On Blogcation

Hi Readers,

I will be on blogcation for the next few weeks: regrouping, chilling, and working on other writing projects.

Stay tuned because Sissy is about to have a serious venue change in the next coming episodes.  I don't want to give too much away, but it's the city so nice they had to name it twice.  And, if you guessed Oklahoma City.... 

Have a wonderful summer and Happy Pride!

Dead End

I stood in the middle of my living room for a long time, where I'd been standing when Faith left me on the arm of her husband, Dagwood.  It felt unreal, like I would wake up in a minute with Faith still sleeping beside me.  We would continue the conversation we'd been having all weekend, planning our future life together.  This was the conversation we'd begun in high school, interrupted for ten years by her gay conversion and descent into religious life, by her loveless marriage, and by betrayal after betrayal. 

I was suddenly surprised to realize that I wasn't surprised at all by the way things had played out.  More than that, I didn't care.  I couldn't believe how numb the whole experience had left me feeling.  I tried poking myself a little with thoughts like, "Wow, I can't believe I fell for it again," or, "How could I have ever believed that Faith really loved me," but I felt nothing.  It was like whatever mental wound I'd received had been instantly cauterized by rage at the male, heterosexist privilege that Dagwood had exercised, so casually, not just in my presence, but in my home.  It was stifling.

As I walked around my place, opening all the windows, I realized that this feeling might just be the calm before the storm.  But, I didn't think so.  If there were any injuries, they were internal, and that's where they were going to stay.  I was sick and tired of wallowing in self-pity.  This time, I was going to put on my big girl pants and move on.

With this thought in mind, I checked my Meetup calendar for Sunday.  I saw that the Chicago Queers-R-Us social group was having a picnic at Foster Beach that afternoon, weather permitting.  I looked out the window, and saw that the weather would definitely be permitting.  It was a beautiful day and one not to be wasted pondering the implied threat in Faith's promise, "I'll be back."

I changed the sheets, threw out the trash, and erased the remnants of the weekend from my apartment and from my mind.  I took the uneaten hummus and crackers I'd purchased the previous Friday and put it in my backpack before riding my bike to the beach.  I think I pulled off the socializing part pretty well.  I laughed, joked, and even flirted a little, but I have to admit, I didn't feel nearly as delighted as I appeared.  In fact, I felt nothing, neither pleasure nor pain.  I was numb, but no one seemed to notice, and that was fine with me.

My friend, Betty, had brought her portable karaoke machine, and we took turns making requests and singing.  When it was my turn, I sang Nellie McKay's, "Identity Theft," followed by the similarly themed "Fuck You," by Cee Lo Green.  Both renditions got nothing but applause.

Déjà vu

Sunday morning, I was laying in bed with my formerly estranged girlfriend, Faith, when her currently estranged husband, Dagwood, showed up at my door, all the way from Oakland, California.  I knew this would not end well.

"What should I do?" I asked Faith.  "Do you think if we wait, he'll just go away?" 

Faith shook her head, "No, he won't."  Her beautiful face was hard and her eyes were dark and calculating.  "Let's just get dressed and let him in."

"Do you think that's wise?"

"It’s the only thing to do.  It would be much worse to have him lurking around downstairs.  God, I hate that smarmy, slimy man.  He is like a cockroach.  When you think you’re finally rid of him, here he comes again."

As if to emphasize the point, the door buzzer began to ring nonstop.  Faith pushed "Talk" on the intercom and shouted into it, "Wait a goddamn minute, will you, Dagwood?" Then she grinned at me.  "He hates it when I take the Lord's name in vain, which is exactly why I do it."

How she could grin at a time like that, I had no idea, but where I felt stressed, like there was a noose about to be tied around my neck, she seemed as untroubled as if we were going for a lakeside picnic.  "Listen Sissy," she said to me, fully serious, "I know I've given you plenty of reasons not to trust me in the past."

Talk about your understatements.  As recently as two days before, she'd admitted to having secretly read my journal.

"I really need you trust me right now when I tell you that I love you, and only you," she went on.  "You are the only person I have ever cared about, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.  Can you please believe me?"

"Yes," I said, and I wish I could have sung it.  We kissed, long, hard and deep.  As though Dagwood could guess what we are up to, he rang the buzzer again, but only once.

"OK, let him in," Faith said. 

"Should I have a weapon of some kind handy, just in case?”

She laughed at this.  “No, Dagwood is way too cowardly to try anything physically abusive.  That is not his strong suit.  He lives through mental intimidation, and he’s a master at it.”

Encouraged by her sincere seeming profession of love and armed with new confidence, I buzzed Dagwood in.

When I opened the door, I expected to find some cowardly, skittering human cockroach outside.  Instead, I was faced with the most gorgeous man I had ever seen outside of a GQ magazine.  He looked sort of like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, only with his good looks marred by a sneering swagger, that masqueraded as strength.

“You’re Sissy, huh” he said in greeting, looking me up and down – mostly down, since he was over six feet tall.  

Without waiting for my reply, he strode past me to face Faith, who was sitting impassively on the couch.

“Well, I hope you’ve finally got this lesbian thing out of your system.”  I had no doubt that I was the lesbian thing to which he was referring.

“Now, wait a minute…” I began

He glared at me.  “No, you wait.  Can’t you see this is between a man and his wife?  Oh wait, this is Illinois.  You people don't have the right to get married.  Well I have the right, so just keep quiet?”

He turned back to Faith.  “You know, if you weren’t so stupid, you’d be dangerous,” he said, picking up her cell phone from the table and showing it to her.  "Didn’t you realize how easy it would be for me to crosstrack any number you dialed, not to mention the built-in GPS?  Sure you did, because sinners like, you always secretly want to get caught."

"Listen, I don't care who you are.  You are not going to speak to her like that.  Not in my place," I warned him, with a glare that I hoped was a menacing as my mood.

Dagwood looked around, visibly unimpressed by his surroundings.  "You're right, Miss Van Dyke.  This is your place.  So you just stay in it.  I'm going to take my wife home."

"She's not going anywhere with you."

"Oh you think she's going to stay here, with you?" Dagwood laughed.  "You obviously know nothing about me if you think I would let you and her raise my child."

Here, I saw Faith visibly start.  Dagwood smirked.  "Did you really think that your girl, Shirley, was your friend? She has been up on my jock since we got married.  Of course, as a Christian man, I wouldn't give her that chance.  But, she could not wait to come to me with your little secret as soon as she heard that you'd run off."

"What if I have an abortion?"  Faith asked, simply.

Dagwood dismissed the notion with a wave.  "Sister, please!  You and I both know you want a child too badly to do any such thing just to spite me.  And you know me.  You would never get to keep it."

Faith broke down at this, hiding her face in her hands.  I went and stood beside her on the couch, resting my hand on her shoulder, and I could feel her body trembling with sobs that almost sounded like hysterical laughter.

Dagwood checked his watch.  "OK, let's get out of here.  I've got a cab waiting in the alley, and we're booked on a two o'clock flight to Oakland."

Faith didn't say anything, just nodded her head slowly, her face streaked with tears.  She picked up her coat and overnight bag, that had been sitting unused at the end of the couch since she'd arrived Friday evening. 

Dagwood smirked at me, and took Faith's arm.  Since he had set out to fetch her, he obviously had not considered for a moment that he would return home empty handed.

I stood stunned, swept up in the wave of déjà vu.  The only difference being that the last time she'd walked away from me, it had been on her father's arm.  Unlike the previous time, however, Faith turned in the doorway and looked at me.  Instead of grief, I saw that her face was lit up with an enormous grin.  "I'll be back," she mouthed silently and winked.  Then, she was gone.

Picking up the Pieces

I left work early Friday, since I wasn’t getting much work done anyway, so I could be back at my apartment before, Faith would arrive from Wisconsin.  However, considering the woeful lack of provisions at my place, I made a stop at Trader Joe’s on the way.  I picked up mostly party food and other microwaveables.  As I have mentioned many times before, I hate to cook.  While Faith is an excellent cook, I thought it would be rude, and a little obvious, for me to fill my fridge with cookable straw with the clear expectation she’d transform it into edible gold.

When I got to my place, it was déjà vu all over again.  Faith was waiting at the front door, wearing a look of nervous expectation and unveiled desire.  Without preliminaries and with no pretense that this was going to be a platonic reunion, Faith kissed me, and I kissed her back, for the first time in 10 years.  That kiss was the answer to the question, “what is missing from my life?”  A question I hadn’t realized I’d been asking until I found the answer: “Oh yeah.  This.” 

It was like when you misplace your car keys only to find them in your hand all along, the ignorance of their presence as a form of absence.  It was like my mouth had never lost the taste of hers.  The smell of her breath was as familiar as my own.  I wanted to somehow pull her inside of me, but found that she was already there, an immovable presence, in the depth of my being. 

Finally, when the kiss threatened to make me drop the bags of groceries I’d been juggling, we broke and headed inside.  

Once we got to my apartment, we did what all long-time-no-see lovers do behind closed doors.  I won’t go into detail, but I will say that it was many hours before the groceries found their way into the refrigerator, and it wasn’t until sometime the next afternoon before any of them were eaten. 

I was lying in bed Sunday morning, with Faith still sleeping, her head nestled in the crook of my right arm.  I felt the ice that had formed over years of unsatisfied longing was finally beginning to melt. The weekend had not been a re-creation of the one 10 years before.  It had been much, much better, since it finally felt like we had reached a point in our mutual lives where our common dreams could be fulfilled, without barriers.

Then the door buzzer rang.  Faith bolted from sleep and sat up.  We both stared at each other.  I had the same sense of impending doom that I’d felt driving Faith back home that long lost weekend before.

The buzzer rang again, insistently, and I got up to answer it.  I told myself that no matter who was at the door, no one would be able to separate Faith and me.  Not this time.

“Hello?  Who is it?”

“Dagwood Morehead,” said the booming male voice through my intercom.

Oh yeah.  Faith’s husband.

Chain of Fools

Friday morning I woke up pumped and ready for the day to begin.  I have to admit that I was looking forward to spending the weekend with my first girlfriend, Faith.  I was also trying to convince myself that her visit was going to be pleasant and drama free. That was inconceivable.  Faith is to drama what Dali is to art, and both are equally surreal.

I'd been bouncing around the office like I’d had a caffeine transfusion.  My cheerful mood must have been obvious.  At one point, my boss, Elston, slapped me on the back and commented, “Glad to see you’re your old self again.”

My coworkers and former roommates, Jackie and Maureen, were not so easily fooled.  Like any good lesbians, they smelled gossip, and they wanted the 411.  They cornered me in the doorway to the supply room, where I had bounced in to get a box of paperclips.

“OK, who is she?” Mo demanded.

I tried to play it off.  “Who do you mean?”

“Sissy, we’ve seen you in dating mode too many times not to know when you’re seeing someone,” Jackie explained.

“That’s right,” Mo continued.  “It’s tea time, Sissy, so spill it.”

I didn't really want to deal with my friends’ inevitable aghast looks and OMGs, so I plead the Fifth.

“Sorry, women.  I don’t want to get into it right now.  I’ll tell you all about it on Monday.”

This answer was unsatisfactory, and they continued to prevent me from bouncing out the door.

“It isn’t Autumn again, is it?”

I shook my head.

“Well, is it anyone we know?”

I could honestly answer “No” to the question, since they only knew Faith by (very bad) reputation.

“Come on, give us a hint,” Jackie pleaded.

“I’ll just say that a friend from California has come to visit.”

“Not Trixie!”  They said simultaneously, which surprised me, since they only knew Trixie by (very bad) reputation as well.

I said a final, “No,” pushed my way past the dyke inquisition, and took the box of paperclips back to my desk.

In spite of my perky mood, I didn't get much work done.  My mind kept going back and forth between the coming weekend with Faith and the first, and last, weekend we'd spent together.

It had been the weekend right after finals, just before graduation.  Faith and I had decided to rent a cabin up in Russian River together.  She'd told her parents she was going on an “outing” with her drama class.  I'd told my parents the truth.  Well, I told my mother anyway.  By that time my father had been living in Virginia, where he’d been stationed, and where my mother had refused to join him (another long story).  I’d told my mother where I was going, with whom, and gave her the phone number to the hotel.  She gave me an extra $50 bucks, the keys to my dad’s Jeep, and told me to have a good time.  I could tell she wasn't pleased, particularly about the “with whom” part, but most of all I could tell that she loved and trusted me.

That had been the most wonderful weekend I’d ever had before or since.  Faith and I had had sex together dozens of times, but that was the longest, uninterrupted time we had ever spent in each other's company.  We thought it would be the first weekend of the rest of our lives together.

We had both been accepted into UC Santa Cruz.  We’d even discussed what program and courses we would be taking together.  Yet, on the way driving back to Oakland, I had a premonition that things were about to go terribly wrong.

“Whaddya say we just keep on driving, straight down to Santa Cruz, and say our goodbyes later?” I suggested.

“But, Darling,  I have to go to graduation,” Faith replied, squeezing my hand.  “My family is having a huge party for me.  The invitations have already been sent out.  Plus…,”she winked, “I think they’re planning to give me a car for graduation!”

I reluctantly agreed with her that our “getaway vehicle,” may as well be the shiny new Toyota she’d been dropping hints about instead of the rusty old Jeep my father was planning to turn over to me upon graduation.

That’s about as far as our common dreams ever got.  When I dropped Faith off at her house and went to help her carry her bags inside, we were met at the door by an intervention.  

A dark suited man had blocked my path and told me, “Come no further, young lady.  We’ll take it from here.”

I had never seen the man before, but the stiffness of his body, the hatred in his eyes, and the bible in his hand made it perfectly clear that he must be the pastor of her family's church.

Then with the preacher on her one side, her parents on the other, and several church members praying in the background, they’d led Faith into the house.  She’d gone without protest.  In spite of her feints toward rebellion, and her sincere desire to be her own person, it turned out she was her parent's daughter after all.  Or, so it had seemed to me at the time. 

At 2:30 Faith sent me a text that read, “On the bus.  CU soon!”  I replied back with a smiley face, but only because my phone did not have a smiley sufficiently complex to sum up all my conflicting emotions.

A little while later, Elston walked by my desk and startled me out of my reverie.  He gave me a funny look and asked, “You are your old self again, aren’t you?”

“Sure,” I replied.  “Why do you ask?”

He pointed down at my desk, where I had absentmindedly strung the entire box of paperclips together into a long, tangled chain.

Strange Loops

The day after my boss, Elston Caan, made his surprising and comforting sick call visit to my apartment, I went back to work.  I knew I’d better!  Elston had assured me that he’d been only joking when he said that he’d fire me if I didn’t cheer up and get on with my life, but I was still worried.  He has been known to suddenly get fed up with folks and go on a firing spree.  I like my job, my coworkers, and being able to keep myself stocked in toilet paper.  I also like Elston, a lot, which is beside the point; and, he seems to really like me, too, which isn’t.

“Buck up, Kid,” he told me on his way out the door.  “I’ve got big plans for you.”

Talk about an offer you can’t refuse.  He didn’t provide any specifics about these plans, but when a guy like Elston says something is big, it’s enormous.

I was still feeling pretty down from my break-up with Autumn, but I put on my best game face and plowed through the work day as pleasantly and efficiently as possible.  But, as soon as I got home, I would step out of my clothes, and climb directly into bed.  Then, remote control in hand, I would doze in and out of old episodes of "Star Trek" and "Battlestar Galactica" until it was time to get up, get dressed, and get back to the office.  

I was lying in bed at 7 pm on Thursday when I got a call from Faith, who was still staying with her cousin and his wife in Wisconsin.  They had a spare room in their house, and they told her she could stay as long as she wanted.  Plus, they were also expecting a baby, which was due a couple of months before hers.  

"It will be too perfect, Sissy.  Jared's wife, Vivian and I can share baby supplies, and we can all tag-team in and out with childcare responsibilities."

"Wow, that’s great!" I agreed, mustering a semblance of joy from the depths of my funk.

“What’s wrong, Sissy?  Do you have a cold?”

“Yeah,” I sniffed.  “I’m kinda stuffed up.”

She seemed to buy that, and went on.  "Listen, I want to apologize for making a move on you.  I was totally out of line, but I couldn’t help it.  Just seeing you again after all those years.  You might not believe it, but I'd thought about us a lot, about what I let get away.  I guess I was jealous when I saw what a special relationship you and Autumn have.”

I sniffed again, audibly, and cleared my throat.

“Sissy, are you sure you’re OK?”  I didn’t answer.  “What’s really wrong?”

I sighed and admitted that Autumn had dumped me.

“Oh, I am so, so sorry.  I hope it didn’t have anything to do with me.”

“We’d been having problems for a while… since day one, actually.  Your visit just brought some things to the surface that had already been brewing.”

“Oh, Baby.  I am so sorry.  You sound like you’re really hurting.  Why don’t I come down for the weekend and cheer you up?”

“I’m not sure that would be such a great idea….”

“Nonsense.  I just saw an ad for that Megabus thing, and they have some really cheap bus fares between Madison and Chicago.”

“Well, OK, but I’m not going to be such great company.”

“Don’t worry.  I’ll be good enough company for the both of us.”

I knew it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea, but what can I say?  It seems that I’d left all my good sense in a pile of tissue and discarded clothes on my bedroom floor.  I said, “Sure, come on down.”

“Great!  I still have your address.  I’ll take a late bus and try to arrive sometime after you’re done with work”

“Cool, but Faith, I want to ask you something, and I need you to promise you will tell me the absolute truth.”

“OK,” she agreed.

“Did you read my journal when I was out?”

Faith laughed.  “Of course I did, Darling!  Does it matter?”

I thought about it for a moment.  “No, I guess not.”

“Good.  OK, I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

Heart Burn

After my most recent ex, Autumn, dumped me, following the reappearance of my disastrous first ex, my initial thought was, “free again!”  Then, I remembered that I had thought the same thing a few months before when it had been me doing the dumping, and me, again, who had gone crawling back.

“Not this time,” I resolved, thinking about the Kate Bush song of the same title. 

It wasn’t like Autumn and I had been getting along that great over the last several weeks anyway.  We kept finding ourselves enmeshed in arguments over stupid stuff like which was the correct way to unload a toothpaste tube. 

Me: It doesn’t matter.

Autumn: It does matter!  If you squeeze if out from the middle, the tube eventually cracks and you have a mess everywhere.

Me: Yeah, but it’s my toothpaste.

Autumn: Oh, now I have to start bringing my own toothpaste when I come over here… etc.

 “Fine,” I thought.  “I am done with Autumn, and I am done, done, done with monogamy!”

That night I emptied the box of things that Autumn had returned to me from her place: some non-latex gloves, water-based lube, a romantic mix-CD, a favorite video… the usual consumables of a romantic relationship.  I put everything away, watched a few CSI reruns, then went to bed around 11:00.

I had to work the next morning.   When my alarm went off at 6:30, I threw back the covers, ready to leap out of bed and back into life as an unencumbered single lady.  I seriously tried to get out of bed, when an unexpected wave of pain hit me.  It was like this voice in my head said: “Now stop!  Hammer time!”  All I could do was lay back down.  I didn’t cry, which was worse.  I fell into a sulk that reminded me of being back in San Francisco on the coldest of foggy days.

What could I do?  I had to call in sick.  Luckily, I did it early enough that no one was in the office.  It's a lot easier to tell lies to a machine than a real person.  I dragged my laptop into bed with me and proceeded to load it with Dexter DVDs, disk after disk, until I had watched the entire first season. Feeling a little dark?  Who, me?

The next morning I wasn't much better, so I called in sick again.  I felt like my mood was improving when I picked out The Walking Dead rather than season two of Dexter.  After all, zombies are so much cheerier than serial killers.

"You think you know a person," I kept saying to myself, thinking about Autumn reading my journal.  I would have believed it of Faith, but it never crossed my mind that Autumn would have done such a thing.  Autumn had always seemed so nice and predictable, in an almost boring way. I knew it had to have been on the morning she'd brought over bagels and coffee, but I wondered when she’d had time.  Then I remembered that at one point she’d excused herself to go to the bathroom, using the one in my bedroom.  As I recalled it later, she had been in there a long time.  I growled and returned to my zombie apocalypse.

At around 2:30 on the afternoon of my second “sick day” my door buzzer rang.  I was really feeling ill when I heard the voice on the other side of the intercom.  It was my boss, Elston Caan.

In the short period of time it took him to make his way up the three flights of stairs to my apartment, I managed to hide all the dirty dishes in the oven, and tossed the miscellaneous clothes and general detritus of self-pity into my bedroom closet.  Then I wiped down the bathroom sink and basin with a wad of Lysol wipes, finishing off with a thorough spritzing of Febreze around the apartment, adding couple of squirts on myself, for good measure.  Then I opened the door.

"Elston, what a surprise…,"  I began.

“Save it, Sister,” Elston said, striding inside like he owned the place.  He handed me a warm bag. “Here, chicken noodle soup, for your quote / unquote 'illness.'  Although, I'm betting that you haven't been sick a day in your life, am I right?"

Talk about your truth tornados.  I couldn’t lie to Elston.  I nodded and agreed.  

"Uh huh, just as I thought.  Girl trouble.  Here,” he said and handed me the second bag which contained a bottle of single malt scotch.  “Get us a couple of bowls for the soup, a couple of glasses for the whiskey, and tell auntie Elston who’s been dragging your heart around.”

I did just that, and as I told him what had been going over the past few days, the tears I’d been holding in for the previous two days finally worked their way out.

Elston didn't say anything, just listened, nodding and taking sips of scotch.

“Feeling better?” Elston asked after I'd finally given my nose a good blow.

“Yes, much! The food and whiskey helped, but your company was the real tonic.  I think I should be well enough to come in to work tomorrow.

“You’d better, or you’re fired.”  I blanched and he laughed.  “Just kidding.”

I wasn't so sure.