My mother used to sing me this song: "I'm in love with a big blue frog, a big blue frog loves me..."
That was a weird song. It's going through my head right now, and I don't know why. Indeed, I have never particularly loved frogs, any of them, although I find them sort of cute from a reasonable distance. Every time I touch one, it pees on me. So I stopped touching frogs and similarly slimy things when I was about twelve.
Right.
So, here I am at school, rather wet and cold and wishing that I could smoke a cigarette, but fairly well overall... I had a workshop about some of my writing this morning, and my classmates actually liked it. It was shitty writing; I was actually sort of ashamed. But they liked it. They told me to put more "love story" in it. They like the love story, they said. "Whatever happens to that Neil guy?" they've been asking me. "We want more Neil. That's the good part."
Yeah, well, I know...
I've been consciously avoiding writing about Neil here in Wet Cleanup because Neil tends to provoke drama. Rather, the very mention of Neil tends to provoke drama. There are plenty of reasons for that, most of them probably valid ones. But you know, what the hell? I haven't written EVERYTHING in this journal all the time, but this thing... this thing with Neil... whatever it is... is far too important to be shut away in my dusty old notebook forever.
The thing is... I found Neil... My old friend, my favorite "character," the one who got away... Well... I didn't exactly let him get away, at least not forever. I found him in March and we've seen each other a few times since then, and... And... I'm madly in love with him... And, I think I probably have been since the night I met him, seven years ago this month... Not that I KNEW that exactly. Call me a moron or whatever, but I really just kind of thought that, what the hell, maybe I'd go on a three-year-long search for some old friend who used to tell me fabulous stories and drink a lot of coffee with me. I guess it didn't really occur to me that most people don't spend, like, years trying to locate an old coffee buddy...
Well, no, there was a little more to it. The last time I saw Neil, he sent me an email the next day that instructed me to remember that he loved me, "until we meet again (and we will)." That was a very, very long time ago. And Neil NEVER broke a promise to me. Oh, he made up a good quantity of bullshit at times, but he NEVER broke a promise. But then we lost each other's contact information. Within two weeks, both of our email accounts went down, for whatever reasons, and then we both moved to new cities, so neither of us could contact the other. Well, figuring that I'm somewhat obsessive (e.g., five YEARS of Wet Cleanup...), and I had access to a computer and a phone card, I decided that it would be me who would have to take up the hunt.
The thing is, I was going to marry Jake... Things weren't always great, but things were okay, and I supposed I was ready to settle down and be a nice, normal wife-like person. But... You know that idea people have about bachelor/bachelorette parties? That you're supposed to do all of the crazy, naughty, irresponsible things that you've always wanted to do, right before the wedding? Well, I tried again and again to imagine what I would miss after Jake and I got married... There were two things: Greyhound bus rides, and Neil.
...Well, now, that was weird! Why would I miss Neil, you know? We hadn't seen each other in years. When I MET Jake, I hadn't seen Neil for almost a year. But, for whatever reason, I knew that I couldn't marry Jake until I found Neil. I couldn't get the thought out of my head. I had to see him. I had to have a cup of coffee with him and talk. Well, that's still all well and good, right? Sure. It just means that I was looking for some closure, right?
Yeah, well...
So, I found Neil. He hadn't made it easy for me -- or anybody else. I figure that I could find anybody at this point. If I cared enough, I suppose.
When I saw him, I knew that "closure" wasn't going to be so easy as I thought.
