After nearly two years’ hiatus, I have returned to my cabin in the woods of Nova Scotia. This is a quick trip as I was planning to spend two weeks in August here, but I will be working for an ad agency in Irvine beginning June 25, so I left yesterday (June 13) and will return the night before I begin the ad-agency gig.

I’ve made a fire in the wood stove. I have always been a little unclear about how to tell if the damper is open. It seems a bit smoky in here, yet smoke is coming out the chimney. A few logs are putting off a lot of heat. I’ll just let them burn out and not put any more on. I don’t want to smother myself my first night here!

The glow of a fire always takes me back to Pt. Arena, because fires were the way I stayed warm. I can’t help associating them with Mike and crazy sex.

Helma, Mike’s mother, is visiting a friend in Monterey Park for a few weeks. I spent last Saturday with her, listening to her talk for six hours straight about Mike, her other kids, her deceased husband, her youth in Germany, her former job at a daycare. Oddly, I didn’t mind this one-way conversation. I really wanted to listen to all that she said. I hadn’t seen her for something like eight years.

Helma really didn’t want to say goodbye to me. She had a look on her face that said she wished Mike had stayed with me, as if by looking at me she could see an entirely different fate for Mike, one that included me but not his death more than a year ago. Also in her look was a knowing that she would never see me again, even though I had said several times that she, Aaron, and I should get together before she left. (This was before I made plans to go to Nova Scotia.) This is the same knowing that I had when I said goodbye to Mike in January of 2000. I wept so terribly, and he wondered why. He said he had never seen me so emotional about a leave-taking before. Though my mind did not yet realize it, my heart knew that I would never touch him again.

I remember Mike saying to me one night as he held me in bed that it was his wish that we’d always have a place like this. At the time, he had meant a place like his trailer in the woods, where we could be quiet, surrounded by beauty, secluded enough for him to chop wood in the nude, as he had done that afternoon. Well, he had such a place until the day he died, and I have such a place now. Strange how people get their wishes, except not in the way they ever imagined.

White, pink, magenta, and indigo lupens adorn my table, picked this afternoon along the dirt road to my cabin.

As I type this, I’m looking out the dining room window at the dense tree cover in the waning light. This particular place and this place of Nova Scotia in general are so beautiful. I am looking forward to the end of the spring semester next year when I plan to drive here and spend six months. I’d like to see this cabin in fall, winter, and spring too.

I’m looking forward to a quieter way of life, one that includes, as I heard on the radio today, schoolchildren singing to butterflies in a garden they had planted especially to attract these winged beauties and news broadcasts that profile a crime wave in the province—a thief who steals flowers from graves in a cemetery outside Halifax.

I wish the dear son were here. I would like to share this cabin with him. Other families have vacation getaways, but we never did when he was a child. Now that I do have a cabin, I would like to instill in him a sense of place, somewhere he can always come to for quiet, beauty, and nourishment. As it is, he is job-hunting, as he wants to save up enough money to go to Europe in September.

The fire is dying, the woods are getting dark, and I am tired, having been up since 6 o’clock yesterday morning. Good night, Nova Scotia. I’m so glad I have this cabin, as it was my wish too to always have a place of quiet, beauty, and sanctuary.

Feeling Like a Loser

I received a poor evaluation from my department chair. I've been teaching on and off for 20 years, and it seems I'm no good at it.

This is all very strange to me. I put in so many hours every week, grading papers, creating hand-outs, writing tests and practice tests, on and on, to the point that I'm only making about $15 an hour when every task is accounted for. I keep my office hours, and I am forever telling students that if they can't make these hours, let me know and I'll meet them at some other time.

Often students smile at me, tell me thank you, let me know how much the class has meant to them.

But then I hear from the department chair that more students come to him with complaints than come to him from all the other professors combined. How can that be? Am I really so awful and yet the students smile to my face but then stab me in the back?

This is just one more area of my life in which I really don't understand what's going on. Why aren't things working out, given my positive attitude and my hard work? What's missing?

If I'm a flop at teaching, in what other arenas am I a loser? Let me count the ways.

* Relationships--In the past year, I have had four dates.
* Money--Always a struggle, though I work my tail off.
* Health--Some days the chest pain and shortness of breath are so bad, I think I'm going to fall over and die.
* Friends--Mostly, they're busy. I had a great time last weekend at the ninth annual chick cabin getaway weekend in Green Valley Lake, but that's just once a year.
* Career--See above. I want so badly to make it to May of 2008, so that I can leave Cal State and have health insurance for the rest of my life, but the chair seems hell-bent on canning me. How tragic that would be--after teaching here for 20 years, I'd be one semester away from leaving and he'd kick me out the door, with nothing.

