Author: themdq

Not In My Profile

This is not going in my dating profile:

The Most Private Thing I’m Willing To Admit Here

Blank. Not answering this.

I am allowed to not answer. It’s my choice, I realized.

This is not going in my profile—The Most Private Thing I’m Willing To Admit Here: My fear is that I won’t know how much I don’t know. My fear is that I’ll realize it later and hate myself. Or that someone will realize it before me and hate me first. I’m afraid I’ll never know what or who I am, at all. My fear is everyone else will and they’ll leave. My fear is that there is no reason to stay. My fear is that I’ll be exposed. My fear is that I’m totally invisible. Or that I should be. I’m afraid I won’t explain it well enough. I’m afraid explaining doesn’t even matter. I’m afraid I’ll be understood. My fear is I’m wasting my time. My fear is that the time that I have is worthless. My fear is I’ll never have potential. My fear is that I’ll die at the exact moment I realize I do. My fear is that I’ll get paralyzed and do nothing and it will be like I’m already dead. I’m so afraid, I feel paralyzed. I’m afraid it will always be this way. I’m afraid my mind will stop working just when I need it. I’m afraid I won’t remember. My fear is that I’ll die not remembering who I am, or that I’ll die knowing who I am and that it will feel as empty as not remembering. My fear is that I’ll hold back when I should give or that I’ll give when I should hold back. My fear is that I’ll think it’s me when it’s really you or that you’ll think it’s me when it’s not, at all. What if I mess up? What if it’s a mistake? What if I’m wrong and can’t fix it and I can’t go back. What if I ruin it? My fear is that I won’t contribute anything. My fear is that no one will remember me. What if the answer was right there and I just didn’t see it. I’m afraid I’ll repeat the same mistakes and I won’t even notice. I’m afraid everyone else will.

Do I have the right fears? That’s what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid that I’m afraid of the wrong things.

Jake wrote it better:

It’s deer and bees that do most of the killing. 

Deer and bees, deer and bees. 

We are afraid of the wrong things. We are afraid of the wrong things.

Questions From Her Father.

In response to the engagement, her father emailed a series of Mark-related questions.

——–

So I have questions.

1.  Do I have to play catch with him now?

2.  Will we have to spend time in the garage fixing cars?

3.  Can I boss him around, and make him get things for me, like hammers and beers?

4.  Do I have to give you away?  I won’t do it!  You’re MY daughter.

5.  (Why’s he so graspy anyway?)

6.  Will he be driving recklessly and causing me to stay up late, worrying?

7.  Do I have to make sure he knows how to shoot a gun?

8.  Will I be going to Disneyland with him?

9.  Do I have to buy him an ice cream every time I buy you one?

10.  I don’t have to talk to him about girls or anything like that, do I?  I don’t want to.

-jd

She very much loved these questions, which were especially funny since her father did not play catch or fix cars or drink beers or shoot guns — although it was true he did love Disneyland and worried very much about reckless driving. 

She emailed him with her own set of questions.

1. Do I have to cook?

                   1a. If so, does Instant StoveTop count? (I remind the jury:
It did for our Thanksgivings.)

2. Will we still get to sit around the kitchen table, talk for hours, and laugh until our stomachs hurt? 

3. Will we still get to play hangman with Odelia, who I hope will continue to misspell words so it’s impossible to avoid the hanging? Bonus if she continues to misspell words like “Moron.” 

4. Will Mark and Odelia fight over who gets to make the tea now?

5. Can I have more time? I need more time. I can’t be grown up yet. 

6. What if our families can’t stand each other? Can I let you all fight it out yourselves? 

7. Are you still going to lecture me about flossing and brushing my teeth? 

8. Will I ever learn to look for the hand towel in the kitchen before dripping all over the floor? Will Mark get irritated with me and hand me the towel now? Because I’ll miss bugging you.

9. Do I really have to wash my socks every time I wear them?

10.  What am I supposed to do now? 

11. Can we go to the planetarium instead of having a wedding? 

12. Alternatively: Can Whoopie Goldberg be the Voice Of God at the wedding? She does a great job at the planetarium.

-e

——–

She wished she could keep emailing questions forever.

All manners of new things.

What happened was:

After they got engaged, she felt increasingly anxious about the things she usually felt anxious about and began to worry about all manners of new things she’d never worried about before.

She began thinking she should do things. And, since she really had no idea what things she should do, she thought the first thing she ought to do was research what things exactly needed to be done. 

It turned out there were practical things like rings and ceremonies and parties and invitations and dresses and hairstyles, and surrounding these practical things there were other things like debates she was supposed to have with various people about what and which and when, and who – including who should do x or y but not a or b – and discussions about whether the whole thing should be about this or that and/or not-about-that or not-about-this. And of course, there was the cost of things. 

She should look up places that had various wedding-related items and advice, she thought. And so she could make the proper decisions, she should probably look up the meaning of things. For instance the different parts of the ceremony, and whether a particular part should be included or excluded based on its meaning and whether it made sense for her, for them. She should talk to the minister. Not that they had agreed on who he was yet, but John-the-minister was also Aida’s husband and a friend, and it’d be nice to have him officiate, which is what she thought they called it. Officiating? She was not Episcopalian necessarily, but she’d been to his services now and again. And mostly, he was down-to-earth, born and raised in Queens, hilarious and smart. He once, just on his way out to conduct a funeral, walked around the living room that she and Aida sat drinking tea, and dressed in his formal minister attire, swung a set of cow-bells, predicting that no one would really know if it was appropriate or even really care if he just started wandering around the funeral with the cow bells, swinging them as though they were incense at a Greek Orthodox or Catholic Mass. “They wouldn’t even think it was crazy if I did this,” he said, swinging them around, the cowbells clanking loudly and hurting all of their ears. This is why she loved John.

She should ask if he would speak about Carl Jung at the wedding because John-the-minister loved Carl Jung and she did too, and that would be quite fun, she thought and better than the regular religious messaging. Maybe he could reference Star Wars, too. Or at least Joseph Campbell.

There was so much to learn and decide and none of them were particularly appealing to spend her time researching, she thought. Except maybe talking with John, who was always fun to talk to anyway.

Perhaps she ought to see if the neighborhood bar would allow them to take over the place and have a dance party. Although she had never really envisioned doing anything other than going to a courthouse someday, if she ever really even envisioned that, she did have fantasies of hosting a killer dance party. She liked to dance very much.

She realized only then that she hadn’t felt anything about it.

It was only when her father asked: “How does it feel?” that she finally felt something.

It was the first time she had asked herself or looked to find the answer.

She felt her eyes become teary, felt her voice crack.

I feel like it’s time, she said.

Remember yourself.

When her mother came to visit, she watched and listened and up in the guest room on the third floor she sat on the bed with her laptop and searched for apartments on Craigslist.

And when she was about to leave, she hugged her daughter, pressed a list of addresses scribbled down on a piece of scratch paper into her daughter’s palm. In the margins, scribbled contact numbers and monthly rents. A rough budget.

You can leave, she told her daughter. You can do it. You are stronger than you feel. 

Remember yourself, she said.

Despite & Because

Her friends wanted to know exactly what it meant. She was all too vague and cryptic. Did she WANT to be elliptical and difficult? They asked.

But — she thought — wasn’t it like that for everyone? Doesn’t everyone look for answers in certain places and not others, getting in their own way despite, and because of, themselves?

The house. Part I. [Spring 2006]

Unlike the rent controlled apartment she would leave behind, the house was large.

She would learn very soon not to forget her water glass. And on the odd occasion she would forget, she would learn it was far easier to pour another, rather than spend time looking. There were too many floors, too many rooms, to search.

She marveled at the prospect of having a bedroom separate from a living room, separate from a kitchen, separate from the dining room and the office. There were rooms enough to have guest rooms and rooms enough that some remained empty. Empty rooms. It was unbelievable, really.

Out front there was enough of a porch to fit rocking chairs or a swing, something she’d fantasized about more than once: herself on some rocking chair or porch swing, reading on warm afternoons. And it seemed to her that the back deck off the kitchen was made for the gas grill that she would most certainly buy to make teriyaki chicken and shrimp kabobs.

There was dirt. In both the front and back yards, and she imagined what she would plant in it. Ivy. Definitely ivy, she thought. Of course, she hadn’t forgotten she’d managed to kill most every plant in her rent controlled apartment, and everywhere else she’d lived over the years. Maybe this dirt would be different, she hoped.

The two cats, Guido and Pants, would easily become comfortable in this large space, she thought. Finding their little cubbies and hiding places, their window seats. They would make good use of stairs and slippery hardwood, chasing one another, losing and regaining their footing, sliding around until weary enough to sprawl across patches of sunlit floor.

She didn’t know it yet, but later, she would have her own cat, too. She’d name him Taco, and he, too, would easily adjust to the mighty quarters, make himself at home. She would love that cat like crazy.

She worried as much as she marveled. It was her nature.

But she had hope. Had she known to, she’d have hoped there would be enough water to fill all the water glasses she would lose. For now she hoped the dirt would be different and kinder. She hoped for sunny afternoons passed on the new porch swing, for lots of kabobs of all sorts and pleasant neighbors. She hoped that, like the cats, she would find her cubbies and hiding nooks when she needed them, her sunlit patches to sprawl and soak in the warmth. She hoped she would find her place there.

