Author: LesleyPearl

I am. A massage therapist. A teacher. A writer. A healer. A dancer. An artist. A bodysherpa. For 10 years I made my living telling other people’s stories — as a reporter, and then, later, as a public relations and marketing professional. Today I help people rewrite their own body stories. Much as I have rewritten mine. My body story read: Fat. Uncoordinated. Sickly, facing a life of respiratory problems. In my 40s, I’ve completed a bike century and sprint triathlon. Hiked the hills of California, Colorado and the South of France. Mountain biked through the Sierra Madre. Snow shoed at Yosemite. And maintained a healthy weight for eight years. Lately, I spend Sunday mornings dancing to West African drumming. I look in the mirror and I like what I see. I believe that when you change how you feel about your body, you change what you can do with your body. And the universe opens with infinite possibilities. As a self-named bodysherpa, I’ve built a practice with the express purpose of helping people to fall in love with their bodies, take care of their bodies and do things they never imagined possible. My blogs are a further exploration of accepting myself for who and how I am at this very moment.

Artist Date 88: Tied

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rcfIt’s Sunday and I’m not at dance class…which feels really weird. I’ll be away more than here – to San Francisco in September and Italy the following month – so it didn’t really make sense to enroll this session.  Except it’s “what I do.”  Except today.

The sun is hot, the air is crisp and the sky is a perfectly blue sky blue. The kind of day I would lament missing if I were in the dance studio.

I jump on my bike and pedal to Wicker Park for the Renegade Craft Fair: Artist Date 88.

There’s a DJ spinning records and it’s all I can do to not spontaneously bust into dance. Although I’m pretty sure no one would mind.

There is leather and pottery. Fibers and lithographs.  And lots and lots of jewelry.

I strike up a conversation with a young jewelry maker from Wisconsin. We talk about art school – where she went, my desire to go.  She is flanked by her mother who notes the wholehearted support she offered her daughter in following her bliss.

For years I blamed my parents for my not going to art school. Truth told, I don’t think I had the drive, let alone the chops.  I fancied myself a fine artist but I didn’t have the discipline.  A discipline I only found later in life – much later, in my 40s, when I took on Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way for a second time.

Feeling desperate, crazy and on my knees, I embraced the book as others might the Bible or the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Viewing it as a salvation.  The keys to the kingdom.  The yellow brick road.

I took on nearly every suggestion – most noteworthy, the bogeyman – the Artist Date. That hour or so alone each week to fill my creative coffers.  Scheduled.  Planned.  And penciled in to my calendar.

A commitment to myself and my creativity.

It changed my life. And I’m pretty sure saved it.  Or at least my sanity.  It forced me to focus on me.  Not in a navel-gazing way, but more in a “What have you done for me, lately,” Janet Jackson kind of way.  Except I’m not asking some no-goodnik while dancing at a diner…I’m asking myself.

When I speak of it, I feel like the Pied Piper.  And today I should have brought my flute.

I run into my friend Whitney, who introduces me to a colleague, who innocently asks, “What brings you here?”

The answer seems obvious. The art.  The weather.  The promise of Black Dog Gelato.  Instead, I tell her about The Artist Date.

As I speak, I become excited by own story. Almost as if it is someone else’s story.  And I am reminded that my life is really quite magical.  That I AM the woman I always wanted to be.  A cool, creative, urban chick.  Like the women I saw in photographs when I was 12 – waiting on line for a shave or a Mohawk on Astor Place in New York.

It is the same feeling I have talking to the boys from San Francisco – where I lived for 14 years – who make and sell tea, T-We. We talk about what took me there – a job.  And what brought me here – love.  For my then husband, when I followed him to Chicago for medical residency.  And later for myself, the people, and the place itself – when I returned by choice, alone, a little more than two years ago.

It’s the feeling I have trying to put a ribbon into an old manual typewriter – part of a salon set up on Division Street by a woman renting vintage furniture. I tell her I learned to write on a typewriter – an IBM Selectric – when I was in journalism school.  About editing the newspaper on boards.  Printed stories rolled on to glass with wax and hacked at with a blue marker to fit the page.  It is the work that took me to San Francisco.  To Germany and Israel.

It’s the feeling I have talking with the woman who make shoes with ribbon laces – MOPED. I am lacing up a pair with gold ribbons and wonder aloud if they might not serve me well in Italy.

We talk about volunteering overseas. My upcoming flight of fancy at a fair-trade chocolate festival in Umbria, where I will live in an apartment with other volunteers from around the globe, and play out my “I live in Europe” fantasy.  I tell her about volunteering in Rwanda and in the South of France.  How traveling this way allows me to go alone without being alone.  How it ties me to people and place and purpose.