So, folks, I'm feeling a little down today. And I've been feeling a little down the last couple of days.

I know I'm not a loser. I know I have a lot of wonderful things to offer the world. It's just that the world doesn't seem much interested.

The Son Turns 21!

Today my son turns 21. How can this be? All I did was feed and hydrate him, and he’s grown to 6’6.” Miracle Grow indeed!

Thank you, Mr. Son, for 21 wonderful years. It’s your birthday, but I’m convinced that I’ve received the gift.

From the first time I saw you on the ultrasound film, I felt a connection. Following your birth, the alien being that you were felt a kinship with the alien being that I have always been.

As you grew and began saying the remarkable things that all young people say, I listened, unlike most parents, who are too busy fiddling with their cell phones or watching TV, or who simply dismiss their progeny’s wisdom as nonsense or lies. And so you told me about fairies—where they lived, what they did at night, and why not everyone can see them. You let me in on what had happened before you were born and about the beautiful ghost who floated down the hall in front of the bathroom. You revealed your theory of “why there is so much fighting on this planet” and how “men have arrows sticking into their hearts that make them sad, and they don’t even know they can take them out” and how the whole world is “like a piece of beef jerky, and all the people and the cars and the buildings are the pepper on the jerky.” You spoke of how you want to have a “girl child someday” because you’re a boy and you want to “learn about the girl energy.” You said that you had seen Jesus at the swimming pool and behind you in line at Disneyland. You spoke of the “shadow people” whom you saw in the corners of your eyes—“they’re not scary, they’re just there sometimes, you know.” And you pointed to George Bush Senior on a television screen and wondered, “Why is that man always lying?” But you countered that pointed realism by turning and waving to all the people in a donut shop, calling out to them, “Have a good life!” then exiting without a look back.

Throughout your two decades here, you have continued to impress me. I remember you as a preschooler, kneeling before rocks and kissing them, telling them that you remembered them from the last time you were at the Japanese Gardens. Or talking to ants or singing songs that came to you “from inside somewhere” before you dropped off to sleep or jumping about in the ocean, chanting “what a jolly good day to be a frog.”

Your insights into people and the workings of the world have become deeper and more refined with age. A few years back, I asked you what you thought of God, and your answer amazed me. I have found the world basically divides on this point: Those who have had some mystical or religious experience believe; those who have not, don’t. But you, who have seen ghosts and fairies, who have dreamed the same dreams I have on the same nights, who have seen “the other side,” did not fall into either camp. You said that beings such as angels and ghosts simply occupy different dimensions; that in no way indicates that there is some overarching force at work here. Wow, I thought, my son is truly a free-thinker. I had never before heard or read of someone take this stance. An agnostic in the noblest sense.

You are an interesting guy, to be sure. A history major who is fully grounded in the present. An optimist who sees the utter nonsense of humanity—how nothing ever changes, just one group of power-hungry people replacing another, over and over and over again. A full-on man who is the most evolved feminist I have ever encountered. A pacifist and a gentle soul who surprised me yet again last summer, when he saw a man “play-strangling” his girlfriend and said with the intensity and single-mindedness of a kamikaze pilot, “If I ever see a man hurting a woman, I’ll kill him.”

And so, as you celebrate the magical 21, knowing that all the world’s your oyster, let me be one of many who raises her glass to you today. May you continue to impress and surprise me—and all who have the pleasure of knowing you.

Dating Insecurity

Why is it that the only men who are interested in dating me are painfully insecure?

These troubled souls fall into two general categories. One: he has not been with a woman for seven years, and I am the first woman he has asked out. On a first date, he tells me about how I will meet his mother and siblings and cousins, about how he’ll take me to exotic places, about how grateful he is that I am going out with him. On and on, he tells me how playful and fun he is, yet he is stiff and dull with me. He has decided already that I am the perfect woman, the right woman for him. I am like no other woman; I am “so nice, so sweet.” All the while I’m thinking, “I can’t take on this big of a project.”

