Cold Snap

How forgetful we are of cold and of hurt.

I can't remember winter. Funny, considering I've experienced over two dozen of them. Yet I'll be damned if I can carry an accurate impression of the season from year to year. Superficial memories abound. Snow, cocoa, wet chilly wool? Those, I keep. Darkness, despair and marrow-deep cold? They begin to fade with the sun of each lengthening day. By the time the first crocus wriggles up, they're gone. Disintegrated and blown away across newly-verdant fields. For the next seven or eight months, the word will evoke naught but eggnog and evergreens. Winter has once again been Sanitized For My Protection.

It's like childbirth. Nature, cruel and clever, knows to slip you an amnesiac. Why else would you do such a thing again? You can never recall why things were so blackly, bleakly challenging. The past is erased, as it your ability to stave off a repeat... to run screaming for your diaphragm or one-way tickets to Ft. Lauderdale.

You forget. You can't dredge up the bottom-dwelling dreck from the hidey-hole of last year. And, as such, can't take a prophylactic leap off a short pier when autumn begins to eke out its last.

If winter's a knife in the side, Daylight Savings Time is the twist. Changes nature sensibly chose to distribute over a month or more are condensed into a single evening. It's a mutation of the nasty, horror-movie kind.

Until that fateful weekend, the season's a slow-moving beast, scaled belly scraping the earth, masticating another a few minutes of sunlight each day. Then the game changes. The clocks roll back, and sixty minutes - sixty of them! All at once! - are devoured. Snap, chomp, gone. That innocuous little lizard turns out to be more akin to Godzilla... rending the fabric of the day between mighty animatronic jaws, knocking the earth off its orbit with a flick of his tail.

The first Monday is hard. Not the hardest - that, you fear, is still to come - but compounded by shock.

I strolled outside, post-work, and it was... dark. "Dark" is a relative term in the city, of course. In the forest, the night is black, proper black, splotched with silver-white puddles of moonlight. Urban nights, for all their thrills, lack such stark beauty. It gets dimmer and muddier. The usual post-workday scramble is suffused with fatigue. People rest their heads against bus windows, eyes closed, utterly spent at 6 PM. They weren't so easily depleted a week ago. Yet again, it wasn't winter.

Exiting the bus and wandering home, my emotions were as dim as my surroundings. "Oh, yeaaah," I thought, "This happened last year, too. For a loooong time. How the hell are we going to get through this without killing ourselves?"

"This winter can't be as bad as last one, can it?" I asked Kateri, grasping for reassurance. "Can it? I mean, if I recall, it was… bad. Really bad.”"

“Yeah, it was bad,” she said, "But things were different then."

Truer words never spoken.

We’d each gotten our first taste of post-marriage life that summer. There’s no finer season to be newly single. The air’s heavy with lust and potential. Clothes, cares and inhibitions are readily shed. Even single parenting seems like a lark… long walks! Ice cream for dinner! Playdates in the park!

We were understandably enraptured with our independence. We had the world at our fingertips, babies on our hips, bite marks on our necks. “Aren’t our new lives awesome?” we’d comment, giggling while we sipped red wine and let our bediapered posse rip up the local café.

Flash forward a few months. It’s cold. It’s dark. And it’s bad. Really bad. Neither of us saw it coming.

“We had each other,” Kateri said, “But we didn’t have what we really needed.”

We didn’t have what we needed... or what we wanted. We didn’t know the difference between the two. And we didn’t know how to obtain either one.

We huddled inside, occasionally ducking out for a gallon of milk or a bad date. While the glacial weather was chapping our hands and faces, our nerves were being abraded by a series of spectacularly unsuitable men. Annoying, aloof, disrespectful, disreputable… they ran the gamut. And yet we couldn’t get enough. The slightest signs of affection were pounced on as though they were deep-fried Twinkies and we were starving… which we were. A few days of silence from our pseudo-paramours was enough to make us hungry, cranky, desperate.

“Heard from Mr. X?”
“Not since last Tuesday. Heard from Mr. Y?”
“Radio silence.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck.”

From my current vantage point, I have no way of remembering the dismal drudgery of The Winter of Our Discontent. It’s been suppressed, like late-stage contractions or junior high in its entirety. I can imagine, though. Trudging through the snow, juggling diaper bags, groceries and a baby who wasn’t yet walking. Scattering my fire on the wind, blowing sparks towards a series of straw men, hoping one would ignite... and then being perplexed as to why my hands were burnt and my back was freezing.

Climate change be damned... that winter didn’t last forever. Things began to slowly shift with the first thaw. The warmth and light helped, of course. Finding a suitable bedmate seems a bit less dire when the comforters have been put away. Most important, though, was the fact that we’d survived. We hadn’t starved, frozen or slaughtered ourselves with ice scrapers. We’d spent a season alone. We weren’t just alive - we were better for it. The testosterone brigade’s text messages and lame excuses hadn’t sustained us through those bleak days. We’d done it ourselves. We’d kept relatively sane, performed home repairs, entertained the children during blizzards, prepared vast mountains of mac ‘n cheese, learned the measure of our own worth.

Our second summer of liberation brought further drinks, hijinks and late-night chicanery. It also brought, as I marveled, “... something I never saw coming! Well, um, except for in the dirty sense.”

Boyfriends.

We’d spent the summer in scorched-earth dating mode. This go-round, we suffered no fools. When our cell phones rang, we didn’t dive for them... we let them ring. Our bodies were sheathed in wispy, low-cut little numbers, but our hearts were armor-clad. “My date was late tonight,” I told Kateri, “And you know what? I realized I would’ve been legitimately happy if he just didn’t show up.”

We were badasses of love, refusing to concede an inch, guarding our emotions with heavy artillery “until things are absolutely, totally right”.

Imagine how surprised we were when they actually were.

Flowers started appearing on our mantels. Phone calls were not only returned, they were initiated. We were treated with respect, loved with gusto, mind and body.

“I might’ve just had an epiphany,” I whispered into Kateri’s ear, twirling a drink stirrer between my fingers. We were sitting in a booth at our dive bar of choice. The leaves and ambient temperature had recently dropped. Warmth was trickling from the earth, but we were, for the moment, still full of hope. And alcohol.

“... yet again, I might just be drunk.”

“Tell me! Tell me!” she said.

“So I was listening to ‘Pressure Drop’. It’s one of my favorite songs, ever, of all time. Love it! And it suddenly occurred to me that this might... possibly... maybe - fuck, this is scary -… be... the one for me.”

“Really?”

“I mean, I’ve had three Scotch and sodas. But, yeah. I’d be happy with that. Really fucking happy. And not for the wrong reasons. Not this time.”

Not this time. It’s nearly December. Winter’s nasty little fangs are about to clamp down on our asses (which, I might add, are decidedly smaller than last year). I fear the cold and the dark, the cabin fever and isolation. But this year won’t be as bad as last. It can’t. The boyfriends play a part - new love warms the room up more than a flotilla of woodstoves. But it’s mainly us. Desperation is a piss-poor fuel, one we won’t be using again. Our days of scattering embers are over. We built a giant bonfire, with our own hands. We stripped down to our undies and danced around, reveling in our handiwork. We chased away those who might steal our heat.

We’ll be hunkering down against the cold with companions who were drawn to us at our strongest... women who take no shit, take no prisoners. Women who make fire.

This year may be one we actually remember.

Thirteen Weeks

The first anniversary gift is paper. Traditionally, this has meant books, stationery and photographs. I'd be happier with, say, candy buttons (the sweetest way to scour one's colon!). Lamentably, the giftware industry has failed to embrace carnival prizes (eighth anniversary: Spongebob temporary tattoos).

The tenth anniversary gift is aluminum. Because nothing says "enduring love" like Beanee Weenies.

The thirtieth anniversary gift is pearl. While jewelry would fit the bill, the fine offerings of the Mikimoto Co. just don't have the same panache as two other apt choices - cunnilingus and dueling pistols.

Last week marked three months since Mr. Awesome and I first laid eyes on one another (and then, being shy folk, immediately averted them).

The three-month anniversary gift, in case you were wondering, is an ulcer.

It's fitting, really... but I get ahead of myself.

---

We'd spent Sunday traipsing around the New Jersey Pine Barrens. However, we never really "traipse" anywhere. We share a strange synergy - when we're together, spooky and fascinating things seem to pop up at every turn. If I ever discover a portal to the underworld, it won't be in Dar-es-Salaam or Kamchatka... it'll be behind Mr. Awesome's couch. In any event, what had begun as a routine nature walk had ended with us emerging from the woods with half-terrified grins, holding a mysterious animal skull on a crowbar. We tossed the skull in the trunk, screeched away from the scene... and went out for barbecue.

An hour later, we were both in agony.

"Fuck you, Sonny's Salmonella Shack!" I said, shooting daggers at the empty tub of mashed potatoes.

Two hours later, Mr. Awesome was asleep. I was prostrate in bed, tears oozing from my eyes, thinking dark and irrational thoughts.

"Maybe we never should've removed the skull from its rightful resting place? Maybe it was a sacred mystery-skull burial ground? Although it wasn't really 'buried' so much as 'tossed next to some empty orange soda cans'? Maybe we should return it? Maybe I should wake up Mr. Awesome right now and tell him this?"

Over the next few days, Mr. Awesome continued to experience intermittent pain and nausea. My symptoms, however, were a bit more alarming: I was unable to eat without experiencing a subsequent five-hour bout of searing abdominal pain.

"This is worse than genocide!" I hissed one night in mid-writhe, "And I'm a Jew, so I'm allowed to say that. Actually, I think I just depleted all of my Jew credits right there. Better go rub a Torah or something."

I was comparing my tummy ache to the Shoah. Clearly, something had to give. A trip to my doctor's office led to a trip to the friendly neighborhood medical imaging lab. A quick ultrasound (Ed. note: why is the transvaginal ultrasound probe so ungodly... generous? Where, precisely, are the expecting to insert it - the gap of the Pyrenees?) led to a diagnosis of "nothing visibly amiss - take a Zantac". Which, several agonizing hours hence, led to a trip to the ER, a tentative diagnosis of a peptic ulcer and a prescription for Nexium. Which - wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, praise G-d and pass the noodle kugel - allowed me to eat without crippling pain for the first time in four days.

"Gee, that's fascinating, Jul," you're saying, "But as enthralled as I am with your gastrointestinal tract, what does this have to do with your three-month dating anniversary, the illustrious Mr. Awesome or the Pine Barrens Mystery Skull Preserve?"

I was getting to that, damn it. Cut me some slack, I have a strange digestive aliment. I intend to spend the next several weeks confronting the tribulations of modern life by falling to the ground and shrieking, "Ow! My gastrointestinal tract!"

---

While investigating the fascinating, fiery world of peptic ulcers, Mr. Awesome stumbled upon an interesting fact.

"I wonder if we gave this to each other?" he wondered, "According to the National Institutes of Health, H. pylori can be transmitted from person to person through close contact and exposure to vomit" [emphasis mine].

I've had a hard time conveying how this relationship has affected me. I've trotted out a parade of cliches... "hit me like a ton of bricks". "Totally gobsmacked me." "When it's right, it's right."

Nothing really captured it, however, until the sudden realization, "Wow… we HAVE been exposed to one another's vomit!"

What can I say? It's been an intense three months.

---

"How high your highest of heights? How low are your lows?"
- Great Lake Swimmers, "Various Stages"

---

Yeah. We've breached the vomit barrier. In addition to "nauseated", we've also seen each other lost, scared, exhausted and depleted.

We've dealt with illnesses of both the mental and physical ilk.

We've visited five states.

We've broken... let's see... at least six local and federal laws. Sorry, Massachusetts.

We've stayed at the worst motel in Elizabeth, New Jersey (for precisely 40 minutes, before decamping to less-terrifying pastures) and the best campsite in Promised Land, Pennsylvania (where the moon shimmered on the lake, the trees slow-danced above our heads and we drank cheap wine out of empty Dr. Thunder cans).

We never thought "we" would exist.

Our previous lives were dissimilar in some ways, eerily parallel in many. Mine was often comfortable; his, often hellish. However, they shared a certain character, a queasy quality best analogized as "purgatory, if purgatory were a strip mall in Hoboken."

We were fat, half-comatose, trudging circles over scuffed linoleum. The blue-light specials were self-negation and futility.

There was the occasional upwards glance towards the skylights (something brighter? something better?), but that world wasn't for us. This was the best we could hope for. The exits were hidden. "Hell," we thought, "Maybe there aren't any exits.

And it's not like this is Darfur. There's climate control, for fuck's sake. And Orange Juliuses. You keep your head down, you enjoy the Gap clearance sales, you accept what you've been handed."

It wasn't until we were thrust outside - stunned, destabilized and squinting in the sun - that we realized exactly how much we'd been missing.

It wasn't until I met him that I realized how much was possible... that behind the skylights, there was an another world.

Bright, rich, hyper-saturated... and it wasn't for other people. It was for me.

We could part ways tomorrow and I'd still consider myself tremendously lucky to have known him... and this.

I'll never accept anything less.

Turns out there's a lot to be said for adoration. For deep, mutual respect. For plans based on hope and excitement rather than duty and capitulation.

For ripping up the east coast, exploring abandoned buildings, getting sloppy-drunk by a campfire, being exposed to one another's vomit, stealing kisses in the kitchen while the children run wild.

For lying prostate on the couch, cursing the deities of the upper GI tract... then cracking a weak smile as you reach out to hold the hand of the man suffering beside you. For remaining legitimately grateful, from the bottom of your miserable, dyspeptic soul.

For love, for trust. For more... for much.

Happy anniversary.

Chuck Norris Lives In My Uterus

There's no "I" in "team", but there is an "I" in "IUD"... and, as of yesterday, there's also an IUD in I. Say hello to my new womb-mate, the ParaGard T-380A:



The sucker's tiny, not much bigger than a bottle cap. It's also kind of homely. While doubtlessly manufactured in total sterility, it can't escape its true nature: it's a piece of wire-wrapped plastic. It looks like something your seven year-old would bring home from summer camp, the kind of mystery craft which makes you wish you'd majored in early childhood education, because damn, those people apparently have some good drugs.

"Wow, that's an interesting... thing, Tyler. Is it... a dinosaur?"
"No. It's a motorboat."

"Is that a picnic?"
"No, it's the Reichstag, but made out of dry macaroni and puff paint."

"Oh, what a cute necklace."
"It's actually a 99.4% effective method of ensuring that I remain an only child, thus maintaining my monopoly on your emotional, physical and financial resources."
"What?"
"... but the googly eyes are just for fun."

The only other IUD available in the U.S. is the Mirena, similarly-sized but a damned sight swankier. It's both sleek and high-tech; it looks like it would be equally at home modulating the flush volume of an expensive toilet or occupying a pedestal at MoMA.

Both IUDs boast almost-perfect efficacy. The ParaGard's ugly charm was a big draw (I mean, c'mon, the thing wouldn't look out of place festooned with sequins and glitter glue). Additionally, unlike the stylish-yet-vapid Mirena, it was hormone-free and effective for over a decade. I'm someone who keeps birth control pills IN MY WALLET; if they're ever more than a foot from my person, I may forget to take them. The prospect of a decade free of worry (and of fumbling while extracting my Price Plus card, thereby informing my fellow shoppers, "Hey, look at me! I enjoy dick AS WELL as savings!") was almost as delicious than the activity which necessitated all that worry in the first place. I was sold.

That is, until Nurse Jen walked in the room.

"Hi! Pardon my butt!" I said, drawing the flimsy paper sheet a little closer to my bare lap.

"So tell me," said Nurse Jen, eyeballing me, "What do you expect from the ParaGard?"

I gulped. I'd come prepared for discomfort, for pain... but a line of questioning straight out of an upper-level management seminar ("101 Interview Questions Incisive Enough To Reduce Your Potential Comptroller's Bowels To a Bubbling Vat of Hershey's Syrup")? This, I did not expect. Especially not from a gentle-looking blonde in scrubs and a scrunchie.

"Um... well, not getting knocked up will be nice," I stammered, "And, er, I read that it can kind of make your periods heavier? Which is okay... I think?"

"A LOT heavier," said Nurse Jen.

"Like... a LOT a lot?"

"Well... sometimes, yes."

The next five minutes were a subtle verbal tango. Nurse Jen didn't attempt to steer me away from my desired nugget of uterine bling, exactly... but there was definite Subtext.

Actual Statement: "... now, every woman's body reacts differently..."
Subtext: "... just like snowflakes, no two MASSIVE EXPLOSIONS OF GORE are the same."

Actual Statement: "As long as you understand the potential side-effects..."
Subtext: "... which you won't, unless you'd like a little demonstration with a ketchup-filled balloon and a moving car."

Actual Statement: "You have to go with whatever will make you comfortable."
Subtext: "Remember that scene in 'Murder Mall IV' where that chick gets trapped in Ham-o-Rama and the killer spiral-slices her? Yeah, it'll be sort of like that."

My resolve did not crumble. It - and my uterus - are made of steelier stuff.

"Listen," I said, sounding for all world like one of the menstruating marvels in a Tampax commercial, "My period's always super-light. Heavier won't be a huge deal. And I have a massive tolerance for pain. You can cold-cock me with a speculum if you want! Um, a fresh speculum."

"Okay," smiled Nurse Jen, "It sounds like you're pretty well-informed. Let's do this."

Five minutes later, I was on my back, bare ass hanging precariously off the edge of the exam table. I counted ceiling tiles as Nurse Jen rooted around in what the Italians refer to as il cannoli del amore. Okay, so they don't. But they SHOULD. After the ol' cervix was located, palpated and swabbed with iodine, it was time for The Painful Part.

Nurse Jen grabbed a slender clamping instrument - sort of like an elongated, hollow-bowled set of barbecue tongs. "Okay... now comes the pinch," she warned.

A wicked cramp rippled through my abdomen. I breathed deeply, clutched my sheet and waited for it to pass. "That wasn't so bad!" I said. "Okay, now for the actual insertion," said Nurse Jen. "Uh-oh," I thought. I felt another, milder cramp... and then the disconcerting sensation of a gnarly little grappling hook sliding into my ute, ship-in-a-bottle-style. A deep ache (accompanied by prickling and chills) slid across my back. I briefly considered asking Nurse Jen if she'd jabbed something important, but decided against it. If anyone out there is in need of a new personal motto, you could do a lot worse than, "Don't insult the person holding your cervix in a vice grip." Thankfully, my fears of having a contraceptive device lodged in my spinal column were for naught... seconds later, the pain receded, followed by Nurse Jen's hand, a speculum and a feisty little gush of blood.

"Ooops!," said the ever-enterprising Nurse Jen, grabbing a handful of paper towels, "Make sure you don't slip in that when you climb down, 'kay?"

"I'm so embarrassed," I sniffled, "I bled on Planned Parenthood! I love you guys!"

Nurse Jen smiled, patted my shoulder and left the room so I could mop up and re-dress.

I grinned as I blotted my nethers with a baby wipe (of course I had baby wipes. If I were ascending Everest, I'd have a sherpa dedicated solely to my intimate cleanliness... most likely, a sherpa who'd wind up filching my credit cards and kicking me down an icy ravine). Historically, I've been a worrier. I've spent vast stretches of time obsessing over numerous and nasty what-ifs. While I've gotten a bit better, it was still a massive relief to have that particular worry eradicated. The fear of unplanned pregnancy, while never enormous, had been a decade-long companion. And now, thanks to a clever little foreign body, it was gone.

"I will name you Chuck Norris," I whispered, patting my abdomen and zipping my pants, "You're tiny, ferocious and frequently covered in someone else's blood. And goddamn it, I know you've got my back."

"Good news!" said Nurse Jen, stepping back into the room, "All your STD tests came back negative!"

"WOO HOO!" I exclaimed, "THIS IS THE BEST WEEK EVER IN MY PANTS!" After bidding her adieu, I walked out into the gorgeous September sunshine, slightly achey but supremely satisfied. There are problems which can't even be fixed by hollow-point steel, I mused, It's a lucky day indeed when a 1" piece of plastic does the trick. With that, Chuck Norris and I strolled down Market Street, ready to roundhouse kick anything that stood in our way.

Four Weeks

[We interrupt your regularly scheduled birth story for a high-test shot o' romance. More intoxicating, less cirrhosis-promoting. About as likely to result in public indecency charges.]

1. There is candy bar love, which is for the young. It is sweet and easy and everywhere. It is bought sans thought, eaten sans appreciation. It is never further away than a few quarters and a crinkle of plastic. It is a delicacy for those who have never been hungry.

And then there is chicken dinner love.

You've come back from the wars. You've got stories the kids can't hear, furrows stitched across your forehead.

You are older. You are weary. Sugary simplicity does not cut it. Makes the teeth ache.

You sink down in the green chair, same wobbly leg as before (it will never be fixed, you've come to accept this, the flaw has become somewhat endearing).

She brings you a plate of roast chicken, potatoes, green beans from the little patch behind the shed.

She rests her head on your shoulder, rubs your back, quietly shoos away wild children, hopeful dogs and stealthy cats.

There is a deeper understanding of hunger now.

There is a tacit agreement to be gentle to one another, an understanding that life is too often anything but.

There is quiet wonder at how extraordinarily lucky you are.

Sometimes, there is cake.

2. Broken is a word loaded with ugliness, like hate or gallbladder or fundamentalist, and you've got to wonder "were we ever broken?", and there's two schools of thought on that, really, or possibly a million, like in the case of pasta sauce and oral sex and selecting winning lottery numbers, but in the simple model of things, there are two, and they are thus, option ONE, no, we were never broken, we might've chipped a tooth or two [insert oral sex joke here], but we squeezed our eyes shut and squeezed our fists closed and took the pummeling with fucking Gandhi-like aplomb, and now it's over, blessedly over, the sun has set on the empire of miserable unfulfillment and colonialist assholes in Old Navy Performance Oppressor! Khaki ensembles and goddamn it, we can finally untense, and then of course there's option TWO (and I sort of like option two, personally, but I also like Timbaland and Powerbars, so go figure), which lays it out like such, which is, yeah, oh yeah, were we ever, broken, battered, crushed, pulverized, stomped into fragments, flattened via steamroller, liquefied chemically, powdered anhydrously, broken broken BROKEN, but we each maintained a tiny little grain of Self throughout the entire process, and we always will, no Bunsen burner or cold-hearted bitch will filter that out, and although we've reassembled ourselves into new and interesting configurations, we're still very... miscible, mixable, deeper parts closer to the surface, more surface area to mingle, more flavor, tactile interest, sensation, hell, more of so many things, more than you'd ever have dreamed or expected while enduring the actual-factual breaking.

3. Around you and I, there is a cozy little sphere of warmth and safety and breathable oxygen. Out on the periphery, higher even than the silo, the refinery lights, the billboards and spray-painted devotions, there is outer space, and it is a place of aliens, uncertainty and stark black fear. Periodically, thoughts come hurtling from the sky, amazing and unexpected. Along the way, they accumulate fear, which is clingy like static electricity, only it is scratchy against the skin and cannot be banished by poking something metallic. A big, big thought gathers a large, large quantity of fear, and by the time it's a few miles above our heads, it's superheated with the stuff, and it glows and pulses and hums until finally the stress becomes too much. One thought can only absorb so much energy, even if the thing was the size of a Winnebago to begin with. So it fissures, cracks and disintegrates into elemental dust, and after the destruction there's an eerily pretty little orange smudge against the sky.

Although they say every so often one actually survives the trip. The Kaminski kids have one in their backyard... word has it the thing crashed through the roof of their barn one night while Bud was fixing up his tractor. Damn near needed a new set of overalls, I'll bet.

Anyway... they keep it out back by the tire-swing, neighborhood kids ooh and ahh and pay a nickel to chip off pieces with a ball-peen hammer. Supposedly the prettiest thing you'd ever hope to see.

4. This must be what the Grand Canyon would be like, if I weren’t terrified of falling, easily sunburnt and liable to wander off, get hopelessly lost in the desert and be forced to kill and eat my own burro.

I haven’t stood this close to this much potential in years. It is a space bigger than my brain can comprehend, in which things I can’t even fathom can be conjured into existence. It is huge and fantastic and overwhelming.

It’s bigger than awesome.

I am torn in several kajillion different directions; unlike a literal dismemberment, this one is downright wonderful. Requires less Neosporin, too.

I want to make you spicy Szechuan noodles. I want to see how we fight. I want to see how we make up. I want to make up stories for the kids. I want to be surprised and delighted and, weirdly enough, I have total faith that I will be. I want to take care of you when you’re sick. I want to do nothing arbitrarily. I want to be guided by rough experiences, good intentions and honest words rather than rote promises and accumulated trips to Target. I want to build something eclectic and odd and cozy and just right. I want to take nothing for granted. I want to take everything for a spin to see how fast it can go. I want to raise the kids, send them off to liberal arts colleges, invest in some sunblock and utility knives and head into what’s left of the jungle. I want to utterly forget the future, the very concept of a future, be it five minutes or five decades from now, and just lie here, silent and content and probably dead-tired, foreheads pressed together, still.

Chocolate and Adrenochrome

It really ought to be sold in tiny glassine packets, priced exorbitantly and slipped from palm to sweaty palm.

It's that good.

Cranked heart rate, dilated pupils. Tension. God-awful wonderful tension. Gum-snapping, knuckle-cracking, unabating.

I'm like a tuning fork, or a speed freak... vibrating at an impossibly high frequency for an impossibly long time.

It's simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating. My batteries are being depleted as rapidly as they're being juiced; a slight fluctuation in current would be deadly. I'd be over and done with, spurting acid all over the whole works or slowly droning down into oblivion.

I've written about it extensively... attempting to word it into existence, straw into gold. Off the paper, it's so much richer and more multifaceted. Words are Diamonique on the Home Shopping Network. This is the real deal, a little chip of brilliance shining in the palm of your hand. You have no idea how it got there; it seems way too good, way too beautiful. Armed thugs from the DeBeers Corporation are bound to show up to repossess it at any moment. You can't clench it in your fist to hide it... that would involve taking your eyes off of it.

So you sit, you squirm, you swallow (and it's softer than sand and harder than sugar), you feel gratitude and terror trickling down your back in equal measure.

You hide a tiny part of yourself in a pale blue eye, radiant verging on radioactive, the brightest thing in a cozy dark room, and you pray.

Don't blink. Don't blink. Don't blink...

The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. IV (B)... Over and Done With

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

Infidelity Lesson #8 : you've heard it from health teachers, public service ads and that one weird friend who always winds up nursing a Yoo-Hoo while the other partygoers embalm themselves with ethanol.

"You don't do things drunk that you wouldn't otherwise do sober... it removes inhibitions, not free will."

This may or may not be true. I certainly hope it isn't. The "facial lacerations due to impromptu pole-dancing" incident, for example. I'd feel a lot better if that could be credited solely to Captain Morgan's sadistic little parrot.

When applied to infidelity, however, it’s dead accurate.

You don’t do things with your crotch that you haven’t already done with your mind. The aching tension leading up to sex can be more pleasurable than the act itself. The somewhat-different tension leading to infidelity can - and is - infinitely more damaging than the act itself.

There are few blissfully happy philanderers. There are plenty who claim to be, but they’re delusional, psychopathic or a zesty combination of the two. There’s always… something. Nagging doubt. A tiny stone in the shoe. “What if?” The act itself may seem startling, like a pissed-off wasp in the living room. But guess what? Somebody had to leave that window open in the first place.

It’s not a disease, it’s a symptom. Illicit sex and lies aren’t capable of creating long-standing marital unease… but they’re damned good at laying it bare.

It’s not a stain, it’s a solvent… like alcohol, or turpentine. The things it leaves aren’t nearly as important as the things it strips away. Self-delusion, doubt, avoidance, complacency, capitulation… the thin film holding the whole rickety contraption together… gone, baby. Gone.

(Free will? That, you keep. Compliments of the house and/or a laissez-faire supreme being).

No matter which side of the triangle you're on... no matter who you love, who you're fighting for, who you grope... you're grasping at ghosts.

---

By the time the big revelation dropped, it seemed laughably small. "That... that was it?" marvelled my then-husband, "I thought you'd, like, killed somebody or something."

It was a tiny and hellish circle of awkwardness, that morning... something scribbled in the margins of Dante's notebook. Soon to be separated, we'd spent our respective weekends cheerfully vow-breaking. We hadn't expected this. I hadn't expected a crisis of conscience. He hadn't expected that I'd return home early, discover him and his girlfriend snoozing, tearfully demand her ejection from the marital abode.

Exhausted, minorly-unhinged, snot- and mascara-smeared... it wasn't one of my better moments. It's one of my favorites, however. It was the morning I finally knew that my husband and I were no longer together, in any sense of the word.

---

"... that was it?"

I was huddled under a blanket on our bed, intermittently crying and yawning. My soon-to-be-ex was sitting next to me, patting my hair, attempting to get to the bottom of my unpleasant little surprise visit. After an hour of false starts ("Swingers' convention? What?"), I finally 'fessed up.

"What do you mean, 'that was it'?" I squeaked, "I slept... with... a married guy! That's not a good thing! That's not me! At least I thought it wasn't!"

"Was this before, during or after the swingers?" he asked, half-yawning, half-sighing.

"Um... before. It was a busy weekend," I said, squeezing my eyes shut." In true type-A form, I'd kicked off the revelry early. The weekend's first conquest occurred far from the woods, on scratchy industrial carpet... with the infamous Mr. Married. My conscience apparently hadn't enjoyed things quite as much as my body. If I'd known that Married would be part of my life for months to come, my sunburnt little head might've just exploded.

My husband's head seemed detonation-ready itself... with exhaustion, frustration and... was that... boredom? "I guess I don't see what the big deal is... why you're reacting the way you are."

"I didn't think I was like that... like... y'know..."

He sighed, patted my head, muttered something vaguely reassuring. I nuzzled my sticky face into the pillowcase, felt sleep begin to slide across my shoulders... the most unambiguously welcome touch of the weekend.

Just as it all went blurry, it all became clear.

He wasn't particularly interested.

He was concerned... sort of. He was worried... a bit. He was bemused by the seemingly-unremarkable source of my hysterics.

But he wasn't interested... not in rug burns, sordid details or existential crises.

I'd raged against infidelity all along... but it wasn't the problem. I'd lost him long before he'd found someone else. He could spend hours with her and still crave more. He couldn't spent five minutes with me without growing bored. It wasn't me. It wasn't him. It was us. We could date, marry, even raise a child... but we couldn't summon up an iota of heat between us. And why do we cheat, if not to re-spark the fire in our own eyes, and to see something kindred in another's?

"Howyoudoing?" he asked, breaking our lull.

"Think I'm a little bit better," I muttered, curling into a ball and closing my eyes. It was an awful morning which ended like a fantastic night... tired and sticky, bruised and confused, slipping simultaneously into sleep and something which might just be understanding.

Infidelity Lesson # 9 : to thine own self be true. All others, take on a case-by-case basis.

If you must pick one virtue from the pantheon... choose kindness. Try to wheedle your way into two or three... but if it must be one, kindness.

Never say never. Never say never again. Never let your guard or your expectations down, unless you'd like a surprise confrontation with Nevers #1 and #2.

Even if you've cheated for the entire game, deal that last hand honestly. Forgiveness. Top-down. One for them... one for you.



Credits: special thanks to M., S., R., and M. ... couldn't have done it without you (insert double-entendres where appropriate). Enormous flaming kudos to my family (for not disowning me), for my friends (for being wise and patient in light of my sporadic idiocy/immaturity) and the internets (your comments are like Good Dog's sweet potato fries... sweet soul-sustenance with a side of garlic aioli). Extra-special shout-out to Bob Mould and Sugar, whose "Changes" has been on perma-loop throughout the entire Infideli-Diaries.

The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. IV (A)

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

"Well here we go again, you've found yourself a friend, that knows you well
But no matter what you do, you'll always feel as though you tripped and fell
So steady as she goes"
- Raconteurs, "Steady As She Goes"

Suburbiaville's sleeping. The birds are silent, the grass slicked with dew. The sun has just peeked above the Target sign. The August humidity will be brutal in a few hours; right now, the air's just the tiniest bit shimmery... sexy underwear in fog format. Thanks to a few early-rising type-As, the town's parfum is an intoxicating combo of gasoline and fresh-mowed lawn. I breathe deeply. Rest my head on the steering wheel. Count backwards from ten. Then scream.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"

At an hour when most people have yet to pay a visit to Mr. Coffee, my world has already disintegrated into ludicrous intensity. Some people are prisoners in their own homes. I'm a prisoner outside of mine. My husband's boxy little SUV sits in our driveway. Snuggled alongside it is a shiny, unfamiliar sedan. While I can't tell for sure, I strongly suspect that the vehicles' owners are similarly snuggled... sharing the same IKEA mattress which has been brutalizing my spine for years. Me? I'm parked across the street, bawling in a dumpy little Civic. I have a set of house keys. I've got my name on the mortgage statement. I've got more irrational fury than a squad of drunken strippers. I've got every right to go in the house. I need - more than anything, it seems - to go in the house. So why can't I seem to move?

---

It's Sunday, six o'clock AM. I was ostensibly meant to spend this weekend camping - communing with nature, unburdening my soul to sympathetic squirrels. While camping did occur, it was by no means the defining event of the weekend. The previous forty-eight hours were, bar none, the most debauched of my young life. There was rum 'n Coke, sex 'n drugs, bad and really, really bad. Boundaries were pushed. Taboos were flaunted. The word (well, make that "pseudo-word") "WOOOOO!" was utilized, unironically and repeatedly. Milestones were reached, celebrated, lasciviously rubbed against.

My first solitary weekend since my son's arrival.

My last weekend before moving out on my own, turning the already-massive disconnect between my husband and myself into something tangible.

The first time in years that I'd violated my personal code of ethics.

The first time I'd - so help me god - semi-inadvertently attended a swinger's convention.

The last time I would turn to my spouse when crisis hit.

---

I wasn't due home until Sunday evening. At four o'clock in the morning, however, I reached a point of bucolic breakdown. I was hungover, sunburnt, confused, teary-eyed, alarmingly sore. I was in dire need of comfort - of both the "emotional" and "sleeping surface not studded with chisel-like rocks" varieties. Under the guise of "having to write about that cah-raaaaazy swingers' convention", I busted down my tent, bid farewell to my companions and hit the highway.

I drove home at roughly the same rate that I drove myself out of my mind… which is to say, terrifyingly fast. “I’m not even sure who I am anymore,” I muttered, rhythmically clenching and unclenching the steering wheel, “Who the fuck does these things? Me, apparently? What was with the swingers? Why did I whip off my top? Why did I do that? And that? Do I hate myself? Should I?”

The Pennsylvania Turnpike was an endless ribbon of industrial ugly. The sunrise was Thomas Kinkade by way of Egon Schiele, freakishly luminous smears of orange and gray. They were a perfect external complement to the contents of my head, which grew progressively nastier over the course of the two-hour drive. By the time I screeched to a halt in front of Thumbscrews Manor, I was a twisted, smoking wreck.

"I need my husband," I hiccuped, wiping my eyes on my tank top... then catching sight of the other car. Her car.

And whaddya know... apparently, so does someone else.

Life in the Thumbscrews household has been monumentally awkward over the past several months. We are bright kids, both fully aware that we're separating (and most likely divorcing). We're attempting to remain civil during this odd interstitial period, both for our small son and our sanity. We've given one another our blessings; our respective extracurricular activities now occur sans subterfuge. I've been staging my own controlled-scale rendition of "Girls Gone Wild". He's been seeing OtherWoman at every opportunity. Despite occasional spots of friction ("So... who'd you do for lunch today?"), things have been strangely copacetic. I shouldn't be surprised (I'm not due back for another 12 hours! Those crazy kids are in love!). Nor should I be infuriated (my own "camping trip" having featured more penises than squirrels).

So why am I falling apart?

---

"Pick up your phone! Pick up your phone! I need you, fuckstick!" I mash the numbers into my cell again... by my count, this is the eighteenth time. At this point, I'm actively arguing with his voicemail . "You can't pick up the phone right now? Can't pick it up because, oh yeah, you're fucking someone else? Pick up anyway! Never stopped Paris Hilton! And she's got her own fragrance! Do you have your own fragrance? 'Eau de Fuckstick', perhaps?"

And so it goes. Spew bile at a prerecorded greeting. Wail into the upholstery. Hate my husband. Hate myself. Hate my car ("I'll bet the backseat of an Accord would be big enough for me to properly curl up and die!").

I decide to get a hotel room. HBO, clean white sheets, $15 club sandwiches... these niceties may very well stave off total jibbering insanity. I drive to the local Holiday Inn, only to find that frugality trumps self-preservation. "Eighty bucks to sleep two miles from my own damned house? Hell, no... I'll show you where to stick your so-called Continental breakfast...muffins, nothing but muffins... always..." I sniff, driving back home.

On a whim, I activate the tiny SUV's car alarm. The neighbors are annoyed. The lovebirds are not roused.

I decide to seek guidance from above. I've never held much truck with Yahweh. Radio waves, however, are a different story.

Seconds after flicking on the radio, I start giggling.

"Steady as she goes," advises Jack White, "So steady as she goes."

I love this song. Always have. I also love "Under Pressure", which immediately follows.

"This is our last dance... this is our last dance... this is ourselves... under pressure."

When Jack White tells you to stay steady, you stay steady. When Freddie Mercury tells you to jump, you say, "How high?" Or perhaps, "How fabulous?" Whatever the case may be... you take action.

I walk up to the door and ring the bell. Seconds later, my husband appears, bleary-eyed and bathrobe-clad.

"Huh? Why aren't you camping? What's wrong?"

Tears immediately dribble down my face. "I had to come back. Muh-make her go home. Right now," I sob.

Amazingly... he does.

ROUSING CONCLUSION COMING SOON...

The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. III

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

She had a heartful of love and devotion
She had a mindful of tyranny and terror
Well, I try, I do, I really try
But I just err, baby, I do, I error
So come find me, my darling one
I'm down to the grounds, the very dregs
Ah, here she comes, blocking the sun

- Nick Cave, "Do You Love Me?"

Infidelity Lesson #6 : the Bad and Ugly aspects of infidelity do not blot out the Good, whether it's emotional, physical or an amalgam. People don't cheat because it makes them feel awful... they cheat because it makes them feel fantastic.

Remember chicken pox? You'd examine the situation afterwards, marveling at how you could've knowingly inflicted that much damage. At the time, however.... giving in, scratching that itch, feeling the release... the potential for a few little scars seemed so, so worth it.

---

There are aspects of gastronomy which would seem right at home in a sleazy horror movie. From foie gras to Frank Perdue, humans have a well-documented history of brutalizing our intended dinner. Unparalleled in the annals of animal cruelty, however, is the treatment of the ortolan. This diminutive songbird is a legendary French delicacy. Its method of preparation is also legendary, so uniquely sadistic that the bird's sale is officially banned. Banned, my friends, by a nation that has celebrated both Jerry Lewis and the guillotine. Clearly, the ortolan's fate is a good deal darker than that of your average Oven Stuffer Roaster.

Death is merciful. Those who would dine on the ortolan, however, are not. Thus, the bird is taken alive. Depending on the whim of its captors, it is either blinded or kept in constant darkness (in order to disturb its sleep/wake cycles). It is force-fed a rich diet of oats, millet and figs. When sufficiently plump (up to four times its initial size), it is drowned in a snifter of Armagnac. It's tossed in the oven for a few minutes ("rare" comes quickly for something the size of a dinner roll), then removed and placed before the diner. It is at this point, startlingly enough, that the whole too-hot-for-Food-TV Grand Guignol really gets interesting.

The crackling-hot ortolan does not pass go. It goes not collect $200. It does not relax atop a bed of herbed couscous.

It is deposited directly in the diner's mouth. Whole. Skin and bone, muscle and miscellany. And how might this sadistic little snackie taste?

Apparently, transcendental. Firsthand accounts tend to disintegrate into theatricality mere seconds after, "... I closed my lips." It's all succulent aromas, rivulets of ambrosial juice, tiny explosions of multisensory bliss.

It’s one of the Western world's greatest culinary adventures. And - contrary to what Visa commercials might have you believe - it can only be bought with cruelty. You get fifteen minutes of carnivorous ecstasy. A shy little warbler gets a week of suffering. This is an openly-acknowledged aspect of ortolan-lore. One consumes the bird with a napkin over one's head, the better to "hide your cruelty from the sight of God".

Do you do it? Do you understand and acknowledge the cost... and still open your mouth? Or do you take the moral high road and order the trout?

I know what I'd do. I don't fully like or understand it... but there's no question as to my decision.

Modern moral dilemmas are so rarely black-and-white. We're haunted by our actions, our inactions, and our ambivalence. Perhaps it's easier for some - people who are more confident, less thoughtful, stronger-willed... maybe just "better". Of course you don't eat the ortolan. You don't cheat on your taxes. You don't court avoidable catastrophes. You never, EVER sleep with someone else's spouse.

And then there are the rest of us. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, cheeks flushed with shame. Listening to this eminently-correct lecture float through the walls. Laughing and crying as we floss bits of wickedness from between our teeth.

---

For an activity directly contrary to the DeBeers Corporation’s primary mission (wedded bliss and walnut-sized solitaires for all!), infidelity has a hell of a lot of facets.

It can be spun as monstrous, selfish acting out. Fucking your girlfriend in the same bed where your wife routinely cries herself to sleep. Sending your lover home to his wife with the faintest of scratches still traversing his back. A horribly decadent mash-up of larceny and gluttony; taking another man's daily bread for your own frivolous midnight snack.

It can be viewed as a tiny and perverse act of self-heroism, as per Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, the entire back catalogue of Rush lyrics. Raging against the machine, the status quo and the dying of the light. Daring to take a tumble down the rabbit hole, safety, sanity and decorum be damned. Striving for something better, hotter, more dangerous, more interesting, more... more. EAT ME and DRINK ME, indeed.

It can seem inevitable. If you live in a first-world nation, your comfort and happiness hinge in large part upon others' suffering. The factory-farmed chicken you eat for dinner. The child laborer in Laos who stitched your $5 t-shirt. The solider who stepped on a land mine to ensure that you'd be able to refuel your Range Rover on the cheap. The guy working in a sheetrock factory in Arkansas for fifty years, destroying his body so that you can live in a house ten times the size of his apartment. "MADE IN CHINA" (in a sweatshop). "MADE IN THE USA" (ditto).

Why does infidelity seem worse than shopping at The Gap? Because it's a conscious choice, for one. Those who remain oblivious to the human cost of their comfort can be accused of apathy at worst. Adulterers are more purposeful in their flirtation with (and seduction of) disaster. Then there's the "indulgence" angle. Covering one's ass is a necessity (albeit not in stain-resistant microfiber). The rewards of infidelity are pure decadence... vulgar luxuries of the worst stripe.

Or are they?

---

Infidelity Lesson #7 : minimizing the importance of [love / sex / affection / companionship / compatibility] in your relationship is a damned good way to ensure that it metastasizes into something hugely important later on down the line.

I’m sorry for so many reasons. Committing grand larceny of the romantic sector. Violating the trust of an innocent party. Letting my various "issues" overgrow, snaking out tendrils while I hid behind a gauzy curtain of pleasure.

Do I regret it? Do I view it as a stupid accident? Do I think for a second that it was preventable? No, no and no. If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that patience and moral fortitude alone are not enough to soothe certain aches.

May you never ache that deeply. May you never need so ravenously. May you never have to choose between your principles and your sanity.

It’d be an exaggeration to say that he saved my life... although during several pitch-black nights of the soul, he was the mini-Maglite which held me over 'til morning. He was a friend, a confidante, a voice of reason, and an ideal psychological sounding board. Because of him, I'm a little stronger, a little saner. I have a slightly-clearer idea of what I want from my relationships and my life. My MP3 collection has been greatly enriched. I am much, much better in bed.

"I want a boyfriend-lite. Or maybe a lover-deluxe," I told him shortly after we met. That may've been coyness on my part... but I got all of that, and immeasurably more.

His wife got betrayed.

She'll never find out. How do I know? I just do, implicitly. The layer of abstraction disturbs me. I'm not sure if it makes the crime less odious, or if it only makes it seem that way. Was it like swiping CDs from Best Buy... or like slipping the ortolan a Valium before going to town on it? It was neither of these, and nothing else I can analogize, either.

It was, as you might imagine, complicated.

He had needs. I had needs. I'm not going to diminish them via description... "Sex" can have a million and a half connotations. "Companionship" and "affection", when absent for sufficient time, can produce the kind of bone-deep, screaming cravings usually associated with narcotics. One can withdrawal from all sorts of things... and that itch, that maddening fucking itch, is always present.

I was uniquely suited to scratch his. He excelled at scratching mine. There was never any question of him leaving his wife - he was clearly in love, albeit a darker and more complicated form of it than is typical. I managed to keep my feelings trimmed back to a bonsai-like level of manageability. One does not endure a lifetime of frustrated crushes without acquiring a few useful skills. It was a contradiction in terms: a cautious, carefully-controlled leap into lustful abandon. We knew damned well what we were doing.

But. And yet. However. Of fucking course.

We didn't discuss the "other" activities... we were so comfortable with one another that they just naturally blossomed. We'd steal long, conversation-packed lunches together whenever possible... chicken fingers and Immanuel Kant. We'd e-mail each other our favorite new songs. We'd send late-late night text messages, wryly bemoaning the state of our [bar / party / apartment / life]. We were, indeed, lovers deluxe, super-plus, with a side of fries and burgeoning tenderness.

It wasn’t guilt which separated us, although there had been the occasional shame-fueled stab at moral conduct. It wasn’t discovery – as stated, his wife didn’t (and won’t) find out. It wasn’t that things grew dull – one of the lurid little pleasures of infrequent liaisons is that the excitement retains a Twinkie-like shelf life.

It was the exact same thing which had driven us together – complacency.

When you’re scratching an itch, you’re thinking about how fantastic it feels, how long you can keep it going. The one thing you’re generally not considering is, "Gee... why was I so itchy in the first place?"

That’s the paradox of infidelity. As long as you’re getting those needs fulfilled elsewhere, you’re not addressing their original absence. Why deal with the unpleasantness of confronting deep, potentially-catastrophic problems which could blow apart your marriage? Why bother opening yourself up, making yourself emotionally-vulnerable, getting back on the horse than threw you... dating someone with whom things could get – dun dun DUN! - Serious? It’s warm and cozy in this bed, and we could keep our heads under the blanket for a long, long time. There’s fiddling while Rome burns, and there’s fiddling around while your not-entirely-satisfactory lives remain stagnant.

Perhaps it’s due to my own moral relativism. However, that revelation produced more shame than the initial transgression. We were using this betrayal as a pool float, paddling in place. While nothing excuses infidelity, magma-hot passion comes a damned sight closer than "maintaining the status quo". When doing something that could be described as "morally reprehensible", you desperately want it to mean something. Eating the ortolan seems all the more heinous when you do it casually, washing blood sacrifice down with diet Dew.

