Month: October 2021

Fantasy Fest

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

At my first Fantasy Fest–my inaugural ball of. . . well, balls (they were painted, but still)–it was eight days of watching the Halloween festival progress and me right along with it. It’s advertised that there’s a Nudity Zone on a few blocks of Duval Street at the heart of the party, but I dipped into a parking spot on the edge of the island where across the street a woman was walking her dog, topless. At first blush, I did blush. But only briefly.

Her freedom ushers in my own. Not right away, but slowly, in a soft rain that builds into a deluge, I ease my way through my uneasiness. At first I just take my top off as I ride my bike back to that parking spot–hidden in the dark, dark that comes with the after midnight hour and sheltered by the brevity of time in which I pedal by any one set of eyes. It felt naughty. It felt fun. I felt bold, like I belonged to the totally-okay-with-my-body sect that I’d only up until now admired from afar.

The next day I bare my belly and the rose tattoo that blooms across it. I wear a sexy wig and a cleavage enhancing top a la Beyonce`. All the while I’m upping my game I’m watching others who were still ahead of me, egging me on benignly. Enticing me with their confidence level and their free-to-be-me laissez-faire attitude.

This is the good side of competition.

A body painter camping at the same park that I’m workamping at by day before slinking off into the night, offers to paint me for free. My head nods enthusiastically, accepting the offer. But the small quiet voice coming from the inside of my belly button whispers Ohh, no. We could never do that.

I don’t like that voice. She tries to keep me down. Low. Where no one can see me. She likes to play it safe so no more hurt occurs. But that’s not how life works. It moves, changes and challenges you. And as my costumes got skimpier and skimpier over the weeklong celebration, there was eventually nowhere left to go, but. . . nude. That’s when my head chimes in with the It’s now or never bit. And when I don’t quite bite, offers up the Quick, while no one really knows you here closer.

I step into her booth, gingerly, like I was barefoot avoiding chards of broken glass. Maybe it was my crumbled ego. Or at least crumbling. I disrobe in the corner, scanning the photos of all the brave who had gone before me hoping to borrow a cup of courage. The paint tickles my nipples and as she transforms me into living art, her touch feels sensual in a new kind of way. I feel bold. I feel badass. But when it comes time to cross the threshold again, I feel vulnerable and unsure. That belly button voice was back.

I take a deep breath, tenderly push through and merge my Poison Ivy into the sea of bodies flowing by. About three steps in, someone asks to take my picture. Then another one a few more steps in. Then another. I begin to see myself from the perspective of the people looking at me and saying, ‘Beautiful,’ ‘Amazing,’ ‘Wow.’ I feel the drop in barometric pressure that is my trepidation. I feel my self-image rise with every flash.

I am this girl, too.

I’m the belly button voice, I’m the headstrong voice barreling into what lies just out of my reach, and I’m this girl—quivering a little less with every block she covers. I am naked, but I am not afraid. I’m vulnerable, but I’m not in danger. I’m exposed, but I am safe. No one got hurt and I got to grow.

Me vs. Myself

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When I was twelve it was the first compliment that I remember. Maybe the first one that was spoken. I was sitting on the living room carpet, legs stretched out under the coffee table and coming out the other side, writing thank you cards a few days after I had been confirmed. In the eyes of the Lutheran church, I was a woman now. I could have wine in atonement for my sins. Worthy, because I’d recited the books of the Bible correctly to the nods and smiles of the congregation. Or maybe that was simply the shelf life of the sacrament of baptism.

“You really have a way with words,” my not easily impressed mother commented as she read over my twenty different ways of saying ‘Thanks for the cash.’

When I was sixteen it was a challenge. My English teacher/Senior class advisor cornered me in the guidance office and told me I should be in AP English. In an ocean of people where I felt invisible, she saw me. Saw right through my thick black eyeliner stretched across the heavy eyelids of stoner, past my attempts at feigning the apathy my group of friends naturally expressed and threw down a gauntlet. I let it lie.

