From Black & White to Technicolor

       I took a walk to the other side of the encyclopedia, as Tori Amos would say.  She wrote this song, “Cornflake Girl” years ago and I’ve always loved it.  Then I saw the video where at the end these amazing women put a hot stud into a huge pot of water on a fire, cannibal style, and dance around him while he whittles a carrot into his bath/stew water.  It loses something in translation, but Youtube it;  I bet you’ll like it, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Eiv7H9XQRY

     Anyway, back to my walk.  I live in a black and white world, mostly, punctuated here and there with transcendent moments of laughter, bliss and fun.  When I get home from the job I mostly like, I walk my dog, put on the TV, blaze a while and then go to bed to do it all over again. 

      On days off I wake up at 11,  take a hot bath and luxuriate in it.  Then it’s clothes cleaning and dog cleaning and house cleaning and daytime TV court shows!  Once in a blue moon I’ll go out for a beer with my friend/ ex-lover and at least once a week I go find Sammy, my best 7 year old friend, and we play video games or he reads and talks to me about his current obsessions which right now are Skylander video games and Pokemon cards. 

     From time to time my huge, raucous family gets together and I go into this silly cocoon with my sisters where we dish, snark, throw around in-jokes and laugh way too loud for public.  No one but the sisters are included and the in-law guys shuffle around the periphery being ignored and talking about boats to each other.

         It’s not a horrible life, but it’s lonely.  It's kind of black and white, but when you live in that world for a while, you forget there's any such thing as a Technicolor world.

     Enter Jodi.  From the first time we talked I’ve been wildly attracted to her.  It wouldn’t be that unusual, except it is for me because I haven’t been remotely attracted to anyone for about the last decade.  It’s like that part of me shut down after a bad experience of two with lovers, and over time it’s bothered me less and less.  At least on a conscious level.  But I know I want more.  I want to connect with someone who challenges me to be more, exposes me to new ideas, and attracts me on way more than just one level. 

     And Jodi sure seems to fit that description.  She says what she thinks and touts herself as someone who doesn’t play games.  She’s honest to a fault, even when it doesn’t advance her agenda.  She's brilliant, with a photographic mind for what she reads and a photographic ear for all she hears.  She’s completely dedicated to the care and feeding of a pair of daughters she would kill or die for.  She’s incredibly sexy and brash and funny and when she laughs hard her whole body gets in on it.  And she laughs a lot.  She has integrity, except when she does not.  She is unapologetic and seems impervious to criticism.  Jodi is pretty close to perfect and I started out in awe of her.  Now it’s been a month of hanging out daily and it’s time to stop and catch my breath.

    I feel in love with her.  I think about her a lot, even when I’m trying not to.  I want to be wherever she is.

       I want to smell her jacket because that’s as close as I can get to her because she can’t stand my touch.  It’s nothing personal, she says.  But being touched or hugged or kissed makes her queasy.  I’m starving for her to touch me and let me touch her or hold her, but I’m not going to push her, ever.  That fact doesn’t mean sex is ruled out, somehow, but she can’t be my lover the way I currently and historically have defined the word. 

    So here I am, knowing better and still holding out hope.

    It’s kind of the worst of both worlds. But somehow it rolls off me and I still want to be near her. 

    She also bitches a lot, about anything and everything.  She rails at traffic, drivers, her kids, anyone she deems a “retard” for any reason.  She bitches at me, she bitches at her sinus congestion, she bitches that the weather is too cold or too hot.  Jodi does not believe in pent-up emotion.  She likes to un-pent hers often and in every direction except toward her 112 lb pitbull who she adores. 

     But I don't think she adores me.  If fact, sometimes I think she barely tolerates me.  I fell right into it with her; instant, strong attraction like I’ve rarely ever felt.  As for the way she thinks and feels about me, she’s  told me,  “I like your company,” and “I’m fond of you,” but she’s also called me contradictory, accused me of being a game player, called me a liar (but only when I was lying) and issued all kinds of ultimatums about what’ll happen if I don’t shape up. 

     She’s issued decrees telling me, “I’m done” where we’re concerned (not that there is any real “we” except in my head) then tried to gaslight me when I called her on it, saying, “I didn’t imply done forever; that was just you reading into it…”   

    In short, I’m pretty much screwed, and not in the good way.  Maybe the attraction will pass, but I don’t know if I want it to.  Probably I’m an idiot, but at least I feel alive for a little while. Here's to Technicolor Blindness.

    

So. Yeah...Jodi.

         

         

I'm in limerence. I know because I wikipeedeed it up and here's what it says:

"...Limerence is an involuntary state of mind which results from a romantic attraction to another person combined with an overwhelming, obsessive need to have one's feelings reciprocated. The psychologist Dorothy Tennov coined the term "limerence" in her 1979 book Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love to describe the concept that had grown out of her work in the mid-1960s, when she interviewed over 500 people on the topic of love."

       
       There's this old joke that goes, "What does a lesbian bring on a second date?" 
                              Answer?  "A U-Haul truck."

