beautiful, funny, sad & true

I knew this was going to happen.

At eleven-thirty, I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and I decided I should give in and go to bed. I picked up and started reading a book of short stories called The Best American Non-Required Reading from a few years ago, and I got completely engrossed in it.  At one-thirty in the morning I found myself completely awake, and practically buzzing with stories.  I didn’t want to get up and turn my computer back on, because I knew that if I did, I’d start telling another of my huge childhood stories, and before long it would be four o’clock and my shoulders would be sore from hunching over in my chair, typing.  Well, that seems to be what this night has in store, so since I’m here now and so are you, it’s time for another one of those stories. I’ll give you a fair warning before I go any further.  I don’t think I’ll need to use any R-rated language, but the subject matter of this entry may make it unsafe to read at work, or it may make you uncomfortable, if reading about nudity is something that makes you uncomfortable.

There’s a certain age that kids reach, years before puberty, when curiosity gets the better of them and they want to see what the opposite sex’s naughty bits are like.  For me, that age was about nine.  The list of likely candidates was surprisingly long, since our neighborhood was full of kids the same age as my little brother and me.  A girl who lived two houses down used to come over to our place to color with crayons on the front porch.  Not on paper, mind you, but directly onto the porch.  One day she scrawled out the words BELLYBUTTON and BAGINA onto the cement.  When I asked her what a ‘bagina’ was, she pointed between her legs and said, ‘This,” and we smiled conspiratorially at each other.  My mom came outside to check on us, and noticed that we’d been drawing all over the porch.  She got mad and sent the girl home, and I had to scrub the porch clean with steel wool.  That’s when she saw what the girl had written.  She decided there and then that the girl was Trouble, and I wasn’t allowed to play with her anymore.  The girl and her family moved away not long after, actually, and I never saw her again.

The Mormon family next door had three kids.  Their son was a year older than me, and he fancied himself a comedian.  He used to say things like, “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, in THAT order,” and we found him hilariously clever.  He also had what was by far the coolest bike in the neighborhood; a purple chopper with stickers of flickering flames along the bottom.  All of us were dead jealous, and we used to beg him to let us ride it.  He had two younger sisters, one of whom was two years younger than me, and the other a year or two younger than my brother.  We would all hang out together often, and if the parents of one set of kids ever wondered where their kids were, it was a pretty safe bet that they were at the other house.

I found out very recently that not long before they moved from the neighborhood, their mom had suffered a severe bout of depression and considered committing suicide.  She confided in my dad, who was then and is now an Episcopal priest, and he counseled her for a short time, which may very well have saved her life.  They moved across the country to New England, but they still keep in occasional contact with my dad, who occasionally gets a note or a Christmas card from them.  Interestingly, after my parents split up, they told my dad they had a feeling that my mom would end up marrying the guy who lived across the street.  Never mind that he was already married, and that my mom was doing a bit of dating herself.  This is actually a very funny subject and will probably merit some entries of its own at some point, but suffice it to say that six or eight years later, my mom DID end up marrying the guy across the street, and twenty-some years on, they’re still married.  I’ll never know just what it was that our former neighbors noticed, or how they could have predicted that marriage.

So.  Anyway.  Back to the subject at hand.  There was a family up the street with two daughters, the older of whom was my age, and the younger a year or two behind her.  They were not the cutest girls in the neighborhood, I wouldn’t say, or the friendliest, but they were cool enough, and we did hang out with them sometimes because that’s what kids do.  I seem to remember them trying cigarettes really early, but I’m not sure why I have that particular memory.

Next to the two sisters lived a cute dark-haired girl who was a year younger than I (presumably our age gap has not changed) and had an enormous crush on me.  She would ride her bike past our house and if I was outside, she would yell things like, “I love you!” or “I’m Wonder Woman and you’re my Superman!”  She was the obvious choice when the aforementioned Curiosity hit, and she was happy to oblige one day in her bedroom.

