Awkwardly Social

I don’t know why I don’t trust him on this one. I’m going to have to meet them eventually. I guess it comes down to wanting them to like me. And he is sure they will. It’s just I’d rather they not have such an inflated view of who I am. He talked me up too much. I’m not the person he claims I am. I’m just a slightly insane wreck from a white trash town with a drinking problem and a bad attitude.

The kids. His kids. Actually, they’re adults.

His son lives in Berlin, so it’s pretty easy to avoid that one.

His daughter lives in Calabasas. That’s relatively close. I’ll be meeting her at the premiere of the movie Mr. F edited in two weeks. He thinks I should meet her before so the premiere isn’t so loaded.

Dinner in Malibu tonight has been discussed.

Which is probably why last night I had a mild panic attack wherein my night gown started to strangle me, the sheets were wrapped around my legs like a bear trap and my phone/alarm clock was mysteriously missing.

I’m trying to not let myself get out of this, but every time I think about it I kind of get the sweats. Like right now. I’m sweating.

Update: Thanks to the magic of holiday traffic and work schedules the inevitable has been delayed for a short period of time.  I was almost getting excited to get it over with.  Now I have to wait.  Eff.

Sunset Junction is this weekend, which marks the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the Louie time period. I’m not going to the street festival this year because, a - I am kind of against large crowds at the moment and b - the bands always kind of sound like shit anyway, c - I’ve already seen The Black Keys (with Louie) and d - live music isn’t really my thing, throw in a bunch of people who don’t live on the East Side but think it’s ‘cool’ and I’m out. The festival always marks the end of summer for me, so that’s… I was going to say good, but it’s not the word I’m looking for, seasonal? Reassuring? I guess I always like summer to end. As much as I love the tank tops I’m always kind of happy for t-shirts. (haha! I live in So-Cal, I don’t have to wear fall clothes!)

Last week I spent a night at my place for a change, and when I walked in I was overpowered by the stench of rot. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t the dog, there was a possibility it was either the garbage or the dead goldfish that had been stewing in it’s bowl for a week and a half, or that I really was dead, and my corpse was so rotten that my ghost could smell it.

Instead of doing the normal thing and taking out the trash and getting rid of the dead gold fish, I went to bed with the windows open and a sheet over my face. I woke up periodically throughout the night thinking to myself, “Wow, it really still smells in here.” Which led to anxiety dreams of how I could possibly manage to take out the trash and empty the gold fish bowl. Here’s how my dreams would go. I would be standing in the kitchen, tying up the bag of garbage from under the sink, I would take that down to the trash. Then I would scoop out the dead gold fish, but not be able to put it in the trash because I had already taken the trash out. And so I would stand there with a dead gold fish dripping dead gold fish juice on the floor.

I’m not really sure what that all means, but in the morning I took out the trash, then I scooped out the dead gold fish, and was standing there holding the dead gold fish in the net trying to put a new bag in the garbage can while it dripped dead gold fish juice on the floor and I got really irritated with myself about how my dream warned me about this very situation and I just did it anyway. I am really dumb sometimes.  Also, listen to your dreams!

And then I ran over a pigeon. It did that stupid suicidal thing where it just didn’t fly away so I just ran right over it. I mean, there are a lot of things I will swerve for, pigeons aren’t fucking one of them. I looked into my rear view mirror and I didn’t see it, but I had definitely heard a slight thwack when it went under. So I was a little confused about where the fuck the stupid thing went. But two seconds later I forgot about it. Because pigeons are not something I worry about. I could give a fuck.

As I was walking Lula that night, I saw a pigeon carcass all the way on the grass. It was in the same area of my pigeon hit and run so I assumed it was the same dumbass bird. But this pigeon had no head. So I either decapitated the pigeon and it ‘chicken-with-its-head-cut-off-ed’ all the way to the grass, or I stunned the pigeon and one of the local pain-in-my-ass dogs that run lose even though they have owners picked it up and ate it’s head off. I’m not sure which story I’d rather believe.

The pigeon’s body remains unclaimed.

This time in my life will have to go on record as being the most busy without much tangibly being accomplished.  I feel like I spend all of my time in my car, in an office, or in a bed.  There really isn’t a moment to spare.  That means writing is getting pushed to the back burner.  I’m going so far as thinking I’m going to need to take public transpo to the office because I need to get some writing done.

So… where was I?

Monday night, I sat down at Home, with probably the worst dirty martini I’ve ever had and Mr. F pulled out a blue box.  We had been talking about the gift he was going to give me for a long time.  And when he pulled the box out, he told me that it was the best he could do.  Ideally he wanted something from Mexico City with hand forged silver, but a girl loves a blue box.  And Mexico City is a long way away.  He wanted to give me something rough around the edges, instead he got me the prettiest, most crisp ID bracelet you can get.

We’re going steady.

This means I might actually have a date to the prom!

I guess my lady parts aren’t suited for sitting in a 104 degree hot spring that has been bacteria-ed up by countless dirty vaginas, because hoo-boy, I’m in pain.  Yay!  A UTI without even having sex.  My lands, I’m a delicate flower.

My StuperShuttle was a half hour late, but I have discovered the joy of ’sky-capping’ it and no more will I wait in a line inside shuffle-push-shuffle-pushing my bag through a sighing mass of annoyed travelers.  NO MORE!  My urinary tract might be on fire, but my mind is clear.

Also, I am sitting at an empty gate.  An empty gate within ear shot of my gate.  I have a super good cattle call number so, here I sit, using free wireless and wondering how to best recap a trip that was pretty awesome until it just started to get on my nerves.

I was doing ok with the phone calls to Mr. F, but then all of a sudden I realized, hey, I’m sitting in a car in a garage while everyone else is hogging up the whole place with their privacy stealing selfs and I started to get annoyed.  I don’t really wear teen-age annoyance anymore, so it felt weird to huff around sighing and wishing people would just try to UNDERSTAND me.

The week had its ups and downs of awkwardness related mostly to one of my uncles insistence on being indignant about how the gays are ruining everything.  I wanted to tell him that the gays are the least of his problems, what with a war mongering president on the loose, but I bit my tongue and said, “Boy, I bet you’re glad you don’t live in Los Angeles!  The gays run everything there!”  He agreed he was glad he didn’t live in Los Angeles.  Most of all because there is nothing to hunt there.  I told him about the pigeons.  He said they weren’t good eating.  It’s always amazing how people can be related and yet carry such varying views on things they can eat and things they can hate.

I have a sneaking suspicion they’re going to start boarding soon, so I’m off.

Everyone was loaded into the mini van, but I was suffering from PTSD from the last ride wherein Amelia spent 15 minutes screaming and trying to get out of her car seat. I stared into the abyss and it stared back, so I ran upstairs and popped a little Valium. Hanging out with my (crazy Christian! but awesome) cousins was totally easy after that.

Then we went to a cowboy dinner. With singing cowboys. Who sang. And didn’t serve alcohol. I survived. Sort of.

(My cousin, Bob, not one of the singing cowboys. He has the most amazing mustache I’ve seen since Magnum P.I.)

I don’t know, Colorado, you have a lot of pretty countryside here, but are you killing me with the Republicans. I guess they have to live somewhere. Might as well give them the 3rd prettiest state in the union. (Arizona 1st, California 2nd).

(Right outside my cousin Spring’s house. Beauty.)

I’ve got a lot more hanging with cousins to do today, and they are really pretty awesome. I forget what a genuinely funny family I have until they start cracking wise and playing practical jokes on me. (Maybe they aren’t really Republicans! (?)).

Also, I might go tubing. I don’t know how that can end well, but I’m hopeful.

I wrote this on January 2, 2008 and saved it to my drafts. I’m trying to clear up some stuff before I go on vacation, and my draft box was one of those things on my list. I have no idea why this particular task seemed important before going on a family vacation where presumably I’ll have internet, but c’est la vie, my mind is a mysterious place.

And for those of you who are new here, a little back story, my boyfriend had broken up with me a few weeks earlier and my life was kind of flipped upside down. My ex and I are on pretty good terms now. He occasionally dog sits for Lula. He knows about my new boyfriend and teases me about him. (Mr. F is 21 years older than me, which makes him 23 years older than Louie, which makes Louie a mere 3 years older than Mr. F’s oldest son. Which maybe would creep me out if I wasn’t so in love.) I’ve come a long way since that January day, and want to get this old post off the plate, but didn’t want to let it disappear into my hard drive of things that disappear. So, without further ado because this introduction is now almost longer than the original post, I give you -

flow-chart

In an effort to not write about how I’m feeling about things today I thought I would make you a handy graph of things I’ve said to people in a weird and awkward way about my break-up and things I’ve thought about saying but didn’t say because I am a chicken. Then I realized to make a graph I would have to have the ability or desire to do that thing with the checked paper and the lines and the clever wording, so I’m just going to write you a list, and in your head you can imagine it is as awesome as these graphs.

