The Great Gastby, Brah

There’s a Guy’s Guy in South Florida. You know the one: rocking (ironic) 80’s sunglasses while posting selfies from the gym. Checking in at the GNC and touting the virtues of the latest keg of Protein Powder. He works at my restaurant and I named him Man Bun.

This isn’t him but it’s shockingly close.

Man Bun and I work different jobs so we never really interact. I’m the one hiding behind the hostess stand, reading Nabokov, and he’s the one pretending to wipe the bar and yelling at the sports people who aren’t sporting as well as he’d sport. At some point during our traditionally slow spring season, Man Bun suddenly turns off the TV with the remote, and when I look over at the sudden silence, out of nowhere he asks me what I thought about Pool Parties. It wasn’t a random question since it was balls hot outside. Never shy about voicing my opinion, I told him I am vehemently pro-pool party. This was the first actual conversation we ever had.
Man Bun begins posting restaurant-wide invitations for a summer-long series of parties thrown at a different pool each week. The servers, cooks, bussers and hostesses dutifully stock up on inflatable toys and beer in preparation, and, sure enough, the Hit Parade begins:

A rooftop haven in Hialeah.
A patio in Punta Gorda.
A kegger in the Keys.
An oasis in Ormond.

As the days roll by, sluggishly, insufferably hot and balmy, each Friday an invitation appears on our kitchen cork board. It pops up out of nowhere, with an alluring photo of the pool awaiting us on the weekend, just around the corner. The photos grew more and more seductive as the temperatures outside skyrocketed, and when my schedule finally allowed a Saturday off, I jumped at the chance to attend the Miami Rooftop event, complete with Miami scene kids and Miami parking hell and all.

barf

I arrived early, because I was distracted and forgot that arriving early is stupid.
Man Bun, who HAD to arrive early because he was the host, showed up shortly after me, toting a cooler full of beer. He pounded a few back, quickly, nervously. When I asked him why he seemed anxious, he told me that he felt a sense of responsibility towards these parties. He wanted just the right atmosphere, just the right mix of people, just the right mix of margarita. It was endearing watching him worry about whether or not his friends were having a good time. On a rooftop. In a pool. In, essentially, fucking paradise.

I was slightly bummed that my boyfriend couldn’t join me — he’d been working odd hours and unable to indulge in pool time. After asking about him, ever polite, Man Bun remarked how lucky I was to be in a happy relationship and that he hoped for a relationship like that one day. When he was done banging bar bitches, of course. He tapped his 3rd Coors to my 1st Tecate and fluttered off to Social Butterfly.

The sun began to set beyond our spectacular view of the neon jungle below. I floated, cloud 9-ing it lazily and gazing up at clouds 10 and 11, which floated lazily in the sky and gazed back at me on my inflatable donut. Just as the dreamy surrealism of swimming in a mirrored liquid sunset soaked in, Man Bun drifted by on a large swan, and we exchanged hellos. I asked him how he was feeling about his turn-out, and he said he was happy, but a little bummed because the one girl he was hoping for hadn’t shown up. I sloppily gestured my beer at the bevy of Miami hotness dangling gym-perfected electrolysis model legs in the pool. Pedicured toes sparkled just inches underwater, like coins in a wishing well. But Man Bun just shrugs.

“They’re hot, yeah, but that’s it. I get bored fast. And I’m bored with being bored.”

He taps his 7th Coors to my 3rd Tecate and Swans off toward the Deep End.
I’m more than a little surprised — I had him pegged as a Shallow kind of guy.

Hmm.

Later, he’s leaning over the railing, staring off into the twinkling lights of the city as they shimmer in the pre-dusk sepia sky. There’s a green light off in the distance. Maybe a house, maybe a helipad. Who knows. But he’s staring at it.
“See that,” he asks, gesturing with his ??th Coors.
I nod, taking a swig of that same 3rd Tecate. (I’m driving home soon.)
“That’s me,” he says. “I’m that green light. I just keep throwing these parties, hoping she’ll show up, and she never does.”
I fail to follow, and he sighs.
“Ah, c’mon,” he baritones, disapprovingly. “I thought you were the reader here.”
“…What book are we talking about?” I ask.
“Great Gatsby, duh.”

