Heartbreak

It's GONE. My beautiful bicycle, my lovely green Jamis Tangier, my freedom. From outside the yoga studio. Wire-cutters. My heart is broken, broken, broken.

I managed to resist my 3 AM impulse to take this out on my ex-boyfriend, at least directly. His astral body received innumerable kicks in the kneecaps during the course of a long, sleepless night, but I doubt he would have noticed--his astral body is under constant attack from his own mind anyway.

Renter's insurance----pffft. Useless. They wouldn't cover the bicycle if I was actually USING it at the time, and the deductible is $500 anyway. I've been trolling Craigslist all morning, but I'm probably too raw to get another one right this instant, sort of like adopting a kitten the day after your 14-year-old Little Kitty dies in a tragic accident. The bonding process could be irrevocably disrupted.

I LOVED that bicycle. Just the other evening I rode it to the East Village to hear a member of my artist's circle perform; I was wearing my deep blue sundress and the actress chick told me I looked glamorous in my helmet. After a couple of gin-and-tonics and some fierce disembowelling of the performance at Lucien's, I took it home the long way, through Chinatown and over the Brooklyn Bridge, singing moody Glass Eye songs that welled up out of my art-department days, when it was just us and Kathy McCarty till 3 AM, crashing bass chords and the high unearthly purity of Kathy's voice.

Time has stolen you from me, Christine
Has made each prospect fade with the evening
Like a ghost, you have withdrawn
Like two children you and time are gone.

I thought, crossing the canal at Union street and turning up 5th Avenue, how Brooklyn feels like my own private fairyland at night; the trucks and the crowds have mostly disappeared, uncovering the mystery of industry asleep, and the fact that I sort of know my way around the city now is somehow remarkable, not just a battle for survival. I felt that I was healing; I felt that I was becoming free. I am so sick of this shit.

I wasn't even going to call the police, but could not quite remember whether my insurance would cover this or not, so I decided to get a report just in case. In practice this meant standing on a street corner for nearly an hour, in damp yoga clothing, fighting back tears, to obtain a completely useless piece of paper. The two blank-faced beat cops who eventually arrived were nonplussed and impassive at first, but after ten minutes, during which the black one fumbled and wrote the report with dyslexic recalcitrance, the Puerto Rican one decided I was okay, told me to sit down in the back seat and they'd drive me home. We had a cheerful chat on the way about stress, yoga, and cultural backgrounds, and he called half an hour later to say they'd found a guy on a Jamis, what color was it? Green, not silver, I told him. But thanks for keeping an eye out, I appreciate it. I really did. It pays to be friendly to cops, something my ex-boyfriend never understood.

To numb out my mind for the rest of the evening I re-read "The Man in the Brown Suit," my favorite Agatha Christie novel ever. With every passing year I am more acutely aware that Agatha Christie is cliche'd, redundant, mannered pulp, but when you fall in love with an author at the age of 8, the magic never really goes away. Also, re-reading prose that was the pinnacle of my romantic ideals at 14 gives me some insight into the deeper nature of subsequent expectations and bitter disappointments. Listen to this:

"You look like a witch, Anne," he said at last, and there was something in his voice that had never been there before.
He reached out his hand and touched my hair. I shivered. Suddenly he sprang up with an oath.
"You must leave here to-morrow, do you hear?" he cried. "I--I can't bear any more. I'm only a man after all. You must go, Anne. You must. You're not a fool. You know yourself that this can't go on."
"I suppose not," I said slowly. "But--it's been happy, hasn't it?"
"Happy? It's been hell!"
"As bad as that!"
"What do you torment me for? Why are you mocking at me? Why do you say that--laughing into your hair?"
"I wasn't laughing. And I'm not mocking. If you want me to go, I'll go. But if you want me to stay--I'll stay."
"Not that!" he cried vehemently. "Not that. Don't tempt me, Anne. Do you realize what I am? A criminal twice over. A man hunted down...you're so young, Anne, and so beautiful--with the kind of beauty that sends men mad. All the world's before you--love, life, everything. Mine's behind me--scorched, spoiled, with a taste of bitter ashes."
"If you don't want me---"
"You know I want you. You know that I'd give my soul to pick you up in my arms and keep you here, hidden away from the world, for ever and ever..."

Well, I mean, really. By the end of the novel young Anne Beddingfeld, orphaned, penniless, unchaperoned and feckless, has received four proposals of marriage, one on-the-fly job as a newspaper correspondent, and not a single indecent proposition. To be fair, she has also narrowly escaped two or three murder attempts. But when she turns down proposal #2, from the strong, silent, Secret Service agent millionaire, he sets his iron jaw, nails the murderer, and then declares,

"Anne, do you remember that I told you I knew what I had to do?"
"Of course, I remember."
"I think I may fairly say that I have done it. The man you love is cleared of suspicion."
"Was that what you meant?"
"Of course."
I hung my head, ashamed of the baseless suspicion I had entertained.

"The Man in the Brown Suit" was published in 1924. Okay, so women had only been voting for four years, and "suitable jobs" for them were limited to parlourmaid, governess, secretary and wife. And for God's sake, it's Agatha Christie. But what I sorely miss about this chauvinistic era, what my heart still yearns for at 3 AM, is not necessarily a steely-eyed, darkly troubled man to fling me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carry me off to Rhodesia (though this wouldn't necessarily come amiss); it's the baseline tension created by a shared cultural concept of honor. People don't necessarily live up to the code, ever; but at least they know it's there.

At thirty-seven, I don't get as angry as I got at seventeen. I no longer slap strange men, the way I did Carl Kutack, when he sat down behind me at a party, poked my ass with his big toe, leaned over and murmured, "you wanna go for a walk?" It's one of life's common ironies that once you have the experience to handle illicit propositions, you get fewer of them. Yesterday afternoon, though, a fat black man in a silver sports car pulled up next to me at a stoplight and called out, "You sure is beautiful. You wanna give me a ride?" I smiled brightly and said, "Thank you very much, sir, but no."

"Why?" he asked.

"I'm just not interested. But thanks," I replied, rolling up my windows. It took me years and years to learn how to do this; years and years to curb my impulse to be polite, to tell the guy I was married or gay, to give him a lecture on manners and decency, to stop taking it as a personal insult. Now, I take it as a compliment, but that still doesn't mean I have any inclination to accept the offer.

Why?

You're not a steely-eyed, darkly troubled man with whom I have fallen passionately in love at first sight, of course.

Why?

I hate to break this to you, men, but most of you are not very good in bed. The best of you need several weeks' worth of patient re-education before you can reliably compete with a vibrator. One-night stands do not provide the scope for such training, and are thus, on even the most basic level, not worth it.

Why?

Do I need to spell this out? AIDS, pregnancy, chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, genital warts, cervical cancer, painful and expensive abortions, painful and expensive children, death. Offensive body odor, kissing like a giant goldfish, bad teeth, bad breath, farting, bizarre noises, slobbering, juvenile remarks. Knifelike pelvic bones that slam into thighs, leaving greenish-yellow bruises. Excessive body hair in unattractive places. Sleep deprivation. Boredom. Betrayal, abandonment, broken-hearted nervous breakdowns.

Duh.

If you kiss me, Mister, you must think I'm pretty
If you think so, Mister, you must want to fuck me
If you fuck me, Mister, it must mean you love me
If you love me, Mister, you would never leave me
It's as sim-ple as - can - be...(ching)

--Dresden Dolls

For the record, the reason I slapped Carl Kutack was not that I found him an unattractive lout. The reason I slapped him is that I'd had a crush on his heart-rending, crinkly-eyed smile for the last nine months, and he didn't even remember meeting me until that evening, when his girlfriend had dumped him and he was drunk and horny. I slapped him because he had eyes for my behind but was blind to my value.

This afternoon I took the N train to Union Square, and not only were the brakes unoiled, screaming violently at every curve and stop, but something in either the air conditioning, the PA system or the fluorescent lighting was emitting a high-pitched, piercing whine which I found nearly unendurable. I spent the entire journey with my fingers in my ears, and nobody else on the train seemed to notice it AT ALL. Two-thirds of them appeared to be asleep, and the rest were reading or staring blandly into space. When I got off the train I could still hear the whine until I was halfway up the stairs. The rest of the world is deaf.

I usually don't talk about being 'sensitive,' for fear that people will think that I'm a whiny wuss. I didn't even realize I was 'sensitive' for the longest time--I thought I WAS a wuss, and that other people found loud, dissonant noises, fluorescent lighting, horrible smells, emotional tension and superfluous whining every bit as misery-inducing as I did, but were putting a brave, stoic, courteous face on it. Then I read a piece of pop psychology on my lunch break, called "the Highly Sensitive Person," took the test, and whoa, nelly. Finally I felt justified in asking for the music to be turned down, the door to be shut, for my lover to take a goddamned shower and quit being so !@*(&# rough. I'm not frigid, I'm hyper-responsive. I'm also brave, stoic, and courteous. Please don't hurt me any more.

This is my life

Today's schedule: 9 AM, get up, feed cats, shower, make tea, read New Yorker, email, journal, blogs, painting analysis, lunch. 2 PM, massage client. Change into painting clothes, work on large caty-wampus painting, because supplies from Jerry's have not yet arrived. 6:30 PM, yoga class. After class, go to bank to deposit massage $$, to co-op to pick up basic supplies and submission form for ad in "Linewaiter's Gazette," in the hopes that I can get more clients. Dinner. 9 PM; bike to East Village to hear member of artist's circle perform in piano bar. Midnight; meditation, Course in Miracles, bed.

A large part of my feelings of artistic and social paralysis, guilt, isolation and fear have to do with the fact that a deep inner part of me is sure, sure, sure that something terrible will happen to me for living like this. I mean, what? I'm not WORKING. I am not getting up at an agonizingly miserable hour, getting on the subway, sitting in an ugly place doing tedious, boring things for 9 hours, taking the subway home again and spending my evenings trying to summon the energy to make Great Art while physically, emotionally, morally and spiritually exhausted.

Well, something terrible WILL happen to me, if I don't get more clients and nothing sells out of my show--eventually, that enormous check to Phil the Neanderthal I have to write every month will bounce, and me, my plants, cats and paintings will be homeless.

But every time I look into getting a miserable, boring job, I look at the numbers, and realize again that one massage client=one ENTIRE DAY at miserable, boring job. And so I spend one more week in guilty limbo, and one more, and one more. Pray for me, pray for my lazy, unrealistic soul.

