Novelty.

Today I learned

Or re-learned

That I am very tired of being a novelty.


I feel self-conscious when I talk about this, or even think too much about it, because of the us vs. them dichotomy, but at the same time I have realized that it's healthy for me to recognize it because I need to protect myself from getting emotionally engaged with someone who will inevitably, ultimately, tire of me.

I am not holding freakishness up as a higher state of being, because it often comes with drawbacks, sometimes major ones. Being high-strung or struggling or just plain crazy are not really things to idealize, and frankly, being weird in ways that permeate your life is not usually something that makes you feel good all the time. It's hard on you, and hard on your loved ones. And you get down on yourself, especially after the hundredth time you really liked someone and thought you had a connection with them and then they tire of your amusing antics and find someone else to spend time with.


Straight guys or girls like my ex, who think they're edgy or alternative because they wear funny clothes and/or like the art/music scene and/or open relationships and/or dick meet me and think "oooh, eccentric girl! Look how funny she is, with her quirks and cones and lard and her thing about some obscure Greek goddess! This will make my life fun and exotic and cool." But they don't get that actually at the end of the day they want to go home to something comfortable and not be challenged by someone different and gradually they start to realize that it's 24/7 and not just a new kind of hipster, and I start to grate on them. 


Because I'm still awake making something that's not even serious in Photoshop, and I am seriously going to leave those traffic cones on my roof forever. Not because it's funny, but because I love them. And maybe, just maybe, I really am going to wear a moustache to a party, and how embarrassing is that? Plus the weird shit on my walls. It's funny at first, but it's so cluttery, and am I really going to leave that up for the dinner party?


They're like perverts... just because they're perverts doesn't make them freaks. They just think freaks are neat, you know, so they want a pocket one to take to parties. For a while. Or, sometimes, they have a whole stable of them they rotate through and invite to parties. You gotta check this guy out, man; he's such a trip.


It took me about 4 years of absolutely adoring my ex and doing whatever he wanted (or thinking I was) for me to realize that for him, the novelty had simply worn off. And another 2 of realizing that it wasn't ever coming back. Because the thing is, I didn't get him, either.

But I'm starting to recognize it in advance, and learning how to cut it off at the pass. I will not be collected. Like a goddamn Beanie Baby.


Now is probably a good time to stop being down about it, and look around in the world at the other freaks, and realize that we're totally okay, and not collectible novelties. We're not cute. We're not funny. We're just regular people who don't quite fit in with the other regular people.


When you're weird, you're going to get weirder as you get older, because all the weird just accumulates. In layers. Because it's your normal.

My friends, the ones who have stuck around and are there for me, have never treated me like a novelty. Because they are also freaks in some way. You get it. I need to stick to my people. I'm lucky to have some.


Holy shit, this post makes me sound like such an utter wanker. I hope I can at least excuse it by being drunk at the time. 

I am ungrateful

I realize that. And also grateful. And also very, very confused. Because I am nothing special, I really am not. Maybe my lack of social graces makes me more accessible, but if anything, that is all it is.

The quiet

You are my own rude grave.

I had buried myself within you

and to unearth myself from that

shallow hole was unthinkable.

A brother in sorrow and love,

you were my kindred spirit; you;

you understood everything I said.

You never took me for a novelty.

There is no way to tell you now,

nothing in the freedom you held

to be the shy, the quiet, the wild

listening bird you gave me to be.

Some thoughts I had on a Tuesday in December

Something occurred to me today that seemed impossible; I've known him (that one, yes, you know which one I mean) for 2 and a half years. How? I am trying to do timelines in my head, and thinking of one friend I’ve known for going on five years, and another friend for over ten. Friends I just met, like you when I just started hanging out with you that one time, when that one guy you were in love with was sleeping with her too and you decided you would keep her and dump him. Also, you, remember that time your girlfriend threw bottles at your head, screaming in the street, because you told her I was a better kisser? That was a dick thing to say, by the way, but you know what, I’m glad you did because she was crazy and bad for you, and I got to keep your friendship even after all of that.

Time goes by so, so fast. Impossibly fast. And now it is winter of 2009, about to be 2010.

I was looking at him (that one) in my office today and we were laughing about something, and he said I should change my avatar on some networking computer site so I did and then I realized that I had changed it to a picture taken almost exactly a year ago, when I first bought my favorite big black coat and my heart was completely, utterly broken over him, and I thought at him, I was so in love with you, how is that possible? How is it possible that I can be so comfortable with you now, just barely a year later, and yet not have that old yearning? Not even any, at all?

I suppose these things are good. Hopeful. Time moves on and while the feelings never stop being as overwhelming as they were when we were new, healing is still inevitable, even as we get older. And yet, it won't be that much longer before we'll be so old, and all of the compromises that we made because we felt like we had to will be all there is in place of the opportunities we didn't take. So there is a sorrow, as well a sweetness, to looking at that fuzzy-headed, lovely man with his wide warm laugh and feeling only the softer love of friendship for him, in place of what used to be an all-encompassing need to be with him always. Only affection, and a very small sorrow that the safe road he chose didn’t lead to anyone’s happiness, least of all his own.

The City, part whatever

They loom over the yard, the new townhouses, and Old Lady Mabel's yard too. Beige pressboard, they popped up in two weeks, built by workers who don't speak the native tongue and are willing to work on holidays and weekends for less pay than the few manual laborers left who were born here. They do a better job, too, with fewer expectations, because they're grateful, and they don't qualify for unemployment.

