Reunited and Confronted

"I really like your boyfriend. He seems nice."
She sips her mimosa lightly with tightly pursed lips.

I smile and gulp my coffee as butterflies fill my stomach.
"Yeah. He's pretty great," I say, dreamily. I'm awash in my affections for a moment before I snap back to the present. "I mean, we haven't been together for very long, but we're having a blast."

"You've had quite a lot of boyfriends, haven't you?" Her nonchalant tone and dainty British accent almost conceal the pointed curiosity behind her probing.

I feel my entire body flush and instantly start to sweat. "Yes. As a matter of fact I have." Her question was bold for someone I haven't seen in six years. "What are you getting at?"

"Oh I didn't mean it like that, I just mean..."

Yeah. What do you mean.

She somewhat stutters, "I wasn't trying to shame you or anything. I just remember that back in the day, you were more described as... whats the word? I don't know how to say it."

Without emotion I offer the term, "Polyamorous Pansexual?"

"Yes! Something like that, anyway. You had this aura around you... like you were too cool to approach but it was also like a vortex that people would fall in and never escape."

It seemed like a somewhat sinister description, however she beamed in wonder and delight at being able to remind me of the personal power I once wielded.

Now I take a gulp of my mimosa. "Well, at least I used to be 'cool.'"

"If I could count the people who feel into your votex and never to recover... Danny tried to kill himself when you left him, remember? And Marc had it bad as well. And If I recall --"

"Ok, yeah, I guess I was somewhat of a heartbreaker back then." I wasn't really enjoying these tales of emotional obliteration that I had left in my wake. And no, I hadn't remembered these ugly details.

"Uh, saying that you were a 'heartbreaker' is such an understatement." She shifted nervously. "But what I was getting at was that you used to be with ... all kinds of people. Then something happened and you seem to be mostly interested in men." Cue nervous laughter.

Oh the boxes I get put in.
"I recently got my heart torn out by a lady, so. I'm glad to have gotten over that and now I can move on with my life."

She looked surprised. I hadn't really blasted what happened on social media, so I suppose in that sense it didn't really happen (if not in front of all eyes). "What happened?"

______________________

I was on one knee behind her in the kitchen. She wouldn't stop washing dishes, ever the excellent home-maker. She reflected, whilst rinsing and drying, that ever day we spent together was the best day she'd ever had. I gently took her hand when it became available and she turned around to find me there, looking up at her. 

"What are you doing?" She looked alarmed. 

"It can still be the best day, every day." And then I proposed we get married. 

She turned away back to the dishes, angry. "I can't believe you would do that."

"Why not? We're insane for each other. I love you."

"You think I'd marry for a green card?!" She whipped her body back towards me, and her eyes were livid. 

"No! No, sweetheart it's not like that. I want to marry you for you. And yes, I want you to be able to stay here with me, if that's what you want, and take care of you." And I really did mean that. 

Despite my sincerity, I lost the discussion. Not because she didn't say yes, but because I had embarrassed and upset her. She was not going to stay, and she likely thought that I was insane or worse, disingenuous. 

She left and days, weeks, months passed. I cried a lot thinking of her. I begged her to come back. I helplessly watched her fall into a pit of despair and drown in booze. She insisted during the day that she was happy, that I should be more supportive. But once night fell, there was a lot of sturm und drang in her phone calls and messages, and she drank like it was an olympic sport. Finally, the calls stopped coming. The last message from her I received was a post in the mail, containing a picture of her dancing. There was no return address. 

Over the months, I stopped playing guitar. One of my favorite songs to play only reminded me of her, and inevitably whilst playing it, the lyrics would become choked in tears. I lovingly put away things that reminded me of her. One day, it stopped stinging so badly. I stopped thinking of her all the time -- things she would like, how I could surprise her if she was here, our inside jokes -- and I even was able to get drunk without getting sad about her. And finally, I was able to move on. 

___________________

"Honestly, love, it sounds like you're really better off. It seems like she was a whole lot of drama." 

I glance at her sideways for this assessment. She doesn't know everything. It's impossible to relay the details of something so complicated, amazing, and heartbreaking with any accuracy in a short conversation. But with a sigh, I decide it's best for me to accept this judgement as having truth to it. What's the point in fighting it, when I've moved on? Formerly described 'Polyamorous Pansexual' little ole me was in a bonafide monogamous relationship with a straight man. And despite the contrasting comparisons of this notion with a portrait of who I have been in the past, I feel just fine. 

Wild Cats, Lady Beats

Everything in the world is hilarious. It's like a cosmic 'your mom' joke.

That's Janx for you. She spits this gem of acerbic wisdom with a slanted grin as we fly down a California highway at 90 mph, her bare foot on the dash as she fingers a gem she wrapped in copper wire the night before. We had a meeting, a caucus of lady hens in Santa Barbara where we gathered our supplies -- cheap red wine, crystals, gems, bright wire, cotton thread in every color of the rainbow, weed, tobacco, instruments, and stories -- we took a big sit with all these things and we rapped. No topic was off limits, no limit was off topic.

The thing about masturbation that really frustrates me is that I think: I am way too cute to be doing this for myself.

A pause in conversation as we all focus on our projects in a haze. Thin paper crinkles as a joint is passed, soft glugging as a glass is re-filled. Somewhere in the room, a bulldog farts and sighs.

I hate those fuckin' fox tails people are wearing these days.

Why? 

They have to kill the whole fucking animal just to parade around looking like an ass-pirate's bitch -- it's disgusting, murderous, and wasteful.

Hey, do you still have your old dreadlocks that you cut off?

Yeah? 

You should die them and make a tail out of that.  

What makes you think I want to look like an ass-pirate's bitch? 

The thing about these ladies is that we aren't your typical ladies, we're cowboys. We will fuck you up from the inside out and laugh while we do it. Rough, a little hard, and gone with the wind, we out west are more like tumble weeds and hardly "the fairer sex." We also represent the modern beats -- just like The Dharma Bums, we're only romantic enough to be pathetic, only revolutionary enough to be self-indulgent. We are vain, and not without sensitivity or desire -- what kind of poets would we be otherwise?

Each us of us are in constant conflict with ourselves; that is part and parcel of our self-indulgent vanity. We each contain a tarot card-like persona against whom we struggle, but it's these struggles that come to define us. Janx's impossibly long, thick dreadlocks in every color of the rainbow are a whimsical touch that attempt to disguise the fact that she is at heart the existential realist. Our mate and occasional ward, who is a brilliant crafter and dedicated boozer often prancing around as a middle eastern unicorn, is the drunken idealist. Sparky, who is here with us in spirit with her magenta hair and her wild eyes, is the emphatic. I, ever searching for sincerity in all the wrong places, am the romantic hedonist. We are each of us flesh hungry wild cats.

On this road trip plummeting back up California's coast, it's Janx's hilarity I'm exposed to at full volume. A realist she is, but humor is the spoonful of sugar with which she shoves medicinal observation deep past one's esophagus.

So I've been questioning my relationship with Man a lot recently, as you know, as I'm sure you are sick of hearing about, and so I've devised a new test, a relationship test. Here it is: if you have a baby and it turned out to be exactly like your partner, and I mean in every way, would you be proud of him or her? Think about it... would you?

Yeesh, I don't know. 

Yeah, well, think about it. That's what's going to happen. So thinking about this actually led me to come up with something else, which I like to call: The Dead Baby Method. I came up with this tactic because I don't use birth control or condoms. When my body starts to feel a little... different or when I sense my uterus go a-flutter, I simply meditate on dead babies. I say to it: Uterus, don't do it. If you make a baby, I'm going to kill it. These are all the ways in which I would kill it. Don't fucking do it. I figure, you know, you hear of those girls who convince themselves they are pregnant so much they start to blow up? Well, if they can convince themselves they are pregnant, I can convince myself I'm not. 

Brilliant.

I know... but sometimes I worry about my mental health.  

Yes, well. Her countering poignant depravity with questions of her sanity is why I can justify calling her a "realist" in my mind.

This bitch is resourceful. Give Janx some powerful hallucinogens and 15 minutes alone and she will return to you having solved all your problems. She will deliver you unto the sweet warbling voice of Jesus Christ and bring you handsome gentlemen cowboys who will play country music, provide you refreshing beverages, and keep you warm when the night turns cold. They will say things like "See that ther' coffee stan' over yonder? Built it. Take mah jakit, lil' lady. Kilt a buffalo in that thing. Hey, Woodrow! Come meet mah new girlfrien'!" and you will never stop giggling... Janx will get on stage and play a stranger's banjo, leading a crowd in a chorus of meowing until the sun rises, and she will purr like a hooker until she gets bored. She will lead you on powerful journeys and quests as an impromptu shaman, a spirit animal even, and she will blow your freakin' mind.

Full disclosure: I hated The Dharma Bums. Even so, in moments I find myself happy to be living it out less piously, and Janx is the Japhy to my Ray Smith.
Was that sappy? Well, you can go fuck yourself.