...I remember the first night I met him. I remember it with perfect clarity. It was the middle of May, and it was very dark, and my friend Marianne had brought her boyfriend over to my house for a bonfire. And the first thing Neil did was put Tori Amos in my CD player and ask me if I'd ever heard that song "Butterfly" that she'd sung. Well, I hadn't, and all of a sudden, I had these weird shivers running up and down my arms. A boy who knew more about Tori Amos than me. He and Marianne were leaving soon. Marianne was running away from home, and nobody really knew if Neil even had a home... So they were going to New Orleans. They sold all their CDs and everything, to have money to leave. When the Tori Amos CD clicked off, Neil put in my Sarah McLachlan CD. And we sang along to the first song. I was standing on my back porch with this stranger with an amazing voice... And we even harmonized without really trying... I don't think we SAID anything to each other -- anyway, I was still kind of too shy to speak to most persons of the male persuasion -- but I remember wanting, more than anything I had ever wanted before -- and perhaps more than anything I've wanted since -- to go to New Orleans with him. Or anywhere. Just to travel. With him.
"Some people might call that falling in love... What would you call it?"
"I call it being high..."
--Brian Andrews and Joe Stewart, wise little assholes I used to know in Binghamton
...And it WAS like falling in love... It really was! Except there was that whole Marianne thing to worry about. Marianne was my friend, so I couldn't fall in love with her boyfriend. I had this weird code of ethics back then. So, I bit my lip and didn't say anything. I was a nerd, anyway. I didn't really talk to guys. I'd only kissed two of them in my whole life. And there was no reason in the world that I could see why anybody would have gone out with me -- or brought me travelling to New Orleans -- much less somebody like Neil. All the girls loved Neil. Including a girl I met a little later, called Rachel. Rachel was my closest girl friend. So, I never said a word about being in love with Neil. Marianne would have murdered me and Rachel would have cried.
I told Neil a couple of weeks ago: "When I met you, and you were talking about travelling, all I wanted was to go with you..."
He was smiling at me. We were smiling at each other like a couple of morons.
"...But I've been travelling. I lived in Santa Fe for a year, and I've seen all the states on both coasts and a lot of the ones in the middle. I've been across the country on a Greyhound, and most of the way across it twice. And it's exciting, and I love it... But I don't think that's what I wanted the night I met you and THOUGHT that was what I wanted..."
"No?"
"No. I wanted to travel with you, but the traveling was secondary. I wanted to be with you."
Fucking A, that was hard, saying that... You know, I didn't even used to talk to boys, much less declare love for them. It was just the two of us sitting there, on this sidewalk next to a vacant lot and a parking garage, but I swear I felt Marianne's ghost trying to stab me or something. I also thought I heard Rachel's ghost yelling "noooooooooo!!!" in my ear. And then I heard my own ghost telling me to shut up before I admitted things that could get me shot down, rejected, and rather broken-hearted on the spot.
But you know... I'm tired of pretending...
I've done a lot of that over the past several years.
I have pretended that Jake and I had a future together, even when I knew we didn't. I have pretended that I would be a nice, normal wife and mother who bought cleaning products that I saw advertised on TV. I have pretended that I don't care when nobody really gives a shit what's going on inside my head, or gives me a disgusted glance when I say something too absurd. I have pretended that, the whole time I've been working on the Book, it was just because it was a good story, and not because I was desperately trying to hold onto the main character. I believed ALL of that. And all of that fell apart and smashed all over the place a few minutes after I stepped into Neil's apartment. I was sitting on his couch, chainsmoking and wondering what the hell he'd done to his hair. And I stopped believing all of the things I'd been pretending. And, mustering up some guts, I stopped pretending almost altogether.
Of course, Jake and I broke up. It was messy and it was horrible and it was one of the worst fights I've ever had the privilege of being in. Eventually, we would have broken up, Neil or no Neil, and I guess I probably knew that the whole time... I still wish it hadn't been so shitty. I still wish I'd had a place to go, so that I wouldn't have had to stay at the Jensens' house for another two months. That just made Jake and I meaner and meaner to each other.
I wondered for those two months what I could have done differently... What if I hadn't gone searching for Neil -- who was, after all, little more than a coffee buddy, if you want to get technical about things... What if I'd insisted upon marrying Jake six months ago or something? What if...? How could I have possibly made things work? Well... Yeah, the thing is, I don't think I could have. Oh, don't get me wrong; when I said I loved Jake, I did love Jake. And despite everything, I do believe he's got a generally good heart. I think he's pretty fucked up sometimes, and I think that he's kind of a lazy fuck, and I think he's mostly incapable of living in the present, but he's got a good heart. But a good heart does not make a good relationship. We just weren't anything LIKE each other... And there just wasn't enough love to compensate. Once, not so long ago, Jake asked me, "what are you thinking?" and I answered him honestly:
"I was just thinking about sentences... I like to cut them apart and name all the parts and then re-arrange them to change the rhythms..."
Jake was astonished. We'd been together a year and a half, and he was astonished about my little sentence-daydreams. Hell, I think about that stuff ALL the time. I read Leonard Cohen's "Beautiful Losers" once a year and do it to every sentence. It's weird, sure, but... fuck, after a year and a half, it's funny the things we still didn't know about each other... And I think it's because we didn't really care to know. We'd settled into our patterns and the rest was unimportant. There was no salvation, really. You can't save something like that. And really, I think if I'd tried harder -- if we had tried harder -- one or both of us would have gone insane. I would have gone first.
...And besides... from the beginning, I was in love with somebody else. Honestly, I didn't KNOW that... I didn't let myself believe any such thing... But I was. I was in love with the one who got away.
So, as I said yesterday: I am homeless, and pregnant. And Jake and I are not together. And the "Big Blue Frog" song is running through my damned head. And I don't presently have morning sickness, but pregnancy makes me unable to shit like a normal person, and I am ridiculously uncomfortable.
But somehow, it really seems not all that bad.
I'm not going to be one of those people who strives to be the most successful for her ten-year high school reunion. I am not going to be the girl who parses sentences in her daydreams and is ashamed of it. I'm going to be kind of freaky, and I'm going to un-school my kid, and I'm going to walk in the middle of the street late at night when there aren't any cars... I'm going to make my own baby food and teach my kid that, in general, the world is a pretty fucken good place. I'm going to trust that the world, and karma, and a few close friends, are sufficient to keep me alive when things seem hopeless. Right now, my situation does seem pretty hopeless, but I've discovered this untapped well of trust that everything's going to be all right...
["I've found the secret to life, I've found the secret to life... I'm okay when everything is not okay..." --Tori Amos, "Flying Dutchman."]
And I'm going to be with Neil. Like, it seems, I've been secretly wanting since I was too shy to speak to boys. I am in love with him. There, I said it. Now you all know. I really believe that we fit together. We've got our differences -- he thinks vanilla sugar cookies have a sort of earth-toned flavor to them, and I think they're much more pink -- but that's perfect too. I don't know quite what we have now, exactly... but it's very, very good. We fit together like two halves of a bagel.
["And I hate how they say 'New York style bagels' here. They're not New York style, they're tiny, and they're not very good." Ohhh, Neil, how wonderful it is that you notice the little important details... And how wonderful that I've griped a dozen times about the same thing and been called a pretentious snob... And how wonderful that I know somebody like you. I love you.]
Right. So, about yesterday's entry... Don't disregard it, because I think it's all true, or nearly so... But don't read pain into it. Maybe a little bit of fear, but not pain.
The thing is: I'm okay when everything is not okay. Everything is NOT okay. But *I* am okay. I am even more than okay. I've been changing moods a lot, and sometimes I've been kinda down, but I have this real faith that everything is exactly as it should be... And that I am alive, and that the world around me is enough to keep me that way. And to make me keep LIKING being that way.
So... don't worry about little old Helena, or the little itty-bitty grape-sized person she's lugging around at the moment... We're gonna be fine... Really, it's a beautiful day, and I think everybody's gonna be fine.
Now, I have to go locate something to eat. Preferably something with a lot of fish and strawberries in it.
(Yeah, yeah, shut up... I know it's gross... I'm hungry and I'm strange and my hormones are fucking crazy...)
~Helena+