I did write well. I should. I’d been keeping a diary on the daily since I was eight. Plus, my dad was a writer. I figured the ability to string words together in a way that made people go “Hmmm” had come in the package along with his green eyes and long legs.

Hands on my black leather covered hips, fingers spreading out from my Madonna-like black lace gloves, I turned her down. Wouldn’t even consider it. It was clear she wanted me to thrive. While I was just trying to survive. Some days I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to do that. But I knew, in that place deep down that knows things, that writing was my rock in a sea of uncertainty. But I had a lifestyle to maintain: how could I skip school and still make honor roll if I took AP English? How could I do my homework half stoned and quickly–so I could go out and party with my friends at night–if I took AP English?

More importantly. . . . what if I failed? I needed all those A’s. My fragile self-esteem depended on them. Ever since I’d tested into kindergarten early as a four year-old I’d been using my academic achievements to balance the scale that always, no matter what I did, seemed to tip towards a deep seated inadequacy. My world felt crazy and unpredictable, but not at school. Here, I knew how to work it. Don’t make me give that up. Don’t take that away from me.

As an adult, I dabbled in it. But I didn’t have the time. Too distracted falling in love or out of love with someone or other. I picked it up again in my thirties and forties, chronicling my world travels and insights. It wasn’t until I was fifty that I gave myself the gift of seeing what this gift was really all about. I moved to Key West. I biked around Hemingway’s house. I joined a Writers Guild. I sought inspiration and encouragement from the legends that were here before me.

It was never about time. It was never about talent. Although, those were things I often told myself. It has always been about me with my hands on my hips in an act of deviance against going to the place I really want to go. Trying to deny and hide from it. And hiding it from others in the process. It’s always been about self-sabotage.

Somewhere, somehow, I still feel unworthy of amazing things. Somewhere, I still feel invisible.

Solar powered

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ 3 Comments

I’ve always been solar powered–in need of high levels of sunshine to function and recharge–seems like my camper should roll the same way. I got into this full-time RV lifestyle to be as free as I can be, the option to be self-sustaining is the next step.

I’m in the Sears parking lot in Key West with a panel, some cables, a controller, two golf cart batteries wired in series and my phone giving me access to a group of people who have done this more than me–me, who hasn’t ever done this at all. But I love the idea of living off the sun, getting my power free and clean, without adding pollution or demand for fossil fuel. I’m reading comments on my many posted questions and looking at the pics of people’s systems, but it’s not really clicking together in my brain. It’s the math and the fear based on the fact that electricity can be shocking that intimidates me. I’m a writer, a wanderer, a word girl. I’m good with creative expression, but bad with formulas.

And I suppose I should’ve been working on this long before I really needed it, but that’s not really my style, either. I’m the poster child for the quote: Necessity is the mother of invention. I’m desperately trying to figure it out and failing in the process. I’m doing a lot of searching and swearing, watching videos and feeling out of my league. Thankfully, a person quick to comment on the Solar for Dummies Facebook page offers to talk me through it. He’s from my hometown—Madison, Wisconsin—on a too cold to work winter day, giving him some free time on a Monday afternoon.

It wasn’t just the contrast of my naïveté rubbing up against his knowledge or the fact that I was now sweating in January instead of shivering (I could almost feel the winter wind reaching through the phone to reclaim me), it seemed the biggest difference between us what his unwavering confidence in me and my ability to do what he was teaching me to do. I had serious doubts about both. I suppose being reminded of how my packed to the rim VW Bug and I drove off into the early morning light, crunching through ice encrusted snow with no particular plan other than finding a place where owning a snow shovel was not a necessity and socks were never needed. But somehow my successes get filed under flukes and my failures get catalogued as flaws. I wish I could embrace my learning curve with more compassion. I try to have the faith that he has, but it feels like a pair of shoes that don’t fit right: they’re my size, but someone else has broken them in to fit their feet.

