Two halves, revisited

There’s two of me. Never been a secret. Along with my dippy nostalgia and my overattention to detail, this is what I write about. What I can say differently, by now? I’m told it’s OK to be divided, that everyone’s divided, but listen: rarely are the divisions so equal. Rarely do they refuse reconciliation.

I’m a hedonist. Selectively. (See? We start already.) I want scotch, and I want it now, in a cold lowball. I want to drink until it’s OK to be me. Then I want to disappear into the crowd. Stalk a warm body. But not anyone. I don’t want strangers. Unappealing. I want someone I’ve studied, but don’t understand, and I want carnal research. I want it so badly that I will drop my entire life for the moment.

The Moment. You know what I mean. Before the scotch and the low-cut dresses and perfumey hair, there’s sitting in an office, sorting mail. In a classroom, taking notes. In an apartment, across a room. I time it well. It’s an art, the affair. I will wait it out as long it takes. I will wait until he believes it’s his idea. I’ll make him come to me. Then -

This doesn’t describe it. I can’t describe it. I’m trying to explain a wildness that isn’t genuine. I don’t want drugs. I don’t want much drunk. I don’t want blind sex. I don’t want to go to Argentina. I don’t want to smash things or people. I want it quiet. I want it suppressed. I want it to converge explosively, then go away.

Let me describe the other part. This is simple: I want someone to come home to. The same person. I want an orderly home, the same home. I want to be an island, with one other inhabitant. I want to see no one except my husband and lock ourselves away with the animals, watch sixteen episodes of a trashy TV show. I want to plant my vegetable garden.

Wake up slowly each morning, open a window, brew coffee, walk the dog around the trainyard, putter, go to work, come home, light a candle, make dinner, slouch into each other on the couch, make lazy weekend plans and then break them, go for Sunday walks, spend weekends at the cabin, love only each other. Love only him. I want this. I want this! Not boring. Interesting in its own right. Fulfilling with a grown-up depth.

Doesn’t describe it, either! Help me out here. I assume everyone has these parts - the spinster noir, the comfortable rock. When you’re young, you try both. Or one. Then you settle into another. The point is, you choose. You make camp or you keep moving. But I can’t do either. Oh, I’ve tried. Tried, tried, tried. Other people and the whiskey burn and the way I feel in a short dress with my hair over my eyes is too interesting to give up. Too vital for my heart. Keeps the horrible existential desperation on its leash.

Without it, I’d go mad. I know this, because I have. Gone mad. The only way to never go there again is to keep moving, and find zen within the movement. But what about the camp? What about the end of the day when all I want is to rest my head? People want too much, sometimes. Sometimes the interestingness turns cheap. What then?

There is a moment before I leave the house when I’m at the bottom of the stairs. My shoes are half-on. I smell like a woman in a dress like this smells. There are things in my hand: cellphone, purse, keys, money, directions. Upstairs there’s a light on in the bedroom, and a bed with a white blanket. Each time - each time! - I have to decide. Sometimes I kick off the heels and go upstairs. Sometimes I lock the door and start the car. But I always, always want both. There has never been a moment where I haven’t. I want life to love me, and I want it to leave me alone.

The older I get, the more I realize I have to choose. It’s easy to choose when you don’t already have camp, but I do. I stay stagnant between the tent and the fields, waiting to be kicked out or called in. I don’t resist the call. But I stay close enough so I can see home.

We live in nomadic times. No more metaphors. I’ve said enough. I want, I want, I want. But only on my terms. Sometimes I meet people like me. Uneasy adventurers. We know each other immediately. We acknowledge the signs. We’re usually terrible for each other. No comfort at all except recognition: we are screwed, this lot. We will never be happy. We will never fit into our skin. But we will have stories. Ask Bukowksi. Ask Fitzgerald. Dead writers. Unhappy and alone. But engaged, and conscious, and interested, I think. Was it worth it? Is it worth it? What a risk, all this. All this, and you.

Posted by: Zosia | 05-09-2008 | 11:05 PM
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The highway

I last drove on a highway in June 2002.

I was in Hopkins that summer. I’d run away from Duluth for a few months to get my head together after a bruisy spring in which I managed to destroy my relationship and my theatre career in one punch. I was falling in love with Chris, but my old relationship (Erik) was still around, and I vacillated between the two for a while. I lived in the muggy basement of a house owned by a sweet new-agey woman I’d met through Erik. She was loyal to him. She didn’t like Chris coming over, so he crawled through the storm window. (I’ve talked about this before.) I was taking sedatives, but my freckles were out for the summer and I went places. Everything was OK, until it wasn’t.

Anyway, I was driving back from seeing Erik in Duluth. I was racing a dude in sunglasses from Florida when I reached over to grab my directions. My car went across three lanes of traffic - during rush hour! - and ended tilted in a ditch. I lived, somehow. Thirty minutes later, still shaky, a girl slammed into me under the 11th Street bridge. Then another girl slammed into her. When I opened my door, my knees were water and I fell. The highway did not cause these accidents, but combined with the heat and disorientation of the summer, a phobia developed: I drove on the highway once more, to move back, but I never drove on it again.

I learned backroads, or I didn’t go at all. Embarrassed, I made up excuses about my car, or my health, and I canceled plans because I didn’t want to ask my friends for one more ride, especially since I lived out in the suburbs (Richfield, then Saint Louis Park). I missed concerts, parties, weddings, work meetings, school events, dates and fantastic adventures. I trapped myself, for a while, though I never knew if the driving got me, or if I used it as a crutch. Either way, I did not drive on a highway. Not once, for six years.

So this Saturday it was raining and dark and late. I was tired and maybe a little weepy. I felt defeated and brave because of life’s latest fluctuations (self-caused, really), and so I took a turn and I was on the highway. I did not die. My car did not explode. My brain did not immediately morph into one of those plasma balls you see at the science museum. I just drove. I did it because I had to, and I did it out of a kind of love, or what I thought was the end of love. And then the next day, I did it again. And then again.

We know how I make decisions: they seem impulsive, but I’ve been quietly planning for months. Sometimes I don’t even know I’m planning. My bravery follows the same line. I am afraid, for years. I am afraid, for minutes. And then I’m not afraid at all, and I step into the road. Easy enough.

Posted by: Zosia | 05-05-2008 | 11:05 PM
Posted in: General | Comments (0)