Angeleno Femme

On Futons & Death

Here is something I remember: I am eight years old and at my grandparents’ vacation home in Arizona. I lie on a stiff futon that does not meet the curves of my body but rather defies them like an unemotional partner.  My hair is crunchy from river water, my skin still smells of sunscreen. I wear my bathing suit, even to bed. The room is dark, and I can barely make out the sliding closet doors in front of me. The only noises are those of late night boats putting down the canals and the tick, tick, tick of an unbalanced ceiling fan circulating the air in the outdated guest room.

I can’t sleep.

I lie awake racked with thoughts of death. Later in my life, during a philosophy lecture in college, I’d come to understand this night of anxiety as what Sartre may have referred to as an existential crisis. I’d had one before, screaming in my California bedroom one Saturday morning about how God couldn’t exist because I had no verifiable proof. I cried about it with my blinds closed while my parents watered plants outside. I cried because I had no answers and everything felt deceitful and it was my first moment where I felt my faith in something slip away from my grasp. I did still believe in Santa, though. He, however, seemed more plausible than God. At least he brought gifts and ate the cookies I left out.

Eventually I gathered my soggy, tear-drenched self and had a sandwich and played hide and seek with a friend that afternoon. But on this night in Arizona, my young mind was racing and no amount of vacationing or crying could mute the thoughts.

I mostly thought of my dog, Stevie. A white lab with a penchant for ear infections and macaroni and cheese, I took him to be my unofficial pony (I’d never been horseback riding) and attempted to ride him saddleless around the living room to his dismay. He was a patient dog, so long as food was not concerned. But I understood at eight years old that Stevie would one day die. I could not conceive of myself as an adult, I could not interpret the long term future, but as I laid on that futon I knew Stevie’s imminent death would occur within the next five to seven years. Always good at math, I laid quietly and did calculations in my head. Death was imminent. I’d watch my dog die one day. And then I realized that I would watch my parents die one day. And suddenly I could not sleep, the overwhelming inevitability of the future shaking any innocence from my petite frame at that moment. The ceiling fan tick, tick, ticked all the same.

After that sleepless night, I made promises to myself. I decided to never get a pet, because getting an animal just seemed like a needless way of putting myself back in death’s scope. And I would never think of my parents dying. Ever. I would push the thought to the back of my mind and bury it with television and three-way phone calls with friends and as an adult, Unisom and Netflix. Sartre would have seen this coming from a mile away.

Stevie died when I was sixteen. He was put down at our house. I did not cry. Instead, I left before the vet showed up and went to a friend’s beach house where I stared at the water until the sun set.

My fear, I realized, was that life somehow translated to endings. Except it wasn’t just a fear, it was a reality, but one I seemed to dodge for years. When my uncle and great grandmother died within days of one another in the mid-90s, I attended neither funeral. My parents went by themselves, shielding my brother and me from a sadness we couldn’t understand. I attended my first funeral at nineteen, and could only focus on the heat that June day. As funeral guests wept around me, I thought about how we’d all be the subject of peoples’ tears at some point in the future, but I let the thought drift away in the summer weather, keeping that promise my eight year old self made.

Death only became relevant again when I fell in love. It was like unintentionally adopting a pet, something I’d sworn I’d never do. I knew I’d lose him to either a breakup or death, as my morbid mind processed things. But being in love opened up a dusty part of my brain and heart that let in fears I’d been covering up with blankets and rationalizations over the years. As I sat with my boyfriend in a showing of “Wall-E,” I wept during the credits. “Why are you crying?” he asked, since nothing on the screen called for it. I’d been set off by a date shown in the animated film – 2110. I realized we wouldn’t be alive then. He wouldn’t be alive. We’d have lost each other. And I couldn’t figure out how to tell him this, so I wiped my eyes and told him it was “nothing” instead. By falling in love, I was inadvertently exposing myself to everything I planned on avoiding that night on a futon in Arizona.

I still cannot handle thinking of future loss for more than a brief moment. My mom and I joke about what she wants done to her body after she dies (cremation? Get turned into a diamond?) and I skim the surface of the topic, I scrape the iceberg with a razor, ignoring the depth beneath. My cat Kelsey died and I lost control, but reigned it in again when another cat, Bosco died. I let my habits chug along.

Now, in late spring, I pace hesitantly towards someone new. A new relationship, filled with all of the potential fears, all of the realities of loss that I have pushed away by being single. The loss right now that seems the most relevant is a superficial one within the grander scheme: fidelity. I am not in deep enough yet to comprehend greater losses with him as a lens.

Last night, as I lied in bed with K in the dark, I asked him: “Are you really with just me?” I couldn’t see his face. All I could hear was the hum of my air conditioning and the cars driving gently by outside. “Yes,” he said. And then rolled over: “Of course I’m with just you.” I try to swallow the honesty as best I can.

With no loss in mind today, I watched a video of a couple on the New York Times website. They are elderly. The black and white video is narrated by the woman, who describes taking care of her husband as his brain atrophies. He is a ghost of his former self. Yet, she speaks with the kind of wisdom that only comes with doing what I hope to one day do – to let go in love. “I have let go of the Michael I once knew,” she says. “But that’s okay, because he’s the Michael that I know now. It’s just all there is now is the love.”

In his nursing facility, she sets up his bed. I watch the video and think about how loss can come slowly, how the pendulum of getting to know your partner on such intimate levels can swing backwards until you are with a stranger because of the brain’s decay. I thought about eventual loss, but not in a negative light. The woman crawls into her husband’s small nursing home bed and spoons him as they sleep.

“A time that I really treasure is when he and I take naps together,” she says. “That’s actually just like it was before, when we would just cuddle in bed, and I guess it’s a time when then I really don’t notice that there’s a problem.”

I think of me last night, after hearing K’s reassuring words. He sleeps wrapped around me fitting to my body in a way that futon never did.

“It’s just me and Michael. I feel fortunate that in this life I have had the marriage I dreamed of having.”

As I have come to learn, I cannot avoid everything painful. I did get a pet. I found myself in relationships. I could give away it all, to other people who can bear the burden of potential loss, but the gains have become elements that outweigh the inevitable. If I think about it too much, I’ll get upset. So I try to simply exist with what I have now, I try to not spoil the present wholeness with an empty future. I try to become nearsighted, and last night my eyes finally adjusted to my dark room and I could see K looking at me. I turned around and we spooned as we always do.

I fell asleep last night okay, and dreamed of the one beside me.

Fear Of Flying

Face next to mine, there is a closeness that I can only understand through the idea of loss. To be so close, the pendulum must eventually swing back, I think to myself. I wait for the other shoe to drop and contemplate lacing up my own runner’s kicks — quit before I’m fired, or something that could make my vulnerability taste like pudding and go down smooth. But for now, he’s here. And I wonder if and when he will find distance, and then be gone. That’s what most do. I say to K, “What if you leave?” His left hand rests on my waist, an airplane tattooed on the fleshier part between joints. It needs a few touch ups, he knows this. “I’m not going anywhere,” K half whispers with the lights low, even though hours later I find myself alone in my bed, telling myself, you can still run, you can still run.

He drives freeway upon freeway back to West Los Angeles where planes fly so low you can read the safety precautions painted on the bottoms of the jets. His line of work involves glorified, mechanized pens and the art of permanency, but I had spent month after month settling into impermanency, into the single life and all that it stands for. While he tattooed others, and while his own body became a shrine to his values and journey, I instead sought life’s temporary tattoos, the kind of relationships I could rub off with a wet towel and replace with a new one, the only remnants being a reddened, tender mark that would fade within hours. Though I myself sport my own ink, I chalked up my inability to embrace the permanent to commitment issues and an urge to avoid the pain of the needle sinking into my flesh. Something stable, something that lasts, to me that involved a heavy sack of emotions that twist around each other like knotted necklaces that I cannot untangle. I decided after a heartbreak that I could not sit through another session, because a tattoo began to feel like nothing more than a scar in the making. K tells me he won’t leave, he’s close to my eyes, and I can hear the buzzing of the tattoo gun and worry about it hurting. I chicken out and take long strides away from him, trying to wipe off a stencil he’s hand drawn over my heart.

