Awkwardly Social

It was a long day yesterday. I have been feeling awful, a string of ‘woman’s troubles’ coupled with various side effects from quitting smoking, the most annoying being my ability to pack on some pounds, have me mood swinging and nay saying and grumping around town like some kind of Oscar without her trash can. The extra weight is making me feel worse than I expected, and I’m pretty sure if the scale keeps pegging up in the direction it’s going, I’m going to feel more than a little crazy. I don’t know if smoking was an anti-depressant for me, but the anecdotal evidence seems to be pointing with two gigantic pointer fingers and popped out eyes in that general direction.

The course of the day is a little fuzzy. Weekends and weekdays all run together for me these days, I’m not working and I’ve been traveling and they only way I know I’m on a weekend is when I walk into a restaurant during daylight hours and there are actual people in there. People who look like they have jobs. Yesterday was apparently a weekend. Until at 3 o’clock when suddenly we were alone in Dusty’s and I wondered if it was a weekday. I ordered another glass of wine and forgot to figure it out for a while.

I spent most of the rest of the day in bed with Mr. F. That sounds like too much information when I write it, and I guess it is, but when you no longer smoke, and you have wine in the fridge it seems to leave many, many hours of free time.

I woke up around 8pm, disoriented, but well taken care of, still though, feeling like I had wasted another day. That the world on my shoulders was never going to feel lighter. That GODDAMNIT I NEEDED A CIGARETTE. Or a cocktail. Preferably a cigarette flavored cocktail. Mr. F looked out his 11th floor window and told me to hold on he had an idea.

I put the clothes on that I had been wearing since clothes were invented and we crumbled into the elevator.

“We’ll walk a block and you’ll be surrounded by the best mariachi band you’ve ever encountered.”

I thought some negative thoughts about big hats, trumpets and stupid pants, but I let him lead the way. Mariachi is something you’ve probably heard at a Mexican restaurant with your parents on your 17th birthday. If you aren’t from Mexico, I’m guessing it isn’t in your playlist. It certainly isn’t in mine.

We walked into La Fonda. In my home town, Camp Verde, Arizona, we had a restaurant called La Fonda. This place looked nothing like it. This La Fonda looked like a banquet hall. It had rows and rows of tables lined up in spokes telescoping from a relatively small stage. And there was a balcony where we were seated immediately. I hoped this wasn’t going to be the disaster that sent me back to my Camel Lights. Mr. F assured me I was going to love it. I was still very skeptical.

They finally filed onto the stage at around 9:45. Three guitars, two trumpets, four violins and some sort of bass. Not a big stupid hat to be seen (except on the young flamenco dancer who performed for just two songs). A strong clear voice, accompanied by the swell of well trained strings, followed in by a crescendo of trumpets and the steady rhythm of guitars and I was totally fucking sold. This band, this band who was giving us a free concert a block away from where I lived, was in-fucking-credible. Each of the band members would file to the mike and sing a song, the hole in their formation filled in with the ease of a marching band. When the only female mariachi player I’ve ever seen took the mike, I squeezed Mr. F’s hand. She gave what is quite possibly the best live vocal performance, of any genre, I’ve ever seen.

That is until the leader of the band said a few words in Spanish about a member of the audience having a birthday, and how she wanted to sing a song with the band. I worried a little as the band led her in with some chords and she confidently took the mike, but the voice of this middle-aged woman with painted on eye-brows and plunging cleavage ripped through the crowd and she held us in the palm of her hand. I don’t know what she was singing about in particular, but I know it was about love, and maybe a little loss, and she, this random woman from the audience, belonged up there.

I studied each of the band members as they took their turn singing. The handsome young protege and the devilishly mustachioed trumpters, the goofy guitarists hamming it up in the back, the string section with the band leader and his three counterparts, and the lovely woman who seemed to be an outsider but when she sang looked like she had been doing it all her life. There were so many stories I wanted to hear from this little band, but since I didn’t get to talk to a single one of them, I filled them in in my head.

Their name is Mariachi Monumental de America, and if you have a free Saturday night in Los Angeles, you would be a fool to miss them.

Palm Springs in July frightens people. There is a good reason for that. Telling people you’re spending some time in Palm Springs in July is like telling people that you enjoy turning on your oven full blast, laying your head down in it and watching your hair catch fire while you have a tiny little fan blowing on your head to make sure if you start to sweat it won’t put your hair-fire out. Guess what? I grew up in Arizona, 120 degree heat doesn’t scare me. In fact, 120 degree heat makes me feel normal. And when I tell you, “It’s a dry heat,” and you look at me like that, like I’m a lunatic, I know that you’ll probably never understand what it’s like to be me. A painfully pale girl who enjoys walking into the sun and feeling like she’s being dried from the inside out.

We got home from Michigan on Sunday, and like I said it’s got its charms. The lush green fields, the aqua lakes with sweet little docks you can dangle your feet off of, the wedding by the lake with a crazy collection of wedding guests, a couple of whom may or may not have been swingers, a saxaphonist and wedding photographer who stalked me for a short period of time at the wedding, and champagne… oh the champagne. But, there was this thing that I cannot let go, and I hope the bride who is probably reading this from a hammock in Fiji right now (bitch!) doesn’t take offense, I don’t even know how to put this politely, here goes, I think half the population that lives there are maybe ‘challenged.’ I kid you not, the semi-retarded service staff became a running joke. They answer all questions with a blank stare and some reactionary quivering. If you could read the thoughts of most of the people we asked for things like, “A cup of coffee, and can we have it over on that couch?” you would hear them say in their dumb little heads, “Uh oh, that woman from LA asked me for coffee. What the heck is coffee? On the couch? Is that a couch? I don’t think people are allowed to drink coffee on the couch. Did she really want coffee? Where is my cousin, maybe he will know how to answer this impossible question about coffee and couches and?” then that person sometimes would just drift away back to wherever it is the service staff in Michigan go when you ask for something like a cup of coffee on the couch in the lobby that is directly next to the bar where you were going to purchase the coffee.

My questions to my friends all weekend were on the order of, “Did I say that in English? Or maybe it was too complex a question? That person works here right? They’re not just wearing that uniform as a joke, right? Why don’t they keep the vodka, you know, AT THE BAR? Why are they always disappearing into the back when I order a drink? Are the cops on the way?” It was stressful. One night we asked for a bottle of water. The ensuing wild goose chase was keystone cop-ian and involved a woman telling me she didn’t know if the hotel she worked in had a SODA MACHINE… I have to stop now, it’s getting me frustrated all over again. I have this to say, “Northern Michigan, get it together, because your blank stares are freaking the rest of us the fuck out.” The wedding was lovely however, and when I smashed a glass of champagne on the beautiful wooden patio that people were walking around barefoot on it was taken care of in minutes. The catering staff at the wedding was top notch. I think the bride flew them in from Minnesota. (ZING!)

On our 4 and a half hour drive back to Detroit we had to drive in a rainstorm that was quite possibly the definition of DANGEROUS. Mr. F and I were pressed against the windshield wondering if the shadowy shapes in front of us were cars or death. Then we started laughing uncontrollably, because there’s nothing funnier then taking your life in your hands to make a flight in Detroit while driving a ridiculous rental car with two Allies sleeping soundly in the back seat. Every once in a while Mr. F would ask, “Are the girls still sleeping?” and I would turn around and check on them. It gave me a glimpse of a weird future where we adopted adults and drove them across country in an effort to keep our fucked up family from falling apart. Needless to say, we needed a vacation from our vacation.

Palm Springs is an easy drive from LA, and both Mr. F and I have a fondness for the desert. We turned the corner to our hotel and I saw a jagged peak slashing the blue sky and I grabbed Mr. F’s arm and gasped (I’m so not kidding about the gasp… I know. I can’t help it). He looked at me to make sure I wasn’t having a heart attack, “What, baby? What?” I started to tear up a little, “It’s just the mountains. I missed them. I really did.”

My German grandfather, a dairy farmer, a Minnesotan, and an all around lover of the plains, would visit us in Arizona and one of my favorite quotes of his was when he would look out our back windows onto the rocky peaks framing our little valley - a view that I think I’ll see when I die - and say, “This would be a pretty place if it weren’t for all those damned rocks.”

Those damned rocks.

Things are dire around casa de Awkwardly Social. I see gloom and despair at every turn. I could barely get out of bed yesterday afternoon to deal with the gigantic bolt wedged in my stupid tire. I slumped into my favorite booth after dealing with my stupid car, ordered my favorite rose, took a Valium and turned to look at Mr. F with tears and frustration in my eyes. He told me I look adorable when I’m grumpy. If I hadn’t been down this road before, and if he hadn’t been pinning my arms to my sides in a protective hug I might have punched him in the face. I started crying when I looked at the menu. All of the things on it sounded like they would be great, especially if they were followed by a Camel Light.

I decided to quit smoking. AGAIN. AGAIN? This time because I am at the age, that stupid age that somehow introduces responsibility and care about ones health into ones daily thinking. It’s not really funny or charming to be a pack a day smoker. It’s smelly and inconvenient and fuck, I love it. I love the way it feels. I love the way it looks. I love the way it sometimes feels like you’ve been duped and that smoking is awful, but then you smoke another and it’s the best thing you’ve ever done. I have never been one of those people who sees a smoker and thinks, “Gross.” I look at a smoker and think, “That is a member of my tribe. She is one of us. Sit closer to me.”

It’s day two. I might not make it to day three.

We were supposed to drive my car to the airport, long term park, hop on a shuttle and catch our red-eye. The only problem was my tire started making a weird noise. A noise that one can’t ignore when one is about to drive on three freeways at break-neck speed, because in Los Angeles, if your tire blows out on the freeway, you are fucked 10 ways to Monday, and not in the good way. It wasn’t that big of a deal, because Allie had her car. I don’t like starting a trip on a note like that, though. My superstition makes me believe if my tire is flat, it’s a sign that the Universe doesn’t want me to get on a surely doomed flight that will go down in flames just after the plane rips in half and I go flying into the ether, arms and legs flailing unattractively on my way to certain death. But, as you probably guessed, I’m not dead.

As soon as we got through the most annoying security line ever (note to security lady - we’ll make sure we have our boarding pass out, for sure, no really, we will! Oh, wait, you wanted our boarding? pass? What?) we hustled to the bar so I could drown my Valium in some vodka. It’s some new thing in bars in airports and (apparently) Michigan to ask if you want a double for $3.00 more. Just so you know, HELL YES, should always be your answer. Hell motherfucking yes if you’re in Los Angeles. The Michigonians don’t like it when you ‘cuss.’ Unfortunately for me, the double vodka tonic and Valium did not work. I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to kill myself. I almost started to wish the plane would go down in a fiery fire ball that was on fire because I was tired, but I held back. The universe has been getting my signals crossed lately and I didn’t know if it would get the sarcasm. The cabin was dark and I saw the silhouette of a flight attendant slowly making her way down the aisle. I grabbed her in desperation. “Lady, I need a vodka tonic. Like now. Is that possible?” She kind of wasn’t a flight attendant… oops.

When we landed in Michigan (Detroit Rock City!) I was operating on about an hour of fitful sleep that involved me drooling into my hand while my sweater covered my face. It wasn’t pretty. I walked into baggage claim and he was sitting there waiting. He hugged me and told me I looked so pretty.  I think he was delirious because I looked like a piece of road kill.  I wanted to crawl onto the top of the carousel, you know the carpeted part, and lay down for a minute. I was advised that was a bad idea.

It took us 7 hours to make a 4 and a half hour drive. But we got to see this charming, little town, Fenton, Michigan has some serious good vibes. Also strong cocktails. (The mother of the bride told me it was the armpit of Michigan after I told her I wanted to live there. What can I say, I love armpits!)

There are a lot of barns in Michigan. I liked the look of this broken down one just past The Jerky Stop. (The ‘2nd largest Jerky Outlet in Michigan’… They’re so painfully honest in Michigan.)

After about 6 hours of barns and Jerky Outlets I started to hate Michigan. I mean, what the fuck? It’s all green. ALL OF IT. There is just green, tree, green, lake, barn, green, green, Jerky Outlet, TREE. We turned down our final highway on the way to the remote wedding (where I was pretty sure we were being set up for some kind of Big Chill meets The Descent situation) and I said out loud to no one in particular, “I gotta be honest, I am so FUCKING OVER MICHIGAN.” It got a good laugh.

But then we got to the hotel and I looked out from our gigantic deck across a quaint little field and saw a lake shimmering in the distance and got back under Michigan.

Last week, Mr. F and I had an impromptu Senior Ditch Day. (It’s funny that we called it that because, um, I don’t know if I’ve told the internet yet, but Mr. F is 20 years my senior… What? He gets discounts! Hahaha, just kidding.) We had breakfast at the Pacific Dining Car, drinks on the roof of The Standard downtown, I got a pedicure at a fancy spa, more drinks, and we ate some sushi, and to top it all off we walked along the canals in Venice. I had never been down there and it was tres romantic.

I have a thing about ducks. You know when they tip over, ass in the air head down, fishing, I think it’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been around adorable. Every year around Easter at the feed store in my home town they would have ducklings and chicks, and once in a while we could convince our mother to let us bring them home. We would fill the bathtub and let them swim. Before they get their quack they peep just like little chicks and then their voices change right around when they’re getting their adult feathers and it’s like having tiny awkward teenagers swimming and shitting in your bathtub.

So we were strolling along the canals, peeping into people’s windows, wondering if they were as happy as we were when I saw a mama duck and her eight ducklings. I clutched Mr. F’s arm, woozy from the booze and feeling all loved up, “Oh my fuck. Ducklings? Kill me now. My goddamned ovaries just exploded.” He wrapped his arms around me, “You want ducklings, kid?” “Yeah, I do.” “We’ll get you some ducklings, baby.”

Wait, let me back up… On our second date, back in May, we went on a long hike in Will Rogers’ State Park. I spent a large part of that hike telling him how I didn’t think I wanted kids. How kids are awful. How they kind of ruin your life. How I’ve gotten this far without fucking up another human being, I might as well keep my record perfect. I turned to him at one point and said, “Well, you know, you’ve got kids.” He answered, “No, I have adults.” (They are just close enough in age to me to maybe creep some of you out.) Oh, how this lady doth protest too much…

Last night, he scooped me up after a shit day for both of us and we went to Edendale Grill. It’s got a pretty patio with twinkling little lights, and a kick ass margarita. I had 3. Or was it 4? When he finally managed to convince me it was time to go, I stood up and pressed into him. I have no idea how it came up. I mean, I can’t imagine I would have just blurted it out, but I must have said something because he said, “You want a baby?”

Um…

Yeah…

Hi, don’t let me have any tequila EVER. AGAIN.

So I threw my arms around his neck and said the most romantic thing I’ve ever said *cough* “Maybe, but you’re so old.” And I said it loud. And there were a lot of people around. And he started laughing so hard that I thought we might collapse into a heap right there in front of all the hipsters.

We got to the car and he did that thing. You know that thing that guys do that I have no idea where they learned to do it, but they touch your face and it feels like you’re being adored? That thing. He kissed me and I told him I was sorry I was so drunk and that he was kind of lucky because tequila used to make me get into bar fights and I was rambling and he just looked at me and said, “Kid, if you want a baby, we’ll make it happen.”

