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July 28, 2003

this is absurd. I can't stop writing about this love thing.

Self-prescribing the tonic provided by the boys of summer is a serious business.

While the soothing joy of their distracting qualities is well-received, there are so many other things to consider - where to go for dinner, which movie to see, which beach to walk, which cemetery to make gravestone rubbings in, choosing which skirt to wear; the skirt that shows grass stains vs. the skirt that collects sand in the pockets.

over the past few weeks, I've fallen in and out of love a whole bunch of times. sometimes with the same fella, even.

and oh my, that kiss was the doozy.

okay, I know it's not always that 'let's get it on' love. or the 'I'll give away my cats for you' love. or the 'buy me a house and let's go get pregnant' sort of love, every time, but each time it is enough of a powerful tug at the soul to mark as 'love' rather than 'lustful flutter'

it's not the beginning, or the end, of the world, either.

it's just the knowledge of possibility.

My love affairs last just as long as the realizations appear, linger, and disappear...little blurbs of passion and connection in the middle of an otherwise perfectly normal and friendly day.

but I'm still having them. these ebbing, flowing, overlapping affairs. and I can't stop thinking about how easy it is. how this love thing doesn't have to be painful. doesn't have to be about erasing yourself in the name of another. doesn't have to be suburban as all hell, or uber-romantic. it certainly doesn't have to be forever.

hell, I fell in love with you today, because when you were describing your mistress, you said 'ehp-it-OHM' instead of 'eh-pit-oh-ME', I knew you were book-smart, not chatting-with-linguists-smart.

I used to love your nerdy self because you wore those goofy blue angel fluevogs with grey socks, even in summer.

I fell in love with you when you were dancing, because when you're dancing, it's obvious you're as gay as I am. Gayer, even.

I loved you because you've not only read No Bath Tonight, you used it (when you were a kid) as an excuse to get out of bathing, and it worked.

I love you because you never let anyone win an argument. even if I've backed you into a corner and run you up and down with how right i am, you still insist "no, I still can't do it your way because ....er....well....Because!!!"

I can't help but love you while you're painting. even if you're painting him, now, instead of me.

I fall in love with you every time you open your mouth - that deep, velvety, jersey meets smooth-southern meets casually-but-clearly-enunciated vocal goodness - your voice tugs at my heart and circulates through my entire system. even when you're just saying my name...

I love you because you're unbelievably normal - and that you revel in contrasting with my abnormalities.

you solidly reaffirmed my love for you when you called that girl a 'filthy pig' and proceeded to outline exactly how much you hate her, even though we both know you've never met her....

your unabashed adoration makes me love you.

your absurd single-mindedness, your ability to make every conversation be about your occupation.

that you don't mind that I call at three in the morning, your time - you still answer the phone with that "I'm so glad you called!" voice.

that you have no idea that I just fell in love with you and fell out of love, in just one hot moment.

I think that's the biggest reason right there.

that you have no idea - that I don't have to share this feeling - I can take it out, enjoy it, and put it back again when I'm done.

well, there it is, then: the tonic of the boys of summer has allowed me to be brave enough to love again....but the bravery stops there, my friends.

is this an addiction?

how do I wean myself from the private highs and start sharin' the love?

Posted by Heather at 01:08 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

July 21, 2003

I like you, but...

I liked you, summer boy, I honestly did. but I have a feeling this isn't going to work, between us.

on our first date, I thought it was a fluke that when we were walking together, you managed to step on my toes eight (8) times, breaking the biggest toe's nail to the bleeding point, and, quite possibly chipping the bone. you were otherwise quite cute and funny, with your adorable accent and your silly bowling shoes...

our second date, when you managed to step on the (possibly) broken toe not once, but twice, I was understanding of your clumsiness, but un-indulgent of your attempts to cram your filthy hands into my lacy underthings. on the bus. which was crowded with evening commuters at the time. Yes, I know I'm irresistibly sexy, but there are times when this woman needs a little...er...finessing, and there are places where said finessing should take place. This was one of those times where TONS of finessing would be necessary - and you should know, the bus is never one of those places to discover if you can fit your fists into my lacy boyshorts. I feel I should thank you, however, for gracefully accepting being slapped, hard enough to leave a mark, and for keeping your hands to yourself the rest of the ride....

