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.

Love was blind, but now I see March 3, 2022

The idea behind this prompt was to freshen a cliché and have some fun with it. The original phrase is “Love is blind.” But I thought it would be fun to take out the word “blind” and try filling in the blank as many times as possible.

Love is _____________(not blind:, but what other ways might it be disabled or challenged/challenging?)

We all came up with lists. We read a few from our lists, and then chose one and ran with it. We wrote for about ten minutes.

Here are a few from my list:

Love is a cry baby

a gutless bully

an old porn star

a one note wonder

a night of bad karaoke

a prude with coffee breath

a pile of dog shit on the hot pavement

a terrible rash 

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What I wrote is below.

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Love decided to go into hiding, at least that’s what I tell myself. But maybe I’ve stuffed Love in a box in the attic and am hoping he won’t be able to get out again. The last I heard, Love got run over by an SUV; it was a hit and run, and Love broke several bones, was in a wheelchair for a while. When we last spoke, Love was limping around, but was driving again, running errands and healing bones.

Just to be clear, it wasn’t I who ran over Love and just kept driving, but sometimes I wish it was. Don’t think poorly of me, it’s just a metaphor. Love was always so good at taking away my agency, my personhood. Love loved to call me a bitch and a little girl. Love was toxic masculinity in the flesh, and I let him rule me with his deep voice and big dick. Love is really just an abused little boy, watching his father throw his mother through a sliding glass door. Love was only three when they left him in daycare all day at the casino, and he had to pretend he was four (because that was the minimum age). Love was almost saved by a social worker when he was 14, but then his mother said she was abused when she was a child, and Love fell under her evil spell and decided to feel sorry for her.

And now you probably feel sorry for Love, don’t you? See how insidious Love is? Even though he took my youth and splattered my romantic dreams all over the windshield, you still feel sorry for him (and not me). That’s okay, though. I know the real story, and Love wasn’t worth saving. It was either Love or me: there was only room for one of us in the lifeboat. So I pushed Love into the water. Don’t worry. Love can swim. He’s already on another shore destroying another island. Love is relentless, that’s what Love is, but at least he’s not my mine anymore.

Home Sweet Home October 1, 2020

The prompt this time was two lists. For a detailed description of how this prompts works, see this earlier post. The two headings this time were, “During the Pandemic,” and “When the pandemic is over.” See a few highlights from my lists here (what I wrote in response follows the lists):     

                                                                                                               

During the Pandemic

Madonna offered no solace

Horny every day

I try to exercise and feel defeated

I baked like someone on speed

Some nights the loneliness was unbearable

When the Pandemic is Over

I’m going to hug everyone, but not shake hands

I’ll have you over and you’ll eat brownies from my dining room table

We’ll look back and talk about it like people talked about WWII when I was a kid

I will dance to house music in a sweaty club

I will never complain about going to the gym again

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For the first time in twenty-one years, I’m not sharing my apartment. Though I’ve lived alone since 1999, I’ve been sharing my space with writers two nights a week, and on Saturdays and Sundays for day long workshops and retreats. On those nights and weekends, I sometimes scrambled to make it home on time to vacuum, to wipe errant hairs from the white tiled bathroom floor, to heat up the forty-two-cup water urn for tea, and to make sure that whatever I baked was ready to go onto my dining room table alongside some snacks. With the chairs in a circle, and a poem on each chair, I’d rarely have a moment before my doorbell would ring and a group of eight or ten people—some whom I’d written with for years, and traveled with on retreats, some I’d just met—would enter my space and take their shoes off.

The pandemic put all of that to a full stop, just as it did my dinner parties and my annual Pink Pride party (something I’ve been doing for 15 years). It also froze my sex life, and forced me to be more disciplined about watching exercise videos and taking daily walks, since turning my living room into a gym with a weight bench was one place I had to draw the line.

For two decades I’ve shared my home with others, and ironically, when that was no longer an option, I began to seriously nest. Oh, I still fantasized about selling everything and moving to the Costa Blanca in Spain, or finding a little house in Boca Tomlatán, but the longer I had my space to myself, the more I seemed to be settling in. I chose paint colors for the living room, hallway, and bedroom. I ordered fabric swatches and chose a sleeper sofa from Crate and Barrel. I reupholstered a few chairs, bought a vintage footstool, replaced the broken blinds in my bedroom, planted salvia and rose geranium on the deck, repaired my desk chair, and de-cluttered my fridge of old photos and silly notes.

I want to say I did all of this because the place was mine and only mine, and that for the first time in my adult life, I was making choices about my living space that served me only. But the truth is, I was preparing the place—setting the stage as it were— for a time when everyone could safely return. I even decided on a larger, more expensive couch than any lonely bachelor would ever need: three cushions and 90 inches—because I knew it would be more comfortable and fit more people when the time came to open my doors again. Change is coming, I told myself—even when I wasn’t sure I believed it—and you better be ready.

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.

Happier Times June 22, 2020

 

The prompt this time was Sinead O’Connor’s song, “In this Heart.” You can click on the YouTube link above to hear it.

