Black Out Confessions

Today I received a letter, from someone who I am sure loves me, but just can’t say it, at least not sober.  And unfortunately this letter was written sober, I know because he signed it “sincerely,” the same way one signs a complaint letter to an airline for losing his luggage.

Sober he can say many things like, “You know how I feel about you”, “You mean the world to me”, “I don’t have to say it”, “I appreciate you so much”, and blah blah blah as if he is the only orator of these words.  As if he were the only King of love brand-name  knock-offs.  As if he is the only one to mask his heart with a thesaurus of phrases that can never be used against him in a court of law.

I am not the type of person that needs to be told she is loved.  I have grown accustom to those words coming along with other lies, like “I didn’t mean it”, “It’s not the same”, “It was a mistake” and “Just kidding”.  However  it is more insult than endearment when hearing it through a wall of empty beer glasses.

Drunk his words are meant to haunt and keep me from sleep.  When he is drunk he calls me a trickster, the girl that makes him fall in love, makes him forget that she can never have children.  Worse yet makes him forget the love, must be planned like careers, taxes, and time shares.  Drunk his hand finds mine, and there is always the moment when he swears that he means each word, and I only need to check his blood shot eyes to read the real map to his heart.  It is lined with apologies for never being the man he should be for me, and promises that the next time when  he says he loves me, it will be sober.  It is this “I love you” That matters.  The words that come before he has to explain it was only the black out talking.  Before he must explain that love comes in many forms, and his lips were confused about which form they were trying to create.

There’s always the argument that what was said drunk was not meant.  The alcohol was possessing its intakers tongue like the holy spirit.  A religious experience ending in a morning of sweat and chills that shift him back into sobriety.  Anything said was a black out confession, it had to be.    He has already promised love to someone else, sober.  She deserved it.  Marked his sincerity by the curvature of her child-bearing hips.  He can’t take back the love he garnered for her in sobriety and hand it over to some whore that only deserves intoxicated words of love that stumble into walls and trip over cracks in the sidewalks at 1:28am.

But keeps his whore near to remind him that medical studies show  alcohol is the only truth serum he will ever know.  Keep her near so his conscience can never rest.  Keep her near so she can never be free to hear the words he says from a sober man.

Order a Poem

Doctor’s run into this problem all the time.  Someone ask “What you do for a living?” and the response is “Doctor”, and the poor doctor now must wade through a litany of ailments that are ridiculous to attempt to diagnose.  A doctor, I recently meant, said he now tells people he is a Mortician, because no one ever ask a Mortician for advice.  What are they going to say, “when I die, what embalming fluid will you use?  Generic or name brand?

So as a writer, in my case a poet, when someone knows they ask me to recite something or make up a poem on the spot.  Recently I was wearing my I’m a Poet Dr. Pepper, at the grocery store and was asked by the bag boy to “prove it”.  What did he want me?  Break out in a Two Chainz rap? Drop a sonnet?  It left me wondering if he had a friend who was a garbage man that came to his home does he say, “Could you grab the thrash for me?”

But recently someone I truly care about asked for a poem.  I have been asked by friends, family, lovers, and I have always blown them off.  Ignored lovers who have said both “Have you written about me?” and “Don’t write about me?” Refused my mother when she asked me to write about her life.  Her life appears on and off in my writing anyhow.  Well my life, as I remember her in it.  This request was different.  Perhaps because it was so smoothly communicated to me in the illumination of dashboard lights and wafting a scent of patron shots.  Perhaps because I had already written over 15 poems either inspired by or directly about him.  Perhaps because there is still more to say.  Perhaps because earlier that day someone had told us that if I loved him, I should have learned “his” language by now. Perhaps because he asked me to make him cry, and I’ve seen him cry before, but I always knew it was for him, not because he realized the damage he caused.  Yet, when I wrote it, I could only sympathize with him.

He grew up making friends family to survive a tragedy he rarely acknowledges.  He saw his friends slipping into a hopeless tomorrows, and fixed his path.  He finds optimism in everything, even when it simply is not there.  He has cared for a sick friend and given her laughter when the nights were filled with tears and sadness.  He loves when he cannot say it, but struggles to show it anyhow.

