All My Little Words

I just realized (like, an hour ago) that it is nigh upon the 2nd anniversary of my friend Bobby’s death.
To this day, I honestly don’t really know if he died on the 18th or the 19th. He was in New York at the time, and it happened sometime in the middle of the night. I got a phone call at about 4am. Phone calls at that hour are never good.

I tried to go to work that day. I don’t know how long I lasted before I became so overwhelmed with emotion that I had to leave. I don’t remember much about that day except that I went straight from work to Liz’s house, where I spent the whole day with her and Eric. I think we played Monopoly. Grant may have been there. Other people may have been, too. But mostly it was me and Eric. It wasn’t too long after that that I sent Eric to rehab.

I remember all the time I spent thinking about Bob, and all the people I talked to about him, and shared stories and memories with.
I proved that misery brings out the best in us by writing the best thing I’ve ever written – about Bob. I was reading it just now and unlike many other things I’ve written which I thought were brilliant at the time, and later realized were just embarrassing, I realized that what I wrote about Bob is still every bit as good as I thought it was the day I wrote it.

I wish I knew him more, so I could write more things about him. He was a great subject. He was handsome and funny and honest. He had THE. BEST. ADVENTURES. EVAR.
How many people do you know who went to Dive School and became underwater welders? He wasn’t working when I met him because his arm was broken, but every day of his life was just as interesting as the ones he spent underwater in the ocean with the sharks, off the coast of South America or wherever he may have gone to work. We had soooooo many adventures together. I don’t know that I will ever know anyone else as fun or engaging or charming as Bob. We missed him when he wasn’t here, and always looked forward to the times he’d get off the boat and come flying back into town with $5 in his pocket after making $30k (or whatever) in something like 2 or 3 months. Whether he had money or not, he was always somewhere interesting. When it wasn’t here in Seattle, it was Chicago or New York or LA.

You know how sometimes you come up with crazy things to do, but then you never do them? Bobby did them, without even thinking twice about. Whether it was dressing up and pretending to be someone else, or getting into a bar brawl followed by a car accident which he would miraculously survive, he would tell me his stories in this offhanded manner, not realizing that they would be unbelievable coming from anyone but him.

One day when he’d been gone for months, he just showed up one day, SURPRISE!!!! at my house, and came right in and started calling out my name. Too bad I wasn’t home! But he was at home at my home. He told me the most delightful story that visit, when I asked about the new scar on his head. It was from a car accident that he miraculously survived, after a drunken bar brawl, if I recall correctly. He went to the hospital and they asked him where he lived. He said “At Bella’s house in Seattle!” as if he were surprised that there were people who did not know this.

After all the things I’ve written about Bobby, I imagine that some people think that we were lovers, that we dated, or at the very least, that I was secretly in love with him. I loved him very much, but as much as I found him handsome and delightful, never like that. I suppose it could have been that way, but it wasn’t because everything about Bob was perfect, and it was perfect that we were never that. Being involved that way might have ruined it (doesn’t it always?) although every woman I ever talked to about Bob loved him, still loved him, and I think always will love him.

I didn’t realize until after he was gone, and a number of girls contacted me about him, and what I’d written about him, that he literally had a girl in every port. That makes him sound like a real asshole, but in talking to these woman, I realized that he made each and every one of those women feel like she was the one. The ONLY one. Whether they were aware that they were not didn’t seem to matter. They all loved him, and he loved each and every one of them. He wasn’t playing them, they weren’t conquests in any way. He was a loving person, and he loved people, and people loved him. While most of us can’t handle “managing” multiple partners, it worked for him because, again, it wasn’t something he thought twice about. He took it all in stride. Every city was like a separate life, and Bobby was a rolling stone, and why should he not enjoy the company of different women wherever he went? It made him happy, and it made THEM happy. The world is a better place for all those women having known him, rather than if he’d only “dated” one at a time, and therefore only been with a few women in his too short life.

I left a comment on his Myspace page, and then I looked down at the last several comments before my new one. It had been a while since the last, but I was glad to see a lot of familiar names in the last half of last year. I was glad to see that he has not been forgotten.
Wish you were still here, mang.