I wondered after my own sanity when I accepted a third date with you, but, as my foot had healed, and my jeans were sufficiently boy-proof, I agreed to join you on a looking-for-stuff-to-fix-up-your-condo 'date'. I love tile and electricals and pipe fixtures. I love carpeting and paint and window treatments - what could possibly happen if I gave you one more try?

what could happen is this: you spent the entire walk from the train to the Expo attempting to pull me into a dance, set to music only you could hear, to a beat that only a spastic monkey could keep time with. I was laughing, not because it was hysterically fun or wildly funny, but rather in an attempt to hide my fear as you dipped me - but I stopped laughing soon after you managed to bang my head against the guitar case of the nice lady walking alongside us on the way down and scraping my forehead against the rusty fencepost-thingy on the way back up.

yes, of course I was pissed. of course I cried, sponging my soon-to-be-scabby skin with a moist towelette and hoping the guitar was better off than my head, as my throbbing skull-knot was concussion-worthy.

Pick out your fucking "condotrements" alone, you walking disaster area. I'm going to the hospital to see if I have a concussion. and see if that toe needs re-setting.

expect the bill in the mail.

and, next time we go out, I'm bringing a bodyguard.

a cute one.

Posted by Heather at 09:05 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

July 16, 2003

A love affair is not a lifetime.

the night was over, we were yawning and giggly and at the point where you either say 'goodbye' or 'come up for a minute...'

All I wanted was a kiss.

and he kissed me. we kissed.

and I stayed for a moment. held his head in my hands, dug my fingers into his scalp and felt his hands tremble on my hips. we just stood there. kissing.

it was perfect. the perfect end to the perfect date.

I fell in love for that brief moment. and I think he could tell.

kissing with your eyes wide open can be very, very romantic, with the right person.

and I'm so very, very grateful he let me. and kept with the kissing. and the trembling. and the kissing.

I'm very, very happy to have had those trembling hands on me, if only for that moment.

to help me to remember why we date at all.

why I date.

why we (I) even bother.

yes, there's always the hope that things might lead somewhere. that I'd meet the guy who keeps the sparks running on both sides of the engine. the one who wants to hear my stories - who has stories of his own to share. the gomez to my morticia, as it were.

yes, I know love is supposed to be more than that - how it's about understanding. about compromising, but not too much. about letting go of expectations. about intangible and tangible and everything in between.

it's about all sorts of stuff that can't be contained in just one hour-long kiss.

but I love the small surprises - I love that I'm healed enough to even entertain the idea of loving someone, even for just that one hour. and I wonder what my life would be like if I could just let that happen again. full-time.

Posted by Heather at 07:21 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 15, 2003

responding to old news

I find it difficult to believe that I'm the only one whose life is filled with 'getting to know each other' stories that somehow end up without middles or ends.

I've had dozens of beginnings without ends, this past year. meet, greet, eat, and repeat...until we run out of clever 'date' stories and have to decide to either get 'deeper' or go find someone else to charm the pants off of for a while.

No harm, no foul, no 'where did we go wrong?" moment to ponder.

sometimes, a lady meets a young gentleman who is interesting, smart, sometimes funny, but after countless meals together, she finds she can't spend another moment sitting across from a fella whose chewing sounds like a pack of dobermans slobbering through a packet of pudding.

sometimes a gentleman meets a young lady who is so caught up in her own vanity she forgets that other people can also be funny and purty, sometimes.

sometimes, two people meet and have tons in common, like co-writing weblog entries to entertain themselves and to harmlessly piss off a soon-to-be-ex-spouse, but don't have enough in common to justify a full-fledged, bumpin'-nasties, meetin'-the-mom, plannin'-long-weekends-together relationship.

sometimes a lady meets a hairy purple person from another planet, shaves him, and finds out he's really just Jeff Goldblum...too late to prevent people from seeing them together, but not too late to stop writing before EVERYONE finds out she's been shaving aliens.

sometimes, one side of a relationship sparks, the other side splutters, and the splutter can't quite put out the spark enough to keep the friendship from completely burning out....

none of these situations is anything to inspire me to post, certainly. and, in this case, as nothing in particular happened, there was nothing to inspire a 'nothing happened' post.

and this 'nothing happened' post, if I was planning on writing one, would most certainly be eclipsed in my mind by the delightful beginnings I've been experiencing.

I like beginnings. I'm good at them.

perhaps, like stephen king, or douglas coupland, or even J. K. Rowling, I'm just better at beginnings than I am at endings.

I suppose it wouldn't hurt for me to try, though. it hasn't hurt their sales to end badly.

hmm. I'll let you know if something turns up. if not about sourbob, certainly about the fountain fella. or the skirt-sharoosher. or the boy who makes me forget my toothbrush. or the barbecue-lovin' metrosexual.

here's to hoping there's no ending in sight.

and, for the record, you're right - this is a weblog, not a democracy. I'm happy to see people are reading picture picture, and that they have opinions about what ends up here, but most of what I write comes from what I'm thinking just before I fall asleep at night...no rhyme, no reason, just 'this is what I thought of today'. fiction or nonfiction, it's all me. although if my real-life editor was as tough on me as you-all are, I swear, my book would be published by now.