The parts of the yard they shadow are not so large, nor so significant. They leave in sun the persimmon and the apricot, the raspberries, the grape and the fig. What they shadow is so much larger. They are selling for half a million dollars, these new townhouses that are built where the old Head Start was, and after that the revival church. Old Lady Mabel's house never sold for that much. Maybe ten thousand, back in the day. They don't cast a shadow on her yard, to the south of them, and the neighborhood is grateful because she has been gardening in that yard for long enough that the soil is rich and crumbly and black, and anything she plants springs up in a few weeks time as lush and nourishing as Eden. She tends her rows hunched over in a flowered housedress, white-haired and slow, dark brown skin and sweet grandma voice telling you what crops she likes to plant in which seasons. "I do love the sound of chickens", she says, smiling, passing bundles of collards and mustard over the fence to her neighbors, "Always have, since I was a girl".

The townhouses don't care whose yards they oppress with their height and their sameness. They don't care about Old Lady Mabel and her stories. The people who build them don't care, because they are working and it's a paycheck to help feed their families. The investors don't care, because real estate is a surefire way to maximize their investments. Real estate never loses. Right? Right?

In the neighborhood, neighbors who bought at market peak couldn't sell their houses for what they paid, but maybe the new townhouses will change all that. Half a million! That could bring housing values up for everyone! Make our homes worth more than we paid for them, so much more. So we can leave. So we can get the hell out of the shithole neighborhood with the old lady who grows her own food and the crazy people with the chickens. A grand or so extra taxes per year is so worth it, if we can refinance and buy that Prius we've been wanting to go with our green lifestyle. And maybe the new neighbors will be the kind of people we've been wanting to live near, people with nice things, clean things, and no dirt in their yards. Maybe, just maybe.

Maybe all those good things will happen, and the new neighbors will pay their half-a-million dollars to move into those new green-construction townhouses, and everything will be so clean and so nice, and the new neighbors will complain to the city about the chickens, and the new neighbors will drive the property values and the property taxes up until Old Lady Mabel and the crazy people with the chickens can't afford to live here anymore, and the neighborhood will be so nice then, won't it? We can have such lovely dinner parties.

Or maybe, just maybe, the people with nice things, clean things, lovely earth-friendly things won't be able to look twice at those half-million-dollar townhomes with green construction and no yards, and they'll sit vacant for years, until the investors pull out and the contractor goes bankrupt and property values continue to slide and maybe the city will step in and force them to lease it to the Headstart program, or maybe they won't, but either way Old Lady Mabel will keep on growing her garden, and the crazy people with the chickens will go on trading eggs for greens. And no one will buy a Prius, or get out from under their mortgage, and the neighborhood will never, ever, get any better.

Dumplings

He acted like they were a damn miracle. Like he couldn't believe I would come over and cook just for him. He ate them slowly and very intently, meticulously scooping equal portions of chicken, vegetables, dumpling and broth into each spoonful. And then he fell asleep curled up against me on the couch, holding my hand. I woke him up eventually and made him go to bed, of course. This morning he got up  ever so carefully and dressed, then he sat on the edge of the bed and bent over me, cradled his arms around my head. He pressed his cheek against mine, told me I could sleep in, kissed me and went to work. I can't get too attached to the feeling, but it was a good one.  It's been such a long time since someone told me to sleep in and kissed me goodbye.

He acted like no one has ever just... taken care of him. Like it was a foreign concept.

The girl I live with is a dumpster-diver, and through her I've become one too. We've been friends for a while now, but I'm not sure exactly how long... eight years perhaps? She is tall and blond, a classic beauty with a tiny waist and old-fashioned ideas. She is from a wealthy family, and travels abroad at least once a year. She is a graduate student of chemistry, and a talented artist. She brings new definition to the term "eccentric". Everyone always said that we were a perfect match, and now we live together in a house that is growing slowly more and more full of things, insane things which we made or found or were gifted to us anonymously by friends passing by in the night.

Mostly, though, it's filling with things from dumpsters.

I know that over time people have begun thinking of us differently. We are building our future out of the things we bring home, a future made out of pieces of other people's pasts. Each dumpster contains an entire story; a bankrupt church with old choir robes, conference tables and a broken organ, or the former crack house with filthy clothes and unsalvageable, vomit-stained furniture. There are some dumpsters that you know, before climbing up and peeking over the edge, that you would need a hazmat suit to climb into.

Some dumpsters tell you, in fragments night after night, about the person whose life is being emptied box by box into it, for portage to the landfill. The mildewed makeshift endtable at first tells of poverty, but soon boxes of toiletries start to tell a story of thriftiness, of always being prepared for the future. An entire case of shampoo; four boxes of Irish Spring. Thousands of tampons. She was a hoarder, the former owner of what is now trash. We guess from her hats and the brightness of her costume jewelry that she was black, and from the beautiful coat with a fur collar that she was imposing in stature. There are no religious mementos... perhaps she was an atheist, or simply not a churchgoer. Perhaps those things were given away to family. In the dozens of romance novels, we find a name written in the front cover. These things come to live with us.

In the neighborhood, we unfold our story as we go out night after night and retrieve pieces of other stories, bring them home to hoard in our history. We can see ourselves growing old, doing this; we can see the overwhelmed look on the faces of the executors of our estate as they say "What are we going to do with all this junk? Should we just get a dumpster?" Those old ladies that lived in that house... the neighbors say they used to go out at night and scavenge through the trash. Their house is full of junk, of strange things rescued from the dump. They always seemed normal enough when you talked to them, but you could see them bringing things home all the time...

Tonight we're visiting the dumpster of a lonely old man who lived on 13th. He was really into Westerns, and his Chinese pornography collection is amazing.