Jen Larsen's Blog, page 3

and that was the year that was

My god, this year. This fucking year. 2013 was amazing and terrifying and so very, very bizarre and wonderful and weird and I feel like I forgot half of what happened because it was an overwhelming tide of all the things.

It started pretty terribly—right off a long string of the world’s most awful OK Cupid an eHarmony dates, sitting at a table in a terrible bar across from couples making out sloppily and wondering exactly what my life had come to. My ex was off on a NYE extravaganza with the girl he was crazy about and I was happy for him so happy very happy irritated because it wasn’t fair that I didn’t have anyone I was crazy about, okay? And I was ready for whatever was next, now, soon, hurry, please.

I spent a lot of the Summer of 2012 wondering what the hell I was supposed to do. At the end of the summer, I decided I was heading out of Utah. In late fall I had decided on Madison.

In January, moving felt so horribly far away—a job, a place to live, packing up my house. Logistics, too many of them. Being stuck in Utah, too real. My god the terrible dates I kept throwing myself on to distract from Worries About The Future. The awkwardness and the creeping sense that I was the problem and they were just a series of ghosts as described via A Christmas Carol, coming to me to point out all my flaws and errors and then leaving me psychologically broken (and sometimes feeling slightly violated because SERIOUSLY FINGERS THERE ON A FIRST DATE COME ON).

I might still have Feelings about this. But not many—because in February my book came out. My book came out! My book, it came out. I wrote it, all the pages in it. My publisher put it inside a cover that was more stunning than I could have hoped for. And it was released into the wild in February, a full month before it was supposed to have been, and that was when I stopped sleeping altogether. Terror subsumed everything.

Throughout the whole process, the copyedits and the proofing and the cover selection and etcetera and the other thing, I was so proud I had made a book and I thought it had turned out all right and I hoped people liked it in a vague and general sense. Then I realized that once it was out in the world there where people really could read it and would know all the worst parts of me.

God, the feeling of vulnerability. The raw, painful open woundedness of it, of my book in the world, of me totally naked and begging you to love me, out in the world. Of course I couldn’t sleep.

In March things started to happen. My book launch party—completely packed with so many people I love. My brother and my mother came. My best friends came. I was a little late starting the talk because I walked into the room, saw it was entirely full of people there for me, just me, oh my god there are so many people and they’re all going to look at me, and oh, I lost it, just a little bit.

It was a weird and stomach churning combination of gratitude for all the love I have and bewilderment about it too and fear because Jesus Christ, I am the girl who spent three years of grad school dreading class participation. I transferred out of community college to a four year school instead of graduating because I refused to fulfill the Speech class requirement. And then I walked into the front of the room and I breathed in deep and I was talking, and a little teary-eyed sometimes, and I lived through it.

March was a busy month. I still wasn’t sleeping. My book got reviewed in People, and then I wrote articles for the New York Post and Refinery 29. The Refinery 29 article got picked up by The Daily Mail, where I accidentally stumbled upon my very first Shitty Internet Comment, as well as Yahoo! Shine. I found out about Yahoo when my Brazilian waxer texted me to tell me I was on the front page, and that was a new threshold for weirdness.

Then Good Morning America called in the morning to interview me in the afternoon and I raced home to clean the house and change into something reasonable and I forgot to put on shoes. The film crew spent a lot of time fixing my stove. I felt awkward and said rambling things. They cropped Crom out of the final story that aired, and the headline said that losing weight had made me miserable, and I didn’t care because oh, the surreal madhouse my life had become, swirly eyes crazy brain etc etc etc.

And I felt so lucky, too. I did phone interviews and radio interviews and text interviews and some other interviews and I think I was generally saying reasonable things that were worthwhile, but I have refused to listen to or watch any of them, to this very day.

At the end of March there was a talk show in Chicago, and I visited Madison and looked at the neighborhoods I wanted to live in. There was my San Francisco book launch full of more people I love, who made it perfect. I coughed and tried to lean against the wall except it wasn’t a wall it was a banner thing and I almost fell down. It’s possible I fell down; I don’t remember it very well, because coping mechanisms.

In April an editor at Harper Collins said, we heard you’re writing a YA book; we want it. I got that message while I was on the train between San Francisco and Utah to go read at an alumni event and I cried a lot in public. I wrote a proposal and they wanted it. They wanted it. They wanted it. Oh god, they wanted it. I still wasn’t sleeping.

In April a documentary program on the Oprah Winfrey Network said okay, we are considering having you be one of our subjects and I said SURE OKAY without even considering what that meant. They put me through a series of Skype interviews. They kept telling me it wasn’t any kind of guarantee. Then they scheduled the filming of my episode for June and I said SURE OKAY.

Stranger Here became an audiobook in June; My company said, “you are the center of our business strategy” and I said, okay so can I work remotely? They agreed, and suddenly moving to Madison was going to be possible. Impossibly wonderful friends helped me find an apartment. The film crew came to my house and had me do Judo and run in slow motion and cry a lot in interviews and talk to therapists and it could not have been stranger. Every time the camera turned off and they said I could take a break, I went upstairs and got under the covers and trembled a little until they called me back.