And I curled up into my seat and sighed, “Those fucking goddamned ducklings.”

I went to three weddings with him last summer. Three so very different weddings. And at each one, I thought, wow I cannot do this. I thought it was about the money and the stress and dealing with the people who had to mingle with people they weren’t really sure they wanted to be mingling with. Or maybe it was that the DJs weren’t playing my favorite song. Maybe because he wouldn’t dance with me but danced with his friends out of my eye-line. Maybe it was that I was always drinking and he never was, maybe sober and drunk just can’t work. Maybe what I meant was, I cannot do this with him.

That summer, that life, now a year long gone, seem so foreign. I was there at all of those places, I was living all of those moments, and I even did most of it with a smile. But underneath that smile a resentment was brewing and I was wrong to keep going and while we were eating all of that cake dressed up like we would someday be next, we weren’t heading towards each other just stumbling down the same road at the same time.

So here I am, seven months after the great dumping of aught seven thinking about all of those other weddings because I’m heading to Michigan in a few days to sit in a pretty dress and listen to pretty vows and wow, it’s going to be so different than those other three. And really, it’s silly to compare how this wedding is going to be different from last summer’s weddings. I mean, of course it is. Every wedding is different. I keep wanting to say, “But at this one… At this one someone will dance with me even though I’m awkward and horrible on the dance floor… At this one I’ll be able to sneak away and make out behind a tree because someone will want to kiss me hard on the lips… At this one people won’t ask me when I’m getting married *wink, wink, nudge, nudge* as I awkwardly dive towards the bar for another heart numbing martini… At this one….” But that isn’t fair, is it?

Don’t get me wrong, there was a single bad moment in all the fun we’ve been having. After a witnessing something that could not really be misinterpreted, even though it was sort of misinterpreted, I stormed out of a packed to the gills hotel room in a drunken fury and tried to hail a cab (which is hilarious if you know LA) and he followed me out confused, managed to shuttle me into his car and touched my hair and asked me to tell him what the fuck just happened. It was awkward to put words to my (semi-)justified feelings, but he listened and that’s when I realized that I spent those last three and a half years living in silence for a reason. So that I could get to this place. With someone who wants to go wherever I’m going, just because I’m going to be there.

So we’re flying off to Michigan to drink and dance and swim in a big ol’ lake, and we keep asking each other why we got so damned lucky. And in the back of my mind I’m wondering if it’s a bad sign that I’m not actually all that worried about another shoe dropping, because leave it to me to worry about not worrying.

His texts contain no punctuation. Sometimes I have a hard time figuring out what I’m supposed to get from the run-on, but then I slow it down and hear his voice in my head and it makes sense.

Tara adds the pauses in a particularly obtuse message and I laugh at her reading.

I lean across the table to her and say in a loud whisper, “Dude, these times, here at this table, with no money and happy hour Prosecco, are going to seem like the perfect prelude to our lives when we’re successful beyond our wildest dreams. You know that, right?”

“Fuck yeah.”

I call him and tell him I’ll meet him at his place and he tells me he’s just wrapping things up at the hospital. It sounds like he’s better. Things have improved there. My heart flips when he calls me kid.

I open the door and hear the record player spinning out loud clear analog jazz. It sounds exactly the way I imagined my life would sound when I was in my 30s. For the first time in a long time I think my present aligns with my visions of the future. It doesn’t scare me.

Laura Nyro is playing. We’re dancing in the living room. Our bodies fit together and we move together like we were made for this. I don’t feel awkward. I just want more.

He offers me a glass of wine. He’s purchased my favorite. There’s no cork screw in the entire apartment.

“Just sit here, baby. I’ll figure it out.”

“Don’t punch the cork in. I don’t need a glass, I’ve already had 4.”

He comes in, wine on his chest.

“It kind of exploded on me when I punched the cork in.”

