Having just watched the Olympics and being enthralled with the sprinters and basketball, and especially the amazing performances of Sha'carri Richardson & all the great female runners, I was reminded of a memory that has stayed with me for over 50 years. Junior high was a pretty awful time for me, as I'm sure it is for a lot of people, and I dealt with the horrors and rejections of that time with journalling, compulsive drawing all day in class, and with intoxicating romantic fantasies of running away from my life.

I always had a close friend or two who made life more bearable & feel really grateful for that, but I was left out of all school activities outside of the classroom. I loved the idea of being in sports, but did not have family support to be on a team (ie: driving me to practice or events) so had to be content with whatever was on offer in gym class. I always loved running, but was slow. I ended up jogging for exercise and running 10Ks in my teens and 20's, and that was very satisfying. But the sharp memory from junior high is when I was on a relay team. I remember standing in my gym suit on the track, either right before or after the event and having this feeling that was brand new to me. I felt immense pride for myself. I felt like I belonged and was a part of something bigger than myself. I felt not alone. I felt connected to a web of interconnectedness I can only think of as belonging. I felt as if I had risen out of isolation and belonged to a class of something I desperately wanted to be a part of: a tribe.

I don't remember the race, how I got on the team, or even if we won or not. I just remember standing there feeling very proud, and there were bleachers of kids and I was the one on "stage".  I could see how this might seem like such a strange thing to be emblazoned in my heart to those who got to be in lots of school activities and played sports all the time, but for someone who wasn't allowed to do any activity that I couldn't get myself to on my own, I got a glimpse into what accomplishment and pride felt like. And I have spent my whole life since then making sure that I am always doing something in my life that feels like an accomplishment or stirs up feelings of personal pride.

During pandemic I watched the Last Dance (10 part Michael Jordan series on Netflix) and have been obsessed with sports documentaries ever since - partial to NBA stuff mainly. I went down the wormhole of all the great players, even watching all of their hall of fame acceptance speeches. 

One of the best things to come out of the sports watching obsession is that it bonded me with my step dad in a new and delightful way. He has been a lifetime sports fan, and I had never watched a game with him, and now when I visit we watch all kinds of sports documentaries and just watched the Olympic events that we both enjoy together. I watched Sha'carri's amazing final leg of the women's 4X100 relay where she bolts up from 5th place to win the race, and obsessed with that shot of her looking over to see where the other runners are as she blazes by them to win gold. The final shot of her, rain soaked and roaring like a champion makes my inner 12 year old misty eyed & happy. You Go Girl! I know people who hate sports and poo poo it like it's for dim bulbs but I totally 100% get why people are like Swifties for NBA or whatever sport they are into. I'm one of you.

So at 63 years old the only thing I do is try and get several miles of walking in a day. I don't feel right if I dont do it, even when it is 100+ degrees outside. I also paint, write, and make beautiful knitted things, and go on a big trip to wonderful chilly countries every summer.

But the shows about personal excellence and championship resonate with me for two reasons: I have the experience of what that is like from learning how to ski at 47, and of having worked hard for my Antarctic life. The other reason is that it pulls me out of traumatic or painful realities. This past year was one of the most challenging of my adult life.

I started hanging out with someone - got a crush on them pretty hard, and then it turned into an obsession/addiction to them. Without going into too much detail, I had entered a feeling state that was brand new to me, matched only by my euphoric experiences in the Antarctic, a place I was so in love with. With this person I felt so happy and alive and for the first time in a really long time, that I had found something I wanted to commit myself to for my lifetime. The way I felt around this person was something I'm not sure I can describe, but it was something akin to feeling like I had arrived home after 60 years of trudging through a dry hot dusty desert...I had landed in the warm and loving and much needed embrace of the thing I had been searching for all of my life. Here it was: the happiness I had been chasing after. I had had many boyfriends and a husband, but this was something totally different - I felt I'd met my soulmate.

We didn't spend but a few months hanging out but it quickly became and anxious/avoidant deal where I was either euphoric during our hang outs, or in tears during his pullback which felt like extreme abandonment. I did all the things: intensive therapy, hired a new life coach, went to tons more AA meetings to work the steps on my codependency and addiction to try and keep myself sane during the relationship, but he eventually ditched me late July 2023 and I was barely able to function until we reconnected in Nov-Dec of that year, with things falling apart after a terrible time during out last hang out in December. He contacted me a few times in January of this year about a show I was having, and our last phone call was Jan 16th, the day of my one person show that he had helped me with. Hearing his voice made me fall into the swirl and want to reconnect, but he said he was going to bow out of hanging out with ANYONE, and was going to go underground to deal with his depression or whatever.