Luckily he also had a lot of patience. I was in territory that I’d only marveled at from afar, stripping cable to expose wires that could then be screwed into the controller inside my outside storage compartment. I’d love to say that I came out of the process embracing Ohm’s Law and excited about electricity, but I didn’t. I did however get it the system installed before dark and kept my cussing relegated to an under my breath volume. Mostly.

The real joy came later, around midnight, when I came back home and pushed the circle on my camper’s control panel that said ‘batt’ and all four lights lit up which meant it was full. At midnight. I know because I pushed it like five times, giggling gleefully at the free energy I had harnessed and the process that I understood just enough to make it happen.

I’d done it after all. I can go anywhere now. I feel like a rock star.

Date

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It’s been so long since I’ve had one I forgot where I kept the condoms.

What is it that’s so titillating about someone being attracted to you and asking you out? It brings out the best me. The flirty me. The easygoing, let’s see where this goes, still strong in my singleness me. Merging into traffic but still very much in my own lane.

It just might be my favorite part, this part with no expectations and therefore no disappointment.

I’m sitting in that seat right now. The place of possibilities. That border between what is and what could be. But now I gotta go and actually see. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Space: The Final Frontier

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I have an Ex with Benefits. This is me trying to keep the good parts of our relationship going–the fun that we had together, the passion, the ease that comes from knowing someone so well–while avoiding the bad. I mean, just because I don’t want to buy the book, doesn’t mean I can’t still check it out from the library from time to time.

It’s not the only time I’ve tried this. This picking through the ruins of a relationship trying to salvage the still intact pieces and cobble them together into some rough shaped yard art. I think it comes from my fear of loss–loss that is already piled upon a hill of loss with more loss boxed away in the basement that I’m still sorting through. Loss that triggers the already heavy load of loss I’m still schlepping around after years of work trying to clear it out.

In the soundtrack of my life, that litany of loss was the steady beat of the bass drum.

It also comes from a resourcefulness that only a child raised within the pain-stained walls of trauma can cultivate. Maybe I’m a little too resourceful.

My childhood certainly infused me with a kind of Take What You Can Get desperation. How could it not? It was all but spoken, steadily demonstrated by the refrain of: boxes of Kraft macaroni-n-cheese you could push a chair up to the stove to make, a “Come talk to me while I get ready for work” distracted level of attention to whatever problem I was facing, and my eyes searching the crowd for a familial face from the middle school concert stage while I wetted the reed of my mouthpiece. While my fellow musicians waved back to the enthusiastic relatives who were proud just to see them sitting there it seemed, because we’d not even played a single note yet, I pretended not to notice as I shuffled my sheet music and feigned inspection of my instrument’s keys. She’d come, at some point, but always long after when I really needed her. Even a nine-year-old clarinet player gets nervous.

Unconditional love was my Atocha and I was Mel Fisher. (I’m writing this in Key West–Google the reference; it’s fascinating).

My cobble project was working. I had the best of what I missed and none of what I didn’t. Until I did. Because people are who they are. If he had wanted to change to keep me–us–then, well, he would have. Long ago. But this idea of a guy in every port appeals to me. I mean, I travel around for my physical life, why can’t my romantic life operate in the same vein?

My ex, having landed a lucrative job and glad to see me back on “The Rock”, takes me out to dinners and then brunches. He even brings me the soup I order while I make peace with a positive Covid test and enter into solitary confinement. To his credit, he was the only one who sat outside of the kitchen window I cracked open just enough to let my words drift out.

To his discredit, he cannot maintain this. Can’t or won’t. I’m not sure how much to really expect from a man who hasn’t seen his son since toddlerhood. As a child–and now adult–who still needs the father she was denied, this one fact has always felt like rubbing up against sandpaper. Yet, hope springs eternal. I come from a long line of women trying to fix the men they’re with; it’s in my blood. And I suspect it is this that propels me back into his arms. Along with the potential for sexapades that give me multiples.

But in the wise words of Madonna: satin sheets are very romantic but what happens when we’re not in bed? When we’re not in bed, we tend to slowly deteriorate. It may take days, weeks, or hours but we are not, have never been, sustainable.

