My brother finds a newborn kitten in my parents’ shed, so young it still has the umbilical cord attached. He takes it inside, places it in a basket over a heating pad and calls the vet. For two days, every few hours, he feeds it kitten formula through a syringe. I ask my mom if they’re going to keep it - the house is, as always, full of crazy dogs. Of course, is the answer. It was in our backyard, wasn’t it? Like mother like daughter. They name it Skipper, after a cat my brother had as teenager. On the third morning, it doesn’t wake up. My brother - who tries so hard and earnestly for a better life - is devastated. They don’t know if it was a boy or girl.
At the party in the penthouse suite, Coco and I are in the bathtub. No water. Guys drift in and out, staring at us like we’re caged, shouting to friends about the two chicks in the tub. There’s a TV next to the toilet playing some crime show. A tall blonde woman walks in, looks at us. Disapproves.
There’s an AA meeting at the table next to us at the Mexican restaurant. It’s 2 AM and they’re arguing loudly about who’s the most legitimate alcoholic. At the chain restaurant on Grand days later, a pastor across the room lectures his daughter about “how the universe works.” At brunch on the weekend we’re bookended by strange-looking people holding babies. We start to feel like actors are following us everywhere we go.
In the lobby we’re eating pizza by a gas fireplace. I’m wearing a blue dress and I’m not in the mood to be there. There’s a video on the wall that looks like a still picture but just turns out to be actors holding very still on film. Ken comes out of the elevator, bounces over to say goodbye to us. The party must be over. His friends tug on his coat. He’s been hard to wrangle all night. He shakes our hands, allows his friends to take him. On the way out, he shoves a cigarette in his mouth and leans over into the fire to light it.
He guides my back as we walk a series of staircases and hallways. It’s an apartment building that looks and smells like a hotel (sterile). I intuitively turn the wrong direction each time, but he manipulates me like a magician performing a coin trick. I’m suddenly turned around, and dizzy on the staircase. But this has always been my life: spatially disorienting. But I’ll go where you tell me, if you catch me in the time of year when I’m ready to be taken: in between seasons, half-asleep and sweet.
Photo by Coco
1. A flask of blackstrap rum spilling down my face and black dress in the fancy bathroom of an upscale restaurant as I wait for Coco to take the photo.
2. Singing obnoxiously in a whiskey bluster with Chris as Rick belts out Hey, Jude on stage. Abbey, seven months pregnant, feels her baby kick when her husband, the drummer, starts the na na na na nas into the mic.
3. Half-sleeping in the backseat of the car after lunch, the sun hot on my face, the guitar solo from Freebird blasting.
4. Ravenously eating string cheese as we - the office girls - walk back from the gas station, giggling about the weekend and swearing we need to get our lives together before it’s too late. But not really meaning it.
5. Running across the backyard with my dog in shoes that give me blisters, a warm rain running down my arms, feeling an achy type of joy unheard of sober.
I’ve never mastered the art of belonging. As I see it, to be a good friend or partner or daughter, you have to let people own you a little. Your sister has her own idea of who you are, and what your obligations are to her, and it’s OK because she’s family. The box she’s got you in and the things she wants from you don’t seem like a burden because it’s just what you do: you change, a little, around each person who has a stake in you, and sometimes you do boring or difficult tasks because there’s a love there. We’re all supposed to do it, and mostly we don’t notice - the obligations are a low, everyday hum that only annoy when they get too loud or uneven.
My problem is that I’ve never been able to let people own me, even in this completely acceptable, necessary, everyday way. It is not a rebellion and it’s not all that interesting, but it’s a truth I thought would fade as I aged. I’ve been wrong: the older I get, the more I pull and resist, and I cause cold wars. Some friendships suffer; the ones that don’t are those people who have made peace with my solitary brattiness, but at a cost. I want to love you and comfort you and care for you, but only in emergencies. When it comes to daily friendships - coffee, shopping, movies, dinner - I drag my feet, make excuses. Cancel. Hope you understand.
Of course, it’s more than just this weird Almasy ownership issue - I’m awkward; I’m shy; I’ve taken that junior high gut-wrenching longing for you to like me, and buried it so deep that I turn silent and flighty when sober; into an oversharer when drunk who goes home and vows not to see anyone for two weeks, a vow I usually keep. After a four-drink night, I feel like I’ve given too much away or allowed people to believe they have a control or authority over me that they don’t. I want to call them up in the morning and say, you don’t know anything about me! You only know what I give to you! I have complete control over my own spin!
I want control over my own spin, is the issue. If I own my news cycle, then no one owns me. But this only applies to people I only half-know.
For the people I know-know - husband, best friend, parents - the righteousness I feel with strangers turns to guilt. Why do I always want to do what I want? Why don’t I defer? Why don’t I just do what I’m supposed to do, what people expect and desire? I compromise, a lot. I think those compromises keep me from falling off the edge of the world, and I’ve made peace with them. But I compromise less than most people.
There’s a way to romanticize this - free spirit! path less traveled? marching to my own drummer? But is there anything particularly romantic about letting people down?
I wanted to make a manifesto for myself today, but I couldn’t figure out the purpose in posting it publically. And what it would say? I’m my own person, and no one can claim me? Good for me, right. There were going to be some lines about treating every person I know with dignity, whether they’re in the room or not. Sometimes I feel like I sell out people for entertainment, or to be liked, but that’s an aside. But maybe not - if I don’t want to be owned, does that mean I don’t want to own anyone else, either?
I do. I collect pieces of people like jewels. I get a heat in my stomach like joy or sex when people confide in me; it makes me feel better, more connected, more in love with everyone. But I just want to collect.
Anyway, here’s a poem:
It’s Ours
Charles Bukowski
there is always that space there
just before they get to us
that space
that fine relaxer
the breather
while say
flopping on a bed
thinking of nothing
or say
pouring a glass of water from the
spigot
while entranced by
nothing
that
gentle pure
space
it’s worth
centuries of
existence
say
just to scratch your neck
while looking out the window at
a bare branch
that space
there
before they get to us
ensures
that
when they do
they won’t
get it all
ever.