Our Happy Hour

Let me tell you about the hat I wore to the Kentucky Derby this year.

Shoot, let me tell you about the whole adorable outfit. Head to toe.

The hat was large and floppy, drooping dramatically over one eye when I bent the brim a certain way. It was straw, lined with black dye for about an inch of the brim, a black flower, perhaps a hibiscus or peony, perched on the crown. The dress was a white halter dress with large black and yellow flowers and a black sash tied around my waist in a bow. The skirt flared slightly over a black netting rimmed with black ribbon and fell just above my knees. The shoes were black patent, rhinestone sprinkled, peep-toe wedges with a straw heel, same color as the hat, and I carried a black patent bag. I wore an antique necklace around my neck that I found at a flea market about fifteen years ago with a best friend. It is silver flowers that interlock and each flower holds a blue bead in the center of its petals.

It was a good outfit.

Today, in the humid June weather of Minnesota, 90 degrees, 52% humidity, I decided the hat was in order again as I was going to walk six blocks with friends for a happy hour at a Tex-Mex bar. I couldn't resist putting together another outfit, and dressed in a spaghetti-strapped v-neck black floral sundress, the same peep-toe wedges, same hat, and same black patent bag. It was pretty cute, despite the cleave sweat beading between my breasts, the sweat pooling in the small of my back, and the perspiration popping up on my cheeks under my eyes.

Dampness aside, my spirits were lively as we walked to our destination, two dear buddies and I. We discussed the details of my impending date with "Ryan", an e-harmony suitor who likes golf and wears braces hoping for "a nice set of chompers" later in the year. As I am new to the online dating scene, the discussion was light and fun. I, this silly woman wearing a big floppy hat, was planning a summer of whirlwind dating and casually archiving potential "matches" if they didn't seem to be my type. Then I told one friend about how the other had taken me on the best date I'd been on in a year- how she called twice to confirm, picked me up in her sweet ride, and dazzled me by bringing her own bottle of Sauvignon Blanc to dinner at Origami, our favorite sushi place. Our friend teased me about how she was disappointed I didn't put out and I laughed and said that was more of a second date sort of thing. We also joked about how, on the date, I told her about the very nice man who was my boyfriend, and who was now no longer my boyfriend. She was shocked, having not seen me in over six months, that she had missed the event. "How's Katie?" her husband had asked after our date.

"She had a boyfriend!" said my friend. "And he's gone. They went on trip and everything. Apparently I don't see Katie that often."

Which is fine. We love each other and it doesn't matter that sometimes our busy lives pull us in many directions. The point is we were laughing and joking about the events in my life. We were having fun.

And we continued having fun over margaritas and guacamole, and we continued having fun when our fourth friend joined us, and we continued having fun when she ordered a Sprite, and we continued having fun when she told us she was pregnant. And we started talking about babies and childbirth and labor and the adorable things children do and the trials of motherhood. And it pains me to say this, but I stopped having fun.

I love my friends who are mothers. I love my friends who are pregnant. I love hearing about their stories, about the great moments, the tough moments- really everything except the painful moments (I don't handle medical stories well). But unfortunately, due to the combination of two nights in a row of women saying they were pregnant (two at my book club the night before), two hours of talking about babies, and two drinks over our happy hour, I was bumping up against a sadness I never admit to myself.

I want a baby. Some day. But right now it feels like that day will never come.

"I can't even let myself go there," I said to my friends, "because it just isn't even remotely a possibility right now." I dismissed the possibility of kids like I had no feelings about the subject. They nodded and we returned to talking about babies, me piping in with a story about someone else I knew just so I wouldn't be completely silenced in the conversation.

We continued talking and laughing. "I mean, who else would have a pregnancy chart in their purse?" said the new mom-to-be to the rest of us. She explained what it was to my other non-mother friend and when she asked how it worked, she promised to figure out when the non-mother-married friend would be fertile and when she would be pregnant.

"Would it tell me who the father would be?" I ask, leaning in and looking at the chart. They all laugh. And I laugh. I am still telling myself I don't want kids. I am not ready to bump into the truth.

We say good-bye to new mom-to-be, a woman who went through a miscarriage in the fall, a woman who will be an amazing mom, and a woman I am genuinely happy for when I hear the news.

As we walk home, I want to be just as sincerely happy as the two women I am walking with, two college roommates, one a mother and one not. But I am starting to realize I can't. "You guys," I say, two hours of baby talk and two drinks later, "that was reaaaally hard." Before I know it, tears are filling my eyes underneath my big, floppy hat. "I just can't grieve one more thing. I already lost so much. I can't think about the fact that I don't have kids." I want to stop talking about it immediately.

"What are you doing?" I asked myself as my friends consoled me and reminded me that life just takes different time frames sometimes, that I don't need a man to have a baby, and that women have babies well into their forties. "You're walking around in this ridiculous hat, going on stupid dates with men who don't care about you and wear braces. You're playing dress-up. You're a failure. No one wants to marry you."

I wiped away the tears and we switched topics.

When I got home I cried. Not because I want a baby. I cried because I both want and don't want a baby. In my mind I know this is not the time, I know that there are things I must do before I give myself to a child. I know that I would not have wanted to deal with co-parenting children with a sex addict. I know that I don't want to be a single parent, that I would never trick someone into fathering offspring. I know that I am blessed to come home and be needed only by a small dog. I worked 60-70 hours a week this spring between my full time career as a high school teacher and my part time gig as an online instructor and I was taking a grad school class. And I dated someone. And I was writing. And I was spending time with family and my wonderful nephews. There is no way I could have a baby right now.

But there is a part of me that feels like life isn't fair. That of all people in the world, I deserve a baby.

Right now, I think my book is my baby. "It's not what you want," said my adviser when I met with him to discuss my thesis, a book-length manuscript. "It's what the book wants." He was speaking sympathetically about my resistance in hashing up the past, in telling my story, marriage, divorce, and recovery.

Sometimes I think I say too much in my writing. Right now, for instance, since my two dear friends are among the ten people that read this blog and I worry they will think I was upset or didn't appreciate them. Or when I look back at the graphic scenes I've revealed about my sex life and think about the people who will judge me for revealing my truth. Maybe it's ridiculous to be this vulnerable. To be this open. To risk hurting feelings of those I love.

