Phone calls from my Ex.
One of many – calls and exes, respectively.
Better in the rearview.
That is, I certainly am. The longer I am absent from your bedroom, favorites list, Holiday Card greetings, friend group, dance card, and my toothbrush leaves your medicine cabinet, the better I look. And you know what, the same goes for you.
One of my favorite things both about social media, particularly Instagram, and being over 40, is feeling GOOD, actually VERY GOOD, when comparing myself to the aging experiences of those whom I’ve, well, fucked with. And look, let’s go there: it is a good strong cannon of persons. I don’t know how to search for all of them (I mean, come on, there isn’t a lot of helpful search info that comes from Googling “hangs out at the … on weeknights” or “went to college with that girlfriend of that girlfriend”. Nope, you need names. NAMES, people, and I don’t know a lot of those. (Note: I don’t say ‘remember’ I mean like EVER knew.) But that’s cool, it was at the time and is still so today. See, that makes me hotter, i.e., the me in my fantasy of me where I am or ever was Hot vs Accommodating, which may or may not have or hold a good deal of collateral in my erotic economy.
Whatever the case: let us say it is Tuesday. And why don’t we pretend it is after lunch. That there is a lull between client sessions. I could do something worthwhile with my time, or I could snoop. What would you do? Well, there you go – so I am on the feed and on a certain person’s page or whatnot, and having feels. Yes, over them, as in what I missed or what we missed together, how happy they look with a person who is not me, even though neither of us ever (really) wanted that.
There must be something in the air, or perhaps it is physics, that has such a person (one particular person at the time of writing) like magic, like divining providence kind of magic, and I get a DM. HOLD THE PHONE! Before I go in deeper, I want you to kill, as an act of mercy, thoughts you may be having about this possibly being juicy, for it will not be. What it will be is very, very pedestrian and positive in that this DM, and perhaps even the snooping before, began a reunion that reminds me of the love we can have, the affection I hold, for the best of my very worst.
Here is another way to approach this: History. How does that land with you? That word “history” is heavy and a bit academic. The heaviness, however, that is what I want to chat about. For instance, my relationship with the lover in question was highly immoral and roped in lies. As ‘good’ as we were, the whys and wherefores of our affair were all wrong. Culturally wrong, socially damnable, personally stagnating, and erotically awesome. (Not for nothing, a good deal of my romances hit those points.) Those sins (and yes, that is how they feel) weigh as such. It is icky and victimizing. A history I speak of in polite company in two ways: in jest and in shame. Hearing the experiences of a pal or other who is on the negative end of the receiving line of such dalliances, I shrink- and for good reason! On that tip, even my husband does not know the annals of all my adventures. No mistruths, but not a lot of volunteerisms either.
Reading this, I wonder if you are thinking a bit of what I am? Take a minute, I can wait….
About careers, Silly!
What about that? What about the way we approach our pasts? Firings, attempts, changes, email threads we ghosted on, dressing downs we have given and gotten, bad hair and worst days, promises offered and never actualized. The things we dread being asked in an interview or forego mention on our resume, doing so making the worst kind of assumptions about ourselves and others. So locked into, committed, if you will, to the stories of ‘journeys’ and ‘failures’ as super route and hyper linear things. This is the definition of baggage.
Too shoot-from-the-hip to quote a definition of ‘baggage’ I’ll instead offer one I dare you to argue with:
