Month: January 2022

Gina

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

I’m volunteering at the Mile Zero Fest in Key West. From my post at the entrance gate I can hear Cody Canada and the Departed are on stage. I wasn’t sure I’d like this kind of music — thought it might sound a little too much like country music — but they’re winning me over. Their strong guitars and the front man’s banter are winning me over: making me dance, even. We’re at the Sunset Green’s Lawn across from the Gulf of Mexico and in between two hotels: 24 North and The Gates. 24 North is named after the latitude and longitude of its location; I have no idea what The Gates is named after — although its bar, Rum Row, has lots of quotes about Hemingway and rum runners.

From the stage, Cody announces that a women in the front row has left with the parting words of: this isn’t red dirt music! His response slams her with, “Red dirt isn’t a genre it’s a place in your soul.”

Or something like that. His words and certainty grabbed me and made me like him even more. It seemed like a good way to address it and the crowd went wild. They moved on and into another great song. After which this banter began between Cody and the crowd. They started using the “K” word (Karen) which then became “Fuck you, Karen!”

Then I heard Cody talking with someone in the front row about what her real name was and the slam of the woman morphed into, “Fuck you, Gina!” I gave a nod to their creativity, even smiled a little. As a writer, I am familiar with rejection and am very sensitive to its encounters.

At the end of the show, people were filing out of the gate saying, “Fuck you, ‘gina!”

As in the abbreviation of vagina.

Ok, now they’re slamming girl parts. They’re using girl parts as an insult. Boy, am I tired of that.

How the fuck can the vagina, the gateway of newborn life, ever be associated with weakness? Reduced to a slur.

Meanwhile. . . “grow a pair” or “have some balls” is equated with toughness.

Have you ever seen a guy get hit in the balls? Watched him crumble to the ground like a bouncy house that just blew a seam? Come on. How has having balls been associated with strength while a vagina, capable of an expanding to encompass the size of a tiny human, gets the rap of weakness?

In the immortal words of Betty White: “Why do people say, ‘Grow some balls?’ Balls are weak and sensitive. If you really wanna get tough, grow a vagina. Those things really take a pounding!”

The Laundromat

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

I was going to bike to a free washer and dryer, but the little voice in my head said, “Just go to the laundromat. It’s closer. It’s easier. It costs a whole four dollars.”

I like to listen to that voice. One, because history shows that it knows stuff and two, because what doesn’t get listened to tends to stop talking. It’s taken me on wild and wonderful rides in the past, so I tend to trust it. I scoop the clothes out of my bike basket and as I load the washer I see my bike start to tip in the wind. I catch it before it falls and the guy folding his clean clothes — the only other person in there, surprisingly — remarks, “You caught it, nice job.”

Random comments like that can be rare in Key West, almost as rare as a practically empty laundromat, which makes me pick it up and run with it. Our chit chat turns to the power of positive thinking and we share some of our favorite inspirations. It’s when I mention that I meditate that his face really lights up.

We’re also both gypsies, cheating the seasons. He’s down from Pennsylvania where it’s too cold to work construction, I’m here because of opportunities aligning.

“We should hang out sometime,” he offers.

I’m aware that I don’t respond to his suggestion, but I’m unaware as to why. And now I have two conversations going: the one with him and the one in my head trying to figure out why I didn’t take him up on his offer. He seems cute enough: hair on the longer side, curling up around his ears and where it hits the top of his T-shirt. He smiles a little when he talks, and he talks like a guy who takes responsibility for his life, his thoughts and his choices.

Sometimes you get so used to turning away from what you don’t want that when what you do want faces you full frontal, you wobble. Forget your lines. I’m prone to saying yes easily and effortlessly and I’m not sure it serves me in the romantic realm of my life. Somewhere in me it seems there’s been a decision to take things more slowly.

He mentions he likes to hang out at one of my favorite spots: the state park, Fort Zach. Here’s my chance. I say I love that place and I would totally hang out with him there. He doesn’t grab my offer like a lion coming up on a gazelle in the wild; he casually nods and says when he tends to be there.

It’s the desire to share a YouTube video of inspirational quotes that brings the exchanging of phone numbers to the table.

As we say goodbye, he makes the classy move of saying, “I’d love to take you out to dinner some time.” Nailing the landing, in my book.

The Power of the Negative vs. the Positive

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

I’m really good at my job, mostly because I love it. It’s perfect for me; and vice versa. I play pool games (swimming, not table) at various resorts in Key West. Every late morning I ‘suit up’ in a bikini and tank top with the authoritative “Instructor” across the back and pedal my bike from one end of the island to the other stopping to play pool golf, Name that Tune, Black Jack on a floating table made of foam; handing out free drink tickets to the winners.

Only in Key West.

And I rock it. How could you not? It’s easy, fun, I’m independent and my boss and I love each other. It helps that I seem to be a natural promoter via my enthusiasm for anything fun. I get my exercise biking sometimes a total of twenty miles in an afternoon, meet cool people—people from home, fellow funsters, musicians setting up to play after I’m done—and satisfy my need for variety because no day and no pool are ever the same.

The bartenders support me and my cause because happy guests are good guests and good tippers. Except for this one bartender this one day who decided to spread lies and ruin my life. I wish I didn’t let people’s inaccurate depictions of me hurt so much, but I’ve never been able to get away with it. I try; tell myself all the upbeat, fortune cookie sized things, like “other people’s opinions of me are none of my business” and “you know your worth” and “hurt people hurt people” but inevitably doubt creeps back in and washes over me, wave after wave. I try to not let it capsize my boat of self-certainty, which now feels more like a Tom Sawyer raft than a boat.

In a sea of positivity, why do I let this little drop of negative become so strong? Why do I weight it so much more heavily? Why do I let one voice become louder than the rest of the choir?

I don’t know. I mean, I do and I don’t. I’ve struggled with it practically my whole life, this, as Mary Karr puts it, “constantly checking to see where I am in line” in relation to others. As much as I tout the stand strong and tall imagery when things are going well—or when things aren’t for someone else — I can crumble when someone starts throwing mud. Because deep down I fear they are right. Deep runs the doubt that maybe I’m not good enough. Not by a long shot.

So I hide. I dodge my boss’s texts asking me to call her about the comments this guy has made about me. Kind of like I hid my underpants as a kid when I’d wet them. Then I go into victim mode, almost paralyzed by a situation that I’ve given way too much weight to.

I apply for other jobs. Or I threaten (whom? myself?) to leave the island entirely; never to be heard from again. Fight or flight. Fight or flight. I know it’s ridiculous but I can’t stop the mental calisthenics. I’m too well practiced. It’s second nature at this point. Maybe first nature, even.

Then, for no other reason than I’m tired of it, I reach out. I take baby steps to stand up for myself and set the record straight in the most compassionate way I know how. That’s when it shifts. That’s when I find out how good it feels to bring things out into the open where they can be seen and my true reputation established.