Pretty, Soft, &

Bitter sweet.

“Call me when you want to hang out,” he said to me as I gathered my bag and my little canvas sack of groceries with the pink Gerber Daisies hanging their fat, cheery, pink heads out of the top of the bag.

“I will, Mister,” I said, opened the door and got out.

I caught him leaning in to kiss me out the corner of my eye as I exited the car and my heart softly beat a moment’s pause, then settled back down as I quietly shut the door on the fantasy.

No kiss was had.

I was not expecting to get a ride home from him, it rather just happened.

I was hoping to see someone else tonight.

And that did not happen.

Although I did get a text late in the day explaining why.

And that felt nice.

Nice to be acknowledged, told that they would be getting back to me, and when.

You see, Mister, that’s how it works.

I have tried to tell you when I would like to hang out.

I even bought a new dress for it, but you, well, you had to work.

I was going to tell it to you like it is last Saturday and you dropped me off at my house with a fellow passenger in the car, negating said conversation and you drove off not telling me when I would hear back or if I would hear back, just that we would hang out soon.

A week of no contact.

I forgot rather what I was going to say.

I don’t need to have conversations in my head with imaginary partners.

See I realize, that you, Mister, were an imaginary affair, safe and sound and intimate because you don’t have it to offer me right now.

Your intentions always so sweet and I would fall for them every time, every fucking time.

I was Charlie Brown and you were Lucy, and I was going to run up to that football and kick it good and hard and score the winning goal and then you would want me and we would all live happily ever after going to museums and travelling and eating at nice restaurants.

And the sex?

Why that would be the bomb, it would be amazing, it would put my vibrator to shame.

Which is hard to do when you own a Hitachi Magic Wand.

Why, I would be throwing it out because the satisfaction would be so amazing.

Would, could, should.

Words that don’t work so well in my vocabulary.

“We should hang out.”

“We should go there.”

“We should go for a walk on the beach.”

I could probably write a few more, but they all come down to the same things, some sweet words, some kind kisses, and lots of empty actions, cancellations, and lack of connection.

You can be willing to say it to me and I can be willing to hear it, spin it out as fantasy and I then can spend my time in a safe little bubble where I don’t get hurt and you and I hang out in imaginary perfection land.

I wasn’t able to say anything.

I don’t know if it was restraint of pen and tongue or what.

There were just no words to say.

How do you break up when there was never really a relationship?

How to say that I am not interested in pursuing it.

I have stopped texting.

I have stopped expecting.

I am in with people who want to spend time with me.

“Let’s meet up and have dinner,” my darling Beth texted me.

Yes.

Let’s.

I was on the way up to Noe Valley after a surprising interlude of hula hooping on the beach.

My housemate was headed out to the Ocean Beach with her daughter and her daughter’s friend from school, our new friend we met last week on the beach with her bright-colored hula hoops was also down the way and I happened to walk in at just the right moment to jump on the caravan.

“Come!” My house mate said with great enthusiasm.

Yes.

That is what I want in my life, enthusiasm, followed by action.

I ran into my studio and tossed up a kale salad and quickly heated up a veggie burger, a persimmon in my bag, my camera, some water, and off to the beach.

Lunch on the beach

There was a great big sand castle building tournament going on and the beach was packed.

Outlying elementary schools competing in sand castle building.

They were so sweet, utterly delicious, totally amateur, and astoundingly perfect.

The castles were built with glee and joy and the whelps of laughter as the tide rose in to rush the moats was a balm on my soul.

Our new hooping friend had a nephew who was competing.

I am not sure what the outcome was, they were all so utterly sweet and endearing, how could there be just one winner?

The crowds were big, but we found a nice patch of beach and pulled out the hoops.

My house mate gifted me one this morning.

I had all sorts of ideas about what I was going to do today and how I was going to do it and it was completely thrown into a loop when I wasn’t able to address the laundry I thought I needed to do.

I wanted perfection.

Instead I got a day at the beach, a hula hoop, and spending time with wonderful girlfriends–new ones, with hula hoops, “old” ones who I have known for almost nine years of my time in San Francisco, dear ones who mean so much to me and I need to spend more time with, little ones who were amazed that I hooped as long as I did.

I got to be around a gaggle of girls and it was awesome.

When I got the call from the man I was already in Noe Valley and I did not answer.

I don’t have anything to say.

You are sweet.

You are endearing.

You are handsome.

You are a fantasy I am tired of having.

I am interested in being alive.

I am interested in not just saying I want to do something, I want to hang out with you, but I have to go do some other stuff first, no, I want to be available for the life and the wonderful surprises it throws me, hula hoops, surfing.

I bumped into a woman tonight I know scantily from friends of friends and I discovered she surfs.

We are going to go to Pacifica next Sunday.

That’s what I am talking about.

Let’s not just talk about it.

Let’s do it.

What ever it is.

Let’s do it.

I may fall back into the fantasy mode, it is easy, it is safe, but I know that I have to surrender to being vulnerable, intimate, present to be alive.

So, here I am.

Present and accounted for.