In Twilight Regalia

I get a lot of legal junk mail at work for my attorneys, much of which they pitch immediately.  This, however, was worth the tree it was printed on.  Emphasis and bracked explanations are mine, and the segments are presented out of their original sequence, for brevity’s sake.
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Article Excerpts by Jeff Immerman, Esq., Cotkin & Collins, Los Angeles

 
“…From the time of the California Supreme Court’s May 2008 decision in The Marriage Cases [the California Supreme Court Ruling enabling same-sex couples to marry] to just prior to the voters’ approval of Proposition 8 in November 2008, approximately 18,000 same-sex couples were legally married in California…. Once married, some of these couples for example may have entered into contracts and transactions between themselves and third parties affecting or changing the characterization of property from separate to community and have incurred substantial community debts.

While retroactive application of Proposition 8 does not affect the marital status of heterosexual couples, it will substantially impair the marital status and related property, financial, and parental vested rights and responsibilities of same-sex couples who became legally married in reliance on the rights recognized by the California Supreme Court in the The Marriage Cases.”

…”If Proposition 8 is immune from judicial review, persons who disagree for whatever reason with the judicial branch’s future determination(s) that a legislative enactment unlawfully infringes upon an inalienable constitutional right of a discrete class of persons, will in the future seek to circumvent constitutional limits through the initialive process.  Unless prevented from doing so, such persons will resort to the non-deliberative initiative measure process in an attempt to resurrect a statute already found to be unconstitutional.  Such a scheme will undermine the constitutional rights of California citizens and will also under the system of checks and balances upon which our governmental system is based. …

…Proposition 8 . . .will, if upheld, cut deeply and permanently the inalienable rights of same-sex couples and the power of the judicial branch to protect, preserve, and safeguard the inalienable rights of California citizens.”

I’m SO TIRED.

It’s been a hard 24 hours.  Yesterday at this time I was pretty much ok, pretty awake, but the City of Los Angeles has conspired against me since.  First, though, the database system I’ve been shoveling stuff into for the last three days decided to overload and close up inexplicably. Our IT and outside corporation that composed the program have been scratching their heads over glitches for weeks but yesterday was an official meltdown.  That left me with mind numbing little to do, which  is an uncomfortable feeling. I always have SOMETHING I need to finish.  Even did the filing.  But there I was with the only one large repetitive job left involving the meltdown morass, and so the rest of the afternoon was spent trying to look busy, which I do by websurfing and chewing cinnamon gum so I won’t stuff everything else in my mouth, and generally wishing I were somewhere else.  Can’t leave the desk. Chained to the phone.

Should I go across the street to just see a chick flick, alone?.  Decided, no, not today, I should get home, I should take that StrengthFinder test to find out where my strengths are and reassess my inclinations/skills/future.  I should TAKE CHARGE OF MY LIFE.

So FINALLY FINALLY TICK TICK TICK it was TIME to leave and leave I did, out into a row of cars that suddenly inexplicably stuck still in a place it never sticks.  It rained yesterday, a fact which hadn’t dawned on me till I was at that point in the line, and OH YEAH Californians can’t drive in the rain (I recalled out from under my fog), a fact which you would think I would connect by now with habitual chaos.  If you smell moisture, be prepared to stay in one place for a very long time, because some idiot has invariably slammed into the guy in front of him.  As was the case, it turned out.  But I didn’t find that out until an hour later.

I (having been sorely afflicted by the frustration of things not functioning all day long) had decided Oh so misguidedly that I should take matters into my own hands, make a right turn off the one street to which I attach all my mental compass functions (Wilshire Boulevard) and venture out towards that street only a half mile down the road, which I was certain existed, named Olympic, and which I have often driven on in fact so I know it exists, but for some reason had removed itself from Los Angeles’ infrastructure, or perhaps even the planet, since my GPS didn’t see it either.  Off I drove on what appeared to be a simple right turn, and in three slight jogs I realized I was nowhere near anywhere I recognized.  This happens to me fairly often, since the 20% portion of the right hand side of my brain which should have been allotted to “Internal Compass” was reassigned just before birth to “Melodic Recognition and Tonal Memory.”   Which means if you want me to join your band, I can play just about anything you can hum for me in a couple of tries, but don’t ever let me drive the bus.