When I point out to him that this is only our first date—and, as I know, but he does not yet understand, also our last date—he becomes irritated and says that I should just go with the flow. At this point, I’m thinking, “I could be home right now, scrubbing my kitchen floor. Or arranging paper clips on my desk. Or staring at a blank wall. What was I thinking!”

Two: he has had lots of sex with lots of women, but he still needs constant reinforcement and affirmation from me—even though we have not had sex at all. He is as touchy as some women—the kind I try to avoid. A benign observation, such as “You don’t strike me as an outdoorsy guy,” becomes a huge insult. Again, I think, “I can’t take on this big of a project.”

Both types of insecure men may be very successful. They may make a lot of money. They may have fantastic business sense. But for some reason, they are tragically insecure one-on-one.

It is my own damn fault, of course. I say “yes” to a date, knowing they are not right for me. I operate under the principle that everyone should be given at least one chance, and, besides, they may surprise me and transform into an engaging, emotionally healthy, dynamic, playful men. I mean, that is in the realm of possibilities, right?

Well, I guess it’s possible. But I really need to be secure in my intuition. It has never steered me wrong yet. Every time I’ve thought, “Warning! Warning! Insecure man! Back away!” I’ve been right. It’s time to say "no" from the get-go and let these men play out their insecurities with women who are willing to take on big projects.

My First Rock Concert, My First Big Spender

This past week I experienced two “firsts”—my first rock concert and the first time a date spent more than a few bucks on me. How, you ask, did I get this far in life without experiencing both of these phenomena many times over? That is a mystery.

The Who at the Long Beach Arena. This was near-mystical experience, complete with flashing lights, crazy screens of ‘70s scenes, and what can only be called an altar, though I suspect most would say it was a stage. The much-larger-than-life images of flower children, half-naked druggies, lava lamps, and Twiggy were mesmerizing, and made me swell with pride. “I was alive during that time,” I silently chanted inside my sound-assaulted brain.

What was I doing in the ‘60s and ‘70s rather than going to rock concerts and getting high? I was “doing my own thing,” you might say—taking long walks in the woods and meadows; reading, an awful lot of reading, especially Egyptology, astronomy, and the occult; writing poems and journaling; praying, at least an hour a day; fashioning altars from flowers, grass, and other natural items; pen paling with Fut Lui in Hong Kong and Shirley Fiddell in Auckland; and cultivating mystical experiences of a non-Who sort, those arrived at through long periods of silence or simply “looking out” at the world and observing the air.

And what of the second “first”? That would be Alan, spending nearly $140 on me in one sitting—my Who ticket, a bottle of water, a hot dog, parking, and a concert T-shirt. And this was only our second date. Is this the kind of treatment other women are accustomed to? I wondered. And here I have spent my entire adult life having one-time dates with men who couldn’t even buy me a cup of coffee.

I don’t know if I’ll ever go to a rock concert again, at least not on my dime. A hundred-plus bucks is a lot of cash for a mystical experience, as I’m accustomed to getting those for free. It was fantastic, and I wouldn’t say no if anyone offered, but I can do a whole bunch of things with $140.

And Alan? In many ways we’re very different, especially on some core levels. But he’s playful—a great rarity these days, at least outside Ireland. And creative—he makes his living singing telegrams while dressed as Marilyn, Borat, or a Hooters girl. That’s clever.

Firsts are fun. I’m going to make a point of experiencing more firsts—a job that pays more than 30 grand a year, a B&B weekend with a lover, and one of my short stories published in a prominent magazine. Add to that a quiet living space—no traffic noise, no car alarms, no planes landing or taking off, no screaming neighbors. And why not go for the big time—a day of perfect health, the first in a lifetime from here on out of perfect health. Ah, now that would be a mystical experience for which I’d glad lay down 140 bucks!

Valentine's Gifts from Left Field

This Valentine’s Day three men surprised me with expressions of their love.

First, the dear son bought me a pair of earrings, though he confessed they had been a “just because” purchase. (He’s good at expressing his feelings; he’s just not too keen on making sure they adhere to a calendar.)

Then, at the end of a long, hard Feb. 13, I was greeted by a priority package tucked behind my screen door. It contained two hand-carved hearts—one of redwood, the other of heartwood—fashioned for me by my friend Roger, a reclusive “desert rat” whom I met almost 17 years ago while he was living in a ghost town south of Death Valley. Roger and I have stayed in touch all these years through snail mail and occasional surprise packages such as this. In his enclosed letter, Roger wrote that he had made two hearts because I am a “doubly special lady.”

And then, yesterday evening, on Valentine’s Day itself, friend and colleague Chris invited me out for coffee. There he surprised me with a metallic-red gift bag with bright red ribbons. “Look inside,” he cajoled. “I’m not sure I can get past the bag,” I replied, captivated by its show-stopping intensity.

Inside were ranch-dip-and-baby-carrot and peanut-butter-and-celery packages from Trader Joe’s. Chris knows my health hurdles preclude chocolate consumption, so he bought me something healthful instead. What a cutie!

Besides being my ally and personal comedian within a generally Machiavellian and humorless workplace, Chris is my good buddy. He’s a fun guy, and, God bless him, he’s real! He got a few sustained hugs for thinking of me on what has often been a challenging day.

So there we have it—love from left field. And what makes this all the more beautiful is that, unlike so many years before, when I was full of listlessness and lamentation due to my “lack” of love, this year I was nearly oblivious to all the fuss. I was at peace with my solitary existence, though, of course, I would jump at the chance of romance. But since it’s not here, I haven’t been wailing over it.

Thanks, guys, for fortifying the smile on my face. I wish you, me and everyone else a bunch of all kinds of love to make it through the rest of the year.

A Different Kind of Valentine's Day

For the past, um, let’s say 26 years, Valentine’s Day has been kind of rough. Back then, I was a freshly married woman whose husband did the freshly-married-husbandly thing of showering me with cards, roses and a romantic dinner. In short, the classic—or may I say, cliché—Valentine’s Day expression of love, affection and mass marketing.

That, unfortunately, was the last time a man with whom I was romantically involved paid any attention to Feb. 14. Sure, there was the year when my friend Rob slipped a chummy valentine under my door to cheer me up. And the year when my son, then only 10 or 11, bought the red rose that he knew my then-boyfriend would not. These were sweet gestures and much appreciated, but let’s face it: Valentine’s Day is for lovers, not friends and family.

And so each year around this time, I have gone into a funk, wondering why love—or even a cheap thrill—is so elusive. Intellectual truisms that VD is just a means for card companies and florist shops to make money have proved unsatisfying. So what! I don’t mind them cashing in if only I could hit the jackpot too.

Things are different this year, I’m happy to report. I am not feeling the dread and hopelessness that I have before during the first couple weeks of February. It’s not that I’ve “given up” or that I no longer desire a relationship. It’s just that the desperation has departed.

I still hold my pillow at night as if it were the man I would love and the man who would also love me. When I embrace my “man pillow,” I get a true surge of happiness—the pillow feels good, the covers are cozy about my body, and I’m smiling widely, light with something I know not what. There’s no longer the tears that follow from thinking that this is the closest I’ve gotten in years to a relationship.

VD is a week away, but I don’t see my mood altering as the day draws nigh. Just look at how cute I am in this picture I took just moments ago. Look at the glow in those eyes, the brightness in the air about me. If some fantastic guy can’t see the beauty here, well, I guess I’ll just have to keep beaming until someone does. Until then, I’ll let my love shine out to the world—and keep hugging that huggable man pillow.

Feeling Good

So often lately I catch myself smiling, not at any particular person or thing, but just at all that is. Or I sense that my eyes are wide open and bright, that I’m glowing, the spark of life shining out, vibrancy giving me a lightness in my step.

Some might think I’m in love. After all, it’s damn near Valentine’s Day.

And, yes, I am in love…though no one’s in love with me. I write that, not in the lovelorn way I uttered those words in 2003, when I was giddy and squishy after a man had kissed me following 15 years of waiting for him to realize I was a woman. I had asked my class to excuse my behavior and the little mistakes I was making on the board. “I’m in love, you see,” I told my students, and they giggled, pleased for me. Later, I confided in one of them, “Yes, I said I’m in love, but that doesn’t mean anyone is in love with me.” After several days, the kisser hadn’t called or e-mailed, much less sent roses. After a little bit more of this, I fell out of love too.

But what I’m currently feeling isn’t like this. It’s not like this at all. The emphasis is not on the absence of love coming my way, but that the love is non-specific, non-personal. No one loves me. Rather, all loves me. Love is coming at me from all directions.