You could call it fear of flying. Being alone kept me grounded. But it is never the act of flying that frightens, but rather the act of falling. It is the potential of the fall, that scares…but even that can be reduced once more. It’s impact that alarms. “It seems like you just don’t want to feel those emotions,” and that’s true. Because to leave the ground means, to me, an eventual return — only with the brutal force of gravity and self-fulfilling prophecies. I stop by the shop one day and see his hand slathered in Aquaphor, the black inked plane a testament to his upbringing near LAX, the land of departure and arrival. Three months since he’d dipped into the atmosphere of my life, and I’d been searching for his return flight’s boarding pass, convinced it existed. I’d been trying to rub him off of my flesh, but something wasn’t working and he smeared more Aquaphor on his scabbing, tattooed skin and kissed me like tomorrow was assumed.

Here is what it has felt like in the past: a smooth take off, an ascent past the clouds. A light headedness even though the cabin pressure tried to remain stable. Taking in the view from above, eating cheap food and watching ice form on the window… Then, turbulence. Slight at first. Then building to a violent shake. Oxygen masks dropping from overhead compartments, white knuckling the seat and wondering when it would end. The plane sailing downwards, my ears popping as we fall. Doing a mental inventory, asking myself why I’d ever get into a relationship in the first place. The plane accelerates as it falls. The last thing I see is a memory of the clouds, beautiful and billowing beneath me and my wrist with surrender tattooed across it. And then, impact.

“Want to come over and watch planes with me?” K asks. I reluctantly navigate the freeways towards him and out on his deck we see the lights of airplanes, of journeys, of people coming home drifting towards us in the night. They look like fireflies in the distance, hovering in place and watching us. His fresh ink healed without a scar, smooth and crisp. The lights morph into planes and roar overhead.

Weeks later I almost run again, fleeing from what could be permanent. My legs begin to carry me, knees aching as I sprint, my baggage piled on my shoulders slowing my determined pace. I tell myself the single life is all that makes sense, that I could never lose control and leave the ground, that the notion of permanency in my life sounds difficult and unnecessary. I run until I’m out of breath, folded over and tired, but as I do I turn around and can see behind me K standing in place near LAX, near home. I think back to all of the times I’ve ran only to look over my shoulder and see a blank, personless horizon. But this time, the person I’m running from kept his word. “I’m not going anywhere.”

It took a few days but I walked back, and when I arrived at the airport, we hugged and I was told, “I missed you.” He helped take my baggage off my shoulders, and we walked through security, through boarding, together. He asks if I want to get on the plane while we lie in bed next to one another, and after months of saying no, I nod my head and mouth “okay.” We find our seats, fasten our seat belts and as the plane taxis I tell him, “I’m really scared. I’m really, really scared.” He strokes my hair and says, “I figured you would be. It’s alright.” I hear the engines begin to whir, we’re pressed back against our seats as the jet speeds across the runway. He takes my hand before we lift off the ground. I feel every concern rush through my body: all fears of being lied to, screamed at, fucked with, betrayed, replaced. But as we hold hands, right as the wheels leave the ground, I catch sight of his tattoo and find solace: fingers laced around mine, his plane, darkened and forever there, points towards me.

Readers, what is your opinion on this?

Is it…

Relationship —> Fall in love

Or…

Fall in love —> Relationship

Thoughts? (Obviously there is no right answer or hard/fast rule but I’m interested to hear what people think.)

