ok, just one more thing
So what are you up to for the long weekend? asked Accidental Date. Well, I said, I’d like to spend some time outdoors. But Thursday I’m having Thanksgiving dinner with good friends in Seattle.
Huh, he said, and paused for approximately three seconds. So one option is that I could pick you up in Seattle and we could go backpacking. That’s when I decided to stop being bitter.
on purpose
The Accidental Date and I had a second, non-accidental date last night. (I guess this means I’ll have to think of a new name for him. Would calling him The Rebound be too true to be funny?) We went to a concert. We danced the whole time. I don’t mean we danced together - I mean he and I both danced all through the concert. If you are not a concert dancer, and specifically if you are not a concert dancer who has dated a non-concert dancer, you may not understand how important this is. So let me just tell you: it’s really important.
It’s so important that when I noticed the couple next to us – a cute guy about our age in a sweet little hipster hat, dancing around, and a pretty girl in red, resolutely standing still even when he tried to dance with her just a little – it took everything in me not to walk up to him and say, You, her? Bad idea.
Afterwards we went to a bar down the street and started talking to the couple next to us. They had been married for ten years and were having a date while her parents watched their daughter. I asked her how they met, and she lit up. She started telling the story – about seeing him when he was visiting a friend in her apartment building, and how he almost wasn’t there that day, and the way they contrived a second meeting – and when he heard her telling the story he lit up too, and joined in.
I was handsome then, he said at one point, and she said You’re still handsome, not in a reassuring tone but just straightforward as fact, and went right on with the story. I was hot then, she said later. You’re hot now, he said smiling.
At the end she turned right to me and said Look. Here’s the point. True love really happens. You really don’t have to settle. You Do Not Have To Settle. We’ve been married ten years and sometimes it has sucked, but we love each other. It can be done. You can meet someone and love them, and just be good to them.
It’s a phrase Operaman and I used often: I just want to be good to you. But we never figured out how to do it. And we never mastered that part where it was ok to take a little risk – I was handsome then – and trust completely that the other person would be there as backup.
In any case Accidental Date and I are meeting up again tonight. And that may be all you hear from me about him and/or Operaman for a little while. Because it doesn’t take much doing to come across this blog, and endless posting about how he’s cool but I’m clearly not over my ex doesn’t seem like the best thing to have out there. (Hello, Accidental Date! Sorry about the whole not-being-over-my-ex thing. I sure had fun dancing though.)
I guess you’ll get to hear a lot more about cement and so on.
don't tell my heart
This weekend I accidentally went on a date.
I didn’t think it was going to be a date. I thought it was going to be me and a friend-of-a-friend and maybe another person or two getting together for an event we were all interested in attending.
But then the event got cancelled, and the “maybe another person or two” got cancelled. It’s cancelled but I’d still like to go out with you, is what the Accidental Date said to me on the phone in the afternoon. The wording caught in my head for a second, but I assumed he meant It’s cancelled but we might as well do something anyway since it’s Saturday night.
I did not think it was going to be a date because I have been sending out zero flirty vibes in the past few weeks. If I’m sending out any vibes at all, they are saying something like I am a bitter and moody girl who cries at inappropriate times and has started drinking a lot more than before.
When we were all out last week on the night we made the original event plans, I looked up at one point and noticed that the Accidental Date was quite attractive. And my immediate thought was He’s quite attractive! He should hook up with that cute girl at the end of the table. That is how much dating is not on my mind right now.
So I was a little surprised when I opened the door Saturday night and the Accidental Date had a bottle of wine.
OH, is what I thought, when I opened the door. Wine.
I thought you might like this wine, is what he said. But what I heard was, I had this bottle of wine so I brought it for us to drink. Like maybe the wine was for economic reasons - cheaper than the bar! - or… I have no idea. Rationalization is a wondrous thing.
We talked for a while in my living room, drinking wine, and I thought, Ok, we have good rapport, but so what? Last week I took great interest in an article about New York condos. That doesn’t mean I’m in the market.
We went to dinner and he paid. This is just a friendly thing, said my head. Why divide the bill when he can just pay for dinner, and then I can pay for drinks after? We went to drinks after. He paid.
Now, I’m not gonna say I was unpleasant during this evening, but I was not turning up the charm. I was not going out of my way to be likable. And though the dateyness of the evening became more and more difficult to deny, I still wasn’t flirting. I was vigilantly not flirting. I kept my hands in my pockets. I kept my feet under my chair. This is just friendly! I insisted, as we shared a piece of cake.
We stayed out until late, and then he said nice, datey things to me, and then he went home.
And despite my best efforts, I kinda had fun. It felt good to have someone show up at my door with a bottle of wine, and ask me questions, and take me out. And he was cute and funny and interesting, though I tried not to care too much. I would like to go out with him again. But afterwards, replaying the accidental date in that silly post-date way, I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d cheated on Operaman.
reminder
I find when I’m overwhelmed with inappropriate self pity, it’s a good idea to reorient myself by helping people whose lives actually suck. Last night I went to a volunteer training for a program that would allow me to do this.
