The Pimp and The Ho (Dwell & Tell Part One)

I had just gotten back from the U.K.  I'd brought a show that I wrote and performed to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  What had brought my American audiences much laughter and then to their feet at the end had a less than earth-shattering effect on the Scots.  In short, it didn't go over so good.  To be fair, it's difficult to gauge the reaction of a crowd when their absence is more prevalent than their presence.  I had some shows when the audience numbered in single digits.  Nice.
It rained a lot while I was there and I was recently broken-hearted.  The two go together well, like $10 Pinot Noir and episodes of 11 P.M. Law & Order.  Edinburgh, for all its beauty, stomped on my already beaten-up heart and sent me home lonelier than I'd ever felt.  Sadly, I like to think that I am my plays, and if they get praise, I get praise, and if they get hammered, well . . . (I am getting better at this.)  Oh, and I didn't get laid either, which I thought was sort of a given circumstance of a summer in Europe.  Nope, not for this Sad American Girl.

M & D and 41 Years

My parents celebrate 41 years of marriage today.  They are the kind of couple who respond humbly yet not without humor about their marital success.  They act like they made it by the skin of their teeth.  It goes like this:  Chuckle, Eye-roll, Not-Sure-How-We-Did-It Joke, Ha-ha, Next Topic?  In short, they cannot take a compliment.  M & D -as they are exclusively referred to in my journals and letters over the years- act as if 41 years of marriage just happened to them.  Like, maybe Time should get the Congratulations, not them, the very members of the marriage.

Ugly Cake

So, several years ago, I’m dating this guy and I fall in love.  It is unclear whether he has fallen with me.  At a certain point he just falls off the planet.  We were long distance at the time and I remember hitting one of those relationship walls that don’t hurt so much as simply stun.

I cannot stay in this if he doesn’t love me back.  Equally.

Otherwise, I’m just dumb, and my friends are having intense conversations over turkey wraps that include phrases like:  “a little worried about her” and “should I say something?”

So, I tell him about the wall –in more (or less?) poetic terms- preparing myself that he will stammer and back out of the whole thing.  But, by gosh, he starts fighting to stay in! 

However,

He wants to stay in without saying “I love you.”

I think if you are 17, you get a pass on the L word, but not when you’re 40. 

Ode to Dad

I was eleven years old when I attended the second audition of what was to be too many to count.  I attended a small ballet company on the east-side of Columbus, the second of the three ballet schools of my youth, and in my opinion, the best in the city.  The audition was for membership in "The Company" which performed publicly and at schools around the city.  I had not made the cut the year before, but now, at eleven, I had so much more going for me...!  By the time I was eleven, I was probably in dance class four or five nights out of the week.  Both of my sisters danced.  My mom took classes, and also, for a period of time, taught movement classes for very small children.  Someone in our family was at dance class at Alan Miles Ballet Academy on almost any given night between 1983 and 1987.

My father did not take ballet classes.

Remember Me Tall

Among the many steps into adulthood that I must take is the uncomfortable action of creating a will.  I guess its time.  It's always time, isn't it?  It is always the perfect time to make a will, just like it is always the perfect time to break-up with a married man or start those exercise videos or that watercolor class.  All choices, I recently read, are made from either faith or fear.  Let's see:  I choose to sort the stacks of Cd's in our apartment rather than create a will out of . . . ?  

Yet, I am married now, and the thought of my husband having to make difficult decisions without my advice fills me with more fear than faith.  I mean no offense, only that I think about these things, and he doesn't, and when I bring them up, I have little faith that he will remember the conversation at all.  Especially if I am dead.

Abundant Sunshine

This morning, the light fills our little apartment in Queens in a way that makes me feel hopeful beyond any shred of reason.  Nothing particularly special is scheduled for this day -- unless you are of the belief that the world is coming to an end.  I think that's pretty special... and I don't even know which end of that boxing match I want to be on.  Either, I float up to the sky and feel 'chosen' - a middle-child's dream come true- or I am left to suffer the ruins of our planet and forge a new world with the little that we have -which doesn't seem that different from what we're already doing.

where's the vino? where's the bean?

where's the vino
I've given up drinking for a while.
(Waiting)
No, I am not pregnant.  Naturally, this is the first questioned I am asked after I drop the on-the-wagon bomb.
No, not pregnant, just need a break from my favorite escape.
No, I have not given up coffee too.  That would be cray-cray.  (The "bean" in the title refers to the me-bean, not the coffee-bean.)
The vino has been released of her duties for the time being.  The bean is laying low.
There is, however, a quarter-bottle of red wine on the kitchen counter, which on my (drinking) watch could never have survived the days between last Thursday --when it was opened and so cooly abandoned by the male guests we had that night-- and now.  The quarter that remains is probably embittered. With its label directed ever-so-slightly out the window it appears to be looking away haughtily, defiantly:  "Fine.  You won't have me?