Posted by Heather at 03:28 AM | Comments (0)

July 08, 2003

Defiling (or is it defiled by?) a Chicago Landmark

Boy, it was hot yesterday. and wet.

another day in chicago's hot, wet american summer. (god, I loved that movie!)

Sweating straight through my dress in the wet hot heat, I walked from the train to meet you at your office...where you indulged me with a bit of your building's history before taking me on our (third?) date.

Over dinner you were surprised to discover I'd never been to the Hothouse;amazed that I'd never seen a japanese jazz singer; a little dismayed to be reminded that I hate live music but insistent that you'd make tonight worth my while.

and although watching the dancers and the musicians (and listening to a bass become a wind instrument in an incredible twist of bowing) was more entertaining than I had expected, and that your abilities to take the lead (and keep it) while dancing a most unusual lindy-hop were terribly amusing, the good part of the night was yet to come.

the best part of last night, for me, was sitting on the edge of our most famous fountain, cooling off from the sticky midnight heat by dangling our feet in the water. I wonder how it stays so pristine, despite the lack of patrols at midnight. I'm still marvelling at the depth of Buckingham's pool - I was surprised that we couldn't reach the bottom, even with our long, long legs. Perhaps if we were a bit less shy (how many dates does it take?), we would have stripped our kits off and plunged in - it couldn't have been that deep, could it?

although I don't know why we didn't just jump in - staying dry was impossible, what with lying on the surprisingly plush and springy grass just outside the lip of the fountain, soaking in the occasional rain from above and the steady dampness from below...I hadn't been so tamely reckless and unconcerned about consequences since I was a teenager.

I felt like I was part of a john hughes movie - as if the entire park had been cleared out for us, and the rain was just a bit of moody movie atmosphere.

it was idyllic. perfect. fun.

until I got on the train to go home.

next time, when I'm cast in the role of 'girl lying in the rain by the fountain,' remind me not to wear white. at least, not unless I have a bodyguard to walk me home.

or a jacket to throw over the gals (who were capped with turgid gumdrops of hot wet puckery goodness in the air conditioned car, and quite clearly visible). if I hadn't already had a date for the evening, I certainly would have by the end of that train ride.

Posted by Heather at 06:20 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

It just figures.

The ONE DAY I finally get my groove on to go to Evanston, have lunch with friends, and camp out on the beach with a book, a towel, and a kicky little bikini, it's cold and stormy.

figures.

at least there's still lunch.

Posted by Heather at 10:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 05, 2003

Sharooshed over a Skirt.

Sharooshed: Surprised, Disappointed, Disgusted.

Sharooshed is exactly how I felt yesterday, when, after shopping for 4 hours for a couple of cute skirts to add to my vacation wardrobe, entering every single godforsaken store in woodfield mall, I found nothing that any self-respecting adult human female could wear out of the house. not a thing.

unless I wanted to: show my coochie for free, look like a reject from the Three's Company, or re-create my san francisco hiking disaster and buy shorts again, that is.

it wasn't that bad, actually, trying on silly ill-constructed skirts with my sister all over schaumburg. as I have mentioned, she's a hoot and a holler, and a hottie, but I didn't plan on spending the whole fucking morning looking for clothes.

I was hoping to. . .no, planning on finding something that hangs properly from my hipbones. something washable. something casual. something knee-length. something to showcase the fabulous ass, without being too showy.

nothing denim.

(the rhythm here is something like the description of the warm, woollen sweater in my head. I don't know how that happens.)

4 hours we shopped. (did I mention how long we shopped?) 4 hours of fitting room lines. 4 hours of " I'd love this if it didn't have a teddy bear print " or " if only they had it in a size 2 - the 4 sticks out like a paper bag around your waist " or " who the hell wears neon? "

I was really trying hard not to make a big deal out of this - the last time I shopped for 4 hours, it was for a bridesmaid dress. I'm excited about getting out of the suburbs for a little vacation romantique next weekend, but I just want to get a couple new skirts, it's not like it's the prom or anything.

there will be walking, dining, museums. there will be sitting in a park and talking. there will be architectural tours. there will be more walking and dining. I'm thinking a couple of skirts isn't such a big deal.

if I hadn't lost the weight I gained over the winter, if I hadn't disposed of the big ugly cargo shorts, if I hadn't accidentally spilled red wine on the Hawaiian print skirt and spilled bleach on the hem of the fabulous sarong, I'd be semi-set for vacation wear. but all those things happened to all those other things, and it's a billion degrees next weekend, and I'm feeling fussy.