When I was a kid, I think I was pretty well behaved until I was about 3. At that point, perhaps I became a little more…
self aware, perhaps? Because for some reason, at that point, I guess I started testing the waters to see what I could get away with.

As I had mentioned in the other post about spanking, when I was a kid, all kids knew that if you did something bad, you’d get a spanking.
It was definitely the norm back then, although I think the tide was just starting to turn, as I think I thought that I would NOT
get one, simply because I hadn’t ever before. I was really probably just too young for one, or too young to have done anything to
“deserve” one.
I “got away with” stuff for probably about a year before my parents must have realized that reasoning with me was not working.
They told me not to do stuff and why and it went right in one ear and out the other, I guess.

One day when my dad wasn’t home, I was hanging out in the kitchen while my mom had something going on the stove, maybe hard-boiled eggs or something because she left the room with the pot still on. The cookie jar (which I had been warned repeatedly to NOT get into for a number of reasons) was on a shelf above the stove, probably to make it inaccessible to me. I had also been warned to stay AWAY from the stove, ALWAYS, because it could be hot and I could get burned. I saw my opportunity though,
and dragged a chair over and reached OVER a hot stove with a pot of boiling water on it to get that cookie jar, and in the process,
the jar fell and broke.
Of course, I was caught. But I wasn’t worried, because I knew I would just get a talking to, which I did, from my mom.
Then my dad came home, and I didn’t think anything of it when they went to talk in the other room. Then my dad sat me down to give me a talking to, which again, went right in one ear and out the other. Until he flipped me around and started spanking me.
It didn’t hurt, but I was shocked. I did not know what to do at first, but then it occurred to me that I’d heard that kids cry
when they got spanked, so I started crying. I think I wanted it to stop because it made me realize that I was bad. And I didn’t want
to be bad anymore. No one wants to be bad at that age.
So I started to cry and my dad stopped, and then he hugged me and I could see that he felt bad. My mom felt bad. I felt bad for
making them feel bad. But that was the end of that, and I knew now that I could get a spanking if I did wrong. I still did a few things
that I shouldn’t have over the next year, and I got a couple more spankings, but after only one or two more, I stopped doing stuff I
had been told not to.

But I didn’t stop getting into trouble. I think things were fine until I was about 6. I was well behaved, now understanding the
consequences of my actions. I didn’t intentionally do anything wrong, and in fact I made really sure to not do anything
accidentally wrong either.
One night my parents had a party, and I guess they decided that I was well enough behaved that I could just stay in their room
and sit on their waterbed and watch the little tv in there. All fine with me, the waterbed was fun, and I had stuffed animals.
After a couple of hours, I must have gotten bored. My mom had a bunch of posters push-pinned into the walls which I was fascinated
by, so I stood on the bed to take a closer look. I don’t know if I was bouncing and screwing around, or if the bed was just sloshy,
but I must have knocked one of the pins out of the wall. I didn’t even realize it. AT ALL. The poster was over the bed, so the tack
probably landing right on it, and then as I squooshed around on there, it probably bounced and rolled to edge, where it fell
between the mattress and the frame, and poked a hole in the mattress. But it would have been a tiny hole, and I was a tiny kid,
so hours passed with no visible evidence. It probably wasn’t until my parent’s much heavier combined weight was on the bed hours later that it really started to gush.

And my dad got really pissed. And he yelled, and it scared the everloving shit out of me, even though I didn’t even know what had happened until he started yelling at me about how horrible I was for puncturing the bed, and on and on and on.
This was WAY WAY WAY worse than getting spanked, and I hadn’t even done anything. (not intentionally anyway, or that I was aware of.)

I must have been too old to be spanked at that point, so instead, I was grounded. For 6 months. No friends, no tv, no dessert.
That was a billion times worse than the spanking that only lasted a few seconds. Even worse was the fact that my dad didn’t believe
that I didn’t do it on purpose. Even worse than that was the fact that after that, I don’t think he trusted me at all.
Because I didn’t intentionally go against my parents for years, but there were a few more times when I accidentally broke things
(things I was allowed to touch or whatever) that I again got the yelling, and even worse, the long term grounding.
This continued until I was a teenager, and I was accused of increasingly more and worse deeds over the years, and I
probably spent half of every year for the next 8 years being grounded. No wonder I became socially stunted, overly shy,
self conscious and overweight.

So, I guess, in short, spanking worked to straighten out my behavior, but I also got to experience the other side of the disciplinary
coin. I’m not saying that anyone would advocate verbal abuse in any case, as an alternative to spanking or not, but I think
even in the cases in which I was wrongfully accused, I would have taken the spanking over the verbal abuse and grounding.
When I was spanked, I felt like I had hurt my parent’s feelings and it made me feel remorseful.
When we moved on to the groundings and yelling, I didn’t feel like my parents had hurt feelings – I felt like they were angry and
wanted to hurt MY feelings. The pain on my butt would have faded long before the pain in my heart would have, as it obviously
still exists.
Again, I’m not trying to say that no one out there has a better disciplinary plan than verbal abuse or spanking – I’m sure many of you
do. My only point is that, in my case, the spanking wasn’t that bad.
And if I knew anyone today who was whaling on their kid on a daily basis, or for shit they didn’t deserve, or was actually
doing any sort of lasting damage (physical or mental) I would be sure to do something about it.

Even though I am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, there have been many times in my life when I found myself up early, sometimes because I needed to be, and sometimes because I wanted to be. Then sometimes, like today, it just happened.

One thing I’ve noticed about morning – the earlier you are up, the weirder things are, or seem to be. I have already seen and heard some weird shit this morning. I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising, considering that we’ve got the Creature from the Black Lagoon, or Coonzilla or something equally creepy living in and around our backyard.

We’ve suspected for a while now that there was something living under the shed and deck, most likely a rat. I had found a dead rat (sweet!) in the basement, and the dogs frequently “hunt” around the shed and the deck. They stare and manuever as if following whatever it may be. I also found a number of bright, shiny objects from around the house in the middle of the backyard, and everyone knows that rats like bright, shiny objects. I wasn’t at all concerned that there might be a rat out there. Rats are small, it wasn’t coming inside (and if it did, its lifespan would decrease exponentially) and the dogs were ready to get it outside. I also know that EVERYONE has rats. You think you don’t, but you do. Even if you live in a nice neighborhood, are wealthy, and keep your house clean. So much the better. The wealthy throw out tons of perfectly good food and rats don’t even have to risk going indoors to get it.

On Monday, we were about to go to bed, and the dogs were out for the last time of the night, when we heard this horrific (but not dog-like) noise. We rushed out, put the dogs in, and searched for the source. Nothing. Went inside, went to bed. As soon as everyone totally quieted down inside, the thing started to make noise outside. We popped up out of bed, and tried to listen for where it was coming from so we could shine light on it. Nothing. This happened several times, and eventually, we fell asleep.

Repeat to a lesser degree, and without the initial horrific noise, Tuesday night. Now, up until this point, I had been assuming that the thing was just a big, deranged raccoon, despite the fact that some of the noises I had heard were not like any raccoon I’ve ever encountered. And yes, there have been a few. Outside of the fact that we have plenty of urban ‘coons, I’ve run into a number on camping trips past. In fact, most of the raccoons I’ve encountered don’t make a ton of verbal noises. Yeah, they’ll crash through the bushes, and walk right up to you and take food out your hand, but the sounds that actually come from inside the things are not really that loud or ferocious.

Last night, I called Sasha thinking she was outside. Instead, she came running from inside to be let out. So I figured, okay, one last time for two minutes while I went to the bathroom. I go to let her back in and hear this insane, crazed snarling/growling/snorting, I don’t know what.the.fuck. I call the dog, and she’s not coming and I’m running around looking for her and I’m not seeing her, all I know is that this noise is coming from the corner of the yard or MAYBE the neighbor’s yard, just the other side of the fence. Sasha spends a lot of time back in that back corner behind the shed, and often crashes around back there, I had often thought maybe trying to jump over the fence. But maybe it was her trying to get the yard monster?! I ran back inside to get a flashlight, and of course when I came back out (little Rolando trailing behind me, snarling his little ass off, ready to killkillkill! – I had to stuff him back in real quick) Sasha was RIGHT THERE. But the thing was still making some shitty noise, so I threw her inside, but by the time I came back to the yard, the thing had shut up.

Went to bed. As soon as we all shut up, we heard the thing again. Here’s the thing. It snorts and squeals like a pig, in addition to the snarling/growling noises, so I am pretty sure I have an urban Chupacabra in my back yard.

Can’t. Wait. to. Move.

Today is the official last day of summer for anyone who has anything to do with going back to school. School starts tomorrow morning at 7:45. It is exciting and terrifying that I have finally come to the day in which I will send Sage off to middle school. Today, I will be giving him his new back to school haircut, and going to get the last of the school supplies. Tomorrow, he will walk home from school for the first time since we moved. I suppose we should probably take a walk up there again.
It is all so weird, because we all thought we’d be moved by now. And here we are still. How long will we be here? We haven’t a clue. The paperwork goes to the new mortgage place today. I go back and forth between imagining us in a new house, or staying here. It is more convenient and safe for Sage going to school and all, and it is cozy here in the winter. At this point, I am down to, if we stay, we just need to change things quite a bit. I want some new book shelves and I need to move some things around. I don’t know what else. Something.

I had the strangest dream last night, but at the time, I think I thought it was amazing. I don’t remember all of it, but, before I had the dream, I had been lying in bed not falling asleep for ages. So when I did finally, at first I dreamed that I couldn’t fall asleep, but it was a dream, because I was in the new house, which of course in the dream was not really like the new house at all. In the dream, I couldn’t fall asleep because there was too much to do. Alex couldn’t fall asleep either (in the dream) and we were sleeping on the floor, a lot like when we moved in here. He got up at one point, and came back with a Sharpie’d on moustache and tattoos. I don’t remember all of what happened, but at some point in the dream, I was outside, I guess in out new neighborhood. I noticed this kid kind of hanging around me, and when I went to walk home, he seemed to be walking with me, as if to make sure I got there or something. As we were walking, I realized that we were passing this cool house that I had seen before. I think I called it the “Pond House” because there was a big pond behind it that several houses were built around. The kid ran past me, and to the house. The house had this glass, kind of like at the zoo, so that you could see into the pond. I saw a woman come walking towards the glass, and with her was a huge dog, swimming in the water. She was the boy’s mother, and she seemed to know that we had walked together. I said something to her about the house and how cool it was, and as I approached that glass, I could see more behind the house, and see that here was a canal that ran behind all the houses all the way up the street I had just walked down. I felt like we were in New Orleans or something, but still here all at the same time. As I approached the house, I could see in through all this glass, and that there was some sort of strange, amazing contraption inside. Somehow, this house had a ride inside, like something from Great America or something. I was let inside, and I was looking around, and it was amazing and beautiful. I sat on the seat of the ride, not actually intending to go for one, but suddenly it started up. I don’t really remember the whole thing, and what I do remember doesn’t sound all that spectacular, but you know it was one of those lucid dreams where everything seemed real, but super real. Like, better than real.

For whatever reason, the dream made me happy. At the time, I felt like it was a good omen. In the light of day, I think that is silly. I suppose we shall see.

2007 was simultaneously shitty and awesome. I began it fairly miserably (nothing new for me, it seems almost every year has begun that way) missing someone that I’ll never forget. I ended it with someone else I’ll never forget, which besides the fat that he is pretty unforgettable, I hope will be because he’ll be around until my sorry ass finally kicks the bucket.

It’s funny how things change. At the beginning of this year, I hardly knew him. In fact, I barely even noticed that he existed at all. That lasted for a couple more months, even though my circle of friends totally embraced and absorbed him, and we hung out plenty.

