paramour

Every time I think I'm finished crying, I start breathing. The breath catches somewhere between my tongue and my lungs and turns into a sob. And then that's it for a while.

Eric and I broke up tonight.

If there is a silver lining: it was one of the best break ups I've had. There was no drama or acrimony or resentment; I might have said one or two foolish things, but neither of us said anything particularly regrettable.

Though right now I really do want to shake him till his ears ring. I want to make him figure out why I wasn't good enough to stay in love with, and tell me, goddamit. I want to make him understand what he is giving up in me.

He already does, and he already did. A while ago, truthfully.

After he had said it, after it was out, after it was decided, I wanted him to leave as soon as possible and also to never get his ass up off the couch. Because as long as he was there with me, there was still a possibility that he wouldn't disappear when he walked out the door.

But once you've decided you can't be together, how much really is there to say?

We did find a few things, though it was mostly me just blathering to stretch the time. Eventually, he got up and left. We had one last hug. I told him I loved him. He didn't answer. He's not a liar, never was.

Well, this is that. The last post of NaBloPoMo.

I know Andrea had a good experience with it, as did Jo. And I certainly enjoyed that they were both blogging every day.

For myself, though, overall, I'd say I'm fairly neutral. It was interesting to push myself, and occasionally when I didn't think I had stuff going on in my noggin, turned out I did. But I didn't love the pressure to just put something, anything, up. I may post a bit more regularly from now on, but probably not every day.

It's good timing, this end of NaBloPoMo, because at 4 pm I'm off to Montreal to visit Shelley for a couple days and then bring her back to Ottawa where she belongs. Not permanently, sadly for us Ottawegians, but I'll take what I can get. I packed my laptop, because what would I be without my laptop, but in truth, I'm not likely to open it, and less likely to blog.

I am more likely to be eating fancy food, shopping, visiting my sister, getting my queer on at Meow Mix, schlepping, or some combination thereof.

This trip away also marks the first time I've let someone take care of Freya since she became diabetic. I know very many kind, competent people who have offered to be on the cat care team, but I'm a little neurotic about it. It feels like a lot to ask of someone. But this time, ask I did.

Eric is going to feed her and shoot her up, and has been very kind about my needless mother-henning around how to do it: "Hmm, you know, *I* hold the needle like this. And I crouch, on her left side. And then yep, little tent, poke your finger in there, don't poke your finger, ha ha. I find it easier if I hold the needle like this." He has also been very patient with the two or three "Are you sure it's not too much/too early/too late?" emails. He's a good egg, that one.

Last Saturday night, after the Body Language opening, I decided to go out for a nice beer and read. I chose the Oak because every time I've been in there, the lights have been anywhere from lowish to garish. Always bright enough to read by, at any rate. And they have Guinness reliably. What I wanted was a Guinness and my Believer.

I thought I might be in trouble when I got there. There was a bouncer at the door. There was a guy behind a couple turntables. This is a neighbourhood pub. With a bouncer? A dj? Not quite right. I walked in. And the dj, a non-pro, made a phony-voiced announcement "Hey, kids, welcome to METAL NIGHT at the oak. This one goes out to..."

Luckily, the bar is divided into thirds. And though the darkness of METAL NIGHT had taken over the left and centre third, the right third was mercifully bright. I took a seat, my back to the TV, lay my magazine and book on the table, ignored the surprised looks from the people at the table beside. Yes, actually, people do like to have a beer and read a magazine by themselves on a Saturday night. In public. I'm okay, you're okay.

Settled in, I looked up. Across and down a couple tables was a guy reading the paper and doing the crossword. He looked up, we shared a brief smile, we both went back to reading. I got through a very well written book review and a quarter of my pint. Halfway through "When Basketball Imitates Melville," the worst happened, and the lights went down.

I slapped the magazine on the table, looked up in irritation, and in sychronization with the guy across from me. We both raised our eyebrows, refolded our reading material and held it up close to our faces.

Even with the light of the hockey game behind me, I was struggling, trying to get the magazine folded just so, frustrated when they went to commercial and the white glare from the ice disappeared.

I lowered the magazine and rubbed the bridge of my nose. I was getting a headache. But I had a beer to finish, dammit, and nothing else with which to distract myself.

Then saved! Karen and her crew from the vernissage came in. I gathered my reading material, my coat and scarf, my corn chips and salsa, Andre grabbed my beer, and I moved whole hog over.

We all chatted for a while, going over the evening in detail. It was a delight to watch Sarah and Karen together. I watched them tell an entire story to each other with their eyes, leaned forward, the eye messages flying back and forth in front of Andre.

The place filled up a little, though never got full. The people who'd given me puzzled looks settled up and moved along. New people took their place. The TV cut to commercial, cut back to the white ice-glare, its glow over the new people. My pulse jumped.

I looked closer.

The guy now sitting at the close end of the table was a normal looking guy, nice enough looking, probably cute to lots of people. He was wearing a green jacket with a white zipper and white piping along the raglan sleeves.

If you had asked me what jacket Eric wore on cool summer days, I probably would have stumbled for a few moments, searching my visual database for an image. My heart? It knew immediately.

Tomorrow, I leave for Edmonton. I'm going not for fun, but for a conference that my work is organizing. Somewhere along the way, I thought it would be a good idea to have a volunteer coordinator. And volunteered myself for it. Like with the iron, a smart person who does stupid things.

Normally, if I were about to leave for a few days, I'd be going nuts cleaning and doing laundry and tidying and buying wine for the housesitter. But I'm not going to have a housesitter because Freya is going to stay at the vet's while I'm gone. Eric, being his regular nice self, emailed an offer to take care of her. "Hmm," I wrote back. "You might want to wait to make a definite decision until I explain everything."

Later that night I showed him the insulin and the needles and read bits of the care sheet out to him. When I got to the part about how she might die if he got it wrong, he thought that maybe the vet's would be better.

I was super nervous about starting her on the insulin, but she's been fine. Better than fine. She's stopped drinking so much and she seems less lethargic. She's actually quite alert in that photo.

Giving the needle is awkward. I'm at the stage where I can see how it might go easier and faster but don't seem to be able to make my fingers do it. I think longingly of the practice shot with the vet tech, where Freya was nervous and so just sat there. At home, where she's more comfortable, she starts walking away from me, or flops down on the floor just after I've gotten the needle in. Oh, fun times indeed.

But no, no crazy scrubbing or bubbing, none of that, just an 85 ride to Boyd St with Freya in her rucksack, open at the top so I can peek in along the way and picking out my clothes for the next few days. And getting my apartment and myself cleaned up for a shit hot date with my lovely paramour.

When did I start hating shopping? I used to like it, but I find that I have very little patience for it any more, and unless something looks either smashingly good or horribly bad, I am stricken with indecision about whether to buy it or not.

Last week, I realized that I only have one pair of pants that actually fit me comfortably. I can sort of fit into three other pairs of pants that I own: one pair is so tight they've been relegated to out-on-the-town pants and even then, I wear a belt and leave the button undone; one pinches me uncomfortably in my poor belly; and the other fits me in the morning and stretches out so much over the day I spend all evening hoiking them up.

The thought of buying new ones filled me with dread. The choosing and indecision certainly. Also, now that I have the luxury of being able to afford stuff that is not made by poorly paid people in terrible conditions, I really didn't want to. But I didn't really know where to go. Eric and his nimble internet fingers helped me out some with that.

And thank fucking god Shelley was in town this week to help me in my time of need.

We met yesterday at the Rideau Centre for a long lunch. I felt like I was entering the trenches. The first shop we went to was Mexx, because a skirt in the window turned my head. We walked in and I was dazzled. Very quickly, Shelley found a beautiful brown tweed pencil skirt. "Megan! This is your store!"

I looked at the tag. Didn't say where it was made. My hopes were not high, but I loved that skirt. I found a sales clerk just in case.

"Where was this skirt made?"

She looked at me like I'd spoken to her in a dead language. "Umm?"

"Where was it-"

My words clicked in. She waved her hand dismissively. "Oh, China." My face fell. I put the skirt down. More hand waving - this time expansively, to take in the whole store. "It's all made in China. Cheap, you know." And she laughed. We turned and walked out. Shelley told me later that skirt cost $95.

American Apparel was our next stop. I am of divided opinion regarding AA. The money I'm forking over profits a man who is possibly a private harasser and definitely a public asshole. And those ads fucking squick me. Add to that: I would not be surprised to find out that the material is made by poorly paid people in terrible conditions. And though the AA plant is in Los Angeles, there have been murmurs that they find ways to skirt American labour policy. Now, none of this I know for certain, no one's been convicted of anything. So I file my doubts and think, this is about the best I can do. Because I will not buy pants over the internet from a certified organic fair trade fair labour company. I will not spend hundreds of dollars on a piece of clothing that has not already made the pleasant acquaintance of my ass in a changeroom.

After much on-ing and off-ing, I ended up with two pairs of cords and a dress which I may or may not take back. The pants are definitely not going back, since they caused much appreciation of, and subsequent handsiness on, my posterior by my paramour. God bless the skinny pant. And the boy who loves them.

The final stop with Shelley was Benetton, which we went into on a whim because it seemed like the kind of store that might have stuff made in countries with decent labour policies. There was a beautiful dress made of the softest material ever. Shelley checked the label. Italy! Hooray! She scoured the sale racks and together we came up with a nice pile of stuff besides the dress.

Sadly, that dress looked awful on me. I put it on and laughed. "Hoo boy," I called across the curtain. "This looks awful." There are some clingy fabrics cut to emphasize your curves into more luscious curviness. This dress just kind of hung off me except where it got hung up on my belly, which instead of looking soft and round looked hard and lumpen. I couldn't stop staring at myself. I didn't even feel bad about it. It felt more like I was the outcome of a random poorly-thought-out sartorial experiment. Shelley started to make a mollifying sound until she drew back the curtain. She stopped mid-coo and said "Wow, that looks awful on you." The salesperson was a little shocked, I think. "Ooooh," I heard from doorway to the fitting rooms. "No one wants to hear that."

Except when it's the truth.

For the first couple of days after Eric arrived in the 'fax, he and I had a running conversation about which one of us was on vacation and which one was on holiday. It went a little something like this:

"Nice to be on vacation, eh?"
"Or holiday."
"True." I paused to absorb the possible thesauratic implications of this. "Wait. Holiday?"
"Yeah. We're on different kinds of trips."
"Ah. Gotcha."

But you know, I didn't gotcha. I mulled it over. The next day:

"So okay. Which one of us is on holiday and which one of us is on vacation, then?"
"Well, you can't have a working holiday, but you can have a working vacation. You did the pride booth and you're doing a reading. So you're on vacation and I'm on holiday, because I'm not doing anything at all like work."

Right.

Conversations like that are one of the many reasons I feel unbelievably lucky to have found Eric.

Another couple days later, about 10 hours into our 36 Hours of Food Poisoning No Fun, I wandered into our bedroom from the living room, where I had been alternately reading the shittiest mystery ever, passing out, worrying that I might puke again, and feeling very very sorry for myself. Exhausted from the 15 foot trip, I sat heavily on the side of the bed. He woke up.

"Hi baby. How are you."
He blinked an owly gravol blink at me. It wasn't a real question anyway.
"So. Is this a holiday or a vacation?"
That got me a smile.
"This is a vacation from our holiday."

Neither of us had ever had food poisoning before. And even now, we're not sure. We spent a lot of time walking around out in the sun without hats and not drinking very much water. Because we're, you know, bright like that.

The trip actually ended up being quite a few firsts, the big ones being our first long trip together and the first sick together. Considering the fact that I miss him terribly after spending 6 nights and days with him in a fairly small room, I think we did alright.

The start of our Romantic Food Poisoning was Wednesday. Wednesday night was going to be a really fun night for Eric, Shelley, Steve, Aurèle and A's brother Phil. We were gonna see rock and roll on the high seas. Or, more precisely, the Maynards on the tall ship Silva.

Early in the evening, Shelley made us a delicious dinner of tofu and greens and rice, and then Eric and I wandered downtown for drinks with A. and P. We ended up at the Split Crow for power hour - a buck a beer from 9 to 10.

(This picture is the closest I will ever get to looking like a beer commercial girl. That is A. to my left, looking blurrily bemused.)

Ah! I can hear you saying, Megan! Sweetie! When you drink too much buck-a-beer beer, you don't get *food* poisoning.

But my response is ready: I was about to go on a boat and take gravol. So I drank only about a third of a glass to be polite, and then sat there, waiting to get anxious about being late for the ship.

We weren't late. In fact, we spent quite a bit of time waiting on the pier, where to pass the time I took a few picture of the stomach ache that was starting to get quite poky.

Apparently, the show was quite good. Nausea felled me early on and I missed it all. I did spend about 10 minutes of one band above deck, but I was shaking so badly that Steve lent me his hoodie to put on top of the sexy little t-shirt, 2 sweaters, jacket number I was already sporting, and A. gave me a fistful of ice. I stared stupidly at my fingers gripping it as my arm went numb. "It always makes me feel better," A. said, shrugging. The fact that it didn't totally give me the creeps meant that it felt pretty good.

Then I ran downstairs because I thought I was going to throw up. Eric came down not long after and stroked my hair and showed me the pictures he was taking of the actual party. I could hear the bands really well, so it was almost like being on deck. Shelley and Steve kept coming down for very nice visits too, taking care of me and keeping me company, even though the gravol had taken away most of my sentences. Though I do believe it is one of the few times in my life I have muttered "Yes, I would like to put my head in your lap," without the slightest whiff of salaciousness.

I worried for quite a while that I was wrecking people's fun, because E. and S. and S. kept having to come downstairs to visit me. But then, even in the haze, I realized that if I had said no I can't go, none of us likely would have been anywhere near the music. So this, really, was a happy medium.

That everyone was so nice to me is one of the many reasons I feel unbelievably lucky to have found my friends.

Okay, so a lot more went on in Halifax than sickness and sentiment. But it's late and I'm still a little dragged out from being sick. Tomorrow, more.

Much fun was had by all at the garage sale, though I wasn't in the best of spirits to start. I even looked out of sorts. The first thing Eric said to me was "Hi baby. You look a little grumpy." At least my outsides were matching my insides. I did jolly up over the course of the day, but I don't think I was great company.

Aside from me, there were very many nice people, and a few odd ones. Because Eric was selling a lot of electronics stuff, he got more business, and hence, more weirdness. He spent a long time talking to one man who was an eBay reseller* who bought, as well as a bunch of Eric's stuff, the giant old vaccuum I found in my basement. I don't know where he's going to ship that thing. Or how. At the end of his transaction, which took quite a long time and involved lecturing Eric on his marketing techniques, the man shook my hand and said "I'll shake your hand because you're cuter than he is." Apparently I have the grizzled, pot-bellied eBay reseller market cornered.

We noted different kinds of garage salers. They range from the the car cruisers, who slow down imperceptibly as they drive by to those at the opposite end of the continuum, the people who pick up every item for a careful examination before putting it back down exactly where it was. Most people came on bikes. Some had the sidewalk park down pat, others, not so much.

It really wasn't so busy. We mostly sat around and drank beer and listened to records. First up was the Rubinoos record that everyone is in a flap about. The last sale of the day was that record to a guy from down the street who had bought the very same Rubinoos record for $7 at a used record store place. He bought Eric's for a quarter, I think. We also listened to some Freddy James and the soundtrack of a movie that seemed be based on CB radio stuff, and some disco, which we all hated, and a couple of other records that got saved because they were actually pretty good. We listened to them on this sweet little portable. You'll notice that the cover is also speakers. That kind of packaging is near and dear to my heart.

It had been a long time since I had used a record player, and thought I didn't let on, it kind of scared me a bit. I always find that on record players there are often many buttons that accomplish the same task (e.g. raise the needle) with no explanation. Maybe it's intuitive if you're used to record players. Anyway, I managed to put on a couple records by my very own self. People were very excited by the record payer, but it was not for sale.

I tried out the rollerskates before Mark and Eric used them as beer sleeves, and I also reacquainted myself with rollerblading. We all took turns with the pink and yellow skipping rope Eric never ended up selling. One woman did mutter that we needed more practice as she went by, so maybe it was our advertising that cursed the rope.

We had many nice visitors, too. Patrick came by for a long while, and took some photos of us and our stuff. Mark spent most of the afternoon with us, and was the initiator of the "roller skate beer sleeve" round of drinking, of which I have a shocking number of very similar photos. David Scrimshaw dropped by and bought a keyboard for a mysterious new project. And possibly the highlight of the day for me was a woman named Christina (I hope I have that right!) dropping by to say hello and that she was a regular blog reader and that she'd just been to Spain and had picked up a couple of very beautiful Camper catalogues. It made me really happy to have someone show up out of the blue like that, and I'm glad she liked my ramblings enough to bring me pretty things in return. Though I have been having serious shoe coveting ever since. Pictured is one pair: they are different, but they belong together. And on my feet.

Another contender for highlight was a visit from Grace and Fiona and Ruby. Grace bought the goils some party hats (a bunch for only 10 cents!). The first one she tried to put on herself broke, and then the ones that Fifi and Ru got, while very cute, were apparently not all that comfortable. So off they came. Then Fifi and Ruby inspected a wide variety of our wares, picked up some dirt and put it down, and made not one transaction. Their cuteness made up for it. Sadly and stupidly, I did not have my camera out to document their cuteness.

At the end of it, there was a lot of crap left over. We took boxes and boxes of stuff over to the super nice people who run a thrift store out of the basement of the Bronson Centre every Saturday and Sunday from 10 to 4 pm. They're raising funds for the A.P.P.L.E. program - A Post-Psychiatric Leisure Experience. They depend on donations to keep the store running. So if you have lots of stuff around your house that you don't know what to do with, and don't feel like drinking beer and listening to records on your front lawn while people poke through said stuff, they're the people for you.

*Not the man pictured here, who was only a little odd.

"So what was one of the slightly inappropriate things my dad said?"

"'You seem like the kind of lady who can suck and blow at the same time.'"

"Riiight. There was more though, wasn't there?"

"Oh, you mean the part where he threatened to break the guy's arm if he moved the cigarette butt pail?"

+++

I have spent the last two weeks scaring Eric into thinking my father was some kind of boyfriend-eating monster. Thing is, my father used to be a boyfriend-eating monster. The boys of my youth were terrified, if also a little in awe, of my father.

But he looooooves Eric. Loves. Him. Told me, in front of Eric, "not to let this one get away." He has barely spoken to most of my boyfriends, never mind told me to hang on to them.

So when my dad was laughing and cracking jokes and being a generally very jovial man, Eric was not the only person slightly non-plussed. Later that night, he said "Your dad is really nice and funny. He's like Dad two-point-oh."

It's possible that I needed to see my dad through someone else's eyes. I knew he had mellowed out a bit over the last 5 or so years, but the only people I really have to talk to about him (besides you, dear internet) are my sibs and my mom. Who don't have exactly unbiased opinions about him- for good or bad. It was good for me, I think, to get a viewpoint from someone who hadn't lived with my dad when he wasn't a very happy person.

The rest of the weekend also went well, though it wasn't as surprising. Everyone really liked Eric. I had been a little nervous, not that they wouldn't like him, because 1) really, what's not to like, 2) as long as I seem happy, they'd be inclined to like him anyway and 3) it doesn't really matter what most of my relatives think because I don't see them enough for it to matter much. No, I'd been nervous that I'd revert to weird unflattering childhood patterns, or that even if everyone liked him, it just wouldn't be a good fit.

Sometimes I just like to worry though.

Eric and I "camped out" on my mom's back porch. Pretty fun, though the first night, we froze our asses off. Well, I froze my ass off until I hogged all the covers and tucked them in tight around me. I might seem like a nice person, but when the cold seeps in, it's another story. I will throw you over for a little nylon and down.

In my defense, I do it either when I'm completely or mostly asleep. Friday night, every time I came out of the haze just enough to realize I was cold, I'd tuck another inch or two under me. Until Eric woke up freezing and barely covered. Though that did give me the opportunity to wrap myself around him pretty tightly to warm him up, and he didn't seem to mind that part too much.

The next night, however, we piled on the covers and were quite toasty.

My mom's house backs on to a pond. I got up at 445 am saturday morning to pee. It ended up being quite the excursion, since the air mattress wasn't quite full and I was on the side away from the exit. So I was on my knees, bent over Eric's legs, arguing with the flap zipper and kept tipping over and falling on top of Eric, but not in a sexy way. In a clumsy "I know you're trying to sleep but I really really really have to pee" desperate kind of way. When I finally did make it out, half dragging and half launching myself, and nearly breaking Eric's knees in the process, my very presence irritated the Golden Labradoodle* next door, who proceeded to bark until I was in and out and back in the tent.

