The Great Migration.

Okay. It’s time to do it.

I’ve started a new blog for my life in Saudi Arabia. If you’re interested in continuing to follow me, follow me over there. If you’re not, this is your opportunity to drop me from your life with the minimum of fuss.

I’ve decided that the new blog does need to be personal and truthful, and if that gets me in trouble, well, what’s the worst they could do? I’ve also decided to drop the pseudonyms. It’s too much work to remember two names for everyone. So don’t get caught up on names as we move to the new venue.

If for some reason the new blog doesn’t work out in Saudi but you’d like to continue getting updates on my life, send an email to rickyisnotangryreally@gmail.com. I’ll keep writing, even if I can’t publish online.

And, the new blog is here.

In Pursuit of the Impossible Dream.

Today’s impossible dream: getting a good photograph of a three-year-old. I was quite proud of myself this afternoon, for getting one of the most amazing photos of the eighteen-month-old:

Today’s photos of the five-year-old were not incredible, but still passably good:

But that beautiful middle child of mine just would not photograph well today.

This afternoon we had the talk about my leaving for Saudi Arabia. It went something like this:

Ruth: Let’s go over by the picnic tables. Daddy has something he needs to tell you about.

[We munch on trail mix for a while. They all want the almonds and walnuts, and don't care about the dried fruits. So weird.]

Ricky: Neil, do you remember this summer when Daddy had to go on a trip and we talked over the computer?

N: Yes.

R: Did you like that?

N: Yaaaaaayyyyyyy!!!!!!!!

R: Well, this time I’m going to be gone for a much longer time.

Drew: A year?

R: It could be about that long.

D: Okay.

R: Drew, do you remember the movie you used to watch a long time ago, Aladdin?

D: Yeah.

R: Well, that’s where I’m going.

D: Okay.

Some demonstration of emotions would have been nice. Total apathy from the two children capable of forming complete sentences on abstract concepts. They have very little concept of distances, though, or of danger. And they’ve been getting used to my absence. We miss each other, but it’s more bearable than it has been. I do love my kids, and I hope they’re safe and well. I do worry sometimes, particularly when I see/hear things like Ruth complaining about suddenly finding a bag of rotting tomatoes in the car. “That’s where that smell was coming from.” Disorder and dirt stress both of us out, but she tends to hide from the cleaning tasks instead of being motivated to do them. I just don’t get it. Does she enjoy having a two-foot layer of stuff on the floor of her vehicle? I don’t think that’s fun, so I cleaned the car. Now that I’m not in her life, I want to clean her car but it wouldn’t be appropriate. I can’t help but think that the boys would be healthier if they had a cleaner environment to grow up in.

She gave me an awkward hug as we said goodbye. I wasn’t confused by it, and there wasn’t any rekindling affection. On my side, at least. Maybe we can be friends; I don’t think now is the right time for that, though. I’m leaving the country in two and a half days.

Big News.

So, here I was, minding my own business, writing a long and probably-not-very-interesting blog post about getting drunk with Mario and Topher last night and writing off BJ who keeps not coming over when invited, and I noticed my Gmail tab indicating that I had a new email. So I checked it out, and it’s my plane ticket to Saudi Arabia. I’m leaving the country in three days. Holy shit, ohmygodohmygodohmygod, fuck that’s quick. After three months of doing nothing, I now have to rush around like an insane person. Three days. Oh wow. I don’t even know what I need to do before I leave, because I’ve been resolutely not thinking about it. I just know I want to see my kids again. And I need to choose books and movies for the trip. No, Ricky, it’s not a trip, you’re moving your whole damn life to another country where you don’t speak the language. I’m going to have to do my Rosetta Stone for Arabic, an entire course in three days. Fuck fuck fuck.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re really drunk the movie Tucker and Dale vs Evil is completely hilarious. I haven’t watched it sober, but I’m prepared to believe that it might still be enjoyable without chemical enhancements.

An Open Letter to Complete Strangers.

Dear The Two Men Who Glared at Me in Walmart Tonight:

I’m sorry that my screaming three-year-old bothered your perfect evening, shopping at Walmart on a Friday night. However, if you’ll allow me to explain a few things, I think you’ll find that his behavior was perfectly excusable.

First, we must consider the physical condition of the child. It was around 7:45 p.m., or in other words, past his bedtime. Sleepy children generally do not recognize the fact that they are sleepy; they only know that they are more emotional than normal. Also, judging from the slime all over his face and sleeve, I would guess that he’s had a runny nose most of the day, which means that he’s also a little sick. Again, at three years old, most humans don’t realize when they’re sick; they only know that something’s not right and that they want their parents to be in constant physical contact.

Second, there are the short-term emotional conditions. This child had been forced to endure watching his older brother, who is too old/big for Mommy to carry, being carried around by his daddy. In The Way The World Works, five-year-olds don’t get a turn being carried. If the baby is in the carrier or the cart, the three-year-old has full rights to all parental arms. And yet, the oldest brother was audacious enough to demand a turn being carried, and his father agreed to it. Also, three-year-olds are not generally comfortable with delayed gratification, but this boy spent two hours in the toy section of Target this afternoon telling himself and his parents that the things he wanted should go on his wish list for his birthday. He knows that his birthday is in six months and that Christmas is much sooner, but he decided that his Christmas list was too full and has, of his own accord, started in on his birthday. I’m convinced that somewhere inside he knows that he’s never getting this stuff that he’s asking for, because his parents tend to use phrases like “cheap plastic crap” to describe the type of toy he wants. He also had a conversation with his mother (it sounds like they’re having this conversation a lot) where she explains to him just how long she’d have to work in order to make enough money to buy him whatever pile of cheap plastic crap he claims to want. His life is full of unfulfilled desires, as are the lives of all poor children.

Third, long-term emotional conditions. Children thrive on routine. They are content to eat the same thing every day for lunch for months at a time. They’ll read the same books and play the same games over and over and over and over again. They are happy when their lives roll in the same ruts every single day. Within the last year, this screaming child has moved house three times, and could be preparing to do so again. These residences have all been in different cities, so he’s also had to change churches, playgrounds, and grocery stores. He’s had to start preschool, where he is expected to learn things at someone else’s pace for the first time. He also has the opportunity to compare his work to that of other children his age, for the first time. His baby brother is extremely cute and is becoming less of a baby all the time–the baby is becoming a person who can express opinions and desires, and now he suddenly has to respect those opinions and desires. The baby also gets a lot of the “cutest child” attention that until recently was only his. His older brother is a total genius, and occasionally defies his parents, thus disrupting the moral order of the universe. His parents have separated and will very soon be divorced. Instead of waking in the night and running to his parents’ bed and waking them up at four in the morning for his mommy to throw his daddy out of bed to make him some breakfast, his daddy lives somewhere else, and they only see each other for a few hours every other weekend. Daddy doesn’t come home right before bedtime any more; Daddy has never even been inside the house. Also, when you saw us tonight, he had been with his daddy for a few hours, so he suspected that when they got to the van, he was going to get into his car seat and Daddy was going to get in a different vehicle and leave him, and they wouldn’t see each other for a couple of weeks, which is a significantly higher proportion of his total lifetime than it is of yours. Imagine not being able to see someone you loved completely for more than a few hours every six months.

So, when we had to wait in the checkout line for fifteen minutes because the cashier didn’t know how to process a check for the customer ahead of us, and then the store employees were cruel enough to merchandise their sticker books AFTER the checkout lines, it was just a little too much for him to handle. Being three, the only way he knows to express this complex mixture of emotions is to cry loudly. It is not realistic to expect every parent to maintain completely silent children in public. If the parent is ignoring the child, by all means, glare at the parent. But when the father of this child is simultaneously holding the child, talking softly to him to comfort him, and moving quickly toward the exit, Daddy’s doing all that he can be reasonably expected to do. Keep your dirty looks to yourselves.

I hope that one day you’ll have children of your own, so that you can experience the joys and trials of fatherhood firsthand. I hope that you see for yourselves that no matter how well your children behave at home, they turn into bizarre screaming hellspawn the minute you step into the public sphere. I hope that you notice how long it takes for a child to hear what an adult is saying, process that message, and modulate his behavior in response. I hope that you notice that this period of time lengthens depending on the amount of visual and auditory stimuli in the environment and on the emotional state of the child. I hope that you experience the disdain that childless adults lavish on all parents who take their children into public. I hope that you can one day feel what an honor it is for an upset child to choose you to comfort him. I hope that this annoyance you felt tonight at seeing a child honestly displaying his emotions can be transformed into sympathy, for both the unhappy child and his parents. But perhaps more than all this, I hope that your child will go from quietly pleasant to screaming in rage in three-quarters of a second, so that you know how unpredictable small people really are, and how predictably unkind fully grown people can be.