I did my show that night and he didn't come, and I decided to go off social media for a month and just paint and do major self care. A few weeks later I looked at fb during intermission at a play and saw tons of posts of him hanging out with this girl and them doing lots of fun stuff tougher and her raving about HIM and tagging him in a bunch of stuff. I fucking plotzed like hell. I went into shock and went into numb zombie mode and left he play and went home and studied their socials and ended up contacting her for a "hang" to find out info. What I nightmare I put myself through during the time I interacted with her. I was very honest with her that I had been madly in love with this person who was now her friend and not mine, and he just kept reassuring me that they were pals and there was no crush or flirty stuff on either side. It didn't matter. No amount of her soothing me about her relationship with him prevented me from knowing the cold hard fact: that he was pursuing her company and not mine. That he had replaced me with her. She wanted so much for us to be good friends and really close, and it was making me so sick to even text with her...I was still in shock and obsession while I was dealing with her, and finally decided to pull away for good and went no contact.

So here it is 6 months later, and she finally contacted me after a few months of not hearing from her. I didn't respond to her, but the timing of it was interesting as I had peeked at their socials and knew he had just gotten back from a trip and was about to be on stage with their mutual friends. I had gotten a lot of advice and decided not to write her back. I went to my parents house in Houston and on Sunday morning after the show he was in I looked at IG and there was several pics of them hanging out together having fun (an important piece of info is that the last time we spoke in May she had told me she thought he was a yucky person and wasn't going to be friends with him anymore. She said she would give him up for me (WTF) but I told her I would just go away, which I knew might reinforce their friendship as she is totally dependent on people for rides, and he loves racing to pick up a girl). She also knew that me seeing photos of them together on fb made me insane with grief, so she said she would not post them anymore. I had unfollowed but not unfriended them so I could keep track of what they were doing so I wouldn't run into them.

Back to a few days ago when I saw the pics of her at his show and them doing fun things - I grabbed my phone (the obsession was reignited) and decided to write her back and said I could not be friends with her as they were hanging out and I was not over it yet. I should have left it at that, but we got into a big knock down drag out via texting where she got very butt hurt and defensive and my butt hurtedness caused me to play the victim card. After several hours of this and us apologizing, I deleted her from my phone, and went to fb to unfriend them. She had already unfriended me (knowing she was going to be posting about them) so I unfriended him as I knew that it was really, completely over. I was closing the door on any potential relationship or contact with him.

When I hit that unfriend button, I was filled with a sense of freedom and acceptance, but underneath it was the deep realization that there was a part of me that was still holding on to hope...hope that he would miss me and contact me again, that he was looking at my page, that he was in some way still wanting to possibly see me. When I saw that he immediately wanted to see HER when he got back from his long trip, it was the final nail in the coffin for me. As a mega-scorpio, the revenge fantasies are so violent and over the top, and my jealousy so intense, that if I didn't have a spiritual program the outcome of this could have been very bad (someone dead or in jail). The love addiction literature describes this in detail, and I fit it 100%.

I didn't realize how much this situation still held a constant little stream of drama for me until I unfriended him. It was a big choice, but totally provoked by her statement that "he is my friend" that was like a twisty knife in my heart. I was like fuck this shit I am fucking DONE with the both of you.

I parsed the entire texting dialogue with a friend and she said the one thing that is still the most baffling part of it all: why, out of all the people in this giant city that she could be friends with, does she want so badly to be friends with ME?!??! Especially when I have explained in great, painful detail how much it hurts me that they are friends and he has no desire for contact with me. Well, fuck her. And fuck him too. I know that is not the spiritual way to be, but for right now it is the appropriate way for me to feel in the situation so that I cannot possibly romanticize him anymore. The obsession with him morphed into an obsession with THEM and with HER. This has been the ghastly theme of the last year and a half of my life and now I am done.  It's never taken me more than a month or two at the most to get over any relationship...this was something I'd never been through before. It will be very interesting to see what beautiful thing is birthed out of it. I can only imagine that it is my own fucking freedom!

