BettyDoesLife's Xanga

a deadly sin

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:09:16 GMT

Last fall was terrible. I got hired for two jobs only to have the offers rescinded. Lexapro had stopped working for me and they put me on Prozac which made me have psychotic episodes. It felt very much like my house of cards was going to fall down. On top of all that, I was broke. Really broke, and so I decided to not pay my car insurance for a couple of months. It seemed a better option than to ask my parents for money.

What I didn't know is that in New York State if you go without insurance they revoke your registration and don't renew it even when, sixty four days later, you get a new insurance policy. Also, they fine you eight dollars for each day you are without insurance. If you're not fast with the math let me tell you, those sixty four days of no insurance equal $512.

Add on to that all the tickets I kept getting for not being properly registered and we have a magnificent disaster.
Today I emptied the last of my savings and paid $210 to get my license back. I'll be looking at another three to five hundred dollars in tickets and fines. Those eighty dollars I didn't want to ask my parents for, have turned into over one thousand dollars. Holy fuck did I screw up.

I feel like I am not a very good adult. Even when I do have money in the bank, I sometimes forget to pay my bills. I've made a concerted effort this year to stay on top of things and it's mostly worked out. Actually, I've done such a good job that for the first time in years I was able to get a credit card. I've been devouring articles on how to rebuild credit. I read articles on "things you should never charge". I'm really serious about this which is why yesterday stung. It was a reminder of how much MORE work I have to do to feel like a competent adult.

I'm taking it one step at a time. My parents are going to loan me what they can. I'll dig myself out of this hole, I just don't want to let things get out of control again. It's going to mean swallowing some of my pride for the next few years as I work on my Master's Degree.

Pride is such a stupid thing.

sex, a misdemeanor and an existential moment

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:49:38 GMT

Mark's skin glows in the morning yellow coming through the loft's skylight. I trace his biceps and bite his shoulder as he arches into me. He waits for me to open my eyes then looks at me so intensely I think I might die of exposure.

With the blankets on the other end of the bed, our legs and arms entwined and some small portion of our passion spent, Mark says, "We should do something outside today."

"Well, I have to go pick up Weed," I say. Then, "We could go to the park by my mother."

We make the hour drive south and just as we are turning into the park, lights start flashing. I've got a broken brake light. It also turns out I've got a suspended license. I'm sure there were really good reasons I didn't pay those things, like wanting groceries or medicine or heat or the internet or a bottle of wine, but as I'm sitting in the car feeling like a complete fuck up who fails at being an adult, there can't be a good enough reason in the world.

Mark,the peace bringer and anxiety slayer, grabs my hand, "It's OK. We'll figure it out."

He drives to the parking lot and we start hiking through glens, along the river bed. Mark falls behind as he takes pictures and I wander ahead, marveling at rocks slowly cut by water. I am still crying when Mark catches up.

"You OK?" he asks.

"I wish I was a better rock."

"You think you shouldn't feel things..."

"No. Look at that rock," I say. He turns around and I hug him from behind. Standing on a rock, I am leaning over his shoulder. "The rock is there and the water keeps running, eroding it and the rock has no will to resist the water; it just changes exactly how it needs to change."

I wipe my eyes and start down the path. Mark holds my hand. In a few minutes he says, "I think you're a good rock."

"Yeah, well I think you're some damn good water."

the male gaze

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:05:12 GMT

I started seeing a career counselor because two years out of school, I am making $8.50 an hour with no real prospects on the horizon. I needed someone to help me focus and keep me motivated. Things were going well. I built a decent resume and started to see some possibilities and stopped saying "Oh, I can't do that because when I have an episode people won't be able to rely on me or my behavior will become disruptive." I started moving, slowly, but I was moving.

The last time I went to see the career counselor, a month ago, we were making small talk about my knee. It's injured (again) and I am anxious to get back on skates.

"So how long do you think you'll be out?" He asked.

"Well, I went to the doctor and he laughed when I asked about skating in November's bout."

"Yeah, but you're tough," he said.

"Well I'm tough but I'm also..."

"Beautiful," he said.

"not stupid," I said and gave him the look of death.

He laughed the way men do when they realize they had only imagined she was flirting. "That should be your business card, 'Tough, Beautiful and Not Stupid.'"

I laugh too, but I can't ever go back to him. Tonight, instead of getting the guidance and support I need, I'm struggling through a personal statement for an application I should have sent out already. It makes me want to gain fifty pounds.

back on the horse

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:43:46 GMT

Friday I filled out an application for a graduate program in Education. I requested my transcripts. Today I wrote my personal essay. I'm going to grad school in the spring. I've said this a million times before, but last week the craziness of living so close to the edge got to me, I was really shaken up and a long talk with myself decided this was the right thing to do. I am at an impasse with my life. I need change. I need to get back on the horse and move forward. So I'm going.

the dam broke

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:59:04 GMT

We are sitting at Mark's kitchen table drinking Pale Ale. I am flipping three pennies while he records the results. It seems like an endless loop of penny flipping, but it is only six times.

"Really?" I ask, "you can go for that."

"Yeah, you know, it's Asian."

"Oh, so it gets a pass on being stupid?" I snark.

He shrugs but something is different tonight. He doesn't throw anything back at me.

"It's cool. I'm just surprised. Maybe I should break out my tarot cards sometime," I offer.

Leafing through the blue book, he finds my hexagram. Something like: Wonderful at first devolving into chaos. I snicker and roll my eyes. "Ain't that how it always goes."

On the inside of the back cover I see little notes and dates. There's one when we first met. There's one a few months in, when we were still circling each other--pent up and distrusting. There are several that he has labeled "the usual".

"There's a 'usual' question?" I ask.

"Yeah. I mean there was," he looks me in the eyes for our movie moment. I feel so ashamed by my vulnerable human feelings but I make myself look. I know what he is saying.

Saturday, laying flushed and exhausted in bed, I decide to let the damn break. "It's not a promise or a guarantee, but I love you very much," I say and shove my head into his side.

I expect him to say nothing. I expect him to pull me close or kiss the top of my head. I do not expect him, as naked as he is, to expose himself. I'm not even sure I want him to say it when maybe thirty seconds later he very simply, very honestly says, "I love you, too."

I try not to move. I don't want to shake or cry. I don't want to reveal how unsure I was of him, or myself. I just want to enjoy the way those words sound. Maybe two minutes later I allow myself to squeeze him and we don't say anything else to each other as we drift off to sleep.

So now we know where we stand.

Standing on the beach with a drunk woman

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 01:27:48 GMT

Last night Mark was kissing my neck and back, running his hands over my ass, when I completely lost interest. I rolled over and fell asleep.

Mark is gorgeous. Five eleven, thin and beautifully toned with shaggy dirty blond hair. If he were a woman he'd be called a natural beauty and he is, hands down, the most attractive person I've ever dated. In a small, ugly city like this, people stare at us when we go out. Not only are we cute together, we're obviously enjoying each other.

We do enjoy each other. We talk for hours with beers on the porch. We go to cool concerts. We tromp through the woods. We do art together. We have extraordinary sex.

From the outside we look like Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Also, on the inside we are like that too, a twin star system, we rotate around each other taking turns being Sirius A or Sirius B. We run hot and cold with each other. Sometimes I'm crazy about him and he is unsure, sometimes he is crazy about me and I am less sure.

Right now I am unsure. Maybe because of things that are wrong with him. Maybe because of things that are wrong with me. Maybe because his ex, C. stood on the beach crying, holding my hand, telling me all of her heartbreak and wanting to kiss me.

"Did he tell you what I said..." she asked about the time she called me family.

"Yeah. He did. And honestly, I don't know if this is going anywhere so I'm really worried about you getting too attached or involved with me."

"Well, regardless of him, I want you in my life. I don't know why you're here. If you're supposed to be helping him or if you met him so that you can help me." She pulled me close for a hug, "I love you and am so glad to have you in my life."

I used to think I would rather love than be loved, these days I understand my narcissism a little better. I am accustomed to being adored, even if I have not recognized it in the past. All of that desire, directed at me, made me want to kiss her too. I wanted to confirm the good and desirable in her, give her a few minutes of peace and return her to the world a little stronger.

family?

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:09:59 GMT

I was in the bathroom when I heard Mark's Good Ex of the North say "When I got here tonight I saw Betty's bag and thought, 'oh yay! Betty's here and if Betty's here I bet Weed's here' and then I thought, 'I like our new family so much.'"

If I hadn't been on the toilet I might have shit myself.

It's been six years since I've had a real relationship with someone. Eaten meals with them, seen them more nights than not, gone to their work parties. I haven't missed those mundane things. Girlfriend duties are a chore, except they're not with Mark. Somewhere down the line I can see us living together, but in the meantime, his babies-mama calling me her family...it freaks me out.

I say nothing when I return to the living room. The topic doesn't come back up until Mark and I are alone in the Kitchen. "Did you hear what C. said?"

I play dumb because I don't want to talk about this. He tells me and somehow it is even more shocking when he repeats it. I don't know what to say. I let my eyes speak and he opens his mouth wide, in surprise, and gasps "I know..."

Part of my horror is knowing that really, at the bottom of it, that's what I think is going on here. Mark and I are making some very weird kind of family bonds and given our track records, we're both terrified. Maybe we needed someone else to call it like they saw it. But still, I'm not really sure I'm ready for this.

The Worst Day Today

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:07:08 GMT

The car was not even off but I was already out the door, across the gravel drive way and hugging my uncle. If it had been a hug with less gravity I wouldn't have felt him shaking. "How are you?" I asked.

"Good," he said, and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

"No, you're not," I said.

I think that when your nineteen year old daughter is tossed from a car and shaken around so badly that she can not be an organ donor the only thing you can say is lies. You give polite and appropriate responses no matter how untrue. It's better than freeing the howling grief and having the well-meaning fall on futile attempts to comfort you. "You'll be OK they would say" and you would say no even though this is true. You will live through this and you will feel OK again, sooner than you expect and that is the worst feeling of all of them. Death, like love, is supposed to last forever.

He holds on tighter. "Thank you for coming. It means so much."

"Of course..."

"I love you," my uncle, whose beautiful daughter now looks like an animal that has been run over by a truck and sitting by the side of the road for several hours, says.

I marvel at the limitless beauty of humans. "I love you too," I say.

Erratics

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:28:28 GMT

We have been driving for a half an hour when Mark turns to me and says, "Are you wondering where the hell we are going?"

"No. You said we were going to see some bluffs. You said they're on the Lake. It's a big lake."

"Yeah. Well, they're on the north side," he says.

I roll my eyes and chuckle. The north side of the lake is Canada. "Well since I didn't bring a passport I guess there'll be a lot of cock sucking at the border."

"Yeah, that was part of the international agreement. Passport or blow job." Obviously, none of the kids are in the car with us.

We park just a few yards from the pebble beach and almost immediately I see why we are here.

"I'm really surprised you've never been here before, what with you being a huge fan of erosion and all."

I smirk at him. I am a huge fan of erosion. I've written love poems to erosion. I shake my head and snort. He's not making fun and I'm not making fun, it's just funny.

The bluffs are like knives into the sky, carving space like it is a thing. Rocks hanging from the sheer cliffs, knowing that a good rain will make them tumble down. Mark takes me to these moments at least twice a month, my jaw hanging down and my eyes full of tears because I know my, our, humans' place. We are so impatient, we hardly belong on this planet.

We walk along the beach. I point out different rocks, "That's metamorphic. You can tell by the striations. They are what we call erratics. They don't belong here. They were brought by glaciers from Canada. we don't have metamorphic rocks here."

As we walk, he plucks shiny rocks from the shore line and brings them to me for approval and instruction. When he's twisting me around in bed, throwing my legs here or pushing against there, he resembles an animal--not at all like this man-child. I stare at him. He's beautiful and complex but ultimately pure in a way that I understand. He is never anything other than what he is at that moment. Maybe that is meaningless to you, but it means everything to me.

We climb into the palms of the bluffs. I make all the oohing and aaahing sounds that mean sincere awe. I think about dieing here, just laying back and sinking into the mud until I am just more erratica to be washed onto the beach, into the lake.

Once we are past the bluffs, Mark starts balancing rocks in impossible positions. I've seen him do this a handful of times. Usually I watch so I can catch that ah-ha moment when gravity is defeated, but today I start gathering the white rocks. Limestone, marble, sandstone. I place them along the highest ridge of the beach, outlining it just to make sure that everyone notices this simple wonder of the world.

We spend at least an hour, if not two, orbiting one another. Checking in just for a moment then returning to our work. Sometimes when I let myself think silly things this is what I imagine for us in five or ten years. Him drawing or sculpting in the garden while I write shoeless on the porch, old soul music on the stereo and the slow emptying of beer and wine bottles. What I imagine is years of this hour or two.

We climb to the top of a bluff and walk around the wooded ledges. We peer over the bluffs. I think about a friend who went surfing down the side of a valcano in Peru. These bluffs are nothing compared to a volcano. The magnitude of our universe is stunning.

In the car, driving back to the city, Mark asks, "Are you hungry?"

"Yeah," I say.

"What do you want?"

"Something fattening and bad for me, actually."

He smiles in his way that makes me feel like I am made of something other than solid matter. I don't think he has ever been so pleased by anything that has come out of my mouth and I know that he will make sure I get exactly what I want.

sneaking out of happy hour

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:00:28 GMT

"Well, there's someone I met and hung out with over the summer," Mark said, his head buried in his kitchen counter. "And she might stop by tonight because I told her I couldn't go see a movie, I had plans. And she said, 'like a date?'"

Mark looked up at me, sort of uneasy. "I told her, 'Well I don't know if we need to call it that.' She said, 'Well, that's OK, you've been honest' but then she said, 'What would you do if I stopped by there at two in the morning?' So, she might stop by and I don't want you to be surprised."

Mark and I weren't exclusive, we weren't in a relationship. I'd just left one and was concluding, yet again, that those things only led to hurt and disappointment. What Mark and I were doing was drinking and fucking. It was fun, but right around midnight his doorbell rang. He let her in. She introduced herself. I said, "You're a couple hours early."

She sized me up--competition--then made the sort of small talk that is supposed to establish positioning. It got increasingly uncomfortable. All she wanted was for me to leave. All I wanted was for her to leave so I could leave. I think this went on for three days before I said, "Ok, well, I want to have sex with him so..." I shrugged my shoulders and turned my palms to the skylight.

"You're cute," she said.

I was shocked, "Thanks."

"But not cute enough."

It wasn't going anywhere good.

"Where'd you meet her?" she whispered. He whispered something back.

We sat there, suspended in our icey moment, until Mark told her, "It's time for you to go."

He walked her to the door, out on to the steps and I heard a howl. I finished my beer. Mark came back in. "She bit me."

"She what?"

He repeated it for my disbelief and then we had sex.

So, I think you can understand why, when I saw her at happy hour today I tried to sneak out of the building without her noticing I was there.

She was there with a local music critic. He's married and they've been having an affair for years. At one point his wife found out and made him end things with the neck-biter. They pretended to end it but they still see each other.

What's funny is that Mark is the asshole and I'm the slut.