We agreed to part ways for a year. The arbitrary-separation idea was derived from Richard Linklater’s sweetly romantic "Before Sunrise"; our reasons were sadder and more pragmatic. "All those doubts and problems," I said, "Everything that’s wrong, everything we’re hiding from... we need to confront it. Beat the living hell out of it."

"Same time, next year?" I said, angrily swiping at my tears, "If neither of our lives have changed at all, you have my permission to kick my goddamned ass."

I miss my friend. I miss the various illicit deliciousnesses we shared. But a little part of me hopes that neither of us show up next year... that we’ve confronted our problems, righted wrongs, inched closer to self-awareness. We’ve gone mano a mano with remorse and forgiveness. We’re finally sated... sans any telltale feathers.

TO BE CONTINUED...

The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. II

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

not for vision understood
burns because it has to burn
change'll happen whether we
are still or moving
breathe in waves of doubt
bitter in your mouth

- Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Little Heaven"

Infidelity Lesson #4 : let's say a troubled relationship is like a mouse. It's taken over your house, it's gorged itself on cake mix and Ramen noodles, it's left odious little pellets in its wake. It's making you miserable. It must be addressed.

You could use poisons, traps or barriers.

You could sulk, you could cry, you could talk.

Or you could use the Amorphous Atom Bomb.

The Amorphous Atom Bomb is invisible. It changes position more frequently than a porn star. It has a fuse of indeterminate length; it could go off in two minutes or in two years. It could wipe out your intended target, half a city block… or nothing at all.

Not a good tool for taking down a furry, walnut-sized nuisance, is it?

It's not a good tool for taking down a relationship, either.

---

We're parked in front of our apartment. It's late, really late. Outside, crickets cheep and streetlights glow. Periodically, tractor trailers rumble by and rock our tiny Volkswagen like a German-engineered cradle.

Inside, bombs are dropping.

"Why are you always so unhappy, Jul? Why do you seem like you hate yourself? And why won't you just talk to me? Please… talk to me?" My husband rests his hand on my thigh, looks me dead in the eye and waits. And waits. And waits.

Like all couples, we've got a hit parade of common arguments. Your Laundry-Avoidin' Heart, It's The End of Eating Anywhere But Applebee's As We Know It (And I Feel Gassy). This particular one (She's Suicidally Depressed In Mysterious Ways) has been cropping up with increasing frequency, however. And unlike lesser tunes, it's poised to hit #1 with a bullet.

"You want to know why? You really want to know?"

"Yes! Jesus, Jul… I love you, I don't want you do be miserable… of course I do!"

"A few months after we started dating… I slept with somebody else."

When he responds, my husband's voice is totally flat. Tears, rage, vicious words… anything, anything would be better than the deadness with which he breaks the silence. "Really."

Until this moment, tears had trickling down my face at a leisurely pace, the stream easily dabbed up with a sleeve. I'd also been steadfastly avoiding eye contact. "Yeah," I say, looking up, "Really." As I'm speaking, my voice cracks… then the floodgates do.

I'm sobbing, shaking, howling, curled up like a comma on my sticky leather seat. My husband holds me as best he can, strokes my hair and tries to calm me. He hasn't always been a great husband. I (obviously) haven't always been a good wife. Years later, as our marriage crumbles around us, years of mutual doubts and resentments will come to the surface. Delusions and illusions will fall, and the overall mediocrity of our match will become apparent. However, we'll each retain our moments of pride… briefly transcendental bursts of kindness and compassion.

This is one of them… perhaps the quintessential one. There are pet names, special dinners, surprise parties... and then there's hugging the person who just tossed a grenade in your living room, blowing everything you know to smithereens.

When I have been sufficiently calmed, we fire up the GTI and drive, aimlessly, cruising in a haze of sodium-arcs and tears. We drive and drive and talk and talk. Some details are divulged (it was a one-night stand with a coworker; copious quantities of alcohol were involved). Others are omitted (it was the most exciting thing which had happened to me in a long, long time; with each verboten kiss, pleasant shock and self-loathing battled for space in my head). Only once do we venture close to the true heart of the issue… and, bright young things that we are, we scurry away immediately.

"The thing that really hurts is that you felt like you had to keep a secret from me for half a fucking decade." His voice isn't accusatory… just exhausted, incredulous. "Why? Why couldn't you talk to me?"

I stare out the window. Gas prices are going up again. Home Depot is a giant orange monolith against the night sky. I have no answers… nothing but a swirl of Lovecraftian emotions, immense, unbelievably frightening and lurking just below the surface.

I couldn't talk to you because you don't understand me, and I don't understand you. Because we're radically different people. Because I knew it from the very beginning, but couldn't manage to summon up sufficient balls to end things before I fell in love with you. Because one of the main reasons we're together today – sitting in a Home Depot parking lot, awkwardly crying and cuddling and bumping our elbows on the stick shift – is because I've spent the past five years trying desperately to atone.

Because one of the major reasons I wanted to get married was for absolution… to shoehorn myself into the role of ever-faithful wife.

Because a few years back, a friend gave me some high-grade Ecstasy, a cavalcade of neurological bliss in a tiny foil packet. I wound up tossing it in the trash. I was terrified of "becoming more confessional".

Because it wasn't a moment of blind, overpowering lust. It was an escape attempt. And if the thought of leaving our dull little comfort zone was scary then… it's a thousand times worse now. We're bonded. We're married. And I'm –

I sigh, a shuddery exhalation of defeat. "I'm sorry. I can't. I just can't."

---

Infidelity Lesson # 5 : every infidelity is like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie... it features a well-delineated Before, During and After. You'll spend a good deal longer than 90 minutes reviewing them in your head. Odds are, they'll be a lot more painful than action-packed. As far as Aerosmith-heavy soundtracks go?... we're only addressing forgivable sins here, people.

Don't waste too much time on the After. It's boring. It's predictable. And it's immutable. Afterwards? You'll feel guilty. In some cases, it will be inordinate, debilitating guilt. In others, it will be nothing more than uncomfortable twinges at the periphery of your conscience. Regardless, it will be your burden to bear. Confession is good for one's soul like grand larceny is good for one's wallet - you're forcing someone else to foot your bill. Bearing a painful, shameful secret is difficult - and probably the single-best way to ensure you don't rack up any more of them. As the late, lamented Sherlock Holmes put it, "The example of patient suffering is in itself the most precious of all lessons to an impatient world."

As far as Before? You'd better examine Before like a long-lost Talmudic text. It's important to know why it happened - and not solely to "make sure it never happens again". Contrary to what the Moral Majority (and the moralizing enormity) may believe, cheating is not like washing a red crayon with the white laundry – a thoughtless, simple error, easily preventable in the future. Doing morally-objectionable things is painful. Not really understanding why is infinitely worse.

How did it happen? Why? What factors were present? What facets of life were lacking? It's a question of developing sufficient self-respect, self-awareness and courage to fully face your own motivations. Successfully resisting temptation is small comfort if the temptation occurs again and again and again. Grappling with mutant, super-sized self-loathing is worthless without an equally-intense tussle with introspection.

Fear might keep you from ever touching the flame again.

But it won't explain why you reached out your hand in the first place.

And then there's the illicit, explicit, oft-overlooked During...

TO BE CONTINUED...

The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. I

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

"Why would I sabotage / the best thing that I have?
Well it makes it easier / to know exactly what I want"
- Snow Patrol, "Hands Open"

Infidelity Lesson #1 : love, sex, affection and trust are like Legos. They can fit together in a million permutations, or not at all. And when heedlessly trod upon, they hurt like an injection-molded bitch.

If the scornful prognostications of those more moral than I are true, I'm in for a lifetime of romantic misery. My actions have bought the ticket; all that remains is to brace myself for the ride. It's gonna be rough. My jaw will clench, my vertebrae will clatter and my heart will never, ever reach a place of comfort and quiet. I will - god help me - eat alone. Tears and Lean Cuisines, my friends. Tears and Lean Cuisines.

I've been on all three sides of the apocryphal love triangle. I've cheated. I've been cheated upon. And I've been a cheater's cohort.

I'll pause to let you gather stones. Igneous have good gouging potential, while sedimentary are delightfully abrasive. Use this handy rhyme to remember: "Lava-borne? Razor-sharp scorn! From a stream? Bitch, get your Bactine."

I'm the last person you'd expect to be a veteran of the Circus Adulterous. My parents have been happily married for decades (despite the occasional urges to fling cast-iron cookware at each other). Fidelity was an oft-touted virtue in our household, along with "taking a deep breath and counting to ten before whipping a skillet at your partner's big stupid head". My previous menage a monogamy (with The Artist Formerly Known as Mr. Thumbscrews) lasted for a not-unimpressive seven years. "Love triangle"? I'm awful at geometry. I'm even worse at flirting. I have a fairly well-developed moral code, I strive for kindness... hell, I donate money to Planned Parenthood and local LGBT support groups (I like to call it the "Make George W. Bush's Head Explode Like an Overstuffed Pinata Combo Platter").

Infidelity Lesson #2: those who haven't experienced infidelity can't really understand it. Those who have experienced infidelity DEFINITELY can't understand it. Situations involving strong emotion and stronger physical urges are among the messiest imaginable. We may be animals, but we're animals with big, complication-causing prefrontal cortices. For us, even "simple" lust tends to sprawl, fractal-like, into a web of implications, ambiguities and consequences.

This slightly-sordid sexual history could've been the province of almost anyone. Could've - but improbably enough, it belongs to me... someone so socially-stunted that I really ought to scribble "MAKE EYE CONTACT, YOU JACKASS" on the tops of my shoes. I've dipped my toes in the Thames of cheating, and I've flung myself in, headfirst and fully clothed (er... perhaps that's a poor metaphor). Some of my experiences have been unintentional. Some have been horribly deliberate. Some worked out for the best. I'm no longer angry that my (now) ex-husband cheated; the ramifications of that particular act of adultery have been surprisingly positive. Hell, sometimes I feel like buying he and the Future Second Mrs. Jul's Ex a steak dinner out of sheer gratitude. Other experiences, however, have been profoundly negative - moments of spontaneity which resulted in unrelenting shame, bad decisions which led to years of even-worse ones.

There's a damned good reason it's called a "checkered past". Some spots have been black indeed - dangerous little sinkholes of remorse and self-loathing. Others have been transcendentally wonderful. Infidelity is a messy, crowded scene... and sometimes, total surprises pop out from between all the sharp corners and precariously-balanced objects. One expects physical bliss - or at least hopes for it in one's humid little imagination. But compassion, friendship, insight, personal growth? These things aren't probable, but they're possible - and all the more precious, given their imperfect origins.

Daisies from cracked pavement... and existential gratification through moral transgression. I may pay a karmic price for my actions. Some might argue that my recent series of atrocious first dates is merely the beginning, the first circle of interpersonal hell. And - unless the inner circles involve flensing knives and/or couple's therapy - I can accept this.

Guilt? Fuck yes, I've got guilt. I've knowingly betrayed trust. I've been cavalier with people, tossing hearts from hand to hand like snowglobes.

Regret? Now that's trickier.

Infidelity Lesson #3:

Once a cheater... not always a cheater.

But you're not as morally unimpeachable as you think.

Your partner? Definitely not as morally unimpeachable as you think.

There are lessons to be learned in the sleaziest of forums.

There is (sometimes) a squirmy, uncomfortable beauty in the most atrocious of actions.

Learn from your mistakes.

Don't leave the same scars twice.

Don't do things solely to collect stories.

Don't hesitate to tell the stories you already have.

After all... you weren't alone then. And you're definitely not alone now.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Double Feature : Co-Inky-Dink / Shiraz With a Shudder

1. The Devil On Miss 'Screw:

Remember back in the day, when George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" netted his ass a lah-lah-lah-lawsuit from The Chiffons?

Remember how the judge issued a deeply cheesy verdict of "subconscious plagiarism"? "While Mr. Starr 's jacking of 'He's So Fine' may have been flagrant enough to put 'Chic'-swiping 7-11 bandits to shame, the court always thought he was the dreamiest Beatle and therefore rules that he did not do so ON PURPOSE"?

Okay. While I know you were all enthralled by this intellectual propert-astic anecdote, it was merely to provide a frame of reference.

Ringo Starr can make mistakes like that. Ringo, who presumably has a whole SWAT team of handlers working around the clock to prevent him from doing so ("Ahem, well, Mr. Starr, while Gevalia's offer of a free 10-cup coffee pot may seem to be a fiscally beneficial one, the board urges you to reconsider").

Which makes it slightly more understandable (although no less hilarious) that I recently managed to get me and my siblings emblazoned with the Underwood Potted Meat Devil:

(A friendly [if utterly horrified, and smacking at forearm while shrieking, "GETITOFFME!"] shout-out to Julie for this startling revelation.)

I whipped up the design on a Post-It one night. We all loved it. It was a moment of pure serendipity. Or so I thought.

Turns out I wasn't craving a powerful expression of sisterly love, but rather a fatty, hog-anus-laden snackie.

[Note: I still love my sister-tat, damn it. Potted meat? Not so much.]

---

2. Dear Jackass Date:

May I call you Jack?

Okay, I'm not sure what sort of mental picture of me you'd conjured up before our initial meeting. You'd seen photos of me (ones with minimal undereye circle Photoshopping, no less!). You'd enjoyed our witty e-mail banter. But okay, fine, so the Jul of your hopes and no-doubt humid dreams was NOT the Jul who came strolling up to you last week at Charming Local Taverna. It's not as though I misrepresented myself in any way, but perhaps you have some heretofore-undocumented neurological condition which may've resulted in your confusion. Would you like Oliver Sacks' number? How about a nice KICK in the sack?

There are ways to express disappointment, my lad. "Wow... thanks, Aunt Earlene! You must've worked REALLY HARD on this Carmen Miranda toilet paper roll-holder!" That? That's classy.

You, my erstwhile friend, are not.

I tried. I joked, I smiled, I made The Dreaded Eye Contact. I asked you questions about yourself, I slipped in subtle compliments and affirmations whenever possible. I was ON, enough to make Miss Manners commit a faux pas in her sensible little panties.

But YOU? You radiated disappointment. You conversed, but much like a celebrity being interviewed by a Muppet... with an eye-roll and a smirk, as if to say, "I'll play along, but JESUS, I can't believe I'm discussing the situation in Darfur with a pimped-out duvet cover."

When the waitress presented menus, you blurted, "No, no... just here for drinks." Ouchie.

Seconds after the check appeared, you flung a few bills on the table (I generally like to pay my own way, but if ever there were a time to say, "Fuck progressiveness", that'd be it), stood up and said, "Well, it was really nice to meet you... bye!"

I took a leisurely walk back to the Bachelorette Pad (it was seventy degrees out... I let nothing ruin a seventy-degree night). After giving it some thought, I fired off the following e-mail:

"Uh... wow. So THAT was awkward. Oh, well. Such things happen. Thanks for the drink. - Jul".

A few minutes later, you replied.

"Yep. They do. Best of luck. - Jack".

Back in the day, this would've resulted in a fury of self-loathing on my part, a torrent of bitter tears on my futon.

Fuck that shit.

So I'm not your physical cup of tea. That's okay. Everyone's got their preferences.

Like me. I'd have preferred to enjoy an hour or so of idle chit-chat, part ways amicably, then receive a "Sorry, just didn't feel anything click" e-mail a few days hence.

You apparently preferred to take the "make date feel monstrously uncomfortable and uncomfortably monstrous" route.

A pox on you. Literally and figuratively.

May you one day squirm as badly. May it last a good deal longer.

May you contract one of the itchier STDs.

May it not have even been that good.

May every man who has ever regarded my body as a source of things OTHER than disappointment - lust and pleasure, comfort and joy - band together and kick your fucking ass.

There are plenty of them. There's only one of you.

Your loss, asshole.

Weapons of Choice

1. Optimism.
2. Wit.
3. Photoshop.

G'ahead, mouseover... and see "Meticulously-Groomed First-Date Jul" transform into "Kindly Fuck Off And Let Me Take a Nap Jul."

[And this was an amateurish 15-minute job... NOW do you know why the ladies gracing the cover of Vapid Twat Digest don't look a thing like you or I? Hint: it's not because some people are magically born without any pores.]

UPDATE : check out the best example I've ever seen of retouching wizardry. I wanna live in a magazine, yo. Trenchant social commentary, all the free perfume samples you can shake a 0.0001 oz. atomizer at... PLUS a team of geeks ready to Dodge, Burn, Multiply and Pattern Fill you to maximal hotness.

Full Release

So, uh.... my divorce is final. According to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I am "at liberty to marry again". I am also at liberty to stuff my belly button full of ground sirloin and go taunt a Doberman, but the Commonwealth will forgive me if I take a pass on both super-fun activities.

(I'm being disgustingly facetious here. The other day, I caught myself tearing up to - wait for it - "I'll Be", by Edwin McCain. How humiliating. I don't care if you were [wooed/engaged/married/freaked nasty] to "I'll Be"... it's still crap. It's the auditory equivalent of a CIA special-ops team... it materializes out of nowhere (in this case, immediately after "Freebird"), invades your ducts, forcibly extracts any tears present therein, then applies electrodes to their testicles. Um... wait. Tears don't have testicles. Except perhaps Chuck Norris's.

Point being: once again, Liz Phair is right. I DO want a boyfriend. I DO want all that stupid old shit, like letters and sodas.

Damn, I hope my boobs are nice enough to make up for my gun-shy disposition and stress-induced forehead wrinkle.

[Gives boob exploratory jiggle... hrmn. Not good enough to negate ALL emotional baggage, but good nonetheless. That'll do, tit. That'll do.]

On the left : the kind, compassionate and wonderful Menita has been there for me throughout the past year. I'm glad she was there with me when I received the news that my decree had arrived. And I'm REALLY glad she was holding a camera.

On the right : this is more representative of my mental state as of late. Introverted. Contemplative. Wistful. And kinda... rouge-tinted. Someone needs to bat the ever-present bottle of dye from my hand before I either go bald or start to resemble a bigger-titted Ron Howard.

New UmamiMami Post : "Massacre"

Part celebration. Part disintegration. But hopefully a bit more fun than gorging on heart-shaped foodstuffs, schmaltzy radio and bitterness.

Escargoing Out Of My Fucking Mind

Okay, I'm coming out of the closet.

Every now and again, for no discernible reason, I, um, go crazy.

I get depressed. Not in a "deeply saddened Applebee's took Dulce de Diabetic Coma cheesecake off the menu" kind of way. Not even in a "rear-ended Hummer while absentmindedly picking nose; now gushing blood on Climatronic system while neckless troglodyte punches your hood" kind of way.

Nope. I get horrifically, heartbreakingly, makes-Eeyore-look-like-Richard-Simmons type-depressed. When I'm in the gray, smothering embrace of a really bang-up depressive episode, it doesn't take a professional to see that mine is not the sanest of membranes.

Observer: "Wow, look at the sun shining behind those clouds!"
Me: "Fuck the sun."

Now, why would I bad-mouth the celestial body responsible for strawberries, daisies and, y'know, our planet NOT being a barren, ice-encrusted wasteland?

Clearly, because I need drugs.

My brain gets sick sometimes. All sorts of whiz-bang medications exist which not only effectively control this particular illness, but also sound like science fiction characters (I like to imagine them battling serotonin reuptake with lil' bitty light sabres). Seroquel! Effexor! Cymbalta! Obi-Wan Kenobi! Oh, wait.

So do I take my daily dose of sanity religiously, pausing before I swallow to give thanks to modern medicine?

Well... no.

I'm not sure if it was due to a desire to be a macho, pill-shunning Chuck Norris type (roundhouse-kicking dopamine in the head until it wishes it were never endogenously secreted!) or plain old self-delusion, but two months ago, I went off my meds.

Now, wait just a ding-danged minute here. Would someone afflicted by ANY OTHER illness try to delude themselves like that regarding their condition? Imagine someone emphatically insisting, "My pancreas is FINE! It produces PLENTY of insulin! Matter of fact, my islets of Langerhans are the BIGGEST YOU'VE EVER SEEN!"... before thudding to the floor in a diabetic coma.

Silly, huh? Diabetics can't control their bodies like that. And neither can I.

This has been one of the saddest, weirdest, most hilarious weeks of my life. It's been my own weepy version of "The Jerry Springer Show". Thankfully, no folding chairs have been thrown at my head, unless you count the metaphorical Chair of Enlightenment.

I'm hoping I've learned my lesson. Praying, actually, in my own heathenish way (side note: I once wore a t-shirt emblazoned with "HEATHEN" to high school. About fifty people asked, "Who's Heather?" New Jersey public school system, hurrah!). Because otherwise, it'll all have been for naught. And oh, what a ride "it" has been.

---

Know this: I sleep around. I don't require dinner before dessert (although yuppified, proscuitto-strewn pizza never hurts). I'm easy like Sunday morning.

I refuse to be ashamed or defensive about this. I really, truly enjoy sex. I spent much of my youth picking out paint chips at Home Depot, choosing between "Sun-Speckled Wheat Field" and "Ever-So Slightly Burnt Waffle" rather than "Your place or mine?" During the three days per week I'm not Official Mama and Sippy Cup-Refiller to the Stars, I jog, I read, I eat out and, yes, I have sex. And to answer the inevitable question: I play it hellaciously safe. I will even bust out my old-school skillz to expound:

Wrappin' it like Christo
Spreadin' nonoxynol like Crisco
Even if they got bad pests
I be stayin' clean as a palimpsest

Ahem.

Shortly after moving to the city, I met a gentleman I dubbed "Mr. Snail", due to his charmingly shy nature. It soon became apparent that Mr. Snail wasn't shy in every way, and he became my casual hookup of choice. He was funny, intelligent, thoughtful, respectful... a genuinely decent, delightfully smutty guy. Although ours was a strictly "no strings" relationship, we enjoyed one another's company and had many fine conversations as well as licentious tussles.

If you can't see where this is going... well, I suggest you go see a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. It'll be FULL of surprises. Will Jack Testosterino manage to save the world from zombies/nuclear warheads/meteors/nuclear warhead-stuffed meteors controlled by zombies who apparently possess aeronautical engineering degrees? You just NEVER KNOW!

---

Know this, too: a week ago, I turned twenty-five. The day the ol' odometer rolled over, I woke up unexpectedly and catastrophically depressed. It took me close to an hour to get out of bed; J.Q. was delighted to spend that time crawling around the big bed, poking me in the eyeball and cackling, "Ahhh-EEE!" I'm not even going to TELL you how he identifies my nose.

Eventually, I determined it was in the best interests of my vision and sanity to Get the Fuck Up. I busied myself with party preparations... slicing mushrooms, making ice, resting my head against the wall and weeping pitieously. It was all very Serious Adult Novel-ish, actually... discontent and crudite! Mental illness and creme fraiche, whizzed and the Cuisinart and scooped up with the Baguette Rounds of Conformity!

The party itself was lovely... good company, excellent risotto, preternatually cute babies. I mixed plenty of drinks and tickled plenty of bellies (for the Big and Little people, respectively; no gin 'n Enfamils were served) but felt oddly "flat" for the duration. My sister Sarah, sensing that I wasn't my usual ass-kicking, name-taking self, stuck around after the last guests trickled out. We sat on my futon, listening to my birthday CDs and discussing Important Sisterly Things... namely, men. Sarah had recently ended a tumultuous three-year relationship and was eager to slap on a mitt and resume playing the field.

"I wish I could find a cool guy to just hang out with, y'know?", she said, "Nothing serious... just to see what it's like to have fun again."

Maybe it was the glass of "Fleur de Stainless Steel Vat" wine I'd been sipping.
Maybe it was Marilyn Manson shrieking nihilstic directives from my speakers.
Maybe all of those syllogism-heavy tests were inaccurate, and I'm not actually a gifted child.
Or maybe, just maybe, I was depressed.

"You should go hang out with Mr. Snail," I said, "He lives pretty close to here, and once you get him to open up, he's a load of fun."

"Er... wouldn't that be, well, extremely weird for you?" said Sarah.

"Eh, I don't think so. And if so? Screw it," I said, employing that ever-stellar "depressed person logic". Unwise choices? Global upheaval? Making your cell phone play a snippet of Joy Division every time it rings? Screw it.

Sending your younger, thinner, prettier, flirtier sister out for drinks with a man on whom you've developed a little bit of a crush?

Screw it. And screw that stupid sun, too.

---

I've gotta say, all parties behaved with admirable tact and compassion. Well, except me. I more or less lost my shit. But I'm MENTALLY ILL! Isn't that good for at least one "Get Out of Emotional Train Wreck Free" card? No? Well, damn. I'll bet if I was muttering to my hair and sheathing my appliances in aluminum foil, you'd cut me some slack.

The first text message came while I was strolling around MegaBookstore.

"Not sure about appropriate etiquette here", wrote Mr. Snail, "But Jul... I really like your sister."

I sank into one of MegaBookstore's granite-like chairs, the kind specifically designed to prevent you from loitering and treating the place like some kind of frickin' lending library. This hasn't stopped me; I'm willing to risk ass-related nerve damage if it means not paying $28 for a hardcover.

"Oh... well," I typed, brain whirring, back aching, "You kids have fun, then."

It soon became apparent that, due to my brilliant strategy of "not telling him or alluding to it in any way", Mr. Snail had been utterly unaware of my micro-crush... and, despite enjoying my company, had harbored no reciprocal feelings.

It was kinda like firing a bullet into a room full of nitroglycerin vapors.

"Are you going to the Unlovable Place?" said Kateri as I sniffled into the other end of the phone, "Do NOT do that, Jul! Don't do it!"

Statement of objective fact: no relatively normal, sane man has ever been smitten with me. Not the boyfriends, not the husband, not some random dude standing in line at the Stop 'n Shop. But that's okay, right? I'm young, I'm somewhat unique, I'll one day find my own level and live in a beautiful world full of Oscar Wilde quotes and foie gras on toast points... right?

Wrong, hissed my brain. You're broken. You will not be loved. Not now, not ever.

I had not only gone there, I'd donned an snorkel and flung myself in head-first.

---

Thank G-d, Buddha or random chance for my friends and family. Oh, and my casual hookups... who, despite not liking me "that way", were still kind enough to visit and attempt to cheer me up.

"I can just disappear, if you want," said Mr. Snail, burying his head in his hands. "I feel like such a complete ass."

"Not your fault," I sniffled, clutching a throw pillow to my chest, "Although it is your fault for not being a dick about it. Now you're the hot, funny, NICE guy who doesn't want me."

"Oh, jesus," groaned Mr. Snail, "Jul, don't even do that to yourself."

"I'm glad Sarah's going to be with a nice guy," I muttered, staring at the carpet, "Kind of takes the sting off of being alone and losing my favorite booty call. Oh, wait: no, it doesn't." After an hour of similarly cheery proclamations, I shooed him out of my apartment.

Poor Mr. Snail.

"I don't have to date him!", said my sister, "If it's going to make you sad, I'll kick his ass to the curb!"

"If, after all this, you DON'T date him," I said, "I will hunt you down and kill you. You'll have a head start, though, since I can't see to get up off the couch."

It was my friend A. - wise, compassionate, endlessly supportive and similarly afflicted - who finally managed to crack my miserble candy shell.

"If you are off antidepressants, get back on something, pronto," she wrote. "Yes, you are one tough mofo, but when there are weapons at your disposal, you are not weak for using them. This is not like childbirth without an epidural; it's more like ... living without shoes. Yes, you get used to the cuts and callouses and occasional frostbite, but it still sucks every time you take a step."

Two days after the shit hit the fan, I left a message with my GP. Although I stopped short of screeching, "I NEED DRUGS NOOOOOW!", it was still persuasive enough to ensure that a bottle of Wellbutrin was in my clammy little hands within two hours. I'm good like that. Shit, I could probably convince John Calvin to knock back a few.

Perhaps that's the meds talking.

---

I took my first dose on the bus, practically chewing off the child-protective cap in my eagerness. While the 'butrin itself will take a few weeks to work its magic, taking steps to address the problem seemed to soothe my inflammed brain tremendously.

I'm still vacationing in Unlovable Family Resort Area... but now, I seem to be able to stay in the shallow end. I have spent enough time in this place to justify buying a time-share. Despite the abundance of freaky anthropomorphic animal heads, I can't help but feel Disneyland would be more fun.

Sarah and Snail are utterly charmed by one another. In an effort to cheer myself up, I'm compiling a list of "Things I Have Which Sarah Doesn't". So far, I've got "adorable - if somewhat bitey - child" and "four inches of height... let's see you reach that jar of beets on the top shelf, bitch! Oh, wait... your boyfriend would probably do it for you."

It comes in fits and spurts. Right now, it's a lovely day. The Baptists down the street are singing hymns and cooking ribs. I'm now eight tablets closer to being able to coexist with my own thoughts. The little cream-colored tablets make me oddly happy. They're the prospect of feeling good about life and myself, formed into a disk and stamped with a "G" (supposedly for "Glaxo"; I prefer to think it's for "Good god, you're insane!"). It's a small thing, but it's a start.

Psycho Killer - Pt. II

(For the first part of "How Our Intrepid Heroine Came To Live With a Self-Proclaimed Serial Killer, see Part I.)

I know what you're thinking. "My parents never would’ve let me move across the country to live with a man I'd just met! Online! Who claimed to have killed people!"

Guess what? My parents wouldn't have, either.

Their path to parenthood was long and hard-won. Your illustrious narrator, their first, arrived only after a decade of marriage, several years of fruitless "trying" and a few miracles of modern medicine. Although my sisters were born in rapid succession, my parents never lost their sense of awe and gratitude. As a result, they were deeply loving but also quite protective.

We watched PBS.

We drank 100% juice.

We didn't bike too far from home.

And we certainly didn't move to Georgia to cohabitate with self-proclaimed psychopaths.

---

Unfortunately for my parents (and their best intentions), I was an astonishingly willful child. From earliest toddlerhood, I ripped through life with white-knuckled determinism. Teenage narcissism intensified this trait; love-bordering-on-religious-fanaticism exploded it. Seventeen Year-Old Jul was not "challenging" or "difficult". Seventeen Year-Old Jul was a Category-5 hurricane: one did not attempt to control it or contain it so much as survive it.

My parents were painfully aware of how any attempts to divert my southbound trajectory would end. Using brute force would be tantamount to hugging an eel. The harder their embrace, the more likely I would be to squirm free, decamp to the nearest Greyhound station and vanish in a cloud of exhaust. Unwilling to risk losing all ties with their child, they were forced to assume the unenviable role of prisoners currying favor with their captor. The overall situation was wretched and unalterable. Via grudging cooperation, they hoped to maintain a small sliver of influence in their daughter’s life.

Of course, they were entirely unaware of David's scary little secret. Had they known, I have no doubt they would've liquidated their assets, hired a squad of deprogrammers and developed a sudden, uncharacteristic faith in an interventionist god.

---

In early January, with my parents' grudging consent, David traveled to Philadelphia to claim his intended bride. I still remember my first glimpse of him as he ascended the stairs at 30th Street Station. He was lithe and blonde, with bright, penetrating eyes… a cherub grown up and grown dark. We locked eyes, lit up, collided in a fervent embrace. I half-expected the entire cavernous structure to disintegrate around our shoulders, shaken apart to marble-dust and cigarette butts.