1. My ex-boss has been feeling sorry for me because I crashed my car on the way to his birthday party, also I occasionally do things for him like fix his fax machine and turn his computer on, so he gives me money every once in a while. I think of him like a curmudgeonly patriarch, not unlike my two grandpas mushed into one, but with a bigger bank account. So today he came in and gave me a check and told me to buy a car. It was kind of funny because the check he gave me wasn’t really of the car buying dollar amount. And we laughed. Then he said in his authoritative voice with what I think I’ve diagnosed as a slight Brooklyn accent, “No really, go buy a car, I don’t want to think about you sitting on the bus anymore.” I said, “Didn’t you hear? I bought a car and I got dumped by my boyfriend! I’ll never ride the bus again! Happy New Year!” I was feeling kind of chipper because I had just consumed three Ferrar Roche thingies for lunch, and we had a nice laugh. At my expense.

2. Fiona and I were sitting at the dinner table and Fiona said, “Do you think you’ll ever get another boyfriend like Louie again?” I said, “Not if I’m lucky!”

3. At lunch yesterday when I found a short black hair in my soupy macaroni and cheese I called the waiter over and told him to take it away. In my head I thought, “And give it to Louie.” Out loud I said, “And bring me another Bloody Mary.”

Last night, Mr. F and I were listening to records, drinking and talking. He had a Wilco album on that I wasn’t familiar with, and I said I couldn’t remember if he liked The Arcade Fire or not. He just got up and put another record on.

The opening to Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) came on and I smiled. I mean, who has it on vinyl? Mr. F does, that’s who.

I don’t know if it was the breeze coming in through the blinds or the way I sang out kind of shyly, “Meet me in the middle, the middle of the town,” that brought my memory of the man on the bus slamming into my body.

I know this song by heart. It was the one I would try to find on my shuffle when I was riding the bus, and it would make me sing as I was trying to sit quietly next to the man on the bus as he read, and I read, and he wore black and I wore brown.

He had straight reddish brown hair, and a messenger bag, and side burns and he wore aviator glasses. And I saw him almost every night. We both sat in the back of the bus. I would wait for the bus close to the sign, he would stand back, farther away from the old Russian ladies’ elbows. Watching. I was always sad if the 780 came and he wasn’t on it. I made up stories about him in my head. I smiled at him. He smiled back.

One day after I got my Civic, I was driving down La Brea, and there he was. He was walking in his black jeans and black button down, with his black messenger bag. His hair hadn’t changed. Mine had. I wanted to stop and say hi, but the light changed and I drove on.

You change all the lead
sleepin’ in my head to gold,
as the day grows dim,
I hear you sing a golden hymn,
the song I’ve been trying to sing.

The song ends and I’m holding Mr. F’s hand.  I’ve been telling him the story, and occasionally interrupting myself to sing a lyric here and there.  I don’t know why, but this song gets it so right and it connects so seamlessly with  that place and time when my relationship was ending and I was making up stories about strangers on the bus.

That man with the straight reddish brown hair made me feel like I was normal.  That living in LA wasn’t as bad as all that.  And I never said one word to him.  Not even a hello.  Once I nodded in his direction, but he didn’t see me and I felt sad that I had missed my opportunity to get a nod in return.

I wonder if he thinks about me.  I wonder if he ever sees me when I’m driving by, that girl with the headphones and the reddish blond hair.

The building is beginning to wear on me. At least once a week I come home to find some kind of management flier on my door, reminding me in a condescending and passive aggressive way of various policies the building has. The last one (and my reaction to it) was so preposterous, I figured it was just an odd combination of our building being part of a big slummy group that has a few less than desirable properties and it’s attempt to keep the place clean and tidy. (At the risk of using a played word: FAIL.)

I think the memo was trying to tell us they would be painting the doors of our apartments, but it came off like, “You people with your stickers and religious hoo-ha on your doors need to be aware that this is against the SPECIFIC POLICY OF NAZI GERMANY and these stickers and crosses and Jew signs need to be removed or ELSE.” They really did mention ’stickers.’ And that’s when I got all crazed. I was standing at my (blank and completely up to code) door having visions of a sticker pasting party that included putting stickers of lewd and sexual content right where they leave their lame ass fliers. Then I remembered that I don’t give a fuck and threw the notice in the trash.

The worst part is that they try to posit the ‘fire safety’ issue of ’stickers on your door,’ when really they should just say, “Hey, you aren’t living in a dorm, keep the KROQ advertisements and weed enthusiasm where it belongs. On your car. Which we don’t provide parking for. Mostly because we hate you. And your stupid attempts at brightening your life by putting a kitten sticker on your door. Eat shit. And then, possibly die. But don’t do it in your apartment. Because we have a policy about that.”

