Radial Symmetry

As you know, I was all excited and proud of having mowed my own lawn. Well, not the actually having done it, perhaps. But I was pretty happy about having found the impetus to do it.

Push mowers, if you don’t know, aren’t the most efficient mowers. Especially if the grass is long, it seems.

What I didn’t write below, because I didn’t think it mattered, was that when I finished mowing the lawn, it was appreciably shorter, but still longish. And it wasn’t the even velvet that a gas or electric mower leaves behind. It was a bit uneven, and some of the tougher weeds remained proudly unscathed.

Looked fine by me. It was a bit wild still, but I liked it.

When I got home from work the next day, it was to the velvet nap of a power-mowed lawn.

My neighbour, whose 4 feet of very short grass under the lilac bush joins our sun-kissed and wilder 12 feet, had mowed the whole damn thing.

Again.

I stood agape for a few minutes, thought about knocking on his door, then moved on up my own front steps instead.

I mowed the lawn today for the first time in years.

Given my general interests and demeanor, you might think that's a euphemism for something at least slightly dirty. It is not.

There I was, with a half hour till my flank steak warmed up enough to prick it and rub it. There I was, with a front lawn that was becoming long enough that even I thought that perhaps enough was getting to be enough.

Last year was a bit of a home disaster.

I felt distanced from the building and the land; I was unsure of my future here. I'd never gardened before, I hadn't had a lawn to mow in 15 years, and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to put those kinds of roots down here.

Last year, the tomato plants got planted, but never staked. If you don't stake tomato plants, they creep steadily along the ground like the vines they are. I was "harvesting" tomatoes on the other side of the garden from where we'd put them in the earth.

Everything in fact, just grew how it grew. We watered it sometimes. Sometimes we forgot.

Eventually we got around to tying up the cosmos, but only because we were worried one of the small children in the neighbourhood might mysteriously disappear. It got cut back long after Halloween; I know this only because the dying foliage was thick enough to use as a backdrop for spray painting my luchador boots.

We forgot what we planted last spring. Just a week or so ago, taking a quick survey, we kept finding new plants. Lily of the valley! Cosmos! Sedum! Halfway through tearing out a mystery plant that smelled like something that might make good tea, I remembered that the neighbour across the street had given me some bee balm.

Last year, I never mowed the grass.

Partially because we didn't have a mower and never got around to either a discussion about buying one of our own or talking to the neighbours about borrowing theirs. Partially because our next door neighbour, whose 3 feet of grass joins our 12 feet of grass, likes a shorter lawn and cut ours when he was cutting his. Partially because I just couldn't manage to care.

Things around here have evened out now. Have gotten better. Not that I didn't like it the way it was; I did and very much. But I like it the way it is now, too. Everyone's getting more of what they were looking for. You can only be thankful for that.

This year, we've planted seeds and watered them.

This year, I'm not walking by the garbage on the front lawn and thinking Someone should take care of that..

This year, Shelley talked to the neighbours about their mower.

Which is why tonight, while I waited for my meat to warm up inside, I push push pushed the clanky whirring blades through the lush grass of my front lawn.

A while back, I submitted some readings to a website called For Your Ears Only. They post audio files of people reading smut.

I had smut and I had a recorder and I gotta voice. So I made some recordings and sent them off. I was pretty excited, because there are some real heavyweights on the site.

Tonight, I went looking for the site to send them some more stuff, and I found out they're doing a podcast now.

They've got six episodes up so far. Three of them are mine.

Two of them are, gasp gasp, Carol Queen reading from The Leather Daddy and the Femme.

I know that may not mean a lot to a lot of people out there. But think about the thing that you love the most, and try really hard to be good at. And then think of the person who's the best at that thing. And then try to imagine that your work was chosen to go next to hers.

And you'll understand why I'm trying to catch my breath.

Last Saturday night, Jennifer and I headed out to Wakefield to catch some of the HiFi reunion weekend at Kaffe 1870. I never made it to the HiFi – its glory days in Ottawa preceded my own – but I liked everyone on the bill. The Recoilers, Jim Bryson, Janice Hall – I may not have been at the HiFi, but I've seen all those people play elsewhere and liked 'em.

We got into the bar, which is a lovely little place. We got our beer and got settled. We stood around chatting lady chat, as we do, and I mentioned that d.jack had rescheduled his return from London so as to come back a day earlier.

I must have looked slightly sheepish when I said that, because her response was to laugh and say “Did you Elinor Dashwood again?” And my response was to also laugh and look more sheepish and admit that I had.

If you've read the book, it's in there too, but what’s burned in my brain is Emma Thompson’s face at the end of Ang Lee's version of Sense & Sensibility. There's that scene, where Edward tells Elinor that he did not get married to the woman he did not love but felt obliged to marry. Elinor, played by Thompson, has been restrainedly and impossibly in love with Edward for a very long time. When she finds out the news, she isn’t happy. She breaks.

It was going to be a surprise, his early return, and that is a very sweet idea, but it may well have killed me, just finding him in my house unexpectedly. But he couldn’t wait, was maybe unsure of how I’d take it, too, and spilled the beans over chat.

I looked at the screen dumbly for a moment.

I typed "really?" a bunch of times and then variations on "are you joking?" a bunch more.

I felt a big lump in my throat. I thought Honestly, Butcher. Am I really going to do this agai- and started honking out jagged sobs. It didn’t last very long, but it was a relief, even if I felt slightly foolish after.

Today? Today’s that one-day-earlier day. As I type, he’s just started the drive back to Ottawa. Back home. Back to his family, his friends. Back to me.

I can’t fucking wait.

Part of what got me through the whole process of suing my ex was daydreaming about the wicked blog posts I was going to write.

The ones that explained my side of the story in gory detail. The ones that excoriated him and made him look as bad as I felt he was at the time. Posts that drew what meagre bathos there was from a very painful situation.

I almost did it, once or twice, when I got whiffs of the stories going around. When people who'd always been friendly with me wouldn't look me in the eye.

Knowing before I started the suit that people might think I was a bitch for doing so didn't make it hurt any less when I saw them thinking it.

When I got those feelings, I was at least smart enough to talk to people I knew would talk me down. "Let it blow over," Shelley said. She's a smart woman, so I listened. I kept writing the posts in my head and saved them all up for one good long screed after all the shit had settled. To finally tell my version.

His last payment came through last Wednesday.

In the past few months, I was increasingly unsure how I was going to feel when that happened. For a long time, I assumed I'd be ecstatic to have it done with and to have this person I'd called any number of names out of my life for good.

For the first 6 and a half years of the 8 years we've known each other, there were big thick hanks of big thick emotions wrapped up in and around the place he occupied in my brain and heart.

The bulk of of those emotions were made up of different types of disappointment. There was resentment. Bitterness too. All of which turned to flinty anger after a while. For far too long before I broke up with him, as a matter of fact. It turned me mean.

But before all that, and even shot through the many kinds of unkind we were to each other, there was joy. He's one of the funniest people I've ever met; he has a warmth and a generosity of spirit I always found compelling. I loved him deeply for a long time.

Eventually the balance tipped, the joy fell off the scales, and we were left with only reaching for it. Both of us wanted the high of that joy back very badly; neither of us knew how to get it. We ended up trying to convince ourselves we were in love.

No one is their best self in that situation, of course, but his reaction to the suit didn't help quell any bitter emotions.

I certainly hadn't expected him to react well to being served papers, but I was shocked by how far on the other side of well his reaction landed. I was no angel, let's be clear here - I was manipulative in a way that makes me uncomfortable - but his behaviour was poor far beyond what I was expecting.

And this, if I were still angry, is where I'd let myself go. It would be pretty entertaining, if my internal blog posts are any marker. I've had a lot of time to find just the right words to shade his depths and to get myself shone up bright as Girlfriend Martyr.

But at what cost?

He and I have gotten to a point where we're friendly with each other - something I would have told you was utterly fantastical 2 years ago.

I like that we've managed that. That we've performed this impossible alchemy. It's amazing to me that the tight jaw and clenched fists and name calling of 2007 has turned into the current exchange of pleasantries, of movie and music recommendations; a casual wave and smile as I walk past him at a show.

When my bank balance showed the payment had come through, I didn't think "Thank fuck I never have to talk to that asshole again." I thought, "Huh. Wow. I guess that's done, then." I tried to figure out what I was feeling, because whatever it was, it wasn't much. A little empty, maybe, a little lost at sea.

He occupied a wounded space inside me for a long time. That space has shrunk considerably over the past couple years; in the past year, particularly, even the outline was getting hard to see. I could find it easy enough when I went looking. Occasionally when I didn't, as well.

And then there was that last hundred bucks and he just, he wasn't. I could feel a slight depression in a part of me where strong feelings once had lived. Like the flesh after a scab falls off. Pink and still a little tender. But whole.

He and I exchanged a couple of emails around the fact that it was over. He apologized sincerely, thanked me for being patient, said he'd changed.

The petty part of me, the part used to navigating around his bulk in my heart, snorted and rolled her eyes.

The bigger part of me thought What does it cost to believe him?

For those who are generous of spirit, the answer is nothing.

One of the first things I do most mornings, after yoga, after putting the kettle on for coffee, after putting the bread in to toast, after feeding the wee cat, though sometimes before all those things, you never know, is to open my email. I could pretend that I'm not looking for an email from my lover first and foremost, but we'd all know I'd be lying.

Monday morning, there were a couple, maybe a few. Shortish notes, all of them. One of them was a recap of the fun the night before. The next was an email saying he'd just found out he didn't get a position in London he'd applied for.

Which meant, I knew, because we've been talking about it for weeks, that the 4 months we were going to have together in the same city had just magically stretched to 8.

You would think - and I expected - that when I got this email I would go into paroxysms of delight. That I might dance a happy dance around my house and maybe sing a tune or two of joy.

What I did instead was nothing. Exactly nothing. I, in fact, forgot about it. Completely. I archived the note in Gmail and erased its existence from my conscious memory.

It wasn't until hours later, when I was leaving work and the door clicked softly behind me, that I remembered. Something about the click, I think, or the colours on the street as I walked out, or a smell in the air. But it was suddenly there.

Remembered the way you remember one piece of a dream from the night before. I could see the email in my mind's eye, the shape of the words on the screen. Hyper-sharp in the centre, wavery around the edges.

I couldn't remember if it was real or not.

It was, I ascertained after a few texts exchanged as I walked home from work. And I started leaking around the eyes, just a little.

All Monday night and all yesterday I felt bloated with tears, you know that feeling?, where you can feel them pressing against the inside of your skin all over everywhere and you feel puffy, about to burst.

This morning, I emailed Jennifer to tell her the good news and my weird reaction and I hit send and I started bawling. Gaspy-breathed, puffy-faced, snotty, red-eyed bawling.

It's the first time I've cried since he left.

When I fell in love with him, I did that fully conscious - and accepting - of the fact that he's based in two cities, an honest-to-goodness nomad travelling a worn path between two homes. So when I've felt sad or lonely this winter, I've mostly just pushed through it. "What can I do?" I thought. "Four months isn't a big deal," I thought. "Just x days till the next visit," I thought. "It'll go fast." I convinced myself.

When the subject of his plans in the fall came up, I said "I'm just going to work under the assumption that you'll be gone. That way I won't be disappointed." And I thought that was fine. I was steeled for it.

And now he's home in a couple of weeks, and now I don't have to brace myself for him leaving quickly after, and now, god, now I am crying.

The tearing feeling of saying goodbye once a month; the inability of skype to transmit smell; the camera right there by his chin where I might usually put a kiss; how he can still make me laugh till I snort over chat; the way I have been Holding It Together; the relief of not having to be this strong in the fall; the incredibly luxury of 8 months together.

It's just all a little much to take, all at once.

So you'd think I'd get that email telling me I'd have him here for more than two seasons and you'd think I'd leap up out of my seat and dance and sing. But I think it was more than my brain could handle. So the info got filed somewhere safe until I could start to process what those feelings might be.

I'm excited, fuck yes, and I can see the dancing and the singing on the horizon, but now, for right now, I believe I will have to lie on the floor and let those feelings feel their way through me.

+1+

That thing where you put your envelope when you're putting a cheque in the bank machine? Yeah, I always called it the deposit slot too.

Shelley and I were running errands on Saturday, one of which was stopping at the TD for her to put a cheque in the bank. She was punching numbers and sticking envelopes; I was leaning against the glass, enjoying the contact warmth.

She beckoned me over. "I think of you every time I put anything in the bank," she said. "Look at this." She pointed at the screen.

Please insert your envelope into the depository slot.

I started giggling uncontrollably.

"Like how you always say 'cellular telephone,' right?"

I just nodded, unable to do anything else. Depository! Unnecessary syllables! Haw haw haw!

Except I just looked it up, and in fact, the TD Bank actually does know what it's talking about. A place where things are deposited or stored is called a depository.

Ergo, the slot you use to put your things in there is called a depository slot.

But I still can't read that without dissolving into some kind of puddle of 12 year old laughter. It (gasp) says (gasp) slot!

+2+

I really should stop saying things like "ergo" in public. Am I still 10 and trying to impress the teachers with my vocabulary? Come on, Butcher.

The problem is that a joint got passed around at a party I was at. I don't partake (it makes me paranoid and/or panicked), and I wasn't drinking, so I will blame the hot-boxed living room for getting me a little fuzzy and thus ending the last story of the night, before we all headed out for dancing fun, with a lusty "ERGO" that rang out into a sudden silence and sea of nonplussed faces.

Everybody laughed at me good-naturedly, with teasing sweetness, and trundled either up the stairs to pee or down the stairs to wait.

Not, frankly, that I was ever off it, but it's true I have been less focussed on binder clips lately than I have been before. But two things recently brought them back into my life with a vengeance.

As Mae kindly blogged, we instituted The Amazing Scarf Organizing System at her house last night. I will wait for you to come back from marvelling at it over on her blog.

...

...

But a month or so before that, I started spring cleaning. Which involved sweeping all the cobwebs from my ceiling. Except that even after I cleaned my broom off, it was still pretty dirty, and my ceilings are a little rough, so the dust bunnies that had been hiding in the depths of the broom were quickly transferred to a new home. Better than cobwebs; not ideal.

This is where having been a housekeeper for many years came in. When I was cleaning the Parkview Apartments as a teenager, one of the jobs was to wet a rag and use an elastic to secure the rag over the head of the broom and then use the whole shebang to wash the baseboards.

Could I? With clips?

Why yes. I could.

I didn't need to wet the cloth, of course, but this old soft tshirt fit pretty nicely over the bristles and clipped easily into place.

Much much easier than elastics, I can tell you that.

And indeed, my ceilings are now very clean, thanks for asking.

I know, I know, we're way past tomorrow for the second half of that crotch story. I will get to it, that I promise.

In news that doesn't make me feel like a liar, I'm reading tomorrow night!

Tara Michelle Ziniuk is the headliner, and Shelley kindly asked would I warm up the crowd. So come on out and let me warm you.

I'll be reading a selection from a story I just submitted for consideration in Best Bondage Erotica 2011.

Thursday, April 8, 2010
8:00pm - 9:30pm
Venus Envy Ottawa
320 Lisgar Street
PWYC

Last weekend was insanely busy.

'Puter Learnin'

I'm halfway through a Web Designer certificate at the 'Gonk, which means a lot of weekend classes. Some are useful - who knew my HTML and CSS coding was so inelegant? - and some are beyond useless - Flash course, I'm looking at you and your rabidly offensive teacher.

Last weekend was Photoshop. It was a well paced course and I learned a lot. The teacher was pretty good, very patient.

Though if she'd stopped just clicking through stuff and then saying "See! There!" while we were all simultaneously trying to look at our screens and the big screen at the front, she might not have had to exercise said patience. But anyway.

It was totally worth doing, even though it meant basically not being at home for the second weekend in a row, but for reasons that are not nearly as nice as your lover's body.

Dammit! I Missed the Queers! Well, Mostly

And then, weeks after I booked the Photoshop course and my work nicely paid for it, the Radical Queer Weekend was announced. For the same weekend. It looked fucking awesome and, by all accounts, was.

I was busy all day Saturday, and too tired for Sunday night, but I did manage to make the Friday night kick-off, where the homos they bounced and the singer she shouted.

Secret Trial Five played a very short but fun hardcore set. I'd seen them in the movie Tawqacore - the only musicians in the film who were women, I believe.

If my ears did not deceive me, one song had a chorus comprised of this line: "We are not Tawqacore." I kinda wanted to stick around and ask them about it, ask them about the movie. Did they like the movie? What did they think of the movement? How was it being on the bus with all those guys?

But I hadn't had coffee for most of the day, which meant I'd spent the day in some severe withdrawal, which meant that I was going to spend Saturday trying to learn software with a mostly decaffeinated brain, since I wasn't going to have a real full coffee till Saturday night.

So the band announced the last song and I started making my way through the - very cute, as noted by Luna - crowd.

There is something perfect about standing in a crowd of slowly getting tipsy drunk dykes. To be woo, it feeds places in me that nothing else can touch. Or, put another way: dykes are fucking rad. And cute.

Okay. So What's This About a Camera?

And why was I not drinking coffee, you say? Is it that you just hate yourself that much?

Before I get to the camera part, just let me say that I was shocked by my reaction to the lack of caffeine. I knew it made me grumpy and headachey, but I didn't know it was going to make me fucking sick. By 8 pm on Friday night, 32 hours after my last dose of coffee, my head was stuffed too full of cotton, I was irritable, and I had started to sweat and shake. It made me thoroughly thoroughly grateful that my drug of choice is not only legal, but easily available.

I can sit my shaking ass down at a table in the Rideau Centre and down a shitty lukewarm coffee in big gulps, rather than having to having to scour the market for an even decently clean bathroom to get my fix and I don't have to worry about people harassing me. Heroin is, obviously, very different from caffeine, but I wonder how much of that difference comes from the way it's treated. Lots of it, I think I can say fairly safely. All of it? I don't know. I wonder if it isn't an issue of magnitude. Alcohol, par example, takes a far greater toll on the health and well being of pretty much any given population than does heroin.

That, at any rate, is what I thought about while sitting at the shitty stand of tables near the Solo shop at the Rideau Centre as the first webs of cotton melted from my brain. I will never go for that long without caffeine again.

In fact, I am starting to stockpile it for the End Times. Because lord knows you don't want to have cotton head during the apocalypse.

But the camera, yes.

The reason I went off coffee is because I volunteered to be part of a study called, verbatim, and take a deep breath now, "The Role of Early, Negative Experiences, Fear and Aversion, Couple Functioning, and Sexual Self View in Sexual Disorders Involving Pain."

The researchers needed both women who experience pain during "sexual activity and vaginal penetration" and women who do not. I'm in the latter camp - another thing to be grateful for - and it's always good to have something to blog about.

Except it's late and I'm tired and this is already too long, so more tomorrow, my pets.