After two hours of orientation, we were asked to do the meet-the-person-next-to-you exercise. I opened by asking Berg about his family, and he gleefully began describing his two small children.
We were then asked to come up front and introduce our partners. This is Berg, I started. He lives on the coast with his wife and kids, and he found out about this program from a friend. I continuted for a while, then he introduced me, and we sat down.
A few minutes later we were listening to another pair’s introductions when Berg leaned in to me and whispered, No wife, by the way.
Pardon? I whispered back.
It was a nice introduction you gave me, but I don’t have a wife. Just two children. He smiled a smile that said more than I’d learned already.
And don’t you worry your pretty little heads about this, friends: I’m full up, for the moment, on the divorced / kids / long distance combo plate. In any case I’m not interested just now in dating anyone at all.
But I’m thinking that, though I miss Operaman something awful, and though I have certain considerable concerns about finding someone else so simpatico, the meeting people thing itself will not be the problem.
contingency
Last night I read a book cover to cover – the first time I’ve done that in a long time – from 5:30 in the stacks at Powell’s to the coffee shop to the bus, to midnight under a blanket in a chair in my front room. It had started unintentionally wile I was waiting for a child to move away from Junot Diaz. Joan Didion was one shelf over. The Year of Magical Thinking caught my eye because magical thinking is an Operaman phrase.
This book is about the year that follows the death of the author’s husband. On the back, boxed in blue, the text says it “will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or a wife or child.”
And in case I haven’t laid on the melodrama thick enough in my blog lately, here exactly is the irrational heaviness that has somehow seeped into my life: that I haven’t, and what if I never do?
It’s not really already so dire. I’m doing pretty good, given the heartbreak. I just feel so done with this dating-and-breakup thing. And I’m angry and sad about Operaman. I wanted us to figure things out that we didn’t know how to do.
Two weeks ago I asked a friend if she planned to have a second baby, and she said yes. I told her I was glad because as an only child I think only children are a terrible idea – both too lonely and too good at being alone. Did you have a dog? she asked. I didn’t.
My parents are practical, and dogs are bad for carpets and vacations. Too much to give up for something outside yourself. But I am no practical person. Settle me somewhere safe and I will gamble it for an unpromising alliance. People I have liked and loved lately are wary of what they might forfeit, but I’m terrified of what I might keep.
No-dog love is not the kind for me. No-dog love is the kind Operaman offered, and I struggled with it start to end. It never seemed to suit either of us. I was sure we were up for something more. I want the kind that can fill two hundred and twenty seven pages with just the first impressions of its absence, the kind that makes you cry that you might never have something so big to lose.
aloud
The two shows at the Oregon Convention Center this weekend were the Hoilday Food & Gift Fair and Wordstock. I was surprised to find that at the entrance, I couldn’t tell who was headed for which event.
I wasn’t planning to go to Wordstock. Its name makes me think of the literary gathering in Wonderboys – selfserious and cliquey and narrated by a weary Michael Douglas. But on Saturday morning I was talking to an old friend about my breakup, and she said it was for the best. You like to do things, she reminded me. You need to date someone who makes time for concerts and readings. And I realized I haven’t been to a reading in a very long time.
So Saturday I heard John Hodgman and Sunday I heard Alison Bechdel and Selden Edwards and Rachael King. I forget Portland is such a literary place, because it’s not a community I’m part of, and because I still carry around my inner East Coast Arts Snob. Like, Oh, people create things outside of New York?
And Rachel King described how she started writing like this: I realized if I was going to be the writer I always knew I was going to be, I had to actually write something. I like that.
And then I heard William Least Heat Moon, who wrote Blue Highways in 1980 when his marriage dissolved and he headed out in a van around the country. He just completed a second book, twenty five years later, while traveling with his second wife. An audience member asked whether he preferred traveling alone or with a partner. If I’d traveled with somebody for Blue Highways there would have been no book, he said, because back then I didn’t know how to pay attention with somebody else present.
I used to believe I had to choose between paying attention – to what was around me, to what I wanted to do and get done – and having somebody else present. And usually I would choose the former, and occasionally I would choose the latter. And only recently, like maybe yesterday, did it occur to me that just because I don’t yet know how to do both at the same time doesn’t mean it’s not an option.
In my relationship with Operaman, we both felt like we had to choose. He chose paying attention, and I chose him. In choosing, we both chose poorly. Now I remember why I used to go to readings.
get outta the kitchen
A week after I moved in last March, the oil furnace in my basement died. It was ancient and had never been maintained and I didn’t get it fixed. I wore sweaters and awaited warmer weather.
The warmer weather came, and now it is gone again.
After several months of research into every possible way to heat a home, I’m getting a woodstove. It’s pretty and it fits the era of my house, and it works even when the power goes out and when fuel prices go up. And of all the options I explored, it’s the one I feel the most excited about. I'ts green and efficient and just a little unexpected. If it’s a hassle and a headache I’ll add something more conventional next year, but for now it’s all woodstove all the time.
The woodstove itself was cheap compared to any other system, but the extras quickly added up. There’s the pipe from the stove to the chimney, for starters, and a different pipe for the chimney to the roof. There’s the special legs I wanted, which cost extra. There’s the guy who shows up to put it all together in a way that won’t burn down my house.
A woodstove also needs a hearthpad, so that sparks and heat don’t set the floor aflame. The prefab hearthpads sold by the stove store were made of NASA material trying to look like stone. I just couldn’t pay so much for something so ugly. I decided to make my own.
I’ve had moderate success, so far, at avoiding Home Depot. There are two great local hardware stores in my neighborhood, and no fewer than three used building supply warehouses in Portland. But this time it seemed inescapable: the project required clean fresh supplies and an assortment of appropriate tools. Also – did I forget to mention this? – I waited until the day before my scheduled installation to get started. So I needed everything in one place, and quickly.
Home Depot hooked me up. Three different Home Depot employees and two helpful Home Depot customers provided thorough and only occasionally conflicting advice on tiling supplies and techniques. I left with a full cart and a plan.
At home I spread everything out on my dining room floor. The dining room and kitchen are essentially one big room, and the wood stove is going between them against the wall with the old chimney. I started by screwing cement board into a four foot square piece of plywood. Then the cement board needed cement, but there were no directions on the bag about proportions. One of the Home Depot guys had said “like oatmeal,” but I realized, as acrid clouds of powder filled the air, that there are all different consistencies of oatmeal. Oatmeal like soup? Oatmeal like clay? I aimed for something in the middle.
I also had no idea how much cement I would need. I consulted three DIY books and each said Follow the instructions on your cement. So I guessed.
Ten minutes later I put a skim coat on the cement board. The excess wet cement slopped over onto my hardwood floors, which of course I had forgotten to cover. Then I put on a thick coat of cement, and sculpted it into even little teeth with my trowel. This was ridiculously satisfying. It turns out I hadn’t made quite enough, so I had to scoop out every last oatmeal-like deposit from the bucket bottom with my hands. My hands, and then the trowel, and then my clothes, and finally the floor, became encrusted in (oatmeal-like) cement. But the cement-drying clock was ticking. I ignored the mess.
I pressed the tiles into the stiff cement ridges, slipping little plastic spacers in between to keep the grout lines even. I wouldn’t have time to grout before the stove came, I learned, because it turns out cement needs two days to cure. I would just have to grout around the stove.
For the sides and the front of the hearthpad I cut the tiles in half with a cheapass tile cutter from the Depot. It was awkward and cut rough, crooked lines, but I decided this would add to the Did It Myself charm. Lastly I tried to even out the tile heights. I’m sure there’s a trick to this. I don’t know it.
All in all, though, the hearthpad looks pretty good. It has maybe been my most successful home project to date, saving me three hundred dollars and involving neither blood loss nor despair. And I even had time to grout it, because when Monday came the installer’s wife went into labor. So my stove is arriving next week.
vote
Beth and I dated for almost four years, and during this time I learned a lot of things. There were the things I learned from her, of course – but there were also the things I learned about other people from how they treated us as a same-sex couple. I learned about the way strangers can threaten you without saying anything. I learned about the way business owners and waitresses can let you know you don’t belong. I learned about the importance of being deliberately, overtly welcoming to people who have come to expect cold receptions. And I learned what it’s like to realize you’ll never be President.
Not that I was going to be president. It’s a very American idea, though – that anyone could be. I remember being taught that in first grade, and I remember writing an essay about how I would be the first woman president. Why the first? my teacher wrote in the margins. It took me a long time to figure out what she meant.
That was the last time I wanted to be President. Politics is neither my interest nor my strength. But one day when I was living in Eugene with Beth I suddenly realized that being president was actually not an option. Not because I don’t want to be, but because of who I am. Americans would never elect a woman president who had been in a relationship with a woman, no matter what, no exceptions. I thought, for the first time, that lots of people can’t actually be president. It’s telling it took me thirty years to realize this. I bet lots of first graders already know enough about the world to not buy that line in the first place.
In first grade I looked at the poster of forty white Christian guys (one Catholic) and I thought, a woman could be up there. Two decades later I know that a gay person couldn’t. A Muslim couldn’t. An atheist couldn’t. And when I was thinking about this list, just seven years ago, I also added: a black person couldn’t. Because what black first grader looking at that poster would ever believe that anyone could be president? What thirty-year-old looking at America could ever think America would vote for a black president, no matter how qualified he or she was?
So even as the economy has come crashing down and my country has been making one tragic decision after another overseas, even as this campaign brought out some of the most hateful, ignorant commentary from our collective closet, I have decided that today I will feel nothing but inspired about America, no matter what happens. Because millions of Americans, friends in New York City and relatives in Kentucky, have decided that they want a man named Barack Hussein Obama to be president. Can you imagine all of the personal struggle that was required for this to happen? Can you imagine all of the demons that had to be faced and conquered? Seriously, look at that fucking name! We are a flawed country, an ugly country sometimes. But we are also a brave country, a country of faith, and better than our fears.