It’s not just the passive aggressive notes. It’s the piles of trash that float up to our gate and into our front stoop and aren’t cleaned up. It’s the lack of parking. It’s the homeless men who sleep dead center in the sidewalk and smell like they aren’t sleeping, they smell like they are dead. It’s the constant harangue of the ice cream truck. The constant honking of the Korean woman next door who won’t get out of her car and tell her daughter to come down, or at the very least invest in a cell phone. It’s the crazy bug I found in my bathtub this morning. It’s the brown water that comes from the pipes. It’s the fact that I quit smoking and every stupid little thing is irritating me. It’s that I still have three boxes of unpacked files that I have no room for. It’s that I want to move in with my boyfriend but have 5 more months on my lease. It’s everything piling up like the tumble weeds of dog hair that NEVER, EVER STOP.

201 was so good to me. It will always be my favorite ‘post-break-up rescue me from insanity’ apartment, I just think I’m ready to move on now. Really, really ready.

I think ‘panic attack’ is the wrong diagnosis. Something happened while we were driving. Mr. F took a wrong turn leading us down a not quite familiar path to a familiar place in a very familiar neighborhood. But there was something about the way we were going, the way the car was heading that flipped a crazy switch in my head. It was unnerving and irritating and I wanted him to stop the car, or at the very least just turn it around and head back to my familiar route. He’s lived here for over 40 years, so it’s not like he’s going to get lost. I’ve lived here for almost 10 and it’s not like I didn’t know where we were, we were just GOING THE WRONG WAY! and I think that feeling, that feeling of going the wrong way was so irrational and so insane that I should have been honest and said, “I don’t think I can be in public today.”

Instead we had a lovely brunch and got back into the car. We were headed down a very crowded Sunset Blvd., and I started feeling the world crashing in on me. Things were not ok. I wanted to be in bed. Badly.  And when I told him I was having a bad feeling, he said, “I’ll take you home right now.” But I insisted we keep going. Part of my new outlook on life has involved saying ‘yes,’ where in the past I would have said ‘no.’

He said, “Seriously, I don’t need to go to those galleries, I just thought it would be nice.”

And I said, “No, I can do this.”

Then I started to fall into a really dark place where I imagined cutting myself. And that was an odd feeling because I’m not a cutter. I hurt myself in other ways, drugs, alcohol, smoking, but never have I been a cutter. So this was an unexpected turn of events.

He pulled into the Chateau Marmont and I thought if I could find something sharp while he ordered I’d be ok. (What the fuck, Tamara? Admit you’re not ok, and go home.) He ordered a margarita and I tried to read the wine list. It was incomprehensible. The waitress waited patiently by the table and I couldn’t pull it together.  She asked me politely in a soothing voice if I needed more time.  I did, but I couldn’t put the words together.  Mr. F put his hand on my hand and told her I’d be a minute.  He looked me in the face and saw that I was crying and said, “We’re leaving right now.”  But I wouldn’t let him, because, and this is crazy, he had already ordered.

I put my head down on the table and muttered something about getting a margarita and a straight razor and have them sent to the bathroom.  “We’re LEAVING, RIGHT NOW.”  “But you, ORDERED, ALREADY,” I hissed. “I’m pulling it together.  This place is so lovely,” I tried to say in a normal voice, but couldn’t really get it out through the choke of emotion strangling me.

Our waitress came back, “What’s your name?”  Sometimes if I learn people’s names it helps me in awkward server/serve-ee situations.  “Elizabeth.”

My margarita came, I took a Valium, and everything stopped feeling so dire.  So I had 3 more margaritas.  That would sort of be the end of the story, but we went home to Mr. F’s place and had a great night making out while a movie tried to capture our attention.  Then I got up to go to the bathroom and stubbed my toe.

And, I started a fight with Mr. F.

And I put on my clothes and told him I was calling a taxi and that it was over.

And I started crying.

And he sat me down and told me that although, yes, I had been mean to him, that no, it wasn’t over, and to lay down and take another Valium and to talk about it in the morning.

So I did.

And that my friends is how a girl with PMS, mixed with an emotional smoke-quitting, plus being a chronic depressive will end your lovely Saturday night.

I’m treating myself a little more gently the past few days.  Only venturing out if I think I can handle it, and man, does that ever work better than forcing myself to be out in public because I think I’m supposed to be strong and invincible.

I had a mild panic attack on the way to the west side today.  I slid into a chair at the Chateau Marmont, and seriously couldn’t even look the waitress in the face.  Tears were sliding around in my eyes and there was really no reason for it.

After 20 minutes of patience on the part of Mr. F, I finally succumbed to a Valium and margarita and 10 minutes later I was feeling half way back to non-suicidal.

Quitting smoking and PMS have proved to be a dangerous combination.  I’m so fucking glad I have Mr. F to sit across the table from me, because if he wasn’t there, I would most definitely be the next dead girl found at the Chateau.

I had no idea what a fucking strangle hold something as lame as nicotine could have on a person who has survived a goddamned crystal meth addiction could have.

I’ll be back tomorrow.  Hold tight.