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Tuesday, October 1, 2013

'scuse me, is this seat taken? The awkward trespasses of a near sighted gal

I never wear my glasses. I shouldn't say never. I just don't put them on instinctually.  It's only at the exact moment that my lack of vision becomes glaringly apparent that I slide on my ocular apparel and enjoy a more thorough comprehension of the world.  The instances that I do are: driving, movies, TV, and seeing bands or performers. Only when that crisp vision leads to an escape do I choose to see the world for what it is. I wonder, often, if my hazy matte version of the world somehow creates a muted version of reality or at the very least a myopic one; I never realize that I am passing people I know until they are near (until it is too late to avoid).  I like not seeing the others around me in such vivid detail- I'm not looking to reconnect on the street or the subway as I am that person who is running 5 minutes behind or lost in her own malaise on any given day.  This makes for often awkward run-ins.

Last year I was cleaning up the street as part of a community building effort to get Washington Avenue clean and happy. I looked through my tunnel vision down the street and saw nothing but the sun, the trees and happy people floating with their coffee cups.  Safe in my invisible bubble, I bent down to pick up garbage. I hadn't showered that morning, my hair was in a weird bun. I had an orange plastic apron on, rubber gloves and my garbage bag was falling a part.  I could do with a little dose of vanity now and then to guide my "stepping out of the house" choices. Suddenly, two pairs of worn vans slid onto my tiny piece of ground that I was cleaning.   As I cranked up, garbage in hand, like a flamingo, there they stood halo'd in the sun: an ex lover and his brother.  I stood up fully- I touched my face by accident to brush the hair away from my eyes and smeared garbage all over my face. Perfect.  I had always imagined my self being really stand-offish and mean to this person when I finally ran into him- but I felt no inclination other than to say "hi" (a little too excitedly) and genuinely ask after his well being.  We hugged, and that was that- an awkward release from a useless grudge.  After all I was cleaning up the mess.  Ex lover and I never became friends again - there's no going back - but you can move forward and choose not to let others' rejections of you hold you hostage.  

I tend to let the shop close down quickly.  I get the wind knocked out of me because my ego is filled with light leaks. Again- my view is narrow. Love doesn't come often to me and it's a two way street: its a narrow playing field of choices filtered by my extremely picky taste and lugubrious self doubt.

The clean up was a fantastic day and I ended up meeting two friends that day who would later become two of the best friends I have ever had.  An upside to my tunnel vision is that it highlights the good ones sometimes too. Like a pinhole camera, everything fades out of focus in the background when I see the golden ones.

Later that evening I met someone. I barely noticed him for most of the night and then by the end, the focus shifted.  I had told him the story of the Washington Clean Up. Silly me- verbalizing my bad pattern of holding on- I had sentenced myself before even getting a trial. This is custommery.

Timing and perspective are everything. People never plan on being as meaningful as they end up being in your narrative. How can they know that the moment they are meeting you could quite possibly be a perfect storm waiting to envelop them into your story and make them main characters - a role they truly never auditioned for? But pain is like a magnifying glass and anything in its sights gets inflated.

So here was the context: I suffer from a crippling pelvic disorder that has/had taken up the main quotient of my energy to "cure" for the better part of the last three years of my life. It's a chronic health condition where I feel physical discomfort 24 hours a day ranging from a grade of 2 to 7. It effects highly intimate areas making physical and emotional connection an experience that literally can leave me feeling violated. It's a humbling battle to fight to say the least. It does not exactly make you feel like the bachelorette of the month. My self image was already encumbered by raging body dysmorphia and insane negativity planted in my brain as a child way before I had agency.   

Adding on another layer: during this time I was struggling in my career and coming upon "a certain age." I was starting to feel expired. My lifetime of no love felt  like a badge of shame or a dirty secret and my angry vagina wasn't helping. I had allowed this disease to take over. Have I mentioned I have tunnel vision?  I was buckling under the pressure to come up with thousands of dollars to pay for scary procedures involving nerve block injections in my pelvic bowl. My doctor was requesting a $3000 special MRI. If I had any chance at happiness to be a normal lovable woman- I had to figure this all out.  To make matters worse I was on a medication that affected my brain. It numbed certain nerves from over firing. It was barely helping me and it was causing "dark thoughts" I was losing the battle in every way possible and I felt so terribly NOT NORMAL. I needed a hero- somebody to save me from the puddle I was drowning in.

DJ was a nice guy (boy).  He was incredibly sharp and curious about the world. He was slightly younger than I but older in relationships, as he identified himself quicker than a sex offender registrant as a grade A "serial monogamist."  There were Las Vegas Red flashing signs to steer clear of him. But there was an intangible comfort to his tremendously nerdy yet hip persona. DJ gave off the false projection of being a safe proposition. He made my mind crackle. We were fresh air in a moment that was probably very stale for both of us. But unlike me- DJ's jail was "another relationship" where he "wasted time." My jail was solitude.  My ears perked with fire when I heard him speak so ungraciously of the time someone had loved him as  a regret. But I knew my perspective was skewed by the rabbit-hole I was living in. And so I chose to ignore the warning signs.  I forgot about anything horrible whenever he popped up on my g-chat. My symptoms lessoned around his presence and I swooned. He was the best medication I had found yet that year. I could see his lithe hand reaching down into the bell jar and swiftly pulling me out. I admit it- I was hoping he would cure me. Silly girl. But hope is the strongest drug I know and when your desperate for a fix, you see nothing else but it's source.

I was hooked. His own special brand of neurosis was readily apparent but I liked it. I tend to like overly structured personalities. I can be a tad too malleable and I lose focus fast. There's not much more too say. We hung out, we had two dates, on the second we went too far... and in the dark, naked, I told him my dirty secret, we were drunk. I spoke fast and in generalizations and tried to dumb down as best as possible. We worked it out. For about 5 seconds I felt really free that I had finally told the person engaged in the most private activity one could engage in- the most private and painful thing about me. I felt safer than I had ever felt, for five seconds. He was a doll about the confession and was frankly befuddled as to how I could think he would act any other way. With patience and time and gentleness- I might have been on the rode to a "normal" life... 

But that was fleeting. My confession was then met with a "while we are airing our dirty laundry..." monologue the size of Texas as to how he was a commitment-phobe and was not looking to be any body's partner for a long time.  "Its probably pretty fucked up that I am telling you this right now...hahaha" It wasn't funny. I outed my self and he gave me the emotional walking papers. Sure we could keep having sex, sure I could stay there but...a giant dead rat just appeared in between us in the bed and I felt winded.  The perfect person, the buddha on the mountain top,would have kissed him demurely on the forehead, thanked him for his time, dressed calmly, and walked out.  Even he knew this because at the sight of my stuttering confused face, he told me he could call me a cab if I needed to go. Brutal I suppose. The myopia began, I chose to ignore it all.

I didn't go that night. I stayed. We had sex two more times even though I mentioned before the third that I probably shouldn't have because I was sore. But what the fuck did either of us care- I was sexually wrist cutting and he was the blade.

DJs interest temperature cooled off quickly. We had a few post-mortem blips on the radar pseudo dates and then I got the message and let it disappear.  I was just a girl he was keeping on the back burner, something he would indulge in if he didn't get what he truly wanted. And honestly, there is nothing wrong with that. It is what we all do and if were safely guarded with a healthy sense of worth - we might all be able to laugh about it after the fact.  But I'm not.

A month or so later we saw each-other at a show, danced up each other's space for the night and barely kissed goodbye on the subway platform.  He was drunk and almost imperceptibly belligerent when he texted "hate me? I'm at the bar..." I don't hate anyone, it hurts too much to hate. I leaned in and then left when the signs were clear that it was a wrap.  I walked home in the rain that night a little sad about how meaningless all of these failed acquaintances feel.  

Three days later I received a gratuitous and insultingly glib email clarifying for me that I was "not cool enough to pursue something with" and that we "should just be cool as friends"  I had been worried my whole life that I was not good enough to be anyone's girlfriend and DJ clumsily stabbed me right in that wound. I would use his words to legitimize my demons on loop. A part he never asked to play. It was his birthday soon and he had met someone else. Someone who was cool enough to pursue. I was an item that he need to clean off his 'to do' list.  Like throwing away the cigarettes so that you don't smoke them.

I'm not going to surmise much more about anyone else's feelings. I cut him off immediately. It wasn't hate, it was just an awareness that his presence no longer helped the situation and I needed to shove him out of my periphery if I was ever going to climb out of my rabit-hole.   And so he just became some dude who knew some of the same people as I. Someone who is according to twitter  "a user just like" me.

That was over a year ago. And though I got over it, I am ashamed to admit I never opened the shop again. Sure there were a few dalliances here and there but nothing to blog home about.  I had a mission. I was trying to break up with my disease. I gave up on my doctor and the physical therapists and I weaned painfully of the meds. I took a time out from my toxic job. I escaped into a vortex of solitude even though the expiration date of my lovability, not to mention fertility, seemed to loom close in like the monster under the bed.  Eventually I got way better at handling my disease and I'm physically doing much better, not cured, just better. It's time to pull the curtains and open up the shop.

I was thinking about all this when I walked out of my apartment with my friend KC to walk down to the local bar to watch a season finale.  I didn't have my glasses on.  As we entered the bar we immediately could see that we were in a quandary; there were no seats, save a few minor pieces of real estate on some couches and the possibility of placing a chair beside those "corner lots." We assumed everyone would understand that we might have to infringe on their space. And so I charged over to a table at a couch to ask a young girl if my friend could sit beside her. I barely noticed the card game happening on the table just past my peripheral view. It was only at her shock and dismay at my request, and the glance she gave her friend which directed my gaze up and over to the left that I noticed DJ sitting right there at a rousing game of magic.  "OH...HI" said I, clearly surprised at how avoidable this moment could have been had I just looked further than my nose. OH ...HI" said he. duly flummoxed. The gamers where not happy with our intrusion and my pal was enraged at what to her was just plain rude. I couldn't see the forest for the trees. I said sorry and walked away.  And like that, once again the band aid was ripped. He was just a person. I put my glasses on as we walked to the back and weighed out our options.  We couldn't really see or hear and both of us felt it was not worth it. We'd been bested by a nerd herd (harem) whose leader was my last detractor.  Despite my home field advantage I had lost this match.  So we left.

We walked over to my favorite bar and she expensed over $250 of cocktails. As soon as we sat down, two incredibly attractive and intelligent men engaged us in a great conversation.  Magically, I had forgotten the awkward mess where I oafishly stomped over to DJ's game table to clumsily crowd in on the couch with his crew to watch a fucking TV show.

It was a long night. It had been a long weekend. As a walked home holding my buddy up I could feel the newly received business card in my pocket. I palmed the bent edge of it marveling at how crisp it was when I first received it. This new guy was the kind of handsome that sparkled. But I was no longer in the eye of the storm,  I still had my glasses on from earlier. I had them on all night. No, he would remain a bit part for now. I could see all the garbage swirling on Washington Avenue. KC's makeup was a mess. I recalled all the tiny details of the bar that night as if that had been my season finale: the sideway glance Pat the bartender gave the girl who ordered "some kind of flavored margarita" The way men's gazes dwelled up and down our bodies with extra surveillance yet at the same time looking into our eyes seeming to comprehend everything- giving off the facade of listening closer.  Tiny little fragments of imperfections swirled about me. None of it seemed wrong. I was just happy that my view was now wider and more expansive; always awkward but nonetheless mine for the long haul.  

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