Limbo

I could go in any of a number of directions.

Okay, so all movement is subject to a lot of hoop jumping and appeals to potential bosses or mentors. My track record with these things is not encouraging.

I am 38. I live in an apartment. I have three jobs or so -- only one of which is reliable. I'd like not to be doing this when I'm 50.

School? I consider it. Fully funded programs, etc. But then there are application fees and GRE fees and fees upon fees and no guarantees, even with the book and the other writing.

Teaching? I'm not a good fit for Teach for America. I got rejected by a program I had planned to opt out of. I can't afford a master's degree or a certification program.

Newspaper? Tell me where there is one hiring. Or one that wants someone with a public track record of quirkiness.

When your retirement plan is "maybe I'll inherit money", there's something wrong.

Maybe I should just drink all the time and not think about this. I need to learn to make my own booze.

Saturday Night in Toledo, Ohio

There's never anything a single person can do alone. And I'm not single, really, just geographically inconvenient to my sweetie, who lives in Michigan and who I won't see tll next week. I'm at Starbucks working, but thought I'd treat myself to a midnight movie. No dice. The new movie company in Toledo, Rave Motion Pictures, now declines to show movies after 11 pm. So I could go to a bar or a Waffle House. I think I'll go home and watch a movie on the tube, snuggle my cats and rest up. I've got a killer week ahead between the three jobs I'm juggling, my writing, and social and family obligations.

Tomorrow, I'll help my (sort of) stepdad move a stack of 40-pound pavers into the backyard so he can anchor his new cantilevered umbrella over the patio furniture. There's leftover ribs in it for me (in the job, not, I hope, in the furniture).

All this underscores a need to move. Not to Michigan, though my sweetie would love that. I miss Boston. I miss movies that start at 1 am and having a million things to do any night of the week. I miss the ocean and the Cape. I miss all of it. No idea if I'll ever live there again, or anywhere other than here.

Still, despite being nearly as good a pilot as he was a singer, John Denver got it right when he covered that shitty song about my town. It's like noplace at all, and I want to be someplace....someplace lovely.

Screwing Up

Sometimes, I screw up. I forget things. I can be careless. I screw up without malice. It's not like I'm some weird modern saint, but I can't remember actually forming a plan to hurt someone. I've said things when I'm angry that I regret, and a few that I don't. But I never set out to ruin someone's day.

What do you do if you inadvertently hurt someone? What do you do when they lay it all out, and you apologize, and they are vague about whether or not they accept? If I apologize, I mean it. I just don't know what else I need to do.

This is really vague, purposely so. The situation I'm dealing with involves someone I love, who's been angry at me for a while, and who vacillates between acting like we're friends and acting like I'm a shitty person who should just go away and die in hole someplace. And when I go away (not to die, but to live my life of tutoring and family obligations, and cleaning houses, and writing and trying to have friends and date), she gets angry at me for not paying attention to what's going on in her life.

Nothing I do works in this situation. I don't think I'm a rotten person. I don't want to buy my friend off. Given the level of anger, I wonder what I owe myself? I like me a bit. I don't know that avoidance is a bad idea, either.

Why can't we all just get along? Oy.

Ben Folds Project: Jackson Cannery

I'm starting a new project. I love Ben Folds. Why? Because he's a genius. His sense of humor, the brilliance of his piano playing, the plaintive keen/whiteboy whine in his voice....I don't know if Ben Folds is perfect as a musician, but he's the perfect musician for me.

I'm going to use his songs as jumping off points for blog posts. Some of the posts will have almost nothing to do with the songs. Some of the posts might describe the things I associate with the songs. No rules, just Ben and me.

#1: Jackson Cannery
(Track 1, Ben Folds Five, 1995)

Stop the Bus....Don't want to be lonely

I do lonely well. Better than I do almost anything else, or, at least, I do it more often than I do other things or other moods. I go to bars alone. I don't drink. I might meet acquaintances. I dance by myself. I watch pretty people mime intercourse and simultaneously envy and disdain them. I leave, alone. To my apartment, alone. To bed. Alone.

I go to the bookstore. I put on makeup. Maybe someone will talk to me. Maybe a man. Maybe I'll run into friends. It's happened. I talk to the barristas in the bookstore cafe. I know their names and college majors. I bring them cookies at Christmas. I've lived in Toledo for ten years. I've been invited to exactly two Christmas parties.

Odd that I love Chirstmas. I bake and give gingerbread men to friends. No one ever gives me cookies. My friends don't bake. Or host parties. They work. They date. They have children. I press my face against the glass and watch couples looking at wedding magazines. I see young mothers choosing picture books. Goth kids in little clusters, talking and laughing. I drink coffee by myself. I go home alone.

Weekends, I scramble. I call and text and e-mail. I chat. No one has time. No one wants to have coffee or see a movie or come to my place so I can make them a lovely dinner. No one feels like singing or dancing or talking. I go to the bookstore. I go to the grocery at 10 pm on a Saturday night. I think the place will be empty, but it's full of couples. Old, toothless men in wifebeaters with the wives I hope they're not actually beating. Yuppies giggling over the bottle of pinot grigio they're buying. A black woman in a sleeveless sundress, hair dyed platinum. She has to weigh 250 pounds, but there's a guy walking by her cart, carrying her purse. I buy ingredients to make risotto. I scale the recipe for one and go home alone.