She made it easy, actually, by asking me if I wanted to see her.  I said yes.  She lifted up her tank top slowly, left it around her shoulders for a moment, and then decided to take it off altogether.  Then she unzipped her shorts, which slid to the floor.  She shimmied her underwear down to her knees, and stood that way for a while to let me look, then smiled and said, “Now you.”  I started to take off my T-shirt, and she reached over to help me take it off.  We were in love, after all, so that little gesture was surprisingly natural and sweet, especially considering that I think we were eight and nine years old.  I sat down on her bed and took my jeans off, which left me sitting in my tighty-whities and feeling really awkward.  She was still standing in front of me, shirtless, with her shorts on the floor and her underwear at her knees, so I mustered my courage, stood up in front of her, and slid my underwear down.  We stood there for a while, a foot apart, just looking at each others’ bodies.  It never occurred to us at that point to do anything more.

We started doing that pretty regularly.  Sometimes we would take our clothes off and cuddle up in a blanket somewhere in her house.  We used to pretend we were married.  We’d be outside playing and one of us would do a big fake stretch and yawn and say, “Unnnnnnnh. . .I’m really tired.  Is it time to go to bed?”  “I think so,” the other would say, and we’d wander off into the house together, holding hands.  We got familiar enough with each other that I could probably have identified her in a lineup of naked girls with their faces hidden.  She was my first love, and her first name was the same as Angelina Jolie’s last.

The Mormon girl next door was a different story, and not a romantic one.  She showed my brother and me (and we her) in our garage.  I don’t quite remember the circumstances of how it happened, but we were outside playing baseball or something, and it was all very matter-of-fact.  We just kind of went in the garage at the same time.  I remember telling her, with my plethora of nine-year-old tactfulness, “Whoa.  Yours is pink.  [GirlUpTheStreet]’s is red.”  My brother and I pulled our shorts down at the same time and let her inspect us in the same way.  I seem to recall that my brother was still uncircumcised at the time, which, if true, meant that we gave her quite a bit of information that day.  Having accomplished our mission, the three of us pulled up the garage door and went back outside to resume whatever it was we’d been doing before that.

My brother wasn’t immune to Cupid’s charms, either, despite his tender age, but this entry is long enough that I think I’d better stop now and leave some stories for next time.  There are a few more that involve GirlUpTheStreet, too, so we all have those to look forward to.   As I predicted, it’s four o’clock in the morning now, and my eyes and brain are having difficulty focusing.

To be continued.

Lately, I’ve made a resolution to be more engaging with people I meet.  It’s safe to say that introverts have a harder time than most other people do, but I’ve been making a conscious effort to reach out more.

Last night’s gig with Susie was a good example.  The event was hosted by someone with an unusual enough name that I’d better create one of those clever pseudonyms to anonymize her; I’ll call her BlondeSinger.  Since I’ve played with lots of songwriters over the years, I’ve played probably five or six shows that she’s been a part of.  I’ve never played with her onstage, but I’ve played plenty of evenings like last night, where she’s been a part of it and so have I.  Also, she once performed on my friend’s radio show, on which I was a regular co-host, including the day of the show she appeared on.

Last night, I was one of the first to arrive.  I set down my accordion and went over to say hello to her.  She clearly didn’t recognize me, so I said, “Hey, [BlondeSinger].   We’ve met before, actually.  I’m friends with [RadioFriend], and you played on his show, and I co-hosted with him.  I’ve been playing with Susie and [short rundown of songwriters] and we’ve played together a handful of times.  Good to see you again.”

“Yeah, you do kinda look familiar,” she said, and asked if RadioFriend was still doing a show, and I told her that yes, he is.  “Cool.”  She looked down at her phone and started texting like mad.  The silence stretched out longer and longer, and it started to become a bit awkward, so I asked, “Who’s performing tonight?”

She grabbed the list of eight or so and explained each one.  There’s GuitaristGirl who’s kinda folky. . .GuitaristGuy who’s kinda like Tom Waits, there’s Susie – she’s really good and has a band (“Uhh, yes, I know,” I said, “I’m IN that band.”)–“  I just felt like an invisible, silent blip on her radar screen, so I decided to be done with that particular conversation.  After I got the scoop on the performers, I got a glass of wine and came back to find Susie and our group of friends instead.