If an outsider would take inventory of my life, he might say there’s no reason to be feeling so good.
• My health has been severely challenged lately.
• My support system is limited.
• My current job pays poorly, is often meaningless, doesn’t make use of my talents and intelligence, demands long hours, is conducted under shabby working conditions, and is plagued by passionless students, unsupportive co-workers and a back-stabbing department chair.
• My apartment is in a marginal part of town with neighbors who enjoy beeping their horns at all hours of the night.
• I have no social life beyond a coffee every month or two with a friend.

And yet when I am alone in my apartment or reading a book in a coffeehouse or walking down the street or getting my groceries, I feel good. I am ever-delighted by the beauty and peacefulness of ordinary objects and the empty air between them.

Quite often I am in my kitchen, preparing a meal or washing dishes, when I look into the adjoining living room at the desk chair in front of the computer. The chair becomes a boundary of sorts, but my vision is focused on the 20 feet or so between the chair and me. The longer I gaze at the air, the more I feel an animation of the space, or of space itself, the ground that allows things to be. I am in the presence of presence, the great I Am. I am happily drowning in the present moment.

Of course, when I am interacting with humanity, it is more difficult to maintain this presence. I’m still working on that. But in these pure moments of no-thought, love streams in.

And sometimes I am able to bring that peace into challenging situations with other humans. Sometimes. Like tonight when I received an e-mail from a friend who has moved from So Cal to pursue a new life in the idyllic Northwest. She had misinterpreted something I’d written, believing that I was judging her when I was truly expressing concern, hoping she was doing OK. Her e-mail calling me on this perceived judgment was surprising, but not unsettling, as it surely would have been a year ago or even six months ago.

I’m feeling good, but I couldn’t explain it to someone who calculates happiness by the number of one’s friends, the size of one’s paycheck, the existence of a significant other or the results of lab tests. When I’m completely in this moment, there’s no room for all of that, only room enough for what’s right here in front of me. And that includes the empty air.

Magic's in the Air: The Tale of Darlene and Ken...and Me

All of a sudden, after two years of applying for positions and interviewing in vain, I have five job prospects.

I’ve already worn my one “interview outfit” to the first round of questioning and can’t wear the same to Round 2. That’s why, this afternoon, I was searching for a suit at consignment and high-end thrift stores.

Before I found my 100-percent-silk, forest-green, $20 Anne Taylor suit—in my size!—at the American Cancer Society store, I happened across Darlene and Ken at the Seal Beach Pier. Sometimes people, objects or events hold messages for us, if we recognize them as such. This was definitely the case with Darlene and Ken.

As I walked along Main Street, eying the merchandise in the shops, but delighting more in the colors and shapes of the objects than in the prospect of owning them, I had the thought, “Every week I will go out into the world and encounter people. At least once during a week, I will make a point to do so, and by so doing I might form friendships or—miracle of miracles—even a love relationship.

“That’s it— I’ll show myself off to the world. Something I haven’t been doing much of for the past 10 months. I stopped reviewing performances for a local paper back in May, and there went my social life. The friends I had invited to these events as my guests have dropped off, save one. Since then, I have worked and stayed home. Not much else. Today marks a new beginning.”

I strolled the pier, smiling inwardly at this simple idea, looking out at the gray, pensive sky; the high-rises of downtown Long Beach; and two surfers who were waiting for the perfect wave and not doing much with the perfectly good ones that were coming their way. I smiled at the back side of a young man playing his guitar to the ocean, and I must have been smiling at everyone and everything—that deep feeling of connection with all that is pervading my mood—because a man in his mid-60s stopped to smile back and add, “Hi, pretty lady.”

Just like the job prospects, this man was an unexpected bit of magic, as I couldn’t remember a man saying something like that to me in a very long time, maybe years. A shift is definitely occurring, I thought, a beautiful shift.

As I walked back toward Main Street, I encountered another man, this one younger than the flatterer by about 15 years. He was taking a photo of his girlfriend or wife. As I so often do, I asked them if they wanted me to take a photo of both of them. They were very happy that I had asked, but even more so, they were just plain happy.

I asked where they were from, and they said, “Here.” Then Darlene gushed, “But this pier is really special to us.”

“Oh, yes?” I queried, always the journalist.

“It’s quite a story,” Darlene said, smiling at Ken.

“Oh, good! I love stories!”

Darlene and Ken had known each other in high school, but both of them had been too shy to make a move. After graduation, they’d gone their separate ways until late last year, when a friend of Darlene’s gave her Ken’s address. At first she had the kind of idea I often get, only Darlene didn’t act on it—show up at Ken’s doorstep unannounced. Instead, she sensibly wrote him a Christmas card and enclosed her phone number. Ken called, and they have hit it off big time. I could see that—they were even color-coordinated. (Yikes!)

“Oh, wow!” I said. “Now I’ve got to take your picture!”

They really thought that was cute, but I suspect they are in that drunken state where they think most everything is cute.

We parted ways, but later I encountered them again, sitting on a park bench and giving each other close-lipped pecks. Then it was my turn to gush, telling them how inspirational their story is and how thankful I am to have met them.

Of course, I thought of Naguib Akbar, the playful, doe-eyed, motorcycle-riding Pakistani with the backpack full of hashish who I dated as an 18-year-old and foolishly let slip away. Naguib wrote two letters to me c/o my mother’s address, the last one 25 years ago. I responded to neither, as my then-husband was jealous of Naguib—I had left Naguib to be with him—and I knew how unlike Naguib he was. Three years ago, I wrote a letter to Naguib at a Florida address I had found on peoplesearch.com. I never heard from him, so I sent him a shorter letter about a month ago. Perhaps Darlene and Ken are a love talisman, as it has also been three decades since I saw Naguib.

But Naguib or not, new love interest or not, even new job or not, a deep contentment and, yes, magic fill me to the top today. Sitting as I am now in my simple apartment with my simple furniture and belongings, I feel bright and “open” just staring at the empty space between these objects. This, too, is magic.

Drugs and Angels

I’m spending Thanksgiving weekend recovering from heart surgery and counting my blessings. Number one on my gratitude list is that I’m home, not in the torture chamber commonly referred to as a hospital.

Though I’ve been in the hospital many times during my 48 years and things have never been pleasant, this visit took the cake.

IVs are always difficult, since I don’t appear to have any veins, and those that can be seen quickly flee under the needle. Several doctors have wondered aloud if I am alive, as they often can’t find my pulse.

Nurses and phlebotomists—those vampires who roam the floors, taking “samples” for the lab—find a vein and poke it, only to have it “hide.” Not to let a vein get the better of them, they withdraw the needle slightly, wiggle it about, and reinsert it deeper and maybe a little to the side in futile attempts to stab and subjugate the rebel vessel. In response to my wincing and thrashing, the vampires finally give up on one site and try another, with the same results. Usually the fourth vein is a charm. If only there were a way we could skip attempts one, two and three.

Though the vein-vanquishing and blood-letting were as dramatic as ever, the actual surgery was the show stopper. In the past I have proved highly sensitive to sedatives. While other patients chat with the physicians during procedures, I am unable to tell them my name. Though I have always been given the normal dose anyway, this time—the time when I’m having HEART SURGERY—someone must have decided to cut back—as an experiment perhaps.

I’m on the table, I’ve been given the anesthesia, the surgeons are poised to make an incision in the artery in my groin and thread a catheter up to my heart. I say as clear as pain, “I’m not feeling the drugs,” to which someone replies, “You will.” Yes, but I want to feel them NOW! No matter, the incision is made and I begin wailing, “Oh, God! Oh God!” I’m feeling every move they’re making. Someone asks, “Where does it hurt?” All these years of medical school and he asks me that! Where you’re making the incision! Where do you think it’s hurting!

I hear some talk about milligrams of this and milligrams of that, but all that keeps coming to me is pain. I can’t move my arms or legs, as I’ve been tightly packed with rolled blankets and rails. The only thing I can move is my mouth and my left hand, which is clawing at my left thigh in agony.

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” I’m crying, not as a curse but as a prayer, as in “Oh, God, deliver me from this torture. And while you’re at it, could you smite the anesthesiologist?”

Now lest you think I’m a wimp, I’m on this table because of a heart attack I had a few years back, when is not exactly certain, since I didn’t go to the emergency room at the time. I’d been having so much pain in my chest and arms that I didn’t see anything different from the heart attack and the feeling of having been kicked in the chest by a horse that had been with me for months.

Finally, just as they’re finishing up, someone says that they’re getting me morphine. What, as a prize for having endured this?

The morphine comes, and, sure enough, that does the trick. My body is so relaxed that I have the muscle control of a bowl of Jello, just in time to be wheeled to the recovery room.

That night when the nurse removes the catheter from the artery, I have surgery déjà vu. The intense, searing pain returns as she wrenches the catheter from my body, through the hard tissue and blood clot that were formed during the traumatic surgery. She does this without any pain medication, though because of my cries, she calls for morphine. Because healthcare workers have been known to become addicts, the stuff is kept under lock and key. Morphine cannot be “at the ready,” as I suggested, just in case a patient needs it. If it is checked out of the supply room, it has to be used. So, I was squirming for 15 minutes before the morphine arrived.

My brother called last night from Wisconsin to see how things had gone. When I told him of this m.o. of giving morphine after the trauma is over, he quipped that that’s what happens on the battlefield. How right he is! Think how much better it would be to go into combat on morphine, before you get shot to hell. Another item on my gratitude list: I’m not in a war zone.

So, how was the morphine? Great. Not worth the trauma I went through to get it, but it was great nonetheless. A delicious feeling of being completely incapacitated, floating, unable to move. I simply closed my eyes and drifted off to vivid, random imagery, like a can of vegetables from which a man in a green zoot suit walked off the label and tipped his hat to me, or a large cat that transformed into a medieval monk reciting prayers in a belfry.

I also experienced some tactile and auditory sensations, but I don’t think this was the morphine, as they occurred many hours following the dose. Someone briefly held my feet while I lay in bed. And I heard the soft whispers of a woman from the other side of the footboard. I like to think these were not hallucinations induced by the residue of pain medication, but an answer, delayed as my cries for morphine had been, to my prayers. “Oh, God! Oh, God!” I had pleaded, and God had answered, sending angels to gently hold my ankles and whisper softly to me in the night. And that’s really something to be thankful for!

Any Suggestions?

I was rejected by a prostitute.

I hadn’t known this was possible. Isn’t a prostitute supposed to do anything you want—for a price? Isn’t a prostitute the last refuge for the ugly, the misunderstood, the deviant and the gross? Granted, I’m not an expert on this subject. In fact, this was my very first solicitation, and I was shut out before we even met.

I found this man on craigslist. Where else, huh? My friend had recently moved a thousand miles from her home and was having fantastic luck with craigslist, averaging three dates a week. As I’ve only had two dates all year, I thought I’d give Craig a try.

I corresponded with a few raunchy men—I couldn’t seem to locate any decent ones—but none of them stepped up to the plate and suggested we meet. My sexually satisfied friend had strongly advised that I stop making the first move, as I had asked five men out this year. Two had come up with I’ve-got-to-wash-my-hair excuses, whereas three had stood me up. Not a great track record, so I took her advice and played coy, which also yielded nothing.

Then I saw “Massage with guaranteed orgasm.” For just $75 an hour, Jim would come to my apartment and provide two services, let’s call them A and B. His ad said he would work with any woman and had recently pleased a 75-year-old. I wrote to Jim, expressing my interest in A, but not B. Truth be told, B has never done anything for me, whereas A figures prominently in my fantasy life. Jim replied that I needed to find someone else, he wasn’t interested.

Rejected by a prostitute, who would’ve thought!

Not sure where to go from here. It’s been nine years since a man shared my bed and seven years since I shared his. And this man died in April, so that road is blocked.

What else can I do but continue to be the tall, thin, beautiful, vibrant blonde I am and to keep my heart open for a man who might notice? And, please, if you have any suggestions, let me know.

Tights, the Ultimate Man-Deflector

Put down your pepper spray. And don’t waste time gaining a hundred extra pounds. If you want to keep men away, start wearing colored tights. Yes, those look-at-me opaque cousins of suntan nylons are more effective than bad breath, body odor, or picking your nose.

Tights, my friend Beverly told me today, are what have been keeping half of humanity from talking with me. For 15 years or more, I’ve been asking my friends why men avoid me, even though I’m a tall, good-looking, slender blonde with a happy disposition. Finally, finally, finally, after years of begging my male and female friends to let me in on the secret, Beverly revealed the truth. Men avoid me because of my tights. They are intimidated by them. Men don’t want other men looking at their woman if it’s not for the right reason—she’s hot. If she’s just creative or, god forbid, doing her own thing, that makes men feel insecure and uncomfortable.

I have always loved my tights—pink, yellow, red, gray, maroon, blue, green, black and patterned. I thought of them as an outward expression of the pixie within. Besides, they have a nice “pull” to them—tights are tight. So it’s not just that I’m decorating the world with my legs, I’m giving myself a teeny pleasure with every step I take.

