I cried to Amber when I left my old apartment behind. She entwined her fingers in mine and let me vent.

In itself, I am glad to be rid of that place. It had black mold in the ceiling from a conspicuous lack of maintenance and pernicious stinkbugs that liked few things more than dying on my window sills. It was entirely too small, though it served as a decent quasi-monastic cell for a few years (alone, I do not need much more than a bed, bathroom, and space enough to write). I never had fewer than two humane mouse traps active at any time and lived in constant fear of a resurgence of bedbugs. The complex had uncanny luck for attracting the most stereotypically annoying neighbors such that most earned derisive nicknames within days, such as The Dealer and Child Abuser Barbie.

You're breaking out in sweat!

Still, it was in that second story hovel that I learned my cherished independence after a lifetime of codependence and abandonment issues. It housed the only time in my life that no one relied on me and I answered to no one. Most of my relationship with Melanie took place in its walls, for good and ill. It was the only home I have had on my own and I managed it even on the edge of penury. It would not be a gross mischaracterization to consider it akin to a cocoon from which I have since emerged, transformed if a bit nostalgic.

As I cried, Amber and I drove to our new apartment, the barely carved block(ed with cardboard boxes) that I was supposed to somehow understand as home. This psychologically feat alone seemed daunting, especially as there were so many external factors begging to be reconciled. It felt I had traded a cramped space on my own for a cramped space with my arguably still new lover who might need more than I would be able to give.

Like a wee bird

I had, both from necessity and inclination, grown accustomed to a large proportion of private time. Though Amber does not require me to entertain her, the fact remains that we would live in close quarters at least until I am made full time/Amber finds a job. She would almost always be no farther than the bedroom. As a Writer, solitude is my canvas. (Though, more precisely, downtime during work or when I am in a public place with appropriate distraction is my true canvas. When granted solitude, I generally exercise or waste far too much time on the internet.) I try not to focus much energy on the notion, but could not ignore the niggling worry that this cohabitation could go spectacularly wrong if we are not supremely compatible and respectful of one another.

Yet I almost immediately find that living with Amber brings many unconsidered joys: opening the front door to her gleefully cataloging new clays on the floor by surrounding herself with dozens of newly baked discs, our wandering to discover the landscape of our new town and stumbling upon both strange graffiti against the scenic vista and Moonies, her habit of perching in a tiny chair while working on her computer, how happy she is to kill zombies with me on video games (and how well we work together to banish the infected from our path), her single-minded focus while playing Dance Dance Revolution in a bra and jeans, that paintbrushes adorn our bathroom and kitchen sink.

Really, artists leave their droppings everywhere.

She toiled tirelessly to unpack and decorate while I worked for weeks so that, every time I returned, it looked a bit more like we belong here. I won't deny that I did half jokingly ask her once, a week into living together, when it was that she planned on going home. She replied that she was home and I could not disagree. Soon, it is hard to imagine that I ever did without her because she has so subtly overwritten my need to solitude.

I was willing to see what this might bring, in part because of my pride. I wanted to prove to myself that I could, by my effort alone, provide a life spacious enough to fit two. It did not much matter who the other person was, so long as she did not bother me too much as I pursued my private passions. It would have to be a girlfriend, I knew, and I had assumed for years that it would be Melanie - who will never be in the financial position to have to depend on anyone who does not share half of her chromosomes. I could enumerate the virtues and flaws that made her seem sensible, but they boiled down to the fact that Melanie and I did not need one another and I increasingly felt a need to prove myself worthy.

We did not get eaten by Moonies at this time.

I don't know that Amber needs me, though I do not recall having ever been surer that someone loves me. She still has her bedroom in her mother's house, untouched if a bit emptier. She has a safety net. Similarly, as she pays none of the apartment bills, I do not need her in any material sense. This allows for a purity to our arrangement, as we are here together because we wish to be.

Her mother questioned Amber whether she sufficiently earns her keep and - while I do not exactly keep a ledger in my mind - I can't imagine that anyone who had seen us together could doubt it. Without effort, everything seems to get done. When I was recently so ill I could not stand, Amber cuddled against me and read The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making to me until the cramping subsisted. We have our symbiosis, even if she jokes that one of the reasons she loves me is that I let her live in my apartment and insist on calling it ours. She also admits that she is the crucial factor that makes this a home and not merely a place to live. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20120119.php 28 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST  

Daniel and his Canadian companion Eva say their goodbyes well before midnight on New Year's Eve. They, with Merrill in tow, had arrived to Tom's party less than an hour prior. None of them actually knew Tom, after all, though it turned out Daniel had a few coincidental associations among the other guests, none strong enough to overrule spending the rest of the night alone with Eva. I just told Eva that it was a pleasure to meet her (it was, albeit so briefly) and wished Daniel a nice night, since it is not for me to dictate the New Year's Eve plans of adults.

At least, this is true in principle, but New Year's Eve in no time for principles.

Merrill does not leave with them, as I have assured Daniel - to the extent he cares - that I can get her home. I drink no more than a few sips of champagne all night and therefore make for a damn fine designated driver.

Merrill chats with a man whose name I willfully let slip from my mind, but whom I will call "Moose"� for the sake of convenience. Moose, I am certain in context I miss, says that he has never had balls on his chin. Merrill parries this by noting this means he is heterosexual, then gives the point, "But are you single?"�

He is, he admits.

I turn from lovingly tormenting Amber - who I may be liquoring up with Jack and Cokes for my own entertainment - and say, "Wow, may I offer the slow clap here?"�

Merrill has been officially dumped in the last few days, though the breakup was one of those prolonged affairs that ran the gamut of social networking statuses. When last I thought to check earlier in the week, she was complicated and he, Henry, was merely single. When I checked before leaving for the party, prior to gussying myself up to suit the demands of a supposedly formal party (after finally allowing Amber reprieve enough from my affection to dress herself in a stunning and frilly blue number), she was single and he, quite notably, was not. Given this - and the fact that Tom's party had an open invite - I could hardly let the poor girl spend such an evening alone.

When she came in, she admitted that she had never before been to a party, which is one of those statements which practically begs for her to be badgered with questions. This is a party, though, and badgering is hardly festive.

I admit to not knowing Merrill well. She is above an acquaintance - we can talk, even if we do not make a habit of it when we are mutually out of personal distress - but I would not call her a friend. We may have first connected around the time of my breakup with Emily, because I was given to harassing people on dating websites for reasons no more in depth than potential friendship. It was contact enough that I recognized her and addressed her by her screen name when she met Daniel, Hannah, Melanie, and me for a salty lunch years ago. (It made sense; I met those three on the same site as I met her.) Merrill was perhaps more Daniel's friend then as now; they had apparently gone on a few dates that came to nothing more. As can be judged from the occasional photos she posts of him wearing pink feathered boas, he trusts and cares for her. With a few exceptions, I have ample cause to have confidence in his judgment.

A good crew

Despite and because of this specific lack in our emotional intimacy, I feel protectively toward Merrill and know even in the moment that I am projecting. In her shoes - to the extent I can imagine them given that this is the second time I have seen her - I know how vulnerable I would be feeling, how inclined I would be to stifle that voice in my head that says this is a bad idea for that cloying demon that reminds me that I have just be expelled from a relationship and aren't I entitled to a bit of a tumble (metaphorically or literally)? Merrill is an adult, I must assume she can take care of herself. And, though I know it might have seemed nearly indistinguishable from quixotic chivalry from the outside, this is not my attempt at white knighting. I do not believe that Merrill is in any way weak owing to the congenital deficiency of having a vagina. (Trust me, I adolesced alongside Buffy. Women kick just as much ass as men.)

She reports that he squeezes her into a sloppy and slightly presumptuous kiss at the stroke of midnight. She seems pleasantly baffled by this, as though wondering if this behavior was commonplace at parties. It is, at least, commonplace where there are attractive and flirty woman, alcohol, and men who see an excuse to steal kisses. I know, I've been such a man on such night.

But I go home with her

After midnight, as I note Moose's hands taking liberties that are improper not only because Merrill is freshly out of a relationship and he does not even know her surname but because he is in the middle of the party and being not even a little subtle, I suggest to Merrill that it is night about time we should be getting her home.

She looks at Moose. "No, I think I'll stay."

I glance at Amber, quickly conferring. "No," I say, "I think it would really be better if you were to come with us. Now. Please." I throw Moose a conciliatory smile, hoping he will loosen his grip on her inner thigh.

"He'll bring me home, won't you?" she very nearly coos to him. He, a bit ruddy with inebriation, agrees. Merrill then locks eyes with me, since I think she knows what I am attempting. "Don't worry."

But I do worry. I back off and ask Amber what we should do, since staying at the party to babysit someone who insists she does not require our services as chaperone or chauffeur is not how I intend to spend the remainder of my night. We decide that our duty is not to watch her get pawed, but that I will be antsy if I do not alert someone to the situation. I tentatively ask around until I am directed to a room of various partygoers, all of whom are tipsy at the absolute least. I explain the situation to Tom and then, to better suit the level of coherence of a room full of the appropriately drunk, break it down a bit. "Merrill got dumped yesterday. Technically, two days ago, since it's after midnight. I don't know her especially well, but I think I would be... not exactly in my right mind... in her position."

"So, you want us to cock block him?" Tom asks.

"I was more thinking of it as babysitting... Actually, yes. Cock block. She should not go home with him."

There is some amused hemming and hawing, some men asserting that the bond of testicular brotherhood mean that they are forbidden from directly preventing a fellow male from scoring with what seems to be an easy lay. I am instead pointed to the hostess, who knows the Moose in question, though it is implied they are not on good terms.

"So this is Tom's friend?" Kat asks.

"No," I reply sheepishly. "Her friend Daniel brought her, but he left hours ago. Tom doesn't even know Merrill. Once we leave, she will basically be on her own, but I think that's a bad idea. I wanted someone else to keep on eye on her."

"If her friend left her like that, she is on her own. I'm not interfering."

In concept, I can't disagree with that argument. And after midnight on New Year's, I am not starting 2012 by subverting the free will of others lubricated by alcohol, especially at the expense of getting home to my warm, cozy bed with my warm, cozy girlfriend. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20120101.php 22 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST  

I have spent the day learning and performing how to execute therapeutic holds, how to cuff children efficiently, how to repel clumsy attacks with irresistible force. This is perhaps a part of my job, though as a teacher, I would just as soon leave the regular exploitation of these skills to the omnipresent guards in my facility.

Muscles I forgot I had are sore and I realize how this job creates, from necessity, compartmentalized versions of me. The self that works in this facility needs to use muscles other than the one between his ears - and despite the appearance I cultivate, I do have functional muscles under my sweaters and jeans. He is guarded, implying he has a life outside the locked sets of doors but going no further than that. He leaves this job behind him when he walks out the door, when he gets his car keys back, when he again steps into the fresh air and realizes he has missed a snow squall in his hours of voluntary confinement for a paycheck. His overreaching thought while behind these locked doors with adjudicated minors is that he gets to go home at the end of the day. They do not, so nothing they can do short of physical violence bothers him. His best response is the outside door clicking shut at 3:30. (I do not mean to imply that - for their various offenses - I see the residents as other than boys whose needs I cannot hope to adequately meet in the half a year the court mandates they spend in this facility. Some of them would have been happy and law abiding given a different environment and I have yet to meet the boy beyond redemption.)

Then I drive the few minutes back to my messy apartment, where Amber is waiting. I vent for all of five minutes before we make preparations for dinner, chat about irrelevancies, or cuddle with a movie. What I do to give us this home has no place within its doors. I would rather keep the purity of this respite. It is returning home to her that pulls me through my days, especially those days when I am being trained in skills I hope I never have to use, even as the muscles in my back can still remember dozens of hands pushing me down and my wrists bear scrapes from the inexpert application of ten sets of handcuffs. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20111228.php 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST  

Amber and I go to Jacki's Die Hard Christmas party, which is to say that we go to Jacki's home and, in exchange for some tasty bread and a beverage, eat copiously of the potluck and watch Bruce Willis in his best role (aside from criminally underappreciated Unbreakable). We cannot stay long - this is the weekend we go from living in our respective homes to living together in Red Hook - but it is hardly an event we are wont to miss. Supposedly, Die Hard is a Christmas movie. By that metric, so is Rent in that it makes mention of the holiday. I am not about to indulge that level of foolishness. Unless Santa, Frosty, Rudolph, the Grinch, or Gizmo features in a supporting role, the film evades Christmas Movie classification.

The movie (and the fact it is not a Christmas movie) is not the cause for this entry. As we the partygoers chat and eat in the hours before the movie begins - which is almost always what happens at Jacki's parties and one of the reasons I love them - I feel strangely able to talk. More exactly, I feel capable of acknowledging I know things, that I have thoughts and opinions, that my expressing them improves the silence. It was not that I consciously repressed myself previously as that there was an unspoken and unrealized deficit in my ego that of late has seemingly been remedied.

Further, as I sit in the living room speaking with Jacki, I must cast a wistful glance toward Amber in the kitchen where she is participating in - not dominating, not silently judging, not counting the minutes until she can have me to herself again - her own conversations.

I turn back to Jacki, who has a grin. "What? I like her," I say.

"I can tell. I like her, too."

"She is... nice to be with. It's easy. We're both independent, but somehow independent together. She has herself figured out. I don't have to worry about keeping her entertained, but I trust she is. I don't remember the last time I was with someone where I did not feel like I was surmounting the odds." I don't say, because I don't feel I need to, that it has been as long since I felt my friends as a whole approved of my partner.

It was not until days later when I stumbled upon something for work - a bit of educational theory I had read and discussed a dozen times before without sufficient absorption - that it all came into focus via Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Need. According to this theory, one cannot consider higher needs until lower ones are sated. More plainly, someone who cannot trust they will have food, shelter, and clothing is unable to really care about safety. Once reliably fed and watered, one might then turn one's mind to this problem but then, until the need for safety is satisfied, one doesn't care about belonging (we are still a tribal species). Then comes ego satisfaction (liking oneself with good cause) and subsequently self-actualization (being the best one can be). Different levels have be slotted into the pyramid by various people throughout the years or the current ones were subdivided as adherents and detractors saw fit, but these are the five with which I am most familiar.

Suddenly, and for the first time in recent memory, I find myself articulate and whole, with sets of worries extinguished in a flash. I have the love of a good woman whose consistent moods are dictated primarily by reason, I have a job in my field at which I perform well. For several years, I knew that I was living from paycheck to paycheck or with the assistance of government programs. Should I catch some illness that sufficiently derailed my health - a distinct possibility as a high school substitute teacher and something that nearly occurred once - I would have found myself begging to family and friends for the means to continue to pay rent. A few times, I went without buying groceries for a few weeks so as to make sure I would be able to meet my financial obligations because a school holiday fell in the wrong place on my pay cycle. It whittled at me. Now, the background processes concerned with fretting have be freed up for more constructive cognitive uses.

With such an underlying and persistent threat to my security, there were parts of my life that remained in stasis or undeveloped, particularly my ego satisfaction. (And, for far too long, I struggled with attachment issues - belongingness - as the core of my self worth; if I was not someone's lover, then what was I for?) As friends and family will no doubt admit, I did not attach appropriate importance to getting published as it did not pay enough to supplant teaching as my means of making ends meet. When Melanie threatened the security of our relationship for over half a year, I took it particularly hard as it was one more aspect of my life that I could not seem to control despite my best efforts. I won't be so patronizing as to imply that I regressed to the mindset of one who lives on the streets, but I find it undeniable that I was not letting myself self-actualize. I could not provide for myself consistently despite my best efforts, therefore I was insufficient despite my stated accomplishments, even as I could intellectualize that my failings had more to do with the economic downturn.

The Hierarchy of Need is situational and not developmental. Just because one has in the past felt ego satisfaction or belongingness, it did not mean that the wrong jolt could not knock them down the pyramid a level or more. There is a saying that society is only a few missed meals from chaos. This is why. Our progress, our security, our very sense of self is predicated on external factors that can prove decidedly fragile. Most of us - myself indubitably included - have only so much psychological buttressing available to us before the external affects the internal in a way that can feel both dire and permanent. Then, we scrabble as best we can until our needs are met and we can again try for the summit. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20111216.php 07 Jan 2011 00:00:00 EST

Despite having found an apartment Amber and I both like (if not love), this move rattles me.

Moving to Jo-anna's three years ago was relatively easy because I had known I had a deadline in Amenia from the moment I took the job there. This deadline was something I looked forward to daily (though I had then assumed I would be starting a new life with my wife by my side). Yes, there was a bit of scrabbling at the last moment, but everything worked out in the end. Frankly, any move away from Amenia was one toward sanity and sense, even though my time with Jo-anna lasted only a bit over a month.

Moving to Fishkill shortly after - rushed by Jo-anna's family losing their house - seemed simple in comparison with my present move. I was barely unpacked. I had my editorial gig by then and felt as though my life was settling into a form I could better handle.

I more than admit that there is a much in this move to Red Hook that is good: we are right in town, I will live with Amber (who I wish were here tonight because I have been dealing with days of stress-induced insomnia and I sleep with her head on my chest), it is a fairly cultural small town given its proximity to Bard College, it is close to my job (on which more presently). Yet I was comfortable in the life I was leading (even though I know that one of the healthiest things one can do with such comfort is to smash it). Aspects of that life felt effortless, even if I fretted over chasing away poverty in a very real way. My subbing and tutoring was so easy that I could do it without thinking, instead devoting my cognitive energies to my writing. Owing largely to having to focus on packing up boxes and make plans for moving and work, this is my most writing I have done in days.

I do want this move, but I feel for days as though I am emotionally muzzled from expressing hesitations aloud. I don't want Amber to feel I am getting cold feet. When I do get around to expressing this to her, she assures me that she understands my feelings - at least those I am able to express - and has been trying to keep strong and steady both for me and her mother (who, despite having rid herself of Amber while she was at college, may be suffering from a bit of early onset Empty Nest Syndrome). Things need to get done and that will not happen if she falls to as many pieces as I feel I am. She, however, does not have as many people as I do to act as a sounding board for her, aside from the women in her circle (who cannot quite relate to what she is experiencing, as many of them are old enough to have given birth to her).

Everything feels like a struggle and I get no mental down time to sort through them all (least of all at work. From 7:30 to 3:30, I am left alone for fewer than three or four minutes at a time, even having to attend meetings during my lunch). I began to cry tonight, when driving Amber back to her house with my car full of another load of boxes. I find my job psychologically awkward, knowing that 90% of the boys end up back in our facility or worse and I am asked at least once daily how long I intend to work there. On the surface, the residents are no worse than the special ed kids I dealt with at my old job, but I feel underutilized. I am a great teacher and I am (according to some at the facility) now babysitting minors adjudicated guilty of felonies - though I try not to know the nature of my charges' crimes so as to be able to help them without personal prejudice. I told Amber that, if I defined myself primarily as a teacher instead of a writer who needs to meet his bills somehow, I do not think I could stay long at this job. I wish I were teaching motivated students at a liberal prep school, but I will cope with this.

Despite all this, were this job were close to my current apartment, I know I would not be so ill at ease now. I could have a month at this job to get acclimated and accrue some monetary security before endeavoring to get a new apartment and move in with Amber.

I concede this could have been so much worse. Not long ago, I worried I was going to have to get a job out of state to keep my head above water financially. While I am certain Amber would have been up for it, we will only be twenty-five minutes from her mother's home and a bit under an hour from where I currently live.

I know all this will ease as I adjust to my job duties and my days stop feeling like interminable interstitial moments between two lives. I will come to adapt to this until it feels this is the only life I have ever led. I know this task before me is hardly the worst I have faced and I am far too experienced to let it bother me for long. Many would doubtless balk at the population with which I am to deal professionally (as I might balk at those residents in a more secure facility). As Melanie puts it when I write much of this to her: "I would even go so far as to say that this ability to wade through the chaos and irrationality of others while still being able to make sense of things is part of what makes you such a good storyteller. You can become part of a place (real or imagined) without letting it take over you, and without getting sucked in beyond the point of analysis and self-reflection. You are, in other words, perpetually intact. Still, you ARE susceptible to being rattled around, which is what's happening now. Let yourself rattle; trust that you will pull through, and call upon that trust when you feel like you can't cope at present." ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20111215.php 30 Dec 2011 00:00:00 EST  

We huddle against a wooden fence in Rhinebeck, clutching our paper sacks protectively. Given that the Sinterklaas parade is still twenty minutes from beginning, Amber and I begin to eat our feast of bagel sandwiches and tater tots, the quickest food we could rustle up among the frigid throng.

"You are warm. Very warm," she says, squeezing my arm as if to induce me to release more body heat to keep her toasty.

"Homeostasis," I say, then lift my Styrofoam cup to my lips. "And free hot cider. That helps."

A woman passes my current sight line who has managed to fit a size ten ass into a size five skirt, so I ask Amber, "What do you think would be the worst song to request at a wedding? I'm thinking 'Fat Bottom Girls'."

"'You're Having My Baby'?" she guesses without a pause.

"What about 'Dude Looks Like a Lady'?"

Given that I have just spent so long reading Ender's Game to Amber at her craft fair that my throat is sore, I am feeling keenly fond. I feel, perhaps without sufficient justification, that today provided a fair glimpse of what our life will be like once we move in together by the end of the month. Though I had tried to experimentally provoke panic at this significant step after having known one another less than half a year, it will not take. She feels overwhelmingly right and makes this new life I am entering into feel all the easier. I feed her a tater tot and cuddle against her more.

The next day, we carry boxes to my car. I have been purloining cardboard boxes from a liquor store to pack up those possessions I do not currently need. My living room - and there is little more to my current apartment but living room - is stacked three feet deep. I try to leave the lighter boxes for her - those full of a stuffed Cthulhu or random closet junk rather than those packed with books - but Amber is too eager to be helpful, so she hoists those that strain her. Within twenty minutes, my apartment is nearly bereft of books and my car must weight at least three hundred pounds more (and feels every ounce of it). My apartment does not look much emptier and will not for another week of packing and transporting. I do not yet feel a weight (three hundred pounds of it) lifted off my shoulders.

We drive straight to Germantown with our load. A landlady called earlier in the day and said her husband could meet us in a few hours. We have found that most of the complexes in the area are outside our likely price range thanks to the proximity to a private college and so have turned to Craigslist. We search maps to figure out how many miles there are between my new job and any potential home, as I do not have snow days.

I find it curious that everything is now fixated on a single imaginary pin: where I have been hired. In the past, I considered potential jobs based on whether they would pull me further from my partner (Melanie primarily, as Emily was a bit more flexible and autonomous). Now I have a partner who is portable, who looks to begin an adult life with me (albeit an adult life within a couple of dozen minutes from her mother) wherever works best for us. She has no job but artist and is well finished with her collegiate education.

I am briefly infatuated with this first apartment because I see it through the eyes of one who has spent the last three years in a studio apartment that fell apart (one that I am positive has a black mold problem in the walls because my former landlord refused to fix obvious water damage and gaping holes in the ceiling, deciding to leave these for the company to whom he sold out). Amber sees it through the eyes of someone who presently lives in a house and thus finds this space cramped. For $50 less than I wanted to spend only on rent, we would get a partially furnished one bedroom with all utilities taken care of. And, yes, there is a part of me that simply wants this process over as quickly as I can manage it. I had initial terror that I had to move at all, nagging worry that I would not be able to find an apartment that is close enough to my job and in our price range. It seemed so massive a task to have to perform while acclimating to a new job, but there is no other way. This apartment more than satisfies my basal needs, even if it is obvious the landlord presumes I am eighteen and in need of parental supervision.

When he shows us the view from the backyard, seventy acres of forest ending at the Hudson River with only the Catskill Mountains blocking the horizon, I do my best to keep composed and not hand him all my money. He gives us paperwork and, just as we get in the car, we receive a call about another apartment twenty minutes away.

A fine cabin to be axe murdered.

We arrive at Apartment Two and I am startled for a moment that it is not an apartment. No, it is a cabin. A self-enclosed building with a roof and no other residents. It had not occurred to me that this would be an option, let alone for $105 less than our top rent.

A woman - not the landlord - shows us around the building. She details that the only thing included is well water, every other utility would be our responsibility. When I press her as to the presumed cost of heating this cabin, she becomes cagey and refuses to divulge. She explains that a tree recently fell on the roof and they are still cleaning up the floor, which she assures us she had just waxed and washed despite the dirt. She mentions that the lawn would be ours and therefore our responsibility for mowing, which is to say that she will do it for $20 a week. She leaves us to wander about it at our leisure while we fill out a rental application. Amber will not say whether or not she especially likes this place, but it certainly is roomy. As she writes, I begin taking pictures of the dimensions, then of the damage and flaws I see (mold, broken plaster, no doors on the top cabinets, plywood drawers on the bottom, nothing but rotten boards for the front and back porch). Though there is talk of there being a boat in the back we can use, I am reticent given how much work this place would plainly need, work the landlord had obviously felt unnecessary before having this woman show it off.

We are momentarily stymied as to our next move, which turns into going to the center of Red Hook and checking the corkboards outside any grocery store or cafe. As we do, I point out to Amber where bits of my books have taken place. "That's the gas station where Roselyn calls the police, that's the White Rabbit Cafe in the story, over there is the Red Hook Diner--"

"That vampires run," she adds.

"Yes, though possibly not really. And that is Shane's apartment."

"So, we could live in Shane's apartment?" she asks.

One Standard Amber.

"In theory."

"Have you ever been inside of it?"

I look up at the window. "Once. My friend Sarah lived there. I think it looks vaguely as I described it. It has been a while."

The corkboards end up being dead ends, since we are not looking to replace or find pets or attend classes in vegan cookery. The wandering is not, as we pass a couple of "For Rent" signs, all of which I promptly call.

Night is drawing in and I am due at a meeting for an anthology project in a couple of hours. I buy Amber dinner at the Apple a Day Diner and try to process.

As the waitress brings us the check, she asks if she can get us anything else.

"Yes, actually," I say. "Do you live in an apartment? If so, do you like your landlord?"

She reports that she does for both and, in short order, produces the landlady's phone number. I look at it and instantly recognize it as one we had already called in our wandering. I leave a big tip for the help.

The landlady - who seems to rent out half the buildings in town - calls the next day and says she has a one bedroom in town, but can only show it when I am working. This means that she can only show it to Amber and I will have to trust my lover to judge it well enough.

Days later, the land lady leaves the apartment over for me to see with Amber. It is not too small, not too far from anything much, nor too likely to fall apart during our occupancy. I ask Amber if she likes it.

"Sure. I guess," she says.

"Not good enough," I state. "We have to live here for a while and there is no heat and hot water included. I need you to be confident."

"Yes, I like it," she clarifies.

"Say you love it."

"I like it," she maintains.

"Fine, then. That will do." I begin to plan where our things will go and make my girlfriend stand in corners that I may measure in units of Standard Ambers. We have our first apartment and I wish this meant I felt the weight lifting, but I know this is only the beginning. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20111207.php 25 Dec 2011 00:00:00 EST

I am not certain what to expect from Kelley's memorial service. I assume it is not a funeral, that he will be there in spirit but not in body. I hope this is the case, at least, as his corpse is not an experience I feel I need. I am not sure of the etiquette of terms - funeral, wake, memorial service - because I have gone only to a couple of these. People online had been speaking of Kelley's Catholicism - that he was so devout that he refused to dress up as a zombie for a zombie Easter party (instead, he dressed as an ostensibly post-mortem Judas and told everyone that he was the reason they were all there) - but this was not a facet of his personality I was ever given occasion to encounter. The vast majority of my prior association with Kelley took place as we tried to terrify the paying public. Theology did not play much of a part in our discussions.

On the drive to the Calvary Chapel, I feel anxiety that expresses itself through urges toward road rage. I understand that this is what is going on and to not let it get the better of me (even if the person in front of me is driving with their hazards on, ten miles below the speed limit, on a road where it is impossible to pass them legally, rather than pulling over and letting the twenty cars behind them go). I meet Amber in a dusty parking lot outside a building that in no way seems holy. She is surrounded by mourners, which is to say "people in black clothing". The demeanor of those in the parking lot, while slightly subdued, is still closer to amusement than anguish.

Amber, dressed in khakis and a black top, is there only for me. She did not know Kelley and had no occasion to have ever met him, since I was too poor to take us to the Haunted Mansion this year. I did not ask her to be there, but she offered to join me when I mentioned I would be going to the service. I was at the very least relieved that she opted to join me, but I was not going to ask her. (Though more precisely, I was overwhelmed with love and appreciation that my girlfriend was willing to sacrifice an evening to be in an awkward social situation with me rather than allow me to languish alone in discomfiture.)

The assembled throng agrees that this parking lot, adjoining what they assure us is a hockey rink, is likely not the right location however much the address assure us otherwise. We spy a sign for the chapel and trudge down the long driveway. People around us crack jokes about how tricking us into meeting at the wrong location would have been what Kelley would have wanted and how the lack of an obituary could all be a part of a massive practical joke. I squeeze Amber's hand, which I have placed inside my capacious coat pocket as defense against the chill of the night, hoping to convey something to her, though I don't in the moment know quite what. I cannot focus fully on anything but the moment, her hand in mine, the cold.

When we find the chapel, I am astounded to see how beyond full the parking lot is. Could they all be here for the memorial service? It does not seem possible. When I went to Emily's father's funeral, the funeral home was packed, but that would have only accounted for one hundred people at the most. This parking lot implies fivefold as many mourners.

We make our way into the building, the air heavy with evaporating tears and a dense silence. I shake hands with and hug people who I have never before seen in anything but shrouds, masks, and latex prostheses. "These people should be dripping blood from every orifice," I whisper to Amber. "Then I would know who I was hugging." Indeed, some people are referred to only by appellations such as "Scary Guy" and "Devil Boy", even if said in somber tones.

We are ushered into a carpeted room that is packed beyond capacity, eventually being directed to seats in the second row, just behind the band. The pastor gets on the microphone and asks if the church family - those who are members of this chapel but not expressly biological family or Kelley's friends - would kindly move to a secondary room to make space for truer mourners. I hear some shuffling, but the view behind us looks no roomier.

This space is vast and seems as though it could accommodate over four hundred in comfort. Later, I will be quoted the figure of a thousand mourners, but I do not know how accurate that is. There is a raised stage, on which the pastor, a couple of guitars, a keyboard, and several mic stand sit. On either side of the stage are six-by-five foot screens projecting a picture of Kelley smiling in his slightly goofy way. In the back, someone is thanked for volunteering his time to do lights and sound for this service. The few church services I have ever attended - weddings, funerals, Christmas - have been markedly more austere.

Kelley's father and mother grace the stage at the pastor's request. His father talks about the parts of Kelley I know, the man who could charm a raging bull into docility, the one who made friends of everyone, the man with the heart of a child to whom kids flocked. To this last point, his family is gathering donations in Kelley's name to provide Christmas gifts to those children in need. He says how, in watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, he was reminded of Kelley. He is the balloon held aloft, but all of us are the connection that keep him anchored to this world. He seems composed, almost peaceful, in a way I am certain I would not be. He then speaks of Kelley's religious side, something the pastor will detail almost to the exclusion of anything else, how Kelley had wanted to be a committed member of the church, how he wanted to more keenly feel the presence of God in his life. Granted, my conception of Kelley is weighted toward his adolescence when he was foulmouthed and hormonal, but what his father describes is almost a version of him beyond my imagining. Kelley apparently had the "Footsteps" poem tattooed in whole upon his left upper arm, as it reminded him that Jesus was there to carry him in his times of need. This brings his family comfort, because they know Kelley is not gone but merely practicing his volleyball spike with Jesus.

His mother demurs speaking at all, but instead nods along with her husband's remarks.

After a slideshow set to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man" Kelley had made for his mother years ago (with the portentous comment "if I ever die, this is going to make you cry so much"), the pastor comes back. He largely preaches, throwing up Bible verses and challenging us to look at aspects of the Bible and tell him that the whole of the book isn't true. I don't find this consoling, though I hope most gathered do. If every word in the Bible were literally true as he claims (especially those statements that contradict other things in the Bible...), that means that Kelley is damned, since he committed suicide and that is a mortal sin that cannot be ameliorated through repentance. All the pastor will grant is that anyone who is not a Christian is going to Hell to burn forever at the hands of his loving God. "If Kelley could come back to you all," he says, all smiles, "he wouldn't. He is where he belongs." I rather disagree and squeeze Amber's hand instead of whispering my irritation. We should be allowed our tears at the death of a man and allowed to remember him at this memorial service, not told in essence that we are wasting our time.

I want the pastor to discuss Kelley, whom he knew, whom he reports came into his office months ago wanting to play a greater part in the church. I want this man not to merely close his eyes and look as though Kelley's death transports him to bliss, but to address that it hurts him personally, how this is a loss not only for him but for the world. He says Kelley would call him, that they would have frequent conversations. Did Kelley confess suicidal thoughts to this man? Did he suspect what Kelley was contemplating? But we get none of that, only a series of Bible quotes (included one from Revelations) that he, the pastor, likes with occasional mentions that Kelley might have appreciated them. I later wonder aloud to Amber whether the pastor simply slots the name of the recently deceased into a boilerplate sermon, given how minimally his portion of the memorial service had anything to do with Kelley.

After some talented Christian rock and another slideshow, the pastor asks if anyone would like to come to his podium to share a story about Kelley. "Make sure they are brief, though!" he chides us after his forty-five minute lecture about his favorite Bible quotes and our own eminent damnation. Only one person goes up, Kelley's aunt, saying how Kelley was born was she was nineteen and carefree but how she learned the meaning of love and responsibility for that love from watching her sister raise Kelley. She says that this was a horrible accident that took Kelley from the world. I look at Amber and mouth the question "accident?" It occurs to me for the first time that one could kill oneself and not have committed suicide, accidentally overdosing or driving recklessly, but this slip is just another puzzle I will not be able to resolve when I want a piece that will clarify.

There is a lull of fifteen second when people are weighing whether they, too, wish to speak, during which the pastor dismisses us to enjoy refreshments in the back.

Amber and I exit. As I do, I see Chris, one of Kelley's best friends as far as I know, crumbled into the arms of a woman while a child tugs at the cuff of his pants. I want to say something comforting to him, but find I do not have the words and know I do not have the right. Amber and I wait by the doors. After a few minutes, and several acquaintances nodding at me as they try to exit, I admit to her that I don't know what I am waiting for. For solace, I suppose. To feel connected to someone else who knew Kelley, someone who won't throw up the words of the ancient dead and weak platitudes in lieu of admitting that this was a senseless death and we deserve better than to be told to get over it now in the name of Jesus (who, as I recall, did say in Matthew 5:4 that those who mourn are blessed because they will be comforted).

We follow the flow of mourners past a smiling woman offering a tray of Swedish meatballs. I find this peculiar and I am about to leave, but Amber takes one. I do as well and we are subsequently led into a room full of cakes, breads, cookies, and punch. It feels like a junior high dance.

"Is this what happens at memorial services?" I ask Amber, as I fill a small plate so as to have some reason to stick around longer.

"I don't know, I haven't been to one in a while. It seems like churches have this kind of food every time I am in one."

I bite into my cupcake and then say, "I was not aware, I have never encountered this at a church. It's usually much more about eating crackers made of Jesus."

People approach us on occasion, greeting me as I try to mentally age them a decade and cover them in fake blood to figure out who they are. This is closer to what I wanted, though some seem too nervous or relieved (that this service is over, not that Kelley is dead). I cling to Amber, chatting with her intermittently about Kelley and mortality but mostly about any other subject I can contrive. ]]> http://xenex.org/journal/20111202.php 06 Dec 2011 01:00:00 EST

If you are anything like me - and why wouldn't you be? - the idea of publishing contracts fills you with a cold panic. While writing is an art for you, it is a business for your publisher. They would like to make money. As pro-writer, as friendly, as positive as the publisher may seem, you are well advised to assume that they are out to steal all your characters and give you no royalties ever. If this happens to not be the case in the end - as will almost definitely be true - you are welcome to be pleasantly surprised.