On the way to meet them, I ran into another songwriter who I’ve met a time or two, and once my two friends and I even spent an evening hanging out and chatting with him at Jarra’s Ethiopian restaurant a while back, when we were all there to watch a band play.  I’ll call him Dreadlocks.  I wandered over and said, “Hey, Dreadlocks!  Good to see you.”  He also showed no sign of recognition, so I prompted him with the RadioFriend thing (cause that’s also how I knew him), and the Jarra’s show, and all that.  Still nothing, and I could see that this was headed for another disaster, so I cut it short with, “I’m playing accordion with Susie tonight, and I’m looking forward to hearing you play too!”

Just then, Susie and the rest of our group of friends appeared and saved the day.  We sat together and talked, and watched the first couple of performers, both of whom were really great.  The second performer was the Tom Waits-y guy, and he did a brilliant version of Rainbow Connection, which he followed up with one of my favorite Tom Waits songs, Hoist That Rag.

As a side note, it was brilliant of him to do Rainbow Connection, but for him to do a Tom Waits cover (despite the fact that he did it very well) when he already is so clearly influenced by Tom Waits, just seemed like a No-Duh.  There’s a girl in town who sounds remarkably like k.d. lang, and who even performs a couple of her tunes, which also seems like another No-Duh.  The point of all this is that I’d rather see her do the Tom Waits tune, and him do the k.d. lang tune.  It adds a bit of mystery and depth to a show, instead of leaving the audience thinking, “Gosh, they sure sound like somebody. . .but who?  Oh. . .right.  THAT person,” instead of sounding like themselves.  Just some food for thought.

After he was done, it was our turn to rock the house, and I should mention that we totally did.  Just before we started, however, someone said to me, “Look up there,” and pointed at the ceiling, where an accordion was hanging, completely defiled, gutted and torn to pieces.  You get used to stupid jokes like that; they just give you more incentive for veni, vedi, vici. “It’s okay,” the guy continued.  “The owner of this place is an accordion player.”

“I know, actually,” I said with a smirk (because I’ve played that venue many times before, including one night when the owner was running the sound, and before I had even stepped up to the microphone or played a note, he called out, “Less accordion!” to a round of slightly drunken laughter.  O, the hilarity.) “. . .but it’s still sad.”

We played four songs, and we brought down the house, if I can take the liberty of saying so.  The sound was great, and the two of us performed great.

Afterwards, when Susie and our friends and I were waiting in line at the bar, a SuperCuteGirl came up and introduced herself.  She was very engaging and flirty, and said she loved our set, and thought that the accordion was great.  We each got a drink and sat down to talk for a while, and after about twenty minutes or so, TomWaitsGuy and his friend came over and joined us.  The three of them knew each other, and we talked about the show.  While we were talking, the next performer came up to me and said he was about to go on, and that he really wanted me to hear his set.  He had introduced himself to me earlier, and he’d befriended me via my music page on MySpace, thanks to a couple of my mates from another band.  So I told SCG that I wanted to go listen to the guy, but I’d be back.  “Cheers!” she said, smiling, and we clinked our glasses together.

I watched the guy, who was very good, and talked with our group.  Afterwards, we all went outside to the smoking area, where I quickly discovered that SCG was married to the friend of TomWaitsGuy.  It was a bit disappointing, to say the least (especially since she wasn’t even wearing a ring!), but at least they were both friendly and cool people.  In a funny, only-in-Portland way, we discovered that they had looked at an apartment in the complex in which I used to live.  We had a good time talking about that.

As another side note, there’s a funny story about that apartment, actually, and the girl who used to live there when I first moved into the complex.  Her cat, Hooligan, got in a fight with another neighborhood cat a couple years before, and the victim cat’s owner sued her for the vet bills.  They settled in court, but not just any court. . .The Peoples’ Court.  She totally lost the case, by the way, when the judge asked, simply, “What’s your cat’s name again?”

“Hooligan.”

The audience laughed, and the judge banged the gavel.  “Court finds for the plaintiff.”

All in all, it turned out to be a pretty dang decent night, after kind of a weird and awkward start.  There’s nothing like a gutted accordion and a really great performance to make you forget about the weird stuff.

I had two romantic dreams this morning, the first of which was more so than the second.  I remember very little of the first, except that I was walking through a park, and I saw two young guys practicing a form of acrobatic dance.  I slowed down to watch them for a while as I passed by.  I walked a bit further and saw a girl who was doing the same sort of dance.  What a coincidence, I thought, they should all be friends. There was a long scene that I don’t remember, but I was back to the park later, walking in the direction from which I came.  As I walked closer, I saw that that the guys and the girl had joined forces and were now acrobatically dancing together.  I gave the group a smile as I passed, and the girl grabbed me and pulled me into an embrace that was surprisingly intimate, yet still looked like part of the dance.  “I just had to meet you,” she told me, “I don’t know why yet, but I felt that I needed to know you.”  We sort of danced around each other for a little while, in that intimate way, while we talked a bit and got to know each other.  It was very beautiful.  Then the dream changed to another scene, the rest of which eludes me.  This is unfortunate, because I do remember that it was also pretty romantic.

* * * * *

Dream #2

I was lying in bed with a girl, T, and our relationship wasn’t particularly close yet.  We hadn’t been seeing each other long, maybe a few days, and for some reason we were both wearing pajamas while we were in bed.  She resisted and got annoyed when I tried to cuddle with her, so we had an incredibly long, uncomfortable conversation before we ended up just cuddling anyway.

When we finally got up, we decided to call one of our female friends and go hiking.  We stopped in at a convenience store on our way up to the hills, and after we’d bought some supplies, the three of us hit the trail.  T led the way, then me, then our friend.  T got a long way ahead very quickly, and the other two of us weren’t able to keep up with her.  We walked and talked with each other instead, and said things like, “Man, she sets a grueling pace,” and “I sure hope everything’s okay up there,” and “I was hoping we’d all get to have some time together; I wish she’d stayed with us.”

After hiking for a while, we arrived at a turn-of-the-century inn that was nestled in a little valley between the hills, and since the front doors were wide open, we walked inside.  There was a lot of activity, and the place seemed to be a sort of retreat.  As we walked from room to room, we saw different things happening.  One room was the quiet room, where people were reading books or admiring the scenery out the windows.  Most people were single, but there was a married couple standing by the window.  In the next room was a dancing class, which appealed to both T and our friend, so they immediately took off their hiking boots and jackets and spontaneously joined the group, which the group seemed to encourage.  I gave them a little wave, and continued walking through the building.  I came to a large kitchen, in which a cooking class was in session, where they were making omelettes in the old-fashioned French way, over a fire in the huge oven.

As I passed one of the young women in the class, she was pulling a long-handled omelette pan out of the oven, rather awkwardly, and it looked as if she was having some difficulty, so I reached over and helped her maneuver it onto the prep table.  We made a few jokes back and forth, and had a really short but great conversation, and I thought to myself that already this girl and I probably had a better relationship than T and I had.  I bid her adieu, and walked out of the kitchen into a library room, where I saw a writer I’d met a few times standing next to one of the bookshelves with a guy friend of his.  I walked over to join them, and Writer asked me how it was going with the new girl I’d been seeing.  By the way he worded the question, I could tell that he knew we weren’t particularly close.

“I don’t know yet, we’re still figuring things out.”

He smirked.  “Do I know my audience, or what?  You been together long?  You f**k her?”

“We’re not quite there yet,” I replied.  “Like I said–”

He cut me off.  “Man, I could never do that.  If we don’t have sex, I’m outta there.”

“Hey, most of my friends are girls.  T and I are taking it slow, that’s all.  Seeing where it goes.”

He gave me a dude-I-just-feel-sorry-for-you look, and we changed the subject and talked about other things for a minute, then I took my leave to find my companions.  I saw them in a large dance performance room, which had bleachers on one end that were packed with people.  I found a seat before they did, so I motioned for them to join me.  They were on their way when a girl plopped down on my right, and dropped a huge duffel bag and overcoat next to me.  I told her that my girlfriend’s sitting there, and asked her to please move them underneath the seat.  She grumbled but finally agreed.  T and our friend weren’t able to make it through the milling crowd, however, so they decided to sit on the floor in front of the bleachers.  That figures, I thought, T and I are kept apart once again. The group of dancers walked out to the middle of the floor, and the show began.

At this point, the dream changed and I found myself in my home, which was an old farmhouse.  It was comfortable but needed a few repairs here and there.  I was walking across the gravel driveway, from the house to the shed, when a dog ran by me.  He was running from Cletus, my crazy neighbor with long black hair who was wearing a black suit, top hat, and John Lennon sunglasses.  He was chasing the dog with one of his homemade guns that had a short, flared barrel.  As he ran by, the dog yelled back to him (yes, the dog was yelling), “Don’t shoot me, Cletus, you hillbilly!”

Cletus lived in the next house down the road.  There was a large orchard between our houses, so we didn’t interact very much.  He was about five years older than I, and his two adult male cousins lived with him at his house.  A few seconds after Cletus and the dog ran past me, his two cousins came running by with two guns of similar design.  I said to them, “Okay, guys, that’s enough; just let him go,” and one of them turned and ran toward my shed, where I was leaning in the doorway.  He was either high or drunk, but I knew he was harmless, so I was unfazed and stood with my arms folded across my chest while he pulled out a switchblade and started to wave it around.

“I don’t recommend you do that,” I said, pausing at one point to lean away from one of his pathetic lunges.  “We’re neighbors, and at some point we may need to. . .help each other out.”

By way of an answer, he lit something on fire and stuck it onto the door jamb next to me, then laughed and ran off to join his brother.  I expected it to explode or something, so I shut the door and waited.  Nothing happened, so after about ten seconds I opened the door, grabbed a small hand towel, and snuffed the little fire out.  I’m gonna need to talk to Cletus about this one, I thought to myself, and that’s when I woke up.

I’ve had the same person in five different dreams now.  I haven’t posted any of them here because they’re not interesting as far as dream narratives go (especially my dream narratives. . .she’s up against stiff competition!), except for the fact that she’s been in all of them.  The first three were in February and March (I checked in my e-mail and Twitter), and the most recent one was a couple of days ago.

She’s not anyone I know from real life, and she’s not anyone famous either.   She’s pretty in an understated way, fairly petite, with straight, shoulder-length blond hair (not normally my preference, but I’ve certainly made exceptions!) and she has a brown-and-white tabby cat who has also appeared in three of the dreams.  The dreams are romantic, but have never been sexual.  They always feel like they’re more about the connection that exists between us.  In one of them, we were sitting next to the window in her house, quietly talking and enjoying the sunshine, with the cat draped across both of our laps, purring.   In the most recent one, we were walking in a grassy lot outside of town, near some sort of cluster of buildings, and trying to figure out how to get back to the highway where my car was parked, so that we could get back.  Suddenly she stopped walking and turned to look at me.  “I think I’m in love with you,” she said.  I was pleasantly surprised by this news, and I hugged her and told her I loved her too.  “And I’ve always known it.”   I love the random, awkwardly worded things that come flying out of my mouth in dreams.   For the record, my all-time favorite dream quote is “Gah! What’d you do that for, you penis hole?!“ but there are plenty of other classics.  Almost every single one of my dreams involves weird dialogue of some sort.

So.  Moving on.

One dream involving The Girl was an extremely short one in which she appeared just long enough to say, “My name’s Christine, by the way.”  That was it; the entire dream.  A friend told me the other day that what her name means (“follower of Christ”) is much more important than her physical characteristics.  I told a different friend about that, and her response was [I’m condensing a few of her responses into one, actually], “I sure hope there is some meaning behind her name beyond that.  If not, what a disappointment. Maybe you passed her on the street one day.  Just because you don’t recognize her doesn’t mean you’ve never seen her.  . .just a thought. Her face could just be ‘filler’.  It seems she made a point to tell you her name.”

Very interesting.  RockShowGirl is convinced that this person is my ideal partner.  I don’t know that such a thing really exists, but it is a really nice thought.  I do know that the way to meet an ‘ideal partner’ is to always be the best and most honest version of myself that I can be, and that will attract the kind of people – either romantic, platonic, musical, or anything – that I want to spend time with.

Le Sigh.

Every night I look forward to dreaming, and I even find myself wanting to sleep much more than usual in order to see what happens next in our saga, but I’m guessing that sleeping twenty hours a day may not be the most conducive way of finding and kindling a relationship.  Just a hunch.