        And I wish I could deny it, but there you have it.  I am a cliche and I'm in limerence.

        Luckily she seems to feel the same way.  Jodi is more than a friend, but she's that, too.  She gets my mind churning with her point of view and if I don't agree with what she's saying, she explains it and spins out her rationale. She's never given in yet to an argument, but she considers all sides with an open mind.

       She's wildly funny with this hard edge I've always been drawn toward like a moth to a blow torch . Or used to be drawn toward because for the last decade or so whatever draws one person to another has been asleep in me.  Strictly dormant until now.

        The second night we went out, I proposed because I love her already and she hasn't had decent health care in years.  It wasn't too romantic which is good because Jodi is sort of the anti-romantic.

     I said, "You need a good doctor and dentist.  Marry me and I'll put you on my policy.  It just makes sense."

   She said, "That's the most retarded thing I've ever heard."  Jodi is not very politically correct, but she speaks her mind like a pro. 

    And I've had more fun with her in the last ten days then I have in the last ten years.

          

   

Love: Still the Biggest Thrill

       

    
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EjcwIVL3s8
  


         I love Katt Williams, the comedian.  He says, in so many words, you've got to take care of the star player, and you are the star player.  Managing to take care of body and soul has its own thrills, but it's not enough.  Love is still the biggest thrill.
     
      Here's another one of my guiding philosophies:  "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy."  And by "Mama" I mean me.   I don't make everyone around me miserable if I happen to be in a bad place.  If anything, I'm more inclined to hibernate and hide out while I work through the blues.  
    
      But keeping my own self happy is a big priority.
    
       That means my own wishes and whims come first, mostly. 
      
       It means I come and go when I want, spend how I want, vote how I want, eat what I want, sleep when I want, think what I want and work the way I want. It's not accidental; I've spent a long time crafting it to be just this way.

        It's a good life in a beautiful paradise of a city, but all alone it feels empty. Even if work is going well, everyone is healthy at home, and the world is clicking away on its axis in mostly predictable ways, unless I reach out for love, to give it and get it, there's something off.  I can feel it like a sunburn that's too far under the skin to soothe.

        So my biggest thrill is love.  That's it.  Love for all of it: family, my sisters, my friends, the Grove, the critters, small kids  at the library where I work and this whole astounding gift of a life. 
   

Rayette

          When I was a little girl, I fell in love with Rayette on the parade grounds at a war college in Norfolk, Virginia.  My dad was  at the school and we lived on the army base.  She lived there, too, but she was older by two years and my big sister knew her from school.

One day I was running around barefoot through the grass and I stepped on a yellow jacket bee.  It was like fire, and sudden, and I started screaming.  Rayette swooped down from out of nowhere, dried up my tears and carried me across the neighborhood like a baby, all the way to my door.

I fell for her right then.  She had a thick french braid of long blonde hair and her wrist, right where it met her hand, was thick, too, which I really liked.  I told her I could read her palm so I could hold her hand the next day, and she laughed while I pretended and gave goofy answers like a fortune teller.

The day after that I made a picture for her in first grade.  It was a horse because she reminded me of a cowgirl for some reason.  I was big on cowgirls at age 7.  I started following her all over the place and hanging around where she would be at the park and before long she invited me over to her house.

I threw down my school stuff and said, "Mom, I'm going to my friend's."
But it was Dad at the dinette set, not Mom.
"Whose house?  What friend?" he barked.
"Just my friend, Rayette."
"Naw, you aren't going over to that sergent's house."
"Dad?! Why?"
"You got no business over there."

And that was the end of my budding love affair with Rayette.

And Now It Can Be Told

       


          I’m 22, always hot to get Jeanne alone, and having a blast in North Carolina being her carpenter’s assistant. She had a swagger I loved, and real chops when it came to building stuff. God, I was so into her.


          The town where we lived, Burgaw, was full of good old boy rednecks and poor country folks but most everyone treated us like family.

          It was because Jeanne loved honky tonks and roadhouses and she could hang with the boys, plus we made no pretenses of being straight so they were intrigued.  Until they found out we weren’t into doing them. By then it was too late and they liked us anyway.

       But there were dark clouds on the horizon on the job site. George, our foreman, got furious when Captain Jack dragged a broken down trailer onto the lot and told us to use it or else.


        To get back at Jack, George ordered a crane and put the trailer up on top of the first floor of this mansion Jack had half built, then he walled it in with cinderblocks so there was no un-doing. I think the trailer came from a prison chain gang; it smelled like puke and man-pee, and it was caving in here and there. But Jack got what he wanted.

        George had already been wooing the Widow Bowen, a German lady from town who idolized him and had a bunch of money, so he proposed and quit the same day. It was an elegant and well-timed “fuck you” to a guy who deserved it, but it left Jeanne and me to take on the fall out.

         And the fall out came the very next weekend. We lived up a dirt road from Jack and from time to time his bulldog would get loose and trot down to fight with our pit bull, Halo.

      That Saturday at five in the morning we heard the dogs fighting outside. Jeanne grabbed Jack’s dog and brought it inside. She called Jack who mumbled something and hung up.

       Five minutes later he was pounding on the door, yelling, “Give me my Goddamned dog!”
       Jeanne foolishly opened the door with her hands full of bull dog and this fat bald prick punched her! Wham---knocked her right off her feet while I stood on the stairs in shock. Then he grabbed the dog and slammed the door behind him as he left.


      That was the beginning of the end of my experience in Burgaw. Shortly after that, I packed it in and came back home. My girlfriend followed in a few months.


     But five years later I dropped a dime on old Jack as payback. I heard he got Alzheimers in the federal pen and ended his days a drooling idiot. When they arrested him on the deck of his yacht he said, “I bet it was those fucking dykes.”

        No, just one, Jackie.

        Moral of the story: Don’t mess with me and mine.

 (See also: Rude security guards, Republican pages, lawyers who live on my street and the deaf/half blind.)

Outed by Kin

          When I was 19, I went to this Gay & Lesbian Expo downtown at the Wolfson campus. I got lost and started going the wrong way down a one way street off Flagler. Then a cop on a horse clomped up to help, but when he looked in the Gremlin, he saw a big roach on the end of this multicolored feather clip in the ashtray.

          He said, “What’s that?”
          I sat there with my mouth hanging open.
         Then he said, “OK, hand it over.” So I did.


         I told him I was going to the campus.  He dropped the roach onto the asphalt, made the horse’s hoof scuff it, then gave me good directions on where to park. He even gave back the roach clip I’d won at the Youth Fair.

       At the end of the day there was a group on the list called, “Lesbians, Etc.” It looked interesting so I signed up along with 55 others.


          One person after another talked about how there’s nothing to do for lesbians in Miami except for a couple of bars owned by gangsters. At the end we all decided to send around a phone sheet for anyone who wanted to have a regular weekly meeting.

        It was how this group called “ The Friday Night Women’s Group” got started. We met at different women’s houses every week, and at I met Jeanne at one of the meetings. It was an instant attraction when she lit a wood match off her boot heel to give light my Winston while we sat around a bonfire.


         I fell for Jeanne because she was hot, but then it deepened after we’d been together a few years and I got to know her on more levels. Then it was love/hate.  Or love/confusion... She had a way of refusing to see the dark clouds of chaos looming overhead and thought if she ignored them hard enough they would go away, magically.   She taught me that most bad situations almost never get to Worst Case Scenario but I also took away this lesson:  ignoring a problem makes it all more likely to flare up like a hemorrhoid.

        When we first got together, I was drunk with love. So drunk I let the world slide and unofficially moved into her place leaving my sister/ roommate Ann hanging.

       I came back to the apartment for the first time in days from U.M. one afternoon.  Some poor bastard had all his stuff on the curb, it looked like.   Clothes, boxes of books, the works. I laughed when I saw it. Then I went upstairs and saw my key didn’t fit the door. Shit! That must’ve been my stuff in the trash!

      I called Dad in a panic and said, “Ann went crazy! She changed the locks on our door and threw away everything I own!” and Dad said, “Come on over to the house, Janie. We’ll talk about it.”

       I drove over with my curb-rescued things and we sat down in the den. He said, “Ann tells me you’re in a homa-sexual affair or something with some old gal. What’s this about?”

     I was blindsided. I said, “Her name is Jeanne and she’s not some old gal. I love her.” We’d only been together a little while, but I really did love her already. I was pretty sure.

     Dad said, “Well, who is she? What does she do? Does she have any education”

      I said, “She manages a hardware store. And she’s a carpenter.”

      He said, “Are you thinking of dropping out of college?”

      I said no. It didn’t even occur to me. Then for a split second I thought he was going to tell me I was done with school since I could never afford U.M on my own.

        He said, “Good. It seems like one of you ought to have an education.”

        Then he told me that all he ever wanted as a father is for his kids to be happy. He told me he loved me. He also said he didn’t think it was a natural lifestyle. Also, he could understand women being together, but not men.

         He told me not to bring “that woman” around the house because he “didn’t want the girls exposed to it, they’re too young.” He said I shouldn’t say anything to my grandparents, either, but they lived in Georgia so that was no issue.

          As for the problem with Ann, it turns out I forgot/ blew off my half of the rent that month, went AWOL and worst of all, came one day and got the dining room table that had been Mom’s for my new girlfriend’s place without even asking. So that’s why she was pissed.

        We talked it out, I hauled her table back and pretty soon Jeanne was welcomed into my father’s house because his wife really liked her and insisted.   Dad never stopped calling her “that gal” but he was always cordial, if not friendly, with her for the next five years we were together.

         Looking back, it was a real gentle  coming-out. It was like wrapping a loose tooth in string then tying the string to a door knob and slamming the door shut. Not a real shock because everyone knew that tooth was coming out and not tense since it happened before I could worry and brood on it.

         I’m incredibly lucky to have the kind of father who would react so calmly and with that kind of grace.   It wasn’t perfect acceptance, but he’s come around even more in the thirty years since, and there was never any doubt he loves me.