Yesterday I went again to Sund4y at Sunny's, and again nobody would talk to me, despite the fact that I was smiling and approachable, but I've come to expect this and really, really just continue to go for the readings and the free coffee. Beforehand I stopped off at BWAC to check on my painting, and I was glad I did--they had moved it, and hadn't printed any labels saying who painted it or how much it cost. Also, all my postcards and their dispenser had disappeared, along with the pen for my comments book, which vanished even before the last show opened. So fuck it, I stole another dispenser, borrowed a hammer, nailed it up, filled it with postcards, returned the hammer with thanks, and hassled John and Anna about the labels. I don't know if they will actually get printed, but my postcards are there. It is my goal to place every single postcard in a good home before my show comes down in September. I used to think that self-promotion was vulgar, but in New York it is a necessity of survival.

A woman in a sunhat and bleached-blonde hairdo about 20 years too young for her was berating Anna for saying that her work was 'not as strong' as another artist's. She was ranting loudly about how "you don't have to LIKE my work, I'm self-taught, I've been working for 20 years..." as if this made her look less like a total jackass for pitching this particular kind of fit. Note to outsider artists: never do this. There are right and wrong kinds of fits to pitch. When someone drops your painting on a nail and punctures it, it is permissible to report this fact tearfully to every important person within earshot, provided you take it home and fix it in a way that proves you know your shit. You can make people re-print your labels if your name is misspelled, but you may not whine that so-and-so's painting was hung in the best spot because she's the borough president's campaign manager. Basically, the goal of fit-pitching in the art world is to demonstrate absolute, internal self-confidence, so that next year you get the spot next to the campaign manager.

I learned the art of effective fit-pitching in art school, during the course of several successive and obviously rigged 'competitions'. There was one student who exemplified, to my mind, everything vile about institutional politics; being a mind-bogglingly bad artist, her path to career success lay through blackmail. "I'm being discriminated against for being a mixed-race black/Native American lesbian," she would cry, when she wasn't on the list for the scholarship, honor studio, or gallery jurying--and they would actually give her the award. I would have shot off my big toe to avoid association with her.

But after losing the scholarship, two successive gallery juryings and one honor-studio competition, I felt that I could not safely rely upon talent, discipline and quiet integrity to ensure my career advancement. When the results of the final, staggeringly skewed honor-studio competition were posted, absent my name, I marched up to the list in broad daylight and wrote on it, clearly, in ink. Then I dropped the matter entirely, being charming and polite to all faculty members whom I knew had dissed me.

They got the sign down fairly quickly, but not before several student body ringleaders had passed by and read, aloud, "'Go to hell. Go directly to hell; do not pass Go, do not collect $200. (signed) Serena T. LaBella.' BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!"

This would not have worked, of course, if my talent, discipline and relatively quiet integrity hadn't earned me some name recognition among the student body; I think the faculty were afraid of me. The day before the semester ended, I got a call from the head of the painting department. "We found you an honor studio. Another student failed to re-qualify." They gave me the best one. The student who failed to re-qualify was the black Native American lesbian, oddly enough.

Saturday my big adventure was biking to Pearl Paint for 200 ml tubes of titanium white. I was in a horrible mood, having decided to torture myself by digging up and re-reading the last letter sent to me by the ex-lover who, up until the beginning of May, was calling regularly and begging me to visit him because he was horny. In May I abruptly stopped hearing from him until two days before my show hung; then I received a cheery little note describing the rains and the flowers and the amiga who is visiting him through August. At the time I allowed myself thirty seconds to be startled and upset before I decided simply to never contact him again, and pushed it out of my mind. But Saturday morning I realized, "wow, that's really MEAN," and burst into tears.

Biking into Manhattan on a sunny Saturday didn't help my mood, unfortunately. The Brooklyn Bridge is fun to bike across, except for the tourists who stand planted in the middle of the bike lane with their cameras pointing at lousy shots, and the toddlers on tricycles who stray determinedly into your path, and the packs of bored teen-agers who look right at you and don't get out of your way, and the couples holding hands who don't look at you at all and don't get out of your way, and the other cyclists coming the other direction who seem determined to run you off the bridge, or into the tourists. Then once you get to Canal Street it is gridlock in every direction; pedestrians stepping off the sidewalk directly into your path and staying there, trucks unloading in the middle of intersections, traffic cops who defend the rights of no-one.

Then in the paint department at Pearl, a salesperson asked what I needed. "Your best deal on white oil tubes," I said. "Professional or student grade?" "Professional, definitely." "You're in the wrong aisle. Professional grade is over here, at $18 a tube. Goodbye," she said.

Well, I go through about a tube and a half of white a week, when I'm in form; 'professional' or not, $18 a tube for Gamblin is too high. I skulked back to the 'student grade' aisle, hid three $8 tubes of Georgian under my bike helmet, treated myself to a couple of new palette knives to ease the pain of humiliation, charged the lot on my 'emergency' credit card and left. Not wanting to feel like a friendless loser, working alone all weekend, I decided to stroll around Soho before returning to Brooklyn.

Soho sucked, too. All the outdoor patios were full of people having fun in merrily chattering couples or groups; all the sidewalks were full of crappy art and jewelry, all the stores were full of size-4 princess clothing that was ludicrously out of my price range. I bought an ice-cream cone and felt fat, lonely, poor and guilty. After checking out the 'sale' at French Connection and discovering that they still wanted $40 for a size-4, almost-out-of-style-and-season tank top, I decided to head for home.

Just as I hit the Brooklyn Bridge, the thunderstorm broke, seemingly out of a clear blue sky. Huzzah! Suddenly all the happy people were screaming and getting out of my way. By the time I hit the peak of the bridge, I was drenched. By the time I coasted down the other side, I was trilling "'Till there was you," joyfully unto the Lord, and the one other wet cyclist who heard me and laughed. I sang most of the way home. Water on the skin is the best mood-rejuvenator I know. The glow lasted till the next day.

Sunday my rear wheel fell off when I was halfway across Hamilton Avenue, by the freeway exit and the Battery Tunnel entrance. I removed the wheel to change the inner tube on Thursday; I don't know how or why I was able to ride on it for two days if it wasn't properly re-attached. Some guy stopped and made ineffectual suggestions while I got it back on, largely unassisted. He reminded me of, and very well could have been, my last Nerve date nearly three years ago, who caused me to swear off online dating forever. I seem to recall that the 'clueless, desperate elf-guy', as I think of him, had, as one of his main conversational foci, the number of miles he'd clocked while losing 75 pounds (but not the pot belly.) Not the adventures he'd had, not the things he'd seen or thought about, just the mileage.

Fortunately he didn't seem to recognize me. Up until that historic date, I had assumed that men who asked me out through Nerve were, at least, reading my profile, and contacting me because they divined a spark of commonality between us. Oh, naive idealist, I. I never actually PAID for online dating, because up until quite recently, men outnumbered women 3 to 1 online. Also, it bothers me, chasing men; I want to be courted. But not courted by men whose standards are: female; has pulse; will listen to me whine about the hundreds of other females who, quite properly, blew me off. My final Nerve date caused me to break ranks with the ironclad politesse of a lifetime. After what was probably only twenty minutes of conversation which included, on his part, casual racism, embittered whining, weight loss/mileage ratios, and an offer to jump into my lap, I said, 'This isn't working out for me," grabbed my bag, hat and coat in one fell scrabble and bolted, shaking off the bad energy like a horde of rabid mosquitoes. I kept looking back in desperate terror that he might be following me.

So, well, meeting men by losing my bike wheel on Hamilton Avenue isn't working; neither is going to literary readings or weekend parties upstate. My friend H. asked me, "so, what do you want? Just some casual fun?"

No, no, no, no, no. I have spent my life slapping the faces of men who just want casual fun, then pretending that what I wanted was casual fun, then stopping that pretence and going properly apeshit on people who toy with my soul. Goddammit, I want a Real Relationship. One where, if there's a problem, the two of you discuss it and work it out in some way. Is this delusional and unrealistic? Other people around me seem to be having weddings and babies and buying houses and going to couples counseling.

Not that I'm whining, really. Really I believe in karma, and divine guidance, and resonance with particular people, and in making a life-plan to learn certain lessons before we're even born. I notice that in the past, I've simply run into the people I've needed to meet and recognized them, without having to make any particular effort. I'm just wondering when the next one is going to come along. Hello? You out there? I'm ready now. Not perfect, not even flat-tummied, but sufficiently de-traumatized from the last one that I can handle more punishment. At least I think so.

More yoga

I mean it about the yoga, that's ALL I want to be doing. I feel like I'm pulling my psychospiritual programming fibers out by the roots and re-planting them where they should have been all along, where, I can barely remember, they USED to be.

To waste time, which I have too much of, I have just been reading political blogs. This will upset most, probably all, of my friends, but such things don't make me angry any more. Why don't they make me angry? Well--

1) I'm just too tired. Anger is painful, destabilizing, makes you feel powerful in the short run but in the long run it makes you helpless, knawing yourself up from the inside.

2) it becomes increasingly clear to me, the more I live on this planet, that everybody involved in any conflict is responding, not just to the situation at hand, but to acres and acres of their own personal baggage. Lesson 7, A Course in Miracles: "I see only the past." Shit, yeah.

3) Getting angry over someone's dumb comments in a blog give that person, with all of her blindness, weakness, confusion and misplaced anger, power over you. Getting angry over something strengthens that thing; it acknowledges and reinforces notions of power and helplessness. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

I don't get involved (much) in politics because I no longer believe the problem is Out There. What's Out There is a projection of my own mind. It makes no sense to fuss with it, lash out at it, manipulate, plot and construct it. It's Not There. Manipulating external events is like trying to change the plot of a movie by swatting at the space in front of the screen while it's playing. The source of the movie, the projector, is the MIND. Change your mind, change the movie. Or even leave the theatre.

One of the younger yoga teachers at the studio has been going on and on about karma, and planting seeds of good thoughts, and helping others. She thinks we're being 'resistant' to the notion; my suspicion is that we're being polite. I, at least, refrained from telling her, "Thanks, I've thought about this already, like, more or less continuously for the last 20 years or so, since you were in elementary school." She's a sweetie really, and her class kicks my butt, enough so that I will tolerate being patronized.

Just at the moment I don't want to get into a discussion with her about what it MEANS to 'help others.' Just at the moment it seems clear to me that I will never help others properly or effectively until I radically help myself. Just at the moment I need to let go of both past and future, and this is easier to do while trying to align my hips while bent double in a lunge and twisting to one side, sweating profusely.

Media creature

Here's my volunteer auctioneer gig, and evidence that I've gained weight since the last time I was on stage. Well, okay, so it's Not About Me. Check out the inside of the eerie old boat.

I spent the Fourth alone and in the city, just like I did three years ago, when I'd just moved here and my best friend went completely insane and decided I was Satan. I suppose I could have called Neneng-girl and pestered her to invite me upstate, or to whatever whirlwind of fun she's caught up in this week, or I could have volunteered to cook a barbeque in the back yard of H.'s new beach house, or even caught a last-minute flight to Texas. But something in me rejected these solutions, whether it was pride or a need to sort things out.

Basically, the only things I really want to be doing these days are fussing over my potted plants and going to yoga class. I wish I had an actual garden to fuss over--the potted plants don't need much attention. I got a cutting from Baby, the Lady of the Evening plant stolen from Peru six years ago by a friend of J. H.'s, and in only six weeks it has put down roots, sent up a new shaft, and popped out several new leaves, which are all swelling fleshily. The miniature rose on the fire escape is flourishing, as are the ficii, the habanera helix, the Christmas cactus, the rubber plant and the African violets. The orchid and the bromeliad, however, refuse to flower. A guy in a shop in the East Village suggested they might not be getting enough light, there on my bathroom shelf. He may have a point; I moved them both to sunnier windows and will keep you posted.

A good friend recently said, "Therapy is scary. When you confront your issues, it feels like you are dissolving, like you don't exist." He said this, I think, to make me feel better about the fact that my ex-boyfriend dumped me rather than try it. I still thought of it as just another stupid rationalization. But just at the moment I'm questioning every single habitual method I have of relating to people. I still feel like I exist, but I only really feel safe in yoga class and in my apartment, preferably under one or both cats.

I went up on the roof to watch the fireworks, and met my next-door neighbor. This guy has been here since two months after me, and I would swear to never having seen him before. Our roof turned out to be an excellent vantage point--they had synchronized displays on Staten Island, over the East River around midtown, and what looked to be either Harlem or Queens. It was cool, and so was my neighbor, an architect/city planner from India. He turned out to be another valuable source of information regarding buildings in Brooklyn; just as I start thinking 'this project is hopeless, nothing will ever happen,' another clue falls from the sky.

My baby cat is nearly recovered! Just as I thought he surely had AIDS, and would waste away by slow degrees, he meowed when I opened a can of tuna, and snarfed the whole thing down. It was like Tigger and the extract of malt. Six cans of tuna later, he's bopping things again. It's a miracle.

Burning away the roses

I sold the breakup painting. Or rather, the head of the BWAC mafia sold it, as she majestically informed me, when I went to pick it up and couldn't find it. "I told the English lady, 'It will change your life,' and offered to carry it downstairs for her," she said, in her sonorous Russian accent. The people at BWAC are starting to be friendly toward me, at least the ones in with the mafia. The price of that painting was probably twenty percent of their gross for the closing weekend. I'm shocked that it sold; it wasn't a painting I'd ever hang in MY home, but then I was the one who painted it to a repeat loop of John Mayer singing "'All you need is love' is a LIE, cause WE HAD LOVE and we STILL said goodbye, now we're TIRED...battered FIGHTERS...". It also weighs about twenty pounds because it was painted on canvas stretched over a made-in-Mexico panel; the irregularities of the edges were one of the things that the head of the mafia had to explain away as 'feature, not flaw.' I'm so glad it is out of my life. It will also pay my rent this month.

I sold another little painting a couple of weeks ago, to a high-school friend I hadn't seen in 20 years. Then another friend looked at my website and wanted to buy the same one. This baffled me; it was my least favorite painting in the show by far, to the point where I almost didn't hang it. The second friend said she liked it because it was more optimistic than the rest of them. She also said that it was obvious, from looking at the work, that I've been depressed all year. So much for brave concealment of suffering under a stoically cheerful exterior.

It was wonderful to see my high-school friend. In high school we had the kind of friendship that is described by child psychologists as "parallel play." We attended the same ballet classes five or six times a week, and sat together at lunchtime and at football games in strained, awkward silences. We both had blonde hair and blue eyes, had good grades and no boyfriends, and people got us mixed up. I always figured that deep down, we probably had nothing in common.

Come to find out, we've practically got parallel souls. Once we finally started dating, we were both drawn to men who did their own repairs on their trailer-park cars, having acquired in high school a visceral repulsion for the ones whose parents gave them a Beamer on their sixteenth birthdays. She had either better instincts or better luck than I did, however--she's been married for thirteen years to a professional dancer who grew up in a trailer park. They have their own dance company Santa Barbara, a house in Sedona, and a six-year-old daughter with blonde hair and glasses. She spends a month every summer with her daughter in a different exotic location--last year, it was the next town over from Guanajuato. She says she loves my work because "it's so spiritual." I told her, "let's keep in better touch."

Before meeting my friend and her family for dinner, I had a crisis of confidence and bought a new outfit with a poufy skirt, anti-aging eye cream and toenail polish. I gave myself a pedicure, super-conditioned my hair, and put on eye makeup. Well, my friend is still a ballet dancer! And I've gained, like, thirty pounds since high school, I limp, I'm single, financially unstable and live with cats.

"We look almost the same as we used to," said my friend. And so we do.




I've been getting acupuncture. The first session seemed like a total waste of time. I got needles all up and down my problem meridian, from right scapula to left ankle; it hurt, it wasn't relaxing or fun, and it didn't do anything. The acupuncturist insisted that I return. We were swapping, so at least it didn't cost me anything. Codependently, I agreed.

The second session was astonishing, just like acupuncture is supposed to be; she stuck needles in my right arm, and my left ankle felt better. It didn't happen all at once--I could feel a steady stream of pulses running up the arm, through the shoulder, down my back and threading through my left hip, to bop down against the injury in the tendon at the ankle bone. "I think we've found it," said the acupuncturist. "These meridians aren't directly connected, but they're distantly related." The ankle tendon got better immediately and stayed better. Moreover, I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream about telling off my bastard ex-boyfriend, with my right arm meridian in knots.

So it is as I suspected--this is about codependency. Codependency, I have discovered, is the ace of spades on my forehead. I did not know it. My best instincts have created my worst problems.

When one of my best friends stopped bathing in college, I continued to hang out with him. I sat through movies at his right elbow, trying desperately not to breathe. We even made out once or twice. I never said those magic little words, "R., please take a shower or I will not sit with you. You STINK." I thought this would be rude and unloving. Eventually I started avoiding him instead.

In nearly all of my relationships, especially sexual ones, I cut people slack. I cut them way, way too much slack, for all the wrong things and all the wrong reasons. Some part of me is always thinking, "they know they're being rude, vulgar, unreliable, mean, and treacherous. They know they're trampling my boundaries. They can't help it. It's not personal. To show I love them, to show I understand, I will not object. I will accept them the way they are, knowing they are perfect. And when my boundary gets blown to smithereens, I will adapt."

Also, I don't want to be a weenie. A spoiled princess, like that girl in "Free to Be, You and Me," who insisted, "Ladies first, ladies first! Untie me this instant, Mr. Tiger! My dress is getting mussed!" So they ate her. Recently I have realized that this was wishful-thinking propaganda. High-maintenance women, far from getting fed to the tigers, are status symbols in most human societies. Cool-ass workhorses like me are wives for poor people.

But now that I know, I am working on it. It's a slow process. Last weekend I went to a party upstate, an overnight "bacchanal" with costumes and bonfire. I went as a bare-navel'd gypsy, and brought my body paint.

(Note: Sexy, for me, is not at all like sexy for Badger. Sexy for me is taking my hair down. "Hot" is wearing a 'tiny-fit' T-shirt with a pair of pants that aren't two sizes too big for me. So for me, letting down my hair, tying a scarf around my forehead, donning a sarong and an Indian top cropped just under my bra-less cleavage, then painting a curly gold sun around my belly button, was tantamount to declaring, 'I am a wanton woman. Let me paint your neck.')

Unfortunately, ninety percent of the men attending were married, gay, or wearing a satyr suit with no butt coverage. (Badger should have been there instead of me.) The married friend attending with me, with unerring instinct, seized the one single, overage male, who was happily engaged in welding a trellis, and dragged him over for a paint job. He was cute, in an earthy sort of way, and we got along. He's an organic farmer and artist's contract welder, and visits my neighborhood once a week to weld for a 'famous artist.'

To cut a short story short, the next day four of us girls got a tour of the organic farm. It was informative and charming, and we harvested strawberries and snap peas. Even in my new vigilance, I failed to dock him points for the fact that, although he'd slept in his own home and not in a field of four-foot grass the night before, he had failed to shave, bathe, or put on clean clothes that fit properly. Well, he's a farmer. Farmers work in the dirt. Don't be a weenie.

But I really, really needed to use the bathroom. The farmhouse wasn't on the tour, but I got a neighbor to show me the way. And on the way home, I wrote a new Rule: "Never date a man whose home is as clean as his barn."

Chickens. Chickens in the living room, and all that that implies. No books, either. This man does not need a wife. He needs a MOMMY. (Thanks, Beck-beck.)

I was pretty depressed about it--not the farmer, that was a quiet triumph of the New Boundaries--but about the fact that the way I see it now, most of my past has been a waste and a tragedy. Most of what I thought was "patience, love, forgiveness and understanding" was codependent behavior that did other people no good at all, and landed me in a yearlong depression and near-bankruptcy. I felt that maybe it's too late, I've lost my chance, and that since I don't know how to relate to people anyway, I'll only live with cats for the rest of my life.

But that was yesterday. This morning I woke up feeling that the past was, finally, past. I don't need to DO anything about it. I don't even need to write back to the ex-lover who invited me to visit him, and then wrote again to say that another girlfriend was visiting, but who knows when she'll leave? As soon as I figure out how to do it, I will delete the phone number of the investment banker from my cell phone, the one who committed to helping me fund my project, then announced that he was moving to Vermont to study Chinese. When I invited him to attend a members-only event at the Whitney last winter, he made another date for the same evening, and immediately after the opening he left me standing on the corner in a blizzard as he jumped into a cab. I figured that maybe he didn't KNOW this was rude.

And as for the future, well, it will be easier. I will no longer follow the Rule that it is rude to TELL someone when they're being rude. Miss Manners writes for a class with a clue, and unfortunately, I don't always socialize with those people. I'm practicing, in my head, phrases like, "Please don't whine. It bothers me." "No, it's not okay, thanks." "No, I'm not interested in a polyamorous relationship. It was nice meeting you. Goodbye."

Who knows what will happen then.

Out of the Closet

I have links, now. This is because I finally gave up on Internet Explorer and took the two hours to download and untangle Mozilla Firefox. You see, I'm not ACTUALLY a narcissistic asshole, I wasn't using links because the "link" icon didn't appear in my browser. That has been fixed, now, at great time and trouble.

beautiful, beautiful, beautiful

I didn't expect to feel so completely, utterly fulfilled and content once this show was hung. It's not as though there were much likelihood of its being a dramatic, public and unqualified success, á lá the opening night of "Once in a Lifetime," by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, which opened at the Music Box Theatre sometime in the thirties. The opening of my art show was not attended by thousands; in fact, it didn't even have a reception. It wasn't received by glowing reviews in all the major journals, hot off the presses soon after midnight, eagerly awaited at all-night diners by a throng of friends, family, cohorts and well-wishers. It didn't gross so many profits on the first evening that I could afford to leave my Brooklyn apartment forever, with only a few family photos, smashing everything behind me, and move immediately into a Manhattan hotel. I expected all these facts to bother me, sort of, a little bit. They didn't. I feel like I did what I set out to do, and I feel fine.

That Brooklyn-apartment-smashing episode is the crowning event of Hart's autobiography, 'Act One,' which Mrs. Wertz bestowed upon me in seventh grade, saying "I think you'll like this book." I have NO IDEA how she knew. I reread 'Act One' several times a decade. It's one of the reasons I felt instantly at home in New York, I think, despite the fact that things here have changed a tad since the nineteen-thirties. The last time I reread it I realized how deeply the story had sunk into my bones, and informed so many of my major decisions in life; I also realized that Hart's ironic, self-mocking and hilarious tone had seeped into my writing style, long before I even knew he was hilarious. In seventh grade I took him utterly seriously--his infatuation with the theatre, his determination to be a part of it against all odds; the thrift, the poverty, the graveside vows, the all-nighters, horrible jobs, humiliating rejections, sudden revelations and paradigm shifts, grueling and unremunerated work, refusal to quit, desperate appeals, brilliant eleventh-hour insights--and finally, his triumphant success, snatched from the jaws of failure. It's a fabulous book. I highly recommend it. You can find three or four copies for a dollar in most major used bookstores.

Anyway, as I said, my show didn't even have a reception. This was rather a slap in the face, since the Art World holds receptions for the opening of every envelope, practically. I've had receptions in bookstores, bars, waiting rooms, Internet cafes and bathrooms. But when I asked when the reception was scheduled, the manager told me "We're not planning on it," in a tone of voice that did not admit discussion or argument. It was embarrassing, but I contented myself with fantasies of showing up suddenly with fifteen friends in tow and some champagne, to cheerfully wreak my retaliation, four or five times over the course of the summer, and forged ahead.

I also had to do, and pay for, all my own promotion. I didn't even bother with a press release, since I have spent enough hours of my lifetime writing press releases that are roundly ignored by absolutely all press on the planet. But I did design and print a card, sending back the first proof, re-shooting the image so that the colors came out accurately, and harassed my entire mailing list both electronically and in person, and got my mom to harass her Christmas card list as well. I even skipped blithely into a few tony stores on the upper East Side and asked them to distribute my postcards. It's really hard to get rid of a thousand. And although I had no press release, I did send cards to all the fancy Art World people that my former friend the Famous Artist should have introduced me to last year, and didn't. Also to the curator of the Whitney Biennial. Hell, it's a very long shot, but the gallery IS just up the street from the Whitney. Maybe they'll stroll in on their lunch break, and gasp, 'eureka!'. Maybe.

The day before hanging, I spent shooting and re-shooting high-rez, color-controlled images of everything in the show, re-writing my bio, resume and statement, printing up a portfolio, burning CDs in case by some miracle the press did show up, and bubble-wrapping the actual work. I finished around midnight. As I lay, exhausted, on my disintegrating couch (it gets feathers all over the place when you sit down, now) the top two paintings in the pile glowed calmly at me through their bubble wrap. I noticed that they were doing it, the thing, what I painted them to do; they were creating a beautiful, beautiful energy in my space. They were speaking of warmth and light and depth and poetry.

The next day it drizzled, or threatened to rain until it did. I made about nine trips up and down three flights of stairs to load the truck unassisted. I kept in mind one of the keys to happiness that I'd heard on the radio, a few nights previously; say to yourself, "I GET to," not "I HAVE to." 'I GET to hang my first show in Manhattan, on this beautiful, soft, cool, rainy day in New York City.' Not, 'I HAVE to climb three flights of stairs nine times on my chronically sore ankle, to hang my underappreciated paintings in a furniture store, without promo or a reception.' It worked. When I got there the assistant showroom manager said, "Oh, it's you."

The assistant's assistant was really sweet, though, and guarded my car in the bus zone until I was unloaded. Then I took my time finding a free parking spot, and having a very greasy breakfast at the diner down the street. The short-order cook took a liking to me and gave me a free slice of turkey. I gave him a card. It was good turkey.

It made my ankle even sorer, taking off my shoes to climb all over the furniture while hanging the show. Also, there was a new, huge cabinet blocking one of the major walls that I'd counted on filling. I actually thought I'd painted too many paintings, and would have to take some of them home again. After some finagling, though, they all fit, and they looked GREAT. Even the assistant showroom manager thawed a bit. Then I spent the evening biking in the rain to one social engagement after another, with people who paid for my drinks and congratulated me, so I didn't have time to mope.

The rest of the weekend was even busier, if possible; breakfast at the Whitney, for a Member Preview of a show of really horrible paintings. Well, except for Julie Mehuretu, or however you spell it. Julie's were wonderful; I sat in her room and blissfully absorbed them. Most of the other rooms I could not even walk into. We are talking gigantic canvases of things that looked like psychedelic tumors engaged in flaming car wrecks. They didn't even follow any formal principles of decent painting; they were edge-aware, lacking a center of gravity, ignorant of color theory, overworked, far too busy, chaotic, ugly, and pointless. And whoever curates shows at the Whitney actually looks at Julie M.'s work alongside this crap and CANNOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE. I tell you, it scares me. So much for a Whitney curator wandering into my show and recognizing it for what it is.

Because IT IS. When I re-wrote my bio I took out all the ironic, self-mocking, defensive statements that were supposed to be humorous. I streamlined and purified my artist's statement, and put in the 'inclusive' résumé that runs to five pages. I tell everyone I meet, "Please go see my show. It's beautiful." I am so proud of myself; I did what I intended to to, despite heartbreak, depression, repression, abuse, and the World's Indifference. The paintings glow, they sing, they move, they murmur of peace through fire and grief. They call out to the street even from the second floor, at an angle. The showroom manager called that evening just to tell me, "We switched two of them around because we had to rearrange the room again. But really I called to say I love it, love it, love it!" Apparently her fear was that the paintings would turn out to look better in photos than they did in person, like their last few shows did. Ha! They look BETTER. Infinitely, hugely, deeply better, and they look damn good in the pictures.

So then we went to see Barry McGee's show at Deitch Projects, and, my God. I'm worried about Barry. I don't know whether he's still grieving for Margaret, or whether he's been co-opted, corrupted and destroyed by the Big Art World Dealers, or whether the deeps of his soul really ARE full of nihilism, chaos, graceless ignorance and a Graffiti Theme Park by Disney, but it was AWFUL. I must write a screed and send it to the Brooklyn Rail, as if. Poor Barry. There are worse things than showing in a furniture store.

After that it was more social madness, shoe-shopping (march me all around Manhattan in a pair of old shoes and then pass a sale at Timberland and you have a guaranteed buyer, no matter how poor I am), an opening at which I got cornered by a drunken, socially clueless anti-war activist who still believes that people will Come Together and live in harmony if only he describes face-melting weaponry with enough gory accuracy to the hapless citizenry, and a late-night video of "Henry Fool." Sunday was co-op shift, Site Osmosis brainstorming and an impromptu dinner party, because Caroline was in town. It was all better than any reception.

One thing which has contributed to my feelings of inner peace and well-being is the understanding that I could not have accomplished this if I were still with my former boyfriend. I used to think I could absorb or deflect any amount of attempted sabotage by damaged people and still succeed. While I was with my boyfriend I didn't count the sunk costs of resistance. There was not ever a really big chance that he would convince me to rent an apartment in Staten Island with strangers and get a job stocking groceries to pay the bills. He didn't succeed in forcing me to do chair massage in bars, nor to take a full-time, underpaid job as 'gallery assistant' and personal slave to a ninety-year-old, third-rate art dealer on the upper East Side. I continued to make judicious use of low-interest credit for career advancement, rather than hosting utterly unpublicized events, walking barefoot on my damaged ankle or painting on scraps out of dumpsters. But he never stopped trying to cripple me, as though my agreeing to any of these unacceptable solutions would save our relationship. He got very, very angry with me for my failure to acquiesce in all his plans, 'as if his salvation depended upon it.'

All of this subtle, ceaselessly negative spiritual pounding took its toll. It's not as if I wasn't up-front about my intentions, but too many people are so accustomed to pipe-dreamers and windbags that they don't take me seriously until they've known me for a couple of years. The first few times we spoke I told him, "I'm real. I'm good at what I do, and I mean it." After awhile he could see that this was true, but he never stopped trying to derail my intention into some dead-end alley of his own paranoid devising. And then, at the end, he said he wanted to "maintain the friendship" and that he "wanted me to be happy." Hello? What friendship? Happy, how? Am I to imagine that, having done his best to annihilate happiness, understanding, communication and respect between the two of us, that he would then become a friend worth having?

Finally it is clear to me that I could not afford that. Yes, I did love him, which was why I put up with him; yes, on some level I still do, and probably always will. But I won't sacrifice my happiness for anyone, least of all for someone who doesn't value it.

So the reason I know my show has succeeded, even if nothing sells, even if I have to get a temp job next week, is that I held true to my own internal compass. Happiness is not possible if this is not the case.