In order to understand the story.

In order to understand the story, her friends said, we need to know why they stopped feeling desire in the first place.

But if she could lay it all out for them, she thought, why would the story need to be told? She would love to be able to lay it all out.

Instead, there were gaps and points of confusion and missed moments and opportunities and she couldn’t identify them all. What was important? What didn’t matter at all? What had she confused as being the former when it was truly the latter? She didn’t really know.

They wanted to know Why.  

Was it always like this, they asked? Or was it like this because of the mess?

If only she knew. She was not certain which things fell into which category; what was cause, what was effect, what just happened. Some things happened, she thought, other things didn’t.

What was the cause of it all. She wished she knew. It wasn’t so clear.

But: Why? They asked.

She wondered if there was any Why at all. Was there always a Why?

And if there wasn’t a Why, she worried: how would she ever know what to do?

The Pillows.

The counselor sat facing them in her large black leather chair, which looked quite comfortable, unlike that old brown sofa where they sat. Nicer than the one in the waiting room, but only just, and always holding too many pillows. Too many, at least, if anyone wanted to actually sit. She never knew what to do with the pillows.

Mark sat on the far side and told the counselor he was upset she couldn’t let the small things go. It seemed she had to comment on everything, he said. Or that was the gist of it. He used a lot of words while she sat silently and tried to keep her mind open. She too felt very upset.

What upset her wasn’t so much the facts underlying his frustration, he was often in the right, she often was inconsiderate and much too critical—it was (again) the fact that he hadn’t said anything to her about it until now. It was as if he had kept the evidence tucked away, hidden until he had someone to hide behind, avoiding her, which was the problem in the first place.

When she found out these things so late it seemed as if she were, unbeknownst to herself, living in imaginary spaces that didn’t actually exist. It was jolting to find you were living in fantasies. For instance thinking the whole week that he was content with her, when he was not at all content. Admittedly, a week was a much better than, for instance, the time between the present moment and a Saturday three years ago.

The three pillows were large and square and red with small orange flecks. She never knew what to do with them. Each time she entered the office, she was forced to prepare to sit, a process of gathering up pillows and moving them elsewhere. She wondered if the placement of pillows was some sort of test, a makeshift Rorschach. For instance, if she placed the pillows on the floor or on the back of the couch or between herself and Mark, or behind her head or to her right, did it mean something? The same way the crossing of arms or legs, or leaning forward or backward supposedly did? She wondered if the counselor made notations. Wednesday, June 03, 2013. Pillow placement: Hoarding/Regressive. Avoidant/Distancing. Resistant.

She did not want to exhibit anything by the movement of a pillow from here to there, but it often seemed as though everything was a mark of something else. Wasn’t there something about a cigar just being a cigar, she thought. But was that ever true? Of course, she was often the one busy thinking about what every cigar really meant, always searching, looking for more, never content with anything simple and plain. She knew. Projection. She knew what that was too.

She spoke to the counselor directly, addressing Mark in third person. First, she said, she was listening, she understood he was frustrated and why—but also: this didn’t seem fair. Why hadn’t he brought this up before? With her? Why now? She felt like she had been brought to the principal’s office.

Why couldn’t he address her directly? Look her in the eye?

It enraged her when he tucked things away. She’d have preferred he just confront her.

It would make her feel she could exist without destroying him, without him leaving her.

Pros and Cons

She laid down, her back against the ragged cream diamonds of the rug, and thought: the things she suggested were not at all like horseback rides or writing courses.

When she suggested things, she thought, they often tended to imply a deficiency of some sort. Like when she suggested he get rid of his jeans in favor of other jeans that fit — at least to her mind — much better. Or, when she bought him a new pair of brown leather shoes to match his wardrobe. Which they did, of course, much better than his old grey ones. Or, when she suggested one Saturday morning three years ago standing over her peanut-butter toast in the kitchen, that he might benefit from seeing a shrink.

It was all with the best of intentions, or so she thought at the time. The jeans, the shoes. She had learned so much from having a shrink of her own.

But of course in retrospect, she realized she had not told Mark she loved him, old shoes, ill-fitting jeans and all, had she?

What was it like having someone suggest you are in need of new pants and shoes and a shrink? She wouldn’t even know, since he never gave her these kinds of suggestions.

It was easier to see what was wrong with things. That was the problem. The clutter. The disturbances. The things that didn’t fit. The squeaks and grease. 

Sometimes she considered writing a list of pros and cons, the good and bad, so as to remind herself, or so as to finally see on the page, what it was that was good, what it was that was going well. The rest she could conjure without much effort at all.