A quick ramble.

Kindness, in different shapes and sizes.

On a Friday spent in as Hollywood builds to a crescendo, I find myself at a Shell gas station, looking for a snack. Its lit like salvation on a darker corner of Sunset, beckoning to those in need of smokes and processed food. No dairy, no bread for me though, because kindness somehow was spelled “deprivation,” lower case “d” in my life. A roster list of foods that shall not be touched. And a homeless man, sprawled out under a pay phone and an earshot away from the chiming gas station door, shouts out to me, “Miss, could you buy me a carton of milk?” Blip blip blip of facts and figures, heart disease, diabetes, lactose intolerance, studies showing this or that, as the door sounds bing-bing and my legs pace through the threshold. Things I don’t want to eat, to drink. But I buy him 1%, because it’s what I would have wanted, were dairy still an option. A day spent reading about its hazards met with a humane moment of one person hungry for the taste of breakfast with mom and dad. One man’s pitfall is another man’s treasure. He wasn’t asking for booze, or a pack of Marlboro Lights, or change. He was asking for a glass of milk. Early sleepers across the city sipping the drink to coax themselves into a slumber, and him drinking milk and drifting off, nuzzled up against a urine-stained wall, waiting for the cops to yank him from his dreams.

I hand him his milk as I head to my car. A smile spreads across his face. “Oh this is a big bottle,” he says and thanks me profusely, commenting on my looks. “Better not make your boyfriend jealous!” he shouts. I turn around: “Ha, I don’t have one,” I say defiantly towards the universe, a way to shrug off K, the one who treats me well to my instinctual dismay.

No dairy, no bread. I sleep that night alone.

Days later, bed-ridden with nausea, my deprivation catches up with me, my body in shock from the change. K texts me saying he will force feed me carbs in an effort to soak up toxins, it eases the pain but only slightly. I eat waffles that night but still am uncomfortable. He offers to come over, I say no, no, no, I look terrible, but “You never look like a mess,” I’m told. Kindness that I cannot comprehend because I understand kindness as deprivation. He deprives nothing, gives all. Hours later I open my front door with hesitance, face half-blocked by the door. He lies with me in bed, and rubs my back though I cannot move. And as I drift off to sleep, he finds his way back to the front door, locking it behind him gently. Later in the week, he tells me I’m beautiful, even when sick. Kindness, but spelled with a capital “K.” Its etymology a change to adapt to, but I try to spell it properly as I take a bite of his sandwich. And slowly, I give up on defying the universe for a few food groups, on defying myself for a single letter.

-

Memory is a powerful thing. An imperfect, skewed yet powerful thing.

I asked a friend recently how it is possible that I can, at times, reflect on what have been very painful times in my life with very unhealthy and unstable people through such lovely, rose-tinted shades. I allow the memories to drift through my mind like friendly ghosts, caressing lonelier corners, wiping dust off phantom happiness. The answer always lies in memory and how it relates to present day circumstance, as if circumstance filters impurities out of that which has settled in the depths of my mind and gone untouched. It wipes Vaseline over the lens and suddenly the world is blurred and beautiful. I look backwards till my neck aches, but with a blinded smile.

I asked a friend why I am so able to dole out insightful advice to others, yet not abide by my own boundaries. Memory and the inertia behind habit apparently can override common sense. And this is overwhelmingly frustrating at times since I consider myself to contain a certain inbred wisdom and ability to be rational (magna cum laude must amount to somethingin real life, right?!) — yet, get my feelings involved, and everything goes wonky. I am suddenly irrational, nonsensical, driven by misguided instincts and wondering: who the hell would ever take advice from a loon like me? In short, I’m dumb as fuck. Straight A’s mean nothing when you can’t foresee and understand emotional bear traps in your life.