But I think I'm doing it because I'm strong enough to be honest. I'm not talking about babies to guilt trip my friends. I'm not talking about sex to get attention. I'm talking about my life and my experiences. I'm talking about my truth, about learning a secret that destroyed my former self and gave me something so much richer in return. There are sad moments. There are moments I wish dearly to be a "we" or a "family." But without a doubt I know I am stronger and happier today than I ever have been in my past, and I know I will be ok. I'm ok where my life and my writing leads me. And I guess I'll have to leave it at that.

So if that means I wear floppy hats to cheer myself up once in a while, so be it.

My Blow Job Essay

It's strange to write this essay. I am not even sure how to begin or what I want to say. I just know the title came to mind and I thought, yes, that is an essay I need to write. And yet, I cannot help thinking of who looks at my blog, what they might think, how they might judge me for talking about blow jobs and sex and all the sordid details of life with a sex addict.

It's a topic I am reluctant to address at times.

It's hard, now, two years after the divorce that was final on 2/15/08, to make myself remember what my past was like, what my 20s were like.

I have memory problems when it comes to sad moments of my past. The events disappear like being erased by the sands of an etch-a-sketch board, a soft-shaking and they unzip from the screen of my mind almost as they are occurring. If I do not write them down right away, I lose them.

"I think you'll do a reading for Joanne, just like you did for Andrea," my mom said to me in March of 2009, the weekend after my g0dmother died. We were driving down to Port Byron, Illinois from Minneapolis, MN, for her funeral. A breast cancer survivor, she had gotten her final death sentence the April before: pancreatic cancer, six months. She made it eleven.

"What are you talking about?" I asked. In July of 2008, my mother, father and I had made the drive to Port Byron to bury my second cousin, Joanne's daughter, who had died while calling her mother, complaining of leg pain, a blood clot. Valedictorian who spiraled down through bad relationships, financial trouble, depression and substances, had hit bottom in Vegas and was making her way back up into the world. She was three and a half years older than me, 33 when she died. She had been the cool cousin I looked up to, the one who played strange music in her room to a strobe light and talked on the phone for hours to her friend. The one who wrote me letters in perfect handwriting about the Guess jeans she had bought, about shopping trips, and her new cat Hillary.

She couldn't be dead.

"I didn't do a reading," I said to my mom. I remembered the awful drive down, the hot drive back, the nausea I felt in the hotel room, standing in the cemetary, feeling the hot humidity caught between the blue sky and the yellow earth, the weeds and cattails in the ditch across from the road pushing up into the sky, the birds darting across the skyline, the moisture I could smell coming up from the earth. Fertilizers, decay, a soggy earth baking under the July sun. I remember standing under a tent, thinking it wasn't fair that her life end this way, that she be dragged back from Seattle, Chicago, Vegas just to be pinned under the thumb of her conservative farmer relatives. I blamed her dad.

We went out for dinner at a restaurant and I remember staring at the menu and feeling sick. A burger. Your cousin's dead. French fries? Your cousin's dead. Pass the ketchup. She's gone.

I remember the wake, the pictures, the cheerleader, the model, the new pit-bull, new friend, her mother. Joanne, in a wig and too much blush, held my arm but didn't cry. She would be gone within a year and she already knew it. Maybe Andrea knew it too. Maybe she knew losing her mother would make her something of an orphan. So she went first.

I'm probably not being fair, but this is how I felt. This is what I remember. I blamed her dad.

But I don't remember reading. I don't remember the funeral. I got to my godmother's funeral eight months later and the church felt familiar. The shape of the room, the look of the altar. I couldn't place it in the neurons of my mind, but I remembered the drive from the funeral home to the parking lot.

I didn't remember giving a reading.

When I told my mom that I had lost the memory, that I couldn't access it, that I had somehow erased it, she nodded sympathetically. "It happens."

Why do I bring this up? It's because it is so important for me to write the details I remember still before they slide away. I want to remember because it was nearly ten years of my life that I spent learning about addiction, and that I feel like things happen for a reason, and I feel like I have learned and grown so much and that maybe others can learn and grow too by way of shared stories.

This is why I'm writing about blow jobs.

It's an essay about sorrow, unfortunately, but let's start it with compassion. Let's start with the catlyst for this essay, the encounter with the ex.

My ex-husband, the one I met when I was 18, started dating when I was 20, married when I was 24, and divorced when I was 29, moved four blocks away from me when we divorced. We live in Uptown, Minneapolis, the trendy yuppie-granola section of town, filled with lakes and bars and restaurants, and outdoor apparel shops that have replaced decades-old small family-owned dive bars. I run the lake. He runs the lake. Today I saw him when I was running the lake. He was walking with his new girlfriend, cute as a button, stocking hat pushed down over dirty blond hair. Both were carrying coffee cups and walking towards me as I finished the 3.5 mile lap around Lake Calhoun.

As usual, I did not look my best. Running pants on, University of Minnesota, Morris hoodie pulled tight over my head and tied under my chin to keep out the unexpected cold of the Saturday morning in March. My hands were balled under the ends of my sleeves and I knew without needing a mirror that my skin was pink verging on red and that sweat was beading on my forehead, upper lip, and under my eyes.

He looked good-looking. Six-foot-three, blue eyes that captured the clouds of the day and spit them back out in a flash, the slightest lines edging his thin face. Hat on to cover the receding hair line. Down vest over broad shoulders. He walked like he was half-listening to his girlfriend, the cute-as-a-button woman who was clearly venting during their walk.

I saw him see me. Then he stared at the lake as if something really interesting was out there and nodded like he was considering an important matter. But I wasn't scared. So I continued to watch him as I puffed along, sweaty and pink. At the last second he glanced at me; I felt a swell of sad love fill my being and though I don't think my eyes watered, they do now as I write this, and I smiled. I smiled because I can't pass my ex-husband on a running path and pretend he doesn't exist.

He tries. Pretends he can't see me. And in this way I know he still grieves too.

I feel sorry for him.

I can't imagine she knows about his addiction. What do you say to someone when you admit you are a sex addict? That's all behind me know. Six hours of surfing a day, but it's over.