Like the ribbons I pick to take with me – seven in total. Purple.  Black.  Grey.  Pink stripes.  Navy stripes.  Silver glitter.  Gold.

Ribbons that tie me to these shoes.

To the ground.  To myself.  To this life.  The one a 12-year-old imagined – right down to the shave.

Hacked

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hey“Hey.”

I’ve been waiting nearly six months for this.  Not this exactly.  But something like it.

Not waiting exactly.  I stopped doing that, having expectations, a long time ago.  But those close to me assured me I would hear something – some sort of word or gesture or acknowledgment – someday.

Tuesday is someday.

I am leaving dinner with my girlfriends at the Birchwood Kitchen.  Lindsey and I are considering going to Martyrs to hear an Afro-Caribbean band.  Our friend Toast has put us on the guest list.

I look down at my phone.  There’s a Facebook message.  It is from Mr. 700 Miles.

My heart stops.

Mr. 700 Miles.  The first man who ever walked out of my life without a word.  (Strangely, I have had this experience twice now.  I’m certain there is some sort of lesson in here I haven’t yet mastered.)

A man I grew up with but didn’t really know.  He lives about 700 miles from Chicago – ergo the name.

He was going through a divorce when we reconnected on Facebook.  I was on the other side of mine.  Our stories were remarkably similar.  Very quickly, an intimacy blossomed between us – first in status updates.  Then in private messages, telephone calls and Skype dates.

I was smitten.  I felt like I’d always known him.   And at the same time, like I’d been waiting my whole life to meet him.

And then one day he was gone.  No call.  No text.  No Facebook message.

I reached out to him a single time – about five days after missing our Skype date – and left him a message telling him it was clear he couldn’t “do this.”  That I had no desire to convince him otherwise.  And that I was sad.  Sad we weren’t “doing this.”  But more than that, sad he couldn’t tell me.

I reminded him we were friends.  That we had always been friends.  I told him I wasn’t angry, and implored him to contact me.  To tell me what was going on for him.

Two hours later, when I hadn’t heard from him, I knew that I wouldn’t.

And then, Tuesday…”Hey.”

I looked up from my phone, leaned into Lindsey and said, “Let’s go hear music and dance.”  My reaction surprised me.

Once upon a time I would have freaked out.  I would have burst into tears.  Or worse, burst into drama.

Once upon a time I would have dashed home (no mind that I had other plans) and called or messaged him and waited for his reply.  Or if I did go out, I would check my phone all night.  Or at the very least, I would talk about it, about him, and nothing else – all night.

That’s not what happened.

Instead, I sent a text to a mentor and friend who knows every intimate detail of the story of Mr. 700 Miles.  I let her know I had received his message.  That I was going to hear music with Lindsey.  And planned to do nothing until morning.

And Lindsey and I did talk about it, about him – some.  And we talked about other things too.

She marveled at my calm.  I felt empowered.

“I’ve been ‘waiting’ six months.  He can wait a night.  Let him squirm.”

These are not my words.  But there they were.

And then we danced.  At times, we were the only ones on the floor.  I felt confident and sexy.  I wondered if the bass player was single.  I did not check my phone a single time.

Around 10:30, we left.

When I arrived home, I went to his Facebook page.  Some wise, intuitive part of me guided me there.  His status read, “I was hacked please don’t open messages.”  (No punctuation.)

My heart sank a little.  Not because I wanted him “back.”  Not because I still wanted to “do this.”  Because I thought I might get an answer.  A courtesy.  Because I thought my friends might be right.

Because I thought he might prove to be closer to the man I thought he was, instead of the frightened boy he turned out to be.  Because I missed my friend.

But in that sinking, I recognized a victory.  A miracle, really.  My response, or lack thereof.  And it was all mine, regardless of who reached out to me, Mr. 700 Miles or his Hacker.  I acted different.  I was different.  I didn’t try to be.  I just was.

I didn’t just feel empowered, I was empowered.  I didn’t just feel confident and sexy, I was confident and sexy.

And I did not check my phone a single time.

Artist Date 87: This Is Not

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This is not us wearing bowler hats.
This is not us wearing bowler hats.

This is not an Artist Date.

I have written these words here before.  More than once.  Every time I act contrary to Julia Cameron’s prescription of the Artist Date in The Artist’s Way.

“An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist.  In its most primary form, the artist date is an excursion, a play date that you preplan and defend against all interlopers.  You do not take anyone on this artist date but you and your inner artist, a.k.a. you creative child.  That means no lovers, friends, spouses, children – no taggers-on of any stripe.”

I have written these words when choosing to spend a precious few hours with Clover before she gives birth to baby Juniper.  When going to Story Club, with hopes of getting to read my work on stage, with Debbie.  When reading an Anne Sexton biography on the airplane.  When staying in and cooked.

And today, when I invite Julie to the Rene Magritte exhibit and lecture at the Art Institute of Chicago – Artist Date 87.

The words are both literal and playful.  Like the way we don bowler hats in the gift shop, take a selfie and post it to Facebook with the words, “This is not us in bowler hats.”  Paying homage to the iconographic The Treachery of Images – a painting of a pipe, (but clearly not a pipe) with the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.”  This is not a pipe.

This is not a pipe.
This is not a pipe.

Since beginning my commitment to the weekly Artist Date, I can count on one hand the number of times I have asked someone to join me at the Art Institute.  There have been two.  Both of them impromptu.

Rescuing Alex from the long line for admission on free Thursday nights.  I whisk him through the member entrance and into a seat for a lecture on “The Return of the Modern Masters.”

Eating free appetizers in the courtyard with Matt before heading off on a shopping pilgrimage to Costco.  I show him Marc Chagall’s America Windows.  I visit the blue glass where Ferris kissed Sloane in the John Hughes classic every time I am here.  But Matt has never seen it.

My date with Julie is by design.  We planned it weeks ago, when we ran into one another at a party.  That night, we talked about our writing.  Our work.  Choosing to be alone rather than settling.  About my Artist Dates…and I invited her to join me on one.

Flanked by her, I walk through the exhibit differently.  I am not taking photographs.  (None are allowed anyway.)  I am not taking notes.  I am not blogging in my head.  I am much more present.  In the moment.  In thought.  Not about my words but about the work.  In relation.

The Eternally Obvious.  Five pieces of a woman – face, breasts, cunt, knees, feet – each individually framed and strung together vertically.

For years, this is how I offered myself.  Pieces of myself.  Body parts.  I say this to myself.  And to Julie.  She nods, understanding completely.

Attempting the Impossible.  A woman “becoming,” as a man paints her into existence.  Does she exist only as he creates her, or is he painting what is already there – like the painter in La Clairvoyance, who stares at an egg while his brush forms a bird?

Le Viol (Rape).  Eyes replaced by breasts, mouth by vulva.  Julie calls it violent.  Is this how we are really seen?

Conversations I might not have alone.  Intimate.  Heady.  Vulnerable.  Hats I might not otherwise try on.

Artist Date.  “A block of time…especially set aside and committed to nurturing…creative consciousness…an excursion, a play date that you preplan and defend against all interlopers…”

Il s’agit d’une date de l’artiste.   This is an Artist Date.

Artist Date 86: On a Scooter, With a Boy in Front and Chocolate in my Pocket

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Final moments in St. Victor la Coste, France. I hiked up to this crumbling castle every day.
Final moments in St. Victor la Coste, France. I hiked up to this crumbling castle every day.

I leave for Italy in 39 days.

I only recently bought my plane ticket, and just last week decided exactly where I will spend the days following my volunteer work in Umbria. I have not booked a single night at a hotel, pensione, hostel or airbnb.

This is highly unusual for me.

By now I would have secured a room for all of my nights, and outlined a rough itinerary of my days – making certain I knew when each museum closed.  I learned this from my friend Tim, who saved the Louvre for his last day in Paris, not realizing it closed on Tuesdays.  He has lovely pictures of the outside.

I would have purchased my train tickets and made copies of my passport.  My travel books would be dog-eared and yellowed with highlighter.

I have done none of this.  I’m not sure why.

And so I find myself tucked into a big chair in the back of the Book Cellar, pouring over travel guides – more out of necessity than anything.  Fodors.  Rough Guide.  Lonely Planet.  Thick books on the whole of Italy.  Thinner versions on Rome, Florence and Tuscany.  Artist Date 86.

I recall my first travels overseas – press trips to Germany and Israel.  I was in my 20s and had dreamed of traveling abroad.  Everything was handled for me.  Flights.  Hotel.  Itinerary.  And yet, I sat at San Francisco International Airport before each trip – terrified.

Flying out of SFO in 1999 to Spain – my first overseas trip with my then boyfriend, now ex-husband — felt wholly different.  I wasn’t alone.

One Saturday morning we somewhat impulsively bid on Priceline tickets to Madrid.  By afternoon, we were sprawled out on the floor of Borders Books – leaving a few hours later with copies of Frommers – Europe on $100 a day and Madrid, Barcelona and Seville.

We traveled overseas together several times over the next few years – me carefully crafting an itinerary each time.   Yet, a part of me longed to travel alone, as so many of my friends had done after college.

And at 37, I do it.

At the time, I feel too old to throw a rucksack on my back, sleep in hostels and shower in train stations.  I find a trip volunteering in the south of France, building walls as part of an architectural restoration project.

I spend a few days in Paris by myself when I arrive.  It does not feel glamorous and exciting as I had imagined.  It feels scary and lonely.  I wander the streets alone, slightly drunk and call my then husband — crying.  A few days later I join my team in Avignon.  Surrounded by volunteers from around the word, ranging in age from 21 to 73, I feel joyous and free.  I have found my place, my role.  I am the friendly American who drinks too much and gives massages.

Building walls in the South of France. 2006.
Building walls in the South of France. 2006.

Eight years later, (I will turn 45 in Italy) I do not drink anymore.  I do not have a husband anymore.  These things that I leaned into ceased to serve me long ago.  This time, this trip, I must lean into myself.  My hesitation in planning suddenly makes sense.  I am afraid.

And yet, I have a plan, a purpose – I am again joining volunteers from around the globe.  This time, at the Altrocioccolato Festival – known as the “other chocolate festival” – outside of Perugia.  This time, my alone time is on the back-end of the trip – and I will have a better sense of place.  This time I have people, “waiting” for me in church basements.  People who also used to drink too much but don’t anymore – people like me.

My friend Pam says I will go to Italy and meet a boy on a scooter and never come home.  She tells me that I am brave.  That she doesn’t know anyone else our age doing what I am doing – traveling, alone.  I do not feel brave.

And I remember what I’ve been told, that bravery isn’t the absence of fear, it is walking through it anyway.

Or perhaps flying through it – direct from Chicago to Rome on Alitalia.  Or riding a scooter through it – an Italian boy in front, and chocolate in my pocket.

Artist Date 85: Cooking Up A Happy Ending

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chef 3

I’m waiting for a call.

THAT call.  From a man I’ve been dating.

I hesitate to use the word as I’m never sure when it applies.  In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever really dated.  I’ve fucked.  And I’ve been in relationships.

We have gone out three times.  He has done all the asking, and all the paying.  This last time he invited me into his home, the home he shares with his two daughters (they were with their mother), and cooked me dinner.  He is a chef.

I believe this would be considered dating.

He tossed a salad of arugula and chopped endive with his hands (a decidedly sexy move) laid over a bed of ripe, juicy figs (a decidedly sexy fruit) and sprinkled it with knobs of goat cheese and homemade croutons.  Then fed me roasted chicken and vegetables.   Simple.  Elegant.  Delicious.

He bought me sparkling waters and sodas as he knows I do not drink.  And told me his 12-year-old daughter was suspect about their shopping trip to Whole Foods.

I set the table.  And we continued sharing our stories.  It felt easy.

At 10 p.m. he asked me if I “wanted to have a sleepover.”

I told myself I would not sleep with him.  I told my girlfriends I would not sleep with him.  I know how sex can escalate my expectations.  I know how it can short-circuit the dance of dating.  I like this man.  And so, his arms around my waist, his fingers tucked down the back of my skinny corduroys, I smiled at him and said, “I can’t.  I’m not ready to have sex with you.”

It was painful.

But more painful was his response.  “I didn’t ask you if you wanted to have sex.  I asked you if you wanted to sleep over.”

I had not woken up with someone since moving out of the bedroom I shared with my ex-husband more than two years ago.  I desperately wanted to stay, but feared not honoring my commitment to myself.

I cast my eyes down, my shirt half unbuttoned and heard him say, “Lesley, go move your car into the garage.”  Secretly relieved, he made the decision for me.

We did have sex that night.  And in the morning too.  And I discovered he was the same sweet man who cooked me dinner the night before.  Who wrapped his body around mine as we drifted off to sleep.  And gently rubbed his fingers between mine when I woke up in the middle of the night, easing me back to unconsciousness.

He kissed me and rubbed my head, told me I talked in my sleep and sent me through his youngest daughter’s pink bedroom and into the closet for a toothbrush.

Downstairs, we drank tea in the kitchen and talked.  I shared my fears about this being a one-night stand.  Just sex, as I was looking for more.  I had voiced them the night before.  Both times he responded, “I wouldn’t have invited you into my home and cooked you dinner if I just wanted to fuck you.”

I felt foolish harping on it.

I haven’t heard from him since.  It has been three days.

My head is spinning as I’ve played this over and over in my head.  Looking at the erratic nature of his communication – always, since the very start.  Wondering if I insulted him with my fears and blaming myself for being too needy of his reassurance.  Or worse, being too much.

My friends tell me that nothing has changed. That his timeline is not my timeline.  They remind me he has a big new job, is going through a divorce and has two children.  That nothing has changed.

And they give me solid advice: Do your work.  Make your art.  Go on Artist Dates.

And so I am here on a Saturday night at the Century Theatre watching Chef – Artist Date 85.

Perhaps it wasn’t the ideal movie choice this evening, but I’d been wanting to see it.

The cooking scenes are lush, gorgeous, sexy.  They remind me of the chef.  As does the relationship between the lead and his son, as he too is a divorced dad.  I am teary.

And then, blessedly, I am pulled out of recognition and identification and into the parts of the story that have nothing to do with me and my chef.  A story of friendship and road trips and standing up for what you know to be true.  Of unchecked emotion.  The power of Tweeting (I’m woefully behind).  And the ability, and responsibility, of each of us to be both teacher and student.

It is a story of happy endings.

So far, mine is not.  At least not this particular one.

I turn on my phone as I leave the theater.  No text.  No voicemail.  (And as I complete the writing of this, a week after leaving his home in last night’s clothing, I still haven’t heard from him.)

I don’t like it.

But I trust, if I follow my friends’ words — Do your work.  Make your art.  Go on Artist Dates – mine will be a happy ending.  With or without the chef.

Artist Date 84: Moreloveletters

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2014-08-16 23.04.48

“If you can read this, then it’s yours! Enjoy!”

I’m standing in the bathroom at Weight Watchers with Leah.  A brown envelope sitting on top of the tampon machine catches my attention.

There’s a hashtag on it: #moreloveletters as well as a website: moreloveletters.com.  Inside is a card with an owl and the words “yooo-hoo!”  And inside that are these words:

“Dear Amazing Person,

You are the lovely recipient of a card from moi! A total complete stranger! Not the creepy kind, more like a loving kind to tell you how awesome you are! Every day as you grow you become more and more amazing! Don’t ever doubt yourself!  You rock!  Keep smiling! Share joy with others!  Lots of hugs, Sunshine”

A wave of joy and gratitude washes over my body.  It is an auspicious beginning to my Artist Date – number 84 – which in my mind doesn’t begin until this evening.  I have treated myself to a front row ticket for the Chicago Human Rhythm Project.  I wasn’t familiar with it, but I liked the sound of it.  And already, the magic of the Artist Date – the magic of being filled up – has begun.

I am reminded of my spiritual business teacher Anne Sagendorph Moon, who taught me that money begets money.  That I am able to receive only by giving.  And to tithe the sources of my inspiration.

I recall another of Anne’s students getting two, crisp, $100 bills from the bank, dropping them in the hands of two complete strangers and running away, grinning.

This note in my hand feels like a $100 bill.  My life feels magical and full of possibilities.  I want to deliver my own little brown-wrapped notecards of love into the world.

And for the rest of the day, I do.  Energetically giving and receiving loveletters until I can pen my own and join this crazy, mad, lovely movement.  Hoping that love begets love.

I text the chef – a man I’ve just begun dating.  I recall it is a day of great transition for him and I wish him well.  I do not ask him any questions, nothing that requires action or a response on his part.  I receive one anyway.  “Was thinking of you…Funny.”

I call out a message of encouragement to the woman in the dressing room next to mine at Intimacy – a upscale lingerie shop.  An invitation to treat herself.  She has just let out a squeal of joy.  That “aha-you’ve-changed-my-life-with-the-right-size-bra-and-thank-you-for-showing-me-how-to-wear-it-properly” cry of relief.  I know it.  I’ve had it here.  More than once.

She laments, “Now I have to make choices.  I’ve never had choices.”

“Buy them all,” I yell through the walls.  Laughter.  Hers.  The salesperson’s.  My own.  A host of other women behind closed doors.  “Seriously.  Do it.”

I don’t know what she does, but I leave smiling with a bag full of lacy bits.  Bras and panties.  Silky. Filmy. Embroidered. Embellished.  The price tags make me giggle.  $40.  $65.  $110.  Ridiculous.  Each rings up at 70 percent off.  A sexy little loveletter to myself.

I call a friend and hold her heart.  I eat dinner and go to the show where I receive the sweat, the lifeblood, of the dancers – literally.  Bits of salty water catching light, cast into space.  The clickety-clap tapping of the feet of teenage girls allows me to imagine a different trajectory.  Sliding doors.

I am recognized as a dancer in my own right by the woman in the seat next to me.  She dances the beginning level West African class at the Old Town School of Music and sees me coming in for the intermediate one.

She sees me.  She has seen me.  She wants to know how long it has taken to arrive where I am.  I tell her I have no idea.

On the way out, I trade a big, wide grin with the handsome sound engineer.  His smile back reflects my own.

I do not give him my card or try to engage him in conversation.  I allow this simple exchange of heart to stand on its own, as if to say “Namaste — I see the God on you.”  A final loveletter of the night.

Choosing To Be A Lesbian Alcoholist

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Patsy and I in Israel, nearly 20 years ago.
Patsy and I in Israel, nearly 20 years ago.

 

The last time I saw Patsy was at my wedding – nearly 13 years ago.  She officiated, combining Jewish, Hindu, Native American and British elements into a ceremony that spoke to both of our hearts and sensibilities.

I spoke to her yesterday for the first time in more years that I can count – not quite 13, but far too long.

We talked about Mickey – her mom – who had just died and what that felt like for her.  About meeting in Israel on a press trip nearly 20 years ago.  And so much of what had happened in the in between.  Things we caught in passing, in pithy Facebook posts and the occasional email.

She had no real sense of what had happened between my ex and me.  Or even that I had (happily) given up the fight with alcohol nearly seven years ago.

And because she had not been with me for every step, every man, every tear and nuance of the journey – she saw the story, my story, far differently than me.  Her reflections were, in a word, a revelation.

She had recently asked me in an email if there was “someone special” in my life.

It was the question I have come to expect. To brace myself for. To both love and despise – as it can feel both hopeful and humiliating, depending on the day, my mood and the current state of my heart.

I told her that I did not. That it hurt my heart to write that.

I told her about the suggestion that I not date for a year after my divorce. How that was pretty easy as no one was really asking. (Which is not exactly true. More to the point would be, no one I was interested in was asking.) And how that year had come and gone.

I told her I had met some extraordinary men, experienced some wonderful emotional intimacy and some wonderful romance.  But none had been truly available for one reason or another.

I told her I am online, like every other schlub, although it is not how I imagine meeting someone. And to keep me and my big, juicy, open heart in her thoughts and manifestations.

It was “my story.” The one I tell myself. The one I tell here.

Yesterday, she helped me tell the next chapter. It had a decidedly different feel.

I told her about the “romantic friendship” with my spiritual-traveling twin. About the man nearly 13 years my junior, who has been dancing around me (and me, him) for some months, and our breakfast date that morning. And about a similar dance I have been doing with a man who looks a lot like Daniel Day Lewis – my ex’s doppelganger.

I told her about the friend who continues to tell me, “I’m still interested.” How my feelings remain platonic. And that I have no desire to try to “make them” otherwise.

And I told her about a new man – the chef – who I actually did meet online. We’ve had just a few dates, and my feelings feel “right sized.” He is easy to talk to and I have fun spending time with him. I find him attractive and I like how he kisses.

“I think you are very genuine,” he blurted across the table a few nights ago. I like that too. Because it is kind and observant, but mostly because it is true.

Patsy replied, “You ARE dating a lot of men right now. You are having fun. You just haven’t settled on one.”

It was true. It IS true. It sounds different from “I am still not in a relationship,” even though the actual details are the same. And it feels different.

She added that in the nearly 20 years she has known me, that I have always had men in my orbit. Always. That I have always been attractive to men. Always.

This was news. I had not seen it that way.

Seems I have spent the past 30-plus years mostly noticing the time in between. The times of breakup and/or longing. And believing that everyone else was constantly in relationship – meaningful relationship – and wondering why I was not.

She reminded me of the other chef. The one I dated before my ex-husband.

And I recalled the hotel bartender in Israel who suggested I show him the pictures in my room. When I replied, “I think you’ve seen all the pictures in all of these rooms,” he asked if I was a lesbian. Earlier he had asked if I was “an alcoholist,” as I turned down a drink.  Close enough.

I chose an evening with my new press-trip friends (among them, Patsy) over an overseas fling, and a good story to be certain. I chose to be the lesbian alcoholist.

And in that recalling, I saw myself as Patsy saw me. (And likely, many others.) Attractive. Discerning. At choice. I have always been at choice…in relationships. And now, in how tell my story.

 

 

Artist Date 83: On The Path All Along

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Photo: Egyptian Streets
Photo: Egyptian Streets

I’m late.

I peel myself away from the Lebanese pastries – empanada-like sweets filled with sweet cheese, the other with nuts, covered in rosewater – special for Ramadan.  From this conversation which is at once both playful and real.  That reminds me what it feels like to connect deeply. To be met spiritually.

I dash into my apartment and dial into the conference call – 7 Pathways to Freedom, Love and Abundance.  Artist Date 83.

Debbie is mid-meditation.  I sit down at the table, rest my feet on the bar that goes across the underside of it, close my eyes and let myself fall into her words.

She suggested the workshop following my most recent clairvoyant reading and healing.  It made sense to me.  I knew I needed a pathway.  Or more to the point, help continuing on the path I am on.  Lately, I’m having trouble seeing the road.

Nearly two years out of my divorce, I expected to be, to have been, in a relationship by now.  I expected to be financially fully self-supporting.

I’ve had men in my life.  Moments of romance and intimacy.

Months of late-night phone calls navigating the sloppy paths of our mutual divorces, followed by a road trip on the sloppy path cross-country that brought me home.  Hours-long make-out sessions lasting from steamy evening into near dawn.  Skype dates where I bared my soul, and my body, on the promise we’d “give it a go,” throwing caution to the 700 miles that lay between us.

I’ve had work.

A place to show up – more days than not.  Money.  Benefits that don’t fit neatly into an offer package.  No health insurance or paid-time off.  Instead, the opportunity to make an impact.  To work with others.  To stumble in a safe place.  And to shine brightly too.

Cobbled together with the cash and prizes of divorce, I’ve had enough to live on.  More than.

But I want more.  More than moments.  More than enough without spousal support.  (Which, sooner rather than later, I will no longer receive.)

My hope is that something will open up for me in this workshop.  Some chakra blockage will get knocked loose.

I close my eyes and listen to Debbie’s words.  I am overcome with shame.

Shame for the relationships in my life where feelings don’t match.

Shame for the sex I’m not having.

Shame that I was set free…and remain free.

(The words slip off of my fingertips now, in real-time, as I write.  Freedom.  One of the promises of the workshop.  It is not lost on me.  But in workshop time I only feel shame.)

“I am ashamed that my friend’s feelings don’t match my own.”  The words slip past my lips as we share our experiences of the meditation.

(And again, in real-time, I realize this is not exactly true.  I think of this particular relationship, where we share a deep connection – a love for one another that is acknowledged often and freely by us both.  What is not matched is where we are in our lives – what each of us is available for.)

I speak my embarrassing, humiliating truth and nothing bad happens.

A half hour later we disconnect.  I do not recall a thing I have heard.  I am grateful for the audio link which will arrive the next day.

I brush my teeth, wash my face, and write my nightly gratitude list.  I am grateful I do not feel like calling Mr. 700 Miles today.  For Lebanese pastry and time with a friend who loves me.   I am grateful for therapy tomorrow and the Cheryl Strayed book I am reading, Tiny, Beautiful Things. 

The list goes on.  Long.  Abundant.

Freedom.  Love.  Abundance.  The workshop promises.  All right here, right now, in my life.  I am on the path.  I always was.  Now I can once again see it.

Artist Date 82: Avec moi-même

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2014-07-17 17.46.31

Big Kahuna Yard Sale.  The Chicago Mosaic School.  Viva Vintage Clothing.

I am walking down Ravenswood Avenue, following the elevated Metra rail tracks.  A pathway I have taken hundreds of times.  Except that I usually don’t go south of Montrose.  I haven’t had a reason to.  And I usually walk on the east side only.

Except today.

Artist Date 82.

Earlier tonight I ditched my plans to attend an end of Ramadan feast for Muslims and Jews.  I am tired and overwhelmed and this small gesture seems like a big step towards self-care.

It is not easy as I am of the variety who fears missing out on something fantastic.  Of the variety more comfortable going and doing than sitting and being.  Even though I have maintained a meditation practice for more than 12 years.  Even though I make my living, in part, doing massage – the stillest work I can imagine.

I like an Artist Date rich with stimulation – music, prayer, food, potential tumult.  Like an end of Ramadan feast.

But today I choose to fill myself in the quietest, stillest way I know how.  Doing one of the only two things that made any sense to me during my divorce and for months after.  I am walking.  (Writing being the other.)  Walking somewhere familiar.  (Ravenswood between Lawrence and Montrose.) And then somewhere new. (Ravenswood between Montrose and Irving Park.)

It seems like such innocuous newness.  Hardly worth mentioning.  And yet, I see all sorts of things for the first time.

A Latin restaurant.  A pilates studio.  Ballroom dancing lessons.

A beer-tasting room.  Several artist studios.  AVEC painted on a building.  And again on a bridge.

French taggers?

2014-07-17 18.03.52

I take photographs of the tags and send them to a friend along with a text that reads, “Um…how do you pronounce that?!”— referencing the hotel concierge who suggested he and his date have dinner at (emphasis on hard A)vec.

He texts back “Aye-Veck!” and “Aw, Heck” and continues on and on in French.  I get about two-thirds of it, then confess I know just enough French to order pastry and ask for directions without embarrassing myself in Paris.  (I may or may not understand the response, depending on the speed of the speaker.)

We go back and forth like this for a bit and I realize I am very much AVEC.  I am very much WITH my friend.  Which is lovely and fun.  I adore him and we laugh a lot.  But this is not why I am here, wandering Ravenswood Avenue, alone.

I think about the rules I created early on for my Artist Dates: Do not do anything I wouldn’t do on a “real” date.  Answer a telephone call or text.  Listen to music.  Check Facebook on my phone.

Eighty-two dates in, I’ve loosened up on the rules, perhaps even forgetting them – until now.

I stop texting and slip the phone in my pocket.

I am amazed how quickly, how easily I can be pulled from myself, from one moment into another, from what is right in front of me.

Forty-five minutes ago I took my ear buds out and paused Aretha Franklin on Pandora.  The sound of the Queen of Soul distracted me from myself, so I put the music away.  Now the words and this relationship distract me.  I put them away too and return to myself.

AVEC moi-même.  With myself.

Artist Date 81: I Could Swim In Your Voice. And Drown In My Own.

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With storytellers Carmen and James. Carmen with trophy from the Dollar Store for Best Story of the Night.
With storytellers Carmen and James. Carmen holding Dollar Store trophy for Best Story of the Night.

I am nearly seven years sober and I am sitting in a bar by myself.  On its face, this does not sound like a good thing.  Except that it is a very good thing.

I’m at Story Club – a monthly “live literature” event where three featured performers tell true-life stories, and three audience members, invited up at random – their names pulled from a monkey carved out of a coconut, the words “Have Fun” scrawled onto the base – do the same.   Artist Date 81.

My feet are slick with massage oil and slosh around in my orange peep-toe wedges.  My head throbs, a reminder of the two cysts I had removed from my scalp just this morning.

I take a seat at a table up front, and immediately wonder if I should sit on a stool at the bar instead – where “singles” sit.  Even though I have trouble seeing and hearing and engaging when I am that far from the stage.

I wonder if I should see if I can join another party of one at one of the banquettes against the wall.

I wonder if it is ok to take up this much space – me alone.  It is a question that has haunted me my entire life.

I stay at the table, order a club soda with lime juice, pull out my reading glasses and dive into my book.

I am sitting at a bar alone with a club soda and a book.

At the table to my right, a gaggle of girls talk about San Francisco.  About writing.  And about a secret Facebook group of women writers – 26,000 strong.

I want to tell them I used to live in San Francisco.  That I too have been wooed into the fold of these female wordsmiths.  That they both excite and frighten me.  And that I’m not even sure how I came to know them.  But I say nothing.

My name is pulled from the coconut monkey – the first of the evening.  I climb to the stage, take a breath and begin reading…”The waxy brown cotton of my lapa feels soft between my fingers.  Like my body.  Like my heart.”

My voice is sing-song-y and gentle.  A heightened version of what I call my massage voice.  It is sweet and loving, lilting and melodic.  It tells you the things you wish your mother had told you.  That you are human.  That you are lovely.  That you are good.

I hear my poetry professor Catherine Kaikowska reading her work – perched on top of a desk.  Her legs crossed, Diet Coke in hand.  Hair wild.  “Deja-rendevous. Deja rende, rendezvous.”  Hypnotic.  I could swim in her voice.

But I would like to drown my own.  I have fallen out of love with it.  My voice.  My story.  Just this moment.  I am bored with it.  All of it.

I have not written about love and pain and loss.  I have not written about sex.  I have written about my connection to my body, to my spirit.  It feels esoteric.  Less familiar.  Less sexy.

I have left out the juicy bits.  The part about tearing off my lapa – my West African dance skirt – and jumping into a pond naked with my crush after the sweat lodge.  The part about him plucking me out of the water – naked – when my strength failed me and I could not pull myself onto the high dock.

I have not written about any of it.  I have not given him a clever moniker and chronicled the story of my heart.  I have held it instead.  Held my heart.  Held my words.  It feels unfamiliar.  Untrue.  It is the story I am used to telling.

But tonight, James and Carmen tell it instead.

James (AKA GPA – Greatest Poet Alive) who has committed to memory the story of Maria breaking his 5th-grade heart when she circled “no” in response to the query in his note – “Will you be my girlfriend?  Yes?  No?”  Not even a maybe.  Not even a spritz of Geoffrey Beene’s Grey Flannel to the paper could sway her.

Carmen who invites us into her bedroom and her psyche at the moment when her friend with benefits asked her to talk dirty to him in Spanish.  Her words are funny and irreverent, honest and sad.  She rolls her Rs and says things like, “Aye, Poppi.”  She feels like a caricature.

They are storytellers.

I fear that I am not.  That I am only a writer.  At least right now.

Carmen – one of the gaggle of girls talking about San Francisco and the secret group of women writers – tells me otherwise.  As does James, when we gather together after the final performance.

My story is lush, he says.  That he closed his eyes while I read.  Listened to my words.  Let my voice paint the pictures for him.

He let my lilting, sing-song-y massage voice – the voice that tells you that you are human, that you are lovely, that you are good – my storyteller’s voice, tell him a new story.