Everywhere I Go

Cancer is a cruel disease, my mother said, puffing on a cigarette. Give me a heart attack or a stroke. She inhales deeper then clears her throat. Behind her, on the stove, the chicken stews and sour soup simmers.

In the almost 48 hours I’ve been here, my mother and I have gone between avoiding the topics of death and disease to diving headfirst to the heart of the matter. This year has mostly been about loss. The air in this house is stifling – the Christmas decorations were never put away from last December, the terracotta pots in the patio are filled with dirt rather than plants.  My mother has let her hair go gray and needs a haircut.

If you look at her when she leaves for work, you would never know she's kind of a messy housekeeper. Her shoes are Ferragamo, her jackets are boucle so there's never any need for an iron, and the jewelry is always just right.

This put togetherness is something I got from her and my father.  No one needs to know your business.

My mother just came out of her bedroom holding a pair of Pucci shoes that she wants me to have. Haha. Even when she's depressed as all hell, she thinks of my wardrobe.

I looked forward to coming to Los Angeles, but now I can’t wait to leave again. On the plane ride back to New York, I will keep seeing my mother’s soft face.  She is a thin woman with jowls. She is still pretty, but now she squints at everything and she is prone to sighing. She walks in a shuffle, the way old Asian ladies do. She is clearly tired and unhappy with the choices she’s made in her life.

Neither of us is that interested in one another’s life.  It is shocking to realize that this woman doesn’t want to hear a thing about what I do on the other side of the country, who I talk to, where I live.  I’m not sure if it’s because it’s so far away. Or if it’s because it involves no one else in the family but me.  Or maybe it’s because she is still grieving for her sister.  I wish I could say (as I have in the past) that she isn’t interested because she is too self absorbed. But this time around, she isn’t interested because she simply doesn’t care.

Last night A called while I was sitting around doing nothing. It reminded me how when we were together, talking to him was the thing I looked forward to whenever I was in L.A.  I rushed us off the phone – what is the point of all this friendship again? Why does he feel he has to tell me that his girlfriend call him and he had to get rid of her so he could call me?  Sometimes I think he calls to reassure me he hasn’t forgotten me AND to tell me that he’s just great without me.  Perhaps his motivations are not clear to anyone, most of all to himself.  Pretty much the same way I’m a little muddled about things.

The night before I left New York, M and I had dinner. On our way to the subway, we joked about dating each other. I told him, half seriously, that I wasn’t sure if dating is a good enough reason to risk our strange friendship.  He said, also half seriously, that he would be willing to take the risk.  Then we moved on to another topic.

What the fuck was that about? 

M and I been dancing around this for years now. It doesn’t seem to me like it’s ever going to happen. Or even that it should.  Then again, why not?

Now is probably not the time for it. But it’s a nice thing to think about. We could go to the opera together -- that has always held a kind of allure for me because I'm always going to the opera alone.

I'm going to see Faust with my Norwegian granny on Monday.  The Monday after that, I am going to see Aida. I'm going back to the life I had before I met A.

One of the things that changed when I was his girlfriend was that I stopped going to the opera.  I didn't care so much about shoes. I didn't suggest going to the restaurants I used to frequent. Mostly it was because I'd feel strange about it with him.

I don't regret any of the time I spent with A, but I have to say I've missed all this.  And I don't understand why I let it go. No one asked me to. Maybe this just means I'm lonely again -- I think of pretty things when I'm lonely.  Or maybe I wanted us to look as if we belonged together. Pucci and Land's End don't go together very well.

Ho-Hum

Cigarettes don't taste good anymore.  Did they ever?  I've been a smoker my entire adult life.  I always joke that the Marlboro Man is my longest relationship to date. That's actually not funny at all. I think the truth is that smoking reminds me of my mother.  The smell of smoke and a perfume called Tamango brings to mind an image of my mother sitting in front of her vanity and wearing dressed in a lace full slip. She is putting on her make-up, Christian Dior in those days.  The slip was probably Dior too.

My mother was beautiful when she was young.  Very Blanche DuBois. Now that I think about it, I am now older than she was then. I was eight or so, she must have been 33.  The dressing table memory is not a good one. When she put on make up, it meant I was sitting next to her and begging her not to leave. Then she would disappeared to her sister's house for the rest of the day. This  happened almost every day. I still wonder now if she hated being a mother. These days, it is the highlight of her life. But at 33, I don't know what she was thinking.

Isn't it odd to think of a smell you cannot recreate and then see a visual image? Scent has no image but I've managed to attach a person to that memory.  That doesn't make much sense, does it?

Last night, I accidentally "shared" this site from my personal email account.  I don't think anyone's read this  but still I worry. I told a friend about the accidental sharing today and she wanted to know if she could read this blog.  I felt bad saying no.  No as in never.  And I told A last night in a panicked phone call.  I worry about him reading this too.  I've said some mean things about him.  But when I think about it, I don't think I've said anything here that I haven't said to him.

That doesn't make it better though, does it?

I am not so sad today.  I cleaned my apartment. I hardly thought of AL at all. When I did, it was not with such regret.

This has turned out to be another pointless entry.

Maybe not dating is going to turn me into a prolific diarist.  That is how it was the last time I retreated from men.  The thing is, life is much less interesting without men.  You don't even have to sleep with them, just their presence changes the hum in the air.

Not reading much now.  Makes me wonder how I manage to wile away my evenings. I haven't had much activity this week save for the dinner out on Monday.  Tomorrow I'm going to some strange place in Queens with two girlfriends. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I agreed to go.  I'll probably have fun but the way I see it now, it would be better for me to stay home and listen to my neighbor's music. On Friday, I'm having dinner out again.

It's getting colder out and this is helping my mood somehow.

She's Got Personality

I am writing this entry on a Wednesday afternoon while at work. Makes me feel like I'm 21 again when I used to journal between customers. I worked in the Men's Shoes department at Sak's Fifth Avenue in San Francisco.

A little over a month ago that I had nothing left to say for this blog. I am amazed at my capacity to delude myself.

My friend Kevin is in town and we had dinner at Bar Bossa tonight. Kevin is gay and alone, doesn't know how to climb out of it. I told him what I'd been doing the last few months, and I could tell he couldn't quite understand how a girl like me could get around so much.

I am not a pretty woman.  I don't say that self pityingly.  I do have my charms, I can be sexy.  I am attractive to people who have talked to me a little, not necessarily by people who just look at me. She's got per-son-ality...I'm trying to quote a song. It's probably not working, is it?

Kevin is good looking but he doesn't pay attention. A lot of the time, he is looking at other things.  Maybe that's why I get more action than he does. He thinks my taking a break from men is a mistake.  He told me I'd be sorry I  pass up all these opportunities for "man sausage."

We were eating sausage. It was a wonderfully gross thing to say at the time.

On Tuesday I was on the phone with A for three hours. We talked about AL, his girlfriend, and all the other things we always talk about. We talk about how we aren't together anymore.

On Wednesday, I was on the phone with A for two hours. Soon A will be forced to commit to the girl who is a less attractive version of me.  I keep telling him how ugly she is and he laughs. Maybe she just takes bad pictures.

What would it have been like if I'd been working in the days and weeks that followed the abortion? Would I have managed to keep it together? I'm still a wreck sometimes. But I am a functional wreck. Working again marks a sort of rite of passage for me, I guess. It means I am cutting off the amount of time I can spend moping.

So three hours on the phone with A within a few days of breaking up with AL. This is a pretty clear sign that I need a bit more time to sort things out for myself. I actually don't believe that.  There is part of me that thinks that if AL liked me more, I would have less to sort out.  Could that be true?

I cannot count A as part of the equation because he has his own set of people to deal with. I told A that I wished he and I could be safe from one another, that he could look at me and say "nothing is going to happen here because I am with someone else."

But I seem to be the one in charge of saying no. It's easy when there's someone else in my life. Whatever my behavior as a single woman, I cannot be sexually involved with two men. It just isn't something I'm even tempted to do.

The odd thing is that I really like AL. I wish I wish I wish things were different. I want to say that I didn't screw up with AL too much -- he wasn't that into me either. Well, I guess I just said it. Is that my sincere believe or am I saying that to assuage the feeling that I was using him? I did like him. I don't even understand this. I like him.

Is it possible that I get into these ill-fated pseudorelationships as a respite from my grief and guilt and whatever else? A pseudoboyfriend means a few weeks of happy, sexy fun where love is possible and the future is not yet fixed. Then something in me snaps -- fun is not good enough all of a sudden when it was just the thing I wanted the day before. Is it when I realize that love is not possible with everyone?  Or is it when I am ready to face myself?

Whatever the reason, I find myself here, searching for different words to describe the same feelings I've had all year.

Hello again, Lucy.