I guess that earns another poem.  So he got it.

I hope this does not become a habit.

Prince Rama would Disapprove

On occasion I tutor; mostly when summer shows up and my paycheck does not.  I have found that, in my district, Indian parents are the most diligent in having their children tutored, and therefore I have had several Indian families at my home for tutoring.  The parents find a connection with me because of my vegetarianism, and we exchange recipes; my Italian ones for their Indian.

Last July a friend had spent the evening, and I forgot that I had tutoring the next morning.  I asked him to stay in my bedroom until they left, a simple hour.  He had a TV, bathroom, snacks and no need to be seen by my tutoree and her mother.  However birds of vanity like making their presence known.  In the middle of the session he sauntered out into the kitchen, grabbed a water from the fridge, winked at me, and went back into the room.  And I was left  slightly red, looking over to the sofa where the mom seemed to be glaring in no one’s direction.  I apologized, assuming she was not impressed by the fact that a man was in my home.  She, of course, said there was no problem but in my heart I felt like I broke a morals code.  The daughter leaned over and quietly whispered, “He’s hot, for an Indian.”  Inside I giggled, wondering if she recalled she was also Indian. “My mom doesn’t like him.”

The mother said nothing that weekend, but there was a next weekend.  She came upstairs to my condo, and immediately sent her daughter back down for her purse which she left in the car.  Like a good mother she gently placed her hand on my shoulder and earnestly spoke, “Denise, You know I like you?”  I nodded. “I tell you as an Indian woman, He’s no good.”  She needn’t tell me who, I was sure who she spoke about. “Indian men use women.  They cannot marry a white woman. He will hurt you.”  What was I to say?  “Our men cheat.  They lie to their wives, and find women like you, who believe the lies their wives’ won’t.  You deserve better.”  She said more, and also told me to take anything he gave me with my left hand as anything I took with my right hand would fall away.

I don’t know if her classification of all Indian men as “dogs” is accurate.  I don’t know if her assessment was correct in general or in total.  I do know that the last two Indian men I dated, do nothing to prove her wrong.  One was cheating the entire time with a woman he claimed was an old friend just visiting from San Diego, and the second was married.  As he explained it – a prison, a trap, the reason 16 hour work days were more favorable then his own house in Glendale.  Even after pulling into the garage he would sit in his Mercedes GL-550 sometimes past  an hour pretending that when he would finally walk into his home she would have returned to India, with her mother in tow.  Both had decided they had no reason to be in America.  Then his white whore would be allowed into his home, and maybe his heart.

But the indictment of Indian men can easily be levied against any man.  Men Lie.  Lies to hide who they are.  Lies they claim, to save you from hurt.  Lies to keep what they want, but do not deserve.  Men simply lie.  They either lie to you, or they lie to themselves.  Whichever it takes to get through another day.

Carnival + Museum + Poetry = PUBLISHED

In November of 2011 I enjoyed an evening at the Museum of Latin American Art with a friend.  It was an insane evening.  He made me wait 2 hours.  Actually an hour and forty-five minutes, after telling me earlier in the day that we could not have out normal marathon outings.  It was to be the museum and only the museum.  When he finally picked me up in his Navigator, that had no air conditioning, we headed towards 2nd street, slightly out-of-the-way, because he had to run an errand and he said, “this must tell you how much I trust you.  I wouldn’t just do this with anyone.”   I had trained him to know that anything he wanted I would say yes to, even though he had no idea that I wanted to ask him to stop seeing me at work and outside of work for that matter.  The games, the uncertainty, the “let’s play it by ear”, the yes’s and no’s of it all had taken its toll.  And this day was not changing my mind.

At the corner of Pacific Coast Hwy and 2nd street as we waited to make a right a bicyclist came up to the my side of the car window and asked for a donation.  She was doing a charity ride as a fundraiser.  He had me look in the center cubby for dollars but there was none so he grabbed a $5 bill and told me to hand it to her.  As I took the five from his hand and gave it to the woman I knew I wouldn’t say a damn word to him.  

