If you're not into yoga, if you have half a brain...

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Jesus Take the Wheel...

So this morning I found myself in the middle of a four car pile up on the highway during the a.m. artery clog of gotta get to work traffic.  There I sat on a 70 mile an hour highway minding my own business when here comes one of those standard white work vans (probably had a body in it) veering off to the right--to avoid the traffic sitting at a dead stop, I assumed.  He hit me and sent me into the Lexus I'd been staring at for the last 10 minutes. Turns out a small, elfish 20 year old in a small, elfish Prius started the whole messy chain of events--at least according to Serial Killer Van.  I always thought people who cried whiplash were just being dramatic, but now I'm pretty sure it's a thing. Nobody panic though, I managed to make it through the day.
Then I got home to find something from my doctor's office in the mail, only along with the usual info on the envelope the words "Geriatric Services" had been added. Awesome... It was a bill.  A really big one.  For a routine vagina inspection. This is reason number 6,832 why I recently changed jobs. Shitty insurance and even shittier people available to answer questions about shitty insurance. But I'm a government employee now, so hopefully that means the only tinkering around down there will be done by an elected official from now on.--Actually I did get ogled at Petsmart this evening, maybe I should've asked him if he wanted to take a look at my kitty while I was there. It would have been free and probably just as thorough. But that may have been misuse of a state seal.
Anyway, it's looking like I'll be on the phone with insurance companies for the rest of my life. It goes without saying I will be tucked into bed as soon as I hit "publish" here.
But I do have two things going for me tonight.  It's kid's week on Jeopardy so I'm almost guaranteed to win at something, and I have a little something doing double duty for me in the freezer.

The Weekly Walk With Me

I hit the road again this weekend.  I walked out of the office at 3:30 on Friday and decided to head a little further east.  Where I'm from the "river" is where you go to break beer bottles and let your dog shit on the rocks on any given Tuesday. The "rivah" is where you go to get away and get drunk on expensive wine in places that serve molasses for hoecakes and have bologna burgers on the menu.
The artists aren't starving here, they are the bored wives of successful men.  They are retired District Attorneys who took up watercolor.  It's the kind of place with constant contradictions. A place untouched by time: a Main Street, U.S.A. with flowing American flags just screaming for a story line on Dateline Saturday Night Mysteries.
I slept in this glorious old lady bed in a boutique hotel:

With this giant old lady clock that sat on 4:20:

I walked the town and down to the water with a naked face. I let my feet get dirty and sunburned.  I sat at a local bar and was force fed mojitos through a bendy straw by a complete stranger.  I met a boy who talked about strong beer, his bluegrass band, his friend's pedophile roommate, and his former professor's scandalous affair with a student.
I spent money at places that sold dusty old dead things like this:

In the same room with works by known artists with price tags like this:

I didn't buy it...

I let my phone die on Saturday night.  And woke up on Sunday morning to have breakfast at a biker bar before I took the long way home.

But they never told you the price that you pay...

I've never been so happy to see a Monday.
The first week of August has become a mindfuck roller coaster in recent years.  There are more birthdays and anniversaries than should be crammed into a seven day stretch.  This week has become as reflective as it is celebratory.  Even my dog had a birthday--she's 15 now.  As heartbreaking as it is amazing.  And on August 6, it was one year ago that my wife and I lost a friend to cancer.  Just a month out from our wedding and on my bachelorette party weekend, we sat at the funeral of a 36 year old who only weeks before had been planning his party wardrobe.  But this is still too fresh to eat at me--time has moved so fast it's as if I haven't had the time to process it, like I haven't been able to put our story in the right order. So it's someone else that I haven't been able to stop thinking about lately.
He was boyish and pure and kind.  He laughed easy, he smiled big, and turned a little pink every time he did.  I saw him angry once in almost 10 years. He was actually good.  He rarely drank, so I would make him mocktails with bitters and cucumber slices.  We would talk about life and women and the way the world worked.  One night we went for a long drive after dinner so he could tell me something important, something he hadn't told anyone and had only vaguely hinted at with his family.  He was nervous and couldn't find his words. I just knew he was finally going to come out. Instead he told me he was forgoing a military career after college to become a priest. His family, though Catholic, didn't support it.  So I did.
But it didn't stop me months later--on Halloween--from taking him to a house party and then to a member's only after hours bar.  We drank. We celebrated. We got separated.  The next day we met for lunch to see with our own eyes that the other had made it out alive and in one piece.
"Last night was crazy," I told him, " I took a boy home."
"Me too," he said.
So that was that.  The priesthood was out, but he wasn't just yet.
He enlisted as an officer in the Army.  And did three tours in Iraq.  We emailed through every one of them so I would know he was OK. When I would realize the weeks had passed a little faster than usual and I hadn't heard from him in a reasonable amount of time, I listened for his name on the news, looked for his name in the paper.
But he came home.  Just as I was leaving for another state and he was a about to be stationed in Kansas for a while we met face to face for the first time in years.  He wasn't boyish anymore.  He was a man now--broad, brow furrowed.  His laugh was still easy but there was a weight in his face.  No pink in his cheeks.  We drank a few rounds, he told some stories, talked about how he wasn't sure if he could sleep in a clean bed, and how he wasn't sure what to do without sand in his boots.  And then we went on our way with calls and texts and emails...
In July 2012 I moved back home.  He called me when he heard the news and told me he was heading to Korea the next day. He would be there for six months, and after would be coming home too.  He had requested to be stationed here.  He was ready to be back with his family and friends, someplace he could be himself.
Three weeks after that conversation, he was crossing the street and was hit by a bus.  After surviving three tours in Iraq, he was dragged through a busy city street in Seoul, Korea and died.  The papers said he was with a male friend.
There was no sand in his boots, no fleas in his bed.  No reason why.

Tearing off tights with my teeth...

I lie upside down on the sofa, I change bandages, I analyze my toenail polish. I eat antacids.  I make mix tapes.  I think about how only privileged white men use the term "ass-hat".  I chew my cuticles. I play solitaire. I tweet, I follow.  I let this cat on my lap attempt to hypnotize me with her purring and drowsy green eyes.  I think about what I'd like to write--who I'd like to insult, the fucks I've had, other people's secrets I'd like to spill.  But I remember I'm not so anonymous. And I realize that I am held back.  I make a note to change that. I eat dark chocolate.  I decide that Violator is Depeche Mode's best record.  I stress about starting a new job on Monday.  I debate how conservative my heels should be. I think about Burt and his bees. I watch the clock. I use the dog as an ottoman. I think about the man I saw fishing--with a pole. and a bobber.--in the man made pond at the Mexican restaurant on Friday night.  I itch.  I think about masturbating, but that's such a cliche.  I wonder if I should change my signature scent.  I have to go to the grocery store.   I have to iron shirts. There is yard work to be done.  I wonder if the Elvis on the license plate across the street refers to Presley, or Costello, or some Latino in a denim shirt somewhere. I get sucked in to online slideshows.
But I don't sleep.