Diary Friday: “Haikus and humidifiers.”

Not really full diary entries, just quotes and snippets and fragments I scribbled in the back of notebooks that I kept during a 4 month period in Chicago. I’ve posted some of this before. Some make me LAUGH, others make that whole time just spring back to life in a weird way. It was so intense, good lord. It was from a particularly manic winter of my life which I look back on fondly, although it was completely insane and ended up with me making the decision, in around March I think it was – to pick up and move from Chicago and go to New York City. So it was a crazy time.

I won’t give too much background – it’s funner to post these things without context, I think – except to say that the guy I reference as “M” was my main flame in Chicago, a particularly insane person (the one who would climb through my window at 3 o’clock in the morning) – and he and I had stopped seeing each other for a couple of months – and the details of it all escape me, although I do know that it involved him blocking me out of his bedroom by putting a humidifier against the door – and then me deciding that a good way to retailiate would be to leave a daily haiku on his answering machine. For FORTY DAYS. It was that kind of time in my life. Full of focused and committed frivolity.

Anyway, it appears from the fragments below that M. had reappeared – as he always did, actually – for years on end … and we had reconnected and were once again thick as thieves. If memory serves, this brief reconnection would be interrupted by a glitch known to me as “The night of the Gingerman” where I refused to speak to him for, oh, 4 months? But again, I’ll leave all that unsaid. It’s funnier, actually.

Ann and I are obviously up to NO GOOD throughout most of this time, and it is making me LAUGH. We are always scheming and I am cracking up. Most of the quotes below involves the two of us “weaving webs of lies” because you know why? Because it was fun. It is fun to “weave a web of lies”.

And the bit about me crying and how M. handled it … I’m still laughing. It says who he is (and who I am, actually) perfectly.

DEC. TO MARCH

Joe: “Member in Pulp Fiction –”
Ann: “No, see now, that was Sheila.”

Ann: “Is that the one where your hair is different?”
Me: “No, that’s your fantasy.”

Me: “I’m just gonna be myself–”
Ann: “I think you should. Of course, if you need to be married …”

Me: “I think M. knew he could show up and I would let him know I wanted him to be there –”
Ann: “Or you’d blatantly ignore him like that night at the Wrigleyside.”

Fragments from M.’s improv show
“Thank you, Gore Vidal.”

“Gash (like a wound) – is offended.”

“I wish I was a deformed midget.”

1/13
Guess who crash-bang-boomed back into my life this week? M. I can’t discuss the chemistry anymore (but of course I still will) – but it just exists. We’re friends. M. is my friend. I really can see myself now paging him from a scary L platform somewhere and he’d come and save me. How do I BEGIN? Being with M. – after a year – is so familiar. It’s like my maroon sweater or something. Oh, who KNOWS. I adore him. Like this is a surprise. It’s a surprise to him, I think.

Mitchell: “Something has happened that I keep forgetting.”

Me: “Isn’t it great that M. is back in my life?”
Ann: “I think it’s totally great, even though you know this is only going to lead to haikus and humidifiers.”

Snippets from M.’s improv show
“I usually save an extra seat for the Narrator.”

Roy, the Idiot Man-Child from the Service Station

“You’re not even a zoologist!”

“Of course, we need to park on a street where there is a raging fire.” – Me and Ann

Exchange between casting agent and M.
Casting agent: “The character is constantly getting into situations he needs to get out of. He’s also a hopeless romantic. Do you think you can do that?”
M.: “I like acting.”

M. to me, when he wouldn’t let me drive his car: “There are traction issues that you just can’t understand.”

Fragments – from M.’s improv show
“Leave some room, John!”

“I like working with pigs!”

“You’re gonna have to wear an eyepatch!”

From Vindication:
I have not the constitution, the education, the ability to concentrate. I fear for my sanity sometimes. There are days when I am on the edge of tears. Sometimes I am so restless I do not know what to do. Sometimes I can talk all night, like King George, you know. I am too, too happy, and in the same day I can be sad beyond hope. Sometimes teaching the girls is all I can do. Sometimes I am magnificent at it. Sometimes I do not know what to do with myself, my hands, my eyes. I want to fling myself down on the grass, embrace it, thank it, each little stem of it. I want a beautiful blue dress, shimmery, the color of the ocean. I want to be the ocean and the clouds. No, not the clouds, that is too far away.