I always thought that the man who is matched to me would love my tights, be attracted to me because I was going my own way. He wouldn’t want just another Nordstrom cardboard cutout, but a woman who was different, special, unique, me.

The man who is matched to me would have an instant sense of knowing that this lady with the long vermillion legs before him would be as “interesting” in bed as she was out and about in the world. For the right man, my tights and my scarves would be secret signs, messages meant for him alone. My guy would think, “Ah, I can just see how she would use those scarves and those tights. I’m so glad my house has rafters and my bed has posts.”

To be told that just the opposite is true, that men are scared of a woman who is unique, is quite disturbing. They don’t want a challenge, they don’t want to get hooked up with a dreamer. That kind of man is only found in the movies.

Men are terribly insecure and their egos are extremely fragile, Beverly says. You can’t let them know you’re someone special from the get-go. That would send them running. (And these are the people we’ve allowed to rule the world for the past several millennia! Girls, let’s rethink the game plan.)

Of course, her theory doesn’t account for the fact that it’s been too hot to wear tights for the past six months. Yet in all that time, no man who has seen my bare, unadorned legs has asked me out. So to hell with Bev’s theory! Let me put on the pumpkin ones. I feel the weather changing.

A Move Made, A Move Delayed

Moves are difficult. Not just for the hours of packing and unpacking or the strain of lifting boxes. They’re difficult for the tiny private sadnesses of finding things I had not thought of for years, items that, though stored away for a long time, are still there, substantial and solid and powerful, as potent as ever to disturb my peace, transport me back to a hope now given up as hopeless, a dream now exposed to the full harsh light of waking life.

Over the past couple weeks of slowly settling into my new apartment, I have found such things and have felt a transitory darkness descend upon my heart, a place I have trained over the last decade to rejoice in the small beauties of existence—the sunlight on an empty wall, a blooming weed in a garbage-strewn alley, the stirring of the earth beneath my bare feet. I have learned to rejoice in these wonders that are present at every turn so that my mind does not wander to the overarching realities of serious health challenges, frustrated career moves and the ache of spending every night alone.

Only I know the power of these inanimate objects. Last week it was two books that disrupted my mood. One on urogenital massage, the other on sacred sexuality, purchased years ago with the firm intention that some day I would have a lover who would put these books into practice with me. Seeing them again made me weep. Get rid of them, I admonished myself. Why keep something that mocks my solitary existence? Give it up! And so I gave the urogenital-massage book to Beverly, who, at 74, has a 50-year-old lover, and the sacred-sexuality book to Goodwill. May they be put to good use.

This evening, just prior to tossing it in the Goodwill box, I held a gold-sequined, gold-satin purse from the ‘20s and realized there was something inside—a blue drawstring pouch that contained the love of my life's black hair mixed with my blonde, their tight curls flattened by time. This past April, this man had drowned while surfing, and his ashes were spread in the cold Northern California ocean, yet I still hold his DNA. And I know that somewhere in my boxes is a hand-painted Egyptian bottle with a miniature stopper. Inside is more of our DNA--my blood and his seed mingled late one frenzied night in a trailer in the deep dark stillness of the Point Arena woods.

He was a troubled soul, and there was much that was not right with him. But in this one way, this very important way, he and I were matched, paired in a strange, otherworldly dance. Sure, I have had sex since I was last with him, but only about seven times in seven years. I suppose it has been better than none at all, but perhaps not. Like living in a dilapitated shack after having resided in a splendid villa on the sea is perhaps better than sleeping outside, without shelter, but then again, perhaps not.

I wish he would return, if just for one night. I have asked him to do so, but as yet, there has been no response. How fitting if he would return from the beyond to make love to me, since so often when I was with him, I traversed the boundary between this reality and some other more intense, vastly lighter and freer plane of existence. I remember very clearly how twice I had floated outside my body, carried by angels, but more often, had remained in my body and felt the world shift.

And so, as talismans, in the way that the urogenital-massage and sacred-sexuality books were meant as talismans to draw my mystical lover to me, I will keep the Egyptian bottle and its contents, and the blue pouch in the gold-beaded purse . By some magic he may pass between the delicate seam between the worlds of living and no-longer-here. I will be ready when he does.

Yes, moves are difficult. Though I no longer think of him every day, and though I am ever-ready to meet someone new, I am not yet ready to toss his DNA. I am not yet ready to make that move.