They were lovely and kind and loving and supportive and I loved them and I was so glad they were gone. I went and got a prescription for a sleep aid because I was going a little crazy.

In the middle of July I drove from Utah with a little dog and as many possessions I could fit into my Hyundai because U-Haul lost my trailer reservation. I got to Madison and I looked around and then I panicked because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, how I fit into the lives of my friends here, how I was going to get the rest of my stuff out here, and worried, so worried I had made a mistake.

But I was happy. Every morning I went down to the lake with Crom and looked at the water and realized I was really genuinely happy for the first time in a long time. I was living so close to some of the most important people in my life, and my Utahn importants were not so far away and my family so near and I was happy.

In August I wore a bikini in public like it wasn’t no big thing (it felt like a big thing). In September I signed a book contract, in October I dressed up as Harley Quinn in a skin-tight costume I made myself and was full of self-doubt and insecurity and I wore it out anyway and it felt so good. In November I turned 40 and wore a very extremely super sparkly dress that was short AND low cut because hell yes do not go gently into that good night. I was surrounded by some of the most essential people in my life and we drank champagne and I was so happy. Later there was the stunningly gorgeous Thanksgivingkuh with stunningly gorgeous people and was filled with light and love and happiness. In December I got to see my nephew turn one year old.

Tonight I’ll cook and watch movies and play video games and it will be a very good night and a very good way to end the year. All year round I have been grateful and scared and excited and awkward and happy and panicked and such a lucky, lucky person.

Happy new year.

Madiversary

And now I live in Madison.

Most of my things still live in Utah. My trailer reservation, U-haul went ahead and lost it. And I threw my hands up on that Saturday, the day before I was supposed to leave, and I said fuck it. Fuck it, I’m just going. I am going to fill up my little car with all the things it can carry and I am going to drive twenty hours across twenty states (was it twenty? It feels like twenty) and I am going to move to Madison with a few boxes filled full with random things and a heart full of determination and some slightly wild eyes and someday I will have my things but not now, because I am so ready to go, do you understand me? I am ready to leave now.

I left, and now I live in Madison.

I love this town. I bought an air mattress; I brought some pillows and my little dog. My apartment is the smallest apartment in the world, though probably not. When people walk in, they say, “Oh, this is a very small apartment” and they are not wrong.

The first week: I walk miles, across town and around. I walk down to the lake just three blocks away. Every morning Crom and I go. He discovers the visceral pleasure and eternal excitement of duck chasing. He learns to swim, and there is very little better in the world than watching a little dog swim very earnestly and determinedly, paddling fiercely but not well. He gets over his fear of putting his face in the water when he realizes it’s the only way to retrieve his ball, bobbing on the surface. Someday he will catch a duck and it will be the greatest day of his life. Every morning I watch him chase his dreams and they are very good mornings.

I swim almost every afternoon except for the days when it’s raining. It rains a lot, and it thunders a lot, and I’m going to have to get over being worried about thunder and flinching at lightning because I think it is not going away.

Every night I find a place to eat on the Capitol—I’m just a couple of blocks from Capitol Square, and everything happens there, and on the streets that radiate out. In walking distance there are all the restaurants and bars and cafes and coffee shops in all the world. There’s a lot of sushi, and most of it is good and some of it is great. I meet people randomly, because everyone wants to talk.

Almost every day I run into the friends I have here because it is such a small town. People I love are just minutes away and I’m still getting used to the fact that we don’t need to have long protracted goodbyes because I live here now and really they are just minutes away that is a literal, factual fact.

There’s a concentrated energy and it feels like everything is going on—I know not everything is going on. I know this is a small town, but that is what I love about it. It is small but it is vibrant. That’s the word for it, it really is I swear to you. I know how stupid it sounds; I feel a little stupid using that word, because who the hell uses the word “vibrant” except for writers for New York magazine and old ladies in caftans. But I am a little giddy with it. The vibrancy, okay? I do not own a caftan yet though. YET.

The second and third weeks are the farmer’s market and the concerts on the square and trying to settle into a routine. But I’m having trouble finding a routine. I’m a creature of routine and this is a terrible thing.

It feels like I am unmoored. It feels like I’m a little out of place. Sometimes, I feel a little lost even when I know exactly where I’m going. I know my neighborhood now, all the blocks miles around. I’ve walked down Willy street and loved it best. I’ve walked down Monroe street and loved it best. I love the whole town best. At my favorite sushi place they call me the redhead and they know which lunch special I’m going to order—they don’t bring me a menu anymore. I am trying to be stable and secure. I am trying to settle in. To fit in and figure out how I fit in my friends’ lives.

The fourth week, the fourth week I lose my mind completely.

It’s not surprising. The giddy energy dissipates a bit and that is to be expected and what’s left is uncertainty. Insecurity. A weird loneliness that I can’t figure out. A strange kind of panic. I know I’m where I want to be, but I am suddenly terrified that it’s not where I’m supposed to be and no one wants me here. I want so badly for someone to tell me what I was thinking please. Tell me I haven’t made a mistake.