So I don't think it was an accident that I was obsessed with this young lady and her bad-assery, heart and grit and she roared across the finish line. I will ditch these two humans I let destroy my serenity and self esteem, and roar forward towards my own future, fighting the most destruction addiction that has ever enslaved me...

Sha'Carri Richardson!

1987

My life was starting to unravel...or more truthful: it had completely unravelled and I was scraping bottom, but my bar was so low that I didn't see how far down I had gone until my only option was to move far away and to be with the one nurturing person I knew. I sometimes romanticize this period of my life and there were some soaring moments, but underneath it was the beginning of the end of a 16 year jag of what I thought was the true meaning of "fun."

I had graduated college in 83 and moved to NYC the next day. The year and a half in NY has been written about previously on this blog, and it is a harrowing report - I'm just really glad I survived it. I had a caring boyfriend during that time, and that is always what has gotten me through my life until I turned 50 - from the age of 17 I always had a loving, nurturing boyfriend as a web of support that I didn't realize I had until now that I have been single for years. Because of the support I didn't have from family, I needed it badly to help me get through life and it usually showed up as a devoted boyfriend. So thankful to have had that...

So summer of 1987 became increasingly bleak...I had broken up with my boy scout boyfriend for a guy who buzzed by me on a skateboard while I was getting drunk in the afternoon at Les Amis cafe in Austin. I saw this beautiful boy and decided to gamble everything, so dumped K. the next morning over the telephone and went over to Skatbeoy's house for very awkward hang out with no connection or simpatico. K was devastated and his mother was dying of cancer and I spiraled down into wasterville, stopped going to my job, stopped seeing the skate boy, and met another man who would be my rock for the next couple of years...but I had to run away as that seems to be built into my DNA as how I escape escalating problems I didn't know how to deal with.

So I packed up everything I owned in my Hondamatic Civic (looked like a helmet on wheels) and drove to Omaha NE to be with a friend who I bonded with in a fierce way on a summer trip to Ireland in 1984. We met through a mutual friend and both fell in love with boys on the Dingle Peninsula and had the most magical and romantic (and drunken) 6 weeks ever. I went back to NYC where I was living and she went back to Houston where she was in college (but her home was Nebraska). We NEVER stopped talking and writing and dreaming about going back to Ireland. Not necessarily to be with those boys but we LOVED Ireland and made a serious plan to move there. I moved back to Austin in 85 and she moved back to Omaha a year or so later. By 87 my life was going nowhere and I had a boyfriend that I as in love with but felt I HAD to take this chance to follow a really big dream. The sweet guy I had dumped earlier that year drove with me as far as Topeka KS and then I headed to Omaha on my own....looking at a paper map and Julie's hand written instructions from a letter. I pulled up into the old craftsman house's driveway and we gleefully reconnected. We went downtown and drank in the Irish bars and I loved the old brick streeted downtown.

I don't know how long I lived in Omaha but it was only a few months...a giddy, vodka soaked few months of singing Irish songs and driving downtown to pubs and working the worst jobs at call centers, merry maids, etc. J was serious about moving to Ireland and she did it - I was a coward and moved back to Austin to be with my guy. I never forgot about my cowardice and giving up on a dream so avowed to myself that I would not ever do that again. It took 17 years but I got a bigger and better dream and went for it. Loyal readers have read reams about that!

Even though the move to Nebraska was brought about by spiraling downward circumstances, that few months of 1987 remains one of my fondest times. I don't know if I have a long post about Nebraska, but I'll rifle through these blogs and see if there is one. Criminals I just did an extremely satisfying post about one special day in 1984 when I lived in Rego Park Queens. Nebraska deserves a novella.

Sixty Two

 I just read a previous draft post and it seemed good enough to post! It's funny that I'll do these brain drain diary posts and they seems terrible when I read them...then a year or two later when I re-read them they are seem decent and insightful.

I have been off my game this past 6 months or so. Last August I went on a trip that was so fun I was euphoric for 3 1/2 weeks. Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland (and all those places in Eastern Canada I love). I came back and was supposed to go to Taos, but just not ready to go on another big trip where I'd be eating a lot every day. I did something possibly insane: I had two weeks off before work started back up in Sept. I went out and bought a tiny house in the tiny house village about 20 minutes from where I was living. It felt wrong from the start, but I felt like I had to go through with it. My apartment I'd been living in was turning into an awful place to live...I knew I was going to have to move and wanted something totally new and different (as I have just read from my previous post I AM IN A RUT - and no wonder! I just read some Antarctic posts and no matter how hard I try to accept that they don't want me and I cannot get back, I want that lifestyle again. I want want want it. I just went on a cruise...wait, I need to end this sidebar and get back to my story...) so I saw this beautiful, pristine tiny home and bought it.

