Bad Boyfriends and Sam's Mom

Last summer, I lost my mind over someone's sonogram photo of a baby.  I spent last Sunday with the mother of that baby.  The baby's name is Sam and he is a few months old now. His mother is lovely.  Every time I said his name, How is Sam? What's Sam doing? I felt something in me stir -- a pang of love, regret, envy, God knows. 

Ericka is Sam's mother.  She drove to New York from Vermont so that we could help our friend CC move from her boyfriend's condo into a studio apartment a few blocks away.  Three days after a double mastectomy, the boyfriend kicked her out.  I could use my powers of description and turn this into a drama. But that seems gratuitous.

CC now posts the strangest things on Facebook about having hope in the dark and other crap that I've never found comfort in.  I hope all these cliches do something for her because it's pretty obvious that this cancer and boyfriend ordeal may be the worst sorrow of her life.  

Sorrow can only be endured alone, this is what I kept thinking as I packed away CC's things.  I folded her underwear because she can't move her arms--if that were my underwear, I would have run away from embarrassment. Ericka moved furniture that seemed too heavy for her.  Another woman put away kitchen things in a matter of hours.  Four children lifted too many boxes. All of us trying to make a home for someone incapable of doing anything for herself, all of us with good intentions.  But at the end of the weekend when all the boxes were gone and we all went home, CC is still sick and humiliated and helpless. 

"I cannot bear to think of the cruelty at the core of this foul world."

I just read that tonight.  The end of a novel I've been struggling with for weeks.  And it is true, isn't it? I don't want to believe it.  Even as I sit here typing this, I do not quite believe it.  I'm not the negative old bag I make myself out to be -- I am, at heart, hopeful and strong.  

But I worry about CC.  It's frightening to realize that none of us can do anything for her, and this seems like too much all at once.

The Ramble

Frigid weather again. I have so many items of clothes on that I have a hard time moving.  This must be what it feels like to be terribly fat.

I need to stop talking to strangers.  Today a street vendor asked me to remove the scarf I was wearing and wanted to take a photo of  it. Then he asked me to wear it again and took another photo. I suppose he is going to go back to some sweatshop now and copy the design.  He gave me a pair of gloves for my trouble and as I was leaving, I heard him telling someone, “that scarf was expensive!” True, but no one's business but mine. I went from being amused by this man to being terribly offended. No mood swing if I could have just kept to myself.

·

Friday night, a pedestrian was struck and killed by a car on Broadway and 90^th Street.  M and I had just finished having dinner at some Belgian brasserie in the Upper West Side and were on our way to Riverside Park to have a walk when we happened upon the “crime scene”.

M was not prepared for the weather.  I gave him one of my scarves – a swath of magenta cashmere with gold and silver sequins.  I wrapped the length of it around his head and neck and then we forced his had down his head—a ridiculous look for anyone (including me, but I sometimes love ridiculous things). For someone as uptight as M, it was pee-in-my-pants hysterical.  I tried to take a photo but he yelled at me and demanded that I just “enjoy” our time together.  I told him he was cranky pants and he bitched even more but in the end ended up laughing at himself. 

I am not sure what is going on with us now.  I keep thinking this is all in my head but we have our nice times (really, these times are not so grand, but it feels, to me, just right). It seems impossible to me that I would be the only one who feels something.  Then again, stranger things happened.  We come very close to moving toward each other BUT we don’t. 

This is all in my head isn’t it?

He is moving six blocks away from me in a few weeks. I suppose we will continue our strange friendship and nothing will change but there is some part of me that hopes for clarity.  The only problem is that I don’t want to lose him. Wendy suggested I jump his bones.  I don't see this happening -- it's not my style.  But a funny thing to contemplate.

·

Saturday morning I ran into A in the R train on my way to the bookstore.  He was on his way to see a flick at The Film Forum, a Kurosawa.  Probably with his girlfriend and her friends.  Seeing him was not as bad as I have imagined it would be.  After we said goodbye, he called to tell me I looked great (really he is a bottomless pit of compliments, it bugs me) and that we should get together for a drink soon.

I’m not sure how I feel about seeing him on purpose.  I do know that I’ve been quite fine without him in the last few months.  So maybe a meeting would just set me back. This is not making me run to my calendar to schedule a get-together. 

Could it be true that I might actually be a little bit over him? Could it?

What does he want from me? It’s kind of weird.  I’m rather unpleasant when I don’t know how to act around a person. I imagine I must have been awkward this morning.  Mean, even?

Last week, I ran into that tall guy I briefly dated over the summer (6 foot 7 to my 5 feet). It happened at the bookstore.  I couldn’t stand the thought of talking to him so I actually hid from this perfectly nice man. 

Maybe I need to find somewhere else to spend my Saturday afternoons.

·

CC had a double mastectomy on Wednesday.  She seems to be doing fine.  I am so scared for her.  What happens when the pain medication and whatever dope they have her on wears off and she realizes, with a fully lucid mind, that her breasts are gone?

The other night at dinner, I said to M, “we are sitting here having dinner like nothing has happened, but just a few miles from here, my friend is sitting somewhere a totally different person.”

M is not the kind of person who can have such conversations. I didn’t elaborate on it. But I thought of CC all night.

·

On Thursday night, an unexpected trip to the opera house to see Turandot. The opera makes me wish I were rich and could see performances any time I want.  Oh well.

Tomorrow, I am going to see Carmen. I swear I live my life like an old lady. But that’s quite all right.

Brava

I'm having one of those nights when I don't know what to do with myself.  There is no comfort to be found in sleep or in my books or in other people and so I just give in to this. The reprieve, I know, will come in the morning. Tomorrow, it will be as if tonight never happened.

Sometime last spring, maybe it was in May, I was at CC's boyfriend's office helping him with his dissertation.  It wasn't long after the breakup or the abortion.  I was a live wire.  CC's boyfriend told me that life would be strange for a long time, that at the oddest moments even after the crisis had passed, I would hear a song or see something that would bring everything back.  He was right.

Almost a year ago today, I was sitting with CC at a bar on Madison Avenue, telling her that A suspected I was pregnant and that I thought he was crazy.  Of course, I knew he wasn't crazy but I didn't know what else to say. CC went to Grand Central Station, and I, for reasons unclear to me, walked to a Times Square drugstore to buy a home pregnancy test.

This morning, A sent me and a few other people an email asking for an opinion on a pitch video he'd made for his movie.  I don't know why that email upset me so much. I told him I didn't want to be included.

That is the truth even though I hold on to him in some way I don't understand, even though I refuse to see him or even take a phone call.  Or maybe I do understand that this is what it means to lose someone.

Everything I pick up lately has a story about an abortion.  I'm seeking it out even as I hide from it.  It makes me crazy that what I deny shows up where I expect forgetting.  That's not fair, is it?

All my friends have babies and that does not bother me.  Just tonight, I emailed Secret Friend from Vermont telling her I wanted to meet her daughter. And I meant that sincerely.  Real babies do not upset me, it's the fictitious ones that bring me to my knees. Maybe it is because my baby feels like a fiction in many ways, most of all to myself.

On Tuesday, I ran into CC on Madison Avenue.  She has lost weight since I last saw her less than three weeks ago.   Even her wig seemed dull.  Next Wednesday, she will have a double mastectomy. I bought her a sandwich and for myself a cup of coffee and we talked about her losing her boobs.

After CC and I said goodbye, I ran into my friend AW's old boyfriend.  I'd thought that they'd get back together (but hoped that it wouldn't happen because I don't like this guy).  But from the awkward way he talked to me, I knew no reconciliation had taken place.

Then A called and then M and my friend Ann called but I didn't talk to any of them.

All that in one hour. Nothing out of the ordinary but I was reeling in the subway, my heart was pounding.  Some superstitious part of me was disturbed.

After all that, I made my way to Central Park West to a dinner party.  Nice people, nice townhouse, nice time, my angst slipped from me like molting skin.

Somewhere on Broadway after the party, one of the dinner party mainstays/hosts hugged me goodbye and invited me back.  Definitely you have to come back, he said. And I felt a thrill, not of desire or anything even vaguely sexual, but something that I imagine a performer would feel after having put on a good show.

Caught Blogging

A fit of paranoia. My cousin saw me writing and asked me if I kept a blog. What could I say? He asked for the address and I refused to give it to him but who knows if he might have gone through my computer later.  He is 17-years-old.  Hardly an innocent at this point, but I don't want to share this.

So I have deleted my photo.

It always surprises me how little I disclose to people, especially when I think of what they share with me. The other night, a friend told me she'd been trying for weeks, without success, to have an orgasm. I know someone who has a massage parlor/happy ending habit. My 17 year old cousin got a blow job in the fitting room of a JC Penney in Glendale. My ex's new girlfriend was a virgin (at 30!) when they met (this knowledge I would pay a pretty penny not to have because this makes me think my ex has no standards). I know someone who has to do everything in multiples of four (the optimum number being 16). I am fascinated by the things people do and how they live and I want to know everything. 

I just realized almost everything I listed has to do with sex.

Saw CC yesterday.  She is in the west coast with her family.  When she returns, someone is throwing her a party. I have no idea how one is supposed to celebrate under the circumstances.  She is getting a double mastectomy in a few weeks.  When we were saying goodbye, we both began to cry. I wished I could be the kind of person who could come up with some positive aphorism but that is where I come up short. All I could do was cry and I felt like I had failed CC in some way.

On my way home from work today, a beautiful girl got on the train at 103rd Street. She belted out an old Donna Summer song called Radio. She sang so well I considered staying on the train just to keep listening even after we arrived at my destination. I gave her five bucks. I don't money to anyone on the subway so that was a first. 

Today is an anniversary. Or close to the day anyway.

NO TEARS.

I even forgot about it. I was tired at work, didn't sleep well so I couldn't concentrate.  But other than than, not much else to report.

No tears!

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.

This and That

A few weeks ago, lying on an examination table at the hospital, an oncologist brought in to read her lab results told CC that she was "not terminal."  Magic words to anyone in her position, as you can well imagine.  CC said she'd just been examined and was naked.  When the doctor told her this news, she sat up and hugged him.  The sheet covering her chest slipped off so she was hugging the stranger/doctor with her bare breasts pressed against him.  The doctor awkwardly extricated himself from her arms.  CC's mother laughed and cried.

Two days ago, she saw the doctor at the drugstore and they nodded curtly at each other.  I told her she should have said, "So doctor man, do you recognize me with my clothes on?" to break the ice.  I'm not sure if she found that amusing at all.

My friend Maya is pregnant again.  Ten weeks.  I imagine her agonizing over how to tell me and another friend of ours.  For Maya's first pregnancy, she debated on how to tell our friend June who'd had a miscarriage. And now there is me with the abortion.

Odd how I don't feel bad for myself.  I'm happy for Maya.  And for myself, I am -- I don't know.  The same.  I can't compare our lives.  June, the other friend, said she felt slightly jealous and then felt guilty about it. What will I say about Maya's new baby next week?

I put my picture up on the blog profile.  Not sure for what purpose.  Suddenly, I want someone to see my face -- this is me, the one who's been writing all this.  This is what I mean when I say that I vacillate between standing out and being lost.

This probably has a lot to do with being a writer.  Obviously there is a part of you that craves recognition.  And there is the part that is embarrassed for wanting that.  Any maybe a part that doesn't believe s/he deserves it.  And hubris -- I am not one of those fame whores!

We are all fame whores, in our way.  This is the conclusion I'm coming to.  Not in a bad way.

The last few days have been strange for me. Incredibly busy, sad in some ways, good in most ways.

I've been avoiding A.  I suppose it helps that I'm obsessing about the possibility of something actually happening with AL.  If that doesn't work out, what happens then?

So I'm not nuts but I still don't know what I'm doing.

I talked to my father this morning.  When we catch each other off-guard, I am amazed at how we get each other.  How much I absolutely love him.

My friend Lyna asked me about my dad the other night -- how could I forgive him for having the affair with my mother's sister all those years ago and how could my mother forgive him.  Why do I refuse to have any contact with my aunt but continue to be, for lack of a better description, devoted to my dad?

The only answer is that I won't trade my dad in.  I will not lose him for anyone.

I often think about my family and loyalty and realize that I am one of the most loyal people I know.  This is not a compliment, by the way.  Sometimes I think it's a wretched quality to have.  There are some people I will forgive anything.  I don't know what that says about me. That I have no self respect?  That I am a good person?  That I am stupid?

Love is crazy.  I am crazy when I love someone.  Is everyone like this?  I don't think so.  Even A -- who didn't want our baby, who didn't want to have a real life with me, who found someone else to fuck so quickly. I still love him.

Love is for suckers.

More Words about CC

My dear CC continues to be in good spirits.  That is an inadequate sentence to describe how happy she is today. The lightness in her voice makes me catch my breath.

She asked me to go to some chemo sessions with her.  She is also getting her head shaved on Friday. A wig-fitting. At some point, she will have her breasts photographed.  She asked me to go with her for the pictures but doesn't want me around for the head-shaving.  She said losing her hair is private, the titty pictures, not so much. Has she separated herself from the boobs already?

What will the wig fitting be like?  Like shopping for a new dress?

I am not even trying to understand how she must feel because that would be, in a way, belittling her experience.

None of us, not her mother or her family or her boyfriend, have any idea what this is like.  I don't want to sound like a sap, but in acknowledging the limits of what I can do for her and what I can understand, I am honoring her. Just for hanging in there.  For being able to sleep at night and going to work today.

Good News Monday

The best news about CC  -- well not the best because the cancer is still there.  But according to Cornell, it's totally curable and in the beginning stages.

Phew.  I cannot even begin to say how relieved I am.  My CC is going to be fine.

Lucy's Perfect Days

It seems like too much to hope for good times in the midst of all this trouble with CC.  But it happened. 

CC

CC is mad at me.  I am the bearer of bad news, the burster of the bubble, the rain on the parade. She is letting people think she is at Stage 2 because her doctor hasn’t given her an official diagnosis.  I think she is at Stage 3.  Yesterday I told her this. That was a mistake on my part.  Mostly because it made her sad and angry. And also because I don’t really know what I’m talking about. 

I just don’t want her to downplay things and end up not getting the right treatment from the right facility with the best doctors.  It’s not my business and I have promised to keep my mouth shut now. This is about no one but CC. I want to be a good friend to her.  Pissing her off at this point is a bad idea.

Another A
I’ve been seeing a man whose first name starts with A—let’s call him AL. He won the green card lottery a few years ago and has lived in New York for the last six years.  He’s from Dublin.  The accent is cute, but not enough to make communication difficult.  I don’t know how long he will be making an appearance in this blog.  We haven’t seen each other that much.  But so far, it’s fun.  I like him. 

On Saturday night, we went to dinner in SoHo after my bookstore gig ended and after he finished work.  He kissed me in the middle of a bar called Puck Fair. Ah the romance!

Then he got a call from work – end of date, I thought. Apparently not.  He decided not to go back to the office.  Grand Theft Auto would wait till Sunday morning, he said.

Okay, I said, but you’re not getting laid tonight.  He laughed and said he wasn’t really expecting that.

Then we went to his apartment in Brooklyn.  He has more books than I do.  He has a little gizmo that scans all the titles and he has a pretty accurate count of what is in his collection.  Very endearingly nerdy, especially for a girl like me.

I like this guy’s style.  Straightforward.  He makes fun of me a little bit.

No one got laid.  I want to see AL again.

Faith and Central Park
Faith is my ex A’s friend.  When my ex introduced us, I was somewhat put off by her I-am-a-strong-black-woman thing. I liked her immediately, but I am wary of self-labeling as defense mechanism.  To me, it is a too-transparent attempt to justify what has gone wrong.  And it means that a person like this would be easily offended by my mostly good-natured but politically incorrect commentary about life.

Yesterday, Faith and I went to see the last performance of the season at The Delacorte. The play was Euripides’ Bacchae.

I queued up for tickets at 9 a.m., she showed up at noon.  Before she arrived, I lay down on my blanket and listened to Bob Dylan and bits of opera. I almost wished she wouldn’t show up. It was cool and sunny in the park.  I could have stayed there all day. I lay under a canopy of trees, the sunlight drifting down between the leaves and water from the previous night's rain occasionally splattering down.  There were a few hundred people in line with me. 

We got our tickets and wandered around the Upper West Side together, got our nails done, drank wine, ate pizza, talked about her movie, talked about men. We carefully avoided the subject of A.  She is uncomfortable being friends with the both of us.  Understandably.  So I told her that we were fine, friends even. Does anyone ever trust an ex-girlfriend when they say this?

Faith is 40.  She is going a little crazy over a man she went out with once three months ago.  They had a falling out after one date and he called her again last week.  I’m not sure what is going on with that.  But I have to say, it was nice to see her shed that I-am-a-strong-black-woman armor and allow herself to obsess about something as simple as a date that didn’t go the way you would have wanted it to.  And to hope that it still has a chance to turn into something. 

Will Faith and I remain friends or was yesterday a fluke?

The Bacchae was probably pretty good.  To be honest, I didn’t pay much attention till the end.  It was a beautiful night.  Between the moon and the sky and the view, and the top of the turrets of Belvedere Castle that was visible from where Faith and I were sitting – I couldn’t concentrate. And later, raccoons that were supposed to be part of the play escaped their cages and I kept looking under the seats for that flash of red eyes. I kept thinking "this is the end of this lovely awful summer."

How could it be that this year, thus far, has been so bittersweet for me?  I don't think I ever truly knew what that word meant until the last few months.

Toward the end of the play, after Pentheus had died and his mother cradled his severed head, I finally started paying attention. The actress let out a wail that pierced the air and I myself tearing up.  I wish I could remember all those lines. “I love you more in death” or something like that. 

Of course, I was thinking of my baby. But honestly, it wasn’t so bad.  It was a reminder, that’s all.

Everything Reminds Me of Something

“If you like pina coladas and getting’ caught in the rain…”

That line was my first thought when I woke up this morning.

I’ve been singing this song non-stop, sometimes out loud but mostly in my head, for the last five days.  I went out with a man who wrote to me about it, then my ex mentioned it, then my friend Heather mentioned it. This song makes me wistful (in a good way). Wanting to escape and not recognizing that what you want has been there all along. Missed connections.

Reminds me of that New Yorker cover a few years back where a boy and a girl are looking at one another while they sit in different subway cars, reading the same book but separated by a subway platform. I remember trying to figure out which book they were reading and concluding that it was Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night.

And it reminds me of that Bob Dylan song “why wait a little longer for the one you love/when he’s standing in front of you.”

I’m a hopeless romantic idiot.  I often wonder why it is that we miss the most obvious things. Is it an inherent human characteristic to reject what seems too easy? Are we wired to make our lives more difficult than it needs to be?

One of these days, I will write about my own big missed connection.

Some good news about my friend CC – the cancer has been downgraded from Stage 4 to Stage 2 or 3.  I hope this latest bit of news is not inaccurate.  I don’t understand how she can be at Stage 2 when there is metastasis.  Let’s hope I’m being overly cautious and totally wrong.

What has CC been thinking of these last few days?  I cannot even imagine. When she first received the diagnosis, she told me she thought of my pregnancy and eventual abortion.  I guess it’s to do with having to face monumental, unwanted life changes.  And when you get down to it, to being alone with your dilemma. Can you even compare the two? 

When C found out she had cancer, no matter what her boyfriend said or did, what anyone says, it is only C who had cancer, the only who might die or lose her hair.

When I found out I was pregnant, I was the only one who was going to make that big decision and live with what came after.

So maybe the similarity is that both situations woke us up to the realization of how we are trapped in ourselves no matter what kinds of connections we manage to make with one another. And that no matter what happens afterward, you will not be the same person you were before finding out.

Tomorrow, I’m going to the ‘burbs to keep her mother company while she undergoes more tests. What is that going to be like?

Last night, I spent the night with my ex.  We went to the biergarten in Astoria, drank too much, talked, got caught in the rain.  (The song obsession was in place before last night, just to be clear.)

Before we went to sleep, I told him I love him.  It’s easy for me to say that, and without rancor, I accept that we are no longer possible.

Will I contradict myself in a few days?  So far, have I? Somewhere, someone is laughing at me.  Maybe I’m the one who’s laughing?

Babies and Maybes

When I first started this blog, I imagined it would be an elegant meditation on grief. It didn’t occur to me that I wouldn’t care about eloquence, that I would pass up opportunities to write about beautiful things. That I would have so much to say about other people, that other people would have reasons to grieve at the same time that I did. That it is possible to feel bad about so many different things at once and to find comfort from the very same people who have hurt you.

The last two days have been draining – the friend with cancer, my sister, my depressed mother, my aborted fetus, my own ongoing non-relationship issues. All of these people occupy discrete spaces somewhere in me, each of them a kind of sorrow.

But here I sit in the middle of a crowded restaurant in the East Village, looking forward to a nice evening. My stomach is in knots--because I am hungry and because I am nervous.

I am not unhappy, exactly. How is that possible? Maybe what I am is a liar.

I don’t know what I am looking forward to. The future seems so bleak. My mother is aging faster than I imagined she would. She gets sadder every time I talk to her. The older she gets, the more she finds to regret.

My friend has cancer and no one knows how this will shake out yet. I fear the worst. It’s my nature. What will her life be like in one week? I think of that and her, and my eyes cloud over a bit. I want to cry for her, but we're nowhere near that yet. It could be nothing. And tears are the last thing she needs to see from her friends.

I am still alone and fumbling in a world of men who don’t quite see me. I am still involved with my ex. We communicate almost every day, we have slept together twice. What do we want from each other? It would be so easy to label this something, that we have become sleazy together. How much truth is in that statement?

I suspect I am being weak even as I tell myself I am strong. What am I doing?

I will be alone for a long time I think. This is not what I want to happen, but something in me resists leaving the last few months behind. Is it the aborted fetus? Do I love A so much that I am willing to take whatever I can from him? Does he love me so much that he is willing to risk new love for old me? Fucking me can't be that much fun. How did I knowingly allow myself to turn out to be his bit on the side? Or are we just unprepared and/or unwilling to live with the decisions we’ve made?

Are we tied to one another more than other old lovers because we made a baby together? No one gets medals for making babies, especially when they turn out to be mistakes.

I just called my baby a mistake.

This afternoon I talked to A for two hours. We talked about everything and still it wasn’t enough time. What are we supposed to catch up on and what are we doing? It seems always to come down to babies and maybes. He blames himself, that if I hadn’t gotten pregnant, we would still be together. That’s probably true. But how badly did he want us to stay together and how badly did I want us to stay together?

How long would I have stayed knowing that all I would ever have with him is movies and breakfast and dating for all the time we are together? I am in love with someone who wants to be Peter Pan. And I want to be a grown-up.

Why isn’t that enough reason to stop loving someone?

How Life Changes in a Split Second

My friend was diagnosed with cancer on Wednesday. She is calm, funny and too crass, then sobbing. 

On Friday afternoon, I cried at Madison and Vine when we were having a glass of wine. She demanded I stop so I did. Earlier that afternoon, I touched the side of her breast, saw the bandage from where the needle was inserted for the biopsy, saw the bruising.  It looked like a bruised boob.  It could have been anyone's boob.  But it happened to belong to my friend.  

She's waiting for more tests to get the prognosis.  I fear the worst -- I don't know why. Because I am an alarmist.

 

My Funny Friend Larry

I recently met up with my friend Larry. He invited a mutual friend along. 

 

Soon after we sat down, Mutual Friend leaned in close to me and said, "I had prostate cancer last year."

What do you say to that? Mutual Friend excused himself to go to the bathroom and as soon as he was out of earshot, I asked Larry why he didn't tell me that Mutual Friend had cancer.

"The guy has a radioactive pellet up his ass--how was I supposed to work that into a conversation?"

Larry is the patron saint of the suffering.  I love him.