I go and buy a dresser. I buy a desk. I hang some art up. I buy flowers and I cook in my tiny kitchen. I breathe in and out and follow up on the volunteer applications I submitted at the library and the YWCA and Planned Parenthood. I breathe some more and I go swimming a lot. I am satisfied to see that every time I take my dress off I am less worried about what random people think of me in a bikini. I don’t care. Crom chases ducks. I do some writing.

The giddiness is gone, but the panic is gone too and in its place is—not quite contentment. Not complete security. But more routine and with it, feelings that feel more honest. Worry, because I always worry. A feeling of hopefulness because I am always somehow basically optimistic or maybe just not so bright. Or maybe because things are going to be okay because I love this town and I am happy here, very basically very happy or basically not so bright and those are generally the same thing.

And it’s going to be okay because this is a very good place to be.

next steps

When I was 17, I fled from Pennsylvania to New York, because there was nothing there for me and I couldn’t imagine having a future in a rural place where the grocery store was a 20 minute drive away. But you know, I say fled, but really I was heading toward college and a life I chose for myself by god.

When I was 26 or thereabouts, I fled to San Francisco because the relationship I was in was toxic, and he wouldn’t let me break up with him. He wouldn’t move out. It sounds so absurd now, so absolutely absurd—what the fuck are you talking about, he wouldn’t? You call the cops if he won’t get the fuck out of your house. You make him leave. But I was scared and I felt trapped, and I had to get out.

But I was also heading for grad school to get my MFA and be the writer I always wanted to be but could never quite manage. I had never finished anything I wrote, ever, not once, until I went to grad school. In grad school, I wrote a book—not a good book, but a whole book, from front to finish. I found friends who are some of the most important people in the world to me. I started heading toward the person I wanted to be, someone independent and smart and creative. I started to believe in myself and it was the most amazing feeling in the world.

When I was thirty four? Something like that. I met a man and I loved him and he loved me and I chose to move to Utah, forward into the possibility of our future etc. and also to a place where I could afford to just be a freelance writer. To see if we could have a life together, and if I could make a living from things I made up. And we did, and I did. It was a really beautiful life, for a really long time and it was good. He and I grew up together in a lot of ways and took care of each other in a lot of ways and it is a sadness that it did not work out. But we have left each other better people, and that is such a good thing.

In Utah I have met some of the most amazing people in the world. In Utah I have found people who know me and love me anyway. Utah has been such a good place for me.

But I am done with Utah. This is the most beautiful place in the country, maybe, and it has been a gift to have the trails at my back door and the mountains shouldering up against the sky and there is so much that is good here, but I can’t stay here any more. It is redder than I can stand for much longer, less diverse. So small in too many ways. There is much that is wonderful here, but it wears on you, it does.

Last year, in the fall, I started to think it was time. Not to flee (maybe it felt a little like fleeing). But I needed mostly to find a place I chose very carefully and very deliberately. To find my chosen home. At first I was ready to go anywhere and everywhere—back to San Francisco, to New York where my mom and brother and his family are. To Portland or Seattle or. I don’t know. Somewhere.

My friend Karen said, wait. Wait, come to Madison. Come be with my family. It ended up on the short list. Because it’s beautiful, and green. Fresh water lakes instead of a fetid sea-monkey broth. Midwestern-kind and polite, but still sophisticated, or sophisticated enough for me. Because I realized every time I went back to SF or NY or Chicago that I was kind of done with big places. Maybe Utah ruined me. Maybe spending so many years in Pennsylvania planted a small-town seed. Something.

I chose Madison for family—so many people I love in a small radius, from right in Madison to Milwaukee and Green Bay and Chicago and Minneapolis. Closer to the east coast. A walkable neighborhood again, oh thank god for I have missed being able to walk to the corner for milk. Colleges I can teach at and a lake I can run along the shore of and put my feet in and a big open horizon. I love the mountains, but I have missed the horizon.

I made the decision to move last year, and to Madison before the year ended, and have always planned to move, maybe by the fall, definitely by the fall. On the burner—maybe a side burner. It depended on work and my house and family. But then, suddenly, everything came together, with work and my house and a place to live exactly where I want to live that accepts dogs and suddenly I was moving in just a month, a few weeks. I’m moving this weekend, to Madison. In the middle of a shower of insane things happening and travel and work and other work and everything that has kept me from sleeping these past six months.

My problem is that usually, I think people can read my mind. Or they know everything that has happened with me and to me and in my life. Or more accurately, they don’t care that much. That is something I have always struggled with, remembering that people want to know these things. I have told some people and not told others and I never remember what and who. And probably I should get better at saying, for instance, oh hey, I’m moving to Madison.

The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage

Update: The contest is closed, but the book is available here!

Food is love (I cut your sandwiches in triangles because I know that is what you like) and sex (licking chocolate from your fingers, from his fingers). It’s comfort (the casserole my mother used to make) and anger (I am going to finish the potato chips because fuck everyone) and happiness (a birthday cake, a perfect peach, a beautifully puffed soufflé would you look at what I’ve done?). Food is frustration because you don’t know what you’re hungry for or you don’t know what to make for dinner or maybe you’re just tired of cooking or it is too hot.

It’s fuel, it’s in excess. It’s too much or it’s not enough. It’s bone-deep physical craving that makes you twitch; it’s satisfaction. It’s what your family does together, crowded into the kitchen stirring and chopping and yelling and making a beautiful mess. It’s what you do alone, meditative chopping with a cat winding around your feet.

It’s memory: pulling out the recipe card with their terrible handwriting to painstakingly recreate the tomato sauce only they can ever really make correctly but you try, you really try and for a minute they’re with you, smiling from across the table and every bite feels like home, it really does.

Food, and what we eat and how we eat it and who we eat it with and who we present it to and how—it took me so long to realize how tremendously important it is, how life-changing, affirming, transforming it can be, how valuable those rituals are. I ate compulsively, without considering what I was putting in my mouth, and why. I ate voraciously, hungrily, thoughtlessly and furiously and alone. Weight loss surgery changed that, necessarily. Abruptly I couldn’t be so violently careless. Or I could—I just paid a price for it. I did it to myself, but I resented it anyway, because there is very little in the way of logic when it comes to the complex emotional morass of food and eating.

And then Lisa Harper asked me to contribute an essay to the book she and Caroline Grant were editing, about the grace and diversity and importance of family food culture and how food matters in our lives, and I was a little panicky. What do I know about the importance of food? It had only ever been important to have it in my face. What did I know about eating, except that I liked to do it a lot but didn’t care much about what I was eating?

So I thought about that, and that’s what I wrote about. I wrote about my brother, the fancy chef, who understands it at a deeper level and who has always understood it. My essay is a little one in a book, The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage, full of other writers who really understand it too. Who write beautifully about how food and how we eat defines us and our relationships. They write gorgeously about patience and love and brokenness and coming back together and ritual and compassion and compulsion. It’s a beautiful book, and I think it’s important—it is easy to forget how important it is to nourish the connections in your life.

It’s also yours to win, in a random drawing! Two readers each get their very own copy of The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage to feed their brain-holes.

To enter, leave a comment. Tell me you’d love a copy of the book, and also what your favorite thing to eat is. If you tweet about the drawing and leave a comment with that link, you get a second entry in the drawing, even! Go go go do it. I want you to read this book, because it is so good.

Win a Copy of The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage

Food is love (I cut your sandwiches in triangles because I know that is what you like), and sex (licking chocolate from your fingers, from his fingers). It’s comfort (the casserole my mother used to make) and anger (I am going to finish the potato chips because fuck everyone) and happiness (a birthday cake, a perfect peach, a beautifully puffed soufflé would you look at what I’ve done?). Food is frustration because you don’t know what you’re hungry for and you don’t know what to make for dinner and maybe you’re tried of cooking. It’s fuel, it’s in excess. It’s too much or it’s not enough. It’s bone-deep physical craving that makes you twitch; it’s satisfaction. It’s what your family does together, crowded into the kitchen stirring and chopping and yelling and making a beautiful mess. It’s memory: pulling out the recipe card with their terrible handwriting to painstakingly recreate the tomato sauce only they can ever really make but you try, you really try and for a minute they’re with you, smiling from across the table and every bite feels like home, it really does.

Food, and what we eat and how we eat it and who we eat it with and who we present it to and how—it took me so long to realize how tremendously important it is, how life-changing, affirming, transforming it can be, how valuable those rituals are. I ate compulsively, without considering what I was putting in my mouth, and why. I ate voraciously, hungrily, thoughtlessly and furiously and alone. Weight loss surgery changed that, necessarily. Abruptly I couldn’t be so violently careless. Or I could—I just paid a price for it. I did it to myself, but I resented it anyway, because there is very little in the way of logic when it comes to the complex emotional morass of food and eating.

And then Lisa Harper asked me to contribute an essay to the book she and Caroline Grant were editing, about the grace and diversity and importance of family food culture and how food matters in our lives, and I was a little panicky. What do I know about the importance of food? It had only ever been important to have it in my face. What did I know about eating, except that I liked to do it a lot but didn’t care much about what I was eating?

So I thought about that, and I wrote about that, and wrote my brother, the fancy chef, who understands it at a deeper level and who has always understood it. My essay is a little one in a book, The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage, full of other writers who really understand it too. Who write beautifully about how food and how we eat define us and our relationships. They write gorgeously about patience and love and brokenness and coming back together and ritual and compassion and compulsion. It’s a beautiful book, and I think it’s important—it is easy to forget how important it is to nourish the connections in your life.

It’s also yours to win, in a random drawing! Two readers each get their very own copy of to feed their brain-holes.

To enter, leave a comment. Tell me you’d love a copy of the book, and also what your favorite thing to eat is. If you tweet about the drawing and leave a comment with that link, you get a second entry in the drawing, even! Go go go do it. I want you to read this book, because it is so good.

whole-hearted

Someone once said to me (someone who really ought to know better): enthusiasm. That’s your best quality. They meant: The way you throw yourself into things. The way you are all-or-nothing. The things you try, they are done and dusted. The people you care about, they know you care about them. The cliffs you fling yourself off, that is some full-fledged epic-style flinging and it is kind of amazing how you have not yet ended up a splash on the boulders far, far below the sane people way up above you, dude. Or words to that effect.

Which is nice, right? That’s nice. But it doesn’t change my argument in response—that it is also a kind of brokenness. That what it actually feels like it means is that the regulator that normal people have is out of whack in me. Gone missing entirely, maybe. Though I suppose if it were missing entirely I really would be a chunky splatter, metaphorically speaking. More so than I usually feel.

So this regulator that I imagine—very steampunky, lots of gears, makes some kind of whistle or clanking noise—I think it’s the thing that lets most people be adults. Make smart decisions. Consider things carefully. Be less dangerously impulsive. Beat down those essentially self-destructive urges.

It is, this imaginary bit of machinery inside me, the thing that ought to have helped me not gain 100 pounds because I was afraid if I didn’t eat all the cake, there would never be cake again. That should have made me carefully consider the fact that there were consequences to eating all the cake. That there were other things to think about beside “not having all the cake.” Instead, what I did was eat with an impulsive and reckless abandon while my regulator clanked and whistled uselessly and disregarded.

Weight loss surgery cuts into that, physically speaking—you can try to circumvent and that works to an extent. But it hurts. And eventually Pavlov is pleased to note that the association of pain with overeating becomes an effective way to curb that reckless consumption. It’s not cured—it’ll never be cured. It becomes contained.

And yet it feels kind of like a whack-a-mole, because other impulses have gone and reared up their ugly heads. I shouldn’t have been surprised, because how many articles have I read about weight loss surgery patients suddenly developing impulse issues? Compulsive spending, gambling, drinking. But that didn’t apply to me because I am not stupid.

And then Ben and I broke up and I bought a bottle of wine and I thought, oh. This is much better, with this bottle of wine in me. I hardly even notice that I’m crying all the time and that is so awesome you guys, who is going to the store for another bottle?

It was okay, though, right, because it wasn’t like I was doing a morning shot to wake up or keeping a flask in my desk or getting drunk at lunch. I wasn’t drunk all the time! So no problem, right? Here’s the problem: when it was there, I drank it. When there was wine, I’d have a glass, and then another. And I’d keep saying yes until it was all gone. Because there was no reason not to. Because if I didn’t drink it, I’d never have alcohol again. It didn’t feel like I was drowning sorrows—but it was nice to not think. It was nice to be cheery.

It felt better than binging ever had.

And it helped when I’d panic. In social situations where everyone expects me to be an extrovert, I can do that for you if I’m drinking! Let me give you what you need the only way I think I can. I didn’t think anyone noticed I was anything but totally charming and not tipsy at all—but of course people noticed.

And then those nights when we’d have a bottle of wine in the house, those nights were getting hazy. And then the nights when there wasn’t a bottle of wine in the house, I started to go out and buy one. Or two. And it was becoming a problem—no, it was a problem. It was full speed ahead into reckless abandon, it was a pattern, it was throwing all caution to the wind and saying fuck it, I do what I want. I can drink if I want. I can drink until we run out (echoes of I can eat everything and anything and all the things, and let’s see how fat I get).

God, do I ever learn?

I do. I do learn, eventually. So I got that going for me. And I’ve quit drinking for awhile. Easy-peasy. Except it was hard the first day, and I was mad. And then I thought oh, yes. Yes, that’s why this is a really good idea, if you’re getting mad because you can’t have a glass of wine (and then another or two) with dinner. That’s why this is possibly the best idea you’ve ever had.

It has been fairly simple since that first couple days—see above, re: whole-heartedness. When I do a thing, I do it well. Ladies.

It is frustrating though, to feel so broken. To feel like I have this tiny little flaw in me that can rupture in new and unexpected ways at any time. Like I will be spending the rest of my life being mindful, being vigilant, being afraid that I will find a whole new way to fuck things up and lose control and maybe that’ll be the time I don’t catch it and everything just falls apart. It won’t and it can’t because I won’t let it—I get better every time at beating it back. But that vulnerable feeling never quite fades and the worry never quite dissipates and that’s probably, in the long run, a good thing?

I think, when I’m being not-so-hard on myself, that it’s what makes me who I am. That these moments of weakness have made me incredibly strong. They’ve helped me define who I don’t want to be and who I can’t be and who I refuse to be ever again.

I’ve always been so, so ashamed of my vulnerabilities—and believe me, the fact that it manifested so patently and physically in my size was such a source of self-aware misery. But I’m learning achingly slowly that being vulnerable is no terrible thing. Letting other people know you are vulnerable and flawed won’t leave you alone and lonely, the way you’re terrified it might. Though it has taken me really so ridiculously long to learn that.

And I’ve even figured out that, if you can forgive me for being sincere here for a moment (which is another of my vulnerabilities, the way I come over all unexpectedly sincere sometimes): it’s where our vulnerabilities meet and mesh that helps us understand each other and fall in love—true love, all kinds, not just the romantic—with the most important people in our lives.

And this flaw of mine, this vulnerability of mine. This bright and brash and slightly mad part of me that sometimes erupts? It also manifests in adventure and taking chances and being brave and trying things because it is a sadness, to be afraid. It manifests in loving people hard without being afraid. And wanting their happiness as much as my own and saying the things that matter even when I’m scared. And from that, the good things in my life, so many of them in all arenas, have come. They’ve come from closing my eyes and flinging myself at the things I want, the things I want to experience, the kind of person I want to be.

It is still incredibly, painfully embarrassing sometimes. Both the good side and the bad. But I’m getting better at believing, whole-heartedly, that the truth of who you are, both that good side and that bad side, can’t, shouldn’t, won’t ever be hidden, and is probably loved. Hopefully.

best cat

Last year, my neighbor stole my cat.

Fang, my fat, sweet, not-so bright little buddy, had started exploring that summer. We’d leave the back door open, and he’d sort of slide himself out sideways, ooze down the stairs, and tip toe into the yard. Then a breeze would kick up and he’d spring twelve feet in the air, do a perfect somersault, and come barreling back inside to not be seen for a full ten minutes.

Eventually, he worked up courage in his little cat heart, and he stayed out there for a moments at a time, breezes be damned. The next step was to go creeping around the yard creepily, staring at birds until they were uncomfortable and had to check their teeth in the mirror. And soon, he was hanging out in bushes, dozing in the grass, and sneaking along the bottom of the fence looking for ways to break out of this joint.

We didn’t know that last part until he came sauntering through the front door one afternoon.

He didn’t appreciate being on lock-down, and escaped the house at every opportunity. To the point where it was starting to hurt my feelings. “You’re breaking your mother’s heart!” I’d yell after him when he once again dodged between my feet and went flying like a fat little rocket down the sidewalk to parts unknown.

Then one day, we realized he hadn’t come home last night. Surely we’d see him in the morning, we assured one another. But no. And then another day and another and I grew frantic and made up signs. It reminded me of how I found him eleven years ago, when I was living in Jersey City. He had turned up at my apartment door, so sweet and cuddly I was convinced he couldn’t be a stray. I printed signs that night to put up in the neighborhood the next morning, and then whoops, September 11th. I spent that week curled up on the couch with him purring (poorly—he never really managed to figure out how to purr correctly) and me crying and watching CNN and if that doesn’t bond you, nothing will.

This time I managed to post my signs throughout the neighborhood, in all my neighbor’s mailboxes on streets in a five-block radius. I called the shelter every day to check after a fat cat with fangs, ridiculously friendly. Kind of dumb? He wasn’t turning up.

“He’s found a good place to hang out,” Ben said. He didn’t believe that because he is essentially a pessimist. I didn’t believe it because I was really scared.

Fang was gone and the weather got cold and we missed him a lot. And then one day my favorite neighbor said, “Is that your cat?” And it was Fang, dodging through the undergrowth and away.

“Oh,” said the neighbor two doors down. “Sorry!” Accidentally she had started feeding him wet food every day and keeping him inside every night and forgot to see if he belonged to someone.

“So why didn’t you get a new one?” said the guy I was seeing when I told him the story.

“A new—cat? Just replace him?”

“Sure,” he said. And while he was so very, very pretty, it was clear that this would just never work.

So. Fang came home. After Ben and I broke up, Fang slept with me and Crombomb every night, all three of us in a row, sometimes some of us on top of others of us, snoring. Them snoring. I never snore. I squished Fang’s belly because that is the weird thing he liked. We watched his programs. We hung out, and his asthmatic purr was one of the best things in the world.

When my two roommates moved in, they brought with them a dog each, and one cat. The dogs had all been friends of cats. The cats were all familiar with and comfortable with dogs. When the sniping started—the barking and the hissing and the batting and the leaping off to safe spots, we didn’t worry too much. They were figuring out their places. They’d figure it out. They snuggled on the couch sometimes. They got worked up sometimes. It happened.

We left for an hour one day, and when we came home, we heard snarling and frantic barking and things falling over and what we found was two dogs tearing my Fang apart. Crom barking at them wildly, jumping at them, trying to pull them off.

The dogs had gotten excited. As dogs do. And Fang hadn’t been able to get away to his safe spot. He was breathing, panicked and shallow, and his fur was shredded and his eyes were huge and my hands were shaking when I wrapped him up in a towel and tried not to hurt him any more than I already had.

At the emergency vet they looked at him and told me he was in critical condition, and they rushed him to the back. “Critical?” I said, when the nurse came back out, and she said, “He could die.”

It is more awkward than you think it would be, considering the business, to start sobbing in the middle of the lobby of the emergency vet. They also have fewer boxes of tissues than they ought.

He lived. He lived for three more days. Torn apart and in so much pain but sometimes, when I stroked down the back of his ear, the silky fur of his nose, he would purr. His silly purr. The vet said, “He’s made it this far. He has a chance.”

We tucked him into my closet, which was his safe spot. The one he couldn’t get to. For two days Sare fed him water from a dropper, and disgusting liquid food from a dropper, and he got himself into the litter box. I slept wrapped around him. Saturday night I tucked him in and left him to check on Crom. I fell asleep on the couch, just for a little while—I didn’t mean to. And when I woke up and raced upstairs, he was gone.

We buried him in the middle of the night, by the side of the house, because I didn’t want him to leave again. And then I had to fly on Sunday morning.

When I came back, I found flowers planted on his grave. And the house is very full, but he’s not here, and sometimes I catch myself thinking, maybe he’s just been stolen away again is all.

insomniohno

About a week ago, I got dental surgery. And it was probably among the best days of my life so far I am not even kidding. I have actually had a series of fun-time whiz-bang surgeries and they have all been swell.

Because what they do, my dental surgeon and his merry band of mouth manglers, is feed you a Valium. Then, they feed you a drug the name of which I forget but which makes everything get pretty hazy and then the world kind of disappears though apparently you are still ambulatory and say many amusing things. Then, they sit you in the dental chair, strap a faceful of nitrous oxide on you and you lose all consciousness all together while they draw dicks on your face with washable markers and eventually get around to surgerizing.

It may be a little bit overkill, there, with the drugs and the business. But I love them for it. I love every pill they give me and how they crush up tablets and pour them under my tongue and how they make sure the mask is nice and tight on my face and how I remember little to nothing past the moment I sit on the couch in their cozy waterfall-surrounded waiting room and swallow that Valium. Usually I manage to stop texting before the drugs kick in.

And I’m gone. Someone I love, who loves me back, will then come to pick me up from the dentist’s office. I only know that because I usually wake up at home in my own bed instead of under the receptionist’s desk. There will be a bottle of antibiotics, and a bottle of pain pills, and a bottle of water and a stern note to take both of them or I will be beaten with sticks.

But usually I am not in pain. Usually I am so happy and that is because finally, finally, I have just slept a solid 16 hours, which is more sleep than I’ve gotten in the full two weeks prior. And I did not dream and I did not wake up and roll over and slip into that twilight where you can feel time passing achingly slowly and you think about how you are trapped in a nightmarish hell where your limbs are weighed down by nightmare demons and this is how you will spend eternity and then that’s what you start dreaming about until you wake up and roll over yet again.

It used to be that I was the most solid sleeper you have ever met. I could fall asleep anywhere. I could stay asleep forever. Sleeping was my magical superpower. Nothing woke me up because I was unwakable, which is going to be the name of my next movie. It’s about a superhero who takes a lot of naps. She is, I have been told, a very annoying superhero. And now I understand why.

I remember exactly when I stopped sleeping, and knowing that isn’t helpful. I know why I’m not sleeping, and that’s not helpful either because I can’t unpublish my book. I hate how crazy not sleeping makes me. And that’s really super extra unhelpful, because it just makes me a little bit crazier.

More dental surgery! Developing a cuddle buddy system because I can sleep when there is someone in bed with me. Volunteers have so far been so patient with a tiny tired little ball curled up against their backs (but really soon I will run out of volunteers.). More running (but really how much farther can I run?). Less caffeine? A hammer, maybe.

TRIPLE THREAT

No genre is safe from me! Here are beautiful poems I wrote from my heart because sometimes it is good to stretch your boundaries and exercise your creative muscles (brain kegel!) and produce beautiful art that will live on through eternity! And also I got stuck while writing my new book. I hope these poems what are filled with poetry touch your heart and other places too but very respectfully.

The Greatest Limerick Ever

There once was a fellow named Tommy

Who bought a stick of salami

He took it and hid, who knows what he did

But I’m pretty sure you can guess and the first two don’t count.

Where Have All the Bananas Gone

I was hungry for a banana.

I had a really good planna.

I’d go to the kitchen

And it would be bitchin’

Because yes, we had some bananas.

An unexpected but inevitable betrayal

The bananas were only a day old.

But they were not there

Gone into thin air

Because my roommate steals all my bananas.

Fang, You Are Fat

Fang, you are fat.

Do you remember how, once,

the sink backed up

And the landlord came over?

He brought lots of towels. He fixed the sink.

And I was so glad, because really,

what good is a bathroom without a sink?

You don’t have to answer that.

Anyway, he fixed it. The sink.

And gathered up all his wet towels

and was leaving to go do landlord things

as landlords do.

You came to investigate. You looked

at him and he looked at you. He said,

“Wow. That is a very fat cat.”

He shook his head. He looked at me

like it was my fault.

Fang, I was so indignant on your behalf

I didn’t want to pay rent anymore.

That’s how indignant I was.

But probably also broke. That happens

sometimes. But I will always

buy you kibble. No matter how broke

I happen to be. Because Fang,

you are fat. And that is okay. That is

more than okay. That is who you are.

This is the beautiful lesson I have learned about things

As I have gotten older (which is okay)

and dumber (which is okay) and more awkward

(slightly less okay but really, what can you do?).

You Have to Be Yourself. That is a brilliant

Idea that no one has ever had. I will

embroider it on a pillow

and then patent it

and sell it on etsy.

Fang, you are fat, and that is okay.

But you’re also an asshole and dude that is so not okay.

Get your goddamn paw out of my goddamn face

and let me go the fuck back to sleep, asshole.

Cookies: A Love Song

Cookies, cookies, cookies

Cookies! Cookies (cookies) cookies

Cookies cookies. Cookies—cookies!

