Deep Waters: My Last WordPress Blogpost January 24, 2024

Dear Readers, I am proud to have had this space to share my work and my writing prompts since 2009. And I thank you for following me here, for all of your wonderful comments and likes, and for taking the time to read my work.

I hope you will follow me to my Substack account, The Writing Catalyst, where I will continue to post my writing and the prompts that inspired them. I’ve subscribed you to the new newsletter free for three months. After that, you can continue to subscribe for free, or pay for a subscription; you can also unsubscribe. The new Substack site allows me to offer virtual writing workshops, podcasts, and so much more. I hope you’ll follow me there.

Thank you for being here with me all these years. Keep writing. Keep reading. And please, keep in touch.

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(The prompt: This piece was written in response to Adrienne Rich’s poem, “Diving into the Wreck”)

“Don’t write about her again,” my inner adolescent says, and he sounds like he’s almost pleading. “Nobody wants to hear about our dead mommy anymore. Especially me.”

It’s too early for a visit from this boy: 8:00 a.m. at the kitchen table. My journal is open in front of me, the pen is poised above the paper, my arthritic hand still stiff from sleep. Not you again, I think, with your full, dark eyebrows and your messy head of wavy hair.  

“Are you just going to ignore me?” he asks. He’s in that baby blue Disney sweatshirt, the one with the peeling white silkscreen of the castle on it. The sleeves are too short for him, but he never takes it off, even in the summer, because it brings out his eyes. Someday, I want to tell him, you’ll visit that castle in southern Germany, the one that inspired Walt Disney, and you’ll be so sick with food poisoning, and so filled with sorrow for the lonely gay king who built that place, you’ll never want to return. But at his age, it’s still a poster on his wall with a Hallmark cliché at the bottom; at his age, that castle is still a beautiful dream.

“I’m trying to write in my journal,” I say.

“I know,” he snaps back. “And I’m telling you not to write about her again.”

I’m remembering now the journal from our sophomore year in high school. Notebook paper bound by a simple green cover. We spent 15 minutes writing every period in my Psychology of Literature class. It was our private work; we didn’t have to share anything we didn’t want to share. I wrote a lot about John Lepsin, about his ice blue eyes and black hair, his big beautiful nose. I wrote tortured unrequited love poems that vacillated between raw desire and fantasies of revenge. But I never wrote about Mama. Only once. Something like, “Things have been pretty weird around the house. Mom has this memory disease and…I don’t want to write about this.” And so, I never did. Until my senior year, when I plagiarized the ending of a piece from the NYTimes Magazine my brother had shared with me. And then again in college, when I couldn’t write about anything else.

“I’m your scribe now,” I tell my younger self. “I’ve filled volumes of notebooks with sorrow and longing, with guilt and shame.”

“I know!” he’s says, slapping his pretty young hands down onto the table. “It’s too much! Stop already. Enough! Basta!” He sounds just like her when he says that, and I giggle a little. “What?” he says, suppressing a giggle himself. We are on the verge of busting up, like two kids in church.

“C’mon!” he says. “I mean it.”

But I am already writing. Mom would have been 100 today. He groans. If she would have lived this long, she probably would have been a mess.

“A beautiful mess,” he says out loud.

“Like you,” I say.

“Like you,” he says.

And then we dive down into the wreck together. It’s my job to shine a light for him. He closes his eyes, holds his breath, and down we go.

Finding Hope in the Rubble March 10, 2023

I’m trying to get used to this new world.

“Can we postpone our call?” my friend in Seattle writes. “I need to go to the gym and get some exercise; I couldn’t go out for a walk today; the air isn’t safe to breathe.” Fires? I write back. She sends a thumbs up emoji.

Later, on my own walk, I spot several giant green parrots sitting in a Cypress tree behind my neighbor’s apartment building. They have red cheeks and are softly cackling to one another as they preen. I love seeing them there, and I also feel the world tilt: these birds are not native to the Bay Area. They are descendants of escaped pets, birds that were smuggled in from Central America.

A few of my closest friends have a “You can’t control everything,” kind of attitude, but it feels like they’re really saying, “You can’t control anything,” and we can argue semantics all day long, but it means something, doesn’t it? That they’ve given up, or that they might prefer to just get stoned and binge watch a new series?

“I won’t pay for Netflix,” another friend says. “It’s too expensive.” Meanwhile, he’s finishing an eighteen-month remodel on a multi-million dollar house in the desert, while I’m trying to pay off the Visa card I used for my new desk chair. Everything is upside down. Comedians make fun of Margery Taylor Greene as they show footage of her latest campaign ad: she’s shooting wild boars from a helicopter with a semi automatic weapon. I don’t think it’s funny.

What you can do? (sic) my brother’s Italian tailor used to say. That question resonates with me. Because doing nothing just isn’t acceptable, as far as I’m concerned, but I also know that you can’t save everybody (or anybody, really) and you can’t, as my sister used to say, bleed for everyone either. You can’t save the world all on your own. But I am not willing to accept this dystopian narrative as set in stone—or silicon, as the case may be—as awful as it might seem. I refuse to give up on this one precious life on this one precious planet (but please, by all means, reserve your spot on Mars, with a layover on the Moon).

I have absolutely no idea how to live into the future when at times everything already feels like it’s crumbling around us, or is so covered in graffiti that we can’t even read the freeway exit sign beneath it. And yet, surely these fifty-seven years must have delivered me some sense of wisdom, some gut feeling about participating in community gardens, and frequenting farmers’ markets, and reading thought provoking stories, articles, listening to lectures. Some part of me knows that you have to seek out the teachers, the lessons, the opportunity to move beyond sleazy erotic massages or horror themed Hulu originals, or loud motorcycles, long lines at fast food chains. You have to find the homemade falafel stand in the corner or the parking lot, the one with the handsome man who is willing to tell you his story of survival. How he beat the odds, how he fled everything he knew and loved for freedom. How he never gave up hope.

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This piece was generated in my writing workshop at Laguna Writers. The prompt was the five word free write (see a detailed explanation of that prompt here), and the five words were, Wild Parrots, Avocados, Grey, Fire, Reaching.

The Way Forward (A Prayer for the New Year) January 1, 2023

Tell me how to mother myself on the days when a young man in class won’t pay attention while I’m talking, and instead of rolling my eyes at his immaturity, I ask myself if anything I’ve ever done in my long career as a teacher has ever really made a difference. Show me how to make the list of ingredients from memory for Pop’s lasagna, even though I’m not eating cheese or wheat or beef right now, show me how to find a way to recreate something warm and comforting that would somehow be equivalent without confusing my gut. Let me see red sauce instead of simply seeing red. Help me find a cashew cheese that actually melts, lead the way to the boxes of red lentil noodles, remind me to add a splash of balsamic instead of red wine. Sit me down in time to enjoy this meal.

Remind me what it was about San Francisco that I fell in love with all those years ago, when I was a teenager with a wild cloud of wavy chestnut hair and I had my whole life ahead of me. How we traveled by car across the country and arrived at that sparkling bay and that fantastic old bridge. How we ate from little paper cups on Fisherman’s Wharf, bay shrimp and crab cocktail, little oyster crackers, warm sourdough bread with butter. Take me back to Ghirardelli Square that first time, the golden lights spelling out the Italian name above the old brick structure, remind me that buildings, like lives, can be rebuilt, renovated, reborn.

Tell me the story again of how my parents fell in love with this city fifty years ago, the clang clang clang of the trolly, the bells ringing out over the Stanford Court with the Tiffany dome at the crest of Nob Hill, where the view in all directions looked like a postcard. Remind me that it still does, even on the days when I am driving in my sensible purple car past tent cities, or slamming on the brakes because someone on a scooter has decided that stop signs don’t matter anymore. When I feel like the air controlled bubble I am floating in could break down any day now after nine years and 70,000 miles, and it seems impossible to imagine buying a new car in this economy, in this historical time in our troubled lives.