“Well, that will make you more three-dimensional.” – Me (weaving a web of lies with Ann Marie)

“You sent the man 30 haikus. I don’t think he’ll mind if you come to a couple of his shows.” – Ann

We were all talking about what our “type” was. I had just come back from a weekend with M. I said, “My type of guy punctuates each sentence with a shot of Rumpelmans.”

Me to M.: “I have a kinder-whore appeal … or at least so I’ve been told.”

Joey, talking to the television, as we watched 30something: “These are nice people, Susannah. They want to like you because they love Garry.”

I’m forever under lock and key
As you pass thru me

M.: “There came a point when I was – whatever, it was clear to my parents that I had to be having sex by that time – I was 23, whatever – and my mom said something to me like, ‘Well, at least you’re not having sex,’ and I had to say, ‘Mom. Look. I’m having sex.’ and she said, ‘I’m glad you’re not having sex.’ Total denial. She couldn’t even hear what I was saying. I think my mom could walk in on me actually having sex, and she’d be like, ‘I’m so glad you’re studying!'”

From the party 12/10
“These Oreos are insanely delicious.” – Joey

“You just never know what will happen with broccoli.” – Me

“I just kicked a pig.” – Ann

Heard simultaneously by Ann:
Me: (with a mouth full of food) “I have an eating disorder.”
Mitchell: “I can honestly say I’ve never slept with —– oh, wait — yes, I have.”

George and Ann, providing dialogue to an old movie, with the sound turned down:
George: “That’s why your dancing frustrates me – because I can’t move!”
Ann: “Well, don’t you think I understand that? I mean, look at my eyebrows!”

Ann: “I was thinking about your life the other day …”

2/20
Me: Hi, honey.
M.: Hi, spanky.

Jackie: “The symptoms of this disease are: trouble with social skills …. long legs … developing breasts as a man – and small tightly formed gonads.”

2/24
M. calls my house – Jackie picks up.
Jackie: “Hello. Tony’s Pizza Palace.”
M.: “I’d like a Sheila to go.”
Jackie: “And what would you like on that?”
M.: “Nothing.”

2/23
Me: “I have my period.”
M.: “What else is new.”

Me to M. (and I was dead serious): “It would totally not surprise me if I disappeared into a white slavery sex ring at some point.”

Me to Mitchell (about M.): “Isn’t he so sweet?”
Mitchell: “He is. He is sweet.” Long pause. “He’s a lunatic.”

Mitchell: “The improv jam is pushing all my buttons.”

Mitchell to me: “If you say ‘improv jam’ one more time, I’m going to scream at the top of my lungs.”

2/26
Crying in M.’s arms – it was, God, 3 am? I said later, “Sorry for crying like such a werewolf.” Not aware that werewolves were big criers. But anyway, I couldn’t stop. It wasn’t sadness, though. I had been so wound up for about a week, and then I relaxed with him, and started to cry, and then I couldn’t stop. For about an hour. Poor man. I kept saying to him, “Don’t be scared – the tears are good tears … I’m happy … I’m so happy …” He had a cigarette dangling from his lips, he was holding me, and he said, drily, “I hope you don’t mind if I just take your word for it that you’re happy, okay? I mean, you’re fucking crying …” “I’m just happy, M, I’m happy …” “Okay, okay, you’re happy. Christ.”

1/13
7 a.m. Jazz Bulls. The place closed its doors at 6 a.m. M. was working – so there was grey weird light seeping into the basement windows. Everything looked weird. Pre-dawn. It felt like we were the only 2 people on the earth. M. said, “You want some coffee before you go to work?” “You mean … go out?” I didn’t think there’d be time for that. He scoffed at the “out” question. “No – I can make you coffee here. You want some?” “God, yes.” I hoisted myself up onto the bar and sat there as M made a pot of coffee. His pants were totally ripped by that loony Christine bitch. I loved watching him shuffle around dealing with filters and coffee and water. He was adorable. All the while we were talking about us. I told him how comfortable I felt with him. At one point I fell into a depression, having to go to work after being up all night. I said, “I can’t believe I’m going to work right now.”