In my face.

Here Is a Poem I Wrote You

The first line talks about how I wrote you a poem

The second line explains that it’s because you inspired me

The third line talks more about that inspiration

And also the fourth, because seriously you are so hot.

Here’s a new stanza. It starts with a sexual innuendo

That is also somehow sincere. I don’t know

how I’m going to pull that off but

I’ll try and hopefully by this point

you won’t even notice that it’s not a very good poem

I mean, it doesn’t even rhyme. But

it’s totally sincere and it does that thing, the thing

where sentences are split across lines all

dramatic-like. Because that is a thing that is in poetry.

I’ve seen it.

I hope you think it’s sexy.

Because I am doing it (and here is where

another innuendo goes because

I just can’t help myself. My bad habit is comedy

and also seriously, you are so hot) that means

this is the greatest poem of all time anyway.

And probably I’m totally going to get laid.

Because you really do totally think it’s sexy.

Right?

This is the last stanza. It gracefully

sums up all the sentiment of the last four stanzas

by subtly echoing the imagery

that has come before—only somehow,

it has grown into something larger

and more beautiful, like your face or similar.

That was not a fat joke.

Let’s make out.

An Incomplete and Unannotated List of Things I Like

1. Ponies

2. The scratchy sound of a match when you make fire

3. Fire

4. Fireworks

5. Ponies

6. Cats who are not very good at purring

7. Dogs who snore

8. Puns

9. Sleep

10. Getting sleep

11. Sleeping for days

12. Never waking up until you’ve slept enough

13. Napping

14. Snuggling

15. Snuggle naps

16. Nap snuggles

17. Ponies

18. Lists

19. Diet Pepsi

20. When my boss asks if he should stock the office fridge with more “DP” and then doesn’t understand why I’m snickering

21. Lists with ponies in them.

22. Uneven numbers. Shit.

Someday I Am Going to Be Rich and When I Am I Am Going to Buy an Island and Fly Everyone I Love to that Island (and Install Some Kind of Science Barrier that Keeps Hurricanes and Tidal Waves Out but Keeps Science In, Because Science, Bitches), and When I Send Out the Invitations I Will Be Sure to Not Only Include You but Also the Boy You Like Even though I Find Him Kind of Irritating because Love Island Is a Place for Love and Loving but Only Out of Earshot Please.

Let’s go bikini shopping.

celebrate tattoo season!

Welcome to tattoo season! It’s that time of year when temperatures go up, and clothes come off. And with that lack of clothes comes delicious spans of naked flesh, wherever you go! They’re everywhere, those luscious stretches of skin, tormenting you with their nom nom nomminess–and if they’re just there in your face, why shouldn’t you reach out and grab yourself a handful? Why CAN’T you just take a big juicy bite?

You can, my friend. Naked flesh is yours for the having, but only if you read the signs. They’re like hobo signals on mail posts, only for the modern-day skinthusiast who wants to slide their hands all over the body of a not-yet-friend but not be arrested for it. How can you tell who wants your fingers dancing a sexy stranger finger-tango all over their silky expanses? The tattoos, my friend. The tattoos. They signal a wanting. A needing. A have-got-to-have it-by-which-I mean-you.

Why else would a woman get a tattoo? It’s to make you look at her. It’s to make you come closer. It’s to make you reach out and take what she’s so eagerly, quiveringly waiting for, if you only you understood the sign. If only you could read her signal, right there in glorious technicolor, in sexytimes moody black-and-gray.

Don’t be shy, my friend. Are you on the street? Are you at a party? Are you on the train? Go up to her. Preliminaries are sometimes polite–you can note, for instance, that she has a tattoo. Something like, “Hey! Look at you, with that tattoo!” If she does not respond favorably, or even rudely responds in a hostile manner, you are well within your purview to call her a stupid stuck-up bitch. She’s the one going around with her tattoos all visible.

It’s possible, though, that she could be shy! Or playing hard to get. Chicks do that. So your next step? You reach out and you grab that tattoo. You take her by the wrist and you get all up in that tattoo. You run your fingers all over that skin emblazoned brazenly with invitation and longing. You find out if tattooed skin feels differently than regular skin (I won’t spoil it for you!). And you make sure you ask relevant, probing questions. Like, “Did it hurt!” and, “How many do you have!” and “Do you know how sexy and brave you are?” That makes them FEEL sexy. That makes you sound sensitive!

If she struggles–if she pulls away, if she says “Hey, don’t,” and even apologizes (though you can tell by her eyes that she’s ASHAMED of being polite to you because she’s such a stupid bitch) and asks you to please knock it off, she wants you to step closer. She wants your skin on hers. She wants you to try harder.

Try harder. Step closer. Step to the side when she tries to go around you. And when she turns and walks the other way, fall into step with her. Tell her you’ll see her again. Watch her go hide in your mutual friend’s bathroom, or duck into a store, or make a quick turn down a side street. She’s not afraid–tattooed people aren’t afraid of needles, why would they be afraid of anything? She’d go home and cover those things up if she doesn’t want people trying to touch them. You know how they are.