Thank You For Your Bad Behavior

March 28, 2014 LesleyPearl1 Comment

Last Saturday I ran into R. at a party. We hadn’t seen one another in a while. And while she looked stunning at first glance, I intuitively knew something was wrong.

Her vibration was low. And she seemed less sparkly than usual.

She confessed she was in what I like to call a “come-here-go-away” relationship. She had become involved with someone who was not emotionally available.

I could only smile. Not for her pain. But because I know it so well.

For the past two months Mr. 700 Miles (Away from Chicago) and I had been doing the same thing. Until two weeks ago, when – without a word – he went away. No text. No phone call. No Facebook message. Nothing.

A part of me felt sideswiped.

We had just Skyped the night before, before bed, as had become our ritual – enjoying all that technology allowed us to enjoy about one another. We blew a kiss goodnight. He said he would call me the next day.

Intellectually, I had no reason to believe he wouldn’t.

With Jo, the night he walked away. I told her he wouldn't call. She told me to let it unfold. — With Jo, the night he walked away. I told her he wouldn’t call. She told me to just let it unfold.

And yet all that day and the next I felt twisty and anxious. Something inside of me knew otherwise.

I was right.

What I didn’t realize was we wouldn’t speak again.

I don’t exactly understand what happened. And yet, I do. Clearly, he couldn’t do it. And for whatever reason, he couldn’t tell me he couldn’t do it.

At first I felt sad. Confused. Then I got angry — chucking magazines across the apartment, their glossy pages smacking and fanning out on the hardwood floors, and shouting into the universe, “You F**king Pussy,” choking on my sobs.

I beat the bed with a red spatula – the one my friend Kristen brought me the day I moved into my apartment – whacking it until I was exhausted.

I wrote a letter in red marker – one I will never send. It wasn’t kind or generous or understanding. It didn’t speak of my gratitude for him in my life, or that my heart would always be open to his friendship – even though this too was true.

I didn’t write it to garner a response, or to guarantee he would remember me a certain way. I wrote it so I didn’t have to hold the pain myself. So I didn’t have to pretend it didn’t hurt when it did.

It felt good. And hard. And when I was done, I wiped the Alice Cooper mascara rings from under my eyes and went to sit in a church basement with the people who taught me I didn’t ever have to drink again – not even during times like this.

I miss him. Our friendship. Our deep connection – emotional, spiritual, creative, sexual.

But I do not miss what I saw in my friend Saturday night. The twisting. The anxious. The uncertainty.

The holding on to what was, what could be, rather than what is. The hearing only what I want to hear – what fits my story.

The trying to wedge myself into a sexy stiletto of a relationship – the one that gives me blisters.

Dressed up for the party...no date necessary. — Dressed up for the party…no date necessary.

And as R. told her story, I felt gratitude. Gratitude for his “bad behavior.” In walking away without a word, he made the choice for me. A choice I had made a month prior, in a moment of strength and clarity, when I told him I couldn’t do this. That I needed more. A choice I ultimately could not stick to it.

It all reminds me of when my girlfriend A. divorced me a couple of years back. When she told me I was “too much.”

“I am sorry you feel that way,” I said, rather than, “You are right. Please show me how to be strong like you” – which was, at the time, more my style.

At that moment our karmic contract was broken. We were done.

It has been more than four years since we had that conversation at her home in Long Beach. Over the years I have reached out just a handful of times. She never responded. And then I stopped trying.

I thought being told I was “too much,” was the worst thing that could happen. It wasn’t. And in the process, I learned that I wasn’t either.

I thought “being left without a word – abandoned,” was the worst thing that could happen. It wasn’t. And I learned that I wasn’t either. That that is an old adoptee fear. Old language. He simply chose a different path. And he chose not to tell me about it. It was never about me.

Perhaps that was our karmic contract. Or at least part of it.

R. left the party early. Perhaps to see her Mr. Come-Here-Go-Away. Perhaps to twist and perseverate. I’m not certain.

But I stayed. I ate cake and talked with friends about the book proposal I am working on, the contract work I recently secured, and about dancing a master class with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Anything but him. But us.

And on the way home, I thanked Mr. 700 Miles – for many, many things – among them, his “bad behavior.”

Artist Date 65: A Revelation

March 8, 2014 LesleyPearlLeave a comment

I just “shhh…d” the women next to me.

I feel like somebody’s cranky grandmother, but I can’t help myself.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. From Revelations. Photo: Paul Kolnik

This is my religion. The dancers and choreographers, my gods. And it requires my complete attention.

It feels like blasphemy as I type the words, but it is true. The stirring between my legs. It rises up my spine like Kundalini energy uncoiling, to my heart – which leaps, and spreads as a flush across my chest and face. What is usually reserved for sexual liaison – either alone or with a partner – comes to me in dance. Really good dance.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is really good dance.

This is my seventh time seeing the company, which may sound like a lot –until compared to Sheila, who I met during the pre-performance cocktail reception. She and her husband have seen Ailey every year since the company’s inception in 1958. It is, perhaps, their religion too.

The first time I saw Ailey I was 24. I watched, rapt. My former lover — the sexiest man I had ever known – at my side. We spent a month together. Twenty-nine days more than I expected. This was our only “real date.”

The second time I saw Ailey I was in the middle of an alcoholic relapse, although I didn’t know it at the time. Following yet another month-long stint without drinking, an effort to prove myself “not alcoholic,” I conveniently forgot all the reasons I had put down the drink and picked it up again that night.

I saw the company three more times. Each of them sober. In Chicago. Once, with my then-husband, the other two with girlfriends.

This is my first time seeing Ailey alone – Artist Date 65.

It feels significant.

Significant because I have treated myself to good seats. Dress Circle. Row AA.

I have learned I cannot watch dance from the cheap seats – looking down on it from up above. I have to see it straight on. As I do most things.

I’ve admittedly been spoiled. Much like the first time I flew overseas, when the German Consulate paid for my Business Class ticket on Lufthansa. It is hard to go back.

It is the same with men.

Significant because there is a cocktail reception before the show and I don’t drink, have a wing man, or a purpose for mingling other than “just because.”

Ever fiber in my body says arrive late, skip the schmooze and head straight for my seat. But I resist. I have been taught courage is not a lack of fear. It is feeling it and moving forward anyway. I am strangely curious to see what will happen.

I meet a gaggle of girls in their 30s. They have never seen Ailey.

We talk about their work. City politics. Chicago neighborhoods.

We talk about my Artist Date. My blog. Boys.

I meet the “since-1958 Ailey fans,” and their daughter – a dancer.

I navigate the plush stairs and the too-small type on my ticket on my way to my seat. My dance instructor calls out my name. We embrace and all at once, Chicago feels like a town. My sense of connectedness expands.

The theatre darkens. The dancers emerge.

“Night Creature.” From 1974. I have seen it before. Like “Revelations,” Ailey’s signature piece that closes every show. I remember the polka-dot light patterns on the floor.

It is both familiar and fresh. I feel the leap in my heart. And a knot in my stomach.

The women to my left are whispering – non-stop.

I pray for patience. For tolerance. I pray they will stop. Useless. I turn and put my finger to my lips. “Shhh.” It is quiet.

At intermission, I feel a hand on my shoulder. It is one of the women I “shhh-d.” She offers apologies, which I quickly and easily accept.

Two Dancers -- Khara and I. — Two Dancers — Khara and I.

“Do you dance?” she asks.

I tell her I do. She says that she used to, and everything melts between us. We are connected. We are the same.

Until she tells me about her dance history.

Although not a dance major, she danced seven days a week as an undergraduate student at Washington University, filling her free hours with courses in ballet, modern, and jazz. I reflect on my four years at Michigan State University – smoking pot and drinking with the big boys.

I do not feel like a dancer.

My five-plus years in West African dance classes – beginning at the age of 39 – feel small in comparison. Amateurish. Perhaps they are.

I ask her to take a picture with me for my blog. “Two dancers,” she announces, as if reading my mind.

I choose to believe her. To allow my status to be independent of her experience. Of Sheila’s.

It is a “Revelation.”

Artist Date 63: True Blue

February 22, 2014 LesleyPearl4 Comments

2014-02-21 15.24.31 — TRBL by Christopher Wool

TRBL.

Christopher Wool’s iconographic piece. The words stenciled in red enamel. TR. Drop a line. BL.

Trouble. Yes.

“Or True Blue,” he offers from the stage at the Art Institute of Chicago. Artist Date 63.

Yes. And that is trouble too.

I have decided to do something I’ve done just once in my life. Leave first.

The one other time I did this, the relationship had turned abusive. I felt I had no choice.

I always have a choice, I am reminded.

There is no abuse here. Not even a relationship really. Not yet. An exploration. A friendship ripe with feelings and confessed crazy attraction for one another. And 700 miles between us.

He once commented it was 400 miles between us and I didn’t correct him. When he later said 700, I knew he had looked it up. “You’ve been thinking about this (visiting),” I said. “I haven’t stopped thinking about it,” he replied. We were on Skype. I saw myself bat my eyelashes coquettishly like a shy giraffe, without even thinking.

But 700 miles aren’t really the problem. It’s the every thing else. We are in decidedly different places in our lives. I am in the clearing, coming out of the forest. He is, appropriately so, tied up in the weeds. Almost available. Like the tables I would hover over at the bar in college, waiting to settle into. Almost.

Lately, there is more time between our communications. I find myself in knots. Wide open. Vulnerable. Uncertain of where I stand.

I wonder when I will talk to him. What is going on in his head. In his life. I don’t like it. I don’t like how I feel. This poor use of precious psychic energy.

2014-02-21 15.20.40 — SEX. LUV by Christopher Wool

I woke up Friday morning. As my knees hit the floor, I began crying. “I can’t do this,” I said, to no one in particular. “I need more.” Tears. Shock. Relief.

In the past, I would wedge my way into “almost available” anyway – finding an opening in a man’s attraction and desire for me. But untrue to myself and to him. Acting breezy, when I felt anything but. And soon pissed off when I didn’t get what I really needed. And lying to myself and to him about needing it at all.

This time feels different. I like him too much to ask that of him. I like me too much to ask it of myself.

All of this is running through my head, as I sit in a somewhat broken chair, listening to Wool speak. Everything he says reminds me of this relationship. My heart. What I have to do. Am afraid to do. Am afraid I won’t get the chance to do because I will either lose my nerve or he will somehow slip away without me having had the chance to speak my truth.

TRBL. Trouble. True Blue. Wool says art is most successful when it does what it says.

Does he do what he says? Do I?

I think about my vision board hanging from a wire on the wall in my apartment. Mr. 700 Miles asked about it the last time we Skyped. I brought the computer to it, showing him the words and images I’d torn from magazines on impulse and pasted on a large piece of cardboard. “Power of the Pen.” “Happiness is not for Sale.” “Effortlessly Simple.”

“In Full Bloom.” “Yourself.” ““Make love.”

“Find your true blue.” The words are small compared to all the others. In typewriter font like my tattoos that read, “left” and “write” and overlaid on a couple standing nose to nose. I pointed to the picture and the words and he just smiled.

More slides. SEX. LUV. He Said, She Said.

Wool talks about process. Creating images through loss. Drawing and erasing. Drawing and erasing. And sometimes even scraping. The tearing away became “the most interesting part.”

But he insists process isn’t that important. That the work should stand on its own.

It all seems a metaphor for my romantic life. My willingness to tear away from this man romantically to see what the universe has in store for me. For the first time – perhaps ever – truly believing I deserve more.

I wander through the exhibit after the lecture. FO. Drop line. OL. I laugh out loud. Yes. FOOL. TRBL. SEX. LUV. I am all of it.

Post Script: Later that day, I did say the words I first uttered on my knees, “I can’t do this. I need more.” To him. I felt sad and strong and sad again. But ultimately, I felt LUV. For him. For myself. True Blue.

Artist Date 61: Permission to Want Love

February 16, 2014February 16, 2014 LesleyPearl4 Comments

I cannot remember the last time I was carded. My friend Debbie reminds me that I don’t drink, so I am not often in bars. So my lack of recent experience with carding shouldn’t be a surprise.

But I am in a bar tonight –the night before Valentine’s Day. I have been “invited” for the final performance of “Solo in the Second City” – a live lit(erature) series about the nature of relationships. Artist Date 61.

I wish I would have known about this sooner, but I didn’t. And the only reason I know about it at all is because I participated in my first ever live lit event last week – Story Club, a monthly event featuring three invited storytellers, and three audience members whose names have been pulled from a hat. Except it’s not a hat, it’s a monkey carved out of a coconut with the words, “Have Fun” scrawled on it.

It is the winter of the Arctic Vortex in Chicago and only three people have put their names in the monkey. This is seemingly unheard of. I am one of them.

I climb up on to the stage, pull on my “cheaters” and read an extended version of my blog post “I Love You.” “Thank You.” About me and my divorce buddy. About walking through hell together. And learning to walk on my own. It is tender and raw and real. I feel like I have earned my place on this stage. It feels amazing.

I am followed by Carly Oishi, a featured writer. She weaves together three stories of love and loss. I am riveted. She is speaking my heart even though I do not recall her exact words.

At the end of the evening, I approach her and introduce myself. I tell her I like her piece. She tells me she likes mine and invites me to “Solo in the Second City.” I mention it to Debbie and we agree we will go.

And so I am here, at Beauty Bar, sitting on a low bench surrounded by 1950s hairdryer chairs, listening to stories of breakups and broken hearts.

One woman reads about watching relationships bloom and wither. But only watching. She has closed her heart off. Closed herself off. I know there is more because I am overwhelmed with feeling and identification, but I cannot access it.

Another reads, perhaps more accurately shouts, about when a man drops off the face of the earth without a word. Not a peep. A text. A fuck off. Nothing. She talks about body parts that are usually covered up meeting other body parts that are usually covered up. About giving someone VIP access to that place where her children were born from. She says it is a big deal.

It is a big deal. To give someone VIP access to that place. To literally let someone inside of you. For so many years I did not think so. There was no velvet rope. No line to enter. At least to my mind’s eye. And each and every one who came (no pun intended) was given an all access pass. Once upon a time. Now single again after 15 years coupled, and solo in the Second City, I can play it differently. I can have a different experience.

I am humbled by her cautionary tale of pain. For taking me back to how it was. And showing me how it still can be. How I can be.

Carly, the co-producer of the series, is the last to read. It is the story I heard last week. But this time I can hold on to the words. At least some of them. The part about love and how you will do anything for it. To taste it. To experience it. To feel it if only for a moment.

Yes. That is how I feel. How I have been ashamed to feel. The message I can discern from the noise and static surrounding me post-divorce is “You don’t need it.” “You shouldn’t want it.” “You need to learn to be alone.”

I know how to be alone.

I go to the opera alone. Dance performances alone. Art shows alone.

I live alone.

I work and dance and write. I have a large and diverse cast of characters I call friends.

I love my life.

And yes, I want love. That kind of love.

Hearing Carly’s words I feel somehow lighter. Less burdened by my desires. Free to let go of this misplaced shame.

I tell her so after the show. That I am grateful for permission to want love. She is visibly moved.

I remind her we have met and she admits she didn’t realize I live in Chicago. “So you ‘do this’?’ Write? Tell stories,” she asks.

“Yes,” I say.

She smiles and tell me she is putting together a story-telling series of all women, and asks if I would be interested in reading my work.

I smile back and give her the only appropriate answer – “I would love to.”

Getting Right Sized

February 6, 2014 LesleyPearl9 Comments

Up until now I have shied away from online dating.

It didn’t fit my sensibility, how I imagined meeting someone. The magic, romance and serendipity of a chance encounter whacking me over the head and shaking me to my core. Entirely unexpected and gorgeous.

My body today...moving and joyful in Africa. — My body today…moving and joyful in Africa.

I recently changed my mind, thinking it might be helpful to, at the very least, see who is out there.

I’d been noodling on the idea for a little while. Then I found myself sitting across the table from my divorce buddy – the man who walked side-by-side with me through the dissolution of both of our marriages – and thought, “I could grow old with you.”

I’ve been here before with him. He didn’t share the sentiment.

At that moment I realized I had been fishing in a barrel – albeit unknowingly. If I wanted different I had to do different. Beginning with looking for someone who, at the very least, appears to be available. (Unlike my most recent, fast, woefully unavailable, flirtation. Core shaking and lovely, but impossible.)

Last night I began an online dating profile. I didn’t get very far – stymied on the first screen.

Question: What is your body type?

Answer: I don’t know.

Several I could rule out: Big and Beautiful, Full Figured, Heavyset, A Few Extra Pounds, Stocky. What about “About Average?” At risk of sounding, hm…not right sized…I don’t think of myself as “About Average.” At all. Period.

(When I mentioned to the aforementioned divorce buddy that I needed to shave my head before leaving on our cross-country drive from Seattle to Chicago, he asked that I consider not – instead letting my stubble grow. “I find it best to blend in when in Montana and the Dakotas.” “I have never blended in,” I responded. “I know.”)

That left me with Slender, Athletic and Toned, and Curvy.

I picked Curvy, filled out a couple of more screens – offering up that I am a liberal, Libra, entrepreneur who would selfishly treat myself to something special should I be blessed with a financial windfall – and went to bed.

I told my friend Kendall about the experience this morning. When I told her I chose Curvy, she told me I chose wrong.

My body (and my relationship status) as it once was.

But what about my hips? My breasts?

Curvy implies extra weight, Rubenesque, she explained. “You are not.” When one of our regular Weight Watchers members walked through the door, she posed the question to him. “Definitely not Curvy.”

This was news to me. For most of my life I would have chosen, A Few Extra Pounds, Full-Figured or, at best, Curvy. I forget that was more than 12 years ago. Thirty-five pounds ago. A breast reduction ago.

Seems my brain is still busy trying to catch up with my body. This isn’t the first time.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a new pair of winter boots. Like a kid, I wore them right out of the store – tromping home through the snow, giddy. When I arrived at my apartment 20 minutes later, I had blisters on both ankles. They were too big.

I cursed myself for being 44 and not knowing what size shoe I wear.

I went back the next day, head dipped, shoe box in hand, to see what, if anything, the store could do for me. They began by measuring my feet.

Six. A little less than six actually. But the boots were a six and one-half. And sometimes, I’ve been known to buy a seven. (These shoes usually ended up in a friend’s closet or at GoodWill. Now I know why.)

They didn’t have my boots in a smaller size, so I purchased a different pair – red leather and suede, treated for winter, with a lug sole. The salesman gave me $50 off for the “inconvenience” of having gotten the wrong size.

I always think I am bigger than I am. Even when I was bigger.

Like the time I picked a fight with a guy a foot taller than me at a bar. Drunk and messy, he swung his girlfriend around the dance floor, continually knocking her or himself into someone else. Often me. Next I knew, I watched myself running into him, full force, slamming him into the wall.

He spun around, ready to fight. He looked around, and then down. When he saw me, he appeared confused.

He grabbed my wrists in one paw, and held a fist with the other, while his girlfriend screamed and I shrieked, “Get a bouncer.” I hadn’t counted on this.

He got kicked out of the bar that night. I was lucky. I think about my brother telling me to not start something with my mouth that I couldn’t back up with my body. I had forgotten.

So I changed the body type on my profile to Slender. But that is all. I’m still not certain about all of this.

In the meantime, I’m working on getting “right sized” – physically, emotionally and spiritually. Seeing myself as I truly am – good and bad. Neither better than or less than. One of the pack. Perhaps even, “About Average.”

Artist Date 54: Sew, Here I Am Again

December 31, 2013 LesleyPearl1 Comment

I am afraid of fabric stores.

I am aware that this is a somewhat unusual fear. Sharks. Spiders. Speaking in front of large groups. Of course. But fabric stores…

And yet, I love them. Floor to ceiling bolts of brightly colored cloth, every pattern imaginable. Zebra skin. Tiny elephants. Frida Kahlo faces.

Shiny scissors of every size and price range. Silky ribbon and trim. Envelopes stuffed with patterns – what I imagine to be the Holy Grail of well-fitting clothing.

Trouble is, I can’t sew. And I am terrified that I wear this deficiency like a scarlet letter. An indelible ink tattoo on my forehead which reads, “She doesn’t know what she is doing.”

I’ve tried. In high school, when I had designs on a career in fashion design. I knew this skill was non-negotiable. My mother’s friend offered to teach me. Together, we made a skirt out of a blue-green burlap-y material. I was pretty delighted, and I wore it a lot. But I still couldn’t sew a button-hole, make pleats or even thread a bobbin on my own.

About 20 years later I took a sewing class in Berkeley, at the shop next to the cleaner who washed and folded my massage sheets each week. Up the hidden staircase at the back of the store to the loft above it, I sat with six other women on Tuesday afternoons for four weeks. And when it was over, I walked out with a very expensive kimono – which I wore for years, until it became greasy from the oil I slathered on my body every morning and no amount of cleaning could take it out. And no closer to knowing how to sew.

I visited a fabric store on Queen Anne Avenue in Seattle a couple of years ago. I was embarking on The Artist’s Way for the first time and took myself there on one of my tentative, first Artist Dates. I felt intimidated and scared, hoping, praying no one would ask me if I needed any help. No one said a word to me.

When I returned to Chicago, I stated my intention to make curtains using ironing tape on Facebook. My friend James was horrified. He sent me a private message saying “Please,don’t,” and offered to sew for me. He did. Mustard-colored with sprigs of white blossom hang in my living and dining rooms, one set tied back with bow ties, the other with scarves. Cartoonish leaves in grey, orange and green cover my bedroom window.

All of this comes rushing back to me as I walk into The Needle Shop, Artist Date 54 – a crazy mingling of curiosity, desire and fear.

Hanging in the windows are bolts of the happiest, most whimsical fabrics I’ve ever seen. I promised myself I would go in “one day.” Ever since it opened up across from the Trader Joes where I shop no less than twice a week. Today is “one day.”

It is small inside. There is nowhere to hide. I take photographs of the bolts. If anyone asks, I will say I am thinking of making pillows and want to see the fabric in my living environment.

This is not untrue. My friend Julia said she will show me how. And that she can help me shop for a starter machine so I can really learn – through practice and repetition.

No one asks. Instead, a sales clerks encourages me to take swatches, pre-cut and pinned to the bolts, along with tags of price per yard.

Brown cotton with turquoise doves and cream-colored plants. White with graphic grey and yellow flowers. Green with turquoise ginkgo.

I wander over to the bin of patterns. They are “high end.” Nothing like the McCalls and Simplicity patterns strewn around my ex-mother-in-law’s sewing room. (Although they have these too.) Sassy 1950’s style tap pants and bras. Messenger bags. Wrap dresses.

The fantasy returns. I will learn to sew. I will make my own clothes. I will have trousers that fit like they were made for me. Because they were made for me. I will make couture. I will make curtains and pillows. I will surround myself with gorgeous, happy, sumptuous fabrics.

I sit down in a stadium folding chair with a sewing book written by a cool-looking, hipster chick. I am immediately overwhelmed and quickly put the book back on the shelf.

I pick up a card listing sewing classes. Easy alterations. Roman shade. Ragland sleeve top. Sewing 101. “We show you how your machine works.”

Yes. But first I need a machine.

Not today though.

Today, this “one day,” I leave with a fistful of fabric scraps and the notion that there may be something here for me – a reason I continue to find myself in fabric stores nearly 30 years after my first visit.

Perhaps I am bound for a fourth or fifth-act career, in fashion. Perhaps I will just learn to hem my own trousers. At not-quite 5’3”, petites are still too long.

Or maybe it is nothing more than my Libran birthright, which calls me to surround myself with beauty. The swatches in my bag, a talisman – guiding me.

A Wandering Jewess

My Journey Back To Self

Tag: Self-Esteem