For years, I couldn't walk past that building without my breath catching and my eyes watering. The next time I form an intense, architecture-linked memory, I'll make damned sure it's with a yurt in Tibet.

We spent the car ride back to my parents' house gently entwining our fingers, staring at one another before grinning and looking away.

We spent that afternoon clumsily rolling around on my futon, marinating in cigarette smoke and sweat. It was here, less than eight hours after we'd met, that the first tiny chink appeared in a previously armor-clad illusion of love.

"Um, baby?” he said, running his fingers over my bare back, "Do you think that next time, you could maybe TRY to keep the same rhythm as me?"

Tears welled up in my eyes. The first seeds of what would become a veritable bumper crop of self-loathing began to sprout in my head. I'd disappointed my soulmate. I was a lousy lay. I wasn't worthy. "Uh... yeah. I'm sorry," I stammered, "I just haven't... y'know... done this a whole lot."

I'd done it so little, in fact, that I was still keeping a mental tally.

It was my ninth time.

If I'd known that the next three months of my life would make that unpleasant little exchange look like "She Walks in Beauty", would I have still gone? You know, I believe I would've. A flotilla of seizure-inducing warning signs wouldn't have altered my course. As is typical of the cocksure, the love-drunk, the inexperienced, I walked in idiocy.

---

Three days, eight hundred miles and a few dozen uppercuts to my self-worth later, we arrived Home: David's parents' finished basement. While I'd been aware that he still lived at home ("keeps the overhead low", he'd explained inscrutably), my first glimpse of the 15'x25' room where my beloved hung his hat was rather disheartening. It was a dim, low-ceilinged cell with Taco Bell wrappers and Dungeons & Dragons paraphernalia scattered over every free surface. The cheeriest touch was the scuffed checkerboard linoleum. "This?” I thought, as that first tiny chink began to grow, "THIS is where all the amoral adventures and shadowy plans for world domination take place? This glorified dorm room is where David the Mastermind spends his time?"

It certainly was. It was where I'd be spending 99% of mine, too.

---

Many women's first few weeks of motherhood are characterized by unimaginable exhaustion, slow-motion panic and a profound sense of isolation. There ceases to be any appreciable difference between 1:00 AM and 1:00 PM. The blinds stay perpetually drawn. A sharp delineation appears between Out There and In Here. The latter arena is so all-consuming - life measured in twenty-minute naps, number of diapers wet and dirtied, frantic calls to the pediatrician - that Out There might as well cease to exist.

I've been there. I've sobbed into a passport-sized diaper. I've lost twenty pounds in under a month because my sudden, graduate-level crash-course in Keeping Infant Alive simply didn't allow for meal breaks.

Georgia was worse.

David worked from home (read: did ten minutes' worth of maintenance on his father's website each month). As a result, he was able to set his own schedule. Ever the iconoclast, he chose the Circadian-altering, crazy-making third shift. We rose mid-afternoon and spent all night concocting impassioned plans to conquer the world, the e-commerce sector or the mall frogurt-stand clerk who skimped on toppings. While unskilled in almost every other area, David was phenomenally charismatic, Anton LaVey crossed with Tony Robbins. It was this slick, sinister enthusiasm which held everything together. Of course our midnight machinations were nothing more than a house of cards. Under dim incandescents, though, the illusion was just too dazzling to doubt.

In addition to being nocturnal, my betrothed was also something of an agoraphobic. Well, that's not strictly true. There were the bimonthly cigarette-replenishment trips, occasional forays to Waffle House for coffee and waitress-derision. There was one action-packed trip to Middle of Fucking Nowhere, Georgia which featured extensive firearm practice, Skoal-sampling and my first tattoo (a malformed mass of squiggles, applied by a burly gent who drank a Bud and told homophobic jokes the entire time). The majority of the time, however, David preferred to stay tucked away in our wood-paneled oubliette, orchestrating mayhem... or, as was more often the case, playing "Metal Gear: Solid" for 48 hours in a row.

"When did he find time to systematically slay thirteen Atlanta-area individuals?” I'd briefly ponder before chastising myself for lack of loyalty, "We haven't left this room in four days..."

After a month of subterranean cohabitation, tiny flaws had enlarged to gaping cracks. The mystique had gone musty. Little, needling jabs had escalated to full-on harpoonings, delivered at rapid clip... "Honey, your design is just way too amateurish for my new website." "We both need work before we can pitch this project to the local paper... my project-management skills aren't that great, and you're just not a very good writer." "Yeah, my parents... they don't really, you know, like you that much."

Cruel barb aside, I wouldn't have liked me very much, either. I was a shadowy, puffy-eyed presence, scurrying into the kitchen under cover of darkness to make David sandwiches. Of course I wasn't terribly conversational. The fantasy for which I'd abandoned my family, my schooling and my rationality was crumbling to bits in front of me. Small talk was for those not attempting to hold an entire world together with trembling hands and unevenly-sliced tomatoes. My feeble, oversudsed and undercooked stabs at domesticity made me resemble a smudged-eyeliner version of the Myra Gale character in "Great Balls of Fire!”… young, desperate to please and prone to dissolving in tears and wailing, "I don't know HOW to be a good wife, Jerry Lee!"

In the movie, Jerry Lee comforted his poor, distraught, underage sweetheart. In real life, David snapped, "Well, I guess next time you'll know that barbecue sauce doesn't go too well with cream cheese", while ordering a pizza.

---

Three months in, the facade had more or less disintegrated. "Tell me more about what it's like," I'd whisper in bed, desperately trying to push him back into an intriguing but ill-fitting mold. "Maybe later... tired... too intense," he'd mutter, drifting off. If David really was the ringleader of a nefarious, multi-state crime syndicate, he apparently performed his duties during the twenty minutes a day I was in the shower. If he’d killed anyone, the deed must’ve been done in the BP, the Waffle House or his own driveway, because he certainly didn’t venture anywhere else. The driveway did feature a large, discolored stain. I was pretty sure it was motor oil rather than the blood of an enemy, an inferior, a sheep righteously culled.

In less than ninety days, the contract was irrevocably breached. The bloom was off the rose. The rosebush had been weed-whacked down to a stump. I was unwilling to face the truth and incapable of stomping out, slamming the door and stepping into the daylight. This was my one and only future. I’d sold my morality and my soul for this vacation, and I was damned if it was going to be rained out.

"I am you," I'd whisper to myself during my protracted shower-cries, tracing our initials on steam-fogged glass, "I am you, I am you, I am you."

I'd lie beside him at night, tracing my fingers over his skin, trying to memorize his scent. Tears trickling down my face, sobbing silently so I didn’t wake him.

---

It ended abruptly. Just-like-that. In retrospect, it’s a wonder my sojourn lasted as long as it did. David was constantly in search of the new, the neuron-tickling, the Next Big Thing. He’d exhausted the possibilities of a fragile, fawning live-in acolyte well before April reared its blossom-bedecked head.

It was six AM. We’d stayed up all night, drinking warmish Jack ‘n Dew, alternately pawing one another and retreating to our separate computer chairs, damp and restless, tapping out our mutual dissatisfaction.

“I’m sending you home.” David turned to me, lapis eyes vivid. “First thing tomorrow.”

So this is shock, I thought as my face went cold and my hair prickled.

“You’re kidding,” I said, more accusation than question.

“This isn’t fun any more- ,” he began.

“I know, I know, babe,” I pleaded, “But I’m trying so hard, every day…”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” said David. “I never really loved you. This was a game… a test to see how much you’d believe, how far you’d go. I gotta say, I'm proud... you took it all the way. And you were twisted enough to actually LIKE it. But you’re not me. You’re nothing like me, not even after three months of trying to be a fucking chameleon. It’s getting old.”

“Was ANY of it true?” I blurted, still glued in the same position, my eyes dry, wide and terrified.
“I’m not going to tell you. Maybe the whole thing was a game. Maybe it was all true, and because part of me does love you, I’m protecting you from me and my life. You’re never going to know. Ever.”

Just as I’d kept a 4” Gerber in my boot, David kept a loaded .22 on his desk. I looked at it, sitting under a burrito wrapper. My hands twitched ineffectually in my lap.

“Don’t even fucking think about it,” said David. “First, a .22 round would only piss me off, and then I’d have to kick your ass. Second… that’s not you. Can’t you tell that by now?”

“No,” I blubbered, tears finally coursing down my chilly face, “You can’t… I won’t… there’s no one else in the world like me…”

“There are PLENTY of people like you,” he said, the last word brimming with happy disgust. “Here’s the phone. Call your parents and tell them you’re flying home tomorrow morning.”

“No,” I blurted, inching my chair away, “Can’t…”

“Well, do whatever the fuck you’d like. I’ll call them. You’re still going home.”

I was free. I was catatonic. I was a 120-amp fuse, overloaded with emotional agony, waiting to break, waiting to blow, and yet inexplicably still sitting here, staring at a stranger with a thin smile and a United Airlines envelope in his hand.

---

The next few days are a pile of blurry snapshots. I remember sleeping with David twice that evening, trying to hold on to just a little of his sweat, his spit, him. Oddly, it wasn’t the worst sex I’ve ever had. I remember packing my beloved stuffed giraffe and birth certificate, leaving my platform sneakers and copy of “ANSWER Me!”. I remember being handed a twenty to buy a snack while in transit (unnecessary; I didn’t eat for nearly a week). I remember David’s father briskly shaking my hand, an impersonal farewell to an impersonal acquaintance. I remember stepping off the plane and seeing my father, remember how he walked up and held me tightly for what seemed like hours, didn’t say a word as I sobbed into his flannel shirt.

---

My sister Sarah claims that my capacity for emotional recovery is much like Wolverine’s healing factor. “Dude,” she’s marveled, “You get pistol-whipped by some totally awful trauma, and thirty seconds later, you’re peeling yourself off the ground, spitting out gravel and yelling, ‘Was that shit really necessary?’!”

This is not strictly accurate.

My first days home from Georgia were quite educational. I learned that while it’s possible to live on diet Coke, it’s not a great idea for your teeth or your psyche. I learned that crying yourself to sleep, crying intermittently through the night and crying before you open your eyes in the morning doesn’t leave a person particularly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I learned that no matter how much you wish it would, a broken heart won’t kill you.

Most importantly, however, I learned how to fake it.

I didn’t want to wake up in the morning. I faked it.
I didn’t want to be conscious. Ever. I faked it.
I didn’t want to interact with my family. I faked it.
I didn’t want to eat or smile or put on a snappy little suit and interview for secretarial jobs. I faked it.

The only thing I really wanted to do was sit in front of the computer, chatting with David, eagerly lapping up my daily ration of emotional abuse, frantically trying to wheedle my way back into his heart. It would be another six months before his grip on my mind and spirit would begin to grow slack.

In the interim, I dated men I couldn’t stand. I saw silly, explosion-laden movies. I went to Friendly’s at three in the morning, scalded my innards with Buffalo wings and coffee, wrote bad, lovesick poems on napkins. I got my second tattoo, a stylized outline of David’s beloved silver ring, a heavy, hand-formed knot which had briefly served as my engagement ring.

And I faked it.

Living – no matter how forced and arbitrary and tiresome – is still not grieving. If you do enough of the former, it’ll eventually start to seem more pleasant and endurable than the latter. Eventually, despite yourself, you’ll utter one genuine laugh, enjoy a plate of homemade spaghetti, nod your head awkwardly to a good, bassy song.

At which point you’ll promptly burst into tears. But it’ll happen again… soon.

You don’t fake it ‘til you make it, exactly. You fake it until time inches forward, the world changes shape and the disingenuous existence you fashioned becomes Velveteen Rabbit-real.

You fake it ‘til it’s made FOR you.

---

It’s been seven years, five months and some-odd days since I returned home. Some very odd days, indeed, as well as some tremendously happy and fulfilling ones. I’ve never had that second tattoo removed; the memory, like the ink, is indelible. I no longer grieve for David. I harbor no delusions of finding the “one other person in the entire world” who shares my snarled strand of emotional DNA. It’s all mine and one-of-a-kind. But that experience – the scary, the sad, the humiliating – is part of it, too. I never want to forget.

I was seventeen. It doesn’t excuse, it doesn’t explain and it doesn’t change.

When I was seventeen, I let a dark, not-entirely-normal part of myself rage out of control. I fed it, nurtured it, flaunted it, and lured a monster to my doorstep. Not a psycho-killer, but someone capable of showing me what my worst, most hateful tendencies would look like in a few years unless I tried very, very hard keep them pinned beneath my boot heel. Who’s sicker – someone falsely claiming to be a killer, or someone genuinely drawn to that person?

The fault lies with me… because it is me. One doesn’t annihilate the dark half so much as work each day to keep it in remission.

I’m as kind and loving to my family, my friends and my son as I can possibly be. I devote myself fully to living a good, moral life because I know it’s a choice. I fight for it with every particle of my being. I surround that dark blotch on my soul with compassion, understanding, sympathetic words and helpful works. I fake like it doesn’t exist… and pretend - or hope - that someday, maybe it won’t.

Psycho Killer - Pt. I

I don't dedicate.
Nonetheless...
For C.

The New Jersey public school system, Stolichnaya, C-SPAN, the Unabomber, my abnormal psych professor, Sub Pop Records and ENIAC are all partially to blame.

But it's mainly on me. Or rather, the sixteen year-old version of me.

Now, maybe the sixteen year-old you was a delightful, upstanding young adult, starring in drama club productions, dishing up meals at the soup kitchen and never letting your boyfriend's hands bypass the orcas swimming across your Sierra Club t-shirt.

Sixteen Year-Old Jul, however, was a monstrous little bastard. I was poorly-informed, endlessly-opinionated, incredibly foul-mouthed (well, some things never change). I was chubby, shy and ensnared in an H.R. Giger painting's worth of orthodontia. I was also deep in the throes of Teenage Ebola: low self-esteem and enormous ego, battling for control within a single body, leaving the host in piss-poor shape for the duration.

I didn't have a boyfriend... but that was because teenage boys were malodorous, slack-jawed cretins. My teachers were liars, charlatans and entirely too fond of poly-blend separates. My parents were cruel oppressors with archaic views of freedom, personal responsibility and the difference between "clean dishes" and "dishes still encrusted with recognizable chunks of Stroganoff, so re-wash them again NOW, young lady".

I kept a 4" pocket knife tucked in one Doc Marten at all times, presumably as proof of my Junior Bad-Ass League membership. I'd practice flicking it open with one hand while alone in my bedroom, periodically losing my grip and spearing my Kermit the Frog pillow.

I should not have been left in charge of a goldfish bowl, let alone my own path to adulthood.

All of this elaborates, but doesn't explain. And it most definitely doesn't excuse.

---

Shortly after I turned seventeen, I made the biggest mistake of my life. In a somewhat off-kilter tribute to the Talking Heads, I'm going to call him David.

We met online in September.

By Halloween, we were deliriously in love.

By Thanksgiving, I'd made plans to leave college and move to Georgia to be with him.

Around the time of the first snowfall, I packed up my stuffed animals and broad collection of misanthropic literature, hopped in my father's dung-colored K-car and sputtered off towards my destiny.

Thing is, around Election Day, we'd had the following instant-message exchange.

David: You know, I've killed before.
Jul: Um... seriously?
David: I've never told anyone, obviously, but I know I can trust you. And I'm absolutely not joking.
Jul: Hmmmmn. Tell me more...

Not incredulity, not horror, not shock... "tell me more".

Psycho killer / qu'est-ce que c'est?

That's stuck with me, more than anything else which happened during that tumultuous, heartbreaking, life-shaping year. "Tell me more".

Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa...

I've forgiven David. You already know where his story is headed (nowhere, fast, bottle of Depakote rattling alongside).

Someday, I may forgive myself.

---

The day of my sixteenth birthday, I woke up, chugged a diet Mountain Dew and dropped out of high school. Tired of being an awkward, geeky outcast, I planned to both reinvent myself and achieve my true potential at Scrub Pine Community College. The latter goal got off to a ripping start; my first semester GPA was a Rod Carew-like 4.0. However, I was still horrifically geeky.... and now, I was paying for the privilege of being ignored by my classmates. I sat alone in the dining hall each day, nibbling a homogeneous chicken patty and shooting daggers at my sheep-like inferiors. My romantic life was limited to a few clumsy liaisons with an aloof Lothario who disappeared for weeks on end and returned my breathy, "I'm so in love with you!", with a measured, "Well, I care for you as well, BUT...".

Things clearly hadn't gone the way I'd imagined. This chapped my pompous little ass to no end. How DARE life deviate from my meticulously-crafted plan? Had I been older and less insufferable, I could have reevaluated my options. Had I been humbler, I could've saved years of strife and reevaluated myself. I could've said hello to the early-education majors, rather than attempting to ignite their scrunchies with the force of my glare.

I was sixteen. It doesn't excuse, but it'll have to explain.

While watching a filmstrip in Abnormal Psychology class one afternoon, I decided that the explanation for my social difficulties was blindingly simple: I was afflicted with antisocial personality disorder... in other words, a sociopath.

I'll repeat: sixteen.

I'd received a copy of the DSM-IV as a birthday present several months earlier. Soon, the section devoted to ASPD had been burnished to a soft gleam by my eager little fingers. "This is SO ACCURATE!" I marveled, copying choice diagnostic criteria onto pastel index cards, "I DO fail to conform to social norms!" I carried this small stack of symptomology with me at all times, periodically pausing in 7-11 or the campus bookstore to leaf through them and murmur, "I HAVE rationalized having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another! Why, just yesterday I punched Junket because she stole my Dr Pepper-flavored lip gloss! If that doesn't indicate a lack of conscience, I don't know WHAT does!"

I applied a zestful, can-do spirit towards nurturing my newfound sociopathy. I spent hours analyzing the seminal hate-zine "ANSWER Me!" as though it were a misanthropic Dead Sea scroll. I located and downloaded the most graphic, disturbing images I could find (crime-scene snapshots, an infamous Steve Albini album cover) in an attempt to "desensitize" myself to them. I stared at my bright, bratty little sisters and exhausted but doting parents and tried (in vain, thankfully) to convince myself that I felt no emotion towards them whatsoever. It was an unsustainably strange way to live; had things gone differently, I'm sure I would have retired the close-range shotgun-blast photos and unsmiling facade within a few months.

Then I met David.

---

My first-ever website was a slow-loading monstrosity known as "Craven Chicky's Wicked Lair" (my screen name having been inspired by Craven Walker, inventor of the Lava Lamp). In addition to a 50MB WAV file of my sister belching punk rock lyrics, it also featured some half-decent (if painfully immature) writing. One day, I received an e-mail from "VitriolLad88", complimenting me on my angry teenage wordsmithery and asking if I'd be interested in chatting on instant messenger. Attention- and affection-starved, I installed ICQ and sent him a message less than five minutes later ("So, what's a nice boy like you doing on a worldwide interconnected computer network like this?").

Later that day, he and I exchanged ten minutes' worth of witty banter.

The next day, we chatted for several hours.

The day after that, the drug really took hold. We stayed up all night, exchanging flirtatious bon mots, deep-rooted secrets and shared hatred of the civilized world. At nine AM, I staggered off to school, exhausted but grinning. In between classes, I scurried to the computer lab to see if a particularly vitriolic lad had fired off any new correspondence.

Of course he'd sent a gorgeous e-mail. Of course it was five pages long.

---

David, you see, was manic-depressive, unmedicated by choice. Falling in love with a person in the grips of an active mania is sort of like riding a malfunctioning roller coaster. The experience is so fantastically exhilarating that it takes you a little too long to notice that something's wrong. By then, you're strapped in place, going ninety miles an hour and helpless to do anything but close your eyes and pray.

Youth is idiocy, enthusiasm is contagious and mistakes are inevitable. Within weeks, I was gone... catastrophically in love and deep under David's spell. Even when young and idealistic, I hadn't been terribly young or idealistic... no bacon-thwarted attempts at veganism, no circulating hand-scrawled petitions at the mall. My bond with this mysterious stranger living eight hundred miles away was the first thing I was absolutely, positively sure of. We spent every spare moment online, chatting, conspiring, marvelling that we'd found the one other soul in the world which perfectly matched our own. "The words 'I love you' don't even come close," wrote David one night, "I AM you... pure and simple." I was enraptured, a believer at last. Never before (and, to be brutally honest, never since) have I felt so adored and adoring, so inextricably tethered to a lover's heart. "I want to gather all the false love I've bestowed upon other women, stack it like cordwood and set it alight," he wrote, "I want to make a massive, towering pyre in honor of everyone and everything which made me who I am, which made me capable of loving you."

Oh, he was good.

David's top-secret sinister "revelation" was delivered at 3 AM, roughly a month after we'd met. It had much the same effect on our nascent bond as tempering does on steel. My love was a killer... because he could, because he was bigger, greater, more powerful than any of society's rules. And I? I was the one woman in the world who knew him, through and through. I was him. I wouldn't blanch at his actions, I would celebrate them. My convictions were now exponentially stronger and more solid than they'd been before. My high-school acquaintances were buying prom dresses and beaten-up cars. I was buying a mythology. I was a feverish, twisted mess, intoxicated by love and potential, enraged by everything else. One night, in response to my escalating verbal abuse, my mother pleaded, "Jul, your family can't TAKE this anymore! You never, ever stop hurting us. I just don't think you can continue to live in this house."

"I don't think so, either," I replied icily (even though my teeth were clenched and my nails gouging divots in my palms), "I'm moving to Georgia... and I'm getting married."

Several days earlier, in a move which had made my already-inflamed heart practically rupture, David had been referring to me as his "wife".

It was the brass ring. It was my whole world, my destiny.

It was, as it turned out, nothing as I'd imagined. But I'd find that out soon enough.

"WHAT?", exclaimed my mother, "With... with the guy you've been talking to on the computer? Are you insane?"

"You have no idea", I replied.

To Be Continued...

The Contract (Ms. Bitterless)

• We will never go to IKEA together. Should we require modern Scandinavian furnishings, we will enlist an objective third party to procure our PAARTIKLE BORD dining set for us. I have seen the face of the male IKEA patron, and it is not pretty. Ranging from "bemused and haggard" to "soul-deadened and haggard", they trail behind their partners, forlorn, clutching fabric swatches and dreams. They say they prefer the beech stain to the espresso; in actuality, they fail to give a shit about this or any other topic. Their Abercrombie t-shirt-clad little hearts weep silently for a break, a truce, some Swedish meatballs, a different life entirely.
  
  I will slit my wrists with a miniature Allen wrench before I let that fate befall you, Imaginary Boyfriend.


• You will appreciate my grilled cheeses. They do not contain a single, one-note cheese, but the symphonic convergence of three. Every millimeter of their interior surface area is slicked with a special mustard/mayo concoction; the last bite is as unctuous and well-seasoned as the first. An arcane dance of squishing, flipping and wiggling produces their Pantone-perfect crispy exterior. And they are made with such love, such buttery-warm affection that it seems as though your name has been scrawled across them, writ small a million times in lacy golden-brown.

• Your presence in my life will make sweetly romantic alt-rock that much better. The treble brighter, juicier. Bass as lust incarnate, pushing and pressing through crackly speakers. The singer's hushed lilt a weak acid capable of dissolving our bodies, sweeping the resultant dust across thousands of miles and causing Pan-Pacific teenagers to sniffle and sigh with the sheer beauty of it all.
  
  As opposed to your current absence, which leads only to my oft-expressed desire to garrote Pete Yorn with his own guitar strings.



• We'll conjure up our own tiny, localized Indian summer... fling off the ennui like a too-warm quilt, open all the windows, flood the house with good smells and golden light. We'll run our fingers through every chain-link fence we pass, kick up flurries of dry, spicy leaves, eat bacon and eggs and cream-shot coffee for breakfast because Wheaties clearly aren't enough to nourish something so ravenous, insatiable, twenty feet tall and growing by the second.



• We will walk in the snow.
  
  You will find my pom-pom-topped knit hat strangely alluring.
  
  We will play eagerly, mittens sticking to ice-crusted playground equipment, snowballs exploding against puffy coats, the air glacially clean and sweet.
  
  We will create our own small ice-world, sparkling and fuzzily aglow under sodium-arc lights. In the midst of a particularly heated snowball battle, the laughing, wet-mittened Ice King will push the flushed, red-nosed Ice Queen down next to the slides. Rather than shoving icicles down the back of her parka (as was his stated intent), he'll cover her chilly face in kisses... freezing, cold, thawing, downright warm, okay then, hot. Crows and rabbits will pause in amazement at the strange creatures with Gore-Tex hides tussling in the snow, smashing delicate drifts, ripping off soaked wool, melting in the chill.
  
  And then you'll shove icicles down my parka.



• You'll read my writing, of your own volition, because it's mine. You'll catch the occasional glimpse of yourself from behind the dense thickets of adjective. You will swoon in exactly the way I imagined while mangling the keyboard with one hand and drinking wine from a party cup with the other. You will leave adorable, purposefully-obscure comments under names which I only I would recognize... FoieGrasApocalyse218, BordentownNewJerseyDeathTrip99.



• You'll send flowers to my office on my birthday. Not vanilla-with-no-toppings roses, not cheap-little-hussy carnations, not the ever-popular and allergy-provoking Asiatic lilies. Flame-orange tulips, luridly purple mini-Callas, one of those eerie, luminescent flowers which only bloom once every twenty years and must be stolen in a risky, late-night commando raid on the local arboretum. Those are more my style. You know.



• The Replacements' "Unsatisfied" : the role you and I play in each other's lives should be the diametric opposite of the sentiment expressed in this song. My liberty and my chances will never be just a lie, damn it.
  
  "Kiss Me On the Bus", though? Westerberg's sweet, pleading, low-grit rasp? Rollicking guitars lewdly rubbing against joyous chimes? That sudden, manic itch to stop reading Spanish public-service posters, stand up and be magically alive for the next three minutes?
  
  I'll be that for you if you'll be that for me.



• You'll let me grow close enough so that it'll really, truly sting if either one of us ever pulls back. You'll be geeky and goofy and captivating enough so that I'll rip through the standard "hesitating/contemplating/flinging-self-off-cliff" rigmarole in record time, no matter how intense that hypothetical sting might be.
  
  And when I'm discussing my busted-up heart and gun-shy disposition, you'll recognize and call me on my complete, utter bullshit.



• You'll always give me quarters for the jukebox.
  
  You'll admire my exaggerated hip-swishing as I saunter back, and your slightly-crooked, drink-stirrer-chewing grin will assure me that yes, 0812 was exactly totally perfectly right.

Tales Out of Camp - Pt. II

I have all sorts of notes compiled for a post about moving to Philadelphia, including such gems as "LIGHTBULBS, 10 PM: WHO DO I HAVE TO BLOW TO GET ONE IN THIS TOWN?", "GAS STATION MINI-MART: HAS HIBACHIS AND TEN DIFFERENT KINDS OF ROLLING PAPERS BUT NO LIGHTBULBS? WHAT UP W/THAT? IF YOU'RE STONED AND EATING A HOT DOG, YOU WON'T CARE THAT YOU'RE DOING IT IN THE DARK?!" and the delightful "NOT ONLY IS THIS NOT MY STREET, BUT THIS NEIGHBORHOOD SEEMS TO HAVE AN AWFUL LOT OF BAIL BONDSMEN!"

However.

Ever since my last post, it's been nothing but, "But what about the SWINGERS?", "Tell us about the swingers RIGHT NOW!", etc. I had no idea that my heavily-domesticated audience would be so enraptured by tales of debauchery. I may have found the most lucrative crossover market since Spanglish pop ("If you don't give me todo su amor, I'll kick your culo right out that door!"): gonzo journalism for the PB&J set. You're not quite ready for German scheisse porn, but you're going to poke your own eyeball out with a rubber-tipped spoon if you don't find a form of entertainment more titillating than "Goodnight Moon" (which I generally finish reading to my short-attention-spanned infant thusly: "Goodnight to the following: bears, chairs, bowl of gruel, disturbing anthropomorphic rabbits. Goodnight noises everywhere, including the ones YOU'RE going to make when mommy unceremoniously dumps you in your crib").

On with the show!

When we last left our intrepid ("intrepid" being a kind euphemism for "drunk") heroine, she was trekking across a darkened field in search of a rumored swingers' party. Her flagrantly silly imagination ran wild during her brief stroll... Jenna Jameson-esque nymphs being lashed to logs with vines, nudes prancing around a moonlit pond, pine cones being employed in ways the original tree definitely wouldn't condone. Upon reaching the campground's pool, however, those naughty-Narnian fantasies (perfect title, should any adult-movie producers wish to whiz on C.S. Lewis' grave: "The Layin', the Bitch and the Whore-Probe") were laid to waste even faster than her present use of the clunky third-person tense.

It was... professional. Slick. Completely, consummately competent.

There was a bar! A DJ! Inflatable pool sharks! Women in Gap bikinis sipping Cosmos!

At that moment, a part of my soul left my body, dissolved into the layer of steam blanketing the pool and floated lazily into the night.

For me, grown-up activities have always been the antithesis of diamonds: best when unpolished.

The first time Junket and I tried pot, we weren't aware of the availability of commercial rolling papers. As a result, our first-ever shared joint was approximately 8" long and bright orange as a result of being rolled on... origami paper. It's one of my favorite memories, and it's largely because of - rather than despite - the coughing, sputtering, and combustion of enough orange dye to mutate the next-door neighbors' DNA.

One of the best kisses of my life occurred mere moments after my co-osculator had consumed a Big Mac. I may be the last person in America who has never tried one of those delightfully caloric concoctions. I always figured there wasn't really any point; by the time I was done customizing it, I'd be left with nothing but a forlorn sesame-seed bun. When it comes to burgers, I'm a purist... no stupid lettuce, no briny-ass pickles, no reeking onions, no baptism by sauce, no matter how purportedly "special".

I remember that kiss, though - fast-food lights reflected in my boyfriend's glasses, his fingers hesitantly twining through my hair, the deep, gas-slurping thrum of the Ford Granada in which we were parked - better than any of the thousands of more ideal lip-locks I've experienced since.

Clearly, not everyone shares this view... hence the popularity of lab-created babes such as Pamela Anderson-Lee-Lee-Rock. But again, personally, the perfection's in the imperfections. And watching women with better hair than I'll ever have aquatically gyrate to "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" sucked all the eroticism out of that scene faster than a flotilla of expensive penis pumps.

"So... is this your first Eros Adventures event?" asked Raoul (note: all names and identifying details changed to protect the... um, not-so-innocent?). "Um... I guess?" I said. I was huddled in the shallow end, sipping the remnants of my rum 'n Gatorade and doing what I do best: no, not THAT, smart ass... observing. During the event's first hour, my observations were limited to the following:

- If these are enlightened, adventurous grown-ups, then why are they all standing on opposite sides of the pool like kids at a junior-high dance?

- Attention, women confronting post-childbirth "spread": while I'm truly happy if you can embrace your body's new contours, objectively speaking, you MIGHT not want to descend a waterslide nude at this point in your life. I'm just sayin'.

"So... whaddya think?" said Raoul. An older, less-intolerably-hammy version of Cuba Gooding Jr., he and his taciturn blonde girlfriend were frequent Eros Adventures attendees. "Uh... I kinda thought there'd be... y'know... more HAPPENING," I stammered. Apart from the occasional al fresco waterslider, the event was surprisingly tame. Couples clung together, rarely venturing apart to chat up their fellow attendees. "It's still early," said Raoul, "Things'll heat up!" "Say," he said, eyes lowered, "Those are some NICE breasts you have there. Mind if I... touch them?"

If my libido had been wounded by the earlier Ethel-Merman-meets-Kylie-Minogue acrobatics, Raoul's eerily polite request for a handful of tit flat-out killed it. It was the spirit of adventure (coupled with the unavoidable fact that my boobs are like the town bicycle's horn - everyone's had a squeeze!), however, which led me to say, "Sure, knock yourself out."

It was then, my mammary suspended in Raoul's respectful grip, that I had an epiphany.

"Actually, I have a confession to make," I said, more literate than I'd been all evening ("Um... waterslide... naked... chafing?"). "I'm a writer, and I'm here to learn more about your lifestyle."

"Really?" said Raoul, dropping my boob like an ignited potato. "Well, what do you want to know?"

As it turns out, rather than being disappointed that they wouldn't get to feast on my supple (um... jiggly? Squish-tastic?) young flesh, the swingers were delighted to discuss their lives, loves and pervy peccadilloes. It also turns out that - unlike casual group sex - I have a natural affinity for the writer's role. Never was I more comfortable than sitting back, watching the action (Raoul was right... while no slippery orgies broke out amongst the FunNoodles, I did get the dubious pleasure of seeing a man orally serviced to the Violent Femmes' "Blister in the Sun"... something tells me Gordon Gano would approve) and interrogating the participants about the interesting twists and lubed-up turns which their lives had taken to bring them to that particular moment. About that, I have to say this:

- While each of the people with whom I spoke had a fascinating back story, I have a feeling that any given individual off the street would’ve been just as interesting. In this culture, in these crazy, topsy-turvy, CrunchWrap-fueled times (note: I've got nothing against the CrunchWrap. It's got more angles than any other fast-foodstuff, so it's a-okay by me. I'm actually looking forward to the development of the CrunchDodecahedron in a decade or so), people rarely open up to one another. We miss this shared dialogue with our fellow humans... hence the popularity of alcohol (KY Jelly for the consciousness) and reality TV.

- Despite their free-lovin', self-confident ways, the swingers were some of the most uptight individuals I've ever met in terms of their raw hunger for acceptance. To a person, everyone with whom I spoke wanted nothing more than for popular society to stop ridiculing, lambasting and persecuting the polyamorous populace. Now, forgive me if I'm being insensitive, but I was unaware of any widespread malice towards those of the swingin’ persuasion. At very least, they don't face the daily challenges of, say [gays, Jews, blacks, the handicapped, immigrants]. I doubt very much that members of any truly marginalized population would take kindly to the swinger's heartfelt pleas for understanding.

Like all good (or at least perversely fascinating) things, my stint as pseudo-interviewer to the rurally wanton had to come to an end. While I was chatting with the adorable female bartender about her current husband, her former husband and the impossibility of utter honesty, a shirtless, Kris Kristofferson-ish man strode up to me.

"So... you're the writer?" he said in a not-entirely-friendly tone.

"Yup!", I chirped, oblivious.

"Well, GREAT!" snarled his companion, a stringy, Crypt Keeper-ish blonde. "Although I don't suppose it matters NOW... party's already over!"

True to her words, lip- (and other appendage) locked groups had begun drifting away from the pool, presumably for adventures of a differently-steamy nature.

"See, we're a little SENSITIVE to the media's portrayal of our way of life," said AngrySwinger, "Ever since our last meeting spot got shut down because a story in the local paper made everyone all hysterical."

"Why can't you people just leave us alone?" spat FuriousWife.

Not having the heart (or humility) to 'fess up that I only "wrote" for an audience of dozens and $4.79 a month in AdSense revenue, I sputtered, "Um... trust me, y'all don't have to worry about anything from me."

"Yeah, whatever," said FuriousWife, "Like I said, the party's OVER."

"My wife's just a little worried about what happened last time," said AngrySwinger apologetically, "We'd appreciate it if you didn't use any names or identifying details (note: I didn't... please don't kill me, swingers!)... maybe just say something positive about alternative lifestyles?"

"I think I can do that," I said, not wanting to be found dead in the woods with a Hitachi Magic Wand-shaped divot in the back of my skull. "You were all really nice, interesting people" (which is true, the fact that I found their gathering roughly as erotic as Sunday mass notwithstanding).

"Thanks," said AngrySwinger, "Time for us to get going now."

I took that as my queue to vacate the premises, which I did rapidly but happily, bounding across rocks and logs with giddy glee.

"Where the hell WERE you?" marveled my companions when I strolled back into camp. "You were gone for, like, THREE HOURS!"

"DUDE!" I yelled, "I... I... PISSED OFF A BUNCH OF SWINGERS! AND I NEED TO WRITE ABOUT IT, NOW!"

"It's four in the morning... you're INSANE," they said as I rolled up my sleeping bag and busted down my tent, intent on heading towards a keyboard as quickly as possible (which, after minor detours such as "caring for short-tempered short person" and "moving to Philadelphia", I did).

I s'pose, in addition to lovers and fighters, there is a third group in which people can be pigeonholed... writers. And while I may not have discovered how to have repeated, Mt. Vesuvius-caliber orgasms or vogue to "Get Down Tonight", I was rather happy to learn that I'm a minor, nonprofessional member of the Scribe Tribe. Swing THAT, suckers.

Tales Out of Camp - Pt. I

There are many lessons to be learned while immersed in nature. This goes a long way towards explaining the popularity of Tevas, s'mores and college students embarking upon Carlos Casteneda-ish psychedelic journeys, during which they attain an understanding that God and Nature are but two halves of the same golden entity, arcing eternally across space-time, only to later determine that, shit, they must've wandered away from the campsite and into the parking lot of the local McDonald's again.

It was armed with this knowledge (but neither peyote buttons nor hacky-sack) that I recently ventured into the forest primeval for a restorative camping trip.

Oh, who am I kidding? I pitched a tent on a field within walking distance of a 7-11 with the express purpose of running around in a wet bathing suit and eating Pop Tarts and rum for breakfast. The only mystical insights gleaned during the trip were along the lines of, "Is there any way to make floating in the pool even LESS strenuous?" (answer: suspend your Pop Tart-bloated frame upon enough foam pool toys to re-buoy the Titanic!) and "How can I avoid contracting salmonella while cooking chicken in an area without running water?" (after wiping hands on grass, tree, rocks, pants and unsuspecting co-camper's rain fly, abandon conventional food-safety measures and just slosh high-test beverages on hands often enough to hopefully eliminate any pathogens).

The trip was ostensibly centered around an Irish folk-music festival. While this fostered a gentle, communal atmosphere not present at, say, the Warped Tour, most attendees were more interested in arboreal alcoholism than music. The Gaelic theme mainly served as a not-unpleasant background note, somewhat like eating at Bennigan's, only with less melted cheese and chipotle-ranch sauce. Occasionally, we were roused from our midday naps and semi-cooked chicken-consumption by a particularly boisterous tune. I will now attempt to recall a representative sample in the most patently offensive manner possible:

"Laddies 'n lassies, please welcome the O'Blarnigans with their hit single, "Begorrah!"

[frantic fiddling]

"Begorrah! Begorrah! Begorrah! Begorrah!
Blimey, cor and crikey! Blood pudding, leprechauns!
Guinness, "The Commitments" and now 'n then car bombs!"

It's a good thing the whole IRA cease-fire occurred, otherwise I'd be a LITTLE hesitant to start up the Civic tomorrow.

After the sun had set and the last accordion had ceased bleating, we sprawled around a glowing lantern, smacking at mosquitoes, sipping truly horrendous drinks (including the perennial favorite, "Diet Coke and... y'know, something. Heavy on the something!") and shooting the breeze. As is typical with this oh-so-effete crowd, the discussion soon turned to sex... who was having it, where they were having it, were any kitchen implements involved? "Really? A POTATO masher?" Earlier in the day, rumors had surfaced that a group of swingers would be meeting in the vicinity later that evening. "Y'know... for SWINGING!" went the gleefully-repeated refrain (as opposed to swingers who congregate in order to analyze one another's investment portfolios, I suppose). "Dude, we TOTALLY need to go check it out!", said one excited fellow camper, "There's no single guys allowed, so I'll hafta find a chick to pretend to marry. Wouldn't THAT be a hell of a honeymoon?" Despite our shared juvenile titillation, no one could muster sufficient nerve to set down their drink and venture off in search of Alternative Lifestyles of the Rural 'n Shameless.

Except... me (att'n, family: feel free to continue reading. Only OTHER people's cottage-cheesy asses are featured in this tale).

I'm generally quite shy, the quintessential observer, what I like to refer to in my more purple-prose moments as a "social moth": at any given gathering, I cling to the wall and soak it all in.

Perhaps it was this interest in amateur sociology which led to what happened next. Perhaps it was an abundance of "something"-heavy libations.

I prefer, as always, to blame indie rock.

Earlier that week, I'd heard Pavement's "Spit on a Stranger" for the first time; to say I liked it would be a laughable understatement. It had lodged itself in my brain more firmly than the mutant offspring of "Don't Fear the Reaper" and the Kit-Kat jingle. I especially loved the lyric, "I see the sunshine in your eyes... I'll try the things you'll never try", delivered by Stephen Malkmus in a lilt so breathy, so god-awful PRETTY as to be capable of making a woman's panties disintegrate from ninety yards away.

I'll try the things you'll never try.

"That's IT, I'm goin' in," I proclaimed, pulling a skirt over my soggy bathing suit and setting out across the field.

TO BE CONTINUED...

I'm A Slut

The morning after, I am maddeningly itchy.

This is not itching of the embarrassing localized variety, the type which makes one wonder if the previous evening's rum 'n Coke-fueled bacchanalia also included a surprise sidecar of contagion.

This itch is all-encompassing. Tiny welts cover my skin. As soon as one has been clawed into submission, another is already screeching for attention.

I consider lolling naked in a wading pool full of calamine lotion.

I debate snorting a few crushed Benadryl through a sippy-cup straw.

In a moment of inspiration, I flop to the carpet and commence writhing, an ecstatic self-flagellant of the Church of the Itchy Fucking Proboscis.

In retrospect, I should have used bug spray. Lots of bug spray. I should have located an industrial drum of pure DEET and upended it over my head in honor of my triumphant BugBowl victory.

Bug spray. That, I realize, grinning and making carpet-angels with my itchy limbs, is my only regret.

---

Female sexuality is a razorblade-seeded apple, a cup of Jonestown Kool-Aid, a banana split with a scoop of vanilla, a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of Semtex.

In other words, sweet, sticky and explosive.

No one fucks in a vacuum. Much like Britney's parenting acumen (breaking news: Sean Preston, 25.3 pounds, carried in Snugli only weight-rated to 24 pounds!), the entire subject has been analyzed, politicized and proselytized into the ground.

No matter how private the act, you can rest assured that every sigh, heave, word muttered and scream uttered has been debated by experts and ordinary schmucks across the moral and political continuum. Culturally, we're much like a five year-old - simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by sex, not to mention utterly incapable of resisting the allure of a closed bedroom door. This carnal curiousity impacts every member of society (surprise, your blow job is on JumboTron!). However, it is women, the gender not possessed of a chromosome with a delightfully authoritative lower prong, who bear the brunt.

First and foremost, there's the "You Might As Well Suck Off the Washington Monument" conundrum. For many (but no means all) Third Wave women, sex is as rife with sinister implications as the avant-garde play which so often preceeds it (marginally-related note: am I the only person who has ever gotten some immediately following a viewing of "Boys Don't Cry"? "Wow, that was... um... wow." "Oh, yeah. Say, wanna do it?"). As delightful as your partner's penis may be individually, it is a member of a Penile-Industrial Complex which includes date rapists, ass-grabbers, men who've uttered the phrase, "She was asking for it", men who are firmly convinced that a female president would be outmatched, overwhelmed, prone to bawling during State of the Union addresses and, every twenty-eight days, threatening to deploy ICBMs to Switzerland unless they send over some fucking Nutella immediately.

And then, of course, there's Receptacle Theory. Sadly, this belief is not limited to conservative wingnuts who hunt squirrels with shoulder-mounted rocket launchers. It goes a little somethin' like this: One needn't look too closely to see a violent aspect to penetrative sex. Outside of some particularly festive fetishistic circles, the squishy, vulnerable penatradee role is typically filled by a female. Together, these two themes merge, mutate and lead to the notion that a woman's emotional nature is analogous to her physical one. You're a gash, a walking wound, tender and sensitive. You are the bagel, the doughnut, the torus of timidity. You are, and perhaps I should go have a snack before formulating any further metaphors, the slab of prime rib and not the rivet-handled knife. You don't take, you give. You don't invite, you consent. And in matters of power, politics and lustful grappling, you will never, ever have the upper hand.

What sane female, it's implied, would endure all that sticky debasement solely for her own gratification?

At worst you're a whore, lacking the requisite moral fiber to keep your virtue safe from unscrupulous men bearing love, comfort, flattery or high-test Columbian White.

At best you're an overly-indulgent mother, grudgingly allowing her mischievous boy to swipe a cookie from the jar without swatting his hand.

You just can't win.

Unless, of course, you can.

---

"You like that, you slut?", pants my companion for the evening. "You whore? You... you... fuckin'... prostitute?"

Well, as a matter of fact... yes.

Bemused, I wonder if he's consciously trying to be as misogynistic as possible. Is this a blow job or a piece of performance art? I consider asking if he'd like to pause and retrieve a thesaurus ("Harlot! Libertine! Hold on, gotta turn the page... wench!"). Uttered by the wrong individual, this derisive litany would be more than a bit disturbing. Coming from a slyly funny academic (whom I've personally seen reading "Horton Hears a Who" to a sleepy toddler), it's amusing and, strangely enough, incredibly arousing. If the heart works in mysterious ways, it's only taking cues from its southerly compatriot, the groin, who works in some truly mind-bending ones.

---

Sometimes, head is just head.

Sometimes, what's IN your head is more or less the only thing that matters.

Afterwards, the car's windows glowed and sparkled white, sodium-arc streetlights illuminating our accumulated frantic breath. I reclined, kicked my foot over the passenger's head rest, smiled, felt utterly, goofily alive.

Talk-show hosts, eyebrows contorted into permanent furrows of concern, love to discuss the myriad of misguided reasons why women sleep around. "Sometimes, it's peer pressure," they intone, "Sometimes, just wanting to be loved, supported, understood." Parents, educators and the federal government all devote an unholy amount of energy to keeping the legs of America's young ladies firmly closed. Casual sex is a dangerous, messy, potentially deadly enterprise; no place, it would seem, for a lady.

It can also be phenomenal. Sweet, sticky, explosive... and a superpower. If done right, flexing one's feminine wiles feels fantastic. It's like a slow, sultry yogic stretch. Education sharpens the mind, exercise sharpens the body, sexuality sharpens the spirit (as well as making one's neurons fizz and crackle like Pop Rocks). It's like being Cleopatra and the Sphinx, simultaneously.

---

We took a convoluted walk afterwards, traipsing across dew-soaked neighborhood lawns and darkened baseball fields. Plump, brazen mosquitos dive-bombed every inch of my bare skin. I can only be so mad at them, as each and every one of the poor bastards probably expired of alcohol poisoning shortly thereafter. At one point, the conversation turned to science, and when asked for my favorite scientist, I scrunched up my brow, wracked my slightly-pickled brain and finally shrieked, "Richard Feynman! Richard Fuckin' Feynman!"

---

Particle physics and perversion. Two extremes of the human experience. One muggy, mosquito-filled night.

I liked it. I liked it very much indeed.