And sex addiction is so easy for many people to dismiss. Porn floods our culture. Affairs are commonplace and not seen as a cry for help. When a friend said, "with complete sincerity, I don't care about Tiger Woods's extra marital affair, his 'sex addiction' or his apology. Take it to the Maury Povich or Jerry Springer show" on his facebook page, I couldn't resist commenting. I sent him a message explaining that it was my belief that people suffering from any type of addiction deserve compassion and firm personal boundaries. He responded by mocking Tiger and pointing out that the DSM-IV psych book didn't recognize sexual addiction as a legitimate condition.

Nine years of my life. Not recognized as a legitimate condition. Belonging to the Jerry Springer show.

This is why I want to talk about blow jobs.


How important is sex to a relationship? When Shawn and I first started dating, first started having sex, we were in a long-distance relationship. I assumed our sex life was healthy because we had a lot of sex when we would see each other. I didn't feel scared the first time we had sex; he was my first. First boyfriend, first lover, first husband, first love.

How does one decide to marry a sex addict? At the end, blue comes to mind. The end of our marriage was blue and black and vacuous. The space between us in bed crushes me still today. We would lie next to each other and lie to each other. "I love you, baby," he'd say.

At the end, we had sex maybe twice a month. I would attempt to sleep with him about eight times a month. His penis would be flacid and limp. I would rub up against him, arch my back, nuzzle my mouth against his pants, undo his belt, look up at him from under blonde hair and pretend like putting his cock in my mouth was the most amazing experience of my life. Lick, suck, press here, gaze up- like magic, I knew how to make him hard. We'd fuck for a minute or two. I'd pretend to get off. Then I would slide off of him, go back down on him, lick, suck, press til he came. In this way I reassured myself that our marriage was just fine.

The time in between sexual advances on my part- and I tried so hard to be enticing, wearing heels and one of his shirts when he came home from work, strewing clothing and underwear on the stairs of our townhome and waiting in bed naked, pouncing on him after we came home from the bar, from a night out with friends- we spent making dinner. We were great at making dinner. He'd chop, I'd sautee. He'd set the table, wash the dishes, I'd make the dessert, put napkins in napkin rings. We would have friends over. We'd cook for ourselves. We'd sit at the table or in front of the tv. We went to movies. We went to bars. We went to plays. We went to the Farmer's market. We never fought. We talked politics. We talked movies. We talked dreams and he pretended to encourage me. We talked music. We went to concerts. We watched movies at home and I'd fall asleep; so tired from my job. We were great when we weren't having sex.

It was my job that allowed him flexibility as an addict. I would leave at 6 a.m. I would pull out from the garage of our suburban townhome and notice a blue glow from the bedroom. He'd wake up when I left but didn't have to be to work until 9. Later I would start to notice his porn use, I'd know from the url addresses and the history that he was looking at porn from the time I left until fifteen minutes before he had to be at work.

Later I would find the credit card statements: $14, 000. It was school, he said, your ring. I'd see the records a year after my naive trust and realize it was dvds purchased from the same adult video empire, this on top of the $300 a month cable bill. I don't know where he kept them. I think there was a closet at work that he used to keep his stash. The addict has to hang on to the trophies.

And I see him as two people: Shawn and the addict. It was Shawn who looked ashamed when he saw me run around the lake today. Shawn who felt remorseful. It was the addict that would lie to me. "I saw the look in your eyes and I knew I had to quit," said the addict. Earlier, as I was waking to the concept of addiction, he'd say, "But how did you know?" addict eyes all soft when I confronted him about the internet porn use. I told him, stupidly, and thus the addict learned how to better cover his tracks.

So why does a girl marry a sex addict? Because he didn't pressure me or force me to do anything that felt scary. Because maybe I had problems with intimacy as well. Because lots of sex meant good sex in my 20 year-old mind. Because I used to love making him have an orgasm, because there was a certain thrill in being able to give him a blow job that would make him get off. Because we would have sex on the floor of his parents' living room while they were asleep, because I gave him a blow job in the car while his brother slept in the back seat. Because we had sex up against his truck in the cul-de-sac where he lived. Never mind that I felt empty during the experience, look how passionate this was. It must be love.

Plus I said, I do. The good girl in me believed that meant forever. That meant convincing him to love me, trying so hard to be what he wanted. Posing, arching, gazing, sucking. I could make him want me. Sometimes it worked. I could keep trying.

Do I give blow jobs today? This is not an essay about my current loves, my current relationships, but I do. I have. I refused for over a year, but I have relented and at times I will at least give head. I don't gaze. I don't fawn. I don't pretend it is the most amazing experience of my life. I still enjoy causing a man to have an orgasm, but I am much more selfish. I don't fake orgasms. I don't pretend to get off. I don't scream. If anything I keep my orgasm to myself. An orgasm requires a certain level of selfishness. A selfishness I lacked in my marriage and in lacking this quality, overgave and enabled an addict.

I have learned that what I cannot tolerate is that blue-black-vacuous feeling between a man and myself in bed. I have learned that sexual intimacy is about more than frequency, more than theatrics and face-paint.

I am compassionate towards Shawn, though a part of me still hates the addict. I believe our dinners were the way we made love. I believe our conversations were our intimacy. I believe he wishes he could have thrown away his addiction, the addiction he told me began at 14. I believe he wanted our relationship to work just as he wants things to work with his new girlfriend. I believe he wants to think he is different. I believe he wants to forget what happened.

Sometimes even I doubt it happened. How could a man possibly look at that much porn? Not want his wife? "It's definitely not you," said a guy at a bar when I told him my story. When I see him walking with his new girlfriend I question myself: did it happen? Did I make it up? Was it real?

It was real. It exists. It's a real problem. Addiction soothes pain and sex-addicts numb out through whatever method works. All of us dance on the edge of an addiction, whether it is work, or sex, or drugs, or booze, or antiques, or gambling, or music: we all have our escape from the loneliness that fills heart blue-black-and-vacuous.

We don't need the DSV-IV to tell us whether or not our problems exist.

Fictional Essays I've Been Scribbling in Between Buying Gas and Groceries...

Part I. --The Next Town

In one of the many episodes and adventures with the imperfect being, she finds herself confronted with an age-old nemesis.

Our story tonight begins with the imperfect being, who, having newly found herself in the beginnings of what looked to be a safe and healthy relationship with a safe and healthy man decided she could not a imagine a happier place in life. Perhaps, she pondered, this was it. She had found it, a place she could exist forever. Perhaps she had finally found herself on the right track, with ticket already purchased, sitting next to Mr. Nice Guy and smiling while they waited for the train to the town called Happiness&Contentment.

But it happened, as it always does, that just as the imperfect being was packing her suitcase and imagining her journey to the town of H&C, that she met an untimely intrusion from her age-old nemesis--Favorite Mistake.

Picture this: bar-close, post-dancing, post-party, post-cab-ride, the imperfect being suddenly finds herself opening the door to her apartment accompanied by favorite mistake, a nemesis so familiar he felt comfortable. So seemingly benign, she forgot the danger. He helped himself to glass from her cupboard and poured water from her Britta pitcher into her new flower mug (the one a friend gave to her with intentions it be used for hot-chocolate with a nice guy on a cold day). It was only then that she realized her mistake. It was not Mr. Nice Guy drinking out of her nice guy mug; it was the favorite mistake.

What was imperfect being to do? Would she rid herself of the nemesis or would this episode become yet another re-run with the favorite mistake?

Luckily, the imperfect being had had a stern conversation with herself early in the evening and pre-bar, pre-dancing, pre-party-and-cab had given the vixen within strict instruction not to sleep with the favorite mistake UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

But favorite mistake was not so easily dissuaded from the mission. What followed was a slightly inappropriate and excitingly dangerous scene that no doubt one could place in both the categories labeled "Unhealthy" and "So fucking hot!!!" Think Gone with the Wind, Wuthering Heights, Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Dangerous. Destructive. Hot.

The imperfect being argued with the favorite mistake. She swore at him, he ripped off clothing, she lashed out at him, he reasoned with her, and finally- she drew a line in the sand:

"Fine, tell me you love me and we can have sex."

The room grew silent and stopped cartwheeling. Favorite mistake looked at her in a blue-green lock-down stare. A year passed and she did not blink. Did not waver.

We all know his answer.

And after he left the imperfect being felt suddenly the silence and darkness of her room empty of her nemesis. She had refused the favorite mistake. She still held her train ticket to Happiness&Contentment.

***

Later, following this episode, the imperfect being will sit in the train station and look at her ticket to Happiness&Contentment... and, she will hate herself just a little for wondering what town the train visits next.

Part II> Who I Don't Write:Memories...

Who have I left out of my writing?

In thinking of this question-- of course, my father jumps to mind--the words almost flinch as I let them out onto the page and the only way I can even allow myself to mention he does not surface in my work is to plug my ears, listen to my own breathing, and imagine I am at the bottom of the FMS pool. It is 5:30 a.m. The lights are sleepy and glowing under the blue surface of the pool and the lights in the room are still turned off so that above the surface is gray and tired. Here I can let these words out.

I do not want to think about why I do not write him. I do not want to ask these questions.

In the past I have done much writing about my father. Writings like snap shots taken at birthday parties, the glow of candles flickering in anticipation of breath, candles that dance in the breeze of a song. Writings and letters and cards and poems. All so happy and perfect. Girl. Father. He smiles tears in her direction.

I only say this now because as I look at the list of other life characters I omit, I see... well, men. There is something so secret about writing about men. And instantly I'm working out a pattern. Even Shawn. I have been writing him elegies, or us elegies for a marriage lost now for two years, but what do I write about him? How do I even know where to begin? I write about my grief. My loss. I don't know that I actually write him.

The new non-boyfriend rattled me this weekend. We had been out all night and he said something about how we didn't really know each other, not yet.

I stopped.

I mean, we have our little routine.

I tensed.

No, no, I mean- I like it. I like what we have. Chemistry- that's what I mean. We have chemistry.

I can't quite let this go. Routine. We don't really know each other. The words pull at my arms as I try to move forward. Could it be that I am the problem? That I can't know men? When I think there's a connection, well, what is there?

And look-- I've done it again. Set out to write about the men I leave out of my life, set out to describe my father, and all I do is dance around these stories. Sidestep the land mines.

I stay in the shallow end. So afraid of what is in the deep end of that pool.

What keeps me from going there? Am I simply scared of being teased? Is the shy girl within just keenly sensitive and perceiving that to like men, to talk about men, is not allowed?

I am nine and the doorbell rings on dark-blue snowy Thanksgiving evening. For me.

"Is it a boy?" my uncle Jerry, the one who sometimes thinks he is my godfather and who I see maybe once a year, teases me.

"Actually," my dad clears his throat, shrugging, "ah, it is."

The spotlight lands on my face and I feel it grow a little hot. I walk to the door in a dress that has a black and white taffeta skirt and a black velvet body. I am pretty sure there is a red bow in my long blond hair, which may be curled since company is over.

My neighbor stands at the door and I am mortified by the significance of this event. And excited.

A boy means something different. It's not allowed. Not yet. But it makes me special. That he's at my door and all my family sees a boy has come over to talk to me.

I get the book he came to borrow for an assignment that he will not need to complete as school will be cancelled on Monday from too much snow. He looks pained for having intruded. We barely talk on Tuesday in school. He returns my book. It is nothing.

There is no significance to this event. I am still wading in the shallow end, watching the lights dance below the surface.

Part III. What I Write When I Don't Want to Write Pain...

I want to write about his adorable face when he's totally calm and holding me in his arms--eyes closed, romantic, a poet. I want to write how he played music, how he is a little thoughtful and remembers my schedule and calls when he knows I will be around, and how he is also just a little insistent, pushing up against me on the couch, pulling my dress up higher, higher, running his finger across my thigh, pressing on the shape of my hip bone, and sighing at the touch of my bare leg.

So smooth, he says.

Just like you, I say.

He laughs.

My awkward Romeo pulling off my too-tight tights, asking politely if we should change positions, after a night out on the town asking if I would go down on him

Don't do it if you don't want to, baby. I just think it might facilitate the process.

His room, my refuge, is blue. Dark blue walls, white trim, a room that suddenly seems filled with light in the mornings. A room where I woke up after the night I met him wearing the pajamas he offered me when I said I was not going to sleep with him. A room where I thought: I like it here.

There is a tree outside that fills the space of the window and a yard that sits on the top of a steep hill so that there is the illusion of no nearby neighbors--only stillness, the city skyline, and a train yard below the tree and hill that you can easily pretend doesn't exist.

That tree's going to fall on this house and kill me someday.