Now I'd been looking out there for several years so it wasn't a total impulse decision...what ended up happening is I could not adjust to how far away it was from everything I like to do. I was 9 miles from a grocery store and no restaurants around. Here, I can walk to everything. I can walk to grocery stores, restaurants, am a short bus ride to downtown, and am near EVERYTHING. It was just too strange out there...so not me...I would walk around the "village" and pretend to like it and care about everyone but I couldn't freaking stand being out there. I would drive into town every day and spend all day here and would feel despair if I spent any amount of time out there. The people out there were nice, but there it was like I had moved away from Austin, into some experimental community that just didn't work for me. And when I tried to force myself to be a part of it, I felt very sad, and like the best part of me was being crushed. The part that is urban to the core...that likes a total private and hidden living space...not having to interact with my neighbors if I don't feel like it. I moved into he tiny house in mid September and moved into my Hyde Park apartment on March 1st. So I spent around 5 months out there and every single day I KNEW I would be moving back into town. The apartment I am in is darling, perfect, quiet, in the heart of the best neighborhood (to me)...a neighborhood of old historic homes and funky old student apt. complexes. A neighborhood that I lived in for most of the 80's. This is my 5th address in Hyde Park, and exactly 40 years ago that I first lived in this neighborhood.

Every time I go on a walk here I feel the ghosts of my college years and the time I moved back from NYC. My first Hyde Park address was on 38th and Speedway in an old wooden 4 plex that is no longer there. It was at the height of my punk rock days, my last year at UT, the end of my relationship with Mike and beginning of the one with Steve. So many shows, so much booze, so much crank.

I moved to NYC in Fall of '83 and back to Hyde Park in Jan of '85. I lived at 43rd and Ave B in a tiny room attached to a large old house that I dubbed "hovel". I think the house is still there but my apt. may have been absorbed back into the house. Then I moved to a darling backyard house '86 on 49th and Caswell (that just got bulldozed) and set it up as a darling little cottage that I sewed in and my boyfriend Kenny stayed at most nights. That was a fraught time as I was trying to be a good girl and not go too off the rails with partying. I was jogging and running in races with Kenny, and we had a little domestic bliss thing going on, but then I'd start partying hard and would run off with other boys and live a double life, like I'd been doing in college: the good girl, bad girl thing. When I went full bore with the drinking, I'd find more boys and get into intense relationships with them and hide it from my stable guy at home. Eventually the stable guy thing would fall apart as I would train wreck my life by dumping him for some other dude and start the whole thing over again. I was going down a dark path and by summer of '87 I had decided to move to Nebraska to be with Julie and plan the move to Ireland. I had dumped Kenny for some guy I just saw on a skateboard and he turned out to be a dud. I stopped going to my job, was living at the dope man's house, and decided it was time to vamanos. All my friends had moved away. It was time for me. BUT, I had fallen in love with yet another guy before moving to Nebraska...

I was EUPHORIC in Omaha! It was like when I first moved to Austin (McMurdo, Portland, NYC, back to Austin). It was 4 months of the most insanely wild time with Julie and the Irish pubs downtown. I lived in her basement and did a bunch of stupid jobs and talked to Michael every night on the phone. Julie and I drank a LOT of vodka and she was very upset when I said I was moving back to Austin in November, but she said the good thing about me leaving is that I was turning her into an alcoholic (first hint!). I drove back to Texas in a snowstorm and Michael was waiting for me at the four seasons hotel in Dallas. We had a rapturous reunion and I came back to Austin with my tail between my legs as Julie went through with our dream of moving to Ireland (we had travelled there in '84 and fell in love with Irish boys and drank and screwed our way though the island...and had talked about moving there every day since). I got my first UT job in a horrible basement of a brutalist building and did the 8-5 thing in a windowless room while Julie went to Ireland. 