He was standing with his back to me, pouring coffee. “Cream? Sugar?”

“Just black. And strong. And please don’t say ‘You like it like you like your men’ or whatever. Everyone says that.”

He poured sugar and cream into his own coffee, handed me mine, which I began to devour (it didn’t even make a dent in my exhaustion) and then stood there, stirring his own coffee. We were lost in our own thoughts. He was deep in contemplation. Turns out, it was about me – but I didn’t guess that in that moment. He was just pondering me, perched on top of the counter, pale, sipping the coffee he made for me, in the dawn-lit bar where he works, half an hour away from having to go to my job.

He turned to stare at me, still stirring his coffee. He looked at me for a long time. Contemplatively. I didn’t ask what he was looking at me like that for. I just looked back at him. Then he said – slowly – choosing his words – or, no – not choosing his words – M. doesn’t really do that – but slowly, as though this idea had just occurred to him and surprised him: “You must really like me.”

That is SUCH a funny moment if I really ponder it. I’ve known this guy for 3 years, and now he says, in a tone of awe, “You must really like me!” It was so sincere. I started laughing. “Of course I like you. What are you, a moron?” Laughing at him. “You didn’t know that I like you?”

“Well – no – I mean, I know you like me. But, I mean, you must like me. You’ve gotten no sleep because of me, and you’re about to go to work – I mean, there’s not too many people I’d do that for.” (He didn’t say if he’d do it for me or not.) “I think it’s rare.”

I felt like I should say something, but I didn’t know what to say. M. sensed that in me, because he said, quickly, reassuring, “No, I mean – it’s cool – that you like me – I mean … I guess I just didn’t know.” He went back into contemplative stirring-coffee mode.

“Well, now you know.” I said.

We drank coffee, not talking, the air clear between us. Both of us thinking. About the other. He gets shy. Like he doesn’t want to say too much, or ruin anything.

He said, looking down into his coffee, “I feel like there’s not a word evolved enough for what we are.”

Fragile moment. I didn’t speak. I let it hover. He had more to say. I knew it. He said, “You have always struck me, from the very beginning as … someone who … wanted to different than what you are.”

That was an ambiguous thing to say. I saw 2 possible interpretations – or, no, actually – now I see the 2 interpretations – but this is how I took it at the time: Sheila, you have been trying to be something you’re not.

So I felt a little chilled by that. I pursued it. “What do you …”

He meant what he had said – but it wasn’t the negative interpretation that I put on it. He meant that: I’m not satisfied anymore with being unhappy, repressed, uptight – and I am determined to get over myself, and get better, push through these barriers I have up.

I did not know that he had perceived that from the beginning. I remember him saying to me on a tequila-soaked summer’s eve, when I was all upset and weepy, “Your journey … has just begun.” He knew. How did he know?

He explained what he meant: “The first time we went out … ” (neither of us know how to define this whole damn thing – we have no words – there are not words evolved enough for what we are) “Well – I told you this – you were so – ” (he stopped talking, and then kind of hugged his arms around himself, put his head down – to show how closed I was and uptight) “And I wasn’t — sure how to handle it … I wasn’t sure if you …” (unfinished sentence, wincing expression, awkward, shy) “But then … you kept …” (stopped himself – and smiled – and I knew what he meant. I had kept calling him, kept making myself available – he didn’t say it in a mean way. It’s the truth.) I said, grinning, “I kept coming back for more, huh.” “Well … yeah … so I figured … Okay … This person is …” (all of this accompanied with those subtle facial expressions and hand gestures he does – we transcend words – the expression and the gesture he made conveyed my whole life: pushing through, frustrated, upset, sick of being upset … wanting to be happy. He saw all that?) I nodded in agreement with his interpretation of me. He said, nearly unable to get it out – too awkward and vulnerable, “So … it’s kind of cool, Sheila … to see how you have progressed. It’s …” He stopped. It’s like I was inside of him. Like he could hear those words “how you have progressed” and to him they suddenly sounded patronizing. But no. They were not. I said, softly, “It is cool, M. It is cool.”