He says this from below our two dogs, the golden retriever, his, and the yorkie-poo, mine, who are wrestling with their usual ferocity. The retriever raises his paw from the ground, swiping at the yorkie-poo's face. The yorkie-poo, in turn, dive bombs the retriever from his vantage point on the bed like a WWF wrestler.

I laugh at his comment, watching as my small dog leaps off his back.

Labels, titles, chapters, and sub-headings...

"So I think I'm just going to start calling you my girlfriend."

"Great," I said to the man laying next to me, vastly relieved that we were simply going to choose our own labels for things in our tenuous new relationship with each other, "And I think I'm just going to call myself Not-your-girlfriend."

I giggled and he laughed, and I realized I was finding myself in an awkward stage of infatuation and revulsion. Despite my best efforts, I was falling into that strange stage of infatuation where even the sight of an unsightly nose hair causes swooning because of its vulnerability and exclusivity. And I was also finding myself in a state of revulsion where side comments about being exclusive, or answering yes when a co-worker asks if you have a girlfriend were causing me to break out in a sweat.

Girlfriend.

It's a label I've held only one other time. A label that led to the disintegration of self, the creation of a new married version of my identity, a label that ultimately led to my personal ground zero and one that I've struggled not to want for the past couple of years.

Girlfriend means danger. Girlfriend means losing me. Getting hurt. Feeling sad. Being lied to. Convincing myself to love him.

At least this is what a tenacious little fighter inside me is saying. Watch out! You know how this goes. It can only lead to pain.

While I appreciate this overprotective little voice for wanting to keep me safe, I am trying to have a conversation with her about letting go of old information, trusting my instincts, and opening my heart to possibility.

***

After our third date, this man beside me said to me, "You're the only person I've dated that I've really liked in a long time."

I paused upon hearing this, filled with anxiety and fear.

"Is that weird?" he asked. "Should I not have said that?"

"No," I answered carefully, "you should always be able to say how you feel." But then, in the darkness of a few seconds, I felt a swell of anxiety push up a sentence that I couldn't hold back.

"But I have to say, I'm a little gun-shy of anything too serious right now." The words spilled out and I held my breath. I had said something that might have hurt this man's feelings, a man I thought I might like, and despite the fear I have faced from childhood about speaking my truth, causing problems for those I love, I had done it. I had said how I felt.

"Oh, me too. Totally throw that out there. I feel the same way," and he explained how after the end of a big relationship in his life he had closed himself off, shut down, walled himself off from possibilities of new relationships. He had known what it was like to be scared of getting hurt again. "But," he went on, "I just have realized that you have to put yourself out there. You have to be vulnerable."

And it's true. It's no good to be closed off forever. As I tried to explain to the protective, anxious voice inside my head, there is no danger in a relationship. I can trust my own instincts. If things don't feel right, if I worry that he's lying to me, I can ask. I can explain my fears. I can end the relationship. I can walk away if it doesn't feel right. And maybe I will feel sad, but sadness is not permanent. It doesn't last forever. Sadness is replaced by joy and joy is replaced by loss and loss is replaced by acceptance, and by appreciation, and by love, and then, suddenly, in an unexpected way, joy returns.

It's no good hiding from life. I would rather go out and hold his hand, see where he leads me.

And so I returned to the conversation with the man laying beside me, to the giggling and laughter, and explained my label of Not-your-girlfriend.

"It's like goldfish," I said. "You can't put the goldfish in a bowl too quickly."

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"You know, when you buy a goldfish from a pet store you can't just throw it in a fishbowl."

"You can't?"

"No. You have put the plastic bag in the water, let the water get to the same temperature as that in the bag, let the goldfish think about things for a while, check it all out, and then you let it out into the bowl."

"So you're the goldfish?"

"Yes."

"You should have explained that with minnows. That would have made more sense to me."

"Minnows?"

"Yeah. We lost so many minnows when I was a kid."

More giggling. More laughter. Joy, unexpected.

***

This past weekend, no real labels determined, but time spent together, I was telling this man about my adventures in Minneapolis parking, relaying how I had run out to my car to move it at 5:30 in the morning after waking to the noise of snow plows and finding a ticket on my dashboard reading "tow immediately." After rescuing my car from the plows, I parked my car on one side of the street, worrying about the vast quantities of snow lining the street, but taking my chances anyway. An hour later, realizing I was still on the wrong side of a snow emergency, I was back out into the morning to move my car again, only to find I was stuck. I explained how two still-drunk party revelers had approached and had offered to help, giving up after 15 seconds saying, "It's no use. Go home, little girl. Just give up." I hadn't bothered to explain the complexities of Minneapolis snowstorm parking to them, but had waited until they walked down the street, got out of the car, and using gloved fingers, dug my way out of the snow bank, rocking the sedan back and forth and emerging, victorious, from the snow.

"Adventures of the single gal continue," I concluded to my new non-boyfriend.

And that's what I realize I'm holding onto- it's not that I'm so resistant to the term girlfriend as I'm clinging to the term single. I like taking care of myself. Part of me cursed the fact that I had no boyfriend to call after finding myself severely lodged in a pile of snow, but a bigger part of me was proud of myself for finding my own solution. Part of me, after moving into my new apartment, lamented the fact that there was no boyfriend to help me haul my stuff into my new space, but another part of me felt free, liberated, safe in the knowledge that I will always be able to take care of myself and that I am a resourceful, independent woman who is going to have a happy life whether or not I find a permanent man in my life or not.

I will make my life what I want it to be.

So it's not so much that I'm scared of moving ahead with this man, or that I'm scared of the outcome of the way a relationship works. Maybe we will last six months. Maybe we will last six more weeks. Maybe we will last forever. Maybe not. It's ok. It doesn't matter. Either way I will be safe. Either way I will find happiness.

In my mind, I'm not quite a girlfriend yet. I'm a single woman dating one man exclusively.

And I'm falling in love with the new label.

Joy, unexpected.

Blonde Moment, with Apologies to Paulo Coelho

In The Alchemist, a book my ex-husband recommended to me because both he and his grandmother liked it, a book I now teach to juniors in high school, a book about following dreams and pursuing personal legends, there is a prologue I have never been able to figure out.

In the prologue, the Alchemist reads a legend in which the Greek character Narcissus falls in love with himself and withers away, so transfixed by his own reflection in a nearby lake that he cannot leave. But the legend does not end with Narcissus' transformation into a flower. It ends with the lake transforming from freshwater to saltwater after weeping for the loss of Narcissus.

"Well, he was very beautiful," say the woodland nymphs.

"Was he?" asks the lake. "I only cry now because in his eyes I could see my own beauty reflected."

And the Alchemist, upon reading this, thinks to himself, "What a lovely story."

I have never quite been able to figure this prologue out. I understand that alchemy is about transformation and the novel is about transforming into something greater than what you were, and about connecting to the pulse of the universe, but this story seems out of sync. It seems to be a story about vanity. A lake so vain it doesn't miss what was gone, but only the reflection of itself.

It's a thought that worries me.

A thought much like the worry love causes me. In my mind, all miracles are somehow linked. If love exists, it must mean God exists. But how can God exist? If we are merely particles buzzing with energy in a world so filled with practicality, how can God be real? And if God cannot be real, as all logic dictates, how can a romantic soul-mate kind of love in this universe? We must be just x's and y's linking with other x's and y's in a frenzy to find the right phermone. How can anyone trust the little voice inside saying yes or no upon dating someone? Shouldn't love, in this world of practicality and energy, be based on decisions, compatibility, and values? Can't we train passion to follow logic? Fend off heart-ache for friendship?

And if that is true, as it must be, why do I so stubbornly resist believing it?

Sigh.

But back to the prologue. Maybe it's about the idea of reflection? Of seeing something of ourselves in others? Of seeing God in surfaces shiny like bus windows and fragile as desire?

I am not sure I will ever be done worrying about the prologue. Or God. Or Love.

But the prologue strikes chords with me at odd times. This is what happens after teaching a book four or five times in a row. It seems to travel always with you. To ring bells at odd moments.

A bell rang in my mind upon reading an essay one of my students wrote.

Keep in mind, this is a student that brings a tornado of emotion into the classroom with her each day. A student who cannot avoid conflict with peers or teachers. A student who is as loud as she is angry, as loud as she might be sad.

We have butted heads. But now we get along.

In her essay, she describes the day her mother tried to kill her. She explains how her mother and mother's boyfriend were drunk as usual and how a disagreement escalated to physical blows. How she escaped and ran into the hall of her apartment screaming for help. How no one came or helped. How only the woman upstairs called her mom saying she didn't want her to go to jail, so keep it down.

She also describes how she went to the principal later for help. How, when her mom attacked her a second time, she went to her room and called the police. How she stayed in a shelter for teens.

She concludes her essay with a quote from Marilyn Monroe that reads:

"I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I'm out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

When I read her essay, feeling the weight of each syllable press into my heart, I came to the quote and heard a bell.

"What a lovely story," I thought.

Because a Friend Told Me I Should Be Writing More Blogs...

It is December.

A million December blogs run through my head-- about a season so draining it frays nerves like split ends down strands of blonde hair, a season filled with memories behind twinkling lights, banks of snow, poinsettias, weddings, friends who remember the anniversaries you are no longer allowed to talk about, and who toast your anniversary of independence, and of realizing that that being lonely while single is so much better than being lonely while lying next to someone who cannot love you, because being lonely while single means only that-- that you are alone, while being lonely while lying next to the man you are trying to love and knowing he does not love you means (possibly? probably?) you are unlovable, and of secret December lives, and lies, and people dying, and birthdays, and Rudolph's nose lighting the way home from Grandma's house along every radio tower in St. Paul, and drawing with your finger against the frozen molecules of the car window, and your mom telling stories about how she worked in the 1st bank downtown and turned the flashing light that dots the skyline on and off, and on and off, because she didn't think you understood, at seven, what statistics meant. And a Santa who knocks on Grandma's door when you are three because he sees you waving in the window and hands you a wooden toy car that has wheels you can take apart, and later, how you learn no one knew who this Santa was, that he appeared out of nowhere, and how somehow you brought that Santa down the aisle with you in December, twenty one years later, and how now both memories slide along the ventricles of your heart with slow, easy, deliberate serrated blade edges.

This is my December.

There are a million December blogs that dance in my mind, like sugarplums laced with acid.

But the blog I will write is my December 29th, the day after yesterday. And today I took a step forward only to have to go back, but stepped forward again, and, after visiting the phone store three times in one day, after making friends with gay, Jewish salesman Bill, the Somali couple buying a phone from the Somali salesman who recognizes me by the third visit, and after somehow offering to bring lunch tomorrow, two days after yesterday, to everyone in the office, I purchased a new phone. Finally.

Today, December 29th, I abandoned the flip phone I had borrowed to replace a much loved and dramatic Blackberry with another. Which meant I had to reenter all of my contacts. One. At. A Time. Phone. Number. By. Phone. Number.

So what I learned was this-- in the middle of My December, my emotional mini-drama, my endless lists of school work and course work and syllabi and syllables, I pushed everything aside to sit on my couch next to my yorkie-poo, watch Sandra Bullock in The Proposal, and type digits into my phone one by one--that while the first ten minutes felt tedious, suddenly a shift occurred. I learned that entering phone numbers into a phone, remembering birth dates, figuring out birth years and anniversaries, brought all of these people into my living room. All of these happy memories and people got my undivided attention as I thought about them and their important dates and numbers. I couldn't help but feel happy as I thought about each and every one. My favorite numbers went into my phone, right alongside my favorite people.

And everything felt right.

And that is why I wrote this blog, this, the day after yesterday. This is my blog for December 29.

Everything just feels right.

The Day after Yesterday

Today I am blowing off the mountains of schoolwork I am supposed to be grading.

Today is a slow morning and singing "Winter Wonderland" in my best lounge singer impersonation.

Today is addressing Christmas cards and buying groceries.

Today is yoga and holiday parties.

Today is remembering newspapers and coffee and French toast for two made with one egg per piece of bread, vanilla, cream, brown sugar and toasted pecans.

Today is smiling at the memory.

Today is making French toast for one and thinking it still tastes pretty damn good.

But Maybe Wear a Helmet

There is something I have lost. Something that recently has gone out of my life. It is the something that lets me send words out into the world without care and with a sort of blind faith that somehow my fingers know better than my mind what needs to land on a page.

Thus, (to borrow a transition word from the list of transitions I gave to my 9th graders the other day), I haven't been writing much.

And for a couple months this was fine. I was busy. I was moving. I was teaching and going to school and applying for another teaching position and training for teaching online and getting sick every other day and THUS, thus- I left writing.

So now my fingers don't know quite what to do. They start. They delete. They second guess. They worry. They pause...

But today, well- today I was walking through my office at school, eyes glued to the assignment I was about to copy for the students restlessly awaiting instruction in the computer lab, when I slammed my leg right into a file cabinet with a noise that startled at least two of the three co-workers that were in the office at the time.

"Katie!" said one of these dear co-workers, "are you ok?!"

"Yeah," I replied, but in my head I thought no. No. Something is very wrong with this picture. What am I doing here? What has happened to my life? Obviously there is a reason my eyes have been causing me problems for the last two months. Obviously there is something I am not seeing.

"I'm fine," I said to my co-worker. "It sounded worse than it was." In my head, though, I was saying, "Nice job. How clumsy can one person be? Who runs into a file cabinet?" And a story a student wrote in a creative writing class I taught one year long ago came to mind, one that featured a teacher who tripped over cords and bumped into things. I sighed.

It wasn't until I bumped into my stove for the second time later on the same night that I thought of my blog, and the tagline about being clumsy and running into things in an adorable way.

Thus, now that I am sitting on the couch with my hound beside me, watching Julie and Julia and trying not to be envious of the blog writer in the movie who became successful by writing about recipes and cooking. I am thinking maybe I should stop being jealous of someone in a movie and start doing work of my own. I am thinking maybe I can be successful writing about collisions? Accidents? Embarrassing mishaps?

Since there is no telling how many embarrassing mishaps I will encounter in my life, no telling how many slightly painful collisions I will have, since I am bound to run into objects and people for the rest of my life, I might as well keep writing.

Thus, I might as well let my fingers run as they will.

And just wait to see what will happen next.

No pausing, no second-guessing. No more worrying.

From New Toy to Skin Horse--Comments on the English classroom

Well- here I am. In a coffee shop. On a school day. Feeling like the world's worst teacher, yet again.

My body has been rebelling against teaching this year. It's only November and already I've called in SEVEN sick days this year, made a trip to urgent care, the minute clinic, two visits to my own doctor, and one trip to a fancy opthamologist in a skyscraping building downtown. Not exactly a personal best. But I want to put aside my rebellious immune system issues, the possibility that my body is telling me to quit teaching, and the pain I am feeling from a golfball sized pus-filled lymph node that is irritating the left side of my throat and making me squinch both shoulders up in a painful wince each time I swallow.

I want to put aside the physical for a moment and think about teaching.

I have to create an assignment for composition students for a course I am taking on composition and pedagogy. Conveniently, I teach composition and so this assignment will be pulling double duty for me- once when I turn it in for my grad class and then again when I use it on my unsuspecting students in a couple weeks.

I felt a little reluctant taking a grad school class on teaching composition while working on my MFA in writing, because, having already earned an M.Ed, I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about teaching already. But it has turned out to be surprisingly helpful, and, even more surprising, I am starting to feel as though I am exiting the shiny, new toy stage of teaching and entering into the shabby, worn skin horse part of the profession. I don't profess to be "real" yet, as the Velveteen rabbit wanted to be in the story, the one in which he sought wisdom from the skin horse who explained about the passing of flashy, new toys. But I do think nine years in the profession has changed my thinking about what I do.

I began teaching as a shiny, new toy right out of grad school, one year after under-grad. I was a ferris wheel of activities and lesson plans and games and exciting things to DO in class. But I think now that I DO a lot less and my students are learning a lot more. Or at least I hope so. I'm learning more, anyhow.

So here are some thoughts and lessons I've been considering in my evolution to skin horse composition teacher:

1. It is better to not do everything but to do certain things really well. It's better to scrap the day's activity in favor of going over the one you gave yesterday. Students want to do assignments that have meaning and they will put more effort into it if they see the meaning in what you do. By going over the materials, you illustrate the importance of the assignment for them.

2. The less I am involved in the assignment, the more they learn. My view of myself as a teacher has changed--I am not the expert telling them what to do, but I am a scholar, asking what we can learn from what is in front of us. I see my students learning the most when I introduce materials and ask them questions, when I say "what can we learn from this piece?" and "how does the writer make her point?" rather than "This is what we learn," and "This is how the writer makes her point." I ask my students to come up with grading criteria for their assignments. I ask them to tell me what a good narrative essay should do. They have to engage more critically with the work and, hopefully, start to think like scholars, rather than as students waiting for instruction from the teacher.

3. Learn from them. I used to be so nervous to pass out class evaluations, and not without reason. Handing a volatile 17 year-old an evaluation form can be seriously devastating for a 23 year-old newbie teacher. Now I learn from my students by asking them to reflect on their own process as writers, or by asking which assignments were most helpful. I am more willing to change and less fearful about their reaction to me. My thinking has gone from "do they like me?" to "are they learning?"

4. Page requirements are for suckers. One lesson learned from the self-reflections I had my students do is that for many, the thing they were most pleased with was the length of their essay. The requirement had been to write a 2-5 page essay and one student wrote "I am pleased with the length of the paper. Usually I am at the minimum but this time I was right in the middle." As a teacher, I found I could actually care less about the length of the paper. And that, in fact, when the students tried to stretch their stories to make them longer, usually the writing became worse. The papers lost their focus, became too wordy, and contained so many details that there was no climax to the story. In the narrative essay, I found the papers that were about a page and a half long tended to be the strongest. And, furthermore, I decided that I didn't want my students to worry about the length of the essay for a second. I wanted them to think about content, voice, and organization. I scrapped the length requirement for future narrative essays.

5. Not everyone likes to write. As a writer, I found this shocking. Having never struggled for topic and being the sort who could ramble on and on for five pages just introducing my topic, it never occurred to me that some people might simply not enjoy writing or might struggle to think of what to say and how to say it. I grew up in a family where my dad was an English teacher and my mom, a businesswoman, loved writing limericks and poems and lengthy, comical Christmas letters. We discussed grammar at the dinner table. We wrote skits to perform at Christmas parties. I had no idea there was a whole culture of people who didn't enjoy reading and writing.

Having made friends with people more mathematically or business-world inclined, I have learned a new perspective. Some people feel frustrated by the subjectivity of English courses, by the hazy guidelines and criteria; there are no answer keys to say you are right or wrong: there is only the teacher with her red pen. Suddenly I could understand why students take the comments and grades on their papers so personally; they are personal. Of course, not to the instructor, but, if you are student who doesn't understand the concepts being explained, you aren't going to receive the comments written on your essay as anything but a message that you are inadequate in this world where other people belong and you don't.

6. Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a great battle. Plato said this, first of all, not me, but it is a lesson that has been the most painful for me to learn. As a new teacher, I took students' failures personally. Why wouldn't they learn? Why wouldn't they try? Why did they insist on failing? But there's always a reason and it usually has little to do with me.

For instance, there was the student I scolded in front of others for skipping class who stormed away from me in a huff. Months later I learned her two year-old nephew had just been beaten to death by her sister's boyfriend. Of course I had no clue, but I will never forget that I shamed her (and not too harshly, to be fair to myself) in front of other people while she was dealing with that. Or there was Tyler, the student who pierced his own eyebrow with a giant safety pin and promptly lost every assignment I gave him. Or Alan, a student who NEVER brought a pencil to class and would chew the ones I let him use for the period... and lose them before class the next day. Or Mary, a student who always dressed impeccably said to me when I asked about her failing grade "I don't know, I just can't concentrate. My dad and step-mom always fight, so I just want to hang out with my friends." Or Jereme, who said, when I asked him about his failing grades that his grandma, his only caretaker since his mom died the month before, had been hospitalized for a stroke and so he had to take over her dog-walking business while she was in the hospital.

No wonder he wasn't turning in his assignments.

7. Or else they are on drugs. Seriously. I've caught at least three kids using in my classroom over the years and I know that's just the kids dumb enough to get caught. Deals are going down in high school halls all over the place. But if students are choosing to be high in school, imagine how pointless they must see school in their lives. Some students will learn later on, some will go on to become addicts, some will have no long term consequences for their choices, but either way ultimately this is the student's choice.

I'm not really sure how this revelation fits into my personal pedagogy for teaching, other than to remember it is an element in the classroom that is never in the textbooks. When you are learning how to write a lesson plan there is never any guidance for what to do if your students are tripping, or stoned, or high out of their minds. And sometimes, when I am beating myself up for a being a failure of a teacher, for letting one or two of the children get left behind, it is slightly helpful to remember that one or two of them might be stubbornly planting their feet in the ground and refusing to move ahead with the plan. That it might not have anything to do with me at all.

8. Everyone wants to do well. Everyone. A peer in my composition class once told me that to get an F on an assignment, even one he didn't care about doing when he turned it in, was like "watching a video of being kicked in the face in slow motion." All students want to do well. All students want approval. All students care about the end results even if they show it by getting mad at the teacher, being hostile, challenging, demanding, apathetic, disinterested, or flippant.

This revelation has shaped the way I meet with students. I try to remember that their efforts on an assignment are their best efforts based on what they understood of the assignment. Even those students who waited until the last minute and rushed through it-- why did they wait? Why didn't they put more into it? Why did they sabotage their own efforts? What were they fearful of? What didn't they understand?

I have decided I don't want to be a teacher who crushes writers. I don't hand out A's but I try to simply remember to honor my students for their efforts and meet them where they are. I try not to shame or belittle my students.

9. You never know what they take with them. It's true. And especially with high school students. There are fewer pictures and cards made for high school teachers. Which is fine. Mostly it will seem like no one appreciates you. That is just the nature of being a high school teacher, especially if you have high expectations for your students and a reputation for being a little tough.

But sometimes a student will surprise you, and the student you thought cared less about school, will thank you for your efforts. Once in a while they will even buy you a shot, as a student of mine from my first year of teaching did when I was with friends at a bar downtown. He was a bartender and, in addition to giving me a drink, he turned to my friend and told her that I was the one of the few teacher at the high school who actually cared about what I was doing, the few that made a difference to him, a student notoriously late to class, usually inclined to goof off, and rarely inclined to finish homework. I would never have thought he would remember me any more than another student, Deshaun, one I worked with twice in an after school program and saw frequently in the halls.

Deshaun was frequently in trouble, mostly failing his classes, and often getting into confrontations with his teachers. I complimented his creative writing in the after school program and would ask him about the rhymes he was making up. Now he works at the Walgreen's by my apartment and is going to a community college in January. He greets me reverently as "Ms. Fuller" when he sees me and keeps me updated on his life, that he's working full time, planning to go to school, and getting his diploma on Monday at our high school because he finally finished his credits. I'm pleased he is succeeding now and surprised he remembers me; I never even had him as a student.

I'm telling these stories not to boost my ego for being an amazing teacher. (Well, maybe a little for ego-boosting. This is a pretty thankless job, so maybe I am just a little bit patting myself on the back for once instead of beating myself up for my many failures.) Mostly I am telling these stories to illustrate that teachers will hear the complaints instantly from the students they have pissed off, but that they rarely will hear the positive feedback. So it's a profession that requires a certain quality of faith, a certain skin horse toughness.

And finally...

10. There is nothing more satisfying than playing tricks on your students. It's so fun. On Friday I promised a taste test for an analysis unit we've been working on and I told my students we would be taste-testing broccoli, liver, and pig's hooves. For some dumb reason they believed me. Another classic joke is to write QUIZ! on the board on April 1st. They never catch on. Seven periods in a row- the joke works!

I say this because teaching can be fun, too. These are not mean-spirited jokes; they are harmless pranks and bring levity and life to the classroom. And, in a classroom where I will be largely unappreciated and teaching crabby students on drugs, I might as well amuse myself.

There are 800,000 variables I cannot control in the classroom (golf ball sized, pus-filled lymph nodes being one of them), but I can control my attitude. And I can find ways to amuse myself. To bring levity to the classroom. So I make bad jokes (for instance I asked my students which character in To Kill a Mockingbird said very little, which character said boo. Ha ha.) and I do not mock students, but I play tricks when I can. I tell my students embarrassing and amusing anecdotes about my family's obsession with jello. They don't laugh, but I don't care. It's not cool to laugh at your teacher's jokes when you are 15. Luckily, I am not 15. I can laugh at myself all I want.

So, an hour later into my sick day, I guess my conclusions are this: Am I an amazing teacher? Probably not. Am I a good teacher? Maybe. Am I doing my best? Yes. Have I learned anything in my nine years at this? Definitely. Is the journey from new toy to skin horse over?

Chances are, it's just beginning.