What I wrote is below.

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I arrive for dinner, and he’s a gentleman, as always, his face lit up like a child.

“Some wine?”

We sit on the sectional, and in about three minutes, I’m climbing on him like a puppy, some fire ignited that’s impossible to control now.

He’s so long. His thigh is longer than my entire arm; when we’re lying together, I trail my hand down, down, down, and I still can’t reach his knee. I feel like I’m climbing a mountain, or trying to stretch the canvas sails on a huge boat.

“I know,” he says. “It’s a lot.”

We’re two men in our fifties, but when his glasses come off, and I look into his eyes, we’re both fifteen again, all limbs and hormones.

“I thought you wanted to talk,” he says, while I’m lying on top of him.

“I did,” I say, “but I can’t keep my hands off you.”

I keep thinking he’s going to have bad breath or stinky armpits, but like a grownup, he has always showered, and he’s rinsed with mouthwash before I arrive. Wiped down the counters, straightened the throw pillows on the couch. Even his beard smells like soap. “You shampoo it, of course,” he says in his soft Egyptian accent, and then we’re kissing again.

I’m lost in his limbs in a way that’s unfamiliar, yet strangely comfortable. It’s easy in a way I don’t question. The little mole on his left side, the dusting of soft hair on his shoulder blades, the curls of silver in a cloud of black at his hairline. You would think I’d be humping him like a chihuahua, but I’m content rolling onto my back, or having him pull me on top, simply because I’m flooded with Oxytocin. Pillow talk, solid, wet kisses. I dare not tell him I’m trying to get as much as I can in case this ends soon, fizzles out. Tomorrow’s boytoy could easily distract this hairy, hunky giant lying beneath me.

I tell him it’s so good, but I won’t say that I’ve been starving for years now. That erotic massages and cheap sauna sex can’t fill this chasm I carry around, this nagging ache to be touched. I’m at the buffet now, loading up plate after plate, filling my mouth with everything delicious. I feel insatiable. I’m not moving, except for the occasional breath, or long sweet gaze, then I’m back again, back again, I’m back again for more.

 

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.

Just Another Day at the Office February 9, 2020

The prompt this time was the bizarre clothes catalog, Shinesty, with a tongue-in-cheek holiday theme that I still can’t  figure out. Just as we approached the winter holidays, each writer took several pages from the catalog and wrote in response. I still don’t know how to describe the clothing in this catalog; it could be consumerism at its worst, or it could be a clever joke. Either way, it looks like Shinesty is here to stay. You can check it out for yourself here.  

I focused on this cover image. What I wrote it below.

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As usual, Ben was not cooperating. I knew from previous photo shoots that he was a prima donna. Not that he wasn’t beautiful to look at: the thick cocoa-brown hair, those long eyelashes, the silky beard. His legs were solid muscle, and even though his nose was wide, it was luscious. Edible, really.

“He’s sniffing under my skirt again!” Jasmine screamed. I had only looked down for a minute, and there they were: Ben (looking sheepish) and Jasmine, both of her hands trying to push away his huge head. “Can’t you just photoshop him in later?” she pleaded.

“Carl!” I hollered. “Would you please do something about this?”

Carl walked over with an apple, and Ben, 2,000 pounds of Bison beauty, started towards him, looking excited.

“Watch your feet now, everyone,” my assistant, Kareem announced. “Big hooves are moving!”

It was one of those perfect windswept days in the Central Valley. The backdrop was golden grass, shorn to a few inches, a low line of trees in the distance, and a blue sky painted with wisps of cirrus clouds. Cool, but sunny, the shadows perfectly composed. It was a photographer’s dream.

“Sorry, Don,” the handler said. “He’s extra feisty today.”

“He’s feisty alright,” I said. “Okay, everyone. Let’s take ten and regroup. Makeup?” It was time for a touch-up. Jasmine needed to be de-shined; Ben got his apple and a thorough face brushing, to which he groaned with pleasure, the god damned beast.

It was my third time working with Ben and Carl this year. Apparently, Bison models are all the rage. Ben even has his own Instagram account. Comments on Ben’s posts range from, “Vegetarians against Buffalo beef!” to “We love Benny!” to “WTF? How come I’m sort of in love with you?” to “Ben for president!” It seems everyone is in love with the idea of a catalog cover featuring this handsome ox, but in all honesty, I think it sets a bad precedent.

“Don?” Jasmine was suddenly over my shoulder. “I can’t work this way! He’s freaking me out.” She had tears welling up in her eyes.

“Jazz,” I said, “Don’t do this to yourself. You’re a professional. You’ve worked with much worse. Remember the monkey in Nepal?”

“That little asshole,” she said, and as she laughed, two big tears popped out of her eyes.

“Makeup!” I yelled again. “For Christ’s sake: Makeup!” Jasmine laughed again and wiped her eyes.

“It’s a crazy business,” I said. “Isn’t it kid?” She nodded.

It was going to be a long afternoon.

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.