Horse Thief

There’s a phrase I heard when I got to certain rooms in San Francisco: If you sober up a drunken horse thief, you still have a horse thief.

Lately, I’ve been getting the chance to acknowledge where I still act from Horse Thief tendencies and impulses.

I was a thief in High School, probably in Junior High, and actually come to think of it, in college, too. It was sort of "a thing" me and my friends did, to see what we could get away with, and also, because we were only stealing from big conglomerate stores, we felt (or at least I did) justified, since they were always screwing the little man anyway – What did they care if Maybelline mascara went into my pocket? That’s a fraction of a cent they’ve lost in profit, and I’m standing in solidarity with the Chinese children they hired to mark the packaging. (Riii….ght.)

I was, however, pretty clear about not stealing from people, only from these big stores, because there was a line I felt I still had to maintain, a standard of behavior I adhered to. It wasn’t right to take from little mom & pop shops, or to steal from actual people I knew. That was wrong. Stealing from the mall was just expected, written into their budgets in some corporate headquarters somewhere, and therefore right -- or at least okay.

It’s been quite some time since I’ve stolen anything. Probably since before I moved to SF. But that doesn’t exactly mean that the Horse Thief has been repentant or ousted.

I have all the stores I’ve “reappropriated” from on a list that I am slowly chipping away at, to make amends to, either by sending in money for items, or “paying it forward” by donating to a charity. Each will have a conversation with a trusted friend around it when the time comes.

But, I’ve lately recognized that there is still a pattern of dishonest behavior and thinking that infiltrates my current life.

When I was working through a temp agency while in grad school, I got to open the invoices to see what the company I worked for was actually paying the temp agency, and it was certainly higher than the rate at which I was being paid by said agency (which, duh, is how they profit). So I approached the company I was working for, and asked if they would just hire me under the table. That way, my Horse Thief logic went, it was cheaper for them, and I would get a few more dollars, since it wasn’t going to be taxed.

Um… Yeah. That didn’t work out so well. Even though I was “working a program,” even though I could talk about the necessity of honesty and integrity in life, and seriously really mean it, this dishonesty was creating holes in my abundance, and in my sobriety/serenity.

Plus, I got caught. The temp agency found me out, and called the company where I was a receptionist, and when I answered the phone, she “surprisedly” said, Oh, Hi Molly…

Oops.

So, there were emails and phone calls and conversations between the HR at the company where I was and the temp agency I’d spurned. After talking with some trusted friends, I wrote an email to the agency, owning up to my part of this deception.

And, in the end, when tax time rolled around, I got a 1099 from the company, anyway, since I’d earned a significant amount in the 5 or so months I temped under the table for them, and I had to pay taxes on that money anyway. Which meant that I ended up earning less from my time there than I would have if I’d just continued working through the proper (read: legal) channels.

I have a moral line about not stealing pens from work, or using stamps I didn’t pay for. But there are other ways in which this fear of not being taken care of, this fear that my needs will not be met creeps out.

This poisonous fear seeps into my life, and I make choices based on that fear. And eventually, I am screwed by it.

It’s been interesting to notice that this is a pattern that has continued into my adulthood. It’s certainly rooted in a long-held belief that my needs will not be met. That if I behave along “proper” channels, I won’t get or have enough. That if I behave by rules and laws that are set down, I will not be taken care of.

So, I better get my fearful, sticky claws into something, I better come up with some better, sneaky ideas, or else I’ll be eating ramen again.

I get it. I see it.

And I hope to change it.

A trusted friend does a lot of work with affirmations to counter fear. So, this morning, I used that tool:

I fear my needs will not be met.

I trust that the Universe cares for all my needs.

I fear that no one is looking out for my good.

The Universe cares deeply for me.

Sure, maybe it’s bunk. But, right now, I don’t know another way, except to “act as if” these things are true. To try to behave in a way that really does align with my morals, instead of with my fears. 

I have also heard that, with every bought of true honesty or clarity or bill paid on time or phone call from creditor answered, that we are closing up the holes in the sieve that holds abundance. Each time my covers are pulled, I get the chance to be more honest, and thereby the chance to mend the bucket into which the fullness of life is surely always being and going to be poured.

I cannot turn a drunken horse thief (or a sober one for that matter) into an upstanding citizen. But I can try to trust that I don’t have to be one anymore. 

Yo' Mama.

Apologies, reader, for the rain delay (lack of blog) yesterday. It was this wonderful Spring rain in the morning, and instead of sitting at my stoic kitchen table, and peering out the window while writing morning pages, meditating, and composing a blog, I took my mug of coffee into my studio’s bedroom/living room, tucked myself into the corner of my couch against the window, and sat next to my cat on the arm of the couch watching the rain make everything greener.

It was warm and cozy, and I just couldn’t bring myself to break the calm of the spell. The sound of the rain, the steam from the mug, watching my cat’s chest expand and contract with each breath. Oh, calm! How I miss you! Oh, rest, you ineffable minx!

I let my thoughts roam over the landscape, and thought how I missed my mom, when she was here last, and sat on this very couch with this very cat. And so, I called her. – Strange and funny thing to do, eh? Think of someone, and actually call them? Not text or poke or email – but make a phone call – God, it’s luxury and connection incarnate.

I knew she’d just returned from her annual trip with her beau to some Caribbean island (Back, Envy, BACK!), and even with only a half hour (barely enough time for us to scratch the surface of a conversation), I called to find out how it went.

I love talking to her. Sure, there are times when it’s grating, and I have to remind myself she’s human with flaws and working on them. But, on the whole, especially these past several years, talking with her is more refueling than it is draining – which is a gift.

She’s just hilarious. Our conversations meander, and side-track, and disambiguate, and non-sequiter, yet always find their way back, like six degrees of separation. It’s these things that I know I’ll miss most when she’s gone. And why I’m trying to get what I can now, to call, and make plans to visit, and email when I can.

Call it morbid, call it realistic. I just want to store it all. Engage in it all.

Coincidentally, one of the anecdotes from her trip was about interacting with the armed guard at the airport, the process of going through customs and homeland security, and the stark seriousness of it all. And, so, as she is wont to do, she planted a funny sentence into the bleak and rote exchange with the check-point guard.

He cracked a smile and then cracked wise. Suddenly, it was an exchange between people instead of objects.

I told her how synchronistic it was that just this very week I wrote a blog about learning from her to talk with strangers, to make our interactions with one another just that much more engaged and alive.

I shared with her my own story about being in Port Authority around the Bush Iraq invasion, and bantering briefly with a guard walking through the orange-tiled halls about exchanging his gun for some flowers.

I love that she does this, and that I do it, as I wrote the other day. It’s part of what makes this life worth living and engaging in, part of the surprise of being alive. When you engage, you don’t know what will happen, you’re rolling the ball onto the Roulette wheel. Maybe the person won’t want to play, maybe they’ll look at you with a “look, I just want to clock out, please stop talking to me” impatience. But, perhaps, both of your days will be lightened just that little bit. Maybe, in fact, it’s the only time you talk to someone all day, as can happen in our disconnected world of modern conveniences.

I asked my “intuitive” once what she thought about my moving back to New York-ish to be closer to her, since sometimes it really is painful to live so far away, to not get to pick up the phone and say, hey that movie’s playing on 72nd tonight, wanna go? Or, I just saw this exhibit is opening at the FIT Fashion Museum, meet up this week? Or, can you come with me to Sephora, I need to find a new blush?

Honestly, it pains my heart to not get to do that with her.

But, my intuitive, whenever this was, a year or so ago, had a pretty logical answer: If you go, you’ll be her caretaker, and that will not be good for you.

It’s true. There’s a fine line from being involved to being too involved, and there’s a pattern of being her caretaker that I don’t want to repeat from my childhood. And it’s a role I know I can easily fall into, without strong enough boundaries: Love as Caretaking, instead of Love as Equanimity.

The jury has been out indefinitely on my move back to the East coast. It doesn’t have to be New York. It doesn’t have to look like moving into caretaking distance. It can look like, "I’m coming down or up for the weekend, let’s do stuff," which is easier than "I’m taking a cross-country flight."

Luckily, I am not in charge of my destination, I’m only in charge of doing the work. Perhaps my boundaries become stronger, perhaps I am better able to stay out of the grooved rut of caretaker. And perhaps they don’t, and I allow myself to say, That’s okay, Mol.

But, on a rainy Saturday morning, I can still give her a call, and we can laugh, meander, and enhance one of the cherished relationships I will ever have.

Being There

See, there’s two things I’d forgotten in all the sturm&drang of rehearsals & work & sick & crossing bridges & lack of down time: I’m actually good at this acting thing. And I enjoy it. 

In the maelstrom of preparation, I forgot why I was doing this.

As I sat in our reserved cast seats in the front row of the audience, watching the other actors before my scene perform, I got a few minutes to gather myself, and reflect. Something the director said during the “let’s get PUMPED” speech before we got into costume helped to remind me: She said, This is for you. This isn’t for your friends, your parents, your partners: This is for you.

This is for me, I repeated to myself. I remembered that this isn’t for a resume, for a good story to tell when I’m older; this isn’t for accolades or for money. I am doing this acting thing, because I enjoy it. Because it’s FUN. Because, once I do get through rush hour traffic from Berkeley, once I do find parking in the Mission behind some dude drinking Steel Reserve and selling electronics out of his car, once I do get upstairs through the weird haunted building, I come to a black box theater.

In that theater, I’m there to have fun, to enjoy myself, and to share myself. I’m there to engage in something I thoroughly enjoy, just for the sake of it. How fucking novel.

It was and is nice to have been sought out during the wine&cheese reception after the show by a cute little gay boy and his girl friend, to have them sidle up during a conversation with a beamish grin, and tell me how great my performance was. That they got chills. To ask if I did that thing with my hands on purpose, and wow, you did? Wow. That was so great.

It’s gratifying to know that something that I actually enjoy doing is enjoyed and appreciated by others—that’s true, too. (We are only so spiritual!)

But then, isn’t that the point of theater, too—to affect another person. To affect an audience, to help them experience something? Sure, Mol, sure. Yes, you can enjoy the accolades, too. As long as they’re not what’s driving you.

In the chaos of rushing to work, to rehearsal, to home, to do it all over the next day, I began to feel weary. I began to feel like maybe I’m not cut out for this—that maybe this hustle is a younger person’s game. Maybe it’s too late for me to be high-tailing it all over creation in service of a pipe dream.

I really was beginning to wonder if I would audition again.

Part of my delay/hesitance recently, is that I knew I was in a production that was taking all my time & memorization space. Part of it is that I know I’m going out of town in April, and didn’t want to audition for anything new when I’ll be gone. (Cuz, it seems to me that working actors can’t really take vacation…)

And, part of it was/is just plain exhaustion and feeling grueled instead of fueled.

But, I am getting to see that perhaps this is just part of the process. Part of that “put in the hard work to enjoy the results” thing that I’m so loathe to do most of the time. HARD work? Meh.

But, perhaps that’s what’s required here, to get the feeling I had last night. Sure, I fucked up some lines, but people didn’t seem to notice. I still got to feel the sense of “right place.” In the chair, on the stage, in front of lights so bright you can only make out shapes in the audience; hearing the sound cues, the mounting tension of my scene, the mounting tension I bring to my scene. Getting to be there, getting to sit in that chair and show you what I’ve got – It was... well, enlivening.

There’s a phrase I’ve heard to name those times when you are so engaged that you feel out of time, out of the chaos of place, when you are so in something that “time just flies,” – it’s called being “in the flow.” When you are so engaged in what you are doing, when you are so enjoying what you are doing that you are somehow matching the heartpace of the Universe. When for moments or even hours, you just feel in it – your speed aligns with the speed of life, and you flow, you coast, you glide.

In it. To be IN IT. In life.

There was a moment, too, as I sat in the dark audience awaiting my scene that I remembered something I sometimes do: I survived cancer to be here, and I am HERE. Staking a claim. Making a name. Claiming my own.

The gratitude I felt to get to be in that PUMP YOU UP circle before the show: All chaos, time pressure, toll bridges are lost – and I’m just there. 

From all quarters (and nickels and dimes).

Of time necessity, today’s will be short. Strangely(?), I had a very particular intention yesterday to show up to my job and do my best--my actual best, not my "sorta kinda all you need to do" best.

By 1pm, I had a migraine so awful, I thought I’d puke, and went home.

In addition, yesterday morning I received an email that proposed an answer to a few of the questions I’ve been posing about purpose, direction, intention, and desire for next steps. I forwarded it to a friend, and asked her professional opinion and input. We got to talk (or email) about what interests me, and what doesn’t, what I do want to engage in, what I don’t. And through the course of our conversation, I came to a pretty good conclusion that may result in more action. Because of the nature of my readership, I am necessarily vague, but know that I sit here today with more information than I had yesterday in answer to some of my recent questions.

As the saying goes: Call it odd, or call it G-d. 

“What’s the use in clapping if Tinkerbell’s just gonna die anyway?”

Yesterday at rehearsal, I was changing into my costume in the women’s stall and overheard two of the other actors reciting lines from their monologue class last semester. This was the line.

It sounded so maudlin, purple, dramatic – and hilarious.

It’s nice when these kinds of pessimistic, nihilistic phrases sound like humor to me instead of like truth. Depending on the day, it could go either way.

But for right now, it sounds funny to me.

Because it’s a question I pique to. It’s a question I (and we) have to answer for ourselves every single day. What is the use in trying, living, loving, exploring, creating, learning, sharing, expressing, including, communicating, if it’s all gonna turn to rat turds anyway?

I think it’s a question we are also privileged to be able to ask ourselves. In many economic circumstances, in many not so small corners and countries of the world, there isn’t the option to see the breadth of life and question why we engage in it—there’s only “do what’s in front of you to keep on living;” there’s only survive.

Therefore, it is a gift (and a curse) to have the opportunity to ask ourselves why we should keep on keepin’ on. And we can choose to take the opportunity, or not.

If we forget the finality of mortality, we are (I am) apt to waste time. To plod along, to not question, and not look up to see what direction we’re going. Which is what yesterday’s blog was about.

I won’t repeat what I wrote around Cancer Time, about the crazy-making imperative clock that then can begin to sound when you start noting the temporality of things, which makes you question if you’re allowed to sit on the couch and watch Netflix – or if because of the finite nature of things, you’re only allowed to participate in activities that move the needle of your life and humanity forward.

That kind of extremity can lead to paralyzation. We all need a mind break.

But, what when that mind break goes on too long? When again you begin to feel what Martha Graham called, “a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest”?

I have that divine dissatisfaction; it’s part of what keeps most artists (and mathematicians and inventors)  tinkering at their “finished” work – there’s always something to do, to improve, to make divine itself. But there is a quagmire when that divine dissatisfaction is coupled with absence of direction or intention or consistency.

Then it is only failure. And you’re back to paralyzation again.

My dear aunt wrote me in response to my blog about courage the other day. She was galled. She asked, in essence, if I, Molly, am not courageous, if I am not a warrior goddess, than what on earth am I?

I agree with her (sometimes), that I am a warrior goddess. Not that I’m unique or special in that; many of us are. But, I wrote a blog while sick that was called, “What’s the use of being a Shaman Warrior if you don’t get paid for it?”

I asked myself in the car yesterday, driving to rehearsal, what a warrior goddess does for a living? I thought about Gandhi and Mother Theresa (if I may be so bold as to compare). And I answered, She teaches others how to be warrior goddesses, too.

What that will look like, I wish I had more ideas. But, I will continue to clap for Tinkerbell – because the “use anyway” is that I (and we all) have been given the chance to touch and enhance the world around us and within us. The use is that every time that we exchange a moment of compassion and joy and true connection we illuminate the world. The use is that every one of us is a beacon for everyone else, if we’re bold enough to shine.

As you can see, I have the blessed unrest – if I could only have the blessed roadmap, we’d be in business. 

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

Call it Spring. Call it some planetary phase. Call it the fact that I’ve been back at my job for one year in April. But the past few days, I’ve begun to feel like things are about to shift. Change is afoot.

Could be wrong. Could be indigestion. Could report the same old, same old here for the next sixty years. But, I don’t think so. I don’t feel so.

It’s kind of a stupid thing to report, that you feel change is afoot, in a blog that is supposed to be about updates and reflections and actions. To simply take a moment to let you know that I feel like things are about to be different seems antithetical and anticlimactic. But, nonetheless, I tell it as it happens.

There’s some sort of coagulation that has happened, that I've begun to recognize. Maybe it was sitting with that woman on Sunday and reflecting on the change that’s occurred within me and my spending habits. Maybe it’s noticing that it’s been a year at this job, which has provided a foundation of stability and structure, and enabled me to heal. It’s also realizing that things are going to change soon at my work, the nature of things are going to be reorganized, and perhaps it’s just a time to reassess what’s happening and going on.

It feels like a time to pull my head out of the sand a little more. To reassert what it is that I want out of life, and address those things that hinder me from heading there, or even dreaming them up. It’s what I wrote yesterday in my morning pages: It’s time to dream again.

When you’re in a storm, all you have attention for and time to do is to batten down hatches and lower the mainsail and hope to Jesus and Allah and George that you get through the rough patch safely.

When the clouds do clear, you spend the time assessing damage, swabbing the decks of all the debris you took on board during the crisis, and getting a new roll-call of who’s still with you, who’s got a broken arm.

Eventually, the water has evened out, the crew is back to its old galley routines, and it’s time to point the ship toward the horizon again.

I’ve been very clear this time, as I ask for direction and guidance, to be open to what’s said/heard/intimated. How do you want me to earn? How do you want me to live? How do you want me to share the gifts I have?

I feel I’ve made an awful mess of hampering myself, like an anchored ship attempting to get anywhere new. And I know that some of the internal and external work I’m doing is to untether that stagnation, resistance, and fear.

A friend once told me, years ago, that things wouldn’t work out for me with theater until I addressed my trauma shit. Another friend told me while I was battling chemo that I wouldn’t get out of this pattern of self-immolation until I moved through my father shit.

Despite all the rowing, all the sails pointed in the right direction, no movement can be made if you’re still anchored to pain. No sustainable movement, at least.

So, I suppose this feeling, this sense that things are about to change, is an indication that I’m hoisting anchor.

Where I go from here? I’ve got to take a deep breath of promise and divine creative unrest -- and trust my compass.

(Thank you for indulging my ship metaphor! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did) ;)

For you, not me.

As is custom, yesterday I got the chance to sit with two other folks who work on their relationship to money. We met in the monthly group of three to hear and discuss and provide suggestions and feedback to one of the group. It was this woman’s first group like this, she being new to addressing her vagueness and impulsiveness around money.

And I got the melodious chance to see how far I’ve come since I sat with a similar group of two strangers almost 3 years ago.

As I watched her discomfort, shame, panic, and hopelessness, it reminded me of how I was when I sat in that first group. I hated that I had to seek help around money; I already spent plenty of time in groups about alcoholism, now I have to do it about debt, scarcity, and … (dread) abundance?

I came to that first small monthly group with my numbers tallied from the month before, my income and expenses. I came with my mounting student debt, my checking account bouncing along the bottom, my credit cards bouncing along the top. I came with starvation in so many areas, and I was so sure they were going to tell me to cut more, since my income was not meeting my expenses.

Instead, what they told me was that I was living in deprivation, and needed to increase the amounts I was spending in certain categories of self-care (clothing, entertainment, food). They told me that my needs weren’t too great to be met; that I needn't be ashamed of actually needing more.

It was horrifying! It was so uncomfortable to be validated that I wasn’t living too big for my britches, but have no idea how to change the income side. At the time, I was barely making ends meet with temp jobs, and felt I was doing all I could to get out of the hand-to-mouth hole. But I was powerless, I was desperate, and I listened to these two who said, We believe it will get better for you; it has for us.

Things didn’t really begin to change for me until last Spring when I began working one-on-one with a new woman I’d admired from those groups. For whatever reason, things didn’t really change when I’d worked diligently with the first woman I’d worked with.

When I started again with J., at one point, she told me that I needed a car, and I would get one. SCOFF!! What?? How? What money? Me? No….

I didn’t believe her in the slightest. At all. But, I did believe that she believed, and that was enough. She said, I needed a car to get to band practice, to get to auditions, to get to work, and it would happen for me.

And, as you now know, last October, maybe 6 months after her proclamation, it did. It’s not a beater car, an “underearner’s” car, it’s not a jalopy. In fact, it is the exact make, model, color, mileage and price I’d hoped to get. Seriously!

I didn’t “come into money.” I didn’t stop buying clothing, or going to the movies. I just kept showing up to groups and meetings and writings like the folks I saw get better do. And things changed.

I know the woman yesterday thinks we’re full of shit, just like I did. I know that she thinks to herself, "Yeah, maybe for you, but not for me," just like I did.

But, with my life as evidence, with one credit card paid off, my $90,000 student loans in repayment (slowly), with food I want to eat in my fridge, and most importantly, with the specter of "I'll never get out of this; I'll just kill myself" long faded – if it can happen for me, it can happen for her.

And if the course of one year of real change can produce what it has, maybe I no longer feel the same militant resistance to where else abundance wants to enter my life. (Maybe.)

Nature vs. Nurture.

Being raised by a psychoanalyst, I grew up believing pretty strongly in Nurture vs. Nature. I believed adamantly in Tabula Rasa, and that every aspect of my personality was developed in reaction to my environment.

Eventually, even through a Psychology Major (that switched to Minor), I began to admit that perhaps there were a few inborn traits that one has out of the womb, but the majority of a human’s personality was forged out of their experiences before the age of 3.

But, I have to admit that the aggregate of my own lifetime experiences, up to and including a Leukemia diagnosis, has begun to make me admit that perhaps there is something more to the Gattaca within us. Perhaps something like perseverance, courage, and visceral insistence on life has more to do with my wiring as “human” and as “Molly,” in particular.

I would never peg myself as someone brave or bold. I don’t charge into the fray, or head corporations, or tie myself to a tree before a bulldozer. I have few of the outward markings I would associate with leader or change-maker.

But I am compelled to admit that my undertakings as an adult do, in sum, mark me as someone willing to rage, to rail, to fight, to excavate all in the service of healing.

Though perhaps if my formative years hadn’t been what they were, I wouldn’t find the need to heal from much. Perhaps.

I had a therapist a few years ago who said something novel to me: Your dad is not a courageous man. This struck me as apocryphal. My father, the one so quick to temper and anger and rule of iron fist was not brave? Isn’t that what violence is—bravery? Isn’t that what power is—anger?

Yet, her words rang so unbelievably true. Like seeing the Wizard behind the curtain in Oz. I know now that that kind of anger does usually hide and house one who is critically afraid. I mean, I usually wear my black leather jacket when I’m feeling more insecure, as if its made of chainmail instead of leather.

But, I was on the phone with a friend yesterday, answering her question about why I was in Victoria’s Secret the other day. I told her about my upcoming trip to meet my consummate penpal—and she squealed. She thought it was so bold and brave, and adventurous, and ALIVE. She rattled on that this experience is going to help so many other people down the line, help women to see that life is meant to be lived.

It sounded so epic when she mirrored it back like that! And maybe it is. And maybe it’s not.

But, I do know that with every meditation, every alternative healer, every inventory, every striving, every goddamn picking myself up, that I am taking something back. That I am reclaiming something. And if that impulse to charge onward, in light of all that is, is called courage, then I guess the Wizard granted me a heart on the day that I was born. 

Him, or His Tragedy?

Two of my formative love experiences centered around the tragic hero.

The first suffered unintentional tragedy by external forces; the second, those forces were internal.

I was 19 when I met Joe in the basement dwelling of a mutual friend, basements being common gathering spaces for teens in suburbia. Scotty J. even had a puke hole in the back behind the water heater should the need arise, and it often did.

In the morning, Joe didn’t remember driving his Camaro over to my house the night before, and thanked me for getting his car there safely. … I don’t drive stick; it really wasn’t me.

It was red. Muscley. His pride, his baby, his staff and his project. Both he and Scott would spend hours in the driveway with the hood up, tinkering, fixing, unearthing, lubing, loving, and suping their cars. Scott was working on a Firebird, the shell of the Trans-Am on blocks in the garage having donated its engine to the Firebird.

I loved this. I loved watching how attentive they were to their cars, how dirty their hands were, how much they knew. How sweaty and excited and jargon-speaking they became when bent over the greasy machine. I loved how the cars sounded when they started up. I loved the primal growl, the testosterone surge. I loved that the cars and their owners turned me on.

Maybe a month, maybe less into this Summer of Love, Joe’s Camaro was t-boned by a woman blowing a stop sign through an intersection. Suddenly, the man-boy I had “fallen in love with” deflated. Defeated, broken, grieving for his totaled “baby,” Joe crawled inside a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red.

I couldn’t follow him there, into his mourning. Nor could I really understand or have the perhaps appropriate amount of compassion for his loss, feeling like he was turning his back on what he did have: me.

After my own very misguided attempts to grab his attention back from the stoned, middle-distance stare he’d acquired, he finally did see me; but this time in outrage and betrayal, and our relationship ended in high-octane tears, screams, and pleading.

Tragic.

The second figure I loved so much I fell into that burning ring of fire, was an artist.

Oh, this one. Andy. A Canadian I met in South Korea at age 23, another teacher in the pre-school where we taught English. From moment one, I could smell the pheromones of a tortured soul, and it rang straight into my bones.

There is something very particular about a tortured artist soul. It reads like a familiar, I acknowledge you as one of my own; I see where it is black inside you, where it is a vitriolic, white-hot, tumulting blackness, a yawning cavern of desperate need and distopian pain. God, it’s electric.

The gaping hole, the violent, untenable ache for validation and self-flagellation… god, you just want to walk into the center of it, and be fueled by it. Let me stand in the eye of your self-destruction, in the blaze of your unrest, and be transformed, be elevated by it.

It’s sick. I know. And because you know it’s sick, you delight in it all the more. The delicious evil of it. The knowledge that you are, together, charring a path through hell, is invigorating.

Andy was, and probably is, a painter. There was a crooked, dotted path of yellow paint down the back alley toward his building where one of his cans had leaked through the bag, and bread-crumbed his trail home.

His fingers were often covered in paint (like Joe’s in grease), and his apartment had more than twenty completed canvases leaning on the floor, against the wall. The typified artist whose greatest work lies stale and unrealized behind walls, in drawers, in storage.

I loved the unrealized potential of him. How he slammed his head against his self-made cage. I hated how he “did nothing with it,” and as if I had the power to free him from that bondage, I would look up galleries and places he could show his work. I would read the poems he wrote to accompany his pieces, and create books in my head for this next great artist.

The fantasy of his life, what it could have been, drew me like a moth. A sick, misguided, gaping hole of my own, moth.

Andy had a girlfriend. He had another tragic girl he was sleeping with. I would sit on the heated Korean floor with him and drink and play cards and fuck and drink and intone and fuck some more.

He was never in love with me. This I knew, but tried not to know. I wondered if I could crawl inside him and patch his broken places if he would love me then. But he was also in love with his tragedy, and you can’t take a toy from a child.

The men I’ve loved past these two have been thousands of shades lighter in tragedy. And I have learned enough that you cannot date potential, or rent love from infatuation, or demand love from one who doesn’t love themselves. I have also learned enough that I don’t really want to be ignited by tragedy anymore, but rather by joy, and I pass up the visibly broken ones for hope of something different.

But in the sense-memory playground of my love life, I do know that my heartpace quickens recalling tragedy’s twisted pleasures. 

But We’ve Got The Biggest Balls of Them All!

When I was living and teaching ESL in South Korea, I earned a nickname: Ballsy Mollsy.

It was not uncommon for me to approach a stranger in a bar and ask inappropriate questions. Or, maybe I was with a group of friends, and wanted to steer the conversation in a more exciting direction, and would pose a candid question to a group that would earn laughs, but few answers. Maybe I would just stumble out to the next bar in search of new conversation without telling anyone, but that was more stupid than ballsy, fyi.

As chance would have it, one day last month, I attended a play my friend was performing in, and I ended up sitting next to the 25 y.o.’s mother. “How did it even come up?,” he answered via text. When I told him, he replied, “That’s right, I forgot you talk to strangers.” (Indeed, how we met.)

I do. I talk to strangers. I mean, how are we ever to meet anyone new if we don’t talk to them? Like the other day, waiting for my burrito, I ended up waiting on the bench next to this guy I see around my neighborhood a lot, who I’ve seen working at the café on the corner. We struck up a conversation, turns out he’s a nice guy, we had a pleasant chat about movies, and he went off with his burritos for himself and his girlfriend.

It’s not always about “meeting dudes;” in fact, it’s more than often not about that. I just like to find out about people, not walk around like the Ants that they talk about in A Waking Life who, unseeing, run into one another and then walk around and continue on their way, antennae down. I mean, that’s what New York is for. ;)

I suppose I learned this from my mom. My mother is notoriously gregarious. To the point, growing up where it was embarrassing, and not a little evidence of her manic tendencies. But, still. We’d be in a store, she’d exchange more than a cursory Thank You with the cashier or salesperson. We’d be on a bus, and she’d ask the woman next to her about the museum she’d just visited, based on that metal entry pin tacked to her lapel.

Sometimes, she’d flirt with the cashier or waiter or whomever. There was a base note to her conversation that wasn’t just cordial or conversational. Pre-divorce, this was a little unnerving.

But. A few years ago, she recounted a story to me that she held as an exemplar of growth and self-aware change.

She was in Zabar’s (Manhattanites will know), and was in an aisle next to a couple. She could overhear them debating which of the cream cheeses they should get. If the tofu spread really tasted like cream cheese, if the chive was better than the dill?

My mom. Had an opinion. She always does.

The success came when she didn’t offer it. She reported to me that she realized they were not asking for her help, they didn’t need her help, and she picked up the chive tofu cream cheese she loves, and went on her way.

Trust me. This is a big success. To “mind your own business, and have business to mind” is a very important boundary to learn. I was amused at how proud she was of herself, too, like she knew that she was learning something, that she was changing something.

I mean, it’s part of the reason our relationship has been able to grow where the one with my dad has faltered: she really is trying to change. And it shows.

Like all of us, change and growth takes time, isn’t simple, and sometimes means taking contrary actions.

But sometimes, how we behave in the world influences others, too. How she interacted in the world helped to inform how I do. Now, sure, I’m not Holly Go Lightly everywhere I go. Sometimes I wish I had a burka. But sometimes, the purchase of a burrito is transformed by the simple act of connecting with another human being.

I leave you with this: I received a card in the mail this week from a friend. In it, she thanks me for what I write here and on my Facebook; that reading “me” helps to buttress her flagging spirits.

I told her how much that meant to me. How much it means to me that my interactions with the world are making a difference; that I’m not telegraphing into deep space for purely selfish and masturbatory reasons. I never really know if how I’m choosing to express myself here is “too much” or "too honest," and I have to trust that those of you who choose to click on the link to read me do so because you find something here, even if it be self-congratulations for not being as bipolar ;)

To hear that how I behave in the world influences and affects people for the better is one of the greatest gifts of having big balls. 

Not Vanilla

So you might as well know now, since it’ll come up eventually: In April, I’m going to Boston for a booty call.

It’s probably one of the most forethought and conscious ones I’ve ever had, since it requires, you know, plane tickets.

But, my dear friend is a flight attendant based in Seattle, and invited me to see her for a few days. I have a few days off around Passover next month, have never yet seen the Pacific Northwest, and said, yes, oh please, travel yes.

In the meantime, my long-time flirtation with a former SF resident began to pick up speed—well, as speedy as text or messaging or emailing can be. There were more "like"s, a few more texts, and not undesired flirtation.

God. We can flirt! Holy shit. It’s pretty much what we did together for the half-dozen years or so we knew one another in SF before he moved to Boston. We went on one date once, but it didn’t really take off, and we remained a flirtation.

So when the Seattle trip came up, and I saw that it was only a few bucks more to fly through to Boston, I asked him if he wanted to pull this flirtation from out of the clouds and onto the ground—or at least, into bed.

We both had reasons and justifications why this was a bad idea. For those of you playing along at home, this was my Cupcake Conundrum. It could be a disaster. Awkward, too much pressure, a lot of time spent with someone you don’t really know that well, all texting and emailing aside.

And then my friend told me, Life is meant to be lived. And I believed her.

So, ticket bought, the flirtation has taken on a new edge of anticipation and intrigue. And holy shit, is it F U N.

One of the wonderful things about this one in particular, is that we do have a basis for being pretty open and honest and vulnerable with one another about other stuff. I wouldn’t exactly say we were friends before, we never called one another up to bitch about stuff or hang as platonic pals, but we’ve developed a foundation of communication over the years that enables me, at least, to feel a little more bold in our new iteration.

I get to be sexy. I get to be saucy, and not a little eye-brow raising in my replies.

And something interesting is happening for me. In the same way that yesterday’s blog was about music reminding me of a greater part of myself, and opening me up to something greater, this whole level of sexuality and sensuality I’m getting to explore in relation to him is doing the same. I feel radiant, is what I wrote in my morning pages today.

Because the flirtation remains in the realm of words and not bodies, I get to be and write things I might not otherwise say. I get to push envelopes, and in doing so, I’m pushing a door open within myself. I love to feel this part of myself in a way that is safe, connected, supported, and reciprocated.

It hasn’t always been that way. My ex was decidedly vanilla. I mean, pretty much everything about him was vanilla!, but so to in the bedroom department. Which is fine. But it’s not going to change anything, open anything, explore anything. I mentioned some things to my ex that I wanted to try, and he wasn’t into them. I mean, god bless him, he tried a few times, but it was obvious he so wasn’t into it, or was so out of his element that he was more just doing it instead of enjoying it.

Despite my public comportment (which shall remain), I am decidedly NOT vanilla. (Nor am I triple swirl chunky monkey supreme, but.) It’s something I know about myself, and until this recent flirtation, have not really gotten the chance to share in a way that feels esteemable before. Sure, I’ve had dalliances where some of my wantonness was explored, and boy were those fun. But those were nothing sustainable, and one-offs, unfortunately (or fortunately).

So getting to express and open and reveal a side of myself that is rarely unveiled is thrilling. It feels so good to say something out of the box, then follow it up with, "I feel insecure that I said something out of the box," and have him respond in a receptive and reassuring way. It’s novel, man.

I mean, I am a Libra. (I just felt all your eyes roll!) My sign is ruled by Venus. The planet and force of sex, sensuality, desire, beauty, luxury, charm. In all my chasteness and celibacy, there has been something missing. Like all of the parts I’m struggling and striving to claim and reclaim, all the passions I’m diligently unearthing and revealing to you, sexuality is a critical piece of that excavation.

It’s sort of a sex-positive thing, I guess! Which, it is important (to me) to note, does not mean that I’m going to throw it around or be “easy” with it – that’s the only reason why I think this is happening in this organic and esteemable way: because it’s safe. Because I feel heard and held and reciprocated and appreciated. Because this person knows much of me that rounds out the view. This isn’t Molly as Sex Kitten (but hey, Yum). This is Molly as multi-faceted, self-possessed woman. And isn’t that sexy. 

Thirsty

Home sick again today, I began to clean up my apartment which has become a bit of a wreck lately. Weeknights spent in rehearsals, weekends spent at auditions, mornings a cluster of Morning Pages, meditation and blogging. I’m up at 6:15 every morning, and am still late to work.

So, I began with the bedsheets, the laundry that was washed last week but still remained in the hamper, the clothes strewn on the closet floor, the dross of everyday living.

Back and forth across my apartment, each time, I passed the black silhouette case by the entry way. The case the singer of the band bought for me so I wouldn’t have to carry my bass my its neck anymore.

My bass has sat in that visible corner, tucked in its sheath, for nearly two months, since I quit the band to focus on acting. My acoustic guitar collects dust. My keyboard, shoved in a closet to avoid visual clutter when the 25 y.o. was over.

I went to a music show last Friday night. It’s this fun band my friend introduced me to, and we bought tickets for their SF show nearly the day after I heard them. I hadn’t been to a music show I wasn’t ushering…. well, since I was in the band, I guess. That was one of the fun things about being in the band, was that I got to hear a lot more music. “Lack of music shows” is on my list of “Serenity Moths” I have tacked to my fridge. The list was written at least 2 years ago, and though many are now crossed off, some remain. (Serenity Moths, to me, being things that just eat tiny holes in my well-being; e.g. lack of music shows, no light over my desk, chipped nailpolish.)

It was REFUELING to go to a music show where I could enjoy and focus on the music. I smiled and watched the bassist voraciously, was flattened by the vocalist and shimmied my little tush in my little section. I admitted to my friends who were with me that I missed music. So much. I think I actually had a dream about it last night, come to think of it. But where do you find time for it?

I am still such a newbie at bass, I have so much to learn, dexterity to gain, simple basslines to master. I just miss the endeavor, the trying.

So, you can guess what happened this morning as I cleaned up my apartment between sips of turmeric tea: I slowly unzipped the black case, and said aloud, Hello again.

I tuned it, it was still pretty in tune, actually. And I know how long it’s been since I’ve played, since my nails are all so long again. I pulled out the keyboard from the closet, and laid it on my bed—where Stella climbed up to watch as I tuned the acoustic too, the one that was my high school graduation present that still has the strap from O. Dibella Music in New Jersey.

My nails still so long the chords were hard to make, I played. I played until the skin on my strumming finger got raw. I made up some new words and played my old songs. And felt the vibration of the wood against my coughing, constricted chest.

Sometimes I live without music so long, I forget its blessing. Honestly, I horrifically have sometimes gone months without turning on my iPod, and when I finally do, it’s like an oasis. Like lavishing in a Caribbean waterfall. It opens something, releases something, allows something to enter. I hate that I forget that it does this—and in some kind of masochistic pattern, I deprive myself of its joy.

When will I play? I don’t know. What will come of it again? I don’t know. But for a few minutes, I opened back up to the aching light of it, and I’m sure something was healed. 

Isn't It Ironic, Don'tcha Think?

The curvature of our lives is funny, isn’t it?

Like most people, I was an acne-riddled, ugly-glasses wearing teen with unruly hair and a limited rotation of ill-fitting clothing. I remember when I was 16, I was at a retreat for Jewish teens, and we were sitting around in a circle on some Saturday night, singing the service that ends Shabbat. All us nervous, hormone-addled teens in one place! And there started a “kissing chain” around the circle--on the cheek, modest-style. The boy sitting next to me had to kiss me two times as the chain came around twice, and I remember hearing him “whisper” to his friend that he tried to kiss a spot that didn’t have a zit on it, but he couldn’t find one.

Kids are mean, sure. But, there is a thick stripe of “Ugly Duckling” syndrome down the center of my story.

Once, in middle school, in a stroke of self-esteem beyond that of usual, I answered a modeling casting call at Nordstrom. My mom supported me and came with me, and I just filed behind some other girls in a line in front of some auditors, hoping, Kate Moss-like, that someone would pluck me out of my angsty teen life and whisk me away to something fabulous and without blemish. (You can assume that didn’t happen.)

What happened instead is I got to live the angsty life I was handed, and nearly 20 years after that cattle-call, be asked to do it again.

I still haven’t sent in those photos to the real-people modeling agents. But, (maybe) I’m closer. The only time I was ever approached to be a model was when I’d shaved my head when I was 21 and was wandering around Manhattan looking for a savior. A man approached and said he was an agent for bald models, and his business card did actually have a bald model on it. (Instead I went to the asylum, but I digress.)

This Christmas, while busking in Union square, I was approached by another modeling agent, and I followed up with a call, and was told to submit my photos. To send them by print. There’s so much resistance to this! Is it the Ugly Duckling saying they’re only conning you? The girl with the acne no one will look past? Or just the ennui and hopelessness of a woman engaged in a professional life that saps her energy and enthusiasm?

In whatever case, and whatever resistance, it’s not up to me, is it?

I had a mentor once tell me, G-d will either fulfill your desires, or take them away. I sort of believe that. The urges and wishes and ideals and fantasies that we have; either they’ll morph into something else; they’ll fade; or they’ll be met. How many of us desperately wanted that X Y or Z, and having not gotten it, later exclaim, jeez, I can’t believe I really wanted that!

What I’ve really been thinking about though, is the irony of having become someone people consider beautiful, which has necessitated the desire to be seen for more than my beauty. I find it a cosmic raspberry that after so many years of being the awkward, painfully shy, unseen thing, I now want people to stop seeing me for my exterior alone.

I think your soul is sexy, he wrote me.

Followed surely by a nice bought of sexting. But, Still.

What a curvature of life, eh? To become the beauty you always wanted to be, but then want people to look past it? It’s odd; I dunno, I don’t have a more well-thought out way to put it.

But, I also know that part of what makes my soul sexy is that I do things that scare me, like submit photos to agencies. I do things that I don’t feel worthy of, and hope the self-worth follows by the esteem of doing them. Right actions lead to right thinking, and all that.

I would like to list this check-box on my list of life participations; just for the fact of trying. Like the acting; just for the act of trying. I hear the screaming teen inside me saying This is WEIRD, but that’s okay. I can drag my feet and do it anyway. 

Did you live happy? Did you live well?

I don’t really believe in heaven and hell. I suppose if I believe in anything, I believe in some kind of version of reincarnation. Not that my soul gets inserted into some new being on the planet, but that the anima that makes my heart pump disseminates into other things – surely, the worms, and dirt, and grass that’ll be fed by me, but also, I feel like there’s some way our spirit gets to try again.

Maybe not. Maybe we’re all worm food. But I think about the concept I've heard that we choose the life that we’re born into. That we somehow float cosmically one step outside of this reality, and when it’s time, we are born into the lock that our life provides the key for – and the lessons and situations we walk into in life are what turns the key. Toward what? Who knows. Enlightenment sounds like such a heavy word. I don’t know that there’s ever any “fixed” or “done” for us. I think that’s part of what our souls, for lack of a better word, enjoy about the whole thing.

It’s sort of like an infinite book of Choose Your Own Adventure. We’ve all heard me talk about how the lessons we’re here to learn aren’t always the ones we want; it’s not like I would have chosen some of the circumstances that have surrounded my life or the situations that occurred in it. But, on some level, perhaps I have and did. And perhaps for some benevolence greater than my own. – Or not.

Sometimes I ask my cat what she did in former lives to be a cat this time. What she was before? And who she bribed to get to be as pretty as she is?

Sometimes I think about the Indigo Girls’ song Galilleo, and how maybe the being we’re born into next time will have so much baggage from our fucking things up, or not “evolving” enough, to be the next great writer and artist, or inventor fixing the world.

Sometimes I sit home sick and watch Saving Grace on Netflix and write a blog about theology. Like today.

I have heard about the whole Pearly Gates thing, and we (or Christians, at least) get asked questions. And I wonder if I were asked the questions in the title of this post, what my reply would be? And if it will continue to change, as it’s surely changed before.

A friend of mine has a mission statement for herself and her life, and squares the actions and activities she engages in against it. If it doesn’t jive, then she finds a way to align her wants with its message: To be of maximum service to myself and others, for the good of all involved.

The other day, as I was sitting in my car, waiting for the call with my potential new somatic therapist, I was struck with a phrase for me and for my life that feels pretty appropriate. It was less a mission statement at the moment, and more a simple observation of the sum total of my actions & endeavors, at least in adulthood: To voraciously expand my consciousness of love.

It’s sort of what I have been doing lately, I think. It’s sort of what I think I want to continue to do. It’s a tall freaking order, for sure. And it’s uncomfortable and vulnerable and occasionally plain biting, but at its base, at my base, I think it’s a pretty good mission for my soul to have chosen.

Once, in meditation, I got this edict for my life: To love, as much as you can. What comes to me from that is that it’s also really as much as you can on any given day. Do your best on any given day, and that level will change, and sometimes will be really freaking low. But if I believe, which I do, that I am here for a purpose, and if I believe today that that purpose is to voraciously expand my consciousness of love, then it’s sort of like when they put those bumpers in the gutters of the bowling lane: I’ll never be too far off center. 

Eat, Pray, Sex

“If I understand you correctly, this whole year is about your search for balance between devotion and pleasure. I can see where you’ve been doing a lot of devotional practices, but I’m not sure where the pleasure has come in so far.”

“I ate a lot of pasta in Italy, Felipe.”

“Pasta, Liz? Pasta?”

“Good point.”

Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert

Unless you choose to live a life of asceticism, you are bound to come to a point when you have to attend to your body’s needs. There are so many ways to go about this, and we all probably have our own patterns for doing so.

There’s serial monogamy, adultery, the hands-on approach. There’s serial hooking up, prostitution, polyamory, and even the somewhat “normal” approach of having an intentional monogamous relationship.

In this age when sex outside of marriage is often par for the course, we really do have a buffet of options. And chances are that we'll eat from one tray or another at various times and emotional states in our lives.

There is no handbook for this. There really are no rules. As the saying goes, “You can do anything you want—as long as you’re willing to accept the consequences.” Sometimes, consequences of actions are marvelous; not all consequences are negative.

I remember the first time I had sex in adulthood sober. I honestly hadn’t had sober sex since I was in my teens, if then. God, it was awkward. I was so aware of everything: the way the room looked, the sound of our breathing, the exact touches. And also, very aware of the intimacy of the act.

That is something that drunken sex does not allow for. You might get off, but you are so far from present; this is not an intimate act. SURE, it can be and was fun; as Dr. Seuss puts it,

It is fun to have fun

But you have to know how.

And I’m not sure I ever really knew how. I mean, I lost my virginity while I was drunk. Which isn’t uncommon in many of the women I know.

So, to exist, sit, breathe, be in the intimacy of sex with another person – well, it really is no wonder I was celibate for so long! Though, I can admit, too, that distanced/detached sex is also very possible sober. Which is usually how it’s been for me. Like I told you earlier this week about the two-way mirror: I may offer you entrance, but I’m not giving you anything in return. Here’s part of another poem I wrote during that celibacy time:

every inch closer you come toward me is

every inch farther from myself that I am.

so by the time your cock is pressing against

the putty of my cervix,

i have found a home inside your wall.

(And that was with a boyfriend!)

I suppose part of my reason for sharing these poems with you recently is to normalize the experience for me, as I think I’m bringing these poems to my Writer’s Group today – my all male Writer’s Group. Though there’s absolutely a titillation factor to my work, the reality is, this is my writing, this is what I’m working on, was working on when I wrote them, and I guess, if there is feedback on how to improve my craft, I want it. But, I also know it may be hard (forgive me) for people to look past the word “cock” and get toward the structure and craft.

We’ll see. I haven’t decided yet if I’m bringing these poems there. It feels exposing, but then again, sharing any of my writing feels exposing.

And I guess that’s what I’m getting at – showing up without retreating. To know that I am safe and thereby be able to show up with vulnerable work, to show up physically and emotionally during sex. To let myself be present with the cacophonous heartbeat of it all.

I have little experience being present in flagrante delicto; but, by escaping it, I do think I’m missing out on some of the fun.

Sex Ed.

There is more right with you than wrong.

I had a therapist once who used to tell me, "As long as you can take a full, deep breath into your lungs, there is more right with you than wrong."

Today, on the most gorgeous day we've seen in the Bay, I finally succumbed to the pseudo-strep throat thing that’s been passing around work, and this afternoon, I'm performing a preview scene of the play I’m in that opens at the end of the month.

So, I take homeopathics, vitamin Cs, a heavy dose of over-the-counter Western, and The Show Must Go On.

And I’ve been thinking about sex. Because, who hasn’t?

I’ve been thinking about the unintentional self-imposed celibacy I was in from August of 2011 through October of 2013. You can do math, and understand that’s more than two years without sex.

And, it’s not like there were some clandestine, but ultimately PG-13 moments in there, either. It was pretty much a white-out period.

Granted, about 8 of those months I was bald and a sallow shade of green, but, the year prior to cancer was not a wanton, robust one.

It was sort of intentional. I’d broken up with my ex in the early months of 2011, had two rounds of rebound sex that left me feeling more empty than fulfilled, and a few months later, found myself back in bed with my ex in a misguided attempt to see if we could pump (pun intended) life back into our relationship.

We couldn’t. And I finally realized that giving the milk for free was wearing me down.

And so began the Great Celibacy of my 30th Year. The year women are purported to have the greatest libido. Probably because our bodies are sending Morse Code messages through our hormones, stating, Get on with the baby-making thing, lady, Time’s a marching.

I began sending texts to two girl friends as each month passed: Two months, no sex. Six months, no sex. A YEAR, no sex. It was appalling but also, I wasn’t about to jump into the sack with anyone just to get my rocks off – because, honestly, you can’t ever be sure that your rocks will get off with someone you don’t know that way. It’s a crap shoot, and is it worth it to have lackluster sex with someone who you know you’re not that into? Hm.

It’s not as if I denied myself the pleasures of carnality; I took matters amply in hand. But it wasn’t the same. It’s never the same—as good sex, at least. Sure, you’re pretty sure you’re gonna get your happy ending, and don’t have to think about what you do afterward, how long you wait for him to leave, or if you cuddle or not. But, part of a poem I wrote during the celibacy goes:

i only ever imagine the weight of you

when i’m alone with myself at night

i can find folds that you can’t

and pace myself as you won’t

but alone, i can never press myself into the

evaporating softness

                                 or grip the muscles of your back

as if you were my life preserver

I once read a story that included the line, “At night, she masturbated herself to an unsmiling orgasm.” What a waste.

I broke the celibacy last Fall with a very pointed and mutually understood bootie call with someone I’d been on a internet date with twice, but who wanted to just hook up, and though there was certainly physical chemistry, I didn’t want that and we parted amicably. A year and a half after that date, my hair grown back to something I could pass as feminine, I asked him if he was still interested in something “casual,” and he was, and I was, and we were, and it was...Awesome.

But, that poem of mine concludes:

how does this alchemy work?

lead returns to lead as

i bolt the door behind you

the moment gimped

by an awkward exchange of

‘see you’s

what tangle the sheets are in,

still warm,

i climb back into them as if

i could coax them into being

you

and you were something else

So sometimes, celibacy is the better answer, isn’t it?

“Life is meant to be lived,” has been going through my head, though. And my body is still one of a woman in her early thirties receiving and extending messages that say, Virile and Viable. And sometimes, it’s worth the awkward exchange, and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you eat the cupcake, and sometimes you don’t. And sometimes you take a full, deep breath and remember that there is more right with you than wrong. And perfection is an illusion, “really.”

Discovering The Third Thing

A or B, Molly? Your life depends on it. Is it black or white, Molly? Your life depends on it. Is Dad coming home right now, your life depends on it. Is he in a temper-FIGURE IT OUT-your life depends on it. Is Mom crying? Is she still alive-LISTEN HARD-your life depends on it. Is it black or is it white, Molly, YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.

A woman I met once and have never seen or sought out again asked me, What if there's a “third thing?”

Much of what I hear is about how we break things into black and white, but that life is not that way. There is an indoctrination, as above italicized, that makes us learn and perceive that life is and must be black and white as a way of survival. And in adulthood, that must be unlearned.

What folks have suggested as remedy to this, however, is “life is gray,” shades of grey (no allusion intended). That it’s somewhere in the middle.

Years ago, I decided that “grey” didn’t work for me in this metaphor, too bland; that instead, “not black and white” could be interpreted as “in color.” Life isn’t “black and white;” it’s in color.

But, this woman told me something else entirely. That it’s something I haven’t even conceived of before.

We were not talking about life. We were talking about sex.

I was telling her how I've vacillated in my life between the icons I have named Betty Crocker and The Vixen. How I swing the pendulum of myself from one to the other; bored by the first, burned by the second.

I was emailing with a friend yesterday about how some of situations I find myself in at the moment are reminiscent of something that happened in my early twenties, a situation I got myself in as a result of swinging from Betty Crocker to the Vixen, to disastrous results. She pointed out a few places where things are different now, that I’m sober, older, and it was just plain different.

But there is a rubber band that pulls this circumstance back to then, a sense memory that lashes out, OH! UH-UH we’ve done this, lady! Remember!! Remember the outcome, the consequences, the disaster! Warning, warning!

She tells me it’s not the same. I remind myself of the year; I look around myself at who and where I am. And it’s very freaking hard to separate the past from the present.

Which brings us back to the trust I’ve been working on. To trust that I am different, that I am safe, that I can allow myself to experience life in a different way today. That I am able to be the third thing.

It only occurred to me today that perhaps the person I’m becoming as I sort all this out is the third thing, neither the puritanical Betty Crocker (who avoids all human contact in search of the unicorn idea of a risk-less relationship), nor The Vixen (who overrides all hesitance toward prurient wantonness).

I had my first initial phone call yesterday with a woman who works somatically with trauma. We’re scheduled to meet next Wednesday, the one day I have off rehearsal during “tech week.” As helpful and warm and not really "getting into anything" as our conversation went, my body closed up tighter than an asshole over a flame. And, this is why I want to see her! (duh.)

I used the words “ingress” and “egress” a lot in my morning pages today, the allowance of things to enter and to exit. Currently, I allow some of myself out, but I refuse anything entry. Or, if I allow entry of someone or some emotion, then I refuse them anything in return.

The two-way mirror of my skin. One side can look in, the other cannot look out.

The third thing, here, would be a window, instead. (Don’t even suggest something without a pane; I might deck you.)