Echo

Fucking irritated at what’s going on at work. Don’t even fucking talk to me.

It is amazing how I can compartmentalize. No wonder I lose track of my feelings sometimes. On one hand I can be completely professional, smile and work and cooperate. On another level, I’m seething. No one can tell. I barely notice it myself. Until I’m alone and my mind goes to it and up comes disgust. But who am I really disgust with? Not them. I’m disgusted with myself for even noticing.

From a professional standpoint, this is going nowhere good.

I slept really poorly last night. Was dreaming that I wanted to buy a new place because my place in San Jose has extremely hard water that is making my hair fall out (true…that’s why I have only been showering at my parents’ house…it’s a known problem that we’re trying to get the developer to address). I was looking at this place that’s $5 million that had 5 bedrooms but was only 700 sq ft, but it was adjacent to the Russian River for rafting and had a private pool. I was looking at the listing and thought it didn’t make sense. San Francisco real estate was out of whack. I kept waking up thinking, you don’t want to live in SF because that place is a bottleneck, but I would go back to sleep frantic to move out of my place in San Jose.

Those fitful dreams were cut in with thoughts about basketball and wanting to stop playing. I thought I tore my ACL again yesterday. It was dangerously close. I recognize that I am lucky it didn’t tear. I went to practice just trying to take it easy. We have a player that I really try hard not to play against. She’s great if she’s on your team, dangerous if you’re playing against her. Reckless. She tends to ram her butt right into me right above the knee and she actually injured me a few weeks ago when she hit me on the side of the knee;  that was a really scary moment as well and I’m still recovering from it. last night I was under the basket and she popped her butt straight into my kneecap, causing it to slam backwards and buckled. I shifted my weight immediately to my other leg but it was very, very close. Scarily close. For a split second, I thought my ACL was done.

I did get kind of mad because she’s always saying I don’t take care of my body, but she’s my biggest risk of injury on the court, so part me of wonders if she’s unconsciously trying to hurt me to prove a point, but I try not to think like that because I’m sure she’s not consciously trying to hurt me. But I have to be realistic about assessing the risk and she’s a big risk. After yesterday, I think it’s not worth the risk.  I think I was really worried about the game today, about if I would try to get up in the morning to find that my ACL is torn. I woke up this morning feeling crappy, feeling scared, feeling unhappy. But at least when I stood up, the knee felt okay.

It’s not worth the risk. I’m not trying to prove anything, and I play like shit when I worry about getting injured anyway. It’s just not worth it.

In my dream last night, I encountered a bar called Hunt’s. I could see it was crowded through the window, so I was trying to find the door but couldn’t get inside. When I finally got in, there weren’t as many people as there had seemed from the outside. I heard my inner narrator say, it’s so sad. You are always looking for a crowd but you always end up alone.

Don’t want to think about it
Don’t want to talk about it
I’m so sick about it

I’m done. It’s a good thing.

Bad dreams to end ambiguous feelings.

Really fucked up dream last night. I was some kind of evil psychopath and I had a girl coming to visit me and for whatever reason I decided I was going to torture her. She got here and I acted like we were friends but I drugged her drink so she passed out. Then I bound and gagged her and threw her in the back of a van while I went out prowling bars.

It was weird because it was me–my brain, but I was evil. I walked around the streets of Santa Monica, smug that little did people know I had this poor girl tied up in my car. I think I must have had her in there for a couple of days because I remember thinking she’s probably terrified and wet/shit herself by now, and it gave me a very complex feeling of both sadistic pleasure and guilt. And rage at her for ever trusting me.

I remember I was walking on the Promenade when I saw Nick from the gym except he was bald. I know he’s not into me, and I could have sworn he saw me then got up to leave because he didn’t want to talk to me.

I think around then it dawned on me what I’d done, that I would either have to kill her or go to prison. What was I gonna say? Just kidding? I think I knew it was a dream because I said to myself, you better end this world but I wanted to get her first so I went back to the car. I remember the smell of vomit and she was scared and more happy to see me than realizing I was the one that did this to her. I felt like a monster. Then I woke up.

I know that they say in some interpretations, every character in a dream represents an aspect of you. In this one, I was a sadistic monster and a naively trusting victim. Maybe I’m angry at the part of me that has held on to something I shouldn’t have for too long. Or maybe my unrequited feelings for someone unobtainable is the monster, the way I’ve kept my insides trapped from actually interacting with the world.

I don’t know. It was hard for me to get up today. I felt dirty from the world I’d walked in, the skin I’d lived in. I went through the day with no feelings. A heart of cement.

Today, I felt nothing.

Parks and Recreation is back on. I heart Ben so much, it’s a shame he’s not a real person. Those episodes when his feelings were revealed last season–pure umami. I’m pretty sure my brain was tricked into thinking I was in love. There were nights I had trouble sleeping. Good scene work does that. I like things that are visceral.

That drummer gets a lot of pussy.

You’re just sharp enough and you’re just cute enough but you’re missing that something that ties your heart to your balls. -my evaluation of someone I met at the conference.

Almost one year ago. Office Christmas party. It was supposed to be a celebration but what I remember most is the rain. He in a trenchcoat. We under a canopy in the rain. A hug. And my heart and soul and mouth were silent. Will my memories always be defined by silence? Will the rain this year haunt me? I always try to do the right thing. That is my greatest strength and my greatest flaw. Maybe I am a soldier. Maybe underneath it all, I’m programmed to do one thing, not necessarily by choice but because that’s all I know.

I know how to replace Steve Jobs’ void. I don’t know if it’s a dream or a vision but it’s worth trying.

I’m an athlete on the verge of retirement. Just have to accept.

hey pretty…

Kyrie suggested we go for drive in her new 2-door BMW coupe. In the parking lot, we slipped into her bucket seats; Kyrie took over from there. At nearly 90 miles per hour she zipped us up to that windy edge known to some as Mulholland, a sinuous road running the ridge of the Santa Monica Mountains, where she then proceeded to pump her vehicle in and out of turns. Sometimes dropping down to 50 miles per hour, only to immediately gun it back up to 90 again. Fast. Slow. Fast. Fast. Slow. Sometimes a wide turn, sometimes a quick one. She preferred the tighter ones, the sharp, controlled jerks swinging left to right, before driving back to the right, only so she could do it all over again. Until after enough speed and enough wind, and more distance than I’d been prepared to expect, taking me to parts of the city I rarely think of, and never visit, I heard her say,

Hey pretty, don’t you wanna take a ride with me
Through my world?
Hey pretty, don’t you wanna kick a slide
Through my world?
(Do you get the gist of the song now?)

I can’t remember the innane things I started babbling about then. I know it didn’t really matter, she wasn’t listening. She just yanked up on the emergency brake, dropped her seat back, and told me to lie on top of her. On top of those leather pants of hers, her hands immediately guiding mine over those soft, slightly-oily folds, positioning my fingers on a shiny, metal tab, small and round, like a tear. Then murmuring a murmur so inaudible that even though I could feel her lips tremble against my ear, she seemed far, far away. “Pinch it,” she said, which I did lightly until she also said, “Pull it,” which I also did, gently parting the teeth, one at a time, down under and beneath, the longest unzipping of my life.

We never even kissed or looked into each other’s eyes, our lips just trespassed on those inner labryinths hidden deep within our ears, filled them with the private music of wicked words, hers in many languages, mine in the off-color of my only tongue. Too bad dark languages rarely survive.

What’s this? There was a witness tonight. Claiming in the span of 2 minutes, I disappeared. Interesting…

Monday night, Matt calls me and says I should go to Oregon. We need more visibility and he wants me to connect with them. Tuesday morning they’re scrambling to get me set up in Oregon.

Rain and unfamiliar territories. Shitty rental car. Blend in by standing out. Darkness in the light. Assassin. My favorite movie is Grosse Point Blank because it soothes my loneliness with metaphor. First night in a Comfort Inn, I’m assuming every inch of this carpet and comforter is covered in bodily fluid, and I’m afraid of getting STDs on my feet. Motel sleep is always sheet only.

My mama taught me that.

Dream so real that I didn’t know where I was or what dimension. In it, Jerry and I  spoke of firemen. In it we finally connected.

Today was my first day back. I’ve been out of it, focused on what I’ve been working on. I come back from lunch and the entire company, all 135 of us, are gathered together and being lectured by a retired fireman. Today is a mandatory fire drill and disaster training.

Speaking of fire or disaster, before I left for the trip, did I wonder what would happen if I left them alone together? Sure. She’d become more bold in her flirting with him and I tried not to pay attention to it so as not to get caught up in it. But she seemed particularly aggressive today and I was shocked to find she’d come to our gym to watch him play last night. I was fiercely uncomfortable and I ached. I wondered if he kept secrets from me. Then I reminded myself if he was like that then I would be done with him.

A lot of chatter between the two. I went on Amazon and bought a set of bluetooth headphones. No need to let this piss me off.