I laid out my past mistakes, my past relationship turbulence to someone new last night and he stared at me, dumbfounded: “Why didn’t you just…leave? That’s so stupid to have stayed,” K said. “I really don’t get it.” I couldn’t explain things to his logical mind.  I instead shrugged my shoulders and twisted the corner of a blanket between my fingertips. The memories, as they floated through my head while kicking up clouds of dust, they didn’t sting. They felt soft, engulfing me in a fog. I sat peacefully within them. It was fine.

But memory left me wary, and tired tonight. I took to the internet to stifle my thoughts, found the appropriate source for misgivings and suddenly the Vaseline was wiped from the lens, the rose-tinted shades removed, the fog cleared and reality hit my nose like the smell of bleach. I unscrewed the cap on the Chlorox and let it pour onto my brain, over the memories, and sting as it cleaned. The murky waters swirled away down a drain congested with hair, shampoo, text messages and naive optimism. I dried off my hair and heard in my squeaky clean head, “What the fuck were you thinking earlier?”

Past events do not change. And often times people do not change, either. But our vantage point as we look at others and as we look backwards is always in flux. We villainize the innocent, we deify the goons. We look back on the painful with fondness, projecting it into our present day because of what I can only describe as the weakness of compassion, the weakness of optimism, traits that we value within ourselves yet curse to hell when they stand in between us and mental progress.

I feel often on guard against my softer side, the side that loves to wade in memories and allow them to shift my interpretation of the present, and vice versa. It’s a guilty pleasure. It allows me to romanticize my world, to pick and choose memories and weave them into a blanket that is nothing more than a fictional retelling of the past. But I pull at the threads, I undo the seams, and reestablish clarity each time. It takes patience, but I’m getting better at it, faster at it. I am on guard because memory is like a parasite, an infectious disease. It burrows its way into my rationale and lays eggs. And I don’t know when I will kill the infection, but it is enough to feel safe for the night, to protect myself from, well, myself.

K asks me if I’ve ever “felt safe with someone,” I say “no.” He holds me and I do not look at him. I’d never thought about it before. Years spent protecting myself from another person, or from my own weaknesses and suddenly a need for a nap kicks in. What is safety when your own mind can create dangerous illusions? No, I’d never felt safe with someone. And I don’t tell him, but that moment, that piece of conversation filed itself away in my neurons as something that I’d like to revisit. A memory in the making. But maybe this one I’m okay with looking back at. Maybe this one doesn’t need a defense strategy, a way out, a bottle of disinfectant and a pumice stone to remove the festering mess. Maybe this memory can allow me to feel safe. Maybe this one can let me say “yes.”

Anonymous asked: I've been seeing a guy for about 2 weeks. I found out he thinks that women are below men in society/is completely against gender quality 'cos "women are always the fuckups in history!" I never saw any sexist tendencies in him, and he actually has a lot of female friends, so this took me by surprise, and I was offended. I disagreed, and he didn't seem upset by it, nor did he try to argue with me about it, but it's been really bugging me. Is it really that big of a deal, or am I just overreacting?

Was he joking? I hang with a lot of guy friends and when I’m dating a guy, I can always handle the whole “Why aren’t you in the kitchen making me a sandwich?” shtick. It doesn’t bother me, because I know that the men I associate with aren’t women-hating dudes, and I also am a really strong minded female that is, for lack of better words, not to be fucked with. I actually dated a guy for awhile that I really cared about who loved to make sexist jokes. I don’t take myself too seriously, so I always rolled with the punches mostly because I can take it, but I can also dish out to a guy pretty hard. He knew that, I knew that, and I let the jokes slide with a sarcastic comeback and a wink because at the end of the day, I knew we were equals. Anyways, good for you for standing up for yourself and disagreeing, since it sounds like this situation is different.