Here is my advice for any serious contract:

1. Follow Yog's Law: Money should flow toward the author. Any contract that wants money from you - upfront, in installments, whatever configuration - is a crock and you absolutely should not sign it. Frankly, you should not deal with any company that wants money from you because they are a scam vanity publisher and beneath you. (Of course, you do have to pay for copies of your own book that you resell at signings and events.)
2. Get a lawyer. I know they are scary. They wear suits and carry briefcases. Unless you are James Patterson, you likely treat your fictional lawyers as little more than pompous punching bags. But this is the one moment in your life where you genuinely need them. Consider it, if you must, as a lesser of two evils situation. I know, you are a poor writer. If you got an advance (I never did) you imagine that most of it is about to go to some law firm. Not so. First of all, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts will be willing to chat with you for free, thus the "volunteer". (A slight warning: the last time I had to deal with Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, it was over a month later - well after I had sent the contract back - before they called me in reference to my voice mail. They are busy people and, if you need to see someone right now, you are likely going to have to pay for the privilege.) Secondly, though they may not be experts in entertainment law, most lawyers have looked at a contact before. Some advice and guidance is better than none.
3. Your publisher will be willing to negotiate, if you are any good. They want to keep you happily churning out sequels and not complaining. Further, they do not want you to seek out other publishing houses if you are a lucrative prospect. If they are willing to let you go, it is either a power play (at which point, you are dealing with short-sighted jackasses and would be better served with a more mature and professional house) or you aren't as good as you would hope and they do not mind losing you.
4. Most importantly, your publisher will be willing to negotiate if they are any good. Good publishers have dealt with all this before and have thought ahead for potential objections and solutions. Any publishing house that reacts unprofessionally to a request for clarification or a request to amend something is either very new or about to file for bankruptcy.
5. Check any percentage against what other authors get. If it seems low, ask your publisher why. Dealing with a contract - a legally binding document - is not the time to develop a streak of meekness. Again, if your publisher is remotely worth their salt, they will be not only willing but eager to discuss this with you. Doubtlessly, you are not the flakiest writer they have dealt with. As long as you are not a prima donna pain in the ass, they will work with you and allay/address your concerns.
6. If you see clauses that say they gain copyright of your book or characters, don't sign it. If you think "I can just write new characters and getting my name out there matters more" realize that the contract might specify the publisher owns any characters you create and that will be a costly bitch to fight in court. You want to retain all rights to your work, otherwise you can end up trapped. (My publisher specifies a five year renewal period; if either party is dissatisfied after this, the contract is not renewed). If the company goes under, you might be stuck with a property you cannot legally market.
7. As another author, Deborah Lipp, reminded me when last I had to deal with a contract (for the film rights to my first novel), "The important parts of the contract are not the money bits, but the rights and responsibilities. Are you indemnified from their malfeasance? Their contract will make damn sure that they're indemnified... if you turn out to be a plagiarist... Make sure the clause protecting you is as strong as the clause protecting them."
8. Everything in the contract is negotiable.

His name was Kelley Doyle. I met and worked with him at the Haunted Mansion almost fifteen years ago. He was such a character that I wrote him into a one-act play I created in college, one that was never produced and which got a C from a professor because he could not believe in Kelley. Someone so foulmouthed could not possibly have wisdom to bestow, according to my teacher.

Kelley was just a kid when I met him, short and frenetic. You could not keep him still. He had an attitude that demanded attention. He could crash a funeral and somehow make the bereaved laugh.

We hadn't spent any real time together for years, since I could no longer offer my Octobers to the Haunted Mansion. We remained friendly, no doubt, but there did not seem a compelling reason to hang out unless by chance we ran into one another. Still, if anyone asked about him, I would have had only positive remarks. No one could hate him, no matter how he might amuse himself by tormenting them.

I have looked through his Facebook Wall every day since my younger brother texted me to let me know the rumor that Kelley had killed himself before Thanksgiving. I admit I looked in part to try to figure out why, as though these cursory glances will arouse in me some Holmesian intuition.

When I look through what is being posted, I find this from our mutual friend Rob.

Just feel numb. To my knowledge I haven't lost any friends in my age bracket until now. And suicide of all things. I'm glad the last time I saw him in September it was on good terms with a hearty handshake and greeting. I think I met Kelley Doyle around 1996, and since then he's always been a guy that almost always "got away with murder". Sometimes he was incredibly annoying and we'd end up in a fist fight. He actually tried to fight me after I quit the Haunted Mansion 10 yrs ago... because I quit. Two summers ago, I helped him raise money at Hope On The Hudson. I was pretty impressed with him for organizing and producing that benefit. This time, he has gotten away with murder, his own. I wanna call him out, like he did me... and kick his ass for quitting. Even when the guy pissed you off, you couldn't be mad at him for too long.

Kelley is not the first suicide in my circle of friends. That dubious honor goes to Todd, ten years dead last summer. Instead, Kelley is the least explicable, the one I know will disturb me for a long time.

Not that there can be any real comparison, but last year at this time, I was beginning one of the mentally darkest points in my adult life. The life I led felt impossible and I felt terrible about myself. The herbal remedy I took to alleviate the symptoms made me so much worse, so sensitive to all pain around me and yet completely trapped inside my head. I called the crisis hotline too many times, just to have someone to talk to about what welled up in me without other outlet. Kelley does not seem like the type to reach out.

Obviously, I didn't kill myself. I did not even want to kill myself, I just ached for my life to be easier to endure. However, had I died then, I do not doubt that anyone looking at my recent communications would feel all signs pointed toward self-destruction. I do few things without considering every angle in writing.

I am not exactly casting aspersion that Kelley did kill himself, but I can think of no justifiable reasons. I try to find his rationale, though I would not be able to accept it if I did. Why he died and, I suppose, why I didn't. It feels as though he were leading an arguably enviable life on his terms. He had started a relationship in June with an attractive woman. His job seemed to be traveling the country, building haunted houses and going to horror conventions. He had been on AMC for the month of October as part of a documentary series about the Haunted Mansion. If there were a camera anywhere, it was going to end up turned on Kelley. (A little unfortunate at the moment; given the nature of his work, there are several pictures of Kelley smiling as he builds coffins.) He was a difficult man to ignore, somehow more so now.

He was was so vibrant. There are these pictures of him, grinning, a beer in his hand. Him in a suit and sunglasses, looking like a scene out of Wedding Crashers. Acting in a murder mystery. Yet I cannot find even a morsel - a message of concern from a friend, a morose status update - that would lead me to understand why he did this.

We are conditioned to expect a sort of paper trail. You want a plot, you want foreshadowing. But with Kelley, at an arm's length as I am, I get none of that. People go from making joking homoerotic references one day to mourning his death the next with no intermission. You see this outpouring of love after someone dies, after they kill themselves, because you can't be expected to be that open when someone is still above ground. Someone posted that they had run into him a few days before at a grocery store and that he seemed fine then. While that might not be the ideal place to unburden oneself of secrets, it seems that no one had an inkling.

I don't know the vagaries of the end of his life. There is no reason for me to and I do not deserve to. I do not know if he reached out to anyone, if there were hints at what he might do. I do not know and never will if this had been his first attempt or simply his last. Anything I learned about this would only be to comfort me, would be an implicitly selfish act.

There is so much about him that is a blank, white space to me. I don't know if he ever had thoughts of suicide before. I don't know if there was a note. And, frankly, it isn't any of my business. I have no right to know and I don't presume otherwise. I am little better than a stranger and I won't ever get a chance to be any more than that. I can't imagine what it must be like for his girlfriend, likely still in the honeymoon period of their relationship when she so decisively lost him. She keeps her status as "In a Relationship", even after Kelley's sister uses his account to end their connection.

We stereotype what a suicidal person is supposed to be. Kelley wasn't, he just died. You want to believe stereotypes about suicidal people because it makes them distant from you. No one who is like you could ever want to end their life, you want to believe. But suicidal people are just people, in the end. They are you, the only difference being that they could not get the help they needed in time, that they quit. It would be a tragedy if this death were only an accident and would rally up an angry mob were it a homicide. But Kelley did this to himself and so there is the survivor's guilt, the love for him and the shock intermingled, the ache that maybe something could have been done and wasn't.

I search for an answer nevertheless, to beat back the despair and comfort myself that there will be signs the next time someone I know thinks of taking his or her life. Kelley did not seem to be suffering from a terminal disease. No one in his life had just died. He had not endured an especially wrenching breakup, even. None of these would make it acceptable, but it would make it a bit more comprehensible. Primarily among adolescents, suicide is thought to be communicable. In a sense, the need to conform is greater than the need to survive. If someone who you believe to be similar to you kills himself, your subconscious adds weight to the belief that committing suicide is something that people like you do. This tendency is so prevalent as to have earned the name the Werther effect.

Particularly in countries outside of America, the fear of contagious suicide is so great that media is banned if it is presumed to glorify the act, that hearing about a suicide makes the vulnerable feel that they are now permitted to succumb. If someone so full of life as Kelley can end it all definitively, what chance does someone of a more depressive constitution have? I think Kelley would kick the ass of anyone daring to follow him into death. He was the sort of person who would not stand for someone hurting themselves (unless it could pass as a viral video), even if he was not inclined to regard himself with such compassion. I know he would not want himself to be this sort of example.

Could he have felt anything but loved in life? People flocked to him and regarded him with appreciation, even at his worst. He was constantly surrounded by friends or he simply made friends of most everyone around him, but that does not mean he was not lonely. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20111125.php 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST  

I am signing up for a discount card at a grocery store when I get the call, asking me if I would accept the job. I did not even manage to get home from the interview. I stammer that I accept, of course, trying to find a scrap of paper so I can write down what paperwork they need from me on Monday in order to move forward with my employment.

I call Amber and ask her for the most celebratory food she can think of. She settles on cake and reminds me that she already intended to bring a small bottle of champagne tomorrow. Now we will have a good reason for it. I then call my mother and say, affecting sadness, that I will have to move. She realizes my meaning and shouts her congratulations, affirming that the hour commute absolutely means I will have to relocate.

I thought I had done well enough in the interview, but have long since abandoned believing my level of qualification and aplomb in an interview bore any correlation to my employability. I had arrived early - which is apparently a faux pas according to articles I have read, but it has to be better than tardiness - and chatted with the secretary about Those Kids These Days and How Things Used to Be Different. That she is affable tells me much about this facility, at least as much as that there are M&M lawn gnomes and no razor wire fences (though, of course, there are locked and alarmed doors). It makes up for the suicide prevention doorknobs in the bathroom that cause me to become trapped for a minute. The last time I interviewed at a residential center - what others largely seriously call "kiddy prisons" - it bore all the marks of its adult equivalent. Where I interviewed today is a low security center in the middle of the country. In my research, all I pulled up was that local college students teach the residents poetry, which suggests to me that these are not the irredeemable thugs implied to exist at the other facility - murderers and rapists who would be expected (in fact, all but allowed) to assault me at a whim. When I interviewed today, I walked past a few of the residents and they seemed no worse at first blush than those I encounter daily while substitute teaching at an inner-city school. During the interview proper, two people scrutinized my resume and asked questions when necessary: why I no longer worked at this job or that, what this program I had used involved, why my novels take place in this area. Then, one of the interviewers played at being one of the residents and I dealt with him as I would any of my students. That I was compassionate, yet respectful and firm, seemed to impress him, but how else should one approach this population? I am not certain when I got the job, but I think it was decided before I left, as they had begun saying phrases like, "When you take the job" and "when we offer you the job." I do not know what was different this time, what they found lacking in all other comers that I possessed. I later suggest that, given that the interviewers mentioned that at least two of the five applicants to have made it this far are female, it might come down to my being the only male whose application was passed onto them.

Leaving the grocery store, I feel disconnected from reality. It has been over two years since I have had a steady job. I am uneasy with the idea that I might not have to struggle and live by each paycheck. Doing so was difficult, but I had grown accustomed to it. It is what I know now. To have a job that pays me for twenty hours more than I otherwise have to work almost fifty hours a week for now - one that finds my service valuable enough to offer me medical, dental, vision, and retirement - is a stunning turnabout and a vindication of what I had long hoped about myself despite the pain of the recession.

Part of my ego had been fractured by my inability to find gainful employment, making me meek. I was made to feel inadequate as I was again and again passed over for applicants who seemed far greener, living with the specter of eviction over my head every month. Last year at this time, I was subbing and barely meeting my bills (though I did). I panicked my girlfriend was going to leave me (and she did). Now I have a stable relationship and will soon have a state job with benefits. On paper, this is what I have long wanted.

This job and its requisite move means that Amber can now live with me. I will make enough money to support us until she gets a job. (She is more flexible in her employment requirements than I am, as she wishes only that it is at least part time and not excruciatingly boring, meaning it involves in no great proportion phones or food. I tell her she is not permitted to take a job that forces her to work weekends.) She admits that this step is scary and sudden, but expresses confidence that this will all be fine, that we will find a suitable apartment at the right price (which is at or under $800 a month, which surprisingly narrows the options quite a lot in the Hudson Valley). We suss out, too, what we require in our future home: likely an electric stove, as many utilities included but definitely heat and water, ideally pastoral with a nearby area where I can run, not a half hour drive to any entertainment or culture (preferably walking distance), a nearby post office (so Amber can mail out her crafts), no roommates or landlord in the same building, unfurnished (since we have too much furniture), closets, a proper internet connection (though we have no need for cable).

In these three years on my own, I have grown accustomed to certain routines and wonder at continuing these when we share a home. I need to exercise at least four days a week if I am to keep my happiness and health, something I tend not to do when Amber is around because I think it is rude to work up a sweat without her help. I then realize that I would be delighted to sometimes use my elliptical while she plays a video game, finding this the perfect concession. If only all issues we will face can be so easily resolved.

I need to figure out, too, what foods we can eat. She tends to say that she is good with anything, which I know cannot be true. Amber jokingly suggests that we can eat nothing but toast sandwiches, but we do need to figure out a more diverse menu than the pasta and turkey burgers I currently feed her.

I think through issues I had when last I lived with a partner and those I have witnessed in other relationships to enumerate to her in hopes of forestalling them in our domesticity. In brief:

• Do not throw out all my dish sponges without telling me.
• Do not put bleach on the clothes when you mean to use detergent.
• If there is something you own that is complicated to wash and you know how to wash it, do not presume I have any idea.
• Ask me to do things and I generally will. Glare at my head and I will cower.
• If I am cleaning, I am not trying to guilt you into cleaning. I just decided to tidy up.
• If you are hungry, say, "I am hungry, are you hungry?" and we will begin making food.
• I only know how to make so many things, but I will eat just about anything.
• Please do not have sex with anyone else.
• Do not take money out of my wallet without telling me. It confuses me.
• If you find surprising money in your pocket, please consider whether I have recently given you my half of the rent and do not spend your windfall before mentioning it.

Amber assures me that none of these will be a problem, as she likes having dish sponges, rarely uses bleach, is less complicated with her washing then she should be, and would like to learn to make more things but tends to be overly cautious with raw meat. As for money, she does not care for it and won't pilfer mine.

She adds from her own (roommate, not partner) experience:

• If I leave my stuff in the way, just tell me rather then complaining about it to other people.

We discuss, too, what chores we actually like doing (washing dishes and laundry, vacuuming and sweeping, cleaning windows) and tend to avoid (bathroom stuff and cleaning the refrigerator).

She wants to know what she can do in order to make me excited about this transition rather than worried. I offer that she could find us the perfect apartment, teleport our stuff there, and get me my security deposit back, which she rules as perhaps a little beyond her abilities. There are parts of this move that do excite me. I cannot wait to see how Amber will decorate, creating a space that is equal parts the two of us. When we are settled, when I spend every night with Amber asleep on my chest and wake to her kisses, I will feel that this was all worth it.

I think I feel better having had these conversations, but what I want most is to be sleeping beside her, which makes it clear her part of this transition is firm. This is not to say she does not frighten me. Things between us are lovely right now, I cannot help but be concerned about adding anything that might tip the scales. I do think this will work well because neither one of us is selfish in our relationship, but it is my nature to over analyze.

I fall asleep quickly but wake up after a few hours. For the rest of the night, I do not even rest. My mind will not cease buffeting adrenaline through my body, urging me to figure out a place to move immediately, before the snow comes. Every doubt, every bit of worry and panic, floats at the surface of my mind and will not be quieted until I figure out individual solutions that I will be unable to institute for a month.

As for this time to not be utterly fruitless, I sign online and write Amber the following message:

I keep waking up from vivid dreams and hoping the whole night has passed. No such luck. I am scared, as you might imagine. Of course, I want a real job. I haven't had benefits in over two years (not that I did much with them when I had them last time). It's just a very large change that I have to plan for and execute. And yes, when it is all finished, I will be in a home with you, leading the life I could not previously believe would be possible so soon. Feeling, if anything, like a real person rather than someone perpetually waiting for his life to begin. But it is nevertheless a daunting change. What if I find the job too difficult? What if we are not as compatible when money is thrown into the picture? What if I cannot find anywhere decent for us to live? I warrant that these are typical jitters - it would be weird if I were not thinking these things - but I nevertheless have them. In a way, I am used to the difficulty of my current life, since I have been doing it for so long. I am used to my relationship being much more uncertain and reliant on external factors. I love you to bits and you are stable, but I cannot deny that I fret a bit that you will pull off your mask (don't do that, I love your face) and be the worst parts of Melanie or Emily.
Here is the thing, when stressed, I have the maladaptive tendency to catastrophize. I can't breathe through the incremental steps, I just have to swallow everything at once. I had nightmares about my boarding school job for a month before I moved (as, in retrospect, I should have).
You are in this with me, my main ally given that I am dragging you along like a rag doll. So, it is going to be to you that I say these things at three in the morning.
I am scared. This is better than the initial fright, but I am still a bit shaky and worried. I am getting what I want, if not exactly as I would have wanted it (except for you. I do want you), but that is no less unnerving. I wish I were a little more ready or that this were a bit better.
I hope you are dreaming right now. I love you. I cannot wait to see you.

She replied:

I was actually asleep for once, and I am there for you even when I'm asleep, so you can always call if you want too - if I'm too asleep I may not answer or be very confused for a bit though. It is scary, but we do have some time. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure it's sunk in with me completely but I also tend not to worry too much except about the incredible amount of things I'm trying to get done in a short time or that the world simply doesn't work they way I want it. Either way, things tend to work themselves out as long as I actually work on them rather than procrastinating. I understand worrying that I'll end up being similar to an ex and such, as I have similar fears in reverse that I'll end up being something you don't expect or want, but I don't actually see that happening as, so far, nothing I've done seems to bother you as much as it does some people. Also I'm learning to trust you and be more open than I have before. I think it will go well and I'm really excited that I'll get to see you more and be moving out of here. I feel the same about how moving would be a good thing in the path of becoming a real person rater then a bit stuck as I have/had been feeling, especially before I had met you. And I can't wait to see you either!

At the very least, I feel that we understand one another. I managed to get through a full day as a fifth grade teacher - I am not wholly certain how and definitely felt my body rebelling against effort - and think I am functional despite my sleep loss. However, by the time Amber gets to me that evening, I am so delirious that I insist I am now a dragon (my hair is specifically a dragon independent of the reptilian nature of the rest of me, as it refuses to obey the edict of my brush). I intermittently roar at her so she is aware that she has wandered into a dragon�s lair and should be mindful not to step on my treasure. Toher credit, she roars back.

As I am already punch drunk from sleep deprivation, I nix the champagne and cake making until tomorrow and instead focus on a celebratory dinner of abysmally average Korean barbecue. I look at myself in the mirrored walls and can't help but feel like a stranger looks back. I have heard that every hour of sleep one doesn�t get is the equivalent of one alcoholic drink. By this metric, I am stumbling about with most of a six pack under my belt.

We then go to a friend�s birthday gathering at a local wine bar. I can focus only on Amber, though, and so talk to her about the life we shall soon be leading, as woman and dragon. The hostess Tara chats with us a little, but has her guest to keep her occupied, thankfully, as I am certain I make for poor company tonight.

I wake the next morning and mentally review the prior night.

"Was I," I ask Amber, "at any point last night sure I was, for instance, a dragon?"

"You were a dragon," she says. "Happens to everyone."

"I'm sorry anyway."

She roars at me, gently, and I kiss her. We make cupcakes and drink half a glass each of champagne from spider glasses she bought me last month. With her, this whole situation feels surmountable, even a bit easy and thrilling. I am a bit grateful that, when she leaves to travel south to visit relatives for Thanksgiving, she will be able to tell people that her boyfriend is gainfully employed.

When I go in Monday to fill out paperwork, I am introduced to some other members of the staff, including the man who will be my mentor. I am shown around, told I can have a free lunch there daily. After asking the residents to applaud my hiring, a counselor asks me to follow him out to a gazebo so he can get a bit of sunlight.

"I want you to know that you can't come in here and make them change," he says as though he fears this is my unspoken plan. "You can offer them change, you can put it out to them, but they are the ones that have to take the initiative to change. You are just there to teach them."

"I guarantee you, that will not be a problem," I say, a bit to preoccupied with my own change to deal with the total transformation of twenty young men in a residential center. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20111120.php 28 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST