Over tea on her parents' back porch, we ask Jinx whether she had any romances in Deutschland, where she spent a semester studying. She admits that there was one, though it hardly ranked as torrid. He was in his early thirties and found on the dating site we all visit. He was a seven minute walk from her flat and she figured that she might as well try a foreign fling, if just for the novelty of having done it. She ended it when she realized their relationship consisted of watching movies and episodes of The Family Guy in English, something she could easily get stateside (and would not want). I am not even certain that they spoke German together, which would at least earn the cuddling a single star from the Cannes Film Festival. Still, she did better at the foreign fling concept than her Chinese classmate, who lived by the mantra (and up to the stereotype of) "no boyfriends!"

Beside this, Jinx was not wholly satisfied with the experience of Germany, though she was grateful to have it under her belt. In retrospect, she wished she had practiced her German more and spoke with the English speakers less (though she expresses some consolation that she at least spoke English with a French girl and the aforementioned Chinese girl). She spent money she didn't have to visit other countries in Europe, because she was there and knew she'd best take advantage while she could.

Melanie behaves more exuberantly in Jinx's presence. She rarely keeps her own accent for long, verbally venturing across the whole of the British Empire, taking side trips to France and Russia, all in the space of a minute. I wonder whether this is how Melanie always is in Jinx's presence, the absurdity spraying in a torrent. It had been building up urgent pressure and cannot be released slowly.

Kestrel

I am delighted to see Jinx, of course, but less loquaciously. She ranks among my favorite people and I fantasize about our one day living with her and her sister. However, my excitement is dampened not only by my disinclination toward silly voices (I am a recovering addict), but because I am horrifically allergic to her three cats and no pill proves remedy. They do, however, make me spacey enough that I have to fight my way out of my skull in order to contribute meaningfully.

The night is getting late without dinner. I had forgotten that meals in Jinx's household tend to be piecemeal, that one simply eats when one wishes and what one wishes. I press the issue and am told our surest bet for food is Kestrel.

We drive half an hour in the dark. Melanie has Jinx sit in the front seat, ostensibly to navigate, but mostly because she misses having Jinx at her side after the intolerable time apart. I am not one to fuss, at this allows me to scribble notes in the backseat with impunity.

We drive to where Kestrel is house-sitting for a gay couple. There is mention of sheep (at least, I think there is - the allergy pills have rendered it such that I see odd visions when I close my eyes), but I don't see any when we arrive and are ushered into Kestrel's waiting arms.

Though we had grabbed a bagful of various ingredients from Jinx's home, there is little coherence. In theory, a meal could be made by combining these properly, but it would not be a meal that made sense. Melanie appoints herself the head chef and, in the process, makes some catty remark to me.

A darling wrapped in allergens.

I raise an eyebrow and remind her, "Jinx is on the list of people you don't have to act tough around. Keep that in mind."

"It's a force of habit."

It is ten before there is something like a meal, cous cous and what I will call improvisational curry (tomatoes, mushrooms, and curry powder). At this point, I would eat most anything, but am grateful that Melanie's culinary experiment bore tasty fruit.

Jinx mentions that Kestrel will be studying abroad in India in the fall. Though I have never been to India and (unless I am scheduled on a book tour in Mumbai) am unlikely to be going there in the foreseeable future, I try to never let such silly things as a "lack of practical knowledge" interfere with my advice-giving, especially given her keenness on Buddhism.

"If you are going all the way to India, you absolutely have to go to Dharamsala," I insist. "It is the seat of the Dalai Lama's government in exile, since they were booted from Tibet."

Kestrel pulls up a map on her computer, pointing where she will be studying. It is fairly central. I could not find Dharamsala on a map, aside from assuming it was somewhere near China and, were this a more detailed map, near the smidge of land that I will assume to be Tibet, from which His Holiness and entourage fled in the midst of a sandstorm decades ago. Nevertheless, I have made my proclamation and - though my intimacy with the subcontinent begins and ends with an ex's embroidered stories, the novel Shantaram, and the movie Slumdog Millionaire - I can't go back on it. We spend a good ten minutes plotting out train travel that will take her close enough for a visit with His Holiness.

Well, I didn't touch it, did I?

When Kestrel gets up to share her findings with Jinx, I note the white paper cover of a book hand-titled "The Artist's Way by K. S. Montague", one of Kestrel's pseudonyms. I instinctively know better than to touch it without permission, but instead say the title and author aloud.

Kestrel materializes and warns me away, that it isn't for anyone else's eyes, concerning some inner work a paperback suggests she do by its steps. She does not actually remove her book from the table, which I appreciate, as it suggests she knows I can survive the vast temptation it presents to me.

Over the remains of dinner, we listen to Kestrel and Jinx improvise on a piano. I know Jinx's singing voice, as she distributes her songs online. I am not accustomed to Kestrel's, which has the smoky twang of Zooey Dechanel from She and Him.

We leave after a few hours, but don't get much farther than the lawn before looking heavenward to the thrall of the Perseids meteor shower. As we are in a rural section of the country, there is little light pollution to corrupt our view (especially once we shout for Kestrel to turn off all the lights in the house).

They don't actually need hands to play, just unity

We lay on a blanket outside and I want to say something profound, like that I feel infinite in this moment. And I do feel this, but it seems trite to announce it. These moments are given to silence or jokes to fend off the minuteness one feels if one understands the slightest thing about universal distances, as we all do.

Jinx says, "I used to worry that I would look up and see a star from a constellation I knew would zip away. I get that it doesn't work that way, but..." After a moment, I ask, "How much money would I need to see this sky every night?"

No one has an answer, though Melanie suggests that the sky is yet another accessory the absent couple has accumulated and that it is only affordable without children.

The next day, we pile into the car for another trip though I am surprised that the destination is little more than a cramped ethnic store little bigger than my apartment, where the girls snatch up ingredients, saying we will have the best tea ever.

On our way home, we stop and pick blueberries. I am not certain as to the legality of our toil, whether some owner is going to accost us for our presumption and demand payment. We pick for forty minutes, though the clear air does little to abate the symptoms of my allergies. It is odd to see Jinx picking berries in a rock t-shirt and shiny black tights, an outfit better suited for clubbing. Melanie, as always, has a perfect berry picking hat at the ready.

In a short while, we have a bag full of our plunder. Only then does the suggestion of payment arise. Jinx walks into an unmanned shed and makes change for a twenty from the open and overflowing register. "You know you are in the country when the till doesn't even shut."

Manual labor

Melanie and Jinx fly about in the kitchen, summoning forth powders and zests from the larder and stewing berries. Quickly, a dessert arises from the ether and they both reiterate that the berries have curiously high anti-oxidant properties, meaning that seconds are not only possible but suggested. I neglect my general aversion to hot fruit, knowing I will earn their scorn otherwise. Gaining a purple tongue is hardly the worst punishment.

Jinx finishes her seconds (and half of my firsts) and then announces that she needs to practice with her family band, The And. As we are fans of Jinx, adding Nym on the piano and Kestrel on the drums and joint vocals could only improve our collective esteem. They practice the same song over and over, hearing flaws that I do not. However, they are recording a CD soon and need to be perfect beyond doubt.

The topic of religion comes up over our tea/dinner and, when Melanie is dismissive of my spirituality, Kestrel asks where Melanie stands on the issue of God. It isn't that Kestrel has anything vested in Melanie believing in God, that she thinks Melanie won't get past the velvet rope in Heaven. Kestrel does not, herself, believe in God (or, likely, gods) as it is conventionally understood.

Melanie's answer comes down to not needing the divine to think the world an incomprehensible miracle, but one she is delighted to spend the rest of her life trying to comprehend. "When I am out in the muck of the Hudson, I feel like a pastor in my cathedral."

I add to this my axiom, "Science is the language God speaks. The better we know how things really work, the closer we are to the divine."

We ate Smurfs

"You sound awfully Pagan," Jinx says to me.

"That might be because I am a Pagan."

"I thought you were Discordian? ...Though I guess that makes sense, doesn't it?"

The moment that brings things into focus for me is something so banal. Kestrel asks us to name as many countries as we can in three minutes in order to appease some online quiz. I jokingly surf to the Nations of the World song, which they rule as cheating. After we succeed in naming over 100 together, they ask to see the video and I realize that they don't recognize Yako Warner.

"We didn't watch TV growing up," Jinx says, very slightly put out. This is something she has had to admit before in less understanding circumstances. Even now, there is no television in their home, leaving the fireplace to assume its position as focus. "Oh, I know," I reply, "I am just surprised at the difference in our cultural contexts." I can and have enumerated the rogues' gallery from Darkwing Duck and am aware that this is hardly a merit badge, however much I now have the urge to make them watch a few episodes of Animaniacs so our referents will match up.

Jinx and kestrel are something exquisitely different from others and I think, in part, this is because they did not while away their formative years staring at a box, being passively indoctrinated. Instead, I gather they entertained themselves with reading, music, and outdoor play.

As did she.

While I got more than my share of play, owing to my mother babysitting through my formative years, I rarely recall feeling anything like the bond jinx and kestrel share with my own siblings. I never contemplated a family band, let alone follow through with making one and recording a CD, for which they have been rehearsing since Jinx returned home. I won't remotely minimize the influence that a childhood of being homeschooled by Nym and Daphne must have had, but the lack of a television further forced their imaginations to provide their entertainment.

Melanie tells me that she is sorry, but that she will have to marry Jinx instead of me so she can legitimately be a part of this family. She amends that I am welcome to marry Kestrel.

"Do I have to... consummate... the union?" I ask.

"No, no, we can all live in communal polygamy," she assures me.

Quickly, a square is made with intersecting lines of each of us. At the center is an arrow labeled "madness", which is right where I would like to be. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100815.php 29 Aug 2010 11:13:00 EST   What happiness looks like

Immediately upon seeing Hannah at Kyoto Sushi, I remark how well she looks. It isn't fair to judge her by how last I saw her - hair still severe from basic training, in her dress uniform, nervous for her town hall wedding to Arthur - but I did anyway. I glance about to see whether the changes are cosmetic, but her wellness derives from an inner fullness. Her body is lean and muscled, no longer waifish. The Navy seems to suit her, at least when she can escape it for a week to be with her husband.

Hannah says that she has lost her fears and insecurities when she accepted how petty they were weighed against forty-eight hours without sleep, drill sergeants screaming abuse, and "confidence chambers" - where one's gas mask is ordered off in a room full of tear gas. She explains to Daniel the weapons in whose use she is now proficient with a casualness that is not forced. She is more realized from who she was last year at this time, the mildly neurotic and lightly fissured woman I called my sister in earnest.

When Melanie appears, she quickly notes how different Arthur looks, since she wasn't at the wedding and can't acknowledge a change she has only witnessed in pictures and my retelling. More than shorter hair, I think Melanie is unused to Arthur smiling, having last encountered him a year ago when he walked in on us cuddling against Hannah when he was picking her us for one of their initial dates. Then, he seemed little pleased to see me, and this scowl set Melanie's first impression. She didn't see his bliss at marrying Hannah in December, didn't know him when he loved her. Hannah, as is her secretive wont, kept all the best bits for herself, morsels only hinted at in the photo albums they keep. We don't know much else about him, aside from anecdotes about past lovers, but I feel that his love of her has been as transformative for him as the Navy has been for his wife.

As we eat, Daniel mentions some personal work he is doing to clarify his psyche, and adds that it has nothing to do with Hannah. With her withering sarcasm that I have missed, she said, "I'm so glad you felt the need to specify this."

Daniel becomes his equivalent of flustered, which registers only as an arched eyebrow. I jump in and say that I think this is a fair thing to say and that, were I to be dining with an ex who had wounded my subconscious (and what ex doesn't?), I would want her to know that my current healing was irrelevant to the affection we had shared, if only to forestall unspoken awkwardness. Also, given the company, there is no real propriety to preserve.

In a year or more, when Melanie likely drags me away to wherever she gets into graduate school, I hope that I can have nights like these, standing dates with a group of close and interrelated friends. I admit to having my unconscious stained by sitcom scriptwriters, but I covet the friendships of these fictional characters who - despite the drama necessary to keep the viewers tuned in - remain close.

Moreover, in their presence, Melanie is consistently affectionate, nuzzling against me on our side of the booth and sneaking wasabi tinged kisses. I realize that this is because all present are safe and have only really known us as a couple. To Daniel and Hannah, there has only ever been Melanie (and even then, I had several months to warm Hannah up to the idea of Melanie before they actually met). They have always been our friends, the only close friends we established as a couple. Even when Hannah returns to her service in a week's time, or when I follow Melanie to grad school, this bond will echo because it derives from somewhere deep. It has breathed deep when the masks are off. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100810.php 20 Aug 2010 12:33:00 EST   See? Not clones.

We pick her up outside a club I frequented in my teen years, one next to a brick factory that boasts of making office furniture. At this hour, the area seems more intimidating than it ought given that I know the names and GPAs of the local thugs. I keep the engine running and Melanie dashes out to retrieve our quarry, Jenna. I feel uncomfortably like someone's dad as I watch a woman in mom jeans hop out of her mini-van and call to a gaggle of kids to pile in, fresh from the mosh pit. Which side of this dynamic am I on again?

Jenna, with hair dyed the orange and pink of a sunset beneath a midnight top hat, wanders to someone's car to retrieve what she will need to spend the night in my apartment. I had earlier joked to Melanie that I wanted to make sure her parents knew where she would be sleeping but - seeing the glint of her braces in the rear view, the orange of their rubber-bands matching her hair - I wonder with more sincerity. I brush this off. I am about as harmless as it gets and Jenna refers to me as having a "kind face", which I take to be a gentle dig.

I'd spoken with Jenna online, enough to gather that we would get along. I couldn't rationalize having overnight company - no matter how well Melanie spoke of her - without some vague screening, though the majority of my questions had to do with breakfast foods, as Jenna had picked up a parasite in South America that made her allergic to gluten. Melanie and Jenna had joked that the latter was a clone, but I know my lover well enough to immediate pick up on dozens of obvious differences that owed nothing to the physical. Jenna is a discrete individual, but similarly companionable.

It is nearing midnight when I bring Jenna into my apartment. I had intended to give all the surfaces a good scouring prior to her entrance - I may still be dented by Melanie's first impression of my living space after a month of true bachelorhood - but Jenna's eyes don't even flicker at the mess that is requisite every night Melanie spends with me.

Mind the ladle, girls.

Melanie darts around my apartment, snatching away self-portraits and cute tokens she left me (and which I affixed to my refrigerator) before her gruff exterior can be witnessed by one of her closer friends. I have tried to assure Melanie that her friends likely know that she gains a liquid center in my presence, but she is deaf my hypothesis. For whatever reason, she obscures her Relationship Identity from those who know any of her other ones. In the presence of those who knew her first or independently, she has to create a combined identity, a mix of who she is with them and who she is with me. I am so accustomed to this that I inquired if Jenna ranked among those with whom she is willing to admit tenderness of a male. Melanie shrugged and said she probably wouldn't punch me in front of Jenna to reinforce what a bad-ass she is. This only manifests in her being snotty about my writing when I later show Jenna a few books that feature my contributions.

We three talk and cuddle until three in the morning, first on the pull out sofa, then on our bed. When we began to get dozy, I inquire whether Jenna would be sleeping in our bed. Despite her arguments to the contrary, she is small enough to take up negligible space. Melanie thinks this over for a moment and then pronounces that she might kick Jenna in her sleep owing to night terrors, so Jenna must retire in the living room, as is proper.

The Ladle Conspiracy

When morning comes, Melanie suggests we go out for breakfast. Before I can assent to the likely use of my debit card, she revises that I ought to make them pancakes and eggs. She confides in Jenna that I am her "good little wife", though I argue I am simply a good host until such a time as I boot them out for ingratitude.

We cuddle on the pull-out bed, watching the remainder of Henry & June, the girls enduring my kvetching that the movie earned an NC-17 rating because of a second long flash of a 1814 drawing of woman and an octopus becoming intimate. (For that rating, I demand actual sex, no matter how often - and accurately - the actress playing Anais Nin pretends to find her heels pointed at the sky.) As neither of the females present is averse to the sight of naked girl-flesh, they are firmly entranced while they finish up their breakfasts.

It is infrequent that I meet a new one of Melanie's friends, so I am glad to get on well with this one (even if - as they are not shy to remind me - she is eleven years my junior, younger than some of those whom I am paid to teach). There will always be a small nucleus of people in Melanie's life who are obscured from my sight - whether warranted or no - but I delight in the one who has been revealed over the last twenty-four hours, a girl on the shimmering end of the visible spectrum, one just beginning a journey that will rarely be less than eventful. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100801.php 12 Aug 2009 10:33:00 EST http://www.cavedrawingink.com/CDI_PRESENTS/CDI_PRES_DEZI.html ]]> http://www.cavedrawingink.com/CDI_PRESENTS/CDI_PRES_DEZI.html 12 Aug 2010 00:00:00 EST   Like fireflies to wanton gods

A woman with the spiky, blonde hair introduces herself as Sue and sits on the log next to me. "So, how did you get here?"

"Oh, I have GPS," I reply instantly, looking up from the orange of the fire. For a moment, I think she believes I am serious, so I amend that I knew Rhianna - her partner and the hostess - fourteen years ago, when she ran the shop Call of the Wild in Beacon and I assumed it was fate that there was a witchcraft store so near to my high school. To Sue, this is a satisfactory answer, though I think her real question is why I am alone here and why I am not going out of my way to talk or dance. The question she does not ask is a good one.

I ask after one of the more enthusiastic young witches, imagine myself in her shoes when I originally met Rhianna. She is so free with herself and so certain of her path, something I now cynically believe only comes from not being aware of the infinite multitude of right paths. Even as I think this, I know there is a touch on envy with my admiration of her sureness, as this is something I never remember and can therefore never gain back. (Not, I am aware, that I would want it. I am a Doubting Thomas by name and inclination.)

From the moment I arrived, I wondered what I had hoped to get from this. I know I had visions of my dancing around a bonfire, of reconnecting with the primal freedom I found at Free Spirit Gathering a few years ago, when Emily was busy with her drumming and I began to liberate myself in the presence of people I would never again see. I am so much more myself now, more complete and confident. I dance for fun at Cabaloosa and, until the July heat curtailed our standing date, was slowly learning to swing dance with Jacki. Yet I cannot overcome the barrier that tells me that I will not find any pleasure in dancing around this fire, that I will be conspicuous and stiff. I am intellectually aware that this is beside the point and that few raising their arms to the drizzle could survive in a Fred Astaire movie, but the spirit doesn't move me.

This is not to say that I am uninvolved. My eyes are usually focused on the embers and I feel a sense of serenity that is less evident in the tall grass of routine, to borrow a phrase. I stroll around the perimeter of the fire and, once, take up a percussion gourd to keep the beat going. But I cannot open my mouth for a chant, I cannot more than bob my head to the beat.

Which moves which?

This drizzle - forecasted to be a torrent - is why I am here alone, though I am not wholly ungrateful. Suzanne had offered herself up to my surprise, but I had called her in the morning to tell her she shouldn't make the drive. I would have felt the need to give her looks that said "These people may not represent my attitudes and viewpoints. Please do not judge me by them and forgive me anything they might say that would even slightly imply I am daffy." I've brought people to supposedly secular occasions that turned out to be Heathen proselytizing (though I more than understood that an event held by Rhianna via her store The Dreaming Goddess would be categorically Pagan). I am reticent to ever have that mortification again, especially with someone whom I would like to further cement a friendship.

I have no close Pagan friends. Religion is not a prerequisite for my affection, nor has it ever been. In high school, there were a couple of girls I dated who dabbled, but none who are currently local or speaking with me. I recall with horror trying to induce a few girls I dated to show an interest, but that lasted not much longer than it took for them to try an ineffective curse at the inevitable breakup. Even given that I used to be the head of an active Pagan organization (which is about six years quiescent), I never much saw a reason to spend my time with most of the members outside of the binds of monthly meetings. Conversely, ever has the problem been that those with whom I tend to feel the most comfortable and therefore spiritual are also those who believe that Jesus died for my sins or that believing in a Sky Daddy of any flavor demeans my intelligence.

My belief system is not integral to who I am. Rather, who I am is integral to my belief system. My Taoist Discordian hodgepodge fits me because I have custom tailored it to my philosophical frame. If it no longer did, it would change to suit me, not the other way around.

Yet, tonight, even as I enjoy my privacy in public, even as I watched Rhianna, Sue, and the witchling twirl fire, I don't connect. I don't feel anything like antipathy for any of them, even finding the teenagers dressed in Renaissance garb and appropriated tapestries suitably adorable. There are thirty people milling about, many of the middle aged women dancing as no one watched, though I can do little more. I can come up with excuses galore, but the fact of it comes down to me and the walls I still find around myself. But I take solace in the fact that I stay until the rain drives me out and, in my solitude, am at ease. It was not long ago that I would have been struck with such awkwardness that I could not have mustered the courage to come alone. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100725.php 09 Aug 2010 00:00:00 EST http://www.thebrokencitymag.com/ ]]> http://www.thebrokencitymag.com/BC6web.pdf 09 Aug 2010 00:00:00 EST   Dancing is a gateway drug

My friend was inebriated, despite her claim to only be on her second drink of the night. (Her name will not be provided, since this is only about her as a catalyst and she doesn't deserve embarrassment for something I am certain she doesn't recall the next day and which was harmless outside my overanalysis.) In the midst of her drunkenness, she said something that transcended flirtation and became an overt come-on, albeit one that acknowledged Melanie's existence, awesomeness, and permanence (due deference was given). It was idle and generalized, in that I likely received the treatment that would be given to any other male friend in her proximity with whom she felt both safe and slightly electric in the midst of Cabaloosa. No one sensible expects asexuality in a dance club and I usually have good (if hyperactive) defenses. But even being hit on by someone I respect - someone whom I am certain meant little by it - there existed in me uneasiness upon reflection.

I told Melanie about this because it felt duplicitous not to tell her (and, of course, it made for a story to share). I know that, in the past, I was overly liberal in relating to my ex what people had said about or against her, generally the legitimate concerns loved ones, which I passive-aggressively told her in lieu of addressing deficits in our relationship.

Melanie responded that it was sweet and cute that the drunken friend suggested she be Melanie's understudy, should the need occur. This is not the reaction I would have had in her shoes. I would be irritated, though I know my friend and am aware that she was not acting on presumption but affection and Irish courage. In Melanie's shoes, I would have subconsciously lowered by voice an octave and tried to suss out any detail that would aggravate or obviate the sin. Even when a near alcohol poisoned stranger in Spain peppered Melanie with sexual entreaties outside a club, I was uncomfortable, though the mere idea that Melanie would even for a second entertain his drooling suggestions verged on the ludicrous. Maybe it is possessiveness or an urge to protect that is ultimately unnecessary (while Melanie knows the proper placement and use of a salad fork, she is also inclined toward threatening eye gouging with it should a stranger not mind his manners).

I concede (because how could I not?) that Melanie is more secure than I am. This weekend, she is seeing some friends, one of whom she has assured me she will keep from my ever having to meet (she is certain that we will clash and sees no reason to bring this about). I am not jealous, per se, but my preference would be for her to be with me and not with people whom have behaved inappropriately toward her in the past. Even the token "do you want to meet us for lunch?" would not be unwelcome. (Melanie has always been one to compartmentalize her world.)

I am still - two and a half years into our relationship and despite her giving me few occasions in which I would be justified in looking askance - slightly insecure. I lug around carry-ons from my prior relationships and, I suppose, my childhood. (My father ascribes most of my abandonment issues to the fact that my mother and he did not and do not get along. To an extent I agree, given that my issues followed me through my dating life and had to originate somewhere primordial.)

Rosie mentioned a guy she brought to 80s Night who then proceeded to hit on and dance with other women in an effort to get her jealous. She told him in parting that jealousy only burns her, it doesn't make him desirable.

I've been that jealous one, glancing over my lover's shoulder to see who was looking at her ass. It is a wretched existence, because there is rarely cause for concern. Even if other people are attracted to the person on your arms and in your bed, all you need to know is that this person is devout and will deny every impropriety. If you can't trust them to do this, why would you deign to let them in your life to say nothing of your body? Why would you ever choose to believe they are seeking to recast your role? ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100723.php 04 Aug 2010 07:00:00 EST   Peachy!

I remember turning 21 as a non-event. I went to a bar to see Dave's band Bone and had my first legal drink, some alcopop that caused me to puff out my cheeks in distaste just as my picture was taken. Zack finished it, since my enjoyment was secondary to the milestone of buying it. Beyond legal alcohol, what good is 21 in America?

Melanie echoed this. She is French if given the checkbox and has had a healthy relationship with alcohol all her life. Despite having all the wrinkles of a Kewpie, she was never carded and certainly never had cause to need to acquire a fake ID.

Still, birthdays require a certain momentum that the Fates delight in impeding, a fact that plagues Melanie in no small way all day. She wants to go blueberry picking in acknowledgment of her birth, but no farms will accommodate. I think, but do not more than imply, that blueberries are either out of season or well picked out. Daniel, Melanie and I drive distances to the opening day at an orchard that will allow us to pluck their peaches, managing to avoid a herd of goats that plainly considered the street theirs. Within fifteen minutes and a half dozen devoured peaches, their sun-warmed juices dripping down our chins and sweetening our lips (I assume with Daniel and well know with Melanie), we have overfilled our bags.

"That didn't take long," Melanie says with a huff. "That's why I like berry picking. It can take all afternoon."

Not wearing a vest and tie!

When we return to New Paltz to hopefully ferret out Jacki at one of her five jobs (no hyperbole), Melanie fidgets and insists we return her to my apartment for a nap - she had spent a week couch-surfing in order to attend a Georgist convention and owes vast sleep debt that inclined her to snappishness. It is her birthday and we are letting her dictate its course to the degree she can. So Daniel and I return to my apartment and kill digital zombies while she snoozes feet away.

When she awakes, she is restored to impish vitality and declares we ought to feed her before she can turn surly again. And, if there is alcohol to be had, all the better.

We witness her buy no alcohol. After sharing a not wholly satisfying Indian meal that nonetheless will stay with us for days, Daniel parts from us as Melanie has in mind celebration of a more private sort. But expectations exist to disappoint. What is a wonderful interlude (one of the best I can recall) to me causes in her frenzy such that she slices her finger in an attempt to rehydrate with a can of seltzer in the midst of things - a wound she ignores for another twenty minutes because she is devoted to making this moment special. What birthday lets us out of its clutches without injury? ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100718.php 28 Jul 2010 13:01:00 EST   Of course, we will grant you a biff in the snoot if you vex us.

There is not someone for everyone, but that's far from a curse. It's almost a blessing, to breaststroke through of the dating pool, to be a carbon atom in the social experiment. While one's partner is not precisely fungible, one knows that one needn't be unattached for any longer than it takes to encounter a similarly-minded singleton and find an empty room.

Then there are people who catalyze with only a few others and are otherwise inert. Melanie and I, with our melange of gallows humor and obscure references, blend well but joke that no one else would have us. (That isn't to say that she is not amazing and doesn't catch eyes.) I am not made for all markets, but that doesn't matter so long as I am for hers. Perhaps it makes our relationship stronger that we know how rare it is to connect with someone else so deeply. Were either of us inclined to see the other as interchangeable, there would be little reason not to make the switch at the first friction as teenagers do.

I transitioned from being dumped by a woman who was not quite right for me despite our respective and synergistic intelligences to one who is far more compatible in a way that is quicky apparent. I hesitated so long in my relationship with my ex Emily, even after proposing to her, that it was startling to ease into a romance with a woman whom I have not doubted for more than a handful of minutes in two and a half years (and almost every one of those moments was loaded into the first two weeks).

I've work at high schools and conformity is all teenagers care about. They mingle with those who have adopted a largely pleasing demeanor to be acceptable for anyone who shops at the same store. I spent my own teenage years rebelling by dressing in the uniform of the abnormal, kissing and parting from dozens of purple haired or pierced girls before I started seeing the virtue of sticking around with those happy few who made me do more than fizzle.

Some people don't need a special someone, just someone. Why should they be miserable when they aren't looking for a soulmate, just a bedmate? It is enough for them to be companionable with someone else, to fall to good conversation and satisfying sex. I am aware we live in a culture that makes its money off our dissatisfaction (how else would romantic comedies do so well?) and applaud those who realize they can love the person they are with, or at least like them enough that love is not a prerequisite to affection.

Conversely, I know too that many wait for what they presume is their perfect partner, even after he or she has receded into the distance on someone else's horse. Even as one suffers from that person's callous rejection, the dial is set to their having been the right one and the momentum of that consistency insists upon mooning long after the one-night stand is over. One watches the silhouette fade beyond the horizon, ignoring those who are in front of them and who, if they are not the Right One, are at least the Very Good One Who Is Certainly Better That the Supposed Right One. I myself have, in my youth, skunked potential romances because I refused to acknowledge that the one I was certain I still loved was busy loving someone(s) else. Maybe those who partner more liberally just have the bravery to try. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100715.php 21 Jul 2010 11:30:00 EST

Dawn rose after noon the day she died. You've known her since kindergarten, when she stole your fire truck during recess and you socked her in the arm. You'd been inseparable since, once she contented herself to take no more than much of your time and the only pain you caused her involved pointed questions.

You watched as she side-stepped the homeless woman begging change on the corner. From across the street, you saw the truck hit her, your arm caught in mid-wave. You rushed to her, but the damage was too severe, too unquestionably fatal. You've heard that quick deaths are supposed to be a comfort because the deceased didn't suffer.

Dawn disagrees. Once you were home again, after answering the questions from the police, once you were back in your apartment with the tension and fear leaking from your eyes, your phone rang. Dawn asked you to swing by the hospital and pick her up. She hung up and didn't answer when you called back. So you went to pick her up because what else were you to do?

She told you that it had been a mistake. The truck just shocked her heart, but she'd revived thanks to adrenaline. Could you not mention this to anyone else, she asked, almost embarrassed. You were so grateful that you acceded, as strange as you found it. You'd been there. You'd been certain she died. You'd seen the broken bones, the blood, the injuries that no longer existed when she hopped into the passenger's seat of your car.

She wouldn't talk about it on the way back to her home, said it felt like sleep. She woke up to doctors calling it a miracle and was discharged. You just joked that she must be a superhero, then amended this to "zombie".

She went to work the next day, selling music at a tiny store on Main Street. She greeted you with a kiss on the cheek--her frustrating custom--when you came in to check on her. Her dark hair smelled of lilacs and ashes and her green eyes were crisp as apples. In retrospect, you have tried to remember if her lips were cold that day, if there was any indication.

Dawn had a way of confusing the subject. You'd try to talk about one thing, tried to pin down definitions, but found yourself in a conversation about the minutia of books without knowing how. She thought it was charming, but you held it as one of the reasons you could never date her. Not for very long, at least.

You asked her to meet you for dinner, tried to confirm a where and when. You caught the quick look downward before she declined, as she felt for something in her pocket, but couldn't register its meaning. "I have another appointment," she said.

"I'll come," you replied. "I'll drive you and then we'll get a bite to eat."

"No, I need to go alone. It's a lady issues problem," she replied, the force of her denial startling you.

"I can deal with lady issues," you begin to say, having known this as her stock excuses, but then came to the real issue. "You scared the hell out of me yesterday. I don't want you to be alone."

"I want to be alone. You are around me too much."

Maybe it was that look in her eyes, the hard pleading, but you listened.

Though you called her daily, it is a week before you see her again, hobbling down the street, when you were on you way to confront her.

"What's wrong with you?" you begin, the question all accusation, but you catch sight of her face under her hoodie. You repeat the question with sincerity.

"Nothing," she croaks. Her eyes are glassy and stare through you. Her face is blanched and her lips, blue. When you were ten, you walked in on your grandfather dying, his heart giving up the fight. He looked better than Dawn.

"You need to get to the hospital," you insist, pulling on her arm. You feel something sharp underneath the fabric of her shirt. It is only much later that you will realize it was one of her bones, shattered.

"No, they can't help. I screwed up." She gets into your car, but you don't turn the key. The story pours out of her. It didn't take a chess game for her to best death. Dawn woke on the floor of the morgue to her phone buzzing in her pocket. She answered and a voice like an apiary asked if she would rather be dead. Of course she wouldn't, she answered. So it was settled and she found her body amongst the drawers of corpses, falling back into it and reviving. But there were conditions.

"Are you saying you kill people?" you say, realizing your proximity in an enclosed space to the undead.

"Ye-no," she corrects. "People die. I happen to be there. I make sure they do. They are supposed to die. I think." She looks at her hands, the blueness of the veins showing through her bloodless skin.

"How do you know they are supposed to? How do you know what to do? How do you know where to be?" you continue, too loudly. You want to poke holes in her story, to make it any less true, but looking at her convinces you that the impossible may be the easiest answer.

In lieu of answering, she fishes her beat up phone from her pocket and flips it open, pushing a few buttons. A text message pops up from an unlisted number, giving a location just outside of town, yesterday's date, and a time. When you reach out for the phone, she jerks it away and hides it in her pocket.

"What happened there?" you ask.

"I don't know. I wasn't there."

"So you don't have to be a part of this, then."

"I wasn't there and now I look like this. I don't know if they died yesterday, but I died again last night. I can feel myself rotting right now. I'm being punished."

"How can we make this better?"

"Only you," she says back, then coughs in a way that rattles in her. "Only you could be concerned about how to make death better."

"You aren't dead," you argue.

"No. I am Death."

The solution comes to you. She missed an "appointment" and began to die again. But, despite her injuries after the accident, she was whole when you picked her up. She had to hit her next appointment.

"But I never know when-" she began and was cut off by the phone. It was so very like television writer's cliche that you both jump and laugh at your fear. She glances down at the phone and says, "It's in ten minutes. And it's eleven miles away."

So, without further conversation, you drive, well exceeding the speed limit. It isn't a question of the insanity of the act--you wouldn't be Dawn's best friend if you were a fan of sanity--but that this was the only way to be helpful.

You arrive with seconds to spare, Dawn jumping out of the car, turning her head side to side. A car that cut you off swerves into a telephone pole, which begins to fall. Dawn searches for her appointment and you see in her ghoulish face that she is unaware of the disaster about to crush her. You honk the horn and fumble with the seatbelt, but the pole lands before you can come to the rescue.

You run from your car anyway, to assess the damage. You are shocked to see Dawn standing there, not merely unharmed but looking herself again.

"What?" is all you can say.

She nods her head toward the pole, where a shaggy haired man lies crushed.

"He pushed me out of the way. Because he heard your horn, he ran out of that shop."

You ignore the danger of the live wires and try to push the pole off him, but Dawn puts a hand to your shoulder.

"Stop. I wouldn't be here if he could be saved, would I?"

"But... he died because we rushed here."

She slowly nods. "Yeah, he did."

By now, the crowd is gathering, looking at you two.

"Hey, we should get out of here. I don't need to attract attention, being involved with two fatal accidents, you know?"

She leads you back to your car but you can do no more than sit and process. "Either drive or give me the keys," she says. You opt for the former.

"So you were right," she says when you get her to the driveway of her apartment.

"And because I was right, we caused the death of some stranger."

"You knew we would. I was unsubtle about what would happen. I cause death. Now I am okay. Just like that." She spreads her pale fingers before your face, the perfume of her skin echoing after. "Poof!"

"Are you okay with what happened?" you ask.

She pushes you, enough to cause impact but not pain. "I'm not a monster. Jeez, why would you ask me that?"

"You aren't acting very upset."

She shrugs and spins a ring--a present from you for her last birthday--around her finger. "I didn't know him. I'm sure he was nice, but I guess it was his time."

"Because we interfered."

She looks up from her hands, scowling. "You didn't have to."

"I did. You were all sorts of jacked up."

"You didn't have to," she reiterated, "but you did. So thank you."

"Yeah, well, what was I supposed to do?"

"What you did." She leans over and gives you a kiss on the cheek, exiting your car.

As far as you know, things return to some version of normal. If she has any more appointments, you don't hear about them. You find articles about the man who died. He was in his twenties and, from what you could tell, he lead a blameless life that should have lasted another sixty years. There was never any mention of Dawn or you, which did not slake your guilt.

You visit her to hang out, but you end up telling her about the man.

"I don't want to know," she says.

"I figured, since I helped-"

"Why are you so adamant about always being the one to help me?" she shouts.

"Maybe because you are always the one who needs help," you reply before you can stop yourself.

The remark doesn't register on her face. You know this means she is now running through stacked reasoning. You just have to play your part until she is satisfied enough to let it drop.

"You have to agree that your life would be a lot easier without the albatross of Dawnie dangling from your neck," she says.

"I don't want easier and you aren't an albatross." You see her open her mouth. "And yes, I get the reference."

"You should want easier."

You shake your head. "How about we work on easier once you finish being Death?"

"I don't think--"

"I know," you say.

The next day, she calls you for an appointment. You drive her to Breakneck Ridge hours early. She brings a picnic lunch, all the foods you love most and a bottle of good champagne. You can almost enjoy this for what it is without remembering how it has to end. You can watch the tide of the Hudson lap at the shore until the sunset dyes the water in pinks and oranges, and she rests her head against your chest, listening to your heart.

You check your watch and, seeing the time is nearly up, scan for Dawn's target. No sooner have done this than you realize. That bond, that connection you've always shared with her, shows itself reciprocal now.

"I'm sorry, so sorry," she says. You feel the breeze against the wet spot on your t-shirt. She looks at her hands, as she did the fetal pig she made you dissect in biology, disgusting work she couldn't do. Is she waiting for you to do this for her too?

"Why me?"

She looks away, to hide the tears, but they saturate her voice. "It's always been you. Everyone I killed, I killed instead of you. I tried to stay away..."

She reaches her hand toward you and you don't move away.

One of Melanie's associates - not the sort of person who was a friend, but someone with whom she had partied - turned up dead for reasons unknown. Melanie guesses an overdose. Jinx wondered if it might have been a car accident. I've heard whispers of suicide. This marked the first death of a peer that Melanie has experienced in a while and possibly the closest. It is a situation that cannot help but shake one's certainty of safety (Jinx wrote a song All Rise about this). Yesterday, this girl was doing any number of perfectly ordinary and forgettable things that she will never again do. Someone whom Melanie had touched, whose hospitalities Melanie had accepted, ceases to breathe and will now to put in the ground.

I tried to console Melanie in the most naturalistic way. Death is rather the only thing about life that can be guaranteed.

I was reminded of Todd, my friend who killed himself when I was 20. At the time of his death, Todd and I had not been close, though friendly enough to have earned a blanket invite to his going-away party (as I have come to call the last party he threw). But I didn't see us ever being best friends. I didn't have time for his pain, given that I was mucked up in the end of my relationship with Kate and the beginning of mine with Emily. Also, though the excuse feels weaker the more I state it, I was still a little irritated with him for having shoved a sponge full of Lysol in my mouth because he thought it would be funny. Sans the sponge, I think Melanie's acquaintanceship with the girl was similar. They knew of one another, but the girl was not someone who Melanie would insist upon visiting over the summer.

Coupled with an anonymous body having been pulled out to Tivoli Bay near Melanie, I half-joked that these deaths tend to come in threes, a concept that Melanie abjectly discounted not as failed pattern recognition, but because she felt they tended to happen in more even groupings.

As such, I ignore the message that Jamie posts to Facebook, saying that she is finally getting the help for her depression that she needs. I think this means a therapist. Jamie seemed a little stressed and burdened under her parents' expectations for her, but not depressed. If anything, I thought she had impressive self-esteem. I post a message saying that I am glad she is getting help (some of my best friends have been or are in therapy).

Later, her mother posts details in reply, which I will neglect to provide out of respect. Suffice it to say, Jamie was a little more than depressed but ostensibly realized that she had hit her rock bottom and wanted to arrest further descent.

I've known Jamie for about a decade and have attended a few parties at her house. She came roller-skating with me once. But I had no idea things were so dire and am not sure I have anything like the right to know that. But I do know that the idea of her no longer existing saddens me deeply.

After Todd's suicide, I experienced guilt and some regret. I had consoled him over his issues with his sexuality and the typical post-adolescent falderal that infests most. I remember his teasing me over my new relationship with Emily. I think I recall him saying I was twitterpated, but that could just be the ostentation of memory. I recall a day of sunshine and spring grass when I ignored work to enjoy a few hours next to him and a girl named Idania. But nine years later, I don't think I wanted to be a closer friend to him.

I wish he had not died, that he could have stayed his hand a little while longer until his mind was less clouded. There was a study done of people who were stopped from committing suicide off one bridge. Of those followed, only six percent had gone on to kill themselves. For the vast majority, being stopped once was enough to keep them alive. I have those subjunctive thoughts, what if I had called Todd at the right moment, what if I had been there? Immediately after his death, I experienced horror that I had blown off his party to meet Emily's parents for the first time, though I later found out that the party was apparently the social event of the season and I was one of the few invitees who did not attend. He didn't die from a lack of attention.

This makes me realize that I care about Jamie more than I previously realized, which feels as stupid to write as I am sure it does to read. These trying moments shouldn't have to occur to bring one to the truth, nor do I think that Jamie requires such a realization from me, though she may need to know how she is important to other people. The thought of how the world would have changed had she been successful startles me, because I had no cause to prepare for that possibility. With Todd, I had known he was suicidal for almost the duration of our friendship but, having had friends and girlfriends who pled self-destruction for attention, I didn't think much of it. And in the month before he died, he'd been the happiest I had even seen him, a fact that I realize in retrospect is because he had finally made his decision to die.

Had Todd lived, he might be a Facebook friend now, but I don't think out connection would be any more profound than that. It makes me wonder how many people orbit my life who are aborted suicides or who are thinking of their coming funeral while reading this. This isn't a matter of guilt and - I would hope - they don't need to hear my attempt to talk them out of it.

My father once told me that the point of suicide isn't to kill yourself, but to kill the rest of the world. No suicidal person really wants to die, they just seek the quickest destruction of the world in which they lived. This slakes the survivors' guilt with a frothy shot of indignation, but is specious.

Dark as Jamie's path to here was and though this cannot yet be considered a happy ending, it allowed Jamie her moment of clarity. It is an indelible and necessary point on the continuum toward her happiness, I hope. I would prefer to believe that it is uphill from here and that, now that I realize, Jamie has yet another set of hands to help clear this boulder that is before her and can rise. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100708.php 13 Jul 2010 09:01:00 EST   The dinosaur doesn't get that I don't want to flirt!

There was a time not long ago when I was, by my own description, an ungodly flirt. At the time, I played it off as innocent, as letting someone know that I did care about them in the most convenient language I had available.

But it wasn't wholly innocent. At that time, I was in a relationship. She had a busy schedule that did not involve me. Even when she was present in body, her mind focused on what tomorrow and the tomorrow after that required of her. So I flirted because I needed an outlet, I needed to know I was still capable of being attractive to someone.

When something inevitably did happen - specifically that she fell for one of her friends with whom she was spending more time given their mutual devotion to a sport - my illicit flirtation isn't what saved me from devastation. I found someone I hadn't known a month before, not someone for whom I idly bit my lip or offered compliments on the edge of impropriety.

Flirtation when in a relationship can't be impeccant. There is always an edge of "how far am I going to take this? Are you going to stop me? Am I?" If the person with whom one is flirting in the unscrupulous type, willing to forsake their relationship or committed only to the idea of their pleasure, you are letting them know that you are leaving your bedroom door open a crack should they wander by. And when they do - because they will - you feel that you have only yourself to blame for leading them on.

Years ago, there was a new friend with whom I flirted. Even then, I could tell that it was more than trivial to her, but I felt faint flirtation would solidify our friendship. She had a boyfriend and I, a girlfriend. The flirtation wasn't much more than friendly for me, but she took it as significant. Our friendship ended within two weeks of our meeting, with her faking tears on my lap in a mall parking lot so I would hold her. I was revolted with the whole situation and knew my sin in it. Even now, I remember this as one of the most spiritually uncomfortable situations I've ever experienced. I've known others who thought they were safely flirting until the other participant tried to force the situation to its crisis. Why else would they have baited the hook if they weren't going to fish, to coin a folksy phrase? They couldn't be happy with their partner if they acted like this, right?

I am grateful right now that none of my friends are flirts (there have been times when all were) because flirting forces the other party into unnatural roles: stiff discomfort or reciprocating and escalating despite what one might independently want.

In college, I played Lysander in a production of A Mid-Summer Night's Dream. As part of my role, I had to spend a lot of time rehearsing affection and kissing with the actress playing Hermia to the extent that my then-girlfriend Kate could tell with a kiss what scene I had been practicing (Hermia smoked and used perfume). Hermia was pretty, but was not my type at the time and I was in a relationship. Still, owing to the fact that I spent the beginning of the play with my arms around and lips on Hermia, I can't deny that I felt warmly and protectively over a woman I otherwise would not have. My heart didn't care why I was pretending, it produced the requisite fondness. When Hermia came onto me off-stage (was her heart trying to aid justification too?), I reacted badly, realizing how groundless my unmentioned warmth toward her was. (Specifically, I threatened to bite her tongue should she make good on her promise to stick it in my mouth during one of our stage kisses opening night.)

So it is with flirting, an attempt to recast someone into a more intimate role. If they refuse this attempt to influence their behavior, they can't take a joke and are joyless. If they don't refuse, they have to keep momentum and surrender to their heart seeking consistency with their actions. Implying to someone that you consider them sexually is intrusive, even when it is welcome (as flirting ought to be but rarely is).

Of course, it no doubt helps my disinclination to flirt both that I am content with my partner and that no one in my social sphere (or former celebrity crushes) gives me that full body tingling. Pegging my abandonment issues for what they are squashed a lot of that urge. Instead of smirking reassurances out of every comely woman in my sightline that I still qualify as a prospect, I find what I need inside myself and do not harass strange women or patient friends. At least for me, flirting was only about the object of my attentions in an incidental way, because it would have been silly to flirt with a vacancy. Instead, I flirted with the space around them in hopes I could cement them there a little while longer.

I no longer need flirting to tell someone that I care about them. It turns out that simply telling someone I care about them is more than sufficient and the honesty of it tends to mean more than cloaking my truth in the clothes of attraction. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100615.php 07 Jul 2010 12:13:00 EST   She does it right.

Readings, like poems themselves, should go on only as long as they absolutely must and not a word longer. They always do exceed, though, so I forget what I thought I liked initially, because a most poet's egos have no sense of time or caliber.

I want to like poetry because it is erudite to enjoy it, but I generally do not. If someone says they have a poem they want to share, I have to restrain my eyes from rolling. There is a story - possibly apocryphal - of some Vassarite informing her professor Elizabeth Bishop that they had written a poem over the weekend and asking if she would look at it. Bishop glared and informed the girl that a poem worth reading could not be "written over the weekend" and to come back when she was serious.

I look back at the prose I've written even a few years ago and know it is bad. Now, I feel that I am competent. I am not writing the great American novel, nor will I ever attempt that (I tend toward entertaining trifles that might make one pause for a moment), but I can string words together in a pretty enough manner.

My issue is that a lot of "poets" seem to be weak prose writers who just assumed that shorter form work is easier and that they would do well freed from the constraints of grammar, punctuation, and spelling (without regard for why one might bent the rules of the language). Aside from full length novels, I think poems can be even harder to write than short stories. Stories can be expansive, can explicate a solitary point for pages to drive it home. Poems are (or bloody should be) succinct and measured. One doesn't select poetry for its ease but for its challenge, as easy poems are largely worthless.

This isn't the snob in me speaking. I may throw out the odd lyrical phrase, but I am not up to snuff enough to write poetry in anything like the way Jacki does. I accept my limitations with some small angst. I simply can't condone someone getting plaudits for choosing to do something challenging in the most slipshod way possible.

With one poet at the performance, everything was "like" or "as" something else. Literally every object was compared to something else, generally quite wildly and with no regard to the substance of the poem. Similes are a seasoning, but when all you have is seasoning and no substance, I am sending the plate of tarragon back as indigestible.

The poetic cadence present at the reading tonight, the urgent pressure on each syllable without regard to meaning, the bastard dialect of a union between Maya Angelou and Christoper Walken, wears on me so that I rebel against listening. I wish I could keep my focus, but I don't feel I'm read to, I feel assaulted by letters.

But, aside from fidgeting in my seat like a child in need of a bathroom break, I try to be courteous, for Jacki much more than for the performers. However, when there is a break and it is announced there will soon be the open mic portion of the evening (which is why most of the audience seems to be here), I make haste outside for some air and white noise. For the most part, open mics are people by those who need to hear their own voices with no understanding of what a poem is or can be. There is a two poem maximum, but I know that they can pull off a Wasteland of crap to stretch their time on stage.

I can't very well suggest that Jacki leave, I have no right and no other options to lure her away, given that this is her world. I am somewhere between pathologically shy around and openly contemptuous of other prose writers. Those who I know, I tend to read only if forced (on which more presently). But Jacki is active in this scene. She knows and willingly consorts with other poets, without much evident distress. I do not deny that hers is the better way. I would likely have more success if my interactions with other writers did not involve an attempt at attention deficit disorder to get away from them before they infect me with further mediocrity.

Months ago, Rosemary and Jess organized what was to be the first meeting of a writers' group including Melanie and Daniel (who are not writers -- at least not in the manner which would likely be useful to us -- but who are painfully honest critics and excellent company). The group, which somehow took on the name Ugli Fruit Conspiracy, has yet to meet again and I have not pushed the issue much. Despite my apprehension with the concept, the fact that I like all concerned as friends (and Rosie's singed cookies) melted the anxiety away.

Other voices, other rooms.

I'd been to a few writer's groups in the area - the National Novel Writing Month one where we didn't talk about our stories or write, the Fantasy and Sci-Fi one where everything anyone ever wrote was either the best thing ever or not worthy to be toilet paper - and found them not worth returning to. I don't question that they are right for many (or most), but they aren't for me. Writers' groups seem to be the sort of people who believe they are always right, even when confronted with the fact that I actually meant the word "foment" and not their made-up and fictional word "forment". They are the ones to anonymously write the critique "big words are dumb" because they don't understand the point of a narrator. They don't actually want to hear criticism and I have no reason to invest myself in giving it.

At the solitary Ugli Fruit meeting, it took us hours to even begin talking about writing, which suited me just fine given that talk of writing so often is where I shut off. Writing, to me, is not unlike masturbation. Pleasurable, stress-relieving, and some people can make money from it, but it is solitary. Many who try to make money from it disgust me and should not quit their day jobs. And, for the most part, I don't want to know about your technique, how long a day you do it, and how long you've been doing it. I don't want to know who inspires you to do it. It does not concern me and I don't care to change that. No, I very likely do not want to do it with you and I won't do it if you are going to stare at me. And I certainly don't want you asking me about how I do it. I will admit that I do and let's leave it at that.

With friends, it is different. Writing becomes a subject I am willing to broach over tea, though I was still embarrassed when Rosie introduced the fact that I have been published. What of my work is out there (a three part story in Cave Drawing Ink's Rise of the Outlanders!, my story "Always Darkest" in Paragon 3, an article in Broken City Magazine this summer, one in The Journal of Cartoon Overanalyzations last year, a seventeen page comic with Dezi) does not feel enough to boast that I am published, since the residuals checks are hardly rolling in. However, I am also keenly aware that were they, I would simply raise my metric to something more challenging so I wouldn't have to own up to having the adjective "published" before the noun "writer" in regards to me.

That day with Jess and Rosie, I also make myself seem like a jackass owing to my writerly prejudices. In discussions of our work and the concept of mutual criticism, I half-jokingly say that I hope none of us writes poetry. The admonishment in Rosie's eyes let me know that I am very stupid and would be well advised to swallow any subsequent words. Jess, as I knew on some level, writes poems constantly and recently self-published a volume. Jess shrugs it off, but I still feel like a literary bigot. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100605.php 20 Jun 2010 00:13:00 EST   I have no idea who this is supposed to be.

I don't know what to say. There was a time where, if it wasn't fair to say I knew them beyond the superficial, I was at least known by them to some degree. I was their mascot, the brother of their ostensible leader, the one who had clean urine were there to be a need to pass a drug test (this never came up). I was the one who they joked they would corrupt, though they never tried very hard since making me one of them would defeat their fun.

As one of them - Chris, I think, though I can't supply a last name - introduces me to a stranger as Garth, a nickname I acquired by virtue of resembling as a teenager Dana Carvey's character in Wayne's World, I wonder if he remembers what my name is, if he ever knew. I mumble out a few sentences to contrast with the boy he knew, that I am a teacher now, and we go our separate ways. He, it should be noted, with a great deal more certainty than I do.

It is a massive party, encompassing sumo suits, a mechanical bull, and a whole roasted pig. Aside from my immediate family, who is there in force, I remember a few dozen of the party-goers as adult versions of burnouts who orbited my brother until he got a serious girlfriend and was urged into sweater vests. I know it is unreasonable to assume they have not progressed as people since last we spoke, even as their children are the primary users of the bull, but it is as if they are frozen in my mind and I don't have the aptitude to age progress en masse. My mother tells me that a family friend here is now well read and a dedicated father to his namesake son and I express gentle surprise. He should be focused on narcotics and four-wheeling still. Perhaps, to him, I should still be focused on grunge music and oversized flannels.

Whenever I am greeted, I project myself more than a decade prior: long hair, heavier, in ill-fitting clothes, shy in an extroverted way, sniffling from unrealized allergies, wanting to belong by rebelling as my friends did. The change has been gradual, cell by cell, but I barely recognize who that was then (if I were ever him). He is just a story to me, one I retell with a shrug with awareness that he doesn't make much sense. I can't imagine what the me ten years ago would make of me, though I flatter myself to think he would be impressed by the publishing credits and worldly lover, even if he might blast me as a sell-out for losing the hair and not becoming an actor. If only others at this party could know that I am not him and am embarrassed by connection to his more extreme and unrefined behaviors. Can others own their past better that I do?

