splat

I've got to warn you, dear friend, dear reader. It's been awhile since I've written anything besides school research papers and I fear that when I unload, the contents of my mind will go splat. I'm so full and so empty all at once. My eyes, unprovoked, constantly fill up with tears and spill over. hidden under huge, dark glasses, I'm constantly dabbing at these leaky windows. I tell people it's allergies. Really I feel like there is a hole in my heart where my soul is slowly oozing out.

"Why can't we ever get you to go anywhere but Reny and Bell could?" Jenna says to me over bbq ribs, corn on the cob and sweet potatoes at Baby Blues on Lincoln. It's a dinky, plain place but trendy so it takes a long time to get a table there.

I don't really know what to say. When I was with them, I felt like I could manifest anything I desired. Every morning I awoke and felt passion in my heart. I would drop my kid off at school, skip my own classes and drive 45 minutes, sometimes longer to their roach infested Hollywood apartment off of Sunset just to listen to Reny talk about life and Old country blues musicians of which Reny's mind is an encyclopedia . Bell, a beautiful pixie of a woman with a magickal voice and committed heart, would come home from work and make us egg sandwiches with spinach and we would drink and smoke and laugh together until I had to leave. I felt free in that studio apartment. The burning shackles of my insecurity and loneliness would not dare enter that apartment complex. They stayed outside where male prostitutes would stroll down the sidewalk and shake their huge cocks at me, asking me why couldn't they get a woman to ever pay them for sex?

Oh and the shows. I felt like a fucking superstar even though I wasn't onstage. Once in Seattle I asked a snarky soundman who was making them sound like shit to step outside so we could take care of business. I booked the shows, I managed the money on tour, always loving that our main source of income was beer and buds and tons of love everywhere we went. It was those times, on tour, driving for what seemed like an endless epoch that Reny and I would seem the most happy. We would actually look at eachother and say, "This is when I'm the happiest." I didn't need to be anything. Life was enough. It's only with my daughter that I have ever felt more complete. But with her it's different because there is all of this fear and responsibility of holding another life in your hands that comes along with it. With them, it was enough just to exist. Every moment was a sacred act of pleasure denoting a deep reverence for life. I didn't know that all of this would soon be lost to me and I would be plunged back into this L.A. existence of getting by one day at a time. The hopelessness of living a life that is supposedly reasonable. Going to school, being a mom, going on diets, doing laundry, it's like being hooked up when these things hold no meaning for me, which is most of the time.

"I love you, Jenna," I said to her still looking at my plate. "But I was in love with them."

Having been here in L.A. my whole life, it seems that everywhere I look are carcasses of my past. All in different stages of decomposition. Some still wet with fluid and buzzing from maggots. Most are just skeletal remains though. Pieces of me are littered all over this city and are slowly being ground into dust. No gravestones to mark the loss of something so precious.

After not more than 3 weeks of deciding that I would no longer date men, that there isn't one anywhere close enough to me that could ever relate to my experience, that the smell of pussy was much sweeter than semen anyway and that I am womyn centered in my religion and even my education so why am I still bi? Who am I kidding? Well, anyway, after having this very logical conversation with myself I went over to Bryan's last night. I flipped a coin before I went, heads I'll sleep with him, tails I won't. Tails it is. Within 25 minutes of being in his apartment we were in bed. Willpower isn't my strong suit. I don't even really like sex with Bryan. He is too rough and sometimes he mangles my breasts, like he's trying to twist off my nipples or something. He turns me around and pushes my head and shoulders into the bed. I feel my power slipping away as I am lying prostrate on his mattress, my vulva a bulls eye and I am sacrificed with one, strong plunge. He tells me he needs to get his bearings because he's been thinking about this pussy for so long (that is because I have refused to sleep with him for quite a few months), been wanting this pussy for so long. Yes everyone wants the pussy, but the lonely romantic that's attached to it, not so much. I know how it is. How it's always been with me and men.

emptiness is all i feel after I cum. An emptiness that floods and breaks through every levy that I have ever built. I wake up this morning and know that this is another day. Another day of meaningless tasks that lead to more meaningless tasks and another day. I repress the urge to flee. If I smoke a joint I can keep it at bay. My soul tries to escape through my eyes and goes splat on the keyboard. I wish I could drown myself in the dirty water of the Pacific, but I have to bring my kid to basketball practice now. Escape is not an option.