New Year's Day

2018 sucked, no doubt about it. I’m in a very dark place, and I have no idea how to get out. One of the biggest mental problems I’m having makes me feel beyond selfish. One of my oldest friends is dying, which makes all my suicidal ideation feel even worse. He is amazing and revered, and so very loved, in big loud ways. He’s a giant in body and spirit. He’s handling death far more gracefully than I’m handling life. I am having a stupidly hard time with the fact that I’m about to turn 45. My heart is still broken. That man took all of my ability to believe that I’m worth, well, any kind of relationship. Which is complicated by the fact that I have a crush. Or two. One is easy. It’s physical and involves a friend, who knows quite well. One of the biggest, shiny, bright spots of my year, was a completely unexpected, vigorous and thorough kiss. We were friends before. Friends we will remain. They’ve done a lot for my self-esteem, just for the fact that before that kiss, they are pretty much the shiniest thing in any room, to me, a smile like a son. The other is far more complicated but still seems to be happening. It would be a completely different thing if it were even possible. I wouldn’t even know how to approach it. Or if I should. Or if I’m prepared for the rejection. Or if I’m prepared for not being rejected. Not right now, I guess, anyway. Right now I'm just a wee spot completely out of control.

Attraction is Weird

Attraction is weird, y’all. I’ve been thinking about this, a lot, lately. I am attracted to all kinds of people. There are things that immediately attract me too, or repel me from people. I can quantify a lot of things that I find physically attractive in people. Personality has a huge amount to do with how attracted I am to someone. There are things I can quantify that I find attractive in male identifying people and female identifying people, physical things. I think all of my friends are beautiful in very different ways. If you asked me who the most physically attractive of my male friends is, I could hands down tell you that it is a tie, no hesitation. Even though I know that others would have different answers. It makes perfect sense, in an evolutionary way, that people would be attracted to different things. But, from a purely physical standpoint, I have two very different male friends that are more handsome than any movie star that I’ve seen. It gets more complicated, for me, when considering women. The two women that I’ve ever met that I would consider purely the most physically perfect, I don’t find attractive. One isn’t interesting to me to converse with, and the other is a horrible person. I know that there are other things that come into play, chemically. The scent of some people drives me nuts. Pheromones, I guess.

Do you tell people that you find attractive that you think they are? Even if you aren’t trying to date them, or have sex with them? Do you let people know if you find them utterly compelling? Why, or why not? I sometimes have a tendency to.

Well, where the men are concerned, I told one of them that I used to drive 6 hours to watch him dance, twenty years ago or so. When I get really stressed out, or wound way too tight, I run. I get in the car, and I run. I come back. Most people never know that I was gone. I actually find it funny that in my life, right now, no one knows where I am, ever, in general. I live with my Grandmother, she has dementia. She has no clue if I am home or not. She’ll forget I’m home if I’m in the same room. I work for a private individual, I don’t work a set schedule. No one knows when I am there, except him. Only two people on my friends list have been where I live now, at least since my Grandaddy’s funeral day. There is no one that I talk to on a daily basis, really, that knows where I am when they talk to me, as I generally only text. Do you have any clue how long I would have to be missing before anyone noticed? Days. Days. Wow. Off the rails. So, twenty years ago, if I just couldn’t take being where I was, and needed a break, if it was a night that it was possible, I would drive my ass to Atlanta. Alone. To dance. And to watch this guy dance. I’ve never seen any guy dance like him. He moves like a well muscled panther in a kilt and boots. I could watch him for hours. I have watched him for hours. When I moved to Atlanta, we ended up hanging out in the same places. I actually did tell him that I used to drive to watch him dance, and drive back before work the next day. As I was saying it, I thought, well, this could be taken as kind of creepy, I guess. Luckily, he didn’t find it so, he gave me a great big hug, and said it was the nicest thing anyone had told him, in a while. Turns out, he’s even more attractive than the near physical perfection, once you get to know him. He’s smart, and thoughtful, and nice, and always trying to grow, and understand new things. He’s pretty much perfect. Now, all of that being said, I have never flirted or anything like that with him. Out of my league, doesn’t even cut it. We aren’t even playing a similar sport. In a nearby arena. He has a partner that is stunning. I am not a pretty girl, y’all. I’m oddly shaped, and hella awkward. I will say, though, that the show I went to in Atlanta last year, the show that caused the great and horrible smashing and destruction of my life and future, he is the only person I spoke to, other than the ex that I was physically with, because I knew he would hug me, genuinely, and for a moment it would be okay. Also, he’s always taller in real life than I remember.

The other male that I find physically near perfection, I can look at the two of them in my mind. Do they look similar? Nope. They have similar builds, I guess. The kind you get from working real hard on it. They are different ages. Different coloring. I have spent a lot more time talking to the second one. I know him better, as a person, and he has never become less attractive, which is pretty amazing. I met him in a place that I am comfortable in, so he was easy to get to know. I’ve known him since I moved back to NC, I suppose. He lets me touch his arms, and he can always tell if I am feeling low, and goes out of his way to make sure that I’m okay. I'm pretty sure he knows that he's beautiful, as I know that he can be really insecure. We build each other up, he gets really upset if I say anything about not being a pretty girl. He's an excellent friend. He has a partner that I am quite fond of.

As for women, for me, it’s not nearly so cut and dried. I know a lot of burlesque performers, in Atlanta, and in NC. Most of them have a confidence when they perform that is intoxicating. Women tend to display their passions more, which is always intriguing. Watching someone’s face light up when they talk about something they are passionate about is one of my favorite things. Get excited when you talk. Playing it cool is only endearing to me if it fails in an adorable way.

Then, I wonder why I think about it. I never think anyone is attracted to me, so why do I spend so much time thinking about attraction? I know people who will say that I’m pretty, and that’s cool, that is what you are supposed to do for your friends, right? I went to art school, y’all. I understand the aesthetics of symmetry, and beauty, and I know my flaws perfectly well. I know how people react to me. Blah blah blah.

Ugh. This post got lost in the woods. I would say that I need to get out more, but that’s not quite true. I need other people that I like to show up at the places that I get out to.

My Caterpillar Girl

There’s a woman in my life that I call my first girl crush. Clearly, I have known her for a very long time. While she is, undoubtedly, my first girl crush, I loved another female long before even her. Certain songs will always make me think of certain people, or situations.

I am pretty sure that this is true of most people. I started listening to The Cure in middle school, but I didn’t meet my Caterpillar Girl until high school. I get asked, upon occasion, how I came out as pansexual. I never did, really. I just realized when I understood the concept, that I always had been. I felt no confusion, or shame, the first time a girl kissed me, any more than the first time a boy kissed me, or the first time a person who wasn’t sure yet kissed me. I fall in love with people, not genitalia. It’s funny, what I am physically attracted to in men is much easier to define than what attracts me to women. But, I digress. I never kissed my Caterpillar Girl. She was my friend, though I now know that I was in love with her. She was my best friend, though I was never hers. High School is hell, you know. I went to a smallish high school. There weren’t that many freaks, so we stuck together. I know a lot of people who say they don’t know anyone from high school, anymore. Honestly, for me, most of those freaks that I needed and loved so much back then are still around and about in my life. For that, I am eternally grateful. My Caterpillar Girl was beautiful, she still is. We are similar in sense of humor and temperament, though she always leaned a little more to hippieness, where I went punk. Thirty years later, I can still tell you what she was wearing the first time that I saw her, her hair falling across one eye, just like mine. Okay. It was the late 80s. A lot of people’s hair fell across one eye. Being so similar in ways made high school, difficult. I have never been much of a casual dater, even in adulthood. Even in adulthood, she and I have been involved with the same men, at different or coinciding times, more than I have been involved with those who never knew her. No, we never had any kind of physical relationship. But I did crave being near her. My high school “sweet heart,” my then future exhusband, was always jealous of how I felt about her, and used it to tear me down, sometimes. He would hang out with her, and tell me how pretty she was, and how he thought I was pretty, too, even if no one else thought I was as pretty as her. If I couldn’t do something that he wanted to do, he would say that it’s okay, she would think he was important enough to spend time with him. But, I was in love with him, he told me so, and it was eventually true. He made me resent her. I carry a fuckton of guilt about it, even now. Things happened. Things unraveled. And one day, she was far away. High School ended. Life marched on. I married him. I knew when she came back, but I was embarrassed beyond belief at my actions. At not standing up for her. At picking the ‘wrong’ side. Then, I went away. And came back. Six months after I moved back, yes, I could tell you the date, I was at my favourite place (a bar) to do my favorite thing (dance) and there she was, twenty six years later. With one of the same friends we still shared from high school. I smiled. She smiled. I lowered my eyes and walked away. Her facial expressions still the same, her laugh the same. At some point during that night, I drunkenly crawled across a picnic table, in short skirt and boots, just to tell her that I had never not loved her. We are Facebook friends. I see her here and there. We chat. I have no idea what she actually thinks of me, now. I am clearly not trying to hide who she is, even though I have never mentioned her name in this. Do I want to have any sort of conversation about this with her? Not really. It was a long time ago. I complicated everything even further, like I do, in recent times. I’m not going out of my way to point her to this, at all. I will just still smile at the memes she posts. The memes that are so like the ones that I post. We listened to a lot of music in high school, driving, hanging out. There are songs that remind me of all of those places, and people, and specific moments, trapped in amber in my mind like personal music videos. We listened to a lot of The Cure. Sometimes, I wish she knew how very, very sorry that I am. That I will always be. A few of my happy places are memories of listening to music, much too loud, in the car. Dancing barefoot in the rose garden, peasant skirts damp with dew, or from playing in the fountain. I was listening to Spotify the other day, and Caterpillar Girl came on, and I smiled. She flickers, and she’s beautiful, she glows inside my head, and she will always be my Caterpillar Girl, even now that she is fully a butterfly. Caterpillar Girl lyrics The Cure Flicka flicka flicka Here you are Cata cata cata Caterpillar girl Flowing in And filling up my hopeless heart Oh never never go Dust my lemon lies With powder pink and sweet The day I stop Is the day you change And fly away from me You flicker And you're beautiful You glow inside my head You hold me hypnotized I'm mesmerized Your flames The flames that kiss me dead