Sincerely,

Angry Ricky

PS Note to Walmart: no parent who is not a limp dishrag is going to go back through the god-awful Walmart checkout line to purchase a one-dollar sticker book. Put them with the toys on clearance where they belong.

Cause for Celebration

Yesterday I got word that my visa application has been approved, so now I’m just waiting for my recruiter to buy a plane ticket and I will be off for Saudi Arabia. I sometimes feel that this process has gone on for much longer than is strictly necessary, but I’ve done the best I can, and I hope they send me a ticket quickly.

Yesterday Mario and Annie found a great house to rent in Idaho, so they’re excited about moving. They’ll take a six-month lease on the house, then use that time to find a home to buy. This place will allow them to bring the dog and the cats, so they don’t have to break up their family.

With both of these pieces of good news arriving on the same day, Mario and I went off to get some wine to celebrate. On the way, we were pondering the likelihood of having these things happening nearly simultaneously, he announced, “Let’s get some fucking lottery tickets!” So he did. I’ll admit that I think buying lottery tickets is pretty dumb, but the money goes toward education (or the Secretary of Education, at least), so I guess that’s a good cause. We got a big bottle of white and got more drunk than either of us has been in a while. It was good.

I also got him to send my number to BJ, finally. More good news, and more waiting tensely. But one step closer to achieving my goals, and that’s something to celebrate.

Vintage Ricky, Again.

I wrote a little about the darkness in my head that I became aware of Sunday night, but I’ve been made aware of this before. I once did some emotional healing treatments with Gianni–yes, those exist in acupuncture, because the Traditional Chinese recognize the connections between the body and the emotions. It makes me sad that people in the West have treated body and soul as separable entities; it makes us dumb and death-obsessed. Here’s a journal excerpt from way back then. I’m sorry if it seems overdone; we were all younger writers three years ago…

[Quick context, by the way: one of the reasons for my acupuncture visits was that I kept choking on water. It was clean water, but I had to force myself to swallow it, or really any liquids. My subconscious was preventing me from taking care of myself. Also, I was still working freight at The Home Depot.]

Feb 20, 2010

My first awareness of acupuncture came, as with most things, from a book in my childhood. There was a picture of a man with a shaved head, with needles (very long) inserted all over his head. I thought it was both strange and beautiful.

My first acupuncture visit was on Jan 21 of this year. Gianni and I had worked together over the summer, curing me of food allergies with AAT. Many of my symptoms had returned, even though the allergy treatments still held. At the acupuncture treatment, the first thing Gianni did was check my pulses. While this is a diagnostic rather than a corrective step, my stomach unknotted itself and it felt very empty—much better than full of conflict. He told me that while my energies were very strong, they were twisted and chaotic where they should be neat and orderly. The first stage of treatment involved a row of needles down my back. Afterward, Gianni said he wasn’t sure if that were necessary, so we did another one immediately—this time I was lying on my back with needles in various places over the front of my body. All other treatments so far have dealt with my front. During this first treatment I got cold, so Gianni has been diligent in keeping the room warm ever since.

During that second part of the first visit, I realized how very angry I was—at almost everyone in my life. I think Baby Neil and Gianni were the only people I knew well whom I was not angry with. I went through a litany of anger, listing the people in my life and my reasons for being angry with them. This naming allowed me to release the anger, and I felt much better for getting rid of the anger.

The next week I was ready to tackle another emotion. I had spent all week recognizing, naming, and releasing anger, so I felt very confident that this next treatment would be similarly empowering. I was wrong.

Gianni conducted what he called a ritualized treatment—instead of lying passively, I was to listen to my feelings and identify what I was feeling at a given time. It was hard for me to recognize what it was—it stayed with me for a while, so I became familiar over time with this emotion—a hollow deadness like a large transparent ball, wrapped in thin layers of anger and fear like tissue paper (red and light green). I held this ball for the next two weeks. Gianni and Ruth both identified it as grief, and he treated it as such, but I have yet to determine from whence it came. Most of the time this grief was bearable, but one night when Ruth wanted to talk about things, I ended up moaning in the fetal position. We missed a week because of dangerous weather, but when we met again Gianni said I was still radiating grief, so he asked me to think of a needle in my ankle as a drain, and a large portion of the grief was siphoned off.

In this treatment I saw myself as a vial with two substances in it—the first, a thick black sticky liquid, like tar. This was the grief, which drained off fairly quickly, leaving only a small amount clinging to the edges/walls of me. The second seemed like liquid sunlight—bright, cheerful, fluid. I felt this to be my true identity, as if the grief were an external, intruding force. I later drew a picture of this for Gianni. After this treatment, I felt great. I was drinking water again and everything seemed fine.

Then Tuesday night I started choking on water again and I had a panic attack on the way to work. While at work, the grief suddenly rose through the surface of my consciousness and blotted out everything not itself. I had to stop wrapping pallets and let it take its own course with me. I drew a picture of this one, also.

Thursday morning I drew my art projects and took them to Gianni in the afternoon. He was very interested in them, and asked a lot of questions. During the treatment, he encouraged me to think of the needle in the top of my head as the source of the light that had been blocked or obscured by grief. After he left me to myself, I looked for the light to come from that point, but there was no light in me. There was a darkness visible, protean and shifting. A face appeared in the dark and I knew it represented the fear of change. It then figured itself as a small white dog with either brown spots or a very dirty coat. It had a mouth that would expand to encompass everything it wanted in its grasp. When I saw it, the thought came to mind, “I hate dogs.” The dog was replaced by brief but graphic images of death, and I remembered the tarot adage that the death card represents any type of change, not just the mortal one. During these images of death, my legs started twitching, and these images were interspersed with other scenes that seemed like memories rather than dreams, but they were memories of other people’s lives, not anything I have experienced firsthand. I would drift off to sleep and then jolt violently awake, still on the table. After a time of this, I felt myself becoming fragmented, as if I were breaking into pieces. The pieces seemed to be ceramic tile, which were relaid in a different pattern. In that time, I had no idea who I was, what I looked like, or what I believed in. Gianni said there was a dramatic shift in energy flow—water back in its rightful courses, kidneys and bladder strong. I realized that this was an important part of the transformative experience I had sought, but it was not pleasant. I was left reeling, a bit like a boat set adrift in no gentle harbor. I was relieved to come home and discover that I still loved my wife and children; I have not yet figured out how I feel about God, or how this new person I have become will worship. I am consciously refusing to go over the past and focus on living in the present, to try to understand myself reconfigured. Most things seem not to have changed, though I have more energy and more thirst than I have experienced in a long time. I am drinking easily again, which is a relief. Despite these dramatic improvements (fear of change seems mostly gone), I don’t feel as though the treatments are done with. I may not be able to articulate why, but I know. I seem to be making more decision based on intuition than on judgment these days—perhaps a step in a good direction.

That’s the first piece of this. The second is from an earlier Angry Ricky post, but I’ll quote the relevant portion here:

Nov 8, 2011

My acupuncturist Gianni told me a little while ago that depression is often the result of an attempt to repress emotion. A few days later, I was looking for a good place in my house to hang myself. I looked for exposed rafters, decorative architectural features, supports on the posts that hold up the porch roof, but there are none. My only hanging options that evening were doomed to fail in embarrassing ways (pulling down either the gutters or the ceiling fan). So then I started wondering about options to burn the house down. I could light the candles on the kitchen table and then light the table on fire. I could spread the hundreds of student essays I needed to grade around the house then drop a match somewhere. I then realized that I had spent a good half an hour planning a suicide I didn’t actually want to perform. This qualifies as depression, I think.

So I looked inward and saw an enormous ocean of pain, with no limit to depth or breadth. Normally, this ocean has a lid, made of heavy concrete that I had scooted back to peek in and see what the depression was about. I couldn’t spend much time looking at it, because this glimpse of my subconscious actually manifested itself as physical pain. So I pulled the lid back on and buckled down to my grading. In talking with Gianni about this later, he said I needed some help. He also made me promise to call him if I start looking for another way to kill myself.

That’s the second part. Now, the third, from just a few days ago:

Nov 26, 2012 [since this was posted around 2 am, I'm actually referring to Nov 25]

Tonight I reconnected with my therapist friend, because with our odd holiday schedules we’ve been skipping our daily chats. I realized that there’s something going on in my head that I’m not dealing with, some loss that remains ungrieved, and I need to get really really sad about it. It seems to be the source of all the fear in my life, but I’m too afraid of it even to admit to myself what it is. Whatever it is, it’s deeper and more scarifying than what I do know about my past, and what I already remember is pretty fucked up. I’m afraid of what could be worse than what I remember now. Paul wants me to work toward figuring out what this is, but right now it’s just a huge black mass that blots out everything else and scares the shit out of me.

Why am I bringing these things together? Same darkness, every time. I don’t deal with it, so it comes back in different forms. At the end of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, he says that the only way to stop reliving the horrific events of our lives is to tell the story, thus ensuring that people who were honestly frightened of Freddy Krueger would rewatch the films compulsively. I write down what happens to me, but then I forget it, and I repeat my own history, as if I were trapped in some Ancient Greek hell. So here I am, telling the story.

I have something mysterious and dark in my mind. At times, it floods my entire brain, and I can’t do anything but be swept away by the tide of my own emotion. It seems to be a monumental grief for an unremembered loss, something so devastating that I can’t approach it without paralyzing fear. It reaches out and sends fear into nearly every corner of my mind and life. If I could remember it and go through the grieving process, I think that I could be free of this and approach life confidently, but it is determined to stay alive and in my head, a bit like an emotional parasite. It protects itself by spreading fear and forgetfulness. I want to be happy; I want to be well; I want to be whole. I want to stop living my life in Gothic horror. I want to know myself. I want to love myself.

Last night Paul gave me a possible strategy for dealing with this, and I think it’s a good one. Instead of trying to tackle the fear, comfort the part of you that is afraid. We don’t have to know what people are going through in order to show them love and support, so I could apply that same logic to my internal selves. Joy L expressed it a different way: she suggested I be a good dad to the kid inside me. I think my strategy for today is going to be watching some sad movies so that I can cry a lot. That may not be the most sensible approach, since my major breakthroughs in the crying department have been during action movies (Spider-Man 2, Minority Report, etc), but I’ll see how it works.

Two Things.

1. An article in the Daily Mail about a teenage trans couple: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2230658/The-sex-change-sweethearts-How-pageant-princess-colonels-son-fell-love-BOTH-transgender-treatment.html

2. A complement to a youtube video that I posted a little while ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0Be8LnuG3U

Okay, a third:

3. Quick Language Lesson: compliment is when you say something nice about someone, like, “Cute shoes!” or “I love your hair!” It has an I in it because compliments are often born of a desire for reciprocity. I’m saying something nice about you because I want you to notice something nice about me. Please, use your words to comfort my insecurity. Complement is when two things fit together nicely, like gay men’s bodies. Notice how it starts like complete? The two (or more) things that are complements make each other more perfect, or whole. Can the internet stop confusing these?

The Dog, The Man, and Which I’d Prefer.

Saturday morning I wanted to punch Mario in the face. I had an elaborate fantasy about completely kicking his ass. I’m not generally violent, and I’ve never been in a fist fight in my life, but I was seriously considering it. Y’see, there are a couple of situations that have been building that I haven’t told you about…

THE DOG

Mario and Annie are moving to Idaho directly after Christmas. Unsure of how they are to be housed, they’ve been looking for a new home for the dog. They won’t just take it to a shelter–he saved the bitch’s life, so he feels responsible for continuing to preserve it. This is not a concept that makes logical sense to me. The kids are supposed to take care of the dog when they’re home during the day, but they both grumble and complain and try to foist any dog-responsibility onto the opposite sibling. They claim to love the dog, but love never looked so like hate. I have never claimed to like dogs, but I go running with her in the morning and sit or lie on the couch with her when it’s doggy nap time in the afternoon, and I’ve learned to tolerate her propensity for licking me (Ew.), even on the face (Double Ew. So unsanitary.). Hate never looked so like love. Mario’s been discussing with his family the possibility of handing the dog off to his grandparents. His grandpa is showing signs of dementia, and his grandma really needs someone around who is going to be unconditionally affectionate instead of hypercritical and batshit crazy. The dog met the grandma at Thanksgiving, and they really hit it off. As long as grandma was around, the dog did not touch the floor. She was always in her arms, I suspect even during dinner. Thursday night grandma went home, and we came back home Friday, when Mario announced that grandma was getting the dog. The kids wept. The twelve-year-old boy made these huge demonstrations of affection and cried more effusively than I have ever seen a male human of that age cry, up until they drove away with the pooch. Out of sight, out of mind. When they came back eight hours later (detour for Christmas shopping), the boy had another major weeping fit, after having been fine all afternoon. He hated walking the dog, he hated feeding the dog, he refused to clean up after the dog, he only played with the dog when he was avoiding doing work, so why all the tears? It seems like the boy is experimenting with emotions instead of experiencing them. It’s all show, with little worth beneath. I spent the day feeling depressed, so I watched an old British comedy series on Netflix, Spaced. I do love Simon Pegg.

This morning I was feeling kind of antsy, but without a dog, I’d look kind of dumb running up and down the driveway (it’s long, and has a steep grade, so that’s not quite as lame a workout as it sounds). I said to Mario, Let’s go out and do something fun, but apparently he didn’t realize that that meant OH DEAR GOD GET ME OUT OF THIS HOUSE BEFORE THE WALLS CAVE IN ON ME, because he went looking for a putty knife under the house instead. I walked myself around in the yard for a bit, then sat on a rock in the sunshine to try to get some heat and vitamin D before condemning myself to another day inside. I must have sat there staring into space for a good twenty minutes. Around lunchtime, though, Mario’s grandparents called and asked him to come get the dog. She was completely distraught in her new home, and they couldn’t stand keeping around a depressed dog. They even offered to drive the damn thing over here, a move without precedent. The dog is back now, and things are better, but there were some tense and lonely times over the last couple of days.

THE BEEJINATOR

Last weekend, Topher was having a crisis, so Mario went to go pick him up from his favorite bar to keep him from killing himself. BJ came along too, and they both talked Topher back into life, reconciling himself to his own existence, and to the existence of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. Mario also found the time to chat me up to BJ apparently, because he told me that BJ would be willing to take me out some time and introduce me to all of the gay sex I’ve been missing for the last thirty-three years. I thought about it overnight, and Sunday morning I asked him to give BJ my number so we could set this thing up.

Tuesday night Topher came over and we had a fire. He and Mario, when looking for something to talk about, talked about BJ. They told me his stories, including his catch phrases, and I thought to myself, This is so weird. Here are two straight-identifying men who are living vicariously through their gay friend. [Yes, Topher admitted to being bi when he was drunk, but apparently he can only admit that after he's downed a six-pack of Guinness.] They want to be him, because he can be all the kinds of outrageous that they rarely permit themselves to be. I think these stories and catch phrases must be much funnier coming from their original source; I didn’t hear anything to attach me overmuch to the absent BJ, and most of it tended to repel me, actually. I don’t need more attention whores in my life; I’m enough of one on my own, and I live with a few more. In all, though, I’m not really looking for a long-term relationship, so that’s not really an obstacle to going out with him a time or two.

After a while, Topher started glancing at the bushes in an awkward manner and wandering over to them, only to stand there for a few seconds and then turn quickly back to Mario and me. Eventually, Mario told him to quit being such a baby and just pee. We weren’t watching him, and it was too dark for anyone else to see. He tried a few more spots, but finally he just went inside. We left him alone for a suitable period, but then Mario told me that one night he and Topher stayed up drinking until Mario passed out, and then Topher tried to convince Annie to sleep with him, so we headed inside to make sure she was all right. Sure enough, he was lounging on the couch and flirting, with no apparent desire to rejoin the men outside. So we all stayed in and Topher and Mario reminisced about some of Topher’s past conquests. Apparently there was one woman who claimed to be a professor at Little State School, and she manipulated him into taking her back to his place, even though he had no intention and even less desire to have sex with her. When she started undressing, he repeated his lack of interest, and when she wouldn’t take no for an answer, his beer-swilled mind issued forth one of his worst ideas yet: Why don’t you just pose for me? And she did! She struck all of these supposedly alluring poses while he only pretended to be watching, and then he sent her home unfucked. It seemed rather heartless to me, kind of like the time that he rejected a girl by telling her that her vagina was like an old laundromat washer. [Context: he once watched a homeless man taking a shit in one. Laundry machine, not vagina.] Anyway, Mario suggested Topher and BJ come over Saturday, as a sort of antidote to all the good family fun we’d be forced to endure during Thanksgiving.

So, Thursday night I checked with Mario, and he hadn’t given BJ my number yet. Then Saturday morning I found out that he wasn’t coming over, because he wasn’t careful about gluten during the holiday and was too sick to leave the house. I was super pissed, at Mario for wasting time in helping me get my needs met, and at the universe for delaying it still further with BJ’s gluten-sickness. I know what that’s like, so I’ll have to wait until Tuesday before I start reminding Mario to pass my number along.

LATER STILL

This afternoon, the three adults of us were talking about the imminent return of the dog, and Annie acknowledged what I had already thought: if the dog comes back into the house, she’s never leaving it again. They’re going to keep her for good, and they’ll just have to find a place to live that will accommodate her. She looked at me and said that if this trend continues, they’ll bring me to Idaho as well. The words flew out of my mouth before I could stop them: Find me a boyfriend. I mean really, this whole sexless threesome bit is already old, for me. It works out great for them, but they tend to focus on helping me with survival needs, like food and a place to sleep, when I’m currently placing a lot more emphasis on the emotional needs they’re ignoring, love and a sense of purpose. I suppose fixating on where I’m going to rest when they sell the couch out from under me is one method of showing concern, but frankly, I don’t give a shit if I end up sleeping on the floor under a couple of decorative throws; I do give a shit that my life seems empty and meaningless, and that I’m afraid of dying alone.

Tonight I reconnected with my therapist friend, because with our odd holiday schedules we’ve been skipping our daily chats. I realized that there’s something going on in my head that I’m not dealing with, some loss that remains ungrieved, and I need to get really really sad about it. It seems to be the source of all the fear in my life, but I’m too afraid of it even to admit to myself what it is. Whatever it is, it’s deeper and more scarifying than what I do know about my past, and what I already remember is pretty fucked up. I’m afraid of what could be worse than what I remember now. Paul wants me to work toward figuring out what this is, but right now it’s just a huge black mass that blots out everything else and scares the shit out of me.

I’m drifting back into romantic fantasies with Mario, but this time I know that this habit has more to do with loneliness and his being the only adult male I see regularly than with any actual feelings I have for him, or he for me. I don’t know how the BJ situation will work out; I’m trying not to pin too many hopes to it, but failing miserably. I really need a friend, and a hug, but all my life has given me so far is a dog.

Impossible Not to Do.

I seem to find my dreams unremarkable, because I don’t generally remember them by the time I wake up. Last night/this morning, though, I had a few that have stayed with me, so let’s write about them.

First. Mario and I were out shopping for tools and sporting goods, when suddenly he told me to put the basket down because we had to leave immediately. I set it in a windowsill and we left the store. He ran down the hill to our apartment, and looked at me with his excited face and told me that they’re putting in a tennis court and we had to get new rackets.

The Voice of Reality: Mario doesn’t run. He certainly doesn’t run faster than I do, but I couldn’t keep up with him in the dream. To my knowledge, neither of us plays tennis. I have no idea why this would be a source of joy and excitement for him. Beyond all that, I don’t foresee a reality where the two of us would live together, unless it would be like it is now, where we live with his wife and children and there is no romantic relationship between us. This is not a situation I have any desire of duplicating in the future.

Maybe this dream is telling me to look for someone who’s more active than he is, but just as peremptory?

Second. I was at a party, and ended up talking to Albert Einstein. I was nervous about the conversation, as I think anyone would be, and I started talking to him in Portuguese as a way of saying, I know something you don’t know [Imagine that phrase in a sing-songy, obnoxious-kid-on-the-playground voice]. Some other adult nearby gave me a warning look, as if to say that I ought not to do that. We were catching up like old friends, or rather, like old acquaintances who don’t actually care very much about each other but who meet unexpectedly after an interval of several years. He was talking about how happy he was living in Venice, and how he was planning to spend the rest of his life there. Then he asked me if I had anyone whom I could spend my final years with, and I told him yes, thinking of my children. And then he asked me if I had any scientific proof of that, and I had none.

My subconscious representation of the most intelligent scientific mind of the last century just told me that I’m going to die alone. Empirically considered, I can’t disprove that statement. I do realize that the very definition of hope precludes the existence of hard evidence, but all the same, it’s a little depressing to me that Mental Einstein is right; I don’t know for sure that anyone is going to be around to care for me when I’m old. No one will need me, no one will feed me.

One of the primary thoughts that keeps me from pulling a sharp knife out of the kitchen and ending it all is the belief that I will find someone to love me. It’s just a belief, a hope, and sometimes less than that. But I hold onto it, because I believe that love makes life worth living, and that finding love again will make all this suffering and loneliness worthwhile. I have my doubts, apparently, for all that I try to crush them. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully believe that I am worth loving, but I’m hoping that I’ll find a man who will try to convince me. I know that I love people for no reason, and that love and deserving seldom go together, but I still try to apply that standard to myself.

A Heartwarming American Tradition.

On the fourth Thursday of November, we in the United States celebrate Thanksgiving. Ostensibly, this holiday is designed for us to remember the time when New Englanders had first arrived in Massachusetts Bay and would have starved in the winter if the local natives had not taken pity on them and taught them how to hunt and raise crops. They had a feast to celebrate the harvest, and pretty soon thereafter got down to the business of killing each other again. Now, we celebrate by overeating, watching the Macy’s parade, and reading the sales papers so we know which Black Friday sales to get to. Some of your more Christian families will insist on making it a religious holiday, but it’s purely Selective American History, overwritten with capitalism and obesity.

It’s not enough just to overeat, though; you have to eat the appropriate Thanksgiving food. Usually turkey, but occasionally ham. If there’s turkey, there’s usually an associated bread product that some people call stuffing and others call dressing. Potatoes, both white and sweet varieties. Generally some other vegetables. Cranberry sauce. Pies: pumpkin, pecan, and/or fruit (apple, for instance).

This week I went with Mario to his family’s place out in Hendo. While there, I was very thankful for two things that I have not had in a long time: a bed that does not double as a sofa, and a bedroom door that I can shut all night long. Oh, it was delightful. Comfort and privacy. All I needed was someone to share it with–a bare bedmate, as Barth describes his partner. I was also thankful for Red Moscato and White Zinfandel (lots of them), and the fact that I didn’t have to drive Thursday night. Mario pegged me as a sweet wine lover (he prefers darker reds), and yes, I do like sweet drinks better. I love just about anything sweet, and always have.

After I was good and sloshed, Mario and I went to Target for a good deal on an iPad. He has one for work, but he’s changing jobs with the new year, and the iPad has become a surrogate brain for him and he doesn’t think he can live without one. Personally, I don’t have any absolute needs that cost $600 on a really good sale, but we all have different priorities. We got to the store at 8:20 and stood in line for an hour to get in the door. It opened at nine, but the line was so long it took us twenty more minutes to get there. Then we had to wait another hour in another line in the electronics department because they keep all the limited-supply, high-demand merchandise under very close supervision. If you’re not in the line, you don’t get one. In this second line, he chatted up the college girls behind us. When I pointed out that he was flirting, he accused me of being overly shy, and he’s right. I don’t start up conversations with people I don’t know; I often don’t start up conversations with people I know well. When I see someone as often as I do him, I tend to lapse into a companionable silence. But then, I have very little interest in women who are fourteen years younger than I am, significantly less than he does. I don’t use them to prop up my self-image by engaging in successful social interactions with them; they don’t make me feel like I “still got it.” I do make exceptions for my students, but my interest there is more academic than social. I tend to see them as amalgamations of their essays instead of always-potential-never-actual lovers. If she hasn’t written me anything, I barely even see her.

Now we’re back home, and I’m facing two more days without privacy. I hadn’t realized how important it was to me that everyone else go to work or school and leave me alone during the day; I’m thankful that on Monday, these things will happen again.

While I’m expressing gratitude, I’d like to comment on the whole coming-out thing that started about a year ago. I am thankful that I’m gay (just those two words are a source of great happiness to me), and I’m grateful that I know that I’m gay (see? another smile. I’m going to be beaming for the rest of the paragraph). I’m thankful that my wife saw my coming out as a reason to end our relationship. I’m thankful that my kids still love me. I’m thankful that I don’t have to pretend to be interested in women. I’m thankful that my sister Rachel and my sister-in-law Lynne have worked to keep my family from rejecting me completely. I’m thankful that my friends have continued to be my friends, and that many of those relationships are much closer than they ever were before. I’m thankful for good books, three hundred years of novels written in English, and over a thousand of poetry. I’m thankful for gay literature, like Whitman and Forster. I’m thankful for the blogs of gay men that I read, because I don’t have any gay male friends in my real life. I’m thankful for you, who read my blog. I have much to be thankful for, more than I can list. I hope all is well with you out there–it’s a big world, and there’s a lot happening in it. I hope you can take a few minutes to remember what (and whom) you are lucky to have; it’s good for the soul.