Ohhhhh! Now I get it.

The (green) lightbulb pops on. The girl across the water with the green light on her dock, the unattainable symbol of
perfection, and the subject of obsessive desire for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s love story. Man Bun has been throwing these parties not to get girls, but to get a specific girl. He has a Daisy Buchanan!

“Yeah,” he says, “I’m totes Great Gatsby. Whatever.”

He belches and crushes the empty can against his forehead, chucking the aluminum shell towards the trash. Somehow, in the waning light, he still makes the shot, but he’s not paying attention. He’s already mid-canonball once more into the water.
I can’t make next week’s party but send an apology via text, which Man Bun replies to, demanding I bring extra beers next week as penance. Twist my arm. I ask him if Daisy made it to this one, and get a sad emoji in response.
Next Saturday rolls around, hot and sticky, and I had a shit day so I decided to track down the weekly pool party’s address in a suburban neighborhood. Man Bun’s eyes light up when I round the corner. “YOU CAAAAAAAME!” he bellows in his signature Viking yawp, and for a moment I forget how bummed out I am. I hold up two bottles of wine as a salute. It’s a two-bottle kind of night.

“I need a corkscrew, and hug, in that order,” I announce. Done and done. One bottle was for the party, and one was for me. I swirl around in a turquoise inner tube and my own head, both spinning circles. I stare languidly at the dimming sky above, as bats explode from their secret hiding spots and start their morning commute. I’m wrapping my head around some bad news — I didn’t get the Agent I wanted. I’m in a full inner tube with a burst bubble. Writer Problems. I float and grieve and after way too little time I’m out of wine. MORE Writer Problems, and I’m a little drunk and I hate everything.

Man Bun is playing ping-pong with what has to be three Victoria’s Secret swimsuit models, but his eyes are on me. He hands his paddle off to a friend in (ironic) lobster-print board shorts and dangles some legs near where I’m sulking in suspended animation. I look at his calves and drunkenly wonder how much of his life he has spent in a gym.

“You cool?”
“Yeah.”

But he sits in silence until I open up. I tell him what’s wrong, and he listens and we joke around. He asks me how things are with the BF, and I perk up as I describe the plans we just made for our next road trip. Seeing his guest more cheerful, Man Bun, ever polite, tosses me a Tecate and a thumbs up and goes to mingle around. Feeling better, I spin and spin until dusk becomes stars and my problems feel smaller and further away, like the little bats as they vanished into black night. Man Bun is back at the ping pong tables.

Later, those tables are turned: I’m sober and he’s not, but he walks me to my car anyway, ever the perfect host. “I’m really glad you came,” he says, opening the door for me. “And I’m glad you and your guy have such a good thing going — he’s a lucky dude.”

I close the door and strap my seatbelt on. He tells me through the glass to get home safe, and through my rearview mirror I see that he stays out on the sidewalk under the singular green streetlight to watch as I drive home to the man I love, and I’m wondering why he doesn’t just go back to his party when I realize…

…I’m Daisy.

Laundro-Matt

My boyfriend's name is William. Matthew is his middle name, but since he is a "the third," he's chosen to go by Matt for most of his life.
I already had 14 Matts in my phone when I met him, so when he suggested I enter his number, I asked him if he'd rather be the 15th Matt or the first Will. I reminded him I'd already dated two Matts to disastrous results.

He asked me, "on a scale of one to Ryan Gosling, how sexy do you find the name 'Will?'"
"Baby Gooses!" was my earnest and eager reply.
He chose WISELY, and has been my Will ever since.
But I'm not one to let a name stand in the way of a Titular Pun, so here it is:

The Laundro-Matt blog...

When I first got married to my ex, way back in 2004, I'd moved straight from my very sheltered life at Mom and Dad's to living with my (at the time) husband. I was super new at adulting, and in one of my many, many classic newlywed mistakes, managed to dye most of my husband's underwear and socks a delightfully cheery shade of pink when I washed them with a rogue red sock.

My ex took it in stride, but he was quick to suggest that we separate our laundry from that point on. He took care of his stuff, I took care of my stuff. And I profoundly regret agreeing to that, because it set a precedent for Not Figuring Shit Out Together.

