“Is it because I’m white?”
The question caught me a bit off-guard, as indeed it was supposed to. “No,” I said, a little bit insulted, “you know better than that.”
She frowned…her mouth unconsciously forming the little girl pout on her woman’s mouth that I found so incredibly fetching that I had to look away…as she marshaled her next argument. There was no way I was going to get out this conversation unscathed.
“If you don’t love me, just say so,” she said finally, her dark brown eyes focused so powerfully on mine that I couldn’t turn away again if I tried.
I took a soft breath, sighing almost inaudibly, as I measured my own words. “I do love you, baby,” I replied truthfully. “How could I not love you? You’re smart…you’re funny…you’re giving and warm and caring…you’re so beautiful it takes my breath away…I’d have to be dead not to love you…”
“Then why…”
“Because,” I said, cutting off the question she’d asked me a dozen times before, “I have a strict rule that I don’t get involved with anyone who doesn’t have a favorite Beatles song…and you, pretty girl, weren’t even born until years after the Beatles broke up…”
That was a new one and she sighed with exasperation and frowned. “I don’t care about that…I love you and you love me, what else matters?”
She was so magnificent in her anger that I wanted to pull her into my arms and hold her for the rest of our lives. “It matters that you’re 23 years old…and I’m not of a mind to steal your youth to get through my golden years…I’m not that guy.”
“But…”
“It matters that you have so much living to do…to finish school…to find a job that excites and engages you…to find someone your own age to love and make babies with…so much to do…”
Tears began to pool in her dark eyes but she defiantly refused to let them fall. “I can do all those things with you…I want to do all those things with you!”
“Baby, I’m more than twice your age…I’ve lived a good portion of my life…I’m old and set in my ways and there’s no way in hell that I’m going let you tie yourself down to me…”
She shook her head and sighed. “I know why you call me “baby”…you’re trying to remind me that I’m “too young” for you…”
I smiled and reached out and stroked her cheek. “Partially,” I admitted, “but also because you are my baby…and because you like it when I call you that…”
She grinned and nuzzled against my hand. “You’re not getting rid of me this easily, old man,” she said resolutely. She surged into my arms and buried her head on my shoulder. “When you’re old and gray, I’ll push your wheelchair and make you oatmeal and love you still with all my heart.”
I closed my eyes and held her tight.
“’All You Need is Love’,” she whispered.
“What?”
“My favorite Beatles song….’All You Need is Love’…wise words, don’t you think?”
I chuckled and kissed the top of her head. “There’s my girl.”
“Damn right,” she said, closing her eyes and relaxing unabashedly in our embrace.
Sara folded into the kiss, letting down her studied defenses long enough to let the rest of the world mind its own business and let them be, and she felt, fleetingly anyway, safe and…loved…
“That’s all I wanted to say,” he said, hoping to bring some levity to the longing and the awkwardness of the stolen moment.
She looked into his eyes and then, feeling incredibly exposed and vulnerable, she buried her head against the comforting broadness of his chest. “You said it very nicely,” she said with more coyness than a woman of her age should be comfortable with. “I’m so glad that you’re my friend.”
He nodded and smiled, just a bit ruefully. “We aim to please,” he said kissing the top of her head. That moment was done and this moment…the “you know we’re just friends” moment…had taken its place.
They held each other…together and so far apart…and let the moment speak for itself.
Sometimes moments are all you get.
Sometimes I get so selfish and self-pitying that I find myself getting so angry at you…angry and abandoned and alone…but those moments are few and far between and they pass like the wispy tendrils of a lazy morning mist…
Sometimes I still hear your laugh…sometimes I still look to share some bit of nonsense with you….sometimes I forget that you’ve been gone since a cold spring…you’ve been gone through a hard and heart-wounding summer…sometimes I forget…but those moments are few and far between…
Sometimes I smile wistfully…imagining what you would say…imagining what would make smile…imagining what cock your head to the side and say everything you needed to in a withering, knowing look…
Sometimes I rage against the heavens…sometimes I rage against the injustice…sometimes I rage, crying acid tears, because my friend is gone…sometimes…
Sometimes I remember all that was and not all that there should have been…sometimes I smile for having known you rather than cry for having lost you…
Sometimes I wish I had told you everything you meant to me…and sometimes I know that you already knew that…
Sometimes the gray envelops me…threatens to smother me…but sometimes…most times…the light breaks through and I move forward, healed and whole and so much better for having known you…
Sometimes I still hear your life…and sometimes it makes me cry…and sometimes…most times…it makes me smile.
- for M on what would have been his 62nd birthday -
Memory dims…time heals…life waxes and wanes...
life moves on like it has to do…
And we are here…eight years gone…and moving on with life like we have to do…
Yes I remember where I was…
Yes I remember how scared I felt…
Yes I remember how angry I felt…
Yes I remember how helpless I felt…
Yes I remember finding solace in the smile of a baby girl…
Yes I remember.
Eight years gone…so many yesterdays ago…
And we are here…remembering with comforting buffer of time and tide…
Eight years gone…and moving forward and looking back…moving on with life like we have to…
Flags flying…tear stains long dry…I remember…we all remember…
Eight years gone…so many lifetimes gone….so many lifetimes to go.
It was your song…I wrote it for you…I sang it for you…and you smiled with your eyes and hugged me so tight I thought my heart was going to burst sweetly right there in the bedroom.
I sang it for you…your song…and you looked at me with such love that I had to shy away or be consumed by own passion and joy…I sang it for you…and you swayed to the rhythm and didn’t once make fun of me being so off-key.
It was your song…I wrote it and I rewrote it and I started to toss it out a million times…but I didn’t…I sang it for you…I sang it from my heart…and your heart…your amazing, mighty, mighty heart sang back to me.
It was your song…it is your song still…you kissed me for it…long and slow, sweet as strawberries and electric as thunder…and you made me sing it again…your song…from my heart to yours.
She looked him…her face a study in piety and pity…and nodded plaintively. It was a hollow gesture. “We were good once,” she said in that condescending voice that she slipped into when she was doing something that she didn’t want to be called on, “and we’ll always be friends.”
He suppressed a snicker. “I don’t think so,” he said with more bluntness than he had usually given her during the course of their carnival ride of a relationship.
She winced but then composed herself. “We will…you’ll see…” She opened the door and stepped into the gathering twilight. The big yellow taxi was waiting at the end of the walk. “I will always love you,” she said, pausing first for effect and then for his reaction.
“Uh-huh,” he said.
It was her turn to shrug. She closed the door and went down the walkway, her pinched heels making a familiar clipped click-clack until she climbed into the taxi and drove off towards the airport.
He stood there listening to the sound of the car fading into the distance and waited. He waited to feel the crushing sensation of loss to bend him to his knees and bring acid tears to his eyes. You don’t what you got ‘til it’s gone…Joni said that (and she’s a poet so she should know)…and so he waited. And waited. And…
He shrugged again. Nothing. Hmph, go figure. And then…lightness, not heaviness, surged softly through him and he grunted a bemused laugh.
He realized that he was hungry and he turned towards the kitchen singing idly…”…you don’t what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone…” Joni was right (of course she was right…she’s a poet)…but sometimes the revelation is not a bad thing.
(This post...along with the previous two posts...was inspired by reading Girls Like Us by Sheila Weller, a book about Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon)
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I fold into my solitude…fumbling, fading, fencing with life from a distance…and I don’t find it to be disagreeable. It’s easy in fact to be beyond anger…beyond connection…beyond trusting that anyone will be there just because I want…just because I need…them to be there.
My faith wanders looking for new places to plant itself and start reaching for the sun again and I let it go, never truly imagining that it will find safe purchase in scorched fields of broken dreams, foolish fancies, and the naïve belief (sorry, John) that love is all you need.
And still…and still…and still…despite my cowardly hubris…my self-protective hubris…my rational dispassionate hubris…my faith soldiers on and I believe.
I believe in the sureness of the sunrise and the magic of little girls laughing…the magic of kisses from beautiful strangers and the comfort of awkward bear hugs from reticent men who don’t know where to put their feelings they can’t…they won’t…call love.
I believe that every day is gift from the universe…that every day is something that belongs to me just because I claim it…I believe that true love is exceedingly rare but always…always…always worthy of being sought out and embraced.
And still…and still…and still…despite all evidence to the contrary…I believe in possibilities that love is real…that friendship exists beyond mere convenience and happenstance…that pretty lies are always trumped by beautiful truths. I believe…even folded into my solitude…that I am not alone…never alone…never completely alone.
And still…I believe in myself…I believe in my dreams….not matter how silly and extraordinary and crazy they sometimes are…I believe in my friends and my neighbors and my countrymen…yeah, despite having so many reasons not to, I still believe (thanks, Carole) in humanity…
* * * * *
MKW Pop Culture Stuff (including a review of Girls Like Us):
“Can I get a tight spotlight?” He waited a moment and then he was captured in a stark circle of light. “Thank you.” He looked out into the darkness. “Should I just start?”
“Whenever you’re ready,” she said, evenly enough to disguise her impatience.
He took a deep breath. “I used to think that the whole world revolved around me. I wondered what it was that people could possibly do when I wasn’t around to watch them.”
He paused, half expecting some kind of response. “I used to imagine that I could fly…that I was the strongest boy in the world…that I was Superman or Hercules…that everybody wanted to be my friend.” He took another pause. “But then I grew up.” Another pause. “Mostly.”
“Interesting,” she said, hoping that he wouldn’t realize that she didn’t think it was interesting at all.
“I used to think that anybody who made an effort to get to know me would realize how great I was and that they would want to be my friend…who would want to be my lover…who would want to walk with me through life forever and ever…”
“Because the whole world revolved around you,” she said dispassionately.
He winced and then nodded. “Yeah.”
“But then you grew up.”
His cheeks grew a bit warm. “Mostly,” he said hoping it would make her chuckle.
She chuckled…but mostly because he was expecting her to. “I think Carly Simon wrote a song about you.”
He smiled. “”Well I always wanted the girls to dream that they’d be my partners…”
“Of course you did,” she said dryly.
He was pretty sure she was making sport of him but he wanted the gig so he let it go. “Well, I’m older now and I know the world doesn’t revolve around me. Hell sometimes the world doesn’t seem to know that I’m even here.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
He paused again. “Yeah,” he lied.
Her right eyebrow arched up knowingly. “Really?”
He grinned wolfishly. “Mostly.”
She chuckled…honestly this time…and nodded. “Thank you,” she said making some notes on her Blackberry, “we’ll be in touch.”
“Okay, cool,” he said.
And then the spotlight went out.
I had a friend who once told of driving cross country…from the northeast to the bohemian expanse of
We played at love, she and I, passionately distant for a brief season…joined by poetry and comic books, by music and chastely humid late night phone calls…and then we stopped pretending and went our separate ways.
She comes into my consciousness…at odd times and from odd angles…even unto today and I choose to remember the sweet moments…a song on a heartfelt mix tape that made me feel loved and connected and safe, a “smile in a whisper” (she didn’t like that Fairground Attraction song but it always reminds me of her) in shared wistful, guileless, passionate dialogues shared in the safety of our distant bedrooms…and take the soft, magical joy those sweet moments can bring when I’m open to it.
I’ve thought about the friend I had often lately as I read a biography of Joni that sends me to my CD collection for Miles of Aisles and Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm (surprising and delighting her with “My Secret Place”...see below... on a tape was a sublimely thrilling moment for me) and, yes, Blue. Joni as a soundtrack…I could drink a case of you and I would still be on my feet…works for me…even unto today.
- for Priscilla -
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MKW's Pop Culture ramblings: Neverending Rainbow
The breeze dances around, mischievously trying to tease me out of my stillness, but I pay it only passing heed. I’m under the tree…the big one that stretches over the roof of my suburban home and reaches humbly for the sky…reading about Joni Mitchell and finding poetry in the expanse of the azure sky. Perhaps, I wonder fleetingly, I am becoming too comfortable in my solitude…but I let that go (if it’s true it’s not a bad thing…for a lingering soft season anyway…and if it’s not there’s no point in letting grayness in on such a glorious summer’s day.)
