It's not that serious

The message was a few lines:

Yeah, it is time for me to wish you happy birthday again, without having seen you for a year.  So much happened in your life since I’ve seen you and I don’t know the half of it.  Sigh

Hope you aren’t hiding in a hole and are out there living the good life. Lots of people love you a lot and you need to keep in touch with them!  SoCal? Really?  What’s up with that?  Anyway, if you want to know about my life, you have to tell me about yours.

I typed in "Nothing much I'm a massage therapist now :)" and almost hit send.

But I didn't
Alot has happened.
Alot has changed. 
To say oh nothing would be a gross understatement.  So I told her what happened to me.... in third person.   Not because I am an ego maniac, but because its really too painful to think of myself as this stupid.
It helped... it truly helped

Because now I know where I have been
Although I can see where I am going
Even if I'm far from certain of where I’ll end up
That's just fine with me

Because I made it  here… I am exactly where I need to be.

Where I am supposed to be  and where I chose to be.

 __Our Story so Far__

We last left our unlikely heroine in San Jose.  It was the end of February 2007  beginning of March.  She had just successfully:

-gotten one of her friends out of a physically and emotionally abusive relationship, 

-reluctantly left her stable albeit low paying job at the law firm to navigate the unpredictable torrid waters of  Los Angeles at  her fiancées enthusiastic and guilt riddled request

-sold or giving away 90% of her personal belongs in preparation for the relocation

- and moved in with his parents.

-and is engaged in an open relationship with fiancee and said from above friend.

Two weeks later (still in withdrawal from the massive ego high of playing the moaner) she is working at Walgreens  i.e. the "Pit of Despair".   Her fiancée who is unemployed and has been since November of 2006  is depressed and mentally MIA due to the apparent fall through of the LA thing (soon to be termed the “Great LA Fiasco of 2006”) . This leaves her to fend off debit collectors, default payments, and the repo man on her lonesome.

In April  while busting her ass at Walgreens i.e suckville USA, facing financial ruin and living with her fiancée’s dysfunctional family  her fiancée is not only passing his time crawling into World of Warcraft the way some manic depressives crawl into a bottle but also crawling into the “friend” she helped out of dire situation.  Although the relationship is an open one and she understands that means sex  she’s hurt… he should have been spending at least some of that time doing the laundry... this can not continue.  
She goes to speak to him about her leaving Wal-hell and instead of getting the comfort/promise to help out that she is hoping for she is cut off and mournfully inquired as to wether or not she is leaving him.


She thinks to herself that that is a brillant idea and replies enthuastically in the affirmative.
He is so overcome that he leaves her bed to go into the bed of his other partner the "friend" who comes and tells her that she will help her get back home to New Orleans.  Our heroine finally puts 2 and 2 together as the "friend" embraces her and tells her to just let it all out.   She cries but mostly out of the halirity of the situations.  She realizes that this is single white female without all the white females.

She decides to let the "friend" and former fiancee ride off into the sunset together.  She knows he will be back because... well the friend isn't her.  And she is right.  It took all of 7 days before it all went to hell for the new little unit.  The friend leaves the fiancee comes back and confesses that the friend was making him choose between them for the last few months and telling her that she was a cold, heartless, selfish and going to leave him for someone better anyway.  He now realizes that swf has been twisting her words and manipulating him.


Our main girl realized that 8 days ago.  "Why didn't you ask me how I felt"  she asks and for the first time is really hurt.... even more than she was over the laundry.

His excuse

She was becoming distant

Her excuse for becoming distant

His not bringing in money, helping with the chores, or looking for a job was a personal pet peeve and massive turn-off.

This recent turn of events inspires her toward her own semi-dramatic mental break down (why should he get all the fun).   She quits, moves into the spare bedroom, re-evaluates her life and enrolls in massage school all with-in 48 hours.  She figures she has nothing else to lose.  Its now early May.

By the end of May she has a job that pays her twice what the other use too, her ex-fiancée is her fiancée again (our heroine is obviously injecting heroin)  and the LA job offer finally looks like it is going to go through.  She refuses to go to LA despite the pleading of the fiancée and his mother.  She realizes that she had given up way to much of her life and needs to get herself straight and on track because she can’t depend on him for anything stable.

He doesn’t go to LA without her.

It’s now July and lo and behold after eight months he finally joins her in the land of productive adults.  He gets a job.She’s overjoyed. After all last time he was unemployed it took him a year to find a job.  He’s cut his refresh rate down by 4 months!!!

They go to couples counseling.

Her week looks like this

40 hrs work
10 hrs traffic
16 hrs school
5  hrs gym
10 hrs massage application

She still comes home and does the laundry and cooking because even though he only works 25-35 hours a week and lives close to his job he forgets to do chores.  And she is too exhausted to complain.

It’s August and she wants to move into their own place… he suggest they wait until she finishes school.  Besides her rent money helps his mom out a lot since his dad hasn’t worked in 25 years.  It’s a good thing they do because in February he is unemployed again.  Happy New Year!!!!

In May 2008 she graduates from NHI.  And becomes a Certified Massage Therapist.  She has held down a 3.96 GPA and has been class leader for the past six months.  She has made wonderful friends for life, conquered an obsessive compulsive eating disorder, discovered how awesome life could be with a self esteem and started calculations regarding her own personal worth.

She tells him she is moving out in three months.  He can only come with her if he starts acting like a man. By late July he has a job.  But in August she starts to notice patterns, cycles, red flags, unacceptable behavior ( he fucks around on her while she's at home visiting her mother for the first time in three years) and she slaps herself.  She looks at her relationship closely and is finally able to see that 3d image 75% of the population insisted was there but she declared as a hoax.

There is a laundry list of things but is sums up to this.  He is not the man(baby) she wants in her life and she does not want to be the woman (mother) he needs her to be in his.  All signs point to yes, the stars are (mis)aligned… they must part ways. 

Since they still share a car she gives him until the end of September to get his affairs in order.  It’s a slow but friendly break up… so far.

Because despite everything.

She still loves him.

He made mistakes, she certainly has made mistakes.  They both have been selfish, and childish, easy to defer blame, accept undeserved credit and shun self responsibility.

She still loves him

In her heart she wishes things could have been different.  Nine years…for  nine years.  He has been her best friend, her lover, her partner, her shining knight, her shoulder to lean on, both crutch and hurdle, simultaneous curse and cure.

And she has been that to him.

She still loves him

But she knows her worth and has chosen to love herself more.

The new chapter begins this October.
All my love,
Renie

ps.  There are something’s I left out... like scandalous kink, moonlight skinny dipping, semi naked photo shoot, losing my car, and a brain tumor scare...  But all those things resolve themselves for the best.

I miss
so bad
that I can taste it
if I bite my tongue
hard enough
I can taste it in my blood
it flows like music
up into me
and through me
soft
gentle
deep

deep
warm

deep
womb

deep
south

I miss
Crescent Bends
the way the sounds of the street
blends
with horse shoe cadence
the smell of these friends
coffee fresh and chicory kissed
flour fried into a pillow
delicate snow sugar misted
 I miss
Rain singin', slipin', spillin' on cobblestones
melted brown sugar, molasseses and pecans
I miss
broiled crawfish, crab, shrimp
and the songs
painful
sweet
that get between your knees
and then crash into your feet

I miss
yellow
purple
and green
the way the street lights danced off of a trombone
a bright golden sheen
I miss
I miss
New Orleans

Inside of me
beneath the skin
beyond the bone
and deep within
there is a dark
dark
dark place
It started small
but now seek space
It growls,
and grows
it's hungry mouth
it takes things in
won't let them out
and I should fear
had it left any in me
that it will consume
my sanity.

this one I wrote about home
about NewOrleans

A letter to a lover lost

I hated you.
Because you would never let me go.
I tried to wash you off... forget you
I changed my walk... I changed my talk... I almost changed my name
But some distant smell would wash over me... even here on the Pacific it would reach me
and reach into me and invade me.
Oregano, thyme, parsley, paprika tossed together on someones tilapia... all it was missing was the cayenne
and then all I was missing was you
City of Sin
City of Redemption
City of Joy
City of Sex
City of Art and Love and Magnolias
City of the Dead
and I am stranded, robbed of my tomb. I always knew I would return to you... even if it was in a pine wood box. But not for one moment, one second, one breath did I think that you would leave me first.
There are no alabaster stones for my bones.

But the tings you did to me. Oh dear god the things you did and who you were... a violently poetic abusive lover. I would swear you off and youd get me drunk and Id come back again and again. A whore with a hurricane in her veins needing a fix from you.

You strangled me when you made love to me, And made me feel like there was no one else. A talent of yours... makin the world disappear.

And here I am in a place with these ugly and inadequate palm trees, with massive god aged redwoods , with soft brown sands and dark green and blue surf that seems like an eternity sweeping before me...
and all I want to do is to curl up inside that little bowl by the river bend. Sit beneath an old oak with a beard of Spanish moss, skin as brown as mine, curvy as the women who walked beneath them while a mosquito silently violates my leg.
The sea to me looks the same but your mystery was contast change

I want you
I want you bad
I want you to give it to me hard and rough with oil and fire, crawfish and jazz, crumbled hot brick buildings, black bodies dancing to the drummers beat, old folk business,
shasay
sway
and second line.
And I want you to forgive me
because no matter how much of a bitch you were. You were family and blood and water and flesh and bone and heart and me. And I thought I was better than you. So much better than you
But I was wrong
we are the same
were the same

Can you hear me?
Can you still hear me?
I want you to open the door.
Im knocking on the door.
I want to come home.

When the white hot lighting burst forth from the blackened amethyst early morning sky and stuck the green rolling hills that teemed with orange and yellow wild flowers something stuck me too.

I remember pulling over to the side of the road and getting out of my car while the lightening danced a violent staccato tarantella across the alien Wyoming landscape. I remember my heart racing to its rhythm... my blood saturated with every roll of thunder as it stalked closer. And I could not move... run... retreat from it. For the first time in my life I faced the storm. Let it wrap my in its arms and smother me. The wind picked up the tiny rocks around me and they bit into my legs like tiny ants but still I could not move... would not move.

Even when the sky opened like a spilt ripened fruit and poured down over me the cold rains gathered by yesterday sun I willed myself to stay and to embrace it back... letting it saturate me. I became so filled that the things inside of me... the dark and dirty, disgusting , unforgiving, un- merciful things that drove me across the mountains, through the hills and across the desert began to overflow their banks. Out of my womb, out of my heart, out of my head, out of my soul and out of my mouth I screamed curses and first... vile profanities... I stamped my feet into the soft earth until my calves were mudded. Then came words which weren't really words but real... a heathen, insane prayer. I mixed my tears with the tears of heaven until I became sick... drowning in the rain.

But I stayed muttering, mumbling,gasping, choking, aching until I could not feel anything except for the earth below me and the sky above me... and pleasure so intense and complete and sexual that it was painful to endure. And that was when the wind died, the heavens solidified and the last distant sound of thunder rolled away.

I was  shaken. I was confused I was unsettled. I felt like I had been kissed passionately by a dying man in his last seconds of life and I knew I was never to be kissed that singular way again. I had felt life, death and divinity in a span of time that was unknown to me. As I sat in the passenger side seat and washed away the mud with a towel and a bottle of water I tried to relive or at least understand what had just happened to me.

I stayed there in the middle of nowhere for the better part of an hour and not one single car passed that stretch of road as I feebly attempted to grasp that moment. By time I left the sun had cleared the horizon and the wind was gently running its fingers through rolling hills... making green rivers run though fully opened orange and yellow flowers that covered them. I took that moment and hid it away. Locked it in the secret place. Washed it off like the mud and left it in the hills. Forgot about it because it was hurt me to think about it.

But it chased me
slowly,
stealthy,
silently.

Through Colorado's rocky mountain ranges and Wyoming's  winding hills, skirting the salted plains of Utah, blazing past Nevada's white hot sands and brunt black jetties, up up up and over the rolling coast of the Sierra. It crept into San Jose down Saratoga street and caught me in its arms yesterday at sunset as I lay on a hill with the wind blowing from the South and the pointed blades of grass biting my legs and arms and neck.

I know why it was painful... why it hurt to remember. My life has always moved from one storm to the next as soon as the sky turned ashen and grey I ran, or turned away or cowered. But not that time. No that time I stood with arms open, soaring and challenging and alive. It hurt because I was dead for so long that I no longer remembered what it felt like to be alive.

Alive!!! My entire being was a sleeping limb roused and beaten until blood coursed again with the sensation of a million tiny pins and that was the pain... that was the torture and torment.

I pushed it away, denied the experience because of deep rooted monestrous reasons that I used as justification to not lead a life well lived.

I substituted false unworthiness, and shame because it was easer than dealing with the appalling veracity of selfishness, slothfulness, and stifling fear.

But yesterday I remembered, relived and was paralyzed with anger at myself but more than that I was hungry. That memory is ahead of my now instead of behind me... teasing and taunting and fresh as spring
and I am hungry for it... longing for the kiss and the thrill of thunder.

.. think I may do this at an open mic night

Nawlins

My home was...

It has been years... years since I've been in a beauty salon... let alone a black salon. The smells of hot grease and curling irons drown me in an ache, a longing for home and pink barrettes, shiny black patent leather shoes and baby blue taffeta dresses. Sade and Aretha Franklin sounds so thick that they wrap around you pulling you into a world between the worlds this portal in to African and American.

And here I sit a fresh 24 feeling all of 14 when he wraps that drape over me and tilts me back in my seat and runs the hot water through my hair. The woman to my left speaks of last Sunday's sermon and the woman to my right moans about her children. And he scratches and scratches and scratches my head until memories wash up coming clean in mint, lavender rinses.

"Is the water too hot?" he asks but it is barely heard for I can hear my mothers voice sharp in my ears telling me she'll be back in a few and to be good.
 
"Yes" I say  but not to him.                            
He makes the water cool.
       

I remember now the awkwardness of sitting there... tilted back stomach exposed hands left at your side not feeling quite covered, trying to sit like a lady instead of bracing your legs wide apart. I curl my feet to the right, clasp my hands across my belly and curs silently for not wearing my longer skirt. He leaves me there... letting some herbal formula work its way into my scalp...

I still feel 14 "isn't that the truth sista?" I hear from my left. I turn in the direction of the voice and nod uncomfortably and manage a smile I hope was not bewildered... The woman smiles in satisfaction and rambles on to her friend ignoring the little brown girl that is tugging at the hem of her exposed black slip edged with an inch or so of lace. And I realize that I am not 14 anymore. That I am a woman. I smile at the little girl... I remember being her. I remember my mother's slip the long conversations about what I do not know. Wanting her to see me.
        He comes and rinses me clean.
                     Pump,
                                Pump
                                            up goes the chair, his fingers twisting my wet hair. And we speak of home, of the south, of politics, of religion, of past, and hope and ambitions. He gently rings out pain as he twists and binds in hope as he locs. This is ordinary for him but today he twists me in and locs "Jane" out. three hours go by I’m worried, my legs ache. He consoles me tells me my hair will loc nicely and quickly and grow so fast I will hate it.

I remember to breathe.

        He seals the bees wax with heat. He spins the chair hands me a mirror and I try not to cry.
                                                     Oh my sweet Goddess what have I done.
                                                    Where has it gone, my mane, my crown, my glory gone.
        Only twisted slender curling dark strands snake around my head. “6 weeks until they locs and thicken and 3 months hard up keep after that you will be fine don’t worry.” He smiles and me. No matter how much I tell myself to smile back I feel the falling of a frown. And I stare into the mirror directly at myself. My round face with ample chin, full heavy lips and large large eyes and I don’t believe it is me.

                                                        The eyes turn sad.
I manage a smile, pay, leave, go home and stare,
                                                                                      stare,
                                                                                             stare into the mirror with a comb in one hand and towel in the other ready to wash it out...
and slowly,
                    slowly,
                                slowly I see what I have done and the woman that I have become and the lesson I have

yet to learn .
I am the field run through, up turned scattered with seeds barren and brown...
my hair, my body, my soul, my being laid farrow far too long.
I am the field run through up turned tilled scattered with seed, and hope, and dreams and determination.
And just like my hair my being will grow.
Just like my hair wild and free and fat and black and nappy and me.
And so I begin again.
For I have never in my life ever looked so not like “Jane”.
We my hair and I unruly once more
like an unbroken wild animal thing
wild beautiful unbroken thing
back in Africa
all the way back in Africa.

me-n-jane  

I started writing something a few days back this is all that I have so far but I think that I am off to a good start the hardest thing is getting it all to come out sometimes I feel as if thw words are all stuck in my head just content to lay there and rot. I have to poke and prod them to come out. Well here it is.

Me -n-Jane

It took my hair out the first time… clumps of it. Just as tame and straight as Jane's but it came out all the same. As if my very skull rejected the forced assimilation even though I was quite too young to understand. And it itched, itched like hell. You know the kind of itch that is just like a doctor saying "oh no dear this is only going to sting" to calm you down just enough to inflict his torment freely upon you. I learned after the first time going to the doctors but for some reason (other than my mother) I kept going back to that salon, sitting in that hot leather chair, letting myself be boosted up until my dangling toes no longer touched the ground ( I suspected then so that I could not change my mind and run away) and tortured almost unbearably for 12 years (once a month) like clockwork.

Oh it burned like hot ice. I imagined my head a stack of smoke. How long was it? 15 or 20 minutes with that awful white girlish pink tinged stuff dripping to my ears and eating the flesh away. I remember it even now. God the liberation I felt when she put my head "under the sink" to wash out that awful lye based acid. It felt like relieving yourself after waiting a long long time. Crud I know but that is the truth. Such intense pleasure after all that pain. Every muscle in my body ached with release. It was like I was being worked over by a grand masseur. .. Well that was until she stared scrubbing my scalp to make sure it was all out. Her freshly French tipped manicured nails ripped at the newly opened wounds or war against my untamable hair. I remember the salt tears running from my eyes as I tried desperately not to cry aloud. Over the years it got easier, more accustomed to the pain. Just one of my many penances for being black and a woman.

I would leave that parlor (two hours later) on account of the drying and curling) and relish in the feeling of the wind running it's finger through my sore scalp. I didn't mind the fact that I would not be able to play bare headed in the rain, sweat or worst of all go swimming (unless it was under the strictest understanding that my head was not be submerged at any and all costs). I was happy no longer nappy. I would swing my head back and forth until I saw stars swimming in the clouds. I would turn in mad circles just to see my hair move freely like all those shampoo commercials. Just as lose and easy as those blonde skinny models. For five minutes I was in heaven on earth. Just five minutes because my mother (ever watchful) yelled at me to get back in the car/house lest the strong southern humidity cause it to go back, all the way back… to Africa. And that would be a waste of her 30 dollars. Money that we did not have to spend. For a week I would suffer sleeping on hard curlers thinking to myself that if Jesus could stand a crown of thorns I would at least stand this. By the second week the chemical burns would heal up. Mama would scratch my head and the scabs would float to the top of the black river and fall like snow onto my back and the dark blue towel across her lap. By the end of the second week I was fine, perfect at peace. My scalp had healed over and my hair still moved when the wind touched it. But by the fourth week it no longer hung down and the thin comb would not pass though it. And my scalp began to itch un mercifully. My mother interrogated me about what I had been doing to my hair. The hair dresser laughed and said my hair will one day be able to "hold the perm" for up to six weeks once I was older (it never did). Unruly once more like an unbroken wild animal thing back in Africa all the way back in Africa.

And so the process began again.
So I could look
just like
jane