Six years later when he suggested we separate our marriage, so he could take care of his stuff and I could take care of my stuff, I took the bait. And that was the beginning of the end of things.

A year later, when my whirlwind disaster-journey landed me safely living with my then-boyfriend Paul, I wanted to do everything I could to express my gratitude for the multitude of kindnesses Paul had shown me. And so I very bravely did a load of his laundry.
*author's note: Laundry = Love. Kudos to any man who does his ladies' laundry. And ladies, if you're doing laundry for a man you're not living with, you are a chump.

For those of you following this blog, you may recall how profoundly struck I was while feeling the heft and weight of his jeans as I'd folded them. These were his working pants, in which he installed theatrical lighting. They were rugged and coarse and very different from my "girl jeans." The density of these pants caught me off guard, and I realized: I'd never folded "guy clothes" before. I instantly felt a bittersweetness strike my heart. I wish I'd folded my ex's jeans for him. I wish we'd tried to try. I wish he hadn't given up so easily.
But it was just easier to separate.

Cut to 4 years later. Present day. 2015.
I wind up working away from home more frequently than my boyfriend, and often I'll come home to find he's done our laundry. This is miraculous in and of itself, but my favorite part is the elaborate thong-chandeliers he makes while drying my delicates from our ceiling fixtures.

This, but like, hanging artistically from our kitchen light. It's good stuff.

Keenly aware that I was slacking on my end, I insisted on helping with the next load.

Our heaving hamper finally let us know that today was the day. My boyfriend loaded the first load of our clothes in the washing machine and dryer downstairs in our building's tiny laundry room. I took over after that, and throughout the day, I made trips up and down the stairs, to the clothesline and back, and performing the sheet-folding dance in our tiny living room.
Later, true to form, I overloaded the washing machine and caused it to break.

This much, times, like, five. Oops. I always assume if the lid closes, it's good to go.

In sheer denial and ignorance, I loaded our sopping wet clothes into the dryer and broke that too.
I made a guilty run to the LaundroMat down the street with the last of the whites as my boyfriend attempted to repair the machines I'd murdered.

Finally, with a view of a California sunset kissing the drought-yellowed hills, I'm folding our clothes.
His clothes. My clothes. Our clothes. There's the batman shirt that he always wears. There's the grey H&M shirt he wore out to our friend's birthday party. A replay of the days we've lived the past month flashes as I fold. We've had a lot of fun in these clothes. And also out of them. My mind wanders...

And then I get to his pants.

Shorts, actually. Cargo shorts because he knows how much I love their pockets. He purchased them in duplicate so he'd have a place for my phone when we walk. A special pocket for chapstick because he always has chapstick and I fucking love that about him.
I feel the weight and the heft of this fabric, feel their rugged velcro and zippers in my fingers as I flip them neatly in half, then half again.
I remember my guilty confession to him about how I ruined the laundry, how I was sorry, how I'd fix it.
And I remember him telling me not to worry, smirking and saying that he'd give me plenty of opportunity to perfect my technique over time. Lots and lots of practice, he says. And I am grateful, because his first instinct wasn't to bail.

2004 Me is punching the lavender-scented laundromat air.

It's OK that I made a mistake. It's OK to keep trying.
Clothes are going to keep getting dirty and machines are going to break. Laundry gets ruined occasionally.
(In my case, twice every 10 years.)
But he doesn't mind.

I finish my folding and place the stacks of fresh clothes in my bag, ready to come home to someone who makes me feel shiny and clean.

The John Avery Effect, Pt. 1

After literally nineteen years of searching, through the modern miracle of cyberstalking, I finally tracked down the first man I ever loved. And let me preface this by stating that this was a HARD teenage crush, back in the flanel-wrapped glory days of 1996. I was 16. He had a guitar. Clearly we were made for each other. His name was (and still is) John Avery, and I met him, oddly enough, at church.

Neither one of us is particularly religious, but his parents are, and my best friend Holly is. So it was pretty miraculous in the first place that I found myself at the Oviedo Baptist Church that evening, but even more divine: this angelic boy bent over an acoustic guitar...
John was playing something derivative of the time - Pearl Jam, I think. Holly introduced us, and when his smokey green eyes shyly lifted to meet my skeptical blue, I experienced a feeling I'd never felt before... and I was instantly smitten. We shook hands and mumbled "hellos," but he held my hand a little longer in his guitar-string-calloused grip. His hands were rough, but gentle as they held mine like someone would hold a bird. He held my hand like he was holding something valuable, and a delicious shudder ran the length of my spine, landing in my brain and lodging there.

Smitten, Smitten Kitten. Oh yes I was indeed. As it turns out, so was he! I'd been curious about other boys at my school in my past, but never beyond rampant gossipy speculation with my female friends about "who likes who," etc. With John, though, there seemed to be a palpable realness to an intangible connection.
We spent most of the service delighting in catching the other one sneaking glances, and each time I'd bust him, he'd turn crimson and hang his head until his mop of sandy blonde covered his eyes and all I could see was a sheepish grin. Oh, he was cute.

And after church, after his band performed, (spladoosh,) Holly and I were leaving when I heard the soft shuffle of corderouy pants hustling up behind us. I spun around to find myself a breath away from John, who pressed a sweaty-palmed piece of paper into my hands.
Two words from him: "Call me?"
A verbal waterfall from me: "Oh yeah, sure, OK. I'll do that. I will call you. On the phone. With this."

I don't remember the ride home. Or really, much of anything after that, except how patient Holly must've been as I surely obsessed about when to call and what to say when I did. Working up the nerve. Whatever I said on the phone must've gone well because John invited me over to his parent's house. They lived so close to me, but just on the border of the next county over, which is why we never shared a school.

When I arrived, I parked on the street in front of his house because his driveway was full of boxes. He came out and introduced me to his parents, who politely shook my hand and called me "dear."
John's parents didn't allow him to "date," so we just went for a walk around his neighborhood. We had SO MUCH IN COMMON: we were both white middle-class American teenagers. We BOTH LIKED MUSIC. We BOTH ATE FOOD. Clearly, this was my soul mate - and then my soul mate dropped a bomb on me.
"So I'm moving to Michigan," he says. "Like, tomorrow."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Hm. Well, that explains the driveway full of boxes. Dammit.

Not to be deterred, I suggested we pen-pal it. After all, I told him. I was going to be a hot-shot writer someday, so I'd enjoy keeping in touch with letters. Kind of chronicle our love affair until we found a way to be together.
Shockingly, he agreed - after all, he was going to be a hot-shot guitarist someday. Surely, they'd have a van or travel trailer of some kind. I could get a laptop and write from there while the band toured the country.
A laptop? I already had a laptop. So basically we were halfway there.

He moved, just like he said, to Farmington, MI. When that first letter arrived in my mailbox I was over-the-moon excited. He DID write. He DID love me. And even though it was riddled with all the misspellings and grammar errors one could imagine from the product of Florida public education, I delighted in every syllable of his oddly block-printed handwriting. I was thrilled to hear about his new surroundings, and visualized everything in lurid detail. The woods near his home. The snow piled up on the red brick walls of his new school.
John hated Michigan. He was just starting his Senior year of High School, and had a hard time making new friends or finding other musicians to play with. I tried to keep my letters cheerful and full of sunshine, but no amount of positivity of affection from me seemed to make a difference.

I obsess in Lisa Frank proportions.

As his letters got shorter and more impersonal, I could sense him slipping away.
I asked my father, who was an airline pilot, if he would help me visit John to cheer him up. After some parental discussions between his folks and mine, in an unprecedented act of adventurousness, my dad agreed! We'd go to Michigan for the weekend! True love conquers all!
John had mailed me a plastic purple bead necklace, and told me he had a matching one. This was the first gift I'd ever recieved from a boy, and certainly the first jewelry I'd ever been given. I wore them every day until the string smelled like my marching-band-practice sweat.
Then I hung them from the rear-view mirror in my car, and every turn I took, every speedbump, they'd rattle and I'd feel that shiver resonate in kind, right up my spine. I was in love.

I'm pretty sure if I'd kept a journal at the time, it would've been riddled with heart-shaped doodles of "Mrs. Jack Avery" and her husband-to-be. I mean, surely the stars had aligned to introduce us before it was too late. Surely the Universe had conspired to nurture our young love with the letters and calls. MY DAD WAS ENCOURAGING THIS RELATIONSHIP SO IT HAD TO BE THE ONLY CORRECT PATH.
Never mind the fact that really, I was the only one writing at this point; that wasn't the point. The point was:

I would go to Michigan and get my first kiss.

After a short flight and a short drive, (but still plenty of time to allow my stomach to completely tie itself into knots,) my father and I arrived in Farmington. We followed my hand-written directions carefully through the snowy countryside to John's neighborhood, which looked nothing like I'd imagined. There were none of the flourishes I'd pictured, no "Michigan Farm House" charm. Just standard track houses on a normal street.
The "forest" near John's house, where he'd go for melodramatic angst-ridden teenage walks of solitude, was kind of just a square or two of semi-undeveloped land. But it was fine - it didn't matter - we were together!

I rushed up to his door, not sure what to expect, but when he and his mom opened it together, there was no swell of music. No cartoon birds appeared, and a very awkward hug ensued between us as our parents met in person for the first (spoiler alert: and last) time.
Didn't matter. I was here. He was here. We were in love. And I was gonna get that kiss god dammit. I was 16. It was OWED me.
After some polite small talk, Dad left for an hour or so to go scout out a hotel for the evening.

That gave me and John some time to warm up. Sort of. I'd been standing around in his mother's living room, not sure what to do with my hands. I hadn't even removed my coat. I was so nervous. Had I done something wrong? Was something wrong? Hadn't he asked me to come?
John suggested a walk, much like the one we'd taken the only other time we'd been alone together. A walk in the woods. A walk in the snowy woods. Trying to still my racing heart, I rebuttoned the coat I'd yet to take off. It was 40 degrees outside. I think I was sweating anyway.
We went for that walk, and I kept expecting that at any moment he'd give me... something. A kiss, an honest moment. Where was all that chemistry we'd both felt at the church? He really didn't even make eye contact.

After we reached some arbitrary half-way point known only to him, we turned around and headed back towards his house.
I think he tried to hold my hand, but we both had mittens on so who the fuck knows.

I could've unbuttoned that jacket for him. I was so hot from my own nervous energy, my blood, my brain, that spot in my brain which had been ignited when he first touched my hand, was on fire. I wanted so desperately to show him that I'd kept his beads, and removed them from their shrine on my car to travel North with me, as proof of my love. I could've shown him, I guess. But something told me he didn't care.

Back at his house, he took me for a quick tour of the town. There really was no town, so he basically just drove me to his school and back. All that nervous chatter faded on the drive back to his house. The bricks weren't even red, they were brown. Why had I imagined them as red? An iconic setting from his letters, in which I envisioned my love ardently penning letters was just a brownish wall about 4 feet high. With a handfull of tired grey snow clustered around the bottom. The naked, thin woods, the non-town, the grey, grey, grey everywhere and the deafening silence from John kind of piled up. We all went out to dinner that night. Our parents took pictures of us. We are standing 3 feet apart in the pictures.
The next morning, my dad and I went back to Florida.

Bleh. Just, bleh.

I sent a thank-you card. I sent a letter. I included copies of the picture my dad took of us. John's hands are folded so far behind his back he looks armless. Just a guy with empty short sleeves, staring stoically into the lens like some soldier in a daguerreo-type.
A little while passes, I've heard nothing. I write him again and ask if he has a girlfriend and hold my breath for a week until my response arrives.
"I am, in fact, seeing someone," he writes. "Lady Depression is her name. I am courting Despair."

I had, at the time, zero comprehension of what that meant. My own Dark Lady would set up camp with me in the years to come, but at 16, I couldn't possibly fathom what that meant. I just liked that he wrote like a cheesy balladeer. I liked that he wrote. I mean, what even WAS depression? Pff. Things would work out.

...Things didn't work out.
After two months went by with no more letters, I retired those beads off my mirror permanently and stuffed them away into some dark corner of a jewelry chest. It wasn't until nineteen years later that I'd see his face again, via the great public crystal scrying bowl known as Face Book.

Stay tuned for Part 2, in which we learn what ever happened to John Avery...

In Case of Suffering Break Glass

Tonight, we drove along the sunset-halo'd mountains headed home, and the twinkling lights below beckoned us into the twilight of the valley where we live. I held my hand out the passenger window, collecting the cool dusk in my palms, spreading my fingers, letting the night free, then trailing lazy digital contrails in the waning light. My hand. My bracelets, knuckles, long fingers, long strong healthy nails and sparkly glossy polish on manicured fingertips.

I flashed back on the time I'd pass the commute home by watching crimson blood trickle down my arms as I "fixed" my hands. Made sure every stroke I'd type hurt, putting tiny cuts in fingers and pulling, tearing my nails and cuticles to expose the raw white tissue beneath.

I remember swearing tearfully to my ex that I was broken, that I'd never write again. I'd never love again. I'd NEVER love myself.
I remember the hot sticky wetness of the blood as it beaded and ran. If the trails reached to my elbows I'd consider it "enough" and stash my toolkit until another time and place I allowed myself to spiral my thoughts that low. And by then, lightheaded and high from the scent of copper, my adrenaline had spiked and drained my energy enough that I no longer felt, no longer thought, and for the moment, no longer hurt. It felt like the only thing I could control. Maybe at that point, it was. But that was then.

Looking at my hands now in the sweet dying of the light, an L.A. sunset which has consistently kissed me goodnight for almost a year now, I can see how wrong I was. How everything has changed. I came to peace with my shortcomings, learned from them, forgave myself, and eventually learned to love the strong healthy person I became. Then I found love with someone else, and began to experience what a healthy, happy relationship feels like. Ah, Whisper-In-My-Ear 2010, THIS is what you meant...

It took a WHILE. It took time, a lot of work, 10 days of Buddhism, a night in a treehouse, lots of therapy, some fire, crying on many a shoulder, a little more fire, nachos, 7,000 miles and a long-distance nuptual bitch-slap, but EVERYTHING GOT BETTER. There and back again, but literally and figuratively in a different vehicle.

It took rebuilding, reframing, relearning, relabeling and relaxing. But it happened. And it totally got better.
So if you're reading this, and you're In It, allow me to be that whisper by your shoulder:
Trust me. I have been In It too. I have felt these feels, hurt this hurt. Hurt just as dark and deep as it gets- and gotten out.
I know you feel alone, like you have to hide whatever horrible thing you do to keep your hurt your own. I kept my razors in the center console and covered the rest up with a smile for as long as I could, until I broke. Stuck, stuck, stuck- in traffic and otherwise.

And somehow, same road, same hands- but there's no glass. There's night air. There's no suffocating heat. There's Santa Anna winds.
I dismissed any friend who ever promised me It Would Get Better, because I hid the extent of my hurt. They had no idea- they'd never hurt like I hurt. Like I hurt myself. So that should get me a little street cred. Listen up:

Whatever you're doing, decide to finish it. Wrap it up. Bandage that shit and start being gentle to yourself, because whether or not you're ready to accept it, you are so loved. And you may hate your skin or your job or the way your husband doesn't love you and not see a way out without blood. But if you give yourself a chance, you'll be on that same road later (it's always the same road) and dangling your fancy hands out the window while you let someone who loves you right drive for a while. And you will be so glad you hung in there- you're worth it. Get up. Fight. Every day. Whether or not you feel like it, you deserve the love you'll feel one day.

Brewer

Everything starts off with strangers- sterile and sanitized. Suddenly, there's chemistry as grains and hopes come from out of nowhere. A sense of growing extractations begins to form, and things heat up dramatically only to be cooled, quickly, cruelly- a cauldron of magic snuffed at its prime. But did you know? I'm a Fermenter. Some craze-inducing bacteria breathes life where before there was none. Sugars have formed. Sweetness. Chemicals swirling trapped in my vessel. Intoxicated with my own chemical reaction, I'll convince myself it's fine because I like the taste. My glass carboy skin holds the bubbling, churning, working, combusting inside while you casually sweep through me. You and Me. Things will be OK. I'm now drunk off my own lies, so don't mind me- I'll just twist here and rot while you sleep. This is, after all, EXACTLY what I asked for. In the morning, I'll stagger off like a poisoned animal full of too many putrid apples. I blinded myself with this ignorant moon-shining. Still...