It could be that most people can enjoy a party on a warm spring day without analyzing interactions down to particles.

The next weekend, at my grandmother's birthday party, this inner conflict - the perceptions and memories of others contrasted by who I imagine myself to be - recurs.

"I don't ever remember him being fat," one of my aunts says in reference to me, when my grandmother notes that I look to have lost weight (having been around the same weight for five years).

"He was never exactly fat," my mother explains, continuing the conversation around me but which does not involve me as a participant, "Just chunky, like his brother."

"It came right off his face," my grandmother says. "He's a handsome boy."

Okay, fine, I'm a little fuzzy on this guy, too.

This is not the end of my discomfiture, as my mother chimes in that I have had a story published in a book I neglected to remove from my bag after having shown it to Jacki the day prior.

They pass it around and then one of my uncles begins to read it. Aloud. I opt to make myself scarce, unable to sit when anyone is reading my work in front of me, to say nothing of announcing the sentences. From having no idea who I am to reading someone I created is too quick a jump (and I cannot stand others reading my work in front of me in the best of circumstances). They may share my chromosomes, but I somehow cannot afford them the intimacy I grant to strangers who want to fork over fifteen Canadian dollars to read Paragon 3. At least, with strangers, I am starting with a blank slate. They never knew me as a chubby twelve-year-old.

"I get awful lonesome after dinner sometimes," my grandma says, out of nowhere.

I feel sympathy that jolts me out of my self-reflection - how could I not? - but it is as if someone in a play is saying these words. They aren't directed at me, but rather the air, her keeping the universe apprised of how things are. She is eighty-three and her husband has been dead for well over fifteen years, I am not surprised to hear that she might be lonely.

I know my cousins love her in a way I do not. This isn't to say that I do not love my grandmother, because I absolutely do. But they dote on her when they see her, as though they'd always had a close relationship that did not extend to me. My mother was always the caretaker. Even at the party, when a chocolate covered strawberry does not agree with my grandmother, it is my mother who is summoned to clean the mess, the designated Cinderella. As the son of the help, I feel a distance.

I want people to know me for what I am, but that feels like entitlement if I cannot broaden myself beyond the roles I feel have been set down for me, the limitations of prior relationships and social cowardice.

So, who do you think you are? Who do you imagine I think you are? ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100530.php 15 Jun 2010 01:38:00 EST   "Bok?"

"...So the chicken hands the frog a book and says 'bok?'," Dawn finishes, "and the frog says 'Readit.'"

This is, inexplicably, the third joke of our frog theme. From this, we will transition to Maine, Finnish, German, Trotsky, lesbian (at least two of us have queer cred enough to get away with this), and - improbably - Emilio Estevez jokes (What do you call Emilio Estevez after a sex change? Emilio Breastavez). We didn't plan on this, it just evolved because chairs were in a circle and someone laughed.

Even in the holiness of the moment, I know that I will remember tonight for months to come. The fire crackles and there is the feeling of the infinite, of an unbroken succession to when our species barely spoke above grunts. This is a night from movies, the camera spinning as some alterna-folk ballad plays low on the soundtrack because directors can't handle conveying the sincerity any other way.

I am reminded, not vaguely, of the communal camping of Free Spirit, the weeklong Pagan festival that Emily and her clan attend. Free Spirit is intended as a sacred retreat and it cannot be for me anymore. Were it not in Maryland, I might be willing to make the gamble assuming I could avoid the situations that would be awkward for all. I can't recapture what was, if I indeed ever had it, and that is a blessing not far from the surface.

Sit. Play dead.

I don't per se consider the interactions at Free Spirit authentic, more of a forced openness that degrades when one replaces one's knickers. Were it not for that emotional anonymity masquerading as openness, there would not be the concept of festival sex. Behind false names, it is intentionally hard to know other people there. Like the pricy souvenirs one buys, the experiences at that campground are put away on a shelf and not used in the daylight.

This is my community near the fire, believing in the insectile impenetrability of our ring of citronella pikes. There are no bracelets here, announcing whether one permits oneself to be photographed. The self that is shown is the only self there is to see, so one need not worry about being outed at one's workplace as a Jacki, Daniel, John, Nicole, Altercation, or Phil - none as pejorative as being held accountable for polytheism. I am not mocking the heathens - they have it hard enough - but delighting in the anarchy mutual friendship provides. And, in very short order, it is plain that most of us are friendly beyond our mutual affection for our hostess. As they are each to credit in their individual and small ways for the synergy of the night, I am grateful to them in a way beyond thankfulness. Tonight isn't borrowed, isn't an experience married to this land. I am not here as an extension of a lover but as a welcomed individual.

Tonight is something that would not have been as possible were Jacki still with her ex Kevin. There would have had to be a Purpose to the goings-on, things would have to be Significant, and the soundtrack would have had to be revised to suit what Kevin felt set the scene rather than the improvisation that occurs.

With the exception of David and Nicole (and a couple of women who appear and vanish in under an hour), I have met all of these people before -- some times as much as a decade before -- and the time for me to feel anything like social awkwardness is so far past expired that it has been restocked as a fine cheese.

Part of the synergy

As Nicole - tattooed, oddly pierced, and jovial girlfriend of David - prepares by drinking lamp fluid and spitting it on her poi, I ask her if she will explode if I take flash photos of her while she spins.

"Yes..."

"You will?"

She looks up from the soaked ball. "What did you ask?"

"If you will explode."

"Then no."

She moves like the flaming ball is a pet she raised from a spark. Phil and Amanda, both with better cameras than mine at the ready, click away and joke that they are there to witness should something go amiss, but none of us can believe it could. Even as we all would lose our eyebrows or, once she and David take turns gulping lamp fluid and then spitting fireballs overhead, lips, there is such a sense of purpose and serenity to her movements that it is certain she has reached an agreement with the flame. Perhaps she is half fire demon, the pictures we take portray her as such, wreathed in the blue and orange of the animate flame.

He dislikes you whippersnappers.

Around the glowing fire as the party winds down, within proximity of two of the people I like best in the world, I am content. Maybe it is the moon I cannot see behind the trees, but there is a sense of tribalism.

Contentment comes more easily to a lack of expectations. I have often been inclined to attach to people as my community, whether they wanted this honor or not, because I was raised on bad television and five-year performance contracts can be difficult to escape. Individual circumstances are not hard to escape and life always took the members of my community where they belonged rather than allowing me to cling. Community in the fullest sense of the term is something that represented my greatest voiced want most of my life, from exchanging saliva for temporary connection with girls in my teenage years to trading away years to keep the near ubiquitous Her from leaving. Friend after friend used up because I leaned too long and too heavily, since no one other person could quality as a community. I envied others their unchanging circles, mistaking stagnation for commitment.

Were I to lean on Jacki for my community, I would be doing her a disservice, as though nestling against her nucleus so I could entangle a few of her electrons. I would be missing out, perhaps, on another community that could use me, the community of Now. I would be ordering the holy moment to occur at will, because I was in a certain place with a certain mixture of people, and thereby preemptively extinguishing it.

I muse whether I am jealous of Jacki's house, but this is not quite it (much as I do like it). It is that having a yard allows one the prerogative to summon friends forth from multiple states, that extending hospitality implies friendship.

While I would hardly begrudge the Universe for creating a portal through which Melanie could step at a whim, I otherwise cannot imagine a place I would rather be this night. It is difficult to put into words the quiet thrilling of feeling the divine is watching.

I know this community I have tonight won't remain when the coals die. At the next party, it might be similar, but it won't be the same. Someone won't be there or some new one will, because each experience is singular and irreproducible. Even were the setup and guest list to be identical, the moments would not be. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100529.php 08 Jun 2010 11:13:00 EST