So this bozo was driving the bus back around and got stuck again going apparently EAST, (how did I do that?  It must have been that evil Santa Monica Boulevard, Sheryl Crow be damned), got stuck again in a queue, and soon enough discovered I was en route to the 405 freeway, the STUCKEST FREEWAY IN AMERICA.  I looked in vain for anything that would suggest which way I was facing and found a TESLA dealership sign (ah how science finds new ways to mock me) which suggested to me that I was facing exactly the opposite direction I should be heading.  AHA! said I, of course, sheng jing bing!, crossed wires again.  I made yet another right, and ended up under an overpass which was teeming with homeless men packing it in for the evening.  Is there anything else depressing you can add to this day?, I said to myself, after locking myself in and proceeding a few blocks further.  Dumb dumb dumb.  Should NOT have asked that.

Eventually seeing I was running out of gas, I turned into the one on the corner and filled up, after waiting for four cars (who all happened to have their tanks on the same side as mine) needed filling.  Off I went, certain I was heading in the right direction, which I was pretty sure was West.  But Los Angeles is not New York, and no fair grid exists.  Two blocks later it was apparent I’d been actually going North.  When I when I intersected with another No Choice But This Road situation, I was….. back at work.  Pretty much.  It was about a 45 minute circuit for nothing.

Hungry and angry and ready to go straight to wherever my dead mother was hiding and blame her for all my genetic shortcomings, I did what E.T. would do and phoned home. “I really REALLY have to get a physical compass, a BIG one that GLOWS IN THE DARK, for my car. Or a chauffeur,” I said, safely back on Wilshire Boulevard, which had emptied during my little impromptu tour.

Husband said he would work on it, encouraged me to stop and eat something since he knows how angry I get when my blood sugar plummets.  I opted for the quickest cheapest (only 10 dollars in my wallet) place near home.  About 40 minutes later, I was nearly there.  FIRETRUCK.  GIANT FIRETRUCK BLOCKING MY TACO BELL.  15 minutes after I nearly had a three alarm chili heart attack, I had rounded two corners more and finally ended up in their ordering line.  Mercifully, I was heard and ordered the food without a hitch.

Back on the way home now, only six more streets to go.  Light.  Another light.  Idiots clogging our neighborhood gas station and lined up out into the street because we have the lowest gas for miles around.  They HAD to broadcast that on the nightly news during the skyrocketing gas price crunch recently, and we’ve been invaded by cars from the entirety of the state since.  Around them.  Swing around the vegetable truck that always parks across the street, and click the garage gate opener.

NOTHING.  I’m at my OWN FRONT DOOR.  NOTHING.

I click in different directions, nothing.
I call the manager.  “Mail box full.”
I call Husband.  He comes down and uses the other clicker.  Nothing.
I’m going to call the police, a locksmith, the Governor, Sigourney Weaver with a flame thrower and a loader, SOMETHING.  FINALLY it opens inexplicably.

Then I spend the evening hour or two in a carbed out fog, wake up with indigestion at 1:00AM to an escaped pet rat, scramble around looking for her in a bunch of towels in the bathroom, find her and return her to prison, and wake up at 6:20 and come to work and I STILL HAVE NO DATABASE.

If there is a circle of Dante’s hell that didn’t get named, this is it, and it probably didn’t get named because unlike my fantastic luck, Dante never found his way out of the traffic jam.

I have a computer database that won’t accept any more entries and a lawyer who can’t spell the word “threat”, let alone “threatened”, and I am deeply, deeply, sad inside today.  But that has more to do with marriage and my inopportune proximity to Valentine’s day (tomorrow).  Last night we made a joke of struggling for a spot on the couch, and the topic of being the alpha dog came up.  He claims to be the alpha dog of the family.  Unfortunately so do I.  He said, basically, in so many passive-aggressive non-ways, But I am the alpha dog and you can’t be happy being the alpha dog.  Because I am the alpha dog.

I was just about to counter with, “But, I don’t want a submissive dog to my alpha-ness, I want an equal.”

But then I realized that the equal to equal is always a war with alpha dogs, isn’t it. And I realized how unhappy I am with it.  I am uncomfortable being controlled, I am uncomfortable and angry if I’m told I have to accept and not comment, and I’m furious if I’m told it will never change.
He pretty much said all those things within a couple of sentences, without even intending to piss me off.  In his offhand, alphadog automatic mode.

He said, “But I don’t argue with you because you always disagree with me anyway, so why should I continue?”
“But I’d rather we could communicate more anyway,”  I tried to say.  Don’t know if I said it that clearly as I have here.
“But I am me,” he said, “and I’m never going to be like that.  I’m not like _________.”

Never going to be like that, is what hit me.  I have set myself in a framework that is now an announced prison, with that statement.
I used to think he would flex with time.  But on this one point I’m not so sure.  He has moods where he becomes talkative, but he does not discuss much.  I don’t think he has a clue what romantic discussion is about or anything that would lead to it.  I don’t think actual emotional communication is even in his vocabulary.  He has only cried in front of me once, and that was when he was directly exasperated with me over some lack of communication we were having when he felt like I was still longing for someone I used to know, and I told him that was NOT the case and he dried right up.  I keep demanding communication, connection, closeness, and none of those things show any signs of coming any closer to my shores with time.  I let out my rope and let out my rope, and draw it in, and there’s nothing in the net.  Strangely, he doesn’t feel any lack.  He is content to live this way, laying our differences aside and ignoring so very much.

In the past, I would just close up shop, pack my stuff; chalk it up to being the wrong person, just move on.  But I’m 50 plus now.  I just recovered from ten years of artistic poverty by diving into a career disaster that should have panned out; and after a bunch of failed relationships, I just have SO little motivation to trust anyone or begin again.

But can I live with this alpha oppression and lonely obedience?  Can I just accept that things will never happen?  I wish I could push myself to feel intensely one way or the other; to motivate me to a liberation or a resignation.  But it’s really right up the middle.  It’s either “He drives me crazy, he does not love me, he knows not how to love anyone; I hate this”; or, “He’s a good man, he’s calm, he doesn’t demand much of me, he’s stable, he’s able, has no vices, he’s generally kind, I should be grateful.”

In Feng Shui, pink is the color best suited for things related to marriage, relationships, romance, because of its symbolism from the metal white and the red of fire.  Passionate flames forge a rigid metal into stronger, more resilient things.  I could choose a metal sword of white or the fire of red affections in the feng shui of it all.  But I cannot choose anything, I am pink.

There were so many questions I wanted to ask you after I found the kit in your bag that day.  You were already in the process of moving out after a three year relationship.

Why now?  was my first thought.  Why would you go to drugs, to cocaine or whatever it was that you were doing, maybe speed?, why now?  What did I do that drove you to it?  Or what was the deviation in you that wouldn’t allow you to take an honest route to a simpler life?  That was the first thought I had as I looked at the little zippered kit with its round circle of glass for a cutting surface and empty vials and the knife and other small curious items.  I was falling through the floor with a stomach full of lead and I wondered how you could have thought so little of me as to call me your mother in your head instead of your lover, and hide away this thing you were becoming, or had become.  What was it I did that made you keep me separate.  That made you decide I could not be trusted to love or help or do what you needed.  I wafted further and further away on a boat of confusion over the leaden sea, down and away and far.

Then later, they all came to me, in bits, over time.  The secrets.  It was almost as if I heard you confessing them to me in my subconscious, long after you were gone.

That day that we went to Canada and stopped into that dilapidated hotel you said a friend had recommended, but it didn’t look livable.  You went upstairs and I didn’t.  We left, you said it was ridiculous, we could get another hotel.  I paid for the hotel we finally chose, in part, and your mother ultimately paid the other half.  That little secret upstairs dawned on me later.  How you must have gone up to buy drugs.

Then there was Jeanine.  Such a fun friend the first time we went up there.  The clubs were so full then, all of us in our black and silver finery, it was such a time.  She was so perked and goofy and took us around and we met all these people, all of whom we didn’t meet again.  The next time we went up, Jeanine was no longer taking your calls, not interested, having gone so straight, so out of the club scene.  I didn’t know that included the reason she was connected with you, which was drugs.

There was the strange way you could sleep and sleep and sleep, and stay up and stay up and stay up.  I really should have known that was drugs.  My fault; I should have connected it, but I didn’t, I trusted you.  You kept it so well hidden.  You pretended to sleep when I was going to bed.  I knew you were struggling to wake up on the days when you couldn’t seem to lift yourself out of bed.  I got you up.  I actually liked it.  I kissed you, I cajoled you, I pulled on you.  I made you coffee.  I made a way for you to be normal.  When you were working or schooling, I made sure you got up.  But the work and the schooling on the side eventually fizzled, with your discontent, with your lack of focus, and ultimately with your own complete exhausted lack of interest.  I always wondered how much more you would have become if only you had let me know what you were dealing with.  If you had let us know why struggling through this wasn’t working.  All the opportunities you might have claimed, that I would have been happy to provide and support, but you wouldn’t let me, because you clung to your secret instead.

There was the nervous way you would get into repeating yourself when you were in a rant mood.  Everyone knew it.  Here he goes again.  No way of arguing with him in that mood.  It wasn’t a mood actually, and I talked you down and tried to have patience each time it happened.  Because I cared for you.  I cared what others thought of you.  But even I couldn’t keep caring when you assailed even me and my beliefs.  It seemed only to give you pleasure to win on your chosen point, in a crazed, unfazed way.  Now when I think of this, I’m only saddened, and I wonder whether you even heard what I’d had to say in any of it.  It was nothing but a big argumentative fog that we couldn’t get out from under.

There was the “friend” we went up to see in Canada who claimed he would put us up and then backed out.  Why exactly did he back out I wondered?  You made a large furious episode of it.  But I could only wonder, did he refuse you because of the drugs?  Or had he only been willing to give you some, and this had all just been a huge pretext for getting some, and then we were again on our way, with me footing the bill for where we stayed?

There was the lice episode that turned the house upside down with cleaning for two days.  In all my life I had heard of it, but never seen any, never known anyone who could be anywhere where they could be caught.  Only much later that little tinkling connection was made in my head.  You. You had been somewhere you shouldn’t. You brought them home.

But what makes me furious is that it makes me doubt everything now.  All the beautiful things I experienced with you are suspect now.  The things you bought me.  The morning when you were asleep, when your hair lay on the pillow in the windowlight like a drawing by Alphonse Mucha.  The sleeping image of you that I cherished.  Were you just…. under?  It all became a sad doubt.

The nosebleeds that I nursed you with.  You claimed it was your mother’s Chinese medicine.  Of course.  Why didn’t I realize it.  Now all the care and worry, I realize was misspent.

We went to the dermatologist together.  Both of us had problems, but yours…. how much of it was just self-inflicted?  Psoraisis is worsened or bettered by internal effects.  Now I can’t know if all the effort I put in to helping you with it was worth anything, or just running around in circles.

The time I begged you to quit smoking.  You tried, and the one day you came in to me, looking wild-eyed and desperate, like you were going through drug withdrawal.  I had thought it was the cigarettes, gave you a massage, put you to sleep.  Guess what?  It Was drug withdrawal.

The only thing I can gather that helps at all comes from this moment.  Maybe you did try, for me, a little.  But you couldn’t keep it up.

But the worst is that, after you had gone and there was nothing left, I came to realize I would never know whether or when you had actually loved me.  If you had.   I would never know if you were You when you made me the silver valentine box, when you hugged me in the kitchen, when you called me little names, when we danced, I can never be sure anymore who was talking.  I can never know if you were really with me at all.  I suspect that you loathed something in yourself so much that you never really knew how I thought of you, that I actually adored the way you looked, and moved, and felt in my hands, and that I tried to see your way for you out of that tiny place you were living in in your past.  How I wanted you to be present with me. But you pulled away.

I have heard you’re much worse now.  Worse drugs came to you later.  Your family finding out, rehab, identity crises, arrests, your child birthed by someone you never really could maintain, and given to adoption, further problems, and how all of it came slamming back to you.

So I can only hope that no matter what you have become by now, at least you know that I was really there, that I would have helped, that I would have loved.  Because I did love you.  Perhaps you’ll connect that sometime.  Maybe you wanted me to see you and discover it, and hated me for not seeing it.  Maybe you hated me for being so facile.  But let me say that my lack of touching the bottom and seeing the darkness was because I saw only the hopes for you.  Maybe you can fault me, since they were My hopes for you and not yours.  That’s true.  But you didn’t give me the truth.  And I loved the truths I did know about you.  I loved your fragility (even though I didn’t know how devastating it would become).  I loved the way you styled yourself and lived your own fantastic idea of life, no matter how outlandish anyone thought it was.  I loved that you treated me preciously when we were together the first two years.  I loved that person I knew as you.  And of course there was the best sex either of us had ever had.  I was entranced with you, the way you had loved me, the way you looked when you danced, the funny small things we shared only between us.  I was just in love with you.  That was all.

Just after I found that kit, I called your brother.  Not to rat on you, but to tell him to help you, because you were already lost to me.  He told me that I shouldn’t worry, you would never be that stupid, I had nothing to worry about.  I hear he’s not speaking to you anymore.

He also told me that day that I should remember that love was just “chemicals in the brain.”  That’s how he put it.  It broke my heart to hear it, because that meant no one would know the truth of what I’d felt.  But all these years later, I can tell  you, it’s not.  No matter what became of you, I can still give you one sure gift.  The love I gave you then was real.  Very real.  You can know that now, now matter what’s become of you.  I have no sympathy for your bad choices, and a great deal of bitterness over the sadness you caused others, but the love I felt for the person I knew to be true underneath everything, I still love if only in a memory.  I’m sorry to see you go away bit by bit.  Though the rest might grow unrecognizable, I will always remember that person, and love that one, that him, the you I knew.  I did love him.