March 2012

23 Bad Dates

March 27, 2012

Before I was a happily married woman, I was a dater. And a lot of bad dates were had. Sometimes the bad dates were caused by unfortunate circumstances. Other times, unfortunate pairings.

Here are 23 of them.

1. The real estate agent who licked my face and left a lingering fragrance of mold.

2. The guy who brought a guitar along and played REO Speedwagon’s “Take It On the Run.” Repeatedly.

3. The editor who kissed me softly, then grabbed my tongue with his hand.

4. The hippie who made me sit at his feet while he sat in a rocking chair and made a gift for me using sticks, weeds and feathers from a dead bird. “It’s a dream catcher,” he said. “It’s for catching your dreams.”

5. The guy who brought his girlfriend along.

6. The drug dealer named Dodge who said, “Maggie, you’re so beautiful and elegant. I would even take you to Red Lobster.” And he never did.

7. The libertarian club president who brought me to a mental institution for our first date. (True story: He later murdered his father by stabbing him more than 50 times.)

8. The guy who was a perfect gentleman. And then told all his friends we had sex.

9. The belligerent alcoholic who got himself arrested at Gold Star Chili. Then he asked me for bail money.

10. The one who Lysol-ed his dirty socks and wore them again.

11. The guy who took me to Burger King. Halfway through our meal he checked his watch and said, “Can we hurry this up? Melrose Place is starting soon.

12. The guy with gigantic tanks of eels in his dorm room.

13. The DJ whose idea of a date was dropping acid.

14. The time my date puked inside the spinning Gravitron carnival ride, making all the little kids weep.

15. The guy who passed out on my living room floor. With his pants down. And his penis in his hand.

16. The brilliant drink-10-pints-of-Guinness-in-one-sitting drinking challenge. (My idea, unfortunately.)

17. The man who cried into his wet burrito, freshly heartbroken over a recent breakup.

18. The marathon runner who excused himself to use the restroom and never came back.

19. The foam party where my date slipped on a floor full of dirty bubbles and cracked a tooth.

20. The party that included a guy named Ishmael with a wad of hash. I went temporarily blind and my friend Gretchen had to hold my hand and walk me home.

21. The one who took me on a hike so long, so difficult and so far into the wilderness, I thought I would eventually have to eat him.

22. The time the guy I was dating paid his roommate to take me out instead. Turns out I preferred the roommate.

23. The guy who read everything in a newscaster voice. Even the brunch menu.

**********

I’m blogging as part of the Scintilla Project, a fortnight of storytelling. Check it out!

Pinkeye from Vishnu

March 21, 2012

I hesitate to even tell people that I went to an ashram in India on my trip around the world, because it brings up the inevitable comparison.

“OMG, you’re like ‘Eat, Pray, Love!'”

I mean, there are worse things to be likened to than an Oprah-endorsed, best-selling phenomenon. But I wish we could acknowledge and honor the stories of women without comparing them all the time. My journey was not Elizabeth Gilbert’s journey, and the road she traveled wasn’t mine. We just happen to be two women with backpacks.

Still, it happened that I ended up at an ashram in India.

It was located in the southern part of India, where vines and palms tangle around swampy backwaters. There was supposedly a zoo nearby, even though there wasn’t a town or a city in the vicinity. But every sunrise we could hear the lions roar.

I wish I could say my original intention was spiritual enlightenment. But I was coming off nine months of constant travel, followed by a blurry string of beach parties in Goa. More than enlightenment, I needed a purpose. I needed a schedule. I needed to lay on a mat and stretch my limbs to the sky and breathe. So I went.

It took three rickety buses through the countryside, one long walk and a wheezing rickshaw up a ribbon-like road, but I finally got there.

I fully committed myself to the ashram. I didn’t bring any forbidden goods, like alcohol, onto the property. I didn’t sneak out for a smoke. I didn’t skip any lessons. I didn’t half-ass it.

Instead, I greeted the blackness of morning with chants of “Jai Ganesh” until the sun rose.

I joined 200 people in a chorus of “Om” until the resonance became so deep and strong that it vibrated the chambers of my heart.

I sat crosslegged on the floor, scooped rice and runny lentils with my hand, ate in silence.

I slept naked under a mosquito net.

And then I waited.

I waited for that moment — enlightenment, clarity, bliss. Whatever it is that people are supposed to feel at an ashram, I wanted to feel it too.

I did my part, after all. I was present. I was open. I was expectant. And when it comes to spirituality, isn’t that the bulk of the battle? Just showing up?

This was also a particularly vulnerable time, since I had lost my mother just two months prior. So I did a lot of meditating and marinating while I let grief unzip me. If there was ever someone ripe for a divine moment, it was me — literally down on my knees in a temple, pleading for something, anything.

When those prayers went unanswered, I turned my efforts outward. I climbed mountains. I sang to the sun as she tossed scarves of color into the sky. I turned my face up to the heavens and said, “Come on. Give me everything you’ve got.”

Nothing happened.

I thought it would come in a bolt of lightning or something equally dramatic. I figured it would be like the conversion of Saul to Paul in the New Testament, a familiar story to every classically-trained Christian. Basically, Saul was traveling the streets of Damascus when he saw a bright flash of light and the resurrected figure of Jesus. The event caused Saul to go temporarily blind, at which point he changed his name to Paul and became (arguably) the greatest disciple of all. It was amazing. The dude went blind!

Meanwhile, I begged for something to happen. And Vishnu only gave me pinkeye.

After I left the ashram, I traveled to Kanyakumari, the town at the very bottom tip of India. In a country full of spiritual places, Kanyakumari is among the most special and sacred. This is the confluence of three major bodies of water — the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean.

It is where millions of travelers, missionaries and pilgrims have entered the continent. It is where Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes were released back into the world. And according to Hindu legend, this is where an avatar of Parvati was set to marry Siva. When he failed to show up for his wedding, the rice that was supposed to feed the guests washed ashore, turning into the rocks that form the beach today.

I hiked up my leggings and waded into the water. It was as warm as tears. Around me, pilgrims tossed pink flowers into the waves, where they drifted out into forever.

Maybe enlightenment never really comes in a force of nature. Maybe it is just the gentle intersection of waves. It ebbs and flows, taking things away, returning again, washing over all of us.

—–

This post is part of the Scintilla Project, a fortnight of storytelling.

New love & New Order

March 17, 2012

Our story together began on a slinky July afternoon at a hipster coffeehouse. I met him when I got up to play the jukebox. He sidled up to me, handed over a dollar bill and told me what song to play.

I said, “Don’t tell me what to do. That’s rude.” Besides, I’d already chosen that song.

He told me I had great taste.

I said he did too.

By the time he walked me to the parking lot, I already knew he would be my boyfriend someday.

He pressed me up against my father’s Buick, the metal hot enough to scorch my skin through the thin fabric of my sundress. When I squirmed, he pushed harder. The air was heavy with humidity, my shoulders were pink, both of us slick with sweat.

His kisses destroyed me. They burned — actually burned — as if his lips were formed from lava flows instead of cherry Chapstick. His tongue tasted like coffee and clove cigarettes.

I sank into the fire.

He handed me a torn cocktail napkin with the number of his friend’s place, where he was crashing on the couch for a little while.

There were already so many red flags, I was practically looking at a communist rally. I should have known better than to fall for the first broken man with a dollar and a request for “Regret.”

But back then, all of it was still new and good. I must have played “Regret” 50 times that night, taking one line of the song, holding it in my hand and polishing it like silver.

“You were a complete stranger, now you are mine.”

____

This post is part of the Scintilla Project, a fortnight of storytelling. It’s not to late to jump in!

One second

March 15, 2012

I loved skydiving. And then, in a moment as quick and rare as a shooting star, I hated it.

What happened in between was this: Two friends, both trained skydiving instructors, went up into the air. On the way down, they collided. One man died. The other shattered his pelvis and broke his spine in five places.

My boyfriend was the one who lived.

What baffled me most about the incident was how quickly it happened — how the entire world changed for two men, their families and many of their friends in less than a second. It made no sense. In a world where we know so much about the molecules and cells that create a person’s life, how is it that life could be irrecoverably altered just like that?

A second is nothing. A blip. A snap. Less than a breath. It barely makes a difference, except when it does — when one man becomes a husk and the other dissolves into the space between something and nothing.

By nature, an accident is selfish and senseless. It’s just this stupid flash of a moment that comes in, fucks everything up and then leaves. There’s no bracing for it, no preparation, no warning. There’s no opportunity to protest, to save, to protect. You can’t possibly put up a fight against something that’s already gone.

Afterward, the minutes and days and weeks that stretched ahead seemed overwhelming and impossible. That’s the cruelest thing about accident time — the chaos comes in a flash, but it takes an agonizingly long time to crawl through the wreckage.

Even now, I don’t understand how we slogged through the months that followed. I was barely a person. I was the cicada’s shell that had been left behind on a tree. And I was only on the sidelines; I wasn’t the one filed away in an intensive care unit.

I cried until it was my natural state. I drove to work and locked myself in the bathroom and consciously reminded myself to keep breathing. I went to the friend’s funeral, which was probably not a wise thing to do, and then I went on a bizarre shopping spree where I bought every Lance Armstrong book I could find. I still don’t know why. I slept on the floor of my boyfriend’s hospital room and refused to leave when visiting hours were over. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t will myself to be the one who was hurt or dead.

One day, at my boyfriend’s urging, I got back in the air. I jumped about 40 more times after that, and then I couldn’t do it anymore. There are many people in skydiving who can witness an injury or fatality and shake it off. They understand that it’s part of the sport, and they are willing to take the risk. I admire them for it, but I was no longer that person. And I was OK with that.

Sometimes people ask me if I skydive anymore. And I usually laugh and say, “No, no. I grew up.” The truth, however, is more complicated than that. I grew older, yes. And I grew more cautious. And I grew cold for something that once brought me great joy.

But while I locked my passion for skydiving away into a little compartment, I also unleashed a respect for other parts of my life.

Over the entirety of the incident, I gathered a certain sense of peace, which was both unexpected but welcome. It came from knowing that one second is the division between happiness and pain, bitterness and gratitude, here and not. It became the glass lens to help me to see clearly, reassess and do what is most important.

Accepting and understanding that fragile shard of time is what drives me now to play with the dog, finish the book, climb the mountain, travel the world, love the boyfriend-turned-husband and ultimately make more moments that matter.

____

This post was part of The Scintilla Project, two weeks of storytelling. See what it’s all about.

On the trail of Anne Shirley

March 15, 2012

NOTE: This is my first post for Scintilla, a two-week blogging project. Today’s prompt is: “Life is a series of firsts. Talk about one of your most important firsts.”

It’s easy to be optimistic when you have a bicycle basket full of Twinkies and are 8 years old

You wave goodbye to your small, ranch-style home, to your family’s brown station wagon and to your little world of Huber Heights, Ohio. You don’t yet know that this is a troubled neighborhood with sagging porches, overgrown bushes and lawns cultivated with weeds. A place where you will someday find broken beer bottles in sewers, leering men in the park and a syringe in your friend Stacy’s driveway.

All you know is that this is America’s largest community of brick homes. Highway billboards declare it so in proud, 200-point type. And today you are leaving it behind.

There is hope in your feet, and it makes you pedal hard and strong for many miles — at least three of them — all the way to the AAA travel office.

“Can I help you?” says the woman behind a desk. She wears a nametag and navy blue suit.

You hand over the membership card that you swiped from your mother’s wallet. You’ve been to this office before, planning road trips with your parents to Gettysburg battlefields and Colonial Williamsburg, so you know the drill.

“Hi. I … I mean, we need a map. To Canada. We’re going to Prince Edward Island,” you say.

”You want a map from Ohio to Canada?”

The woman carefully examines you.

“Yes. Just a map. That’s all,” you say. “Um, my mom is waiting in the car.”

You hope this lady doesn’t notice the pink Huffy parked in front of the office storefront.

She sighs and walks over to a display case filled with maps and brochures.

“Would you also like some pamphlets for hotel and entertainment options in Nova Scotia?”

You have never heard of Nova Scotia, which sounds like a terrible affliction of the spine, but you smile and nod anyway.

The travel agent stuffs everything into a plastic bag. She returns the membership card, which you carefully place into your plastic wallet. It is already bulging with the money your grandmother gave you for Christmas and your birthday, plus some quarters you lifted from your dad’s dresser. You’re rich, and you know it. There’s got to be at least $50 in there.

You ride for many blocks. You are on your way to faraway places and wonderful things. The ribbons in your hair are made of yarn and they fly like the banners that trail a skywriting airplane.

The past few years, you have ripened inside a house of books. This is both a literal and figurative statement. Your father always has a book in hand to read in line at the bank or during halftime at the basketball game. Your sister has thick college texts that look simultaneously intimidating and enticing. Your older brother makes you look up words in the dictionary for his homework. You help your mother carry paper grocery sacks full of books home from the library, and then you build forts out of them. You sit inside books on top of books to read more books. And you love them with a passion that you don’t feel for anything else.

Your very favorite is “Anne of Green Gables,” a book that doesn’t read like a book at all but more like a very long letter from an old friend. It is the completely fictional story of Anne Shirley, a plucky, freckled orphan who is adopted by cranky old siblings. They live in a house called Green Gables in the quaint little town of Avonlea, Prince Edward Island.

You don’t believe that Anne is a work of fiction. In fact, you are convinced that you and Anne are exactly alike. While Anne puts liniment instead of vanilla in a cake, you learn not to put hot dogs in the microwave. Anne feels uncharitably toward classmate Josie Pye, and you push Cheryl Lacy off the monkey bars. Anne lets a mouse drown in the plum-pudding sauce. You dunk a cockroach into the ranch dressing on the salad bar at Sizzler. (This is an accident.)

The book feels so incredibly real that you ignore the laws of space and time. It doesn’t matter that “Anne of Green Gables” is set in the early 1900s and you are living in the thick of the 1980s. The only thing separating you from Anne is 1,500 miles. Or kilometers once you get to Canada.

It begins to drizzle. You pull to the side of the road and eat a Twinkie underneath a tree. It is cold. You are not prepared for this. You eat another Twinkie, because you are fat and gluttonous and happy you don’t have to share this food with your sister and brother.

You decide to ride through the rain, because who knows? Maybe it is raining in Canada too. You just want to get there.

You stop again when you get to the highway. You already don’t know which way to go. The cars are too fast and confusing. You are scared.

You turn around and pedal home.

This day is imprinted in technicolor on your memory, but it never even registers for the rest of your family. Years later when you retell the story, none of them remember it happening. It is just another Tuesday.

For you, this is a day that matters. It is your first taste of possibility. It is your first failure. And it lights the fire that burns for escape.

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