But, I am a firm believer in the notion that red flags emerge early when dating someone — like during the first date, first week or first month. If this is something that he stated with a serious tone that you think he believes, that’s a big time red flag and he’s not someone you want to be dating. If he’s saying shit like he’s completely against gender equality and standing by his words, yeah, he sounds like a misogynist and is probably best to be avoided. Also, having a lot of female friends doesn’t mean he isn’t in some ways misogynistic or a supporter of gender inequality — friendships have loose boundaries and aren’t as serious or emotionally thick. You really learn what type of person someone is once you’re dating them. That tends to be when their “issues” come out, if they have any (in my opinion). If a dude is saying he thinks women are below men in society, you can bet that relationship isn’t going to be all flowers and puppy dogs once you’re really in it. That’s not a “normal” mindset with most guys, especially in today’s younger, more liberal generation.

Anyways, since you’ve only been seeing him for 2 weeks, it’s a pretty painless separation compared to breaking things off after a few months, much less a few years (should you decide to do so).

Since I don’t know the dude or your dating situation, you just have to go with your gut on this one. I can’t judge if you’re overreacting or justified, since I can’t sense if he made a passing joke to ruffle feathers or said this to you in a serious conversation with sincerity. If he’s making you feel wary on this topic, I’d jump ship. There are plenty of awesome guys out there who want to treat you like a frickin’ queen, not someone who is subservient or unequal. Healthy relationships are built on equality. If you do end things with him, just throw that into the pile of “avoid in the future!” And as I always say, GO WITH YOUR GUT.

Let me know how things go!

Xo

For All Ma Single Ladiez

Sup wassup reader-world. I know I said I wasn’t going to do some ubiquitous blog prosey post on Valentine’s Day, but I thought I’d repost my list of “Benefits Of Being Single In Your Twenties.” This list is a nice kick in the ass if you find yourself moping about your lack of boyfriend/girlfriend on this Hallmark-fueled holiday. As I’ve always said, you should value being alone and single because there will most likely come a point in time where you will neeeever be alone (with husband, kids, grandkids, etc.) and you will long for the time when you could indulge in every one of the following benefits (oh, and I added some new ones, too!):

• Sleeping in the middle of your bed, starfish position.
• Treating flirting like a sport.
• Ability to travel without being romantically tied down to any location — seriously, just pack your bags, go somewhere, and enjoy it with every fiber of your being.
• No guilt associated with an “oops” make out session
• Save loads of money during holidays!!!
• Don’t want to shave your legs for a month? No problemo.
• Open season at any bar/club/party.
• No shame in being attracted to more than one person at a time.
• Always have control over the remote, always have control over the radio.
• No hawking over your Facebook, worried about something “inappropriate” surfacing.
• Questioned by no one, answer to no one except yourself (and God, if you’re into that sort of thing).
• Can start a new routine like going to the gym or taking up a hobby whenever and actually have time for it.
• Spontaneity!!!
• Lipstick — any color, anytime, DGAF.
• Stories from awkward/funny dates — the best!
• Learning more about yourself and what you want from a relationship — extremely important.
• More time to focus on friends and family, which is a beautiful thing.
• Seat never left up in the bathroom.
• Can operate by rule of “yes” in virtually any circumstance.
• No “mental clutter,” as I call it, obscuring your important thoughts about goals and such — for example, while in the shower and letting your mind wander, you can think about all of your priorities, dreams and progress instead of “Fuck, should I call him?” or “Ugh, we got in a fight again.”
• Girls night, any night of the week!
• The lovely feeling of “what if?” and rampant potentiality.
• You control your life and your emotions — not someone else.
• Learning to trust yourself, love yourself, and like spending time with yourself which sets amazing, healthy foundation for when you are ready to enter a relationship.
• Enjoying the freedom of some of the most exhilarating, exciting years of your life. Seriously. It’s phenomenal once you embrace it.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of the single folk out there — you’re young, you’re free, have fun :)

Worth It?

Unif is releasing a leopard print biker jacket with spikey studs in late April. This is so AJ it hurts. The price tag of $310 also hurts. Should I save for it? Hmm…

Of course I would be wearing real pants.