding out if he's single and would like to...eh....fuck it, I have to do this, here I go." It was like watching myself do things without my own permission. Driven by a deeper force.

Driving back from Christmas weekend on the White River, getting lost, and approaching what I believed was a buzzard dining on something's corpse in the road, only to get this funny feeling as I drove up on it and swerve at the last minute, breaking all the rules of driving, and seeing as I passed a young bald eagle staring me down...so glad I didn't just smear a BALD EAGLE all over highway 90.

Dancing in my panties, with my big goofy yellow sunglasses on, lip-synching GNR "Patience" while Zach laughed and recorded me.

Talking to Zach over webcam chat as I saw a huge bowl full of goldfish he had bought for our cat to slaughter...and realizing what a wonderful man I had finally found.

Waking up in the cool air and sunshine and laughing trees beside Indian Creek--grabbing my towel and soap and walking down to jump in the coldest, cleanest, leaf-green water while the trees laughed and butterflies exploded from the shore. Having no running water or electricity and feeling nonetheless like my life had just begun, laughing naked there in the sunshine, alone with my new love stirring a campfire just shouting-distance away...the sunshine and the cold water and the butterflies and me just laughing, splashing so hard in the water and letting the current make love to me.

Looking at Zach and knowing that I could not only NOT drive home that evening and be away from him physically for another week, but knowing that the only thing that mattered from that point forward was that I be near him and with him as often as I could for the rest of my natural life.

Waking up next to him at dawn on Easter morning and making love until the stars moved and Time held its breath.

Sitting on the porch, smoking with him after making love on a Sunday morning.

Learning gin. Laughing and talking while he made so many plans for our life together and I cooked dinner as he drank and smoked and watched me.

Looking around me, every day I live here, saying "oh my God, I love my life."

It's like life finally started happening with me instead of to me.

And I could die happy, right now. But I won't, because I'm interested to see what's coming. If it's anything at all like the last year of my life has been, I'll stick around.

Seeing in the dark

Keys clicking like little frantic heartbeats
(a frightened rabbit, a bird)
That bright white glow against the dark that means:
"I'm connecting to something."
It's not a computer.
It's a lifeline.
Half-empty beer bottle
leaning, cold against my hip--
I, prone, propped up in bed,
crippled.

My fingers are the only animated part of me now.
I could use them--
press into my eyesockets,
squeeze and pull the unseeing parts away
push, push past the mush of hot, wet tissue
find the gray matter.
Clasp it. Tug at it.
Pull it out, fling it,
smear it on this screen.
Then, everything would make sense.

My fingers refuse to obey.
The little clicking keys
are soundless.
A trigger is one loud click.
It's an easier way to get my brains
onto the screen.

I Guess So.

Here we go again.
My fingers don't even work.
You're welcome, all. For me not doing it.
I can feel the steel, the angle at which it rests, oily
in my mouth
(full of boredom)
cold metal, a long reach--
say "ah."
Touch the roof of your mouth
with that cold, cold metal.

Lovely.

Licking it in my mind.
(The open, oily barrel)
Really? No.
Shotgun funeral.
Gun-shy.
Dick.
Cock.
Fuck me to death.
My brains out.

HOLY FUCKING CHRIST COME FUCK MY MOUTH UNTIL I CANNOT SPEAK OR WEEP
MAKE EVERYTHING WET
ALL FLESH
BREATH
COME
COCK
THRUST
LEAN PUSH
RIBCAGE
STOMACH
PELVIS. DIG. GRIND.
BONES.

...shocked..?
Oops.
Better now.

It's funny that way.

I don't want this to be a complaint. Something really wonderful is happening right now: Virgil is standing by the glass front door, on full alert, birdwatching--like he's at a Wimbledon final. And he reminds me so much of Andre that sometimes I feel guilty. I want to go out today and get some birdseed for the feeder, just so he'll have something to do while I'm laming it up in here. Should I feel guilty for loving him the most when he reminds me of Andre?

So, I'm waiting for this job--THE job, the hard one, the one I want. I've been doing what I'm told you're supposed to do and not give up on your dream for something else. So the fuck what if my dream is to stop drinking like a sloppy fish out of water, be good to my lover, and land a low-paying job doing what I wanted to do when I was about five. I wanted to be a veterinarian, and that was something they could be proud of me for doing, so they wanted me to do it. Then they saw that I was a good writer (was), and wanted me to do that. Then I went to college, and people thought I was smart. So maybe they could be proud of me for being an editor. A writer. A something with words. Then I got into grad school, was forced to teach Composition, and was just lonely and miserable enough to throw myself into it wholeheartedly, so they thought I was good at it. Some of my students did, too. So, maybe I could've done that.

I didn't.

I did some other shit in the middle. I was good at that, but I couldn't or wouldn't do that either, for whatever reason.

So I quit grad school, because it's full of assholes who only want to hear how smart they are talk about shit that absolutely does NOT matter in order to convince themselves that they are as smart as they think they are and how one day they'll get to just be writers, but in the meantime pretend to care about the tiny minds they piddle into while drinking with their other friends who want to hear how smart THEY are and talk about things that also don't matter. And they know where they're headed. Some little shithole community college where they might eventually meet a decent lay at a conference and get hitched even though they told themselves their whole lives that smart people are too smart to believe in marriage. How is it that I feel like the failure here?

Oh wait, that's right: because just once I stood up for them in a way that took balls and shouldn't have caused anyone any harm. And it backfired. And the only friends I had (save one, who I might also have just completely accidentally lost for good) got pissed at me, but didn't tell me for a couple of months, until I finally had the courage to actually go out among them, one last time...and I find out that they were pissed at me for months for something I didn't mean to fuck up, which I did on their behalf. And so now, that's failed, too.

And of course, I fucked up suicide as well.

Now, I'm just depressed. I guess that's what happens.

If I don't get this job, I don't know what I'll do. Probably the same old failing shit that I always do.

Please, God that I don't believe in, just let me get a job where I can go back a little bit and feel like I'm saving the dog I failed to save.

I think I'm even making my dogs depressed.

At least I just wrote something. Something no one will read.

Friends at home.

I have decided never to have children. I decided this a long time ago, but, at 27, I'm finally old enough that when I say it (again and again), emphatically, people believe me. I'm not married; I have two and a half degrees and no career; I'm terribly irresponsible with money, and I have very little discipline and less ambition. But none of these things would stop me from having children if I wanted them (in the case of some folks I know, all of the above are true, but they keep on squeezing out that next one). I am extremely close to my family, who never abused me any more than your average family. I don't particularly like children. Anyone's. Children are no better or worse than most adults, as far as I can tell; some of them are rotten, some of them are incredible and amusing and have something to contribute, but for the most part, they're boring.

But above all, there is one reason I don't want children: I love having pets.

It's snowing hard here for the first time in over five years. I couldn't quite get up the gumption to go frolic in it like I would have years ago...but then I let the dogs out.

I have a two year old Belgian Sheepdog (Groenendael) named Dante, and a ten month old black labradoodle named Virgil. They are both black, brilliant, healthy, happy dogs--but in terms of personality, you might as well be talking about Hamlet and Polonius. To Dante, snow is how things should be. You'd have to be a tiger to demonstrate a more regal dignity--everything holds his interest, but everything poses a potential threat to his wards (us). Constantly marking the world around him, head up, eyes bright, taking it all in. He knows how to take care of himself and of his people; he is protective, ever-watchful, and extremely independent. Silent, smart as hell, fast, capable of understanding everything you say to him (although he makes his own decisions based on circumstance). Then there's Virgil. All the intelligence of a Labrador and a Standard Poodle, but still such a puppy. Nimble, agile, fast...yet clumsy and slapdash somehow. Follows me everywhere, interested in whatever I'm doing. Vocal, grumbly, funny little houndthing--no sense of danger. "You want this? I want this! Look, I will get it and bring it to you, and then you throw it so that I can have it, and then I will bring it back again! I love you! I love this? What's this over here! Oh, look! I love it!"

I can't even say how long I spent today, just letting them out, watching them dust each other and yip and yelp and scrap and wrestle and run and live. Now it's dark outside, and the snow is still falling. Virgil is curled, in a meatloaf-tight wad beside the front door, and Dante is stretched out, all sleek and dark like gravity itself, eyes half shut, completely content and exhausted beside me on the couch. I look at them, and I feel like royalty. I do what I do for a living so that I know nothing bad can happen to them that I cannot afford to fix. They are taken care of, even if I am not. Total peace here, this evening. Thanks to my dogs.

Is there a religion that worships them? Well, there is now.

And if you don't love me, let me go.

Listening to The Decemberists' "Engine Driver" incessantly. New mantra emerging in the chorus...everything in my life is so uncertain--even my love--a larger thing these days than it ever has felt previously. It scares me. I remember Zampano's chest breaking through chains and think of my heart--when I love, it hurts.

I have my Ipod on (well, no Hank's Ipod, to be accurate), and am sitting on my knees in the floor of the apartment, wondering. I have a good cry coming on--the result of accepting things I do not understand.

A poem is wanting me to write it, and I don't know how to begin. I feel as though my face is pleading with every other face it sees, asking, "What IS this? What does your face want from my face? Why do we bother even acknowledging one another?"

Will anyone ever be worth it? Worth the awkward moments in elevators, the "How are you"'s to sales clerks, the being polite to the old and the handicapped and the stinky people with strange wardrobe decisions (stories we later relate to a group of drunken friends who pretend to hate other people along with us)?

I fear that my writing has slipped away forever--that I will never again be able to construct a coherent thought with the potential to create a connection somewhere else inside the obscurity that is experience.

Showboating, mimicry.

Mating Rituals

I'll never get used to them. Even when I am only one of many in a seething, desperate, drunken mass, I feel myself inside this hamster wheel of skepticism and alienation. It's not always a bad thing, but drinking at least made the plastic more transparent. I know, what an idiotic metaphor.

Why sex? Well, it feels good if you do it the right way(s) with the right person(s), sure. But beneath that, we're fundamentally--I don't care whether or not you "believe in" marriage or kids, or even want either of them--geared to pair off, find a cave, and squeeze out another little monkey or six.

That said, (very reductive, I know), what purpose do relationships serve, when you do not--as I don't--have any intention of reproducing?

There are plenty of happy, childless, long-term couples out there, right? Do they still fuck? What happens to their sex drive once makin' babies becomes obsolete? It's like Jackie Treehorn says, "The brain is the greatest erogenous zone in the body." That's where my sex drive derives, anyway. First thought, then action. And are men and women so fundamentally different in this respect?

I know this makes me sound very ignorant, but the thing is that, for someone who has actively pursued sexual...(I refuse to say "liberation") awareness for most of her pubescent life, I feel like I suddenly know nothing about it.

That brings me back to the question of what a relationship--homo or hetero, open or closed, long-term or short-term, but romantic regardless--is FOR, if not for reproducing. Body heat. It's true. Also, instinctively, let's go back to the jungle or the open plain, the mountains, or whatever. Let's go all the way back to spears. Back-to-back, you're better off, regardless of your gender. That expression--for someone to "have your back," really gets at the heart of what I'm trying to understand. Yes, I have an agenda here. I want to know:

What is it about a relationship that has been so important to me, over the course of the last year, that I let Liam put me through the ringer without just walking away? Why did I let myself, and him, become so unhappy that I felt more like his enemy than his partner or lover? I know where it began, but that doesn't mean that I can just blame him and move on. It began with a lie. It always does. And not just any lie, but a lie that put me at personal risk. I'm talking STDs here. That's something I take very. Fucking. Seriously. Condom or no, viruses are getting cleverer and cleverer, and their consequences are dire.

Oral sex is awesome, on either end, if it's done well. I'm not going to put in a fucking dental dam, or suck on a big rubber tube. That would take all of the enjoyment out of it for me. Does that put me at a higher health risk for stuff like HPV, AIDS, etc? You're goddamned right it does. I have no delusions about that. So, when Liam was cheating on me, lying to me about it to the point that I didn't know who he had done or what, I had to assume for the sake of my own safety that he was having unprotected sex (oral or otherwise) with women I did not know. And I have to say--nothing personal here, but a couple of them were really nasty. Like, really got around. And I never found out about it until AFTER the fact. AFTER I'd had unprotected sex with him.

My rage about that only increased with each time he did it. I lost track of how many, but who's counting now?

The point is, my "partner" risked my safety and my longterm health for the sake of getting his fucking dick wet. That was not a gesture of love, devotion, or even friendship. It was very nearly the most careless, selfish thing that anyone has ever done to me. And he did it a lot.

He seems to feel pretty sorry for himself, with his busted tooth and his dental bills, about the raging, abusive alcoholic he escaped from. I can't pay his dental bill, so he came in and pretty much said that I should "give" him the scooter I have been needing to sell to support myself.

I wonder how much antibiotics for chlamydia come out to, after all the treatment? The immunization shot against HPV? Anything else that might turn up in my system long after he's scot-free on his scooter? He loved to preach about his privacy, but the wall we kept coming up against was that his "privacy" could have cost my private-parts a whole lot of trouble. Somehow, that never seemed to sink in with him. We were doomed, and have been, for a very long time.

And yeah, I'm feeling pretty resentful about the old issues. The breakup is going fine, it's just that now I can really look back and see it for what it was: a fucking train wreck for the last year. Before that, it was beautiful. Blame aside, that's all I know. But clearly, I have been feeling this way for a long, long time. Resentful doesn't even begin to cover it. Try furious. Wounded. Betrayed. Scared enough to strike.

Sex doesn't mean what it used to mean. Diseases are very, very real, and I don't want a goddamned one of them. I wouldn't wish them on anyone, but the conclusion I keep arriving at concerning my conflict over monogamy is this:

It's not just monogamy. It's statistics. It's trust. It's knowing how many invisible enemies are out there, waiting to feed on my pleasure parts, and having trusted someone else with my long-term health.

I don't think that he ever understood how serious it was--not just the cheating, not the jealousy, but the lying about it.

Goddamn it, I want to see a pedigree before I fuck anybody ever again. I'm gonna go get myself tested for everything under the sun, and I'm going to present any future partner with some fucking papers. And I'm gonna keep 'em updated in cycles of six months!

Well, anyway, I don't know about that, but I sure as shit am going to make a mofo wrap his shit up. Twice.