seriously. with every store we went into, it became a bigger and bigger deal. It was like when we were looking for jeffiner's wedding dress - each minor fault became a line on a checklist of things that we didn't want in a skirt:

• no flowers


• no micro-minis


• no cheap-ass bias-cuts


• no ruffles

we would divide and conquer - she'd take the left side (she's left handed), I take the right side (there is no other side left) and we'd zoom from front to back, pulling any potential candidates in size 2, 4, and 6, and meeting in the middle to show our finds. mischievous minx that she is, jeffiner would inevitably find one skirt that fulfilled more than three list items, the best of the bunch being a flowered mini with mesh ruffle....

if we found any potential candidates for cute skirtishness, we'd cram into a dressing room - and fall down laughing over how the seams bunched lumpishly over the sides, or how the cargo pockets gave a jodhpur-like shape to a skirt that looked straight on the hanger...

4 hours of that can make any gal crazy.

4 hours of shopping for a simple skirt for a simple vacation with a simply lovely companion began to de-simplify into some big deal skirt. for an end-all vacation. with the perfect companion. who may actually notice that what I'm wearing isn't casual enough. or formal enough. or well-constructed enough.

I think they were piping some sort of drug into the mall that turned all of our brains into those of seventh grade girls.

so when, on the way home, dejected (sharooshed, even) and just a little bit sniffly from all the air conditioning we'd just been through (or was it the aforementioned girlishness-drug?), we remembered a Gap Outlet just a few miles up the road from where we were meeting friends for dinner -and we figured it wouldn't hurt to try one more place before giving up.

we screeched into their parking lot, checked our " horrible skirt checklist " and marched up to the door....

to find a ZILLION perfect, straight, butt-emphasizing, shapely-calf-exposing, straight-and-smoothly-seamed, washable, packable, just-showy-enough skirts. for the low low price of 29.95.

all from that unnameable season between ' last season's rejects' and 'this season's overstocks ' .

all just a few miles from where we started shopping, before getting caught in the vortex of the schaumburg mall.

so, I have these perfect skirts. and a week to filter out all that seventh grade girlishness before packing - it's just a vacation with a friend, after all.

Posted by Heather at 10:56 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 02, 2003

Drunk, and in charge of a bicycle.

I hadn't ridden a bike since I was eighteen. Until 2 o'clock this morning.

spurred by sleeplessness and the bradbury collection I was reading (the introduction entitled: 'Drunk, and in Charge of a Bicycle", I pulled the least-crappy looking bike out of the rusting heap of bikes my family keeps in the garage and adjusted the seat so I could reach the pedals.

I picked it up and carried it through the house to the back porch so as not to wake anyone with the rickety garage door motor, checked the gears, the chain, the brakes - gave the tires a squeeze and was surprised to discover firmness there.

deep breath, I ease onto the still-too-big-for-my-5-foot-8-height-boy's bike, carefully avoiding racking my privates on the scarily-too-high support bar, and I ride.

there's nowhere to go at 2 in the suburbs, so I just circle around the places I used to ride when I was a kid.

• the high school parking lot (where I learned to drive and was told by my very very kind instructor that he'd give me an 'A' if I promised not to drive again)
• the public swimming pool (where I taught little kids that it's okay to open your eyes under chlorinated water, even though it hurts. where I swam every day in the summer between 8th and 9th grade, becoming a long, lean muscular blonde alien (another bradbury reference, i suppose) before starting high school)
• the Pickwick theatre, where I saw my first movie at age 5 (Bambi, my mom tells me) but I only remember the murals on the ceiling and the naked lady statue beckoning from the foyer of the mysterious "gentlemen's lounge" area...
• the hilly {yes, hilly} parts around downtown Park Ridge, where the oldest houses are, with the lush back and side and front yards, inexplicably lit at 3 in the morning for us night owls, I suppose.
• rounding back by the cemetery (I jumped the fence with my first high school boyfriend to see his own name on his grandfather's gravestone), I debated taking the forest preserve trails back to the house, but i remembered the creepy, muddy, unlit underpasses and decided to ride past the farmhouse (yes, in the middle of hard-core suburbia, with sidewalks and driveways and fire hydrants and marital dissatisfaction, there is a working farm. go figure) and through the depressing 50's development areas until I finally reach home again.

I bump up onto the curb and rack myself, hard on the godforsaken bike-frame-support thingy. I simply must thank my brother for mowing the lawn yesterday, as it made a very soft cushion for me, falling to my knees and whimpering in pain and hoping my neighbors aren't awake at 4 to see me lying there in my pyjamas, bicycle tangled around my knees and tears in my eyes.

no sleep for me, last night, I'm afraid. or this morning. but I did dream.

Posted by Heather at 12:34 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack