awareness

Hey guys,
I wrote this a while ago and threw it into a file. I wasn’t sure when the time would be right to hit “publish”. But in the space of the past few months, several woman have told me about a very similar situation coming up in their lives, and a couple of high profile female writers have left their male partners for women—so I knew it was time to share. Besides the fact that I know you guys love to hear about things that get me all squirmy.
Let me know what you’re thinking.
xox

“I had a love affair with a man”, he said nonchalantly, his back to me while he flipped pancakes.

I nearly did a spit-take with my mouth full of coffee. Not the funny kind that happens at the end of a joke. More the shocked, eye-bulging, quick exhale, I-need-more-air kind that happens when your live-in boyfriend casually drops a bomb like that at the breakfast table during a leisure Sunday morning two years into your relationship.

We had gone down THAT road.

The road less traveled. It is labeled that because you should NOT go that way. EVER.
We somehow, and I can’t remember exactly how, had gotten sidetracked and ended up on the subject of past lovers. There should be a big sign: TURN AROUND. GO FURTHER AT YOUR OWN PERIL! For those of us stupid enough to think that talking about that kind of stuff doesn’t matter. Oh, it matters!

Or does it?

This guy always colored outside the lines. He was big and bold in everything he did, most especially in the way he loved.
His love was enormous. It was unencumbered, dramatic and all-encompassing. It’s magic lie in its unedited innocence. He was still under thirty and had never had his heart crushed by a steam-roller or dragged behind a car. I was thirty-five-ish and besides being steamrollered and dragged, my heart had also been dropped from a fifty story building and tied to an anvil and thrown into the sea. Just to name of few.

I had the barely healed scabs and scars from my wounds. He did not. His heart was smooth and supple.
A love that pure enabled him to paint with a very broad brush. My pathetic brush was the width of a single human hair.

So, besides being madly in love with him, I was forever intrigued.

“Oh, really?”, I replied as soon as I could find my voice, attempting to sound cool and casual, like he’d just told me he loved plaid. I’m sure I sounded like I’d swallowed a piano.

“These are hot”, he said as he delivered a stack of blueberry pancakes to the table. “And I already buttered ‘um”.
He kissed the back of my neck as he went by, grabbed the syrup and a plate and sat down across from me.

My eyes were fixed on him but not focused. God, he was beautiful—and blurred. Me? I was reeling a little. Okay, a lot. I was reeling A LOT!

Did he have an aids test? I know we’d discussed it once but I couldn’t remember. My heart was pounding. Yes, Yes he had. Whew! We both had and they were negative. Bullet dodged.

So, now what? What about the obvious question: Was he gay?

I remember the napkins and what I was wearing. Isn’t that weird?

The napkins were white cotton with big, blue flowers and I was barefoot, wearing a blush colored linen top that I’d paid way too much for because the color “blush” was all the rage—and I was a redhead back then so “blush” was a good color for me—over a pair of ripped up jean shorts.

“Tell me more”, was what I think I said. Or something to that effect. I may have said “You have my attention”, but I doubt I had the cognitive agility at that moment to come up with any three syllable words. As he started to talk, my vision came back into focus and I sat mesmerized, staring at his lips as they moved over his teeth to form words.

“It’s wasn’t a big deal really,” he said, sensing my inner freak-out. “He was a guy who lived in my building. He had a huge jazz collection on vinyl and we used to listen to music and smoke pot.” He was shoveling forkfuls of pancake in between words, the blueberry tinted syrup glistening on his lips as he spoke. I handed him a napkin.

“How long ago was this?”, I asked, and the minute I did I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. Recently? When he was a teenager? What did I want him to say?

“Oh, I don’t know…” he was looking into the distance, trying to conjure the past. Shit. Did I want him to re-live this memory?
“About five years ago. Yeah, wow, five years”, he was shaking his head marveling at the passage of time. I remembered that feeling.

Years are like dog years when you’re under thirty.

“You said love affair. You were in love?” I asked. This was the curious part. The part that struck me. I suppose I understood a dalliance in college or a same-sex fling. I could wrap my brain around the sexual exploration aspect of it all. But love? That was…diiferent.

“I was. We were. In love that is”, he was leaning back in his chair, arms crossed, staring at me, grinning. I could feel my face melt. There it went, down the front of my blush blouse, pooling in my lap. I suppose looking across at a melted face snapped him out of his complacency. Compassion kicked in because he leaned forward and took both my hands in his.

“Listen, it just happened. We were friends, and then we fell in love. We had sex…” He looked me straight in the eye. “It’s the oldest story in the book.” In that moment his brush painted a swath across my life as wide as the Grand Canyon.

“Was he…is he gay?”, I asked, holding my silly, single-haired brush. I guess I was thinking maybe the other guy had seduced him although I knew it had probably been the other way around. That wide-open heart of his was irresistible.

“I’m not sure if he identifies as homosexual. I don’t know. He moved away and we lost touch. I don’t—if that’s what you’re worried about.” he was laughing, turning my hands over, gently kissing my open palms while keeping his chocolate-colored eyes locked on mine. His ease and comfort around sexuality only served to exacerbate my narrow-minded clumsiness. Damn my face! It always gave me away. Poker player was not going to be a profession I could bank on.

That was the first time I’d heard the term “identifies” regarding sexuality. This was the nineties so the term wasn’t all over social media like it is now. As a matter-of-fact, this was before social media, if you can imagine that.

“You love who you love”, he said in a more serious tone, letting go of my hands. Then my boyfriend with the gigantic, all-encompassing heart got up and started to clear the table. “The heart wants what it wants”, he said, “Then, eventually, you check under the hood”.

The visual of that made us both laugh.

This “situation” turned out to have no repercussions on our relationship which died of natural causes about a year later.

What did reprecuss was the influence of this young man. He turned out to be my Yoda. He taught me to paint with a brush as broad as a four-lane highway. About almost everything in life. And in the process, it healed so many of my open wounds. He, on the other hand, did go on to have his heart broken by numerous other women—those bitches.

So, what I know for sure is that doesn’t matter how you “identify”. If you fall for someone of the same sex after being straight—are you gay? Bi?

Who cares! To quote Lin Manuel Miranda: Love is love, is love, is love, is love.

Carry on,
xox

We killed an animal on Saturday night. We had to. It was lurking in our bedroom without having been invited.

When I say we killed it I mean my husband did.

I hate killing things.

I carry spiders outside. I insisted on catch and release of the skunks that were torturing our dog earlier this year, and I absolutely refuse to let my husband shoot the crows even though one of them barfed up the nauseatingly smelly guts of partially digested roadkill all over my car windshield the other day.

So, yeah. Even when you provoke me—I won’t kill you. Well, not intentionally. At least not until this year.

If you read this blog you know how real the struggle has been to eradicate our rat infestation. For the past year, we could give that temple in India, the one devoted to rats, a run for the title of Most Rat Infested place on Earth.

We have an exterminator on salary, we were forced to cut the gorgeous Bougainvillea on our back fence down to the nub after they ignored all of our eviction notices, and I myself chased one out of the house in a drugged up stupor (me, not the rat—long story) which was asinine because it probably had survivor sex and three weeks later—more rats!

Even our beloved housekeeper, Maria (aka The Rat Assassin) has tears tattooed on her face like murders do in prison.

It all started while I was brushing my teeth before bed on Saturday night. I tend to wander while I brush and so I saw the little fucker out of the corner of my eye at the exact same moment as our dog Ruby and my husband Raphael. They were on the bed engaged an almost inappropriate display of affection when Ruby went all meerkat. (That’s what we call it when her head shoots up at attention and she starts frantically sniffing the air.)

“Uh oh,” I heard my husband utter as the three of us simultaneously spotted the rat running along the wall across from the bed. Does anyone else here feel like “Uh oh” is the understatement of the year when you discover a rat had taken up residence in your bedroom—at ten o’clock at night?

“Awwwww, fuck!” I yelled, spitting toothpaste everywhere. (A much more appropriate response, don’t you think?)
“How did he get in?
How long has he been in here?
Where has he been hiding?
OH shit! Do you think he’s been living under the BED?”

My husband wasn’t even listening. He was up getting a weapon.
I ran to spit and rinse. Then I dashed out of the room shutting the door behind me to keep the rat bastard contained…IN MY BEDROOM!

A grenade, I thought. I have to find a grenade. If that rat has been living under my bed well…maybe napalm. Clearly, we have to napalm the place and start over. Duh.

Ruby and I cowered, she outside and me in a dark hallway while my brave and heroic husband did broom battle with the rat. We could hear it and I have to tell you despite what you’re thinking—it actually sounded like a fair fight. When we timidly tiptoed back inside after being given the all clear, we were both traumatized—pale and shaky.

Even my husband who has put many a dying animal out its misery was affected. “I killed an animal tonight,” he said. He doesn’t usually say shit like that. It was weighing on him.

As I saged every freakin’ corner of that room to dispel the dead animal juju, so I could merely entertain the idea of sleep—I wondered why in the hell animals put us in such a horrible position?

I remembered hitting a squirrel after it froze and then at the last-minute made the shitty, life-ending decision to run under my left rear tire. That dull thump, thump, haunted me for weeks. Once we saw a man finishing off a dear after it ran in front of his car, demoing the front end. I was even reminded of a conversation I had with a lovely woman at a party recently who was grieving the loss of their family dog who suffered from cancer and had to be put down.

Why do these animals use us as their exit strategy? It sucks. Hard.

Why do they choose to cross a highway at all? What in the name of God is so important they have to get to the other side?

Why do they cross streets in the first place? The memo that explains how deadly cars hitting soft, furry bodies can be has had decades to circulate.

Why do they linger when they’re sick? Why do they force us into making such a horrendous decision?

And why for the love of all things holy is the entire great outdoors not enough for a rat to enjoy? Why did it have to come inside—into our bedroom?

These are just a few of life’s great questions. If you have a clue I’d love to hear it.

Carry on,
xox

Thank you, little person, who goes through my recycling bin on trash day.

I say, person because I can’t tell if you’re a man or a woman…and it really doesn’t matter.

It’s that smile of yours that stops me in my tracks every time, reminding me just how good life really is.

Even though you are barely taller than the large blue bin you manage to get to the bottom of things. I see you digging underneath the highly top-secret, shredded documents that leave my husband’s office every week, without making a mess. You can even navigate styrofoam popcorn at the holidays without even one escaping into the gutter.
That is a talent.

I’m intrigued with you. I really am.
It can be one hundred degrees or fifty, it doesn’t matter. There you are, rain or shine, covered head to toe, dressed like a beekeeper, with your pith helmet covered in a fine gauge netting that leaves only your tanned face exposed.

Yet, you have eyes that dance with mischief and dare I say…joy?
And when you smile, which is often, I’ve noticed that you have—at the most—maybe five teeth.

You are unabashedly happy as you gather our neighborhood’s valuable recyclables. All of the plastic, cans, and glass bottles. And unapologetic, I can tell.
You take great pride in your work as you sift and sort, making sense out of chaos. You find the treasure amid the trash. I admire you for that.

I can be in the worst mood, convinced that my life sucks ass, then I drive up, see your big toothless grin, and it can change my day. You have changed my day—many times.
Because how bad can my life be? I mean, you’re happy and I’m not?
That’s a reality check.
That’s a game changer.
That’s a Universal kick in the pants.

I also suspect part of your joy and contentment comes from knowing that there’s big money to be made here.
Listen, I’ve joked a couple of times that judging from the number of wire baskets you fill with the valuable stuff that we can’t be bothered with, you probably have a Mercedes parked a few blocks away, and are wearing couture under your beekeeper’s outfit like the Saudi woman do under their burkas.

Good for you.

You provide a service we never knew we needed—and you do it with a smile.

Or, you’re medicated out of your mind. I have a cynical friend that swears nobody is that happy especially someone who rifles through trash all day, and that you must be blissed out on some really great shit.
“I’ll have what he/she’s having”, is what she always says about you.

It doesn’t matter to me.
Thank you for making me happy every damn Tuesday.

Carry on,
xox

“Once I read a story about a butterfly in the subway and today, I saw one! It got on at 42nd and off at 59th, where, I assume, it was going to Bloomingdales to buy a hat that will turn out to be a mistake, as almost all hats are.”
—You’ve Got Mail

Once upon a time, a loooooong time ago, my friend Wes asked me this question: “If you were a hat, what kind of hat would you be?”

“A black beret, of course”, I responded without hesitation.
This was the mid-nineties when everybody was wearing berets. Think Monica Lewinsky.
And it was during my black dress with black tights with black Doc Martins phase so yeah, I felt confident with my decision.

As I remember it, we were walking down a pretty steep hill near Wes’ home in San Diego on our way to dinner at a little place in his neighborhood.

Or… We were walking down that same hill after parking someplace where they didn’t have meters (because we were too cheap cool to pay for parking) and I was eating an Abba Zabba.

I have memories of both those events and the hat conversation happened on one of them I just can’t remember which one.
Anyway, I digress.

Wes stopped dead in his tracks mid-hill which took me a while to notice and because I had so much momentum going. When I finally did look back—he was shouting distance away.

I know that because I heard him shouting “You are so NOT a black beret! Do you even know yourself at all?” At the back of my head.

I waited and when he caught up with me he gave one of those shoulder shoves that your brother gives you when you eat the last chocolate chip cookie or your friend gives you when you say something dim-witted like, you think you’re a black beret.

“What? I love my black beret! It’s simple and clean and it gets the job done—pretty much like me!” I said, presenting my case to his smirky little face.

He started to laugh. And not just a polite little tee hee kind of laugh. Oh, no, my friend was practically doubled over, seized with big guffaws of raucously loud laughter.

I looked around, embarrassed, but the street was empty.

“You are the most complicated person on the planet! He finally managed to choke out. “Simple? Simple? HARDLY!” Bahahahahahaha!

I just stood there with a pouty face silently watching my friend convulse with laughter. But as everybody knows laughter is contagious and within seconds I came down with a nasty case of the giggles.

He continued, Oh, my, gawd! Get’s the job done! A beret is boring! A beret says I didn’t have the time to think about this. You are NOT boring and let’s get real here—you overthink EVERYTHING!”

He locked his arm in mine as we continued down the hill powered by the laughter.

“Okay”, I acquiesced through a fit of giggles. He had a point. “Then, if you know me so well—what kind of hat am I?”

“You are a pink hat. A pink party hat with a flower. Something zippy and sassy that says let’s have fun!”

And although I would never be caught dead in such a hat, I loved the fact that my fashion-forward, highly insightful friend had picked the exact same hat for me that I imagined the butterfly on the subway had chosen for itself at Bloomingdales.

By the way, I have to disagree with Ms. Ephron, (who wrote You’ve Got Mail) hats are never a mistake, even for butterflies.

So…what kind of hat are you?

Carry on,
xox

At the end of the day, at the end of the week, at the end of my life,
I want to be able to say that I contributed more than I criticized.
~ Brene Brown

Have you ever noticed that I give you the heavier stuff on the weekends? So that you have three days to process it?
Weekends are good for that. And videos too. That’s when I catch up on my video watching and since I feel like you guys are family, I just assume you do the same. So, here ya go.

A video from two of my FAVORITE people—talking about heavy shit—on the weekend! But I LOVED IT!

Brene will be talking about (among other things) dehumanization, shame, and unaccountability. Which I like to call the Slippery Slope Trifecta. I can also admit, especially after the past year of the most butt-sucky, sucky, politics that I am guilty of all three. And after listening to this talk…I promise to do better.

If we dehumanize somebody by calling them names in the process of trying to shame them, (sound familiar yet?) they become non-human, expendable. Like, it is literally easier to kill them. Fuck.

The German’s did it with the jews, and some people are trying to do that today, TODAY, with anyone of color and immigrants. If we criminalize them then if they get shot or deported we won’t feel bad. That’s where the lack of accountability strolls in. There’s blaming others. There is fear mongering. We criticise anonymously. There are lies. We get offended by a word that was used—instead of the actual act.

Okay. So…put on your cozy pants and pull up a sheet cake—because shit’s about to get real.

Hey! Are YOU braving the wilderness?
xox

Check out all of this and more in Brene’s new book:

https://www.amazon.com/Braving-Wilderness-Quest-Belonging-Courage/dp/0812995848/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506122747&sr=8-1&keywords=brine+brown+braving+the+wilderness

Hey guys,
This is a post from three years ago but after talking to some friends lately I think it’s as relevant now as it was then.
Whatcha think?
Carry on,
xox

Late the other night at the Carmel writing retreat, after three-plus hours in a masterminding session listening to and giving feedback on everyone’s books, my roommate Jeannie and I had become giddy from equal parts exhaustion, exhilaration, and chocolate.

In between fits of laughter, we would tell stories from our lives, peeling back the layers to reveal a bit more about ourselves.
We’d pull something out of our sacred stash of writings that we’d never read aloud to anyone before, offering ourselves up for critique, only to have our trusted roomie leap across the room and throw her arms around us. “You have to read that to the group!” We’d exclaim. Then we’d double over in a giant fit of the giggles. It was like summer camp for adults.
Pinkie swear.

One great story that Jeannie told, had to do with a crooked tooth.
She may be in her forties, and a highly successful entrepreneur, but she has the face of a pixie, a disarmingly charming southern drawl, the eyes of an imp, and a slightly crooked incisor (which I didn’t even notice until she told this story).

This tooth is part of a big beautiful smile, it is not unsightly, it’s certainly not calling attention to itself, and it is NOT a snaggle tooth. I know a snaggle tooth when I see one because my old boxer has a wicked one.

Anyway, Jeanne is living a perfectly lovely life, slightly crooked incisor and all. As a matter of fact – she doesn’t even see it when she looks in the mirror.

So as she tells it, recently her mom asked her, quite seriously, “Honey, are you ever going to straighten that crooked tooth of yours?”
“What?! I have a ….what?!” She ran to a mirror to survey the scene.

Yep, sure enough, there before her was a slightly turned in tooth.

‘Was it THAT bad? Why hadn’t she noticed it?‘ Her mind raced. ‘Is it holding me back? Are people repelled?’
You know how the mind works. Suddenly, because it was her mom calling attention to it, she had the teeth of a troll.

Hardly!

She just had a blind spot. Something she was so used to seeing, that she didn’t even notice it anymore.

God, we laughed about that tooth. “Yeah, I was wondering about that, when ARE you going to get that fixed?” I said, wincing and making gagging sounds. We laughed until our sides ached.

Then I remembered a blind spot story of my own, so I shared.
Ever since I can remember, I’ve had a flesh colored bump on the tip of my nose. I guess it’s technically a mole; but it’s not black, and there’s not a hair growing out of the center, so I’m not a witch—I can hear you, stop thinking that!

Anywho, I’ve had it removed twice, once sliced off and once frozen, and both times it grew back. Seems it felt cozy on that piece of real estate on my face, and it had no intention of vacating. So I left it alone.
To be honest, I never saw it when I looked in the mirror, it was just a part of my face.
Ahhhhhh, and then there’s my shitty vision—a blessing and a curse.

Cut to: A blind date, the 1990’s. I’m dressed to the nines, hair, make up, the whole enchilada. I’m seated across the table from an attractive man, at a VERY expensive, and perfectly pretentious Beverly Hills restaurant. I am picking at the $65 salad while he orders a bottle of something red, and when he finishes, he gets a big warm smile on his face, leans in like he’s going to kiss me (so I put down my fork and stopped chewing) then he reaches up and touches my nose lightly and says “You’re a pretty girl—you should get that fixed.”

He mole shamed me.

Motherf*cker, please. I spent an hour getting ready, I shaved my legs, I’m wearing my best…everything, I’m smart and witty (and humble) and you can’t take your eyes off my mole??

I grabbed my purse, politely excused myself and drove like a bat out of hell all the way home. I literally ran to the bathroom to study my face in the mirror, and there it was, my persistent friend.
(You really did have to get in just the right light to see it…I swear).

The next morning I called the dermatologist and had it removed…this time for good.

The things that I mentioned are minor, but what if we have a blind spot to something that is actually holding us back?
What if that guy was Mr. Right? Yeah, not in a million years. BUT…what if? I really knew deep down that I had the nose wart, I was just in a state of perpetual denial, so, maybe we shouldn’t shoot the messenger.

What else am I in denial about? Thinking I’m an organizing fool when I’m really just a fool?
Am I blind to the fact that I really cannot cook? Or keep to a budget? Or stay interested in a man for more than a year?

I’m convinced we ALL have a blind spot story. What’s yours?

Love you, warts and all,
Xox