November 2001

Vanessa and I didn't make it to the meeting. Instead, we studied, I waxed my eyebrows and Vanessa's lip hair while her cats, Pipsqueak and Simon, watched. Later Vanessa came down the stairs wearing makeup and a new hairstyle. No, she wasn't going anywhere, she was in pajamas. Now she's on the coffee table again, dancing into the mirror. She slips out of an elegant black dress and gyrates in incongruous grandma panties. We are in hysterics!
Vanessa is beautiful. My little ex-stripper, future nurse with beautiful sea-blue eyes. That same beautiful little girl in seventies black and white photographs who would end up being molested by an uncle, becoming a drug addict, remaining generous and fragile, sometimes surprisingly profound, sometimes shockingly shallow and free. All she asks is to be loved, accepted. It's hard not to fall in love with her, even pity her. I feel immense affinity with women to whom life has been unkind.
I take erotic pictures of her.
Light would not recognize itself without the presence of darkness. In turn, light gives darkness purpose.
After yoga in San Rafael I rush to an AA meeting in Mill Valley. "You didn't call for dinner on Tuesday," Claude admonished soberly. I apologized but made no excuses. We drank hot tea during break and again he handed me a white envelope with newspaper clippings about Iran and what is happening there.
Tariq says I'm a fatalist.
My garden is empty, but I still manage to imagine better days, in the future, enriched by experience, brimming with humor, older, stronger, all of this far behind me, when I am safe in this country, in this world, if such a thing is at all even possible.
The city is sunny and beautiful, and yet somewhere missiles fire, people die, children are orphaned.
Disconnected. The candles help, the music, the cats who seem to be masters at being in the moment- lounging, cleaning themselves, wrestling, being startled by something and quickly recovering. Disappointment, grief, fear. I can't focus. I can't study.
The man who delivers the bread to the restaurant greets me in the morning with, "Hello handsome!"
A woman at one of my tables asks what ethnicity I am, "You should be a model."
Another woman and her daughter write on the bottom of their bill, "Emil, you are a fox!"
They make me smile.
Just to clarify I am neither drinking nor drugging. It rains. I light candles, make green tea. The heater runs, the vents sigh. My love is not yet in my life. He is elsewhere in the world. Is he even living? The marriage I still secretly dream of is impossible and unreal. I do not talk about it with others. And if he does appear in whatever shape or form will I recognize him or reject him?
Joan and Jill are Sunday regulars at Half Day and over the years we've become somewhat close. They are in their fifties and lesbian. They've even invited me to their parties, which I've never been able to attend, always telephoning to thank them. Today they asked how I am and I said that I've had a lot on my mind. They both echoed that they could tell. Jill, straightforward and optimistic, asked in her fading Australian accent if it had to do with love, a man. I smiled, 'I wish that's all it was!'
The next time I stopped at their table I mentioned the nature of my worries. Joan, who was an attorney for forty years and a retired judge, advised me to get a good lawyer.
'I have one. It's just that I'm not aggressive enough with him...'
Jill casually shrugged her shoulders, "You have to learn to be!"
Joan spoke warmly, "You're like me, you're sensitive. They," she referred to the world at large, "are not. And you get hurt all the time. I understand."
The restaurant was bustling and I was pulled away again. When I returned some minutes later Joan told me about her struggle with cancer and the many dark months she spent in bed, ultimately finding the will to live. She added, "We should get together for lunch. And we should make an appointment with your lawyer and go see him together!"
Jill chimed in, "Joan can ask the right questions. She'll help you darling."
This is the journey. My personal journey through night and rain. And at this very moment everything seems OK, nothing's terribly wrong. Life is even perfect. Rain is rain. Night is night. Joy is joy. There is no other meaning to things. Everything is a process and will be dealt with in time, and it doesn't matter that I wasn't street-smart enough, aggressive enough, bold enough. All this is more about accepting my true nature than it is about how unforgiving life and people can be. It is about being wholly who I am, no matter how naive, immature, unsophisticated, and trusting. The world is massive and all wishes are swallowed whole. The horizon chuckles. Men are made of glass. Laws plastic. Tonight I accept that this lifetime has been about a meaningless series of mistakes, flaws and imperfections. It is merely a practice run. And that I am quite average at it, sometimes even below average.
Perhaps my sole duty is actually to err repeatedly and suffer consequences, that all I need is to be imperfect in life, continue to make mistakes, fall, break, hurt, lose, and not struggle. How simple. How natural. How obvious.
How liberating! To say the wrong things. To hesitate. To run away. To break promises. To avoid. To evade. To trust the wrong people. To dream. To not do or be anything great in life. To only slip quietly by, unnoticed, average, mundane. To do it all wrong!
Rain isn't the only thing falling tonight. The mask cracks. The eternal dam leaks. The veil falls.
I'm almost afraid to stop writing, to leave here and return to the room, to the actual world that is inarticulate, shapeless. The world in which we are pulled in many directions but offered few destinations.
I want my life to be more than this scrambling about trying to get things in order, something more than cleaning up after myself. I want to help others.
If the sky can, so can I. If the leaf can, so can I. If the street can, so can I. If the night can, so can I. Go on...
I am dissonance and the inchoate truth. Now I am flute. Piano. Drum. Pan. Spoon. Jazz. Forgetting the textbooks, the phone calls, the fax, the deadline, the panic, the worry, the mystery.
I live in train stations, about to depart to better places, a new destination. But in truth there is no train. In reality, beyond the smoke and mirrors, there is no escaping the self.
The train and the station are a dream, a wish, beginnings without a past, without ties to the past, its consequences, places, and people.
Last night Vanessa came home with Ben, the young man in his early twenties with whom she is living a double life. We talked briefly before I headed upstairs to bed. Minutes later Vanessa barged into my room, flipped on the light switch, hopped into bed with me, and kissed me on the cheek. "What's wrong? Do you like my new sweatshirt?"
I chuckled, 'I just need these months to go by. And yes, I like your sweatshirt.'
"You can borrow it!"
The lights had been dimmed in the studio. Something about stretching in unison with others, separated only by mats, like little islands, and the music, brought tears to my eyes, but no one saw me crying.
I've lost another ten pounds. I am now underweight at 160. I feel nauseous and dizzy. Every inch hurts as the heavy air of living presses against my skin.
Streets were wet, though it was not raining. Light reflected off the wet asphalt. There were buses, pedestrians, bars. I walked alone, taking the scene in with my senses, moving with the people- individuals, pairs, groups; all interesting to me, fascinating. A disheveled young man approached me. He had vacant blue eyes, a built chest that was exposed. He asked, "Do you know a bar where there are older men?"
He was like a lost little boy searching for his father, any father, not to love, but to sustain him. I was sober, in control, invulnerable. I lit a cigarette, looked up and down Castro, 'There's a place up that way on the corner. I've never been there, but I've walked past. It's an older men's bar.'
The young stranger looked down at his attire, frowned, and said, "But look at me. I'm in sweats and a tank top."
'All the bars here are casual. You'll be fine,' I tried to console him.
"Is there a spot where people drive around and pick up guys?"
'I'm sure there are, but I wouldn't know anything about that. Are you looking for a sugar daddy?'
He looked me in the eye, "Yeah."
Was he homeless? Was he high? My heart filled with sadness.
'Good luck.'
We parted ways.
I had come to the Castro to escape Marin's quietude and bask in the happenings of the city. I'd been to a bar and ordered carbonated water, people-watching. Now as I headed to my car I saw Nabeel- the Assyrian with whom I'd had that terrible date a couple of years ago. I was prepared to ignore him, but he noticed me.
'Hi Nabeel. Dakheet?'
His goatee had grayed considerably, his light eyes were deceptively innocent. We chatted a bit.
"You look thin," he observed.
'I am,' was all I could think to say.
As he talked about his life I searched his face for something real and I saw a mistake, a lover, a brother, a troubled man.
'Well, I have to go.'
"Where are you going?"
'Home. Take care of yourself,' and I touched his leather sleeve, pressed lightly, and smiled. He smiled sweetly back at me and for a moment I imagined that we could sit somewhere together, have a drink, and talk earnestly.
How is it that I can be so violently hurled into complete darkness and silence from a scene of love and celebration? I shut down and swallow my complaints, questions, pain, sorrow, even my moments of joy. I want to die. Disappear. Everything will be all right, I tell myself.
I sleep too much. I don't eat. When I stand I become dizzy. I want to drop out of school, work, life. Darkness in all my thoughts. Fear. Complete anxiety. Tears.
A customer shares her concern, "I gotta tell you, you're getting too skinny."
I don't want to die. There's so much still in me- so much life, curiosity, potential, creativity.
It excites me to think of all that's possible yet, to imagine the life that awaits me on the other side of this storm, this mountain. I finally acknowledge my depression and make an appointment to meet with a doctor, holding on to the hope that my life will one day make sense, and that I will find my place, my purpose.
This morning I popped my first antidepressant. All of it had become too much and I lethargic, confused, but being my own friend, advocate, caregiver I had to do something about the frequent thoughts of suicide, which snuck daily into the warm, colorful folds of my imagination. Looking back I know that I have blindly existed in a thirteen-year marriage to depression. I continue. I begin.