“Oh baby. You really didn’t –”

He interrupts me with an amazing kiss.

“I know you love it.”

French pop from the 60s is playing.

It happens to be a perfect night. And no matter what happens with him and me, I know it will go down as my favorite Friday night. Ever.

I had to go to the pound to renew Lula’s gun license.  She likes to carry a concealed weapon, in this neighborhood it’s understandable.

My big mistake was taking a tour through the kennels after my business was done.  I started crying right in front of the sweetest little white and tan cocker who wagged his tail and pressed his nose through the wire.  Even though my apartment is tiny and one dog is already too much responsibility, if my building allowed people to have a second dog, you would be meeting Mr. Pants right now.  That’s what I decided to call him.  Mr. Pants.

Shit.  And now I’m crying again.

Why is it so hard to find the right thing to say to someone who needs you to say the right thing?

I’m sorry.

I love you.

I’m here.

Rest your head.

Sleep a little longer.

Give some of it to me, I can take it.

I had a talk with the universe, but it’s ignoring me right now.  I’ll keep trying.

I’m so fucking sorry.

I love you.

I lost my bra this weekend.

Normally that would be an impossibility, but this weekend something totally changed for me. And that thing was that I found myself in a swimsuit, an actual honest to god two piece. And once I figured out that I could sit around in it all day (HI, I ALSO GOT A UTI. What am I a moron?) I pretty much did. Which led to me leaving my bra somewhere. I’m guessing room 105 at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

It was a very good bra. I mourned its loss, and had to wear a really old almost elastic free bra that fit like a piece of fabric loosely balanced on my bosom with no sense of gravity or movement. So when I experienced gravity and movement, my bra sort of threw up its hands and said, “Have at it, world! Look at Tamara’s tatas sway in all this gravity.”

But before I tell you the story of how I’m suddenly a 34D, I’d like to go back a bit and say, holy shit, I sat around in a swimsuit. In PUBLIC. With a male person. And with other male people around.

I am pale. I am curvy. And I haven’t been in a swimsuit since high school. Which is ridiculous. I usually wear shorts to cover the bottom part of my curviness. It’s a strategy that almost always has someone asking me why the fuck I’m not wearing an actual swimsuit, and me always hemming and hawing about how they don’t really want to see me in an actual swimsuit.

Catherine has been bugging me for the last month about her wedding in Michigan, on a lake, where there will be swimming. And how if I don’t get in that lake in a swimsuit she’ll stop being my friend. So, when Mr. F– took me to a hotel that has a pool that has music piped in so you can hear it when you’re submerged, I decided to have a go at it. I mean, he’s seen me naked. Like totally, completely naked. And he still likes me, so I did it. And wow. I thought I was going to die for the first fifteen seconds, but then when I didn’t, I got over myself and relaxed. I think the champagne helped with that whole ‘relaxing’ part.

The best part was when I walked out of the bathroom hoping lightening would strike me dead right there in the heart of all that is tanned and beautiful and LA (and so not me) and he said, “God, you are so fucking pretty. Look at you!” So the swimsuit came off for a little bit and then it went back on and we went swimming.

And somewhere along the way I lost my bra. This was an impromptu vacation so I didn’t have any luggage. I seriously hope I didn’t drop my bra in the lobby, but I wouldn’t put it past me. I’m pretty sure that last march through the lobby was done with a couple of vodka tonics tingling my veins.

Yesterday I took myself to Victoria’s Secret to replace the bra of magic and uplift and tried on several but there was a ‘fit’ issue with all of them. I flashed back to a conversation I had with Allie about her bra size and how she had gone up a cup and down a size and I decided to see if our tits had once again aligned. And lo, the angels sang and the sun beamed in and Jesus smiled, for my boobs are a 34D. And I have two bras that actually fit me.

No fucking wonder my back has been killing me. To quote a good friend of mine, “That’s a lot of boob.”