Don’t let me yearn for the old days, like a wizened old man, let me accept that they are gone. And teach me, someone, some ancestor—Mama, Merijane, some good ghost—please teach me how to see the way forward with the same light and hope I had looking for my first job thirty years ago, when I was twenty-seven, trudging through a rain-soaked SOMA in secondhand clothes. Don’t let me cling to these three decades of loss and change. Instead, shine a light on the path ahead, even if you don’t come with me, shine a light, please, so I can find my way through.

I want to be able to hold the memories like something precious, a sleeping baby or a favorite old book, and at the same time, I want to look ahead, not constantly behind. I work so hard not to feel regret, to instill hope in others, even that boy today in class with his stupid smirk. Even him. Help me find the way to see the path ahead, just a little of it, and to not be so afraid of the dark.

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The writing prompt that inspired this piece was 4 x 4:

Generate four lists:

1. Four cities you are familiar with (they do not have to be cities you love)

2. Four colors

3. Four people you love or have loved

4. Four favorite foods

After you’ve generated the lists, take one word from each list, and create four new combinations. 

Choose one of the combinations that interests you the most, and come up with a few descriptive words or sensory details that you associate with each of words in that list. Don’t think too hard or write too much. This is your prompt.

Now write for 20 minutes: anything that comes to mind. Don’t worry if the writing takes you somewhere unexpected.

Dia de los Muertos November 2, 2022

I imagine them together now, in a way that might seem childlike to you. She with her wavy hair tucked behind her ears, and he with those thin lips that disappeared when he smiled. They were just bone chips and dust in Ziplock bags the last time I saw them. I was surprised how different their ashes looked: his were brown and heavy, hers were light and soft grey. We mixed them together.

We threw white roses into the water, something I learned from the Brazilian goddess Yemanjá, via Africa. It felt ancient and important. The pounding surf washed the flowers up against our bare shins, along with the ashes, soaking our rolled up jeans.

Sometimes, when I think about them now, they could be calacas, the bony espiritos from Posada’s drawings. Mama could be Catrina, with her big hat and long gown. Pop could be wearing a scarf, smiling now without lips, driving a sports car. In my dreams, for years after Pop died, they were always hanging out together, offering me champagne, reassuring me. We took long train rides together, in which they inquired about my siblings like gossipy old aunts, and once Mama showed up to a party to try the brownies I had made, because she wanted to see what I’d done with her recipe.

I can’t say that I believe they are in Heaven, but I also don’t believe they are nowhere at all. Reincarnated? Maybe. I feel like their spirits are still somewhere fleshy and warm, like those sticky nights I spent with my first lover in Mexico all those years ago. The ceiling fan whirling and whirling, the sheets cool and slightly damp, our naked bodies entangled, sleep fractured, nearly impossible. We were floating together, but we were also part of that mattress, that tiled floor. The rest of the world had fallen away. That’s how I think it is for them now. Two lovers, alone at last.

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The writing prompt that inspired this piece was a “collected poem”: a poem created from many lines from several different poems. See below.

Grief

Anything you lose comes ’round in another form

Pink roses and white roses

those words were all that was left

Certain phrases, topics, must be approached with care

People are good

they offer up their pain

I imagine you

When you died

What’s unsaid is palpable as dignity, as death

All motion stopped when he died

Long-faced irises.

when you had to be helped on with your shoes

before you leapt off

Mums

Anything you lose comes round in another form

When grief sits with you

you hold life like a face

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come

and giant sunflowers

I will love you

Pink roses and white roses

Anything you lose

again

“Grief” contains excerpts from the following poems:

“Cantaloupe,” by Lee Robinson

“April,” by Judy Bebelaar

“The Thing Is,” by Ellen Bass

“Moment of Inertia,” by Debra Spencer

“Making Things Right,” by Barbara Bloom

“Return I,” by Elisabeth Stevens

“What People Give You,” by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno

“Unmarked Boxes,” by Rumi

Magical Thinking June 20, 2022

My sister recently shared a modern version of Disney’s Cinderella trailer from 1950. What I imagine was originally a corny 1950’s soundtrack for the two minute trailer was replaced by a modern remix, no doubt to reach a more contemporary audience. “They ruined it,” she said. Earlier, we had serenaded her fiancé with an a capella version of “I know you (I’ve walked with you once upon a dream)” doing our best to harmonize. “Very nice!” he said.

If you’re not familiar with it, the narrative of the song is love at first sight, with a kind of 1950’s emo set of lyrics that confirm the person of your dreams can literally appear before your eyes, and so you should trust your gut when it comes to that first hello.

After another glass of wine, I soothed my sister’s soul by finding the original version of the trailer, complete with a late 1940’s choir singing that very song and nailing the crescendos, as only those hired to sing on a Disney soundtrack can. “That’s more like it!” my sister said, then busied herself with the dishes.

I watched it again, with the volume turned down, and remembered how fantastic that film was to me when I was just a little baby gay boy. The magic of the fairy godmother, the rags-to-gorgeous-gown transformation, the sweet mice as friends, all that pink and blue, and the gleaming white castle in the distance. It’s the prince of course, who steals the movie, with his broad shoulders and thick dark hair. The prince, who really says nothing except, “May I have this dance?” and then literally sweeps old Cindy off her feet.

You know how it ends: the glass slipper, the evil stepmother and selfish stepsisters outdone by kindness and courage, and of course, happily ever after. Boy was I stuck on that one my entire life. My sister—who is planning her third wedding—doesn’t like it when I get academic and psychoanalyze fairytales. She detests the violence of the brothers Grimm, and prefers the sanitization of Disney to the real thing. Any argument I might have made in the past about the meaning of the story—that sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are allegories about young women growing into sexual beings, who can only be awakened by handsome young men—were dismissed as too serious or no fun. And she’s right, of course. I am too serious, and sometimes, at least when analyzing narratives, I am not much fun at all.

I’m still waiting for a Disney movie about a same sex crush and ends with the main characters going off to separate colleges in the end (like real life). But no matter how much Disney disagrees with Florida’s conservative governor, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

What I want to say is this: Cinderella fucked me up. It fucked me up. Because I grew up believing in love at first sight, and happily ever after, and that big one: a man will come along and sweep you off your feet and take care of you for the rest of your life. I spent my 40’s with someone completely ill-suited for me because we were both convinced that fate kept bringing us together (and maybe it did, but now I know it was trying to teach me something very different from what Cinderella taught me).

I much prefer films like Pixar’s Up . At least that one is more like real life: grief and broken dreams and the willingness to love again, to keep your heart open, to go on another adventure. To not become a bitter old man because you have loved and lost. Let’s sing the theme song to that movie, shall we? Let’s all harmonize to that one instead.

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The prompt that inspired this piece was a music prompt: Orla Gartland singing, “Why am I Like This?”

That Time of Year October 28, 2021

The ghosts are back. It’s their time of year, you know. All Hallows Eve is just around the corner, when the veil between the living and the dead grows thin. Don’t be alarmed. I know it’s never easy to face the dead, especially the ones who didn’t go gracefully. They might border on haunting, but not if you pay attention. Listen to them. Like all spirits, like the living, they just want to be heard.

It was that way once with my brother, Marty. He was an enigma to me, really, most of years we were alive together on this planet, so when he moved to the other side, our relationship didn’t change that much. Except that one year, when he came to me in my dreams, his photo on my end table bleeding so profusely, I woke up and turned on the light; a child again, frightened awake by a nightmare. “Okay,” I said out loud, to an empty room now washed with harsh light. “Okay, okay. Stop haunting me.”

It was November 1st, and my Day of the Dead altar was fully decorated and covered with photos of past loved ones. But not Marty. I dug through an old box and found a B & W of him from 1970. He was 18, his dark hair long and wavy, blowing in the wind. He had a smattering of acne, Grandpa D’s deep set eyes, Mom’s full lips: his two front teeth crossed over a tiny bit, just like hers did. He looked uncharacteristically un self-conscious, relaxed. He had his whole life ahead of him still, and was heading off to New College in Florida, trying to get far away from all the boring people he had to endure where he grew up, including his parents, and every conservative midwestern suburb he’d ever lived in. Later, after many arguments with Dad, he would head to Southern France.

