DISCLAIMER:  I share my writing on this platform since there is a high probability it will never find its way into a book. You are here because you clicked on a link. I am not forcing you to read these excerpts from my life as I remember them. I understand there are multiple versions of any shared experience, and this is just one version. I change names where possible to protect identities and request that you do not try to "reveal" them. I am not out to hurt anyone, but I do love me some sarcastic humor and creative license...hope the difference comes across. If you are offended by or don't agree with something in my writing that you chose to read, I 100% decline to care and 25% suggest you start your own blog. Sometimes I swear or talk about things that might make you uncomfortable, like religion and my vagina. If that last sentence made you slightly uncomfortable, this is probably a great stopping point for you. However, if you choose to continue reading, please do so respectfully so this site can continue to be a safe space.
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Part 2… (Continued from Part 1 - Click to read)

Simon: This is going to be a hard one because you will probably stop liking me at this point. Simon was John’s best friend until I came along. I decided the time was up for my relationship with John, so naturally I did what any 14 year old coward would do. I cheated on him with another guy in the auditorium foyer during an award-winning performance from the high school drama club. Consumed with guilt, I immediately broke up with John and started pining after auditorium guy with not much luck. (More on him later). When that didn’t work out, a tall, stylish, bass-playing glass of water named Simon suddenly caught my attention. In the blink of an eye, I had ruined a friendship and snagged a new four year commitment. I managed to hang on to my virginity by a thread, bless his heart. Although I think I may have given him a blow job in the back of his parents‘ van on the way home from a family beach trip. Again, my memory fails me there because I subconsciously ignore any times in my past where I behaved like a damn hooker. The thing I remember the most fondly about this relationship is music. Simon was a punk rock kid with an old school gentleman twist. He made me mixes of bands like The Ataris, Blink 182, Dance Hall Crashers, Bouncing Souls, MxPx, and Unwritten Law. But he'd stop whatever he was doing and ask me to dance when Santana's Samba Pa Ti came on the radio. A true romantic, he would write me love letters and bring long-stemmed roses to my door like they were growing in his truck. Simon eventually left town on a quest to join the family business: prison. His plan was to become a correctional officer and then my husband. I really cared about Simon, but my plan was to not have anything to do with that. I had heard stories of C.O.’s beating the shit out of their wives because the stress of their jobs became too much to handle at home. No thank you. Besides, it was almost time to go to college. I saw Simon a few years ago; over a decade had passed since we were together. He came to see one of my shows when my band was on tour and smoked a cigarette during the break with my lesbian band mate who also happened to be my ex. As I looked out at the two tattooed, well-dressed, pompadoured musicians  through the front window of the bar in what I can only describe as a This is Your Life moment, it suddenly struck me that I did sort of have a type.

Check back next week for Boys and Girls - Part 3

Woke up this morning and wanted to play but didn't feel like writing. So this happened. Can someone find me a castle to dance in?

As most of you know, I've been struggling to process the difficult relationship I have with my mother in the context of her battle with brain cancer. I woke up this morning and the words to this song just fell out. I wouldn't normally choose to write a song alluding to tourniquets since that's been done about a zillion times before but this particular song didn't really come from my own brain as much as it did my subconscious so I felt it was important to deliver in spite of the cliche. I wanted the song to be relatable from all aspects of the situation- from both my perspective as well as my mother's. 

DISCLAIMER:  I share my writing on this platform since there is a high probability it will never find its way into a book. You are here because you clicked on a link. I am not forcing you to read these excerpts from my life as I remember them. I understand there are multiple versions of any shared experience, and this is just one version. I change names where possible to protect identities and request that you do not try to "reveal" them. I am not out to hurt anyone, but I do love me some sarcastic humor and creative license...hope the difference comes across. If you are offended by or don't agree with something in my writing that you chose to read, I 100% decline to care and 25% suggest you start your own blog. Sometimes I swear or talk about things that might make you uncomfortable, like religion and my vagina. If that last sentence made you slightly uncomfortable, this is probably a great stopping point for you. However, if you choose to continue reading, please do so respectfully so this site can continue to be a safe space.

​Boys and Girls

I don’t think I was one of those girls with “daddy” issues. But for some reason I chose to be one of those girls with a perpetual older boyfriend. It sounds snotty to say I was mature for my age, but I was (hair flip). I spent most of my teenage years biding my time until I could finally fly the coup. Maybe I thought older boys were my ticket out of town, maybe I hated being alone, maybe I liked being the sole focus of someone’s attention, or maybe I didn’t want to bother making BFF girlfriends. I still haven’t really cracked the case, but the fact remains that I have not really been “single” for any significant period of time since I was 13 years old. The following is a list of the boys I busied myself with over the years. There were other flings here and there, but these are the “landmark” fellows. Please keep in mind while reading (and this is no excuse) that when measured against the girls I grew up with and the town I grew up in, my antics were relatively normal, if not vanilla. If you come from a dirty little town, you tend to do dirty little things to pass the time. The thing that makes me sad is this: all these guys, with the exception of one, genuinely loved me. But for some reason, I repeated the pattern of slowly making them suffer until I was ready to try something else. I was a man-eater and I didn’t even know it. The thing that makes me even more sad is this: if I wouldn’t have been so scared of being alone, and if I would have actually tried spending any amount of time getting to know myself, I may have realized I didn’t need them to fill in some imaginary hole in my life, thereby preventing years of pain and suffering for all parties involved. I won’t make assumptions that any of these guys even care about my wrong-doings at this point, but I do still carry with me the residual guilt of being such a dishonest person and the shame of being so horrible to people who loved me. Not to mention I am embarrassed for being somewhat of a teenage hoe-bag.

John: He was about 16, I was about 13, and my mom was about to shit a brick. This guy had no business being with someone my age, but in his defense, someone my age had no business being at the party where we first met. We clung to each other for a couple years, me for the reasons listed above, him for reasons having to do with trying to take my virginity, bless his heart. J/k, he really loved me, I think. Due to my parents‘ legitimate concern over our relationship, I somehow found myself turning into some sort of secret agent in order to spend time with him and experiment with the sensations I was having between my legs. Sometimes I look back on my time with John and I am repulsed. I think I may have given him a blow job in the back of a church van, but the memory is fuzzy due to years of trying to block it out. Other times, I find a sweet little silver lining of tenderness. Many nights I found myself scooting down the hallway stairs one-by-one on my butt so the floorboards wouldn’t creak, then slipping out of the garage door into the night where John would be waiting at the school across the street. He spread out blankets and we would lay there under the vast black starry sky keeping each other warm and listening only to the sounds of a train rolling through town every half hour. Even though it was a wildly inappropriate relationship, those particular memories remain clear in my mind and I think of them fondly.

Check back next week for Boys and Girls - Part 2