Streets Are Uneven When You're Down

A funny thing happened to me the other day.

There I am, standing at the elevator, just minding my business when my next door neighbor comes up to me. I've only ever met him once or twice before; he's a short little black guy, maybe in his mid to late fifties, one of those people who passes rapidly through the salt-and-pepper phase straight to pure white. Usually he studiously avoids eye contact, but this time he marched right into my personal space and started talking.

"You know the walls are pretty thin in this building," was how he started his story... Seems his wife, a nice lady I've only ever glimpsed in passing, never leaves the apartment anymore. He does all of the shopping, anything that requires going out. She hasn't been to so much as a doctor's appointment in two years. Agoraphobic I guess is the professional term. But she loves her TV shows... Or she did until cable got so expensive that they can only afford basic now. This man, my neighbor, was really worried about his wife when the cable went off: she got very depressed, withdrawn... Sometimes wouldn't even get out of bed. Until recently, that is.

After her last bout of five or six straight days in bed he came home one afternoon from work and found her dressed, coiffed and perky. She couldn't stop talking about a fight she'd heard the neighbors having - which of course would be us - and some of the juicy details she'd overheard. Over the next few days she followed the progress of our rapprochement with careful, water glass to the wall attention. She'd been doing better ever since - and all because she'd found something to occupy her. Something to absorb her attention, something that interested and titillated and even scandalized her at times. A story she could follow almost every day with characters she felt she knew.

In short, my love life is my next door neighbor's new soap opera addiction.

Her husband told me this so earnestly that I was a little afraid he was going to ask if she could join in, but that's not the case. (*THANK JEBUS*) No - she'd heard us talking about moving when our lease is up and was just as indignant as any soap fan reading a cancellation notice for their favorite video histrionics. Not knowing what else to do, he approached me. I'm still a little stunned; in his shoes, I'd never have told the principal players, not EVER. I'd have just hoped for the best. I suppose, though, that watching your wife of over twenty years drift slowly into a depression from which you were afraid she might not emerge would be enough to make you want a little control over the situation. Still, would you walk up to a complete stranger and tell them that listening to their sex life through the bedroom wall had cured your spouse's agoraphobia? I'm not sure I'd have the balls. It was sort of nice to be complimented even in such a backhanded way though.

"You queers done saved my wife's mind, an' I hope you'll never move" is a phrase I think I'll treasure for a long time.

Now I definitely think we're gonna move, FYI.

Title lyric from "People Are Strange" as covered by Echo & The Bunnymen.

This Could Be The Best Place Yet

I feel so restless lately. Useless. Like I'm killing time that could be better spent.

I suppose it's at least in part due to my (very late) realization that I can probably look forward to about as many good years as I've already had... if I'm lucky. This makes me want to do something more with the time I've got left... But something for whom? I can't really see the logic in making the last thirty to forty years of my life into one big gesture aimed at someone else that would never be fully appreciated and which would probably be at least half misconstrued. So it only makes sense to make those years as comfortable as possible for old Numero Uno, right? Thing is that it makes me gag a little just to read the selfishness in those words, and even if that didn't repulse me (and it does!) I know it wouldn't work.

There are some truths that are transitory and some that are permanent, at least when it comes to people. My taste for Prince, however long it seemed during my adolescence and however horribly it scarred those around me, was transitory - and for that if I thought there was really a god I'd have to thank him emphatically. A more permanent truth is that I need someone to take care of if I'm going to make it. I don't really care enough about my own material wants and needs to cook and clean and pamper myself. This is not the same, I've learned, as saying that I don't care enough about myself. I do. I'm just too unmotivated by my own needs - contradictory as it sounds, it's true. I have to have someone that I feel responsible for (and to) in order to pay the bills on time and clean under the fridge once a month.

I have someone like that in my life. I suppose that since I have found him wanting in some regards I could get rid of him and try to find someone better. I know a lot of people would feel that they owe it to themselves to do just that if they found themselves in my shoes. I know that I could punish him; I've been in a relationship with someone who punished me because she found out who I really was, I know how that feels. I don't wanna do that. Not so much because I don't want to punish him (of course I do, I'm only human) but because I don't wanna be the punisher. I don't want to wear that hat and I certainly do not wanna internalize that whole vengeance thing into my world view. Who has time and energy for that? Obsessing over people who have wronged me feels like hiding in a dark closet and cutting myself - that sane and that likely to hurt anybody but me.

I just wish I knew what to do with the anger that bubbles up in my heart every time I think about it. I wish I knew how to turn those feelings of impotent rage and seething hatred into something positive. I hear that's possible... but then, every movie from 1930 to 1950 or so told us there'd be flying cars by now too and look how that turned out. The thing I'm really afraid of is that at some point those feelings will be present in the same physical space that he is, if that makes any sense. I'm afraid that I won't feel those things when I'm alone and not keeping myself constantly busy enough, but when I'm with him... I'm afraid that whatever pane of emotional glass I've managed to erect between those feelings and myself during the hours we're together every day will shatter. I don't ever want to so much as raise my voice in anger to him. I love him and I'm afraid of hurting him. I couldn't live with myself if I intentionally hurt him.

Those angry feelings, though, and that fear, those are the only really lasting scars of one dark chapter in what might be a long and varied story. I'm still reading along every day, just wild to see how it turns out... I just keep my fingers crossed in hopes of warding off cliffhangers.

Title lyric from "Time (Clock Of The Heart)" by Culture Club.

Days When I Couldn't Live My Life Without You

I've been reading back over a lot of my old stuff lately, the blogs I wrote and the short stories, the comments on other blogs and Facebook. A little digitally-assisted trip down memory lane if you will. It's always good to look back through the old words and rediscover yourself, like recognizing an old friend that you haven't seen in years. A little sad, too. For all that I try every day to be a better and more ideal person I really haven't changed much. Sometimes I wonder if anybody really does change their own essential personality sheerly through force of will... Or if, as that cheesy vampire novelist said somewhere, we're are like flowers unfolding: ever more truly and completely ourselves. Every change actually just a further realization of who we really are and always will be. Forgive me if I find that both distressing and soothing at the same time, will you? It would be nice to think that my lack of change is not only not my fault but out of my hands completely...

Just as it completely sucks to think that somebody you love can't change for the better and if you really love them you'd better just fucking choke down all the parts you don't like because they're permanent.

Giveth and taketh away, right?

Right now there is snow on the ground outside my window.

I know it's just temporary: a few days ago we were in the forest looking at the tender new shoots the melting snow had uncovered, and we were wearing only shirtsleeves and jeans. The temperature has dropped exactly fourteen degrees since then and will surely rebound even higher within the week. March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, that's what they taught me in kindergarten. After much abstinence and an unbelievable number of miles racked up on my pedometer I am STILL packing around 20 pounds of winter gut between my ribs and hips. I lift free weights, I climb three flights of stairs four times a day and still my metabolism won't let me catch a break. Now that clean living and a reasonable diet have failed me after just a few months I'm going to turn to steroids and artificial thyroid hormones. Screw it - better living through chemistry, right?

Anyway, I didn't sit down here to write anything in particular and once again I've more or less succeeded at that. As one final reflection, you can try to do your very best without making it even once but if you actually try to fail you'll at least come reasonably close each and every time. Clearly, it's all about adjusting your goals - if you succeed at failing then aren't you still a success?

Have a wonderful time. Do all that you can to be happy because I still believe that it's all that really counts. Until I post again here, all of my best to all of you.

Title lyric from "Days Go By" by Dirty Vegas.