For the first time in my life I truly felt like I'd let myself down. My mother had thought I was a failure for not getting a job in film upon college graduation, but I moved to NYC which was a huge win for me so I knew I was no failure...with the amount of partying I was doing I knew I was winning, at least in the high functioning category. I would sit outside on my lunch hour and stare at the clouds in the sky dreaming of doing something fabulous with my life. It was 1987-88. It would be 17 years before that fabulous thing happened. In that 17 years would be many boyfriends, a husband and divorce, more boyfriends, many job changes at UT and the State, and in 1992 I quit partying for good. So in 2004, 20 years after that Ireland trip, I deployed to Antarctica, and had a life of joy and meaning beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I had it for 8 seasons, and I don't have it anymore. I just read some Antarctic blog stuff I wrote on my other blog and I ACHE for that life again. I'd give anything for it again.

Yes I am grateful for my sweet little life...but I was not built for a sweet little life.

Random stuff from a couple of years ago...now posting

 I have not been writing much and at all...and then I'll get a wild hair and read an old post and BAM! There it is...a magic sauce that comes from not me and transforms me in the doing of it - the Writing. The writing is something I have always done, from earliest memory. It was like my soul knew that it was the thing I had that could connect me to myself. I read a post from Skiing and Knitting this morning that was so good it took my breath away...I thought, did I write that? It is so good! And I wrote it how I am writing this and how I've always written everything: fast, free flowing and automatic...it just pours out of me and there is editing going on...but mainly I am trying to get to the vein of what I am trying to say...

I feel I've been in a rut for a few years. Either Covid or aging has made me less excited about things. Maybe that is good? To be more serene and peaceful...just to live an ordinary life and go to work and have my treats be these simple things I really enjoy: AFS, driving for early voting and Eday, my NYC & Taos trips, going to shows and seeing my new friends. Yes I have built an interesting Austin life! Post pandemic it seemed we were all so ready to connect...I fell hard for some dude who I never think about anymore, and that was several months of distraction, but something else is going on as well that is mysterious.

I seem to have low tolerance or interest in peoples b.s. anymore. I am happy enough with my own company and work conversations and talking to the poll workers but old friendships seem to be not as satisfying as they once were. The friendships feel like a rut...but then I feel like I really need them sometimes. I have a very confusing relationship with myself over romance - sometimes I think I really want it and other times I'm not interested at all...it may present itself right in front of me and it's just a big fat NO from the universe...

And yet, driving my Travis County van to the Flawn center fills me with joy every time. The building right next to the Tower, that was called the UGL when I was in school at UT, that building on that campus, that I am at for work reasons feels like one of my "homes". There's Austin, NYC, the Ice, and UT Campus...I have so many memories from that campus: the 4 years I was in school, the first job after moving back from Nebraska, then the many years of work there until 2004 - then Antarctica, Oregon, and a move back to Austin that had me temping at UT again and having a BLAST in the libraries and working with plants, and a weird clean out job at Psychology school, and the the UT Press, followed by Drew asking me if I wanted to be at Elections and I said yes! Elections led me back to being on the center of campus again.

Tonight I had my van parked at Flawn for two hours...the evening was cool and beautiful after a heavy rainstorm all day...ending my day at Flawn feels like coming home...the nostalgia is so big and so heavy...the Union, Cactus Cafe, meeting Erica on the west mall and grabbing the Chronicle too see where the Punk shows were. Mike M waiting for me every day after class...sitting in wonderful classes hearing amazing things and enjoying so much of what I was learning. The awful times with David F and hating him. 

But in the beginning was Richard R who I met in his Plan B English class when he was a brilliant 17 year old prep school dropout. I was wearing my Elvis Costello glasses and a tie, and my friend said I have a guy you should meet - it was instant, I fell hard, we hooked up and were lovers and in love. We were in NYC at the same time over X-mas break...I went every X-mas to see Gary and be in NY over New Year's. We met at Elaine's, because that's where Woody hung out. I wore a beret. We sat at the bar and I knew he was seeing his other girlfriend there. When he came back to Austin, where I had been thinking about him every single moment of every day, he dumped me first thing. He came to my Jester dorm room and said he was breaking up with me because he was in love with Arabella and had actually just been using me the whole time. But before that he had told me he loved me, and wanted me to say it back and I couldn't. He was a terrible lover but we hooked up over the years several more times...and then we'd visit in NYC when I'd visit later on..and there was that ridiculous time when he stayed at my Queens apt for a month or so and talked on the phone every night with his girlfriend back in Austin.