I was pretty surprised the Saturday he called me right as I was getting off of work and asked me if I wanted to go to dinner with him at The Ruins. For free. I didn’t know it at the time, but The Ruins is this amazing and bizarre private dining club in which people pay something like $1000 a year for membership, and then pay for their meals and drinks on top of that, and those aren’t exactly cheap either. As far as I could tell, that membership fee got you nothing more than the privilege of being allowed to dine there. We had been invited by his friend, who I had   only met ONCE, and who had been working there for a year, so he earned the privilege of having 4 of his friends come to dine with him, free of charge. There were 5 of us.
At any rate, it is an amazing place, and we had an amazing time. It was St. Patrick’s Day, and I was just glad to not be out in the general public with all the amateurs in green. There was hardly anyone else there, and we took our time eating, with a break to retire to the garden after each course for a cigarette. Alex was allowed to bring Sasha. Actually, I guess that is one thing membership gets you – the privilege of bring your canine companion with you. We drank. A lot. We met the lady who owned it, who is “elderly” if you were, but lovely and sweet.
After dinner, out gorgeous waiter gave me a tour of the rooms I hadn’t had the pleasure of visiting. I’d never seen anything like and it was quite a treat. Thanks, Alex!
The most surprising of all the surprises that night came after we had left and we were all hanging out outside by our cars, and Lucas (the friend who worked there, and was pretty loaded at the time) told me that Alex was in love with me.

Wow. What a whopper.
But then I realized that all the signs were there. When he asked me to go to the park with him, or when he told me he’d teach me how to snowboard. When he told me he’d buy me shoes. When he asked me if I’d rather have a new camera lens or a flash for my birthday – things that I thought he was kidding about. The night I remember sitting on his lap at Cyrus’s house, something which I’d never have given a second thought to. After all, we are all a flirty lot who are quite comfortable with each other and holding hands and hugging and kissing each other.

I had just finally convinced myself that I didn’t need a love of my life, and had just started to get into really “dating”. I was seeing something like 3 other people at the time. This new revelation really confused me. How could I not have known, when he would often carry me to bed after I fell asleep on the couch after a long night of tv and wine? Did I like him that way? If not yet, could I? I didn’t know what to do.

The following week was my birthday, and I had a lovely dinner at my house with plenty of friends. During the day, some beautiful flowers were delivered, from Alex. He was late, late, late showing up at my party, but he arrived with a camera lens as a gift, and later that night, after we had a little afterparty at my house and everyone else had left, he carried me to bed, and crawled in with me. We haven’t slept apart but maybe a single night since.

That was the awesome part of my year. I may have finally found the perfect guy for me. I love him more than anything, and I hope that he really does want to stick around forever because I can’t imagine living without him now.

On the shitty side of things, I lost a lot of friends. Not lost as in had a fight and are no longer friends, although a few of them have just changed, circumstances changed and we just don’t hang out anymore and that is just as sad as by any other means. Fortunately, no one died, but a lot of people moved away, and many others went away for a long time. A lot of them just can’t really handle the complexities of socializing any more and so they just don’t. That is okay, in most cases it is much better for them, but still, it is sad, and I miss them too.

I got kind of raped by my former landlords, but at least I do like my new home better, and I’m sure that my old house is still rotting on the market with it’s way too huge price tag, and I feel much better about the money that I could only fight to get back so much, so as not to have a stress induced heart attack, due to the fact that they have more than likely lost a lot more in rent that they could have still been collecting if I still lived there. Additionally, because of the move, I no longer have roommates, and I was totally over that. I guess that part really ended up more in my favor than anything.

I have come to realize that I really ahve a lot of issues with my job and I’m pretty much over that too, but I kind of have to deal with it for now. All I can do is try to get to a point where I am working less.

I guess really this past year was just shitty because of lost friends, and because of all the bickering and drama between the ones that remain. That doesn’t sound so bad, but most people don’t have friends like mine. Most people don’t have friends who regularly get robbed by other “friends”, or the majority of which are really poor, or drunks, or addicts, or any combination of any or all of the above.

I had a pretty crappy New Year’s Eve. nothing REALLY bad happened, but it certainly wasn’t what I had hoped for. It was too crowded, not everyone was all together in the same place, and by the end of it all, I was so tired that I feel like never leaving the house again. Grant says that it’s not “tomorrow” until after you’ve gone to bed and slept, something which I’ve never been able to get down with. Tomorrow has always been tomorrow as soon as the sun comes up. But I think in this case, I’m going to let everything that happened up until I went to bed on January 1st remain as part of 2007. 2008 began this morning when I got up.

Alex and I have already decided to not “go out” for a month. We will still go places around home, out for our Friday nights of mexican food and margaritas, and out to dinner and the movies by ourselves on Saturday, but I don’t think I want to stay out late or get even close to drunk. I also really don’t want to see people, but I will make an exception for Sky and Victoria, since they will only be here for another week or so, and I conceded to Alex that people could maybe come over on Fridays to play Rock Band. But not this week. I need some alone time, some peace and quiet. I am looking forward to going to bed early, but not too early, and fairly sober on Friday, and going to a nice dinner and to see a movie on Saturday. A movie, for chrissakes! And waking up in the morning on Sunday. Maybe even getting something done during the day, with maybe even time left over to watch a dvd as well. What a concept.

I also suggested a do-over of New Year’s on the last Saturday of the month. A fresh New Year’s just for us, alone, the way we should have done it this time – a nice dinner somewhere, just the two of us, then go home and drink a NICE bottle of champagne, ALONE, and then have the New Year’s kiss we should have had, rather than the brief peck in a crowded bar stretching to reach each other that we did have.

It’ll be a better year this year.

When I read the bulletin that last night was Kincora’s last night to Alex, he asked me if I was going to go, presumably to say my goodbyes to a bar that played a big part in making Seattle what it is today – formerly Squid Row and Tugs, just to mention a couple of infamous places that previously occupied the corner building of what had become one of Seattle’s dive-y-est bars.

I surprised him a little by saying no, but it was no surprise at all that I didn’t because I wanted to preserve my memories. I saw no reason to go when it would be crowded, not the same little place where me and 8 of my friends could just swing and grab a table for the night. I didn’t want to feel the atmosphere of sadness, when I could remember all the good times.

Sitting in the back booth with Victoria, always trying to avoid the caved in part of the booth seat, trying to get Eric to sit there because he’s tall.

Playing pool on the kind of crappy little pool table that never had enough room around it to take a shot without hitting someone.

Christmastime last year, the night of the Santa Hat, the night that Eric threw his beer glass across the room, and no one got thrown out, absolutely nothing happened except that we sat back down and drank more.

The nights when I was there hanging out afterhours, when I would suddenly realize that it was 4am.

Even the night that Kiki practically attacked me in the bathroom stall, and I could hardly get his drunk ass off me.

All the times Reno and all the other guys would leave the Cha Cha to go the bathroom at Kincora.

And maybe best of all, sitting on the couch, looking up at my then future boyfriend, the aforementioned Alex.

It’s these little scenes, the smallest vignettes that stick, single moments frozen in time forever, that matter. I didn’t need to go have one last drink there – I’ve had plenty. I didn’t need to see it one last time – I’ve seen it more intimately than most. I didn’t need to be the last to leave before it’s gone – I’ve been the last to leave more times than you’ll ever know : ) And I didn’t need to try and capture any more memories – I have the best there’ll ever be.

What more could I need, when I know that everytime I ever think about Kincora, I’ll remember Alex’s smiling face looking down at me as I sat on that couch, and then a flood of other colorful and happy memories will wash back over me?
In a lot of ways, I wish they weren’t tearing Kincora down, but I also realize that just like every dog has his day, every bar has it’s night, and Kincora has had so many nights…I know from experience that sometimes you just can’t make any more amazing memories of a place. I was done making mine there a while ago, and that had nothing to do with the impending demise.

I’ll miss you Kincora. Just the way you were.