Four Thoughts, Disconnected
1. Sometimes, I take a hot shower so long that I think I lose consciousness. Leaning my left shoulder on the tiled wall, steamy, soap melting in my hand, I could be dreaming. I lose time, maybe I travel. Have another life for a few minutes. What is real, I wonder, except that I feel the water running down my legs and into the drain.
2. I told someone the truth last week. I knew that when I did it (in GChat because we don’t talk anymore) it would re-frame who I was/everything that had happened. But I needed to tell him. I needed him to know. I needed him to absolve me of guilt and shame, to give me penance and forgive me so I could forgive myself. I’d been pretending to be someone I wasn’t. A woman who existed in my imagination, but not yet in reality. Not so far from who I am, a version of me that could be, that might be, that soon will be, but not who I am, not who I was this summer. I fretted that I was a kind of Catfish, and, maybe, I was, but I’d catfished myself too. (To be clear, this was a truth about my past, about a version of my story that I tell to normalize myself. I did not lie about who I was in order to attract or trick him.)
I’m too old not to know who I am. But, truthfully, I don’t always. I’m too much even for myself. Too sad, too silly, too intense, too needy, too self-centered, too sexual, too love-starved, too self-centered. And I worry too much about what you see (you, all of you, the general you in my head.) Still so much work to do before I become the person I am capable of being. Still struggling through the day as this imperfect self. And trying not to be an asshole.
3. The thing about radical truth is that it feels euphoric to tell it. Freeing. Like a superhero cape. (Well, I guess as long as the consequences aren’t dire. I didn’t go to jail or anything.) So, now I’m playing with the idea of revealing all at a story-telling event on Friday. 5 minutes. How naked am I willing to be? How naked do I need to be? Is this just another way I think I have to “earn” love? I’m not sure yet, but if you’re in NYC on Friday, and want to watch me do a little burlesque, come to Best in Show. (No guarantees I’ll get on. It’s open mic.)
4. Went to my local Irish pub on a football Sunday. Intended to have a Jameson, eat a few fries and read my copy of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist. Truthfully, I was also there to check out my friendly neighborhood men. The fries were greasy, the whiskey and the book were fine, and the boys were sort of lumpy and sad. A few middle-aged woman laughed loudly and yelled about being more better. (I know, I’m sorry, I’m middle-aged too.) I’m never happy there, but in my fantasy, it is a sort of Cheers for single, literary nerds. Makes me long for Cedar Tavern. I should stop going, but I’m ever hopeful.
The Shelf is a Metaphor 