How strange to write all that and know that it all started 43 years ago...43 years ago I moved to Austin to be a freshman at UT and what a wild ride it has been...but I keep circling back to campus...a place I lived next to when was born, a place I came back to 18 years later for college, then many years of work, and now I drive there in a completely unrelated job by some freaking miracle...yes this campus is my home - and not because I was bleeding orange or involved in campus activities, sports, or even friends with any other students...this campus was the first place where I got to grow into myself and explore me..the first place I got to break free from my parents rules and be my own person. I was a wild drunken party girl who was also a talented student in some areas (absolutely clueless in math/sciences from day one)..those are ecstatic memories. I think I always tried to recreate that magic by changing jobs every year at UT trying to find that just right FIT and it never really worked...never really worked until I started temping and then now feels perfect as I'm just cruising in in my van and doing a service. I am servicing the polls. I get to see my friend James Thomas a lot. I get to see someone from high school whose life revolves around the campus also...especially west campus...oh those magical days of running around from Radkey Manor all over town. That was a God moment (1988), when I ran into Michael's friend who needed a roommate and it all fell into place. Another magic moment (2010) was when I went up and asked to be duty fork operator and Todd said YES and gave me a contract. And going to NYC at 18 for the first time...going to Europe at 17 for the first time...my life feels like it was designed for me, like it is not random...this beautiful life was designed for me...and I've had so much fucking fun...nyc with Kate, my 25th aa birthday...the cruises with mom, the cruises with myself and with sober people...the super fun job I have now...the fun people I've met: Dana Norman, Paul Rodden et al...the first few years post divorce -wow!

Cowboy

It had been an epic summer of vaccinated fun going out to clubs and seeing bands and meeting cool guys who I really connected with...first there was R at Hole in the Wall and he gave me load of attention and told me how beautiful I was..then there was the tall tattooed German at the next gig who we had an intimate and juicy 3 hours of talking with and he gave me his card. I was perforing in the Cinderella play and had a solo song that was spectacular and I was just beaming from how awesome it is to peform and be on stage...I was so joyful from the the production and all the love we got from the audience and my freinds that I met that I had absolutely forgotten about the German that I was hoping was more interested...but I didn't mind so much that nothing was happening with him...it just seemed every time I went out I met a really intersting guy and had a great interaction...after the incredible Slacker reunion show and two punk reunions shows and the princess play I thought, can it get any better than this??? ...and then it got a whole lot better - I went to the second performance of the princess play and I was not really looking forward to it that much - there was a big Hickoids show afterwards that I was not planning on going to, but after the fun of the play and how alive and awake I felt I knew I wasnt ready to go home and saw the the venue for the show was only 3 mintues away! I drove to the show and heard my band and decided just to go for it and go in - very dressed up in my tight jeans and silk blouse and lots of makeup...I excitedly greeted friends and guys were all over me telling me how beautiful I was...I was watching the band, enjoying myself standing alone and felt a presence behind men - a man (or some men) had planted themselves behind me and I turned around and started talking to them as Chris Burns was talking to them...one was this tall gorgeous cowby with boatloads of swagger...he was tall and manly and seemed so out of my league - the kind of man that I would never think would ever go for me..but I was chatting away happily and must have mentioned something about guys never flirting with me , and he said "Oh I'm flirting with you"...and I said you are! and I never left his side for the whole night...we talked, and Wylie acted a fool constantly coming up to me and saying stupid shit...and the Cowboy put his arm around me and held me close and I asked what he was doing and he said "affetion!" and I was still so baffled by what was happening...we hat that magical connectin that I have with F but this guy was available and wanting to go home with me (or maybe his idea was to go home with some girl that night)...but I asked him to walk me to my car and we passed by a photo booth and we went in and he started kissing me - romantically and passionatley kissing me...it went on and on and then he got bery handsy with me and it all was very fun but I noticed I didn't feel anyting physical with what was going on, I was just so agog with amazement that this beautiful creature wanted me that I was going along with it - he was treating me like I was this gorgeous desireable thing and it was just like a Cinderella moment that was just beautiful and magical and felt like the first time I was with Andy in ANtarctic after wanting him for SO LONG - God I wanted Andy!!! So I was very clear that I liked this guy - I really liked this guy...we had talked a lot and he was the real deal..so when he walked me to his car he reached out his hand and held mine in a grand gesture...it was So. Romantic. There was a full moon, there was a summer cool breeze...we both looked hip and cool and he asked if he could come home wiht me...he wanted to be with me....but no part of me was going to bed down with him...I just didn't want to....I drove home in a swirl and woke up the next morning and was in a LOVE JONES a Big Way...I abanoned my usual routine and my usual self to lay around and feel drunk on the love I felt we had cooked up...I went through the day and did my stuff and he texted me at 2:00 telling me how much fun he'd had...I texted back - heck yes!!! and he asked did I want to get together later to pick up where we left off...which I'm pretty sure meant sex...but if I'd had my wits about my I would have queried..later that day? Pick and do what? Was he asking me on a date? I already know the answer to that...I texted back that I was busy and could see him later in the week or the weekend but I wrote that text out of fear...then a week later I wrote, and yes I want to pick up where we left off"....but I think the moment had passed....night we met was so passioante and beautiful and he was still feeling it the next day and I pushed him off because I was so afraid he just wanted sex...and now I it's been almost two weeks and I havent heard from him and don't really expect to - I have obsessed over him....been giddy talking to my girlfreinds about him, but deep down feel sad about it - sad and angry that I've become someone who cant say yes to this unknown big gesture...maybe it would have been okay? But no part of me wanted to invite him to my house and me have to go through how unromantic it my vaginal sitch is...but I miss that girl! I miss that girl who alway said yes! Who could operate in the moment like that...but it is not me anymore...I could have no more said yes to him that night or the next day even if I'd forced myself...the last time I went against my body with Joel I felt horrible for days...my body said NO and it said it BIG!!! My body said no, but my heart if fully open for him if he decided he wants to get to know me...I need to be courted, and cherished, and takend out on dates...I need to be valued...but a part of me feels I missed out on soemthing beautiful...but did I? what we did have was truly, truly beautiful :-)

Crush

Around 1980 I was a wild party girl punker just living a wild and reckless life while keeping it together enough to stay in college. I dumped my high school boyfriend as soon as we got settled into the dorms and knew I wanted to be wild and free. And I wanted them all...some were one year boyfriends, most were flings with passion, some one-nighters, but I was so in love with my dream to moving to NYC upon graduation that that was the north star that steered me...that and my new affectionate relationship with my long lost father (who lived in NYC). But one night, Greg, the sweet guy I had dumped freshman year took me on a scooter to a party near downtown. Greg was big enough to still be my friend though I had hurt him badly, and we are still friends today. So I remember being drunk from being out at Raul's and Greg wanted to go to this party and it didn't sound cool to me but I went anyway and it felt too ritzy and buttoned up for me. I was used to skinheads and drunks in a dusty old wooden floored house with no furniture (we didn't sleep in those days) and a keg in the middle of the living room. I have snapshots of horrific things going on in these rooms sometimes - just real low brow for an uptight suburban girl like me (who liquor transformed into I'll do anything sort of girl). I remember an old mansion, dimly lit rooms, and then sitting down and seeing some lines being chopped on a plate. Yea, my kind of party. The person doing the chopping had very thick blond hair and even thicker coke bottle glasses. We partied, talked a little bit, and something happened to me: I become obsessed with him. I still have the diaries I wrote about him. I talked to everyone I knew to see if they knew him. I had someone bring me a giant San Antonio phone book so I could look him up. He has a common name so there were several M.S. to choose from. But somehow I found out the right one and sent him a dozen roses around Christmas time. Where I got the money for that I do not know. I didn't hear from him. Then one day a few months later I ran into him in a line at a bank. It was awkward and I felt strange, and we made a date - I'd probably had several boy toys by then but the hook was back in...M was here and was going to come pick me up for  a date. I was so terrified as I waited for him. I wouldn't drink because I was too nervous and when he knocked on the door and sat down on my couch he slapped his hand on my knee in an affectionate way and I about jumped of the couch. I was so nervous...I only got this way around guys I was obsessed with: mute, frozen, not knowing how to act. Completely the opposite of how I acted any other time I was around I guy I was hooking up with. We went someone on a date and he was driving terribly...it seemed like something was wrong with him and he said he was his glasses, but I finally figured out he was messed up! And it didn't seem like just alcohol he was on. So we had out date, he stayed over, I don't remember much else but he started hanging out with us in our punk rock squad of really rotten acting characters. We did some shitty things, stole stuff, threw molotov cocktails (I don't remember where) and just general trashing of people's apts. and yards. We were just into using the one car between us all a late nite weapon. I wasn't crushing on M anymore and was probably hooked up wth someone else but he liked the drugs so hung out with us but was older than us. My best friend always messed with my boyfriends so she knotted his shoelaces together when he was nodding out one night and when stood up they all got a big laugh out of it. No one from our group was spared practical jokes. Almost 30 years later I ran into M outside a SXSW film premier. I was in line and saw him and thought who...is...that...guy...and looked down at his badge and it was him and it all came rushing back. We caught up and he took me around on his Harley to shows and we ended up having a sweet sweet beautiful romantic hookup for a few months before I went back to the Ice. Yeah...some connections never die...

...and only come around a handful of times (or less) in a lifetime. So here I am pretty much single for a decade, with a few bits and bobs of dating thrown in, a month or two hangout with a guy here and there but basically BUPKUS for the 4 years I've been back in Austin. I actually had more of a dating life on hillbilly mountain in Oregon that I have here in this town where I know so many people...mostly old fucks. So I started working with someone and it happened again...the work ended and I went though withdrawal and was fine and now work started up and he's back. All I know is that I am thrilled to know that this giddy, sweet, über romantic and squishy side of me can still be awakened. I never meet a guy that I really like. And I met one that I really really like. But I can't have him, and that may make it even more interesting for me psychologically...but damn I want him.

Tommy (old draft just posted)

Deeply entrenched in the punk scene in Austin in the early 80's, I like a lot of chicks, wanted a really punk rock boyfriend. I had my square side still, but at night, lubed with liquor in those clubs, thrashing around to that 3 chord noise that can still blow out my solar plexus, I felt as punk as they come. I couldn't do the full on costume: the mohawk and safety pins through the cheek, but I was punk in my bones and that's all that mattered. Because I had such fragile self esteem when my buddy alcohol wasn't in my system, I usually had sweet, mild mannered boyfriends who made me feel safe. I had kind of a double life where I went to class during the day and drank and slam danced at night. One night at the club I met some boys who I hadn't seen before - they were all standing in a pack and I grabbed a beer out of one of their hands and swigged it, and the boy who I took it from said "you're the meanest girl in Austin." He went home with me that night and never left, and we lived together for the the remainder of my college days. He was one of the Vidor boys, a group of country boys who moved to Austin and moved straight into the punk scene and took it over. I swear, I've looked at thousands of photos of those days, and I am not in a single one of them even though I was at every show, but Tommy is every one of them, front row center, flying across the stage, totally engaged with the band. Tommy was not the boy I took home with me that night, but he was one of the pack of boys from Vidor that I soon fell for...he was my muse, the one I always wanted to be with, the one who I wanted and then he wanted me and I was too afraid to go all the way and be with him. We were from different worlds...he drank way way to much (the reason he is no longer alive), and there was too much chaos and drama around him. He lived on the knife's edge of junkiedom and homelessness and squalor, and I was a self hating obedient college student. We circled each other for almost 30 years...dear sweet Tommy. When I was getting divorced he was the only person I wanted to see...I lost 50 pounds and bought sexy mini-skirts and hung out at the 24 hour coffee shop across from he restaurant he worked at, waiting for him to get off at around 2:00am..me having gotten up at 6:30am and worked at my hideous office job all day, gone jogging after work then primped to go out and then sat and waited, and waited...all my friends started going home at 11:00, midnite, 1:00am...and then eye stabbingly bored, I still waited in my perfect tiny skirt and clunky heels and big red lips...waited in a boiling hot plastic chair on a cement porch for that kitchin smelling man to come meet me and whisk me away to his apt in South Austin. At around 3:00am we're on the couch watching tv with his roommate and he's drinking, and drinking...me in horror-ville, having been awake so fucking long, but waiting and waiting for that magical 5:00am time, when he's liquored up enough to get in bed with me and get on top of me...and he's sweet, and its terrible, but this is what I've been waiting for...the call of the muse wrecked my marriage and upended my life..the call of this sweet, broken drunken muse..who still calls to me, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to get back to him...the muse busted me from the prison of marriage...led me to back to Tommy, led me to S., led me to C....and then, led me to Antarctica. And most recently led me back to Antarctica after 4 years gone, and led me to A. - and a pain I couldn't reckon with. I knew how to handle past pains but this one sunk me. I'm ready to hear the call again, to follow again...

[deleted]...only to be recreated then. God this feels good to come back home to the writing...feels so good to come home to.