“There,” I said out loud to his photo. “Are you happy now? I haven’t forgotten you.” I knew then as I know now that ghosts don’t want to be forgotten, but no one had ever reminded me quite so vividly in a dream. Subtlety was not one of Marty’s strengths, dead or alive, it seemed.

I have a photo of him on my fridge now too. After all these years, his ghost and I seem to have built a loving friendship.

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The prompt this time was the poem, “Ghost,” by Cynthia Huntington. You can read it here.

This Family to Which I Belong August 13, 2020

The prompt this time was the five word free write. (To learn more about this prompt, see the link here.) One of the words, hurricanes, reminded me of the memoir, Wave, by Sonali Deraniyagala.  If you haven’t read this incredible, frightening, beautiful book about loss and survival, I recommend it.

That night, I had just learned that a dear friend and mentor, Pat Schneider was dying. I would wake the next morning to find out that she was gone. I still don’t have words for how this makes me feel, although I am forever grateful to have known Pat, and I am indebted to her for showing me that being a survivor of loss was part of my gift as a teacher.                                                                         

Anyway, the five words that night were:

Pigeons   Figs   Grey   Hurricanes   Waiting 

What I wrote is below.

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He wants to pitch a story to a queer magazine, something about begin gay and going grey. Or maybe he wants to write a villanelle, or a sexy, saucy, sonnet. He could even return to that old manuscript, to the scene in GG Park where the pigeons rise all at once, then circle and circle.

Instead, he finds himself writing (again) about being a survivor. That old, tired narrative he’s written 1000 times before. His inner critic sighs and his inner adolescent leaves the room: nobody wants to hear it.

And yet, the irony of it. He was supposed to be a statistic: dead from HIV, suicide, or something brutal, like a bashing. He certainly had a death wish as a teenager. He wanted to die with his sick mother, because that way he wouldn’t have to endure life without her. Like that scene in Sybil, when they are lowering her grandmother’s casket into the ground, and the little girl—beside herself with the loss of that one tender love—wants to jump in after it. That’s how he felt too. I can’t possibly live without you, he thought, so better to die with you.

But it turns out, he wasn’t really morbid. He chose life. He grew older. He kissed dogs, marveled at yellow swallowtails, spoke to house finches, coaxed flowers to bloom. And now he finds he’s in good company.

The survivors just keep coming. Those who have endured pain and humiliation, fear, great, great loss. What a beautiful, unusual family they are: all ages and genders and backgrounds. He’s still surprised by their stories, by all that they’ve survived: the surgeries, the sexual predators, the bullies and the batterers. They’ve become good parents, or published writers, they’ve rescued abused dogs or sat with people who are dying. The irony doesn’t escape him, though: he never thought he’d live to see this surprisingly wonderful group of people he now belongs to.

First Visitor April 30, 2020

In this difficult time during the Covid-19 pandemic, I gathered a group of trusted writers and asked for their help. Knowing that my writing workshops would have to go online, we did a “practice run,” and wrote together for a few hours. The prompt that produced the piece below is tried and true: listening to Breyten Breytenbach’s poem, “Your Letter.” See that prompt here.

What I wrote:

Jose comes into the apartment wearing a mask. “You don’t have to wear that for me,” I say. “But please do whatever makes you feel comfortable.”

He takes it off, looking relieved. Seeing his face after nearly three weeks of self-quarantine (except for two stressful trips to the grocery store)—seeing that beautiful Aztec nose, his wide smile—is like a lifeline.

We’re still here, I think. We’re here in my living room, together.

On the trail below Twin Peaks, we walk single file, trying to stay six feet apart. Seeing the familiar dusting of dark hair on his caramel colored calves feels like a miracle.

We are walking on a trail we have walked on before; he is telling me a familiar story about his romantic relationship, and the details that used to fire up my defense for him, now feel like a mantra or a prayer. Sacred. His body close enough to touch. The lovely sing-song of his Spanish accent. His breath.

“Everyone is afraid,” I hear myself saying, surprising myself, because now I’m defending his fickle boyfriend.

He turns to look back at me with kindness. It’s physical, his gaze. It holds me the way a parent holds a child: lovingly, unassuming. And we are only here, in this moment, with a view of the city skyline rising bright white into a blue, blue sky. We are here. Both of us. Bathed in gratitude.

 

 

My Life in Flowers March 11, 2020

The prompt this time was the flower prompt: everyone in the workshop is given a flower that has recently bloomed in San Francisco, and we write in response. For a detailed description of the prompt, see this earlier post.

And just to give you some context for the tone of the following piece, which I wrote last week: we do this exercise every year (and I often do it on my international and Hawaiian retreats as well). So for me, this is a reminder of another year passing. I’ve posted several pieces on this blog in response to this prompt. See those links—as well as what I recently wrote—below.

https://lagunawriters.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/flower-fanatic/

https://lagunawriters.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/flower-fanatic-part-ii/   ____________________________________________________________________

Nobody sees a flower—really—it is so small it takes time—we haven’t time —and to see takes time, like having a friend takes time.

-Georgia O’Keeffe

World, I am your slow guest,
one of the common things
that move in the sun and have
close, reliable friends
in the earth, in the air, in the rock.               

-William Stafford 

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I want to tell you a story I haven’t told you before, but I fear I’m all out of stories now. No, really. Perhaps my head is just so filled with news about pandemics and Democratic presidential candidates that there’s little room left for stories that involve flowers, but I think it’s more likely that I’ve told you all of my stories already.

How I drove across the country with my parents on our big move and got stuck in a blizzard in Wyoming. How when we arrived in California at the end of January there were pink blossoms on the trees and mustard flowers growing waist high between the Live Oaks. How my next door neighbors grew orange roses that smelled like citrus, and in early April, the purple irises grew tall and opened lilac colored petals every year: dependable, elegant, the one small joy in my mother’s monotonous days.

Later, I discovered gardenias in Los Angeles—entire paths lined with bushes—so fragrant, they produced a near trance state, and how later, my one big love floated them in a bowl next to the bed we slept in together. In California, I learned that wisteria, with their old and snarled branches, thrive every spring, drooping under the weight of their blossoms, buzzing with bumble bees.

I learned about the Dahlia Garden in Golden Gate Park —about as close to Oz as I was ever going to get—how they came from Mexico originally, how tubers were different from bulbs, how jonquils and narcissus could bloom even in the rainiest February. I want to tell you why lilacs make me melancholy, and why Cecil Brunner roses—tiny pink and candy sweet—remind me of permanence, though flowers are the very epitome of impermanence, and no matter how many babies come into my life, and friends and relatives die, I still have to learn that nothing lasts forever over and over again. Frankly, I’m tired of that lesson, just like I’m tired of telling the same stories over and over again.

What irony, I think now, as I put this pen to paper, that the flowers come back year after year, the cloud of lemon-scented acacia blooming along the back driveway, the Japanese cherry blossoms on 19th Street between Castro and Hartford, the Victoria Box clusters dangling over Sanchez Street near Duboce Park, even the tulips below the 1960’s sign that marks the aging development I live in  (“Vista San Francisco”); they will burst back to life year after year only to die again. Still, I keep loving them. Every. Single. Year. And I keep telling these stories over and over again, with these flowers, these old companions, as my backdrop.

Wise Guy September 2, 2019

The prompt this time was to begin with a list of five cities you are familiar with, then to write about one of them.

First on my list was Mexico City, but I also had my inner adolescent on my mind. What I wrote is below.

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My inner adolescent is on the couch reading when I arrive. He looks up as I struggle through the door with my gym bag, school bag, and lunch bag. “Hey, bag lady,” he says. “Need some help?” He’s wearing white socks, tight Levi’s, and a red tank top; with his 30-inch waist and bulging crotch, he looks like a Blue Boy Magazine model: oozing sex and yet totally unsure what to do with it. I ignore his offer, knowing he’s only being polite, and heave my book bag into the corner by the printer. 

“What are you reading?” I ask, bracing myself for his naive criticism. He only likes National Geographic or Vanity Fair. Quite frankly, I’m not in the mood for him today.

“Something called Saveur,” he says, surprising me. “A special edition on Mexican cuisine. Pretty delicious.” His eyes are darker blue, more like Mom’s, and the whites are bright and clear. Young eyes. His hair is curlier than I remember, from getting caught in the rain, perhaps, or a working up a good sweat.

“I’m just wondering why you’re here,” I say, heading to the kitchen to put a kettle on.

“Beats me,” he says, leafing through the magazine, “I figured you needed to see me.”

“Tea?” I ask.

“Gross,” he says, then catches himself. “I mean, no thank you.”

We volley this way sometimes. That lovely boy I once was who plays cynical now, but really lived in a world with a sense of wonder and spontaneity, two things I have to get high or travel 1000’s of miles to tap into now.

“Actually,” he says, “I was wondering when you were going to buy that ticket to Mexico City.”

“You want me to go, is that it?”

“You’re awfully bitchy today,” he says. “I mean, more so than usual.”

I sigh. He sighs.

He looks so earnest. I want to tell him that forty years from now he will sometimes be driving home in the rain so filled with a sense of melancholy that he will want to drive to a bar instead and get good and drunk. That some days, his work will feel like helping countless young people with their whole lives ahead of them, while he feels stuck in his own life, fearful of chronic illness. That he will feel bone-tired.

“Anyway,” he says, “have you bought your ticket yet?”

“I don’t know about Mexico City,” I say.

“Why not? You’ve always wanted to go there: Casa Azul, the museums, and now this hot guy you’ve met online—”

“I don’t think living in a fantasy world is healthy for either of us,” I say. He laughs then, that shotgun laugh we get from Mom.

“Oh, please!” he says. “You’re a writer. We’ve always lived in a fantasy world.”

What could I say in response? He claimed me as a writer, and the kid had a point. Has always had a big heart too. Had no qualms about saying no to dissecting a fetal pig in Biology class because it was “disrespectful to the poor, dead, baby piglet.” (His words exactly.) I knew his love for flowers—roses, jasmine, violets—was a reflection of this big heart, and an attachment to romance.

“What do you have to lose by going to Mexico City?” he asked.

“About $1000,” I said.

“Just charge it then.”

“And my dignity, if I contact that beautiful young man.”

“Your dignity?”

“Yeah,” I say, taking the screaming kettle off the burner. “Once he sees what I actually look like in the flesh, he’ll run for the hills.”

“You underestimate how beautiful you are,” he says.

“So do you,” I say.

“You’re better looking than I am,” he says.

“You just have low self-esteem.”

“I’m serious,” he says. “You need to own it.”

I want to tell him that I only feel beautiful when I put eyedrops in my eyes, when I haven’t eaten very much, when someone I love looks at me and I can see myself through his eyes. Or when I am dancing. But I don’t dare. I don’t want him to feel this kind of sorrow yet. I feel protective of him.

“Oh, I know sorrow,” he says, reading my mind. “I stayed home and took care of our dying mother, remember?”

He’s right, of course. Back then I didn’t have the mindfulness I have now. I didn’t have the vocabulary or the lifelong friendships to talk my way through a bad day, a big worry, or the tug of grief when it came in waves. I have options now; I have the freedom to make my own choices.

“If I meet him in Mexico City,” I say, “it’s probably just going to be a sexual thing. Nothing more.”

“Sounds good to me,” he says. “It’s only $366 round trip if you buy the ticket today.”

We look at each other for a moment, and then he just smiles that big white smile. I want to smack him, but I also want to thank him. Instead, I just smile back.