And so I breathe, the wind tickling the new growth on my recently shaved cheeks, and read about Joni and soak in the sunshine and find poetry and soft symphonies in the cloudless summer sky…and so I breathe, comfortable in my solitude, and let the moment linger as long it will.
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MKW's Pop Culture stuff: Neverending Rainbow
I’m sure there will come a time when I won’t run across something funny…or interesting or infuriating or fascinating or just silly…and turn to share it with you only to find myself disappointed that you aren’t there in the seat you inhabited for so long.
That time will come…one day…but it hasn’t yet.
I guess missing people isn’t supposed to be easy…isn’t supposed to gotten over in the passing of scant weeks and months.
I still feel your energy…still hear your acerbic wisdom echoing through the halls of the house…I still want to share the things that made us smile and grimace and sigh and laugh unabashedly.
I’m sure there will come a time when I won’t miss you quite so acutely…but maybe I’m wrong…and certainly that time is not now.
The summer breeze tickled our faces and we smiled broadly…two glorious fools on top of the world…and shared soft strawberry kisses in the approving sunshine. Hand in hand…so much in love it too amazing to be true…and we leapt into the air…giggling like schoolchildren…and danced in the arms of the wind.
We kissed…dancing…we laughed and sang…dancing…we drew together and completely forgot about the rest of the world…it was just us…two glorious fools…so much in love…and the sun caressed us…dancing…and looked away discreetly as we consummated our passion once more…sweet, sweet dancing.
The early evening cool spilled over us…resting and laughing and smiling knowingly…as we lay in a field of wildflowers…two glorious fools in the arms of the goddess…and prayed that tomorrow would be even half as glorious as today.
The
Despite my best efforts to be the best staff that I can, I am well aware that my feline overlords regard me with a whimsical mixture of razor-thin patience, haughty indifference, occasional affection, and withering exasperation (I’m pretty sure that they tolerate me as much as they do only for want of opposable thumbs and access to money….had they both of those things I am quite sure that my services would no longer be required…)
I don’t take this personally.
I endeavor to meet their needs to the best of my abilities (said abilities are sorely lacking in their eyes, of course, but hey I’m only human…) hoping to exchange that for the chance to be able to work sometimes without having to stroke a back, try to decipher a meow, or throw a ball.
It’s a fair exchange.
And so I serve them and express my gratitude for being allowed to dwell in their presence. And they accept my presence and my ministrations while regarding me as what they know I am: a sometimes useful idiot.
Again, it’s a fair exchange.
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
I'm not sure all these people understand
It's not like years ago,
The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water
They cannot see me naked
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday...
- R.E.M. -
The night was bright, given vibrant life by the light of a full, proud moon and we were just drunk enough to cast aside our common sense and strip naked and run headlong into the icy surf. Even at 2 AM there were a handful of people on the south California beach but no one paid us any attention (people tend to come to the beach at 2 AM for reasons of their own…they really don’t care or notice why anybody else is there.)
The cold sea water didn’t sober us up as much as might have been expected and we splashed around for a few long minutes before we retreated back to the sand and fell down laughing. We lay in the sand, naked but not cold (perhaps the lingering aftereffects of the rum we’d consumed at the bar a few blocks away), and looked up at the moon. The world fell away and, for those moments at least, we forgot about the heartaches and disappointments that had led us to the bar and on to the beach.
Eventually we felt the chill of the night…and we felt the awkwardness of being naked together on a public beach…and we slipped into our boxers and jeans and t-shirts and sat in the sand listening to the surf. We sighed, almost as one, as the heartaches and disappointments started to crowd back to the front of our minds.
But we shook them off. The night was still bright and the morning would be time enough to deal with that stuff again. We glanced at each, grinning knowingly, and then got to our feet and wandered off towards the parking lot where we’d left the car. We slept in the car for a while and then, sober enough to negotiate the ever bustling
* * * * *
"Nightswimming"
words and music by R.E.M.
Pop culture stuff: Neverending Rainbow
My feline overlords were waiting impatiently outside my bedroom door.
Fed and happy (for the moment anyway) the overlords (actually two lords and one lady) drift off to places in the house (in the now open bedrooms mostly) and give me space to savor my first mug of tea, to glance through the paper, to delete a majority of the newly-arrived e-mail (spam filters are not nearly as effective as I would like.)
I did my household chores yesterday so I finish the latest research project (gotta make that coin) and clear the decks to work on my novel.
A shower and a second mug of steaming tea and I’ll be good to go. The morning clouds are clinging to the sky petulantly but the guy on the radio assures me that they will lose the struggle by mid-morning. It’s going to be a good day. It’s another Monday morning.
(Today’s soundtrack: “Michael Keith’s Summer Mix ‘09” and Bob Marley & The Wailers’ B is for Bob)
There was a time…a lingering time…when I deluded myself into thinking I meant something to you…that your declarations of love were sincere…that my declarations of love were real and requited. Deeds have put the lie to that…but maybe that’s a good thing.
Hell, I’m not even sure if you ever really liked me…you’ve certainly gone out of your way to let me know that my well being is not within your sphere of concern now that you’re done with me…now that I’ve stopped trying to achieve the seemingly impossible goal of trying to figure out what would really make you happy (though in the process of stopping I have paradoxically actually discovered the answer I was looking for all along: nothing will make you happy, it’s the pursuit of the next thing that fires your soul, reaching any goal just turns to ashes in your mouth and you cast about for the next patch of greener grass almost immediately.)
Time moves on…as is its wont…and I endure. I am struggling…but content. I am alone…but not lonely. I have learned from us…the good and the bad, the real and the imagined, the noble and the petty…and taken it all into heart as the journey continues. It is, in fact, a good thing.
There was a time…but that time is gone and there is only here and only now and I’m okay with that. That too is, in fact, a good thing.
She glanced down as he came out of the bathroom, her eyes playfully hooded and her smile deliberately enigmatic but still undeniably teasing.
He finished toweling off, his skin still humid from the steamy water, and met her gaze. He glanced down and then smiled ruefully. “It’s a grower not a ‘show-er’,” he said, half-proudly, half-defensively.
She smiled brighter and threw open the quilt she was under. “Then pretend I’m from
There were times when he thought that she was too thin…that her breasts were too small…that her butt was too flat…but those times were fleeting and quickly forgotten. Most times he was besotted with the willowy curve of her lithe body and that feeling was more than quadrupled now that he was finally seeing her naked and welcoming.
He slipped into bed and pulled the quilt over them. She drew him close and he leaned into a lingering kiss, the blood rushing to his loins. “See?” he said huskily, “I told you…”
She nuzzled his neck, she sighed a long, warm breath. “Stop talking now,” she whispered thickly.
And they danced the dance of passion, bodies explored and entwined…they danced the dance of passion like it was their hundredth time together and not their first.
Afterwards, they lay under the quilt catching their breath while the sweat from their bodies mixed in languid little pools on his chest.
She kissed his shoulder and then snuggled back close to him. “Oh my,” she said without the slightest hint of irony.
His senses were still too fevered for him to be articulate so he settled for a quip. “We aim to please, little lady.”
She laughed that laugh. “Definitely a grower,” she said closing her eyes and luxuriating in the soft waves of passion still coursing through her.
He kissed the top of her head and closed his own eyes.
And she was flying…soaring happily into the azure sky…laughing merrily as her little hand reached up into the warm sunlight, reached up to touch the face of God.
And then, just as suddenly, gravity gently tugged her back down towards the familiar expanse of mother Earth…and she closed her eyes, not the least bit afraid, and spread her arms wide as the breeze caressed her hair and tickled her face.
And then she stopped. She stopped and found herself where she began…in the protective arms of the best and strongest man in the whole wide world.
She opened her eyes and smiled, just a bit shyly. “Hi, Daddy.”
“Hi, baby,” the best and strongest man in the whole wide world replied. “Again?”
She nodded. “Yes, please, again!”
She giggled as the best and strongest man in the whole wide world said, “Okay, baby, he we go…”
And she was flying…
- for Dads everywhere -
(the best and strongest men in the whole wide world)
