A woman walks into a bar

I like knowing what I want. Being decisive is a quality I find exciting in others, and thrilling in myself. The very fact of having choice is pretty amazing, and decisiveness is the best way I've found to revel in this luxury.  It is so easy to become overwhelmed by choices, and to allow the beautiful wonder of plenty and freewill become a burden. I see it in my students, frustrated that they cannot choose a library book, or a sticker, or a bookmark. I see it in adults, torturing themselves to make perfect choices. I see it in myself sometimes, when I have reduced myself to a puddle of angry inertia-tears. With children, taking most of the options out of sight usually decreases the amount of time they require to choose, and increases their pleasure with their choice. Harder to do this simple trick with adults, or oneself.

What I have found I can do is to practice. I create a game, called "What do you most want at this moment?" (WDYMWATM is a terrible title for a game. I guess in my head I don't refer to it by name much.) I play the game when I am sad also - its good for reminding oneself how awesome life actually is, by making plain how much agency one has. But the game is particularly good for building skills in decision-making. Maybe because when you know what you most want, you have, in effect, thrown out the vast array of choices, and can hone in on finding something similar to this one thing.

In any case, it makes me happy to not pick up menus and just ask for what I want. It is less fun in a retail environment - I've breezed by racks to find salesclerks and ask for particular items, but usually the item isn't available. Kitchens are different - magical places of transmogrification where things can be turned into other things and approximations become victories of creative power on a very different level than settling for a blue dress when you wanted an aqua one. But kitchens (my own or an eatery's) are ideal settings to play the game - the stakes are low, the occasions for practice numerous, and the end result is near immediate.

Decisiveness is not always successful. I decisively declare I don't want things before I have actually considered whether I want them or not. If I am startled by an offer or a sales pitch, my answer will always be no, just to eliminate the unwelcome intrusion into my space. Pretty frequently I find myself looking at the back of some boy who asked me to coffee after class or a vendor hawking the exact thing I was looking for, thinking, "Well, crap." Shooting from the hip means failure, sometimes.

But most of the time it makes me pretty happy. And sometimes it makes me ecstatic. It might make me a super annoying person to date, but in casual relationships nothing is more liberating than exiting situations that cease being fun. Oh, here's this environment turning to crap, it's going to be a big bummer, if I was in this relationship long term I'd have to stay and clean this up, but I'm not! So I can just leave and be with my awesome self. Ta-da! I have a vivid memory of driving away from a man's cottage one morning when I was bored and unhappy and he was ignoring me, until he turned around and I was waving goodbye, listening to Norah Jones for several hours on the sunshiney drive home. I felt guilty about it later and sent him flowers (which of course confused him because he'd already forgotten the whole thing), but that was a rock star moment for me, when it dawned on me that I was an adult and did not have to stay.

I'd rather meet people at a place within walking distance than do almost anything else, because it gives me the most agency (when I arrive and depart) with the least responsibility (how much I can drink, how simple it is to find my way home, what obligations I have to others). Other options have to be evaluated on a graph where providing my own transportation (increased agency) is weighed against joining others for transportation (less responsibility). This means I am on my own a lot, among strangers, which is not always ideal, since I also value friendships and intimacy. But I love being on foot. I love the freedom. I listen to old poems romanticizing the sea and its lures to sailors - that's me, on my feet in a metropolis.

I am in love with myself on foot. In love with my agency and decisiveness, even if I am blowing off things I want because I don't think before speaking. The offer will come back, or it won't. Whatever. The sun is shining, my feet are walking, and I'm hopping onto the stool, making eye contact with the barkeep, "What reposados do you have?...This one, in a margarita. Grand Marnier. Lime juice, no sour mix. Rocks, salt." In this one small area, I am queen. I am discriminating and difficult. "Is this okay?" the barkeep nervously hands me a glass. I am a bitch. Sorry. I am in love with myself and my decisiveness. The only thing sexier than watching a self-possessed man is hearing my own voice ringing with assurance as I ask for exactly what I want.

unscumbled

I watch Libby hold Naomi

Naomi is crying. The moment is private, painful.
I should help, I should leave.
But I watch

because the moment is also beautiful, this picture of what love is,
what it is at its most basic.
Intimacy
Someone to hold you
Someone to let you fall apart, be strong when you are vulnerable
Someone who sees the pain that makes others uncomfortable, drawing near anyway,
not to exploit - no solutions, no demands
just a witness beside you

And all my complicated thoughts fall away
my angst and tortured prevarications
my inability to articulate what the fuck I am looking for
This is it, I think. This is what I most want.
I want someone to love me like this.
I want to trust someone enough to be this weak

To stop protecting partners from my emotions
Like I can't really be me
Like I can't speak at full volume
Or share what I am really thinking
Being polite all the time
because the messiness displeases others

Take off the shade
Burn at full brightness
Be it exhausting, trouble, a tangle of yarn, this is my beauty
I scream fun
I sparkle
I hold on with both hands
not your problem
I know myself - just listen
These are my colors, unscumbled

Let me crackle
or let me radiate

no distaste
no retreat

Make the small talk I can't at the funeral, so the walls can melt over my face

Answer my left-out petulance simply, "Just dance with me." 

Hear someone throw the gauntlet, catch my eye, slip keys back in pