oh my...

Red wine..., following red beer, following white wine... following strange mix of pop music from my youth. I am thinking about the "grapevine" the weekend dance hall (connected to Swarthmorian church) wholesome fun for suburban teens, thumping house music and a "movie theater" where the most exciting part was watching what kind of sexual activity our classmates were engaging in... of course I only once partook of said environment, and then not even, my one weekend boyfriend Charles Wong, who, unfortunately bragged too much about how far he was going to get with me and ruined his chances... alas... sometimes talking too much can really have a negative impact... wouldn't you agree?

Oktoberfest, at the Santa Barbara Museum of History, a sort of company party for the design crowd, and of course I only wanted to wander off by myself. That's all I ever want to do in "party" situations, for as long as I can remember. I always need to find one person with whom to have a tete a tete, and hide in a corner, discussing the finer points of life. I suppose it is ultimately a narcissistic fantasy of mine, but then I have never claimed to be anything but self-involved.

I am remembering the teenage parties where I was always hanging on the margin, just "cool" enough to be invited and just strange enough to not fit in. The akward silences, the strange interfaces, I was never cruel enough to be a teen queen, I could never have justified crushing the soul of a poor hoping adolescent. There was a time, though, that I bought into the negativity. Oh how I would have loved to be the girl that everyone wanted. It reminds me of "Mr. Jones" and how I thought Noelle had it made, even though she was just as confused as I, and then that she is now divorced from her Harvard husband and how sad that makes me, and how much I would like to see her and talk to her again, as two girls, not as two wives... or ex-wives, or quasi-wives, or whatever it is that we are these days...

How can I possibly be only twenty-six when I feel that I have lived three different lifetimes? And now is the fourth and everything seems so new and shiny and reckless and fabulous and then I am snapped back to reality. I have a daughter. I have a life. I have responsibilities... But I know that my daughter is a militant of happiness and that makes me feel better. She danced and danced and danced... never caring if anyone was watching, feeling the rythyms and moving her body, as if she were a girl much older than herself, but un-self-consciously... Van Morrison calls to me, the brown-eyed girl of my 13th summer, I know, my eyes are green, its just that sometimes they're not, and I think of the longing platonic, or absolutely un-platonic, lust that I shared with the nice Jewish boy Matt Cohen that summer, a summer listening to the Doors, and feeling the rain fall with the riders on the storm, and believing that this _was_ the end... and still hanging out with my parents...
And then the Ramones and then David Bowie and I am launched back in time to the space shuttle that I dreamed would take me away from where I was, a girl, in her bedroom, attached to her phone, longing for a boy, but not just any boy, a boy that I could save, and that could save me, who could bring me to my knees and toy with my brain and all its intellectual gallantry. I think that I have never gotten over this.

I once dumped a perfectly nice surfer boy, who was perfectly into me, by telling him that he just didn't stimulate me enough intlellectually. Who was I? What an absurdly ass-holeish demagogue... It was just that, you know, that I like to hear myself speak. I admit frivolity, or self-agrandizing, what can I say, there was rarely anyone to prove me wrong...

And then there was Beth and Suzie... How we had fun, dressing up in my bedroom, discovering our sensuality, playing games, making plans... The questions about multiple orgasm and self-exploration - Suzie never did...Beth was always so sad because the boys preferred Suzie, I didn't really care as long as there was a good time to be had, Pete and Greg and the first time we smoked in the woods and then bounced on the bed and the world spun like a top... How I wish I could have cried so many years later, with Isabella in my arms, when I ran into Pete on the street in downtown Media, PA. and I asked after Suzie and Beth and he just stared... You don't know? he asked incredulously... Suzie died three years ago of a heroin overdose...

No, I didn't know, I imagined her happy and free, happier than me, and the chill ran down my spine and I asked myself how I did nothing... But my life had moved on, I had been around the world and back, leaving my friends, my family my life... How could I have known, but then I had suspected... somewhere I must still have the photos I took, black and white, I named the series "Amistad" - how I wished for what Beth and Suzie had, but I could never give myself over to just one person, not Heather, not Jen, and later not Carrie or Jeff or Rob, or Laura or Jenny or even Kirsten who I adore, perhaps more than all things...

I think I will keep drinking tonight, so that the words keep flowing, I am an eternally immature, irresponsible, self-involved narcissistic feline, refusing to be a concubine because I want the King for myself and no one else. And yet, so much is still sublime, beyond my reach, unfurling itself in the distance, a temptation, a tease a distant copse of trees swaying, calling to the wood-nymph in me... I will never reach the goal, I will fail miserably, I will fall, crawling through the muck ... and still happily.

The sorriest part of all this is that I re-read myself and want to vomit. Nothing transcendental, nothing beautiful, not even iteresting to anyone but me... but what is this if not an opportunity to spill my guts privately and publicly all at the same time. I remember Paul and me, laying with our backs on the still warm asphalt, staring up at the stars, singing our hearts away to Galileo and my toying and his longing and my un-trustworthy abuse of our friendship and love. I remember the urgent kisses before leaving and the hopes that I didn't share, cruelly (maybe I could have been a teen-queen after all).

And three nights ago, there we were, and a pair of teenage girls from Brazil, giddy in their inexperience and their pre-mature saavy, and me thinking I can't handle beeing a corruptor of minors, and offering to drive them home, little girls that they were singing about "sexual healing" - what could they know about "sexual healing" ? They are at the point that they will learn about sexual breaking and stealing and robbing and cursing wondering why he doesn't call after you did just what he asked.

I am transported once again to London, Watford, actually where I spent a summer playing soccer and trying to fit in with a bunch of rough-around-the-edges north Philly soccer-stars, girls who accused me of being a "nigger-lover" for hanging out with a group of South-London boys. and oh, how I waited for Charlie, how could he know where to find me? But I waited and I hoped and I imagined him calling my name by the window, his hands reaching out for me... And then the trip to Ireland and the bizarre sexual politics, the repression and at the same time, prurito, the itching to know what was forbidden, my first trip to a "real" pub (and probably the only one), trying Guinness and practically spitting it all out on the floor. The game was all that mattered then, and perhaps, still now, I long for the game that will make me feel alive and real, and not quite so disjointed... And Chicago, and Supertramp were the soundtrack to my days - the transatlantic yearning, kippers for breakfast, and tea that could kill a horse. The following summer, post-surgical reconstruction and the same obnoxious English boys, complaining about how Spaniards could not make a cup of tea and marvelling at my astounding English skills - what a good laugh I had that day... a girl in the body of a woman, but still unsure of how to step lightly, repressed and shocked by the European lack of shame, breasts bared and mine even more interesting for their lack of exposure.

The discovery of cleavage... what a powerful leverage over men (and women I would later learn) and if only they knew that I would gladly cleave from my chest the unwanted and uninvited flesh. I would have been Peter Pan forever if I could have been. Not that it really matters, I guess we are all relatively un-satisfied with the bodies we have been given, and who wouldn't be with the amount of incidental propaganda that is forced down our collective throat, practically from birth.

I have failed as a mother because I have folded to Isabella's pressure... I have even taken her (cringe... hide behind large pillar...)" to Disneyland. But only becaue she asked... how can I say no? I can only hope to inspire her to question the validity of the discourse, but hiding from it won't solve any problems, I think, it will just postpone them to a more difficult time. She loves princesses, and who wouldn't? I have lately wished that I had some royal influence, a snap of the fingers and that back massage that I always want, readily and humbly offered... not so.

There is a wonderful story, the last of Lorrie Moore's "Birds of America" about the horror of accidentally killing someone else's child and the escape to an Italian village as the (non-functional) concubine of an academic, and the obsession with an ex-pat masseuse. That is the kind of obsession that I would like to have. If I could pay someone to take my body un-judgingly in their hands five times a week with no other objective than to release the lactic acid and other toxins from my muscles, well, let's just say I would be a happy woman. But, I have no funds for such luxury, and I have been involved in far too many car accidents to ever live pain free anyway, so I might as well just learn to live with the burn...right?

What would it be like for money to be no object? I think that Lhasa de Sela was right, if there is no pain and agony, there is no reason for love to exist, without the privation, there is no point... the happiness loses its sweetness, dulling like a bad American meal at a bad American restaurant. Flavorless and full of fat, with no electric impulse rolling down your tongue to your chest, no ardor, like the milk that rolls in and burns to the core of your nipples as the child tugs.

Perhaps I should just take up an un-healthy habit, like drinking, or smoking...and forget about what I really want.