But the sunrise was stunning.

The drive home was good too. It was me and Eric in the front, switching off on driving duties, and Amy and Aurèle in the back seat. I'm not sure we could have fit much more in the Yaris, which has about 8 cubic feet of storage space. When Amy went to get her camera out of the back, it was a bit like those snakes-in-a-can tricks. Not quite as sproingy, thankfully.

She got her camera out of the back because we stopped at a place in Orono called the New Dutch Oven Restaurant, and I wanted a picture of the sign.** I felt compelled to stop, since I had been talking a week or two about a dinner Eric had made me in a dutch oven. A lot of sniggering ensued as I vainly attempted to stand my ground and point out that it was a cooking pot long before it was a fart joke.

It was like the little car was magnetized, and even though we'd only meant to stop somewhere for a sandwich, we all felt that a meal at the New Dutch Oven Restaurant was something we couldn't pass up. The food was what you would expect: it tasted good with ketchup on it.

We got home around midnight and it was nice to be back, even after such a short time away.

*"It's a what?"
"A Golden Labradoodle."
"Labradoodle? What kind of name is that?"
"Well, it's a mix of a Labrador Retriever and a Poodle. Labradoodle."
"Who owns a Standard Doodle?"

**I'll post it when she sends it.

Friday nights and Saturday mornings are for nerve wracking.

Later this morning, as you'll notice over in the sidebar, I am reading at WestFest. For days I've been saying, "Hoo, yeah, pretty nervous about it." Not really feeling nervous, but knowing that I was and was just refusing to feel it.

My palms started sweating. I'm feeling it.

I've read enough times in Ottawa that I feel I've found a groove - I've gotten used to knowing, if not the whole crowd, then at least a good chunk of it. It's nice and comforting, though can get a little odd when I'm reading the more raw, sexy stuff, and I'm not quite sure where to look. As in "Oh, right, I just made eye contact with a good friend of Eric's as I said 'your cock getting thicker and darker.' Maybe I'll look at the back wall now."

Small discomfort aside, it's usually pretty cozy. Tomorrow, though? Tomorrow there are going to be some friendly faces, for sure. But it's not my element. Frances Itani, for fuck's sake. She's, like, a real writer.

It'll be good for me, I think. The nerves are good news, too. I always perform better when I've had a good case of the jitters.

Last night was a different kind of nerves. I met Eric's family. There was no doubt in my mind that they would be entirely lovely. He is one of the politest and most respectful people I've ever met, and though I'm sure nature played a role, I have a feeling that quite a bit of that is due to nurture. His oldest sister went out of her way to say hi to me on Facebook, which I thought was super sweet and extraordinarily welcoming. And I'm a nice person, and I'm nice to Eric, so there is no real reason for them to not like me. But still. What if I said something stupid? Or out of place, or didn't realize I was trying too hard till it was too late. Or, more likely, what if I couldn't think of anything to say at all and I seem like a sullen brat? Or a snoot? I don't want them to think I'm a snoot.

When we picked his oldest sister up, I clammed up. After Hi, I'm not sure I said one word on the way from her house to his other sister's house. I didn't really say anything for the rest of the night, either, though I could tell I had loosened up by the end of the night, because I told one of my long hand-flapping stories while Karen was in the car. There was one part of my brain telling the story and another part thinking, wow, you've chilled out, eh?

They're such a nice family together. Teasing, but sweet. Really funny. Tanya and her husband Guy had just gotten back from Germany and had a lot of stories. I laughed pretty hard, particularly one that involved them getting on a train that kept reversing direction after one stop. It felt easy to be with them, even though I was too shy to say anything.

I have it good though. Most of my family is really nice too, but my dad? Eesh. While I love him and am very much like him, my father is a gruff, impatient, cranky man. He has little tolerance for bullshit and makes no bones about telling people when he feels they're bullshitting, which sometimes creates what I see as needless conflict. In the past, he has been more likely to grunt at my boyfriends than talk to them. Really though, he's a huge softie. But it took even me a long time to see that.

If you've got the time today, please do come see me pretend to not be nervous on the same stage as Frances Itani. It would be lovely to have a friendly face out there. I promise to do more than grunt at you.