CT

Today is a better day than yesterday.

Some background: this has been a fuck of a winter. Not the shitshow fuck of a grand emotional disaster winter that last winter was, but enough of a fuck that I have at times thought -maybe I could have a season, one season, unmarred by some kind of loss.

A more grinding -what now- kind of fuck.

Here is the winter's dreary catalogue: the definitive end of an ill-defined thing with the Born Ruffian; [redacted]; filed under expected but still sad: the date for Jennifer's move; a trip to California lovely enough to highlight the sheer impossibility of continuing what CT and I had started; weeks of achy pulling apart; [redacted].

I am so tired of losing things, of stretching through transitions by convincing myself that what is on the other side will be as good as what was there just one minute ago. Better even, maybe. So tired. Sick of. Ignoring how sad.

All this was okay, mostly. I'd been a little leaky here or there about various things, suddenly hoarse-voiced in the middle of a story now and again. Okay though.

Then CT sent an email. It was a long one, a few screens. It was his usual: thoughtful, analytical, warm, unsparingly truthful, full of strength and vulnerability.

That is what I gave up.

I lost it, the Okay.

Took a while to find it again, and there was a lot of noseblowing and hiccoughing as I was searching.

But find it I did, eventually. Things picked up after that, got better even.

At 10 pm, Jennifer and I met up at the pub, where Steve and Cowboy H. overlapped the end of their pints with the start of ours. Then J. and I moved off down the road to see Winter Gloves and we danced danced danced to the synth and the handclaps; I closed my eyes and remembered why it is I see live shows, each chord or kick drum beat a gorgeous electric force from head to feet, immersed.

Moving out of the crowd at the end of their set, we ran into D.Jack and Handsome Jim and Jennifer handed me over, cutting out after 30 seconds of Thunderheist, which I knew she wouldn't like. TH was a disappointment, all of the beats with none of the volume, it floated over me and I couldn't dive in. I'd wanted to so much, been dancing around my living room for a couple of days pretending to be buried in the dark club full of noise, swinging my hips and shaking my hands at the ghosts.

I danced anyway, because why not. It was fun to get sweaty at the back of the crowd. Trade snarky jokes over the not-loud-enough music. To get tipsy and have another beer, fuckit anyway.

Today I'm still feeling a little washed out from finally having felt the sad I'd been cutting off at the knees. Probably that extra beer too, who's kidding who here. A little sleepy from not getting to bed till 2.30 in the am.

It's an okay kind of washed out, now, laid back. Making plans, cleaning up. Appreciating the sun and the subterranean green tone to the air; the riffley grey wind of an early spring afternoon, its smell sticking to you long after you've come inside.

When I got to Davis on Sunday, the leaves were furled, grey buds on the grey branches that hold themselves like stiff twisty snakes high above the roads. Under my watchful eye these last four days the buds have come into their own, and the town is ten different kinds of green. The air reeks of it, sharp grass by mid-morning, rounded to yellowish in the sun-drenched afternoons, and after the sun falls: purpley grey green, the colour of dusty succulents.

I've been trying to horrify the native Californians with tales of winter, which is truthfully not very hard when you're with people who think the freezing point is, well, freezing. One of them – Trish, maybe? - asked when it would be spring in Ottawa.

Right now it seems like forever away, though it's a rare treat to be able to watch the leaves twice in one season.

It's my last day in California. We're sitting inside at the Delta of Venus, the Davis version of the Wild Oat, minus the buttery scones. The bearded djs have set up, but I think we might head off before they start, and take Lenny the German Shepherd to the dog park.

Before we got here, CT took me on a bike ride around campus – it's pretty and spread out, built mostly in the 60s; the buildings are squat with sharp corners. The grounds are lush, palms and pines and flowers everywhere. Blooming trees. Full of squirrels and ducks and kids rushing madly around during finals week. And bikes. Lots and lots of bikes.

Making plans to leave is melancholy. We just spent a few minutes hashing out what the rest of the day is going to look like. I need to be packed before tomorrow, since we need to be out of the house at 8 and I haven't seen the early side of that hour in a long time. We finished the conversation with long faces.

But I'm excited, too. I'm a homebody at heart, even if my home is still mostly frozen.

Homesick, I'm homesick. I miss my cat, my house, Team Some Street. I don't miss the ice, but I do look forward to watching it crack open in the next few weeks, as I wait for the leaves to fold out.

Last Friday night, with the whole city of San Francisco towering above me, I passed out. At 10 pm. Flat on my back, in all my clothes, mid-way through a conversation about what we were going to do. I just shut my eyes, and when I opened them again, I realized I'd fallen asleep.

"You mind if we don't do anything else?"

CT looked at me solemnly.

"It's like a big weight has been lifted from my shoulders."

The trip has been a study in contrasts. San Fran is all narrow streets and vertiginously high hills, hydro wires and bus cables and sharp corners and bustle and noise. Davis is flat, not quite prairie flat, but flatter than Ottawa, even, with wide bike lanes on every road and even wider suburban streets lined with low-slung houses and citrus trees.

I don't know why this is such a shock to me, but lemons grow on trees. Everywhere. So do oranges and tangerines. And grapefruit. It's like when I discovered that garlic is a plant, and doesn't come in two varieties - salt and powder.

It's not like I didn't know that citrus grow on trees. I just never imagined it. It never occurred to me that people would *own* such trees, and that the fruit of said trees would be so abundant that they'd let it fall and rot on the ground, because what are you going to do with 6 dozen grapefruit hanging out in your backyard?

I never once imagined picking a perfectly good lemon out of the neighbours garbage. I never one imagined making my 6'4" temporary live-in boyfriend scrump one for me from a random tall branch almost overhanging the sidewalk.

All I want to do is wander around the neighbourhood with my tall friend and gorge myself on oranges. It delights me.

Also, it is 8 pm and the kitchen window is wide open.

I'm roasting a chicken. CT will be back home from his class in less than an hour. The two of us, plus his two roommates, will sit down to snacks and wine first, then the chicken with garlic mashed potatoes and sauteed green beans. The eating out was fun, but man, I'm glad to get back to my ancient grains and dark greens and oatmeal in the morning.

There's a hippie co-op grocery store just a short walk away from here, and so far, I've spent hours wandering around its aisles, looking at prices, ogling the four varieties of kale, being shocked by the long aisles of wine made Right Over There, filling tubs too full olives from just beyond the city limits.

Whew.

Weight is a big issue for me, as I've written about before. And Kat's post yesterday got me up on my soapbox and off on a tangent.

I decided to move it from her comment thread to my own blog because really, what I ended up saying had very little to do with what she wrote. The thoughts I've been having for years strangely coalesced around one or two of her sentences.

So I've spent ages tonight pounding out my train of thoughts, and I think I'm happy with how it came out. I was going to post it tonight with just a quick read through, but I think it needs time to sit. And it may be long enough that I need to divide it into a couple of sections so that you don't skip the whole damn thing completely.

Look for that in the next few days.

At any rate, here it is, much closer to midnight than I expected to be conscious, and my dishes aren't even done.

However! I did get partially packed for my trip to California, to see CT. Truthfully, I started yesterday. I'm only taking carry on, and I'm a little worried about fitting everything in. I had to prioritize something fierce, taking only the important things.

This, of course, means that I don't really have a reasonable outfit in there. Though I suppose it all depends on your definition of reasonable. Nine days of skin-tight jeans and lots of cleavage for certainly fits CT's version. And I do like a reasonable fellow.

Man, I feel like I'm going in about 10 different directions at once.

It's going to be warm in California. I won't have to wear a parka. Man, I hope we bought enough beer for tomorrow night. What if someone gets sick for the show? What if I fall down again? No, I won't be drinking. When I see CT, boy, am I going to [redacted] [redacted] him. What if I've fucked up and they pull our license? What if our houseguest thinks my house is dirty? Or ugly? And don't forget to take the address of where you're staying in San Fran. Those poor bartenders, Rice-a-roni Fuck Fest 2009. Oh, that Michael. Fucking hilarious.

Instead of being extra responsible and coming home early from work to clean and practice, I met Michael for a post-work drink. We sat at the bar in the Whalesbone and gossiped and laughed and said inappropriate things to the waitstaff.

I got back half-drunk and wound up, talking exactly one mile a minute.

When Shelley came over, I realized that half-drunk with only a couple of slices of bread and hummus to sop that up is a bad way to practice. I have those pieces memorized, and quite well by now, but when push comes to shove, the start of the next line sticks its head in the sand. Hopefully, when we're on stage, and push comes to shove comes back to push, I'll be able to yank 'em out.

Well, the cold has laid off, or rather laid in, lower.

I've developed my Third Stage Honk, during which I sit by the computer in the kitchen not noticing what I sound like until M-C comes down and says "Jesus, you okay? You sound awful." Or Shelley calls, and when I go to say hello the air catches on my vocal chords but I don't want to honk hello in her ear and so I swallow it instead, which sounds not like hello at all but like air leaving a bellows; or, like Shelley's grandma.

But I feel fine. It's just with the honking every time I breathe in. Exactly what I was hoping to avoid by taking a day off.

Because what is not sexy? Giving out a big honk in the middle of your porn reading.

++

It's probably a good thing I'm so het up over this performance on Friday. I'm het up for a bunch of reasons.

One, I usually read my work, rather than memorizing and performing it. Been a long time since I've had to go off-book, as it were. Two, I'm not used to taking my clothes off in front of a large group of people. Three, I'm not used to performing with other people, and although I'm pretty solid when Shelley's not performing with me, the first time or two together I'm off my game.

What's the worst that can happen? Well. The worst is that I start into a coughing fit part way through and have to leave the stage because of it. And that's pretty bad.

Anyone have any suggestions about staving off a coughing fit? My ex used to use Slippery Elm if he was feeling throaty and had to go on stage.

I'm willing to listen to any and all pet remedies.

++

It's probably a good thing that I'm so het up over the performance on Friday because if I weren't, my head would be totally lost in the clouds thinking about my trip to California and I'd be walking into things and falling under cars.

One. Week. Today.

While I can't believe the time has passed so quickly, CT and I have both had it already with the anticipation.

Before a month ago, we weren't going to see each other again, well, maybe in the far off distant probably-never future; that was the plan. So the first few weeks after I booked were a high of "oh my god, i'm going to see you again. for real! that's so weird. i'm so excited."

Now, though I'm still excited, and how, I'm used to the idea of going, and I would really really like to stop remembering what it's like to kiss him and actually plant my lips right smack on him.

I've managed not to start packing, but it's taken all my worrying about the performance to do so. Starting Saturday, all bets are off.

+One+

Grace and I quite handily beat Greg and Bobcia at 4 games of Sequencia, mostly, we decided, because of the Polish Diagonal Sight Disorder with which both are afflicted. This, you will have to trust me, is hilarious, and I would explain why, except that by the time I finished explaining, complete with diagrams and flow chart and game plans, it would not be amusing in the slightest.

I love this game, though. I'm not a huge board game fan, having been turned off them at an early age by a childhood friend who cheated like mad, lied about it, and then made fun of me for losing. But I find Sequence - "It's part card game, part board game!" - thoroughly enjoyable. It's enough to keep your hands busy while you're chatting, and not so difficult that you have to pay much actual attention.

Bobcia also called me a boozer all night, as in "Get a load of this boozer here!" because it took me an hour to drink my one and only beer of the evening. I found this also to be hilarious, for reasons that probably do not require flow charts.

+Two+

One of CT's pictures from his trip here in August has been chosen by Schmap for the Downtown Neighbourhood section of their Ottawa site. I'm very excited about this. I was standing right. There. Swear to god.

+Three+

Does anyone want a yowling cat? I've just about had enough.

I've heard her through the earplugs, the past two nights.

If I thought it would make it better, I'd get her one of those automatic feeders. But it would have to have multiple compartments so that she could get fed at 3 am and 5:30 am, and probably 4 pm too, so I didn't have to generally listen to an hour's worth of yowling when I got home.

And sure, I could feed her earlier, but at what point does it stop, yknow? She's on a pretty strict schedule. Between 6:30 and 8 am, 5:30 and 7 pm, and 11 pm and 12:30.

If I fed her every time she started yowling, she'd go through a case of cans in a couple days.

Basically, if you are in the house and she hasn't just been fed, she's either yowling or I'm hunched up waiting for her to yowl.

At 5:45 this morning, I took my earplugs out, wrapped myself in a robe, stomped down the stairs and shut her in the basement. Then I stomped back up again, shut my door, plugged my plugs back in and slept, solidly and deeply, for about 90 minutes.

You know what I want?

I want my pre-diabetic cat back. I want the cat who ate dry food 5 kibbles at a time, who slept with me at night and put me to sleep by purring. Right now, I do not want the wet-food eating, stink-drooling, demon-infested yowl monster that my formerly sweet natured lovely cat has become.

Not much of a salesperson, am I?

+Four+

I didn't go to the Slow Dance Party tonight because the thought of strangers touching me made me want to back slowly out of the room instead.

+Five+

I think my post yesterday came across as less hopeful than I meant it.

It's really quite a relief to have stopped looking, and all in all, I'm pretty happy about it.

I don't really think I'm going to be alone forever, not necessarily, at any rate. Hence the wry half-smile and the murmur.

Maybe I'll find someone, maybe I'll find someones. Maybe I won't find anyone.

But what's the worst that can happen? Most of the women in my family who are over 50 - all but two of them - are single, either through divorce or death. And those are just the ones who are alive. All my great aunts were either spinsters, or widowed young enough I never met their husbands.

I come from a long line of women who have ended up without a partner, though not alone, not by a long shot. They've all lived full and happy lives.

What I need to do is fight against what pop culture tries to shove down my throat as the one true way. Difficult to do, because being coupled in some form or another feels right to me in many ways. But wrong in many others.

So I'll write and I'll knit and I'll run and skate and lift weights and practice yoga. I'll play board-and-card games with my friends while drinking one beer. I'll put on short skirts and go dancing with other friends while drinking several. I'll go to California to visit hot boys. I'll travel. I'll go back to therapy. I'll laugh at good jokes, read good books, eat good food.

And happily, mostly, I'll warrant.

Something that I did not blog about was a potential trip to India for work. I was worried about jinxing it, which, as it turns out, I should not have worried about.

We were waiting for funding: we waited, we waited, I put off booking stuff, put it off, couldn't put it off any longer. I emailed my boss and said I couldn't go.

But fucking christ, did I want to get out of Ottawa, and how. I tossed around other ideas - Havana, Austin, Northern California.

What? I hear you say. Does not a certain Conference Fling live somewhere...

Oh yes, yes he does.

I spent a few days mulling over whether or not I should ask if I could impose myself on his sunny climes.* Before I could come to any concluding conclusion, CT beat me to the punch. Did I want to come? Visit him?

Hell yeah. I should say so. I was a little cautious about saying yes impulsively. Was I running away? Would seeing each other again complicate the very lovely relationship we've built?

CT told me he would be cautiously optimistic over a couple of days until I gave him my answer. Though of course by "I need a couple of days," I meant "I need to talk to Shelley."

When I asked Shelley if going to California wouldn't be running away, she pointed at the giant snow drift behind my head. "Of course you're running away! Who the hell wouldn't run away from Ottawa in March?"

With that sage advice under my belt, I walked in my house, fired up Skype, and said yes.

Now, not only do I get to go to a place that gets a skim of ice a couple times a year, I get to see CT in all his glory. I get to meet his dog, the friends I've been hearing about, see the house he bought while he was in Ottawa.

It's strange to have a friend and not be able to picture them in their context.

I have a general sense of what CT's town looks like, have seen some pictures of his house, the wall behind his web cam, have watched Lenny the German Shepherd walk into the room and put his head in CT's lap. I know what half of the en suite bathroom looks like.

Not much to go on. Not enough, is what I say.

I'm flying into San Francisco, we're spending 4 nights there. I'm hoping we can take a long wandering drive back to CT's home town, and then 5 nights in his house before he drives me back to SF to head home.

A few days after this got all planned - yesterday - my boss called me into his office. They'd gotten the funding for India, after all. My chest seized in panic. Were they going to want me to go? Would I be able to say no? I had commitments! I had nice weather and warm arms waiting for me in California!

What would have been an enthusiastic whoop three weeks ago turned into a series of choked-back nononononononos stuck in my throat.

"So [redacted is] going, as before," my boss said. "And as well..."

I set my jaw.

"So is [redacted]."

I let my breath out. Quietly. I was not redacted.

"You," he pointed his head at me, "I want to send to Dublin at the end of April. Does that work for you?"

I should say so.

*Yes, that is what the kids are calling it these days.

On some avenue in Chicago, probably N Milwaulkee, CT looked down at me and said, "You've got a thing, did you know? You don't like to be on my right side. Even if you end up on my right side, you switch over to my left as soon as you can. No matter what."

I did not know.

Or rather, I did not know I was still doing it, 10 months later.

++

On one of our early walks, Eric dropped behind me and popped up on my other side, my right side. I did a quick twist towards him, raised my eyebrows.

He explained that he was monocular, having lost sight in his right eye a few years ago. Having someone on his right side, while not a huge issue, was just not that comfortable, forcing him to turn his head almost completely to make eye contact.

I took that quite seriously. Partially, it just seemed polite, what I'd do for anyone. Partially though, I wanted to stand out for him as someone thoughtful and nice. Not completely altruistic, you could say, but the result was the same. Seemed an easy thing to do to make someone you liked a helluva lot more comfortable.

Even so, at first I'd forget. After a block or two, one or the other of us, usually me, would start, drop back, and pop up on the other side, grinning.

After a while, I almost never forgot. It just felt natural to have a solid presence on my right side.

A little while after that, no matter who I was walking with, if the usual presence were an absence, I'd feel a wee frisson. Not quite anxiety, but on that continuum. A little rock of salt in your boot, not hurting, but making you shake your foot to shift it somewhere less poky.

The closer the person was to Eric's height, the more pronounced the absence, the more jagged the rock, the more quickly I switched.

Eric and I stopped walking together pretty abruptly, but I kept on with the habit. Not that I was was trying to keep on with anything else: it's just that I'd long stopped noticing the pokes. There was just one smooth unnoticeable cascade of feelings and reactions that lead from frisson to flipping sides, which had created its own indelible string of neurons snaking through my subconscious.

++

I had a rare trip to the Hartman's yesterday, in that I didn't run into anyone I knew, or even recognize, till I was nearly done. I came swooping around the corner to head back to the olive bar, and nearly literally ran into Eric.

We were both almost done. I just had a few things, but stayed behind him in line anyway, forgoing the express lane to chat and catch up.

I'd say it was lovely, but it wasn't even that, really - it was just normal. Or rather, it was the kind of lovely you get from running into someone you don't much hang with but is always a pleasure to see. How's school, your loan came in?, yeah, the diagram on the interac machine is totally stupid, sandwiches are for boys, i know!

We paid for our stuff, left, both quite weighed down and slow on the greasy shifty-snow sidewalks. What are you up to tonight? oh, you know, visiting with the kgrf, midnight!, really. And we got on to the topic of his glasses, which made me think about his eyes, which reminded me.

I was on the wrong side.

My first thought was to switch, but seeing as how the sidewalks were narrow and slightly treacherous, seeing as how we were both laden like pack horses, seeing as how we hadn't much further to go, I just left it. I didn't need to be extra special triple nice anymore. He'd be okay, I was pretty sure, he wasn't going to die.

But my habit? Finally, it had. Just faded away, without me noticing.

When I wrote that I didn't know quite what to say about Chicago, that was a bit of prevarication.

Though I came back from Chicago in a bit of an emotional mish mash, I knew pretty well what I was feeling, and I'm sure I could have found the words - I almost always can - but it wasn't right to post about it then.

When CT came to Ottawa, I wrote that it took a couple of days for us to find our stride. But once we clicked, we really clicked, and we were meshed, tight.

It was the opposite in Chicago. The first couple of days, things were like they had been in Ottawa. But on Friday we switched rooms, and that seemed to be the fulcrum, when, as he wrote to me a few days ago, the rush of touching each other wore off, and we tumbled down into sad realities.

One of those realities being the knowledge that we were never going to last. Were never meant to.

We continued on, enjoying each other's company, seeing interesting things, but there was a unmistakable undercurrent of melancholy. Neither one said anything about it, though as has always been the case between us, we were thinking the same thing.

For my part, I was willing to coast on the surface. I didn't think a heavy conversation about what I was feeling and sensing would make anything better; I thought it would only ruin the time we had left together. We made plans to talk about the big stuff when we got home.

I won't go into the details of why we don't work. Those aren't really important. Though I will say it's not just the obvious 3000 miles. I will also say that as you get older, you realize that love does not conquer all, and never was meant to.

We've decided to not break up, not exactly, but to go on indefinite hiatus.

We'll shift to being friends, which is what we were drifting towards anyway, and maybe, sometime, if it works out, we'll take another trip together. Not to shut the door completely on the possibility of us, but to shelve it, high up.

It's been a lovely 4 months with him. I've learned an incredible amount. It's the first time I've been with someone I felt could take care of me if I needed it, where the hotza wasn't compromised by feeling safe and cared for. He is a kind and thoughtful person, honest with himself and with others, straightforward in communication, able to make himself vulnerable, able to ask for what he needs and accept what I have to give. He is a rare creature, in many ways.

And he always thinks I describe him with hyperbole.

I'm happy that I can clamber up to the top shelf and reassure myself that our possibility is still there, whether we take it or not.

More importantly, I feel lucky to have him in my life, as a good friend, held dear to my heart.