Slowly walking towards joy.
I got a couple of tattoos yesterday.
Three hours of sitting.
Which is about as much as my body can take before I’m kaput.
During that time I spent a lot of time saying good bye to my ex-boyfriend.
Over the weekend I did a lot of reclamation of self.
Reclaiming my heart by doing deep self-care, loads of writing, and going out dancing.
Not once.
But twice.
And Friday.
I was home.
Home in my body, moving freely about the dance floor.
Completely non-pulsed to be “first on the floor”.
Meaning, literally, the first person on the dance floor.
I danced from 10p.m. until 2:30a.m.
By midnight I had done 12,500 steps.
By the time I got home I had done another 17,500.
My workout is to move to music.
I have always loved dancing.
And I love, love, love, house music.
I also went to 80s night at the Cat Club on Thursday with an old friend, so good to reconnect, and hopeful for more of that too.
We danced around to 80s music, most specifically from 1984, I think that club night was even called 1984, and then we took a break to re-hydrate and sit and I dished on the break up and it was good.
Probably need to do that over coffee and not in a club, but that was where it happened and I’m grateful.
So grateful for all the folks near and far who have reached out, given me love, opened their hearts to me, their kinds words, their experiences, helped me process and work it out.
The writing too, works it out.
The tattoos work it out as well.
Originally the tattoos were going to be just one tattoo–a sobriety commemorative tattoo for 19 years.
And that was definitely gotten.
But.
Because of the break up and how I have processed heart ache before I decided to also get a “break up” tattoo, as one lady I work with termed it.
They are more than “break up” tattoos, my tattoos are ways of marking change, transition, transformation, reclamation of body, working through emotional pain with the healing of the piece and the sitting through chosen pain.
I did not choose the pain of the break up.
I would not have broken up.
I would have chosen communicating and collaborating and working on it.
That choice was taken away.
Sitting still through the chosen pain gives me some autonomy back and pulls me from the ambivalent, ambiguous not knowing of the silence on the other end.
The deep, cold pain of being not spoken too, iced out, silence like being stabbed with icicles.
Oh, yeah, and he never got back to me, never replied to that email, I sent him in response to the one he sent me to see each other.
(I do want to see you)
I haven’t heard a peep.
I sent that out one week ago.
(No response is a response).
So I moved it forward.
I did have a moment or two on Friday thinking, well, maybe he’s going to reach out, I did say come see me Friday or Saturday.
But there was nothing.
Instead I met an old acquaintance from Paris for a meeting and then after that we went and got Thai food in the Haight.
I gave him a ride home and felt really good about having done some service, but more importantly just to talk through the relationship ending and his experience with the worst break up he had and how he said, “later, now, I can laugh about it or my friends will say, remember when…and laugh with me.”
“But at the time it was the worst pain imaginable.”
Yup.
I get it.
It is extraordinary pain.
But it is waning.
The heat in my leg from the tattoo assures me of that.
Emotional pain can be, is amorphous, it moves, it floats around you, it is like a constantly raining cloud of pain.
Anchoring my pain in the body with getting a tattoo also anchors the emotions and helps me process.
Lying on the table looking out the window at the dark rain clouds and the passing cars, the lights moving reflected wetly white, red over the pavement, the various framed flash art in the studio, the tattoo sign in red and purple glowing in the background, the sound of honky tonk heartbreak on the stereo system.
“Good bye _______” I said over and over and over again.
Good bye.
And I meant it.
I also reflected often on the night before, Friday night, when I was dancing at Monarch.
I saw New York House legend Tony Humphries.
So fucking good.
So powerful.
He took me to church.
House is home.
House is love.
House music is in my soul.
House brings me joy and happiness and helps me transcend.
House is where I go to church.
And as I danced and smiled and twirled and clapped, warm and safe in the underground belly of a club in the SOMA I reflected with joy that I was home.
That I was love.
“You are beautiful.”
“You are stunning.”
“You must be from New York, I’m from the Bronx.”
“You know Tony from way back don’t you?”
“You are not 51!”
“I feel seen by you.”
“I see you.”
Some many mini and macro conversations while moving, constantly moving and joyfully being washed in the music.
It set the stage for the long, rainy drive to Petaluma the next day to see my artist and also catch up with a friend at Sol Food, oh my God, Puerto Rican soul food, so good, and connect and have her love and time, she drove up from San Rafael.
I was ready for the tattoo.
I was ready to say goodbye.
My artist and I, DannyBoy Smith, collaborated on the piece, changing the art up a little to help it be a better tattoo.
The original art is by Fernanda “Lady” Guedes, a Brazilian artist that is part of a book called “Frida Obsession”.
All the artists in the book did their interpretation of Frida Kahlo in their own way.
I really resonated with Lady’s piece.
It felt like me.
I got the book from an art/zine/underground bookstore on a meander with my ex through Mexico City.
I love art book stores.
I got a couple of art zines and the Frida Kahlo book and a notebook.
We sat in an outdoor cafe after the book shopping, that I had talked the owner into serving us coffees even though they were closing.
We sat and looked at our art books and I wrote.
I took sly photos of my ex while he was reading, the hanging ferns framing his face as he read, the sound of the warm light misty rain softly drizzling, the pulse of the street, the owner and the staff transitioning from lunch to dinner service, the laughter of the man and woman at another table talking rapidly to each other in Spanish.
I look at the Frida book and I did think then that there were a few Frida portraits that I might want as a tattoo.
I was not expecting that I would get a tattoo five and a half months later to cope with the break up.
But there it is.
And here I am.
Still standing.
Walking through the pain.
Letting go of the story.
“If you cut out the story,” a friend of mine said the Friday before last, after I had told him the whole story while we wandered around China Town and North Beach, “this is what I hear,” he paused.
“He broke up with you because you didn’t offer to drive back from Tahoe.”
Jesus fuck.
I mean it was more than that.
But to some degree, it’s great short hand.
And there is more than a modicum of truth in it.
My friend also said, “take back your power.”
I felt like I did that this Friday night at the club, dancing to House music, surrounded by love and community.
I felt seen and appreciated for just being myself.
And I said goodbye to the relationship the next day and let it go.
I literally said, “I’m leaving you here now,” as I exited the tattoo parlour, “I’m letting you go.”
Good bye love.
Hello what ever comes next.
And I know there will likely still be twinges of pain, as the tattoo heals, so does my heart.
Moments of hurt.
But for the most part.
I think I am done.
Moving on.
Walking home.
Walking towards joy.
Auntiebubba 