Stop the bus. Stop it. Don't. Ben's right. Seconds pass slowly. Days go flying by. Just....stop.

Late

Late at night, when I can't sleep, I sometimes read his blog. The one with the halitosis. The one with the twin bed and the artsy, smoky roommates. Him. And I wonder how it is that a man who had breath like an unflushed toilet, a man who expressed fear of soup and who had never eaten a strawberry before I fed one to him, I wonder how a man like that can have a girlfriend when I'm alone.

And I look at pictures of the other one. The one who called me a whore because he was terrified I'd write about him. The last guy who kissed me. I wonder if he's the last guy ever. I really hope not.

What have I learned? Tall isn't a good personal quality. Nice isn't enough. I need to remember to brush my tongue.

It's something, no?

Death, Birth, Phlegm

My friend John had a heart attack a week ago today. I met him through a dating website, and our single date involved looking over crochet patterns and drinking coffee. He told me about his family. He hugged me goodbye because "Hugs are good." He reminded me of a polar bear. Not the real kind who would totally eat you but are probably starving to death because of global warming and Al Gore. The kind from Coke commercials. I could imagine John enjoying a Coke and sharing his treat with cute seal pups.

John had already found the love of his life, though. He and Carmela were back together, probably before my Starbucks cup hit the trash can as I waved goodbye after the coffee date and wandered toward my car. I forgave this lapse -- I didn't enjoy feeling like a backup plan, but John's kindness and gruff sense of humor eventually won me over. He ran a local open mic where I did the first readings from Butterbabe. He gave me advice about my last boyfriend ("Dump him. "Dump him. DUMP HIM"). I called him to check up from time to time. We always had funny conversations and I'd hang up the phone feeling a bit lighter and more cheerful than when we'd started.

John struggled with Type 2 diabetes his entire adult life. He spent most of the fall and winter last year having toes chopped off and recovering in a nursing home. He had a demented roommate who'd sit in his wheelchair in a hospital gown, spindly legs bare, knees wide apart. Carmela stayed with him as much as she could. I came by with a copy of the book, and for more boyfriend advice ("Seriously -- dump him. He's a douche.").

I last saw John at Artomatic 411, a sort of grand fleamarket of the arts that ran for three weekends in May and June. In a warehouse downtown, local painters and sculptors and writers and musicians and filmmakers put on a show. John looked so much better than he had in the nursing home. He'd lost weight, become engaged to Carmela and was making plans to finish his social work degree.

John had a heart attack a week ago today. I know I told you that, but I still don't believe it, and I feel like if I say it, I'll convince myself. I'd rather not believe it, but it's immutable and sad and terribly real now. John died a week ago today. He lived 47 years, all of them in Toledo. He wrote lovely, gritty, clever, poems that evoke this rusty little town by the Maumee and Michigan. He made the place softly forlorn, shaved the edges so that the city's oddball charm stood out, glowing softly like sodium lights in a steady rain.

Becca and I went to the visitation. We hugged Carmela and beautiful Caroline, the brilliant young woman John mentored and loved like a little sister or daughter. We met his mother. We left.

Becca's birthday was Saturday. She's 43 now. We had delicious food and a party in the park. There were gifts and songs and piggyback rides. I can't believe I can carry a 180-pound woman, but I used to carry a good 250 more pounds than I do now just in my own body weight, so I guess it makes sense.

And now I have a head cold and the phlegm keeps coming.

Better things are coming. Better days ahead. They have to be. My birthday is in six weeks. At least I've had another year.

Men

I never dated before the age of 35.  I used to weigh nearly 600 pounds and didn't want to sleep with creepy fetish dudes.  So.  I never dated in high school.  Nor in college.  I had my first date in December with a man who has nine toes, who lives with his mother and who brought with him a purse that he made himself.  Suffice it to say, he went back to his girlfriend and nothing came of it.

I've also dated a guy who swapped tags on items so he could trick Sears into giving him store credits, a homeless S&M dude who wore a truss to the movies, and at least one man I'm pretty sure is gay.  I negotiate dating poorly.  I'm pretty sure I'll die alone, surrounded be cats.  I know the cats will eat me.  I cut my finger a couple weeks ago and Spenser, my ancient, incontinent tabby, licked the blood off the floor.  I know cats like the taste of me.  And the man thing isn't working.

I wonder if it's easier for people who've done this since high school?  Of maybe it's even more brutal and depressing.  If I'd dated for twenty years and still didn't have a boyfriend, I'd probably feel pretty bad about that.  The guy I liked the most of all seems to have moved in with someone else.  He still wants to talk to me because I'm good entertainment.  So I'm learning that dating sucks and that a lot of men -- in my admittedly limited experience -- make terrible friends as well as terrible lovers.

Maybe I need to move?  Or maybe I just need more cats.