I never ever say no to a person asking for alms, due to Walt Whitman “Give alms to all who ask”.  A person who does not when they can, is an immediate goodbye to me.  He had linked into a value that I believe defines the core of a man. and when she handed me back a crochetted AIDS ribbon magnet her mother made it simple confirmed everything I planned to say,  I would continue to not say.  And I even knew that would mean he was noe allowed to continue destroying me.  Slowly, in nibble sized pieces.

At the museum there was a work that had a woman who was disconnected at the joints.  the writing that outlined her shaped said, “Aquella mujer bella que un loco por odio destruyo” and he translated it for me.  The irony stunned me.  So he took a picture and sent it to me, and I wrote, as I always do, “Out of Hate“.  As the cycle goes, I now have the great privledge to see this poem up on the Carnival Literary Magazine Website as part of their Sneek Peek for their next issue.  You really should follow Carnival on facebook.  The work on this site is always amazing.

So that day gave me a ribbon, a poem, & him. He stays in my life, because I want it.  Some days more damagingly than others, but my choice.

A Year Later

Today it was barbecue; nothing a vegetarian enjoys more.  But in a weird way, when I could turn off my mind, there was something nice in the comfort of a group, even one that would mock the veggie burger in a den of ribs and sauce-slathered meat.  But now my mind cannot turn off.  A year ago it was heart tartar cooking in the citrus juice of truth hidden for far too long.

A year later and I still struggle between forgiving, forgetting, and hating.  But I do love Mexican food, whether from the Pike on 4th street or after visiting the Getty.  If I wasn’t vegetarian, heart would be my meat of choice.  It must be delightful with a twist of lime.  I would cook it well done, nearing burnt, allowing the heart to rest on a counter top next to the Morton’s salt and knife sharpener it must still be the juiciest of meats when sliced properly.

Once the heart has been eaten it can’t be felt still beating, can it?  Sometimes there is a sudden jolt in my chest. A flame blistering the heart, perhaps.  It will be sudden grabbing stealing a breath, yet forgettable.

A year later you have plans that feature a solid career, a loving wife, doting children, a trip up North.   Even without a heart, I want all this for you.  Find a delight in the joy that registers in your sand dune eyes.  Thrill in the idea of seeing this all come to fruition, and hate you because I want this all for you, when a year later I have bruises on my wrist hidden with bangle bracelets, and cuffs, from someone who doesn’t mind the heartless.

Emotionless Poet

The addict psychoanalyzes me.  Group was where he saw people take hammers to themselves shattering all over the linoleum floor inside Red Door Rehab.  He’d watch them glue the pieces back together, leaving out what hurt, to be better men and women.  So I’m an easy read.  I’m the member of the group that never shares.  The one that refuses to acknowledge my short comings, the part of me I  have to break to put back together.  He would hate me in group, because my stoicism mocks him.  He works through every emotion, greets it, feels it, talks about it, shares it, and then accepts it, where I don’t have an emotion.

He sucks in more air than his newly drug free lungs can handle and exhales in anger and exasperation.  Poets have emotions, deep bleeding emotions that boil over with no warning spilling on every unexpecting thing in its path they cry over dead possums and laugh hysterically just because the sun came up, as if no one knew it would. For poets every moment is a tragedy; every moment is a triumph. But not for me he observes. And so he has been testing his theory on and off for the past nine months when I would bother to see him.  He once told  me he loved me and it was no different then when he said good morning.  His next attempt was telling me he had to leave me and I emoted nothing so he came back.  Then there was the attempt to see anger  surface when he said I was meaningless sex, a body, any would do; I just left the room and made breakfast.  Now he has given up.  He can’t do this anymore.  He can’t stay in a relationship that is emotionless.  He can’t use me for sex, just because in the moment it feels right.  He needs to feel that I’m in it.  That there are emotions he is feeding, that he is being fed.  When I don’t respond he becomes angry.  He’s a guitar player. He writes music.  He knows nothing good is ever written unless you have lived the emotion, and he is tired of checking for breath.  I am his failure.  A poet without emotions is an anomaly, a creation mistake.  He pounds his fist against the table and yells maybe bringing his fist down on my face will shock me into a reaction.  Maybe if he screams loud enough my heart will beat again, blood pulse, a pressure found.

He doesn’t know, others have done all this before.  He is not a pioneer, special, an anomaly.  He is every reason I write and don’t emote.  It’s not  that I don’t feel anything.  I feel everything.  It’s that he doesn’t deserve those feelings.  He hasn’t earned the right to know what makes my heart beat, skin crawl, breath gasp.  He does not merit a poem, let alone the poet that could create it.

New Year Parties that Were & Weren’t

Monday night around 8pm the Peacock calls telling me I should pick him up.  We should ring in the New Year together.   Talk about getting back together.  I haven’t spoken to him in a few months.  He has left messages now and then, reminding me what I’m worth, telling me that no one else will want me, but even those had stopped a month ago. It’s funny to me that he knows so little about me.  If he would have ever listened he would have known I don’t drive on holidays, I tend to avoid driving on regular days.

It’s a shame he never listened.  He would have known I dislike holiday parties, all have a weird history for me.  The last New Year’s party I went to, I went with my best friend, at the time, and the man from work that was my best friend there.  Later that night I found the man I was there “with” or  “for” in a corner with another woman. I just left, it wasn’t an official date anyhow, we were going as a group.  No loss at all.  But in the process there was a loss–my cell phone and it cost me $250.  Oh well.

The New Year’s Party I remember fondly was with Doug. My friends and I went to San Francisco to visit another friend, who had moved with his partner.  It was a disastrous trip, that featured Doug cartwheeling down a Catholic church Aisle, and tongue pierced kisses with fake camels in nativity scenes.  Those were highlights.  We arrived late, a delay, we were told, because of bad weather (I still contend the pilot was drunk and they needed another and we had to wait for his arrival, but all unsubstantiated).  We arrived late so there was no food, but a plethora of alcohol.  That didn’t seem like a horrible idea until hunger hit.   Poor Doug was relegated to sleeping on the floor next to a cat litter box, where Kris and I had the pullout bed.

No matter we made it through the days and then there was New Years.  We knew no one at the party we ended up at that night. Kris, Andy, and Peter were there but they had migrated and found people to chat up, whereas Doug and I had each other. Somewhere Doug an I heard that whatever you were holding onto at midnight, when the New Year knocked you down, would be what you spent the rest of the year with.    We found a bottle of Spanish champagne and sat on a sofa.  Took out cash from our pockets and held hands.  We waited like we waited for our flight.  We laughed and giggled and let time past. When the clock was counting down our last seconds of the year, we hugged, the champagne between us, the money in our hands, and no one else in the room.  Each tick of the secondhand solidifying our friendship. It was the best New Years Party I ever attended.

So when the Peacock wants to go out, on his terms, I know for sure he is not what I want to be holding when the clock strikes midnight.  He is not what I want to spend my next year with.

The Drunk in Sobriety

It might be unfair to call him the drunk, he has been sober for a bit now. Still once a drunk always a drunk.  But he is aware now.  Aware of the lives around him like a newborn becoming aware of his own feet yet still unable to maneuver them into a walking position.

He explains how the holidays are difficult for him, perhaps he will drink again, but so far he has held out.  He must deal with family he would like to forget, friends he has distance himself from, and mostly himself.  His emotions get the best of him, drag him deeper into his selfish ways and he stops calling, talking, reaching, until right now.  He will work the grave yard shift to forget the eves and the days that follow.  Sleep through what he must.

As the night continues he tells how his sister owes him, for she stole his SSI checks when he started rehab.  Now in sobriety, he knows those who care about him will never leave him.  They haven’t this far, so when he retreats and disappears from them they let him come back.  I want to argue back.  I want to explain they allowed “the drunk” to retreat, because sometimes they had to be sick of him.  Sometimes they wanted him gone.  The kind ones excused his behavior as a drunk and not really the sensitive man he is.  What he doesn’t understand is now, he is not the drunk.  When he runs, it is him, the man he has cemented.  He can not blame it on a forgotten week, but instead on his own selfishness.

I tell him that eventually they will leave.

He reminds me I haven’t.  I’m here, listening comforting, and not being heard or comforted.  I guess he is right, I stay.  But I hate it here, and the holidays don’t feel like the holidays.  I have sent out cards, wrapped gifts, and still nothing.  I don’t want to spend time with family, or friends.  I don’t want to pretend I am happy when I struggle every day to find meaning in breath.  I don’t get to sleep through the holiday as I must orchestrate them for a detached family that will take without appreciation, that will measure love by dollar signs.  Or worry about whether I gave gifts that will stay with my friends, long after they have been disposed of.

What I want is a drink and a place I don’t desperately need to .

The Transvestite in the Alley

My mother warned us all to stay away from the back alley.  It was a horrible place.  Ki, the misunderstood teenage boy of our neighborhood, was there.  Always with friends.  His mother screaming from the kitchen window, calling him an abomination, a queer, a mistake.

I thought he was cute.  I was seven, but even then I liked a man’s attention, and Ki looked like Davy Jones of the Monkees.  The Davy Jones rerunning on my tiny TV screen in a permanent teenage love, not the real Davy Jones my older brother would introduce my seven year old self to, via a People Magazine Article, with gray hair and wrinkles mocking his Day Dream Believer Days.

There was a weekend when all the younger kids played outside.  I was never a real fan of outside, unless we could make up stories and act them out, but my mom must have wanted us out of the house, so I did as told.  We ran back and forth through the apartment complexes and duplexes on our block to the alley.  Stopping outside Ki’s apartment to swing on the T-Bar the neighborhood women used to hang towels for drying.

Ki and his girlfriend came out the back door, that day.  The girlfriend crying, her mascara running down her face and cigarette dangling from her lips.  I thought she was a tragic movie star.  He told her to wait, and she settled on the cement back steps, smoking and sniffing.  My brothers did not see what I saw and began calling her names.  I don’t remember them all, but I remember she yelled back revealing she was not a girl at all.  “What the fuck are you looking at?  Get out of here or I’m going to burn your little fuck faces.”  She threw her lit cigarette at my little brother, Junior.  The boys all ran off screaming, and for a moment I began to as well, and then I stopped.  I picked up her cigarette and returned it to her telling her, “Don’t worry,  if I smoked I’d throw cigarettes at them too.”  She just groaned and I went away.

I liked her.  I’m well aware she wasn’t a her, but I was fascinated and came back a few times that day to see her on the steps.  Some times alone, some times with Ki holding her, some times with a budweiser, some times smiling.  I couldn’t stop myself from coming back and checking that she was still there until the point that she was not, the way you keep checking under a freshly placed band-aid to be sure the bleeding has completely stopped.

I don’t think about Ki any longer, except for when Davy Jones finally died in February of this year.  He was 66 when he died, and I still see him as a permanent teenager with stars that twinkled in his eyes each time he fell in love on The Monkees.  And I’m glad Ki moved away a few months after that weekend, because he is always the teenager holding his girlfriend on the back cement steps even though her mascara was running.

My Father Was a Cheater

I was 6  when my mother had enough.  There were no pictures, or tell-tale lipstick stains on his collar.  My mother swore to smelling other women’s perfume, thrifty drug store whore perfume,  but he could always explain it away. Finally the explanations could not quiet her she said no more.

We were driving down Willow Street just passing Pacific Avenue in the blue Toyota station wagon, the first and only new car my mother would ever own.  She saw him walking out of the hotel with this week’s blonde.   This time it was too close to home only a mile, maybe 2. It was impossible to realize that  our world was crashing at that moment. I just remembered how embarrassed I was by my mother’s yelling, hitting, and hysterical crying.  She told him to keep the room and his whore, he wasn’t allowed home anymore.  He must have retorted back, I pay the rent; I’ll come home when I want.

He never wanted.

That was it.  During the divorce I saw him once, by 7 I would never see him again. It’s be over 30 years.  He lives in the same city, yet has never seen the wreckage he left behind. He has no idea that my mother is all the things he didn’t marry and maybe a few he did.  He has no idea that I measure my value by a man who leaves me in a hotel room to get home to his wife and daughter. I  know what the blonde knew. . .Only a fatherless daughter never stops looking for a father.