Later he asked me if I was going to the gym. I said I might. He asked me if I was almost ready to leave so I said sure. She always insists on walking him out. He barely said goodbye to her, we were talking. And so I told him I would go to the gym. And I did.

I was on the roman chair when he came up and asked me if I was done. He didn’t want me to feel like I had to walk him out. I asked him, are you asking me to walk you out? He said, only if you happen to be leaving.

So we walked out together, I wondered, was this it? Were we finally going to talk? He said it’s weird how dark it is now this time of day and between the shadows and glow of the streetlights, I think of the touch of his hand and how he is black and I am black and how scared I am that he’s going to say he knows about the dream and he’s sorry. It should never have happened.

We are alone and talking. We are two people, talking. We are two people talking, alone. Until my aunt drives by and honks.

We say goodbye. See you tomorrow. I tell him I don’t really want to play tomorrow and he says he wants to take it easy, too, so a slow game will be good for us. I wonder why life has brought us to this point, and where it took the rest of us.

The moon through my windshield reminds me the full moon is rising.

As I drive away, I remember firemen.

My jealousy works in funny ways. The moment I feel it, rather than digging in, my response is to let go of the object. Give up. Not want it anymore. I have a low threshhold for emotional competition. I don’t feel healthy if there’s jealousy present. It makes me feel like I would rather give up all those feelings around a person or object, the desire and the feelings of being threatened, because if something was mine, it would be mine regardless. In this case it’s not mine to begin with and a 3rd party is ramping up aggression. And I don’t like what’s happening in my subconscious. I don’t want to care about any of this.

My dreams last night took me to a place so deep I woke up to a reality that felt less real.

Jerry and I were cleaning out a garage. He was helping me because I’d asked him to. I noticed our hands kept touching but he and I–it is what it is so as always I feel nothing for him except a twitch of something buried so deep inside it exists in a dimension that is not this one.

It was exhausting and we collapse in these two white sofa chairs. We were talking about firemen or something. Our hands touch and I push my mind away from it immediately out of habit but this time, he curls his fingers into mine and he is holding my hand. We are connected. His hand was cool, not exactly soft, but very real. Skin I remember from a time beyond time. The hands of a man that brought a universe of feelings to my throat but I couldn’t say a word. I couldn’t even look at him. Just sat there, frozen by his touch.

Come here, he said. I look at him and he’s looking at me the way I catch him sometimes. But this time it’s out there. It’s no longer hidden. I get up and sit down, kind of on him because the seat is only big enough really for one person and he wraps his arms around me and kisses me, and his lips are soft and gentle and remind me of an entire distant lifetime but I know it’s wrong because he doesn’t belong to me this time around. Someone will get hurt now.

He says to me to be patient. That he’ll figure it out but it’ll be “after” and I’m at once furious because after all this it’s still not me and I’m sad because this is tragic. She’s a good woman and I have broken my moral code. I have broken myself because of not being able to let go.

That’s all it was. The handhold. One kiss. Despair. I woke up to find it was exactly 7:30 and I was supposed to be at a breakfast meeting. I never got my wake up call. As I scrambled to get ready, I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream. It was hauntingly real, the textures, the way I felt so high and so low at the same time. Throughout the rest of the day, battle after battle, my mind never left the touch of his fingers curling around mine.

The dream scared me.

6 meetings back to back meeting with different groups. Our brand is my responsibility. My team is my responsibility. First I owned the fool who has been cockblocking my team then I dove deep. Infiltrated. Coerced. Commanded. Seduced. Men or women, I’ll take ’em all. Outward-facing title–Director of Strategic Alliance. Internal-facing…so many people ask me what exactly I do for my company. If you got close to me and paid attention, you’d see it on my nameplate.

It’s all about perception.

Mission accomplished. This VP tries telling me he’s worked with AMAX for 12 years but he doesn’t believe he’s ever met the leadership. I asked him to take a moment and say it again if he really believed that. He looked me in the eye and said he didn’t think he has. He asked me, why, who is it?

I asked him what the most important piece in chess is. He said the rook. I asked him what piece is every other piece trying to protect? He said, the queen.

I said, if you don’t think you’ve met the leader yet, the team’s doing a great job.

Remember the name. I just ran circles around you in front of your team.

Packing my bags. I feel like a ninja who has been handed a mission. Infiltrate Intel. Seduce. Coerce. Command. The deadliest assassin is always the queen.

Once upon a time he traveled back in time and found himself, moving forward.

Sometimes I don’t know how plans fall apart but it’s about grabbing the new one and playing along.