(Incredibly, I think I bypassed the story of the very last time I saw Brandi Morgan. She wasn't even officially active as an entertainer -- she went and retired -- but she happened to be in town to catch a U2 concert and agreed to meet with me secretly upstairs at Blush anyway. Nothing earthshaking happened, it was just a very sweet session. And now to the thread proper -- )
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Murdock, who was "Murdered" on April 7, 2008, actually died today on February 15, 2012. I had already told Heidi my real name ages ago (news flash: she's learning how to ski!), and of course Elwell has known awhile. But yesterday I came clean with Columbia, not only about the name but my always having been in Pittsburgh and my reason for the Murder, and she laughed, she seemed to appreciate my reasoning. The thing is, Columbia is the last veteran there -- there is one veteran black dancer but I never really got into her, so Columbia is my Last Mohican. So I told her, on Valentine's Day (and of course, I got her a valentine), that I'm hanging up the whole Murdock scene and the club scene as well. Yes, I might visit Columbia on a special occasion (her birthday in summer, Christmas) but I see that as just the two of us.
So this thread may be over after all -- but not before I met yet another Czech chick, built a bit like Natasha the Giant of the Nineties but with a sweet face, let's call her Jordan. (It's thread's end, so I don't give fuck all if this name gets duplicated in reality.) I had my werewolf mask with me -- no real plan for it, I was desperate for nostalgia -- and Jordan got me in a booth and I swear to God, she promised me that she would bring out the wild animal in me. I told her "You don't know the half of it!" Then she got distracted for one moment in mid-dance and I slipped it on. She liked it so much that when we were done she slipped it on and stark naked burst out of the booth growling at everyone out there. It is true, it is true, there have been some magic moments. But it was really my time with my Red Queen Columbia that I treasured.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
I saw Elwell. But she had been kicked out of the club. Desperate for work, to keep her wildly ambitious cash flow up and steady, she worked about one week in a smaller club and the money sucked there (certainly compared to Blush), so she's found other work. So I wanted to see her. She would not join me in the William Penn -- which is a shame, because it's a great hotel. So I considered going to the other club. I idly threw out the option of her place -- I didn't think there was a prayer of that. And yet, yesterday and today, that is where I went.
Yesterday was an interesting failure, she had simply too much website work to do and that left us only an hour before she had agreed to go out with friends. What can I say, she takes her entrepreneurship very seriously -- and that's just the current company, on top of endless angst left over from an old restaurant venture with her awfully shameless (first) ex-boyfriend. So today, there was time and peace and smiles and jokes and yes, sex -- and here we reach the cascading edge of the Flat Earth that is this thread, and find ourselves in a whole other social realm which I no longer wish to share too intimately.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. She was sweet and good to me in a way I will treasure forever -- but in a context I can never understand. Four years later and she has seen fit to share some of the deepest secrets of her life and yet I have no idea what I am to her. To listen to her half the time, I'm some project. She bought me a cell phone. I don't need a fucking cell phone. But her cerebral computer won't accept the possibility. It's inconvenient to her endlessly fluid let's-change-plans-at-the-last-minute mentality, which somehow reasons that it's shame on me for missing an FB message of hers from one hour ago WHILE I WAS IN TRANSIT. And that in and of itself sounds petty, I know, but I begin to understand how untenable my position is. Nothing is real for her unless it's constantly on her phone, her attention span refuses to assimilate as much as a single paragraph -- and the thing is, if I'm her secret, to be held apart from everything else in her life, and she can never mention my existence to anyone, out of this endless web of people she knows, while she's endlessly adoring everyone else's existence and then sharply criticizing the obsolescence of my own ... then I don't get it. Of what value am I to her? Today I thought I was at the very least worth a good screw. The act itself ... I'll just say, it seems to speak for itself. But then right after she says, eh, she can take or leave sexual ecstasy.
I wish there was a single factor I could point to. She's all plugged-in and I'm just not, so there's that. But I get to wondering if, in some way, she's too male for me, that I've too much the classical feminine in me to put up with this squeezing and scrunching of time and demand of protocols, basically bossiness -- and it doesn't even sound like bossiness, coming out of her voice, with an attitude claiming to be one of helpfulness and concern.
She turned on to me in the first place because I was so alien -- and now she can't seem to stand it.
I can keep trying to thrash this out, but I think this is the end. Yeah, I know, cry me a river, hot woman has sex but then buys you a phone, oh no. But you weren't there. At every turn I could only be bitterly reminded that I do not really belong in her life. I'm almost nauseous right now with how much mindfuck I've put up with today.
I have known the dream, what I always assumed was Everest -- and it is not enough. I always harbored a suspicion that we could never fit. Now I know.
I don't think she values me enough to come hunting for me, to come tracking me down. I was just one odd little extra fleck of colored glass getting swirled around in her fun little kaleidoscope. Her kaleidoscope will spin on just fine without me. I've thanked her, and pleaded a headache which I blame on myself and said I'll drown my brain in chianti -- and you know what, that's still not a bad idea. And if she starts bugging me, I'll just take it very slow and very cool. Because as hot as she is, and it was, she is not SO hot, sell-your-soul-at-a-whim hot, Angelina hot. I have scaled Everest -- and you know what, it seems more like one of the bigger rides at Kennywood.
It was, yes, the best of times -- and I am in zero hurry to ever have another one again.
later update:
I notice this is my 11,776th post. Am I discussing here what could at long last be my personal declaration of independence? It's hard to say.
Now that I've had a chance to catch my breath -- to literally **82** on it -- I can better appreciate a few things. One, the whole "Can I dump the hot sexy babe who's only out to mess with me for messing's sake?" issue is no issue, because I did it before. In 1990 I got involved with a brilliant but bipolar woman who, desperate to hang on to me, showed up at my doorstep in a raincoat and nothing else, and I dumped her. (Okay, so I dumped her two months after that admittedly persuasive raincoat stunt, but still.) So I can do it again.
I think it's perfectly natural for an organism to reflexively want to defend itself from invasion. The problem being, I look around at this life of mine and I have to confess "Fuck all, man, you NEED an invasion." But is she the right invader? Is she the last straw, who will load me down with all kinds of useless extra drama and help to murder any hope this year held out? Or is she just the right ass-kicking tornado, bad in style but correct in intent, I need to sweep through my life? That she happened to me at all is miracle enough. How much more miracle does she really have left in her?
My mind floods with movies. I think of Kurosawa's "Ikiru," which my mother loves and which I do recommend. A dying bureaucrat, snickered at as "the mummy," starts dating this vivacious young factory worker. He marvels at her, but eventually she has to tell him, and I'm paraphrasing very badly here, "You can't absorb my youthful energy just by being with me." Then she shows him a little mechanical bunny that hops across the table and says "I do my job and I think every **09** in Japan loves me." (Special edit: that "dirty word" just now? "Ch1ld." FUCKING CENSOR!) So he leaves her, to fight bureaucracy and corruption to build a playground.
So I could leave Elwell, in an Ikiru way. But then there's also that damn "Accidental Tourist." Is Elwell Geena Davis? But then, honestly, does life ever turn out like a movie, let alone a good movie?
There's the old saying about the fiercely religious man who, when his community is hit by a flood, declares "I am so religious that God alone will take care of me." His neighbors check on him, and then the police check on him, and then as the waters rise a boat comes by to check on him, and then even a helicopter calls down to him as he's up on the roof, and every time his spiel is the same: "I am a religious man and God loves me and will save me." So he dies, and he meets God, and he asks "I waited for You, why didn't You save me!?" and God basically replies "I DID try to save you, you schmuck! I sent your neighbors, and I sent the police, and I sent a boat, and I even sent a helicopter! What are you even DOING here!?" So perhaps from time to time we get to be each other's angels without even knowing it. I need an angel, and she certainly seems like one. What if it can really be that simple?
even later update: it's 3 PM EST and my cell phone has been charging for two hours now. How long does this take? I can't help but think of this little red phone as a hotline, in the oldest sense, a secure and secret line between two people. Wonder how much action this one will see?