I hold onto him for financial as well as sexual reasons. Maybe I reconcile those books in my own mind, in my own style of accounting. But some things can’t be bought and eventually I crave all the things our relationship couldn’t give me and the balance tips into the red. And I’m back to breaking up with him all over again.

But this time, the Universe gives me whiplash. In his place, in the space I’ve made, another friend steps in. He wants to go to dinner with me. He’s so enthralled with the experience that he pays. Here I was, holding onto something that was so easily replaced. What I feared was a loss shows up as a gain. Never again will I be able to settle for partial satisfaction. Instead I will make an altar of the emptiness of my life and see what offering the Divine decides to place upon it.

Or is there such a thing as emptiness at all? At times I envision this next best thing, person, place, feeling, thought that’s ready to move in is pushing the old thing, person, place, feeling, thought out the door. The new takes the old’s place while the seat is still warm. However it happens, it’s nothing short of miraculous.

Pain Will Leave Once It Has Finished Teaching U

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Yesterday afternoon was one of those times when you’re shaken, literally, by how awful things are playing out. But by early evening it was clear–this curse had turned into a blessing.

I was working the late gate at the park under the scorching beam of the sun that likes to stream into the ranger station at what is already the hottest part of the day. After an aggressive visitor the day before yelling “Fuck you!” not just once to my face but again as he drove away, I was determined to be extra sweet today so as not to be in the least bit offending, thus avoiding any chance of any such repeat interaction.

That was my takeaway. Can you believe it? ‘Maybe if I asked more nicely how many people are in your car? then you wouldn’t get verbally abused’ was my deep introspective dive as I looked out over the beach last night, waves lapping at my feet, sinking my toes further into the sand. What crap. No wonder it didn’t take away the gnawing in my gut. No wonder it invited another lesson. “Pain will leave once it has finished teaching you,” Bruce Lee said.

Cue the physically threatening cycler. For the second day I am shaking at the gate. This can’t be right. So I ask for help. And when the ranger doesn’t help, and I’m still shaken fifteen minutes later, I call for more help. And I learn that not only is my concern valid and my command for this person to leave the park the correct action but it was retroactively so, going back to the day before. I learned there were consequences to someone treating me that way and the calvary was coming.

Another ranger was making rounds to try to locate the offender. Management called the police. A ranger stayed with me until they arrived. And even though the person was never found (maybe he’d realized his possible fate and had left already) I was touched by the “I have your back” response. As people filtered out of the park at closing time and I pulled down the flags, I caught site of a pair of headlights that were not moving like the others. It was that officer; ready for action, positioned for support. The whole thing was starting to melt me like candle wax.

It had me open, humbled, willing enough to see what the real morale of the story was while I pedaled my bike hard out of the park, music on full blast to crowd out of my mind the replay of the awful scenes I’d endured.

My default is the lone ranger. I’ll handle it. I can do it. I got this. And I’m quite proud of my independence, it has served me well. It’s taken me around the world and through some tough times. But it has also, I can see now from this new place in my curriculum, kept others from lending a hand. Standing with me. Somewhere, I got the idea that the highest level of achievement was doing it all by myself.

“Somewhere!?!” my inner wise voice snorts in a tone so sarcastic I had to laugh out loud. We both know exactly where I got it. I got it from the mother who relished watching me move out at seventeen and a father who left me at four.

Now that I think about it, I have advanced far beyond the age where one finds worth in announcing, “Look! I did it all by myself!” No longer a child tying her shoes for the first time or mastering riding a bike without training wheels. I was an adult. I’d made it already. And besides, my worth was established long ago–by God. I come from Perfect Love, created in His Likeness. There is nothing I need prove.

I wondered as I watched the wagons circle around me, felt their focus on the hurt that had been done to me and their own efforts to try to make it alright again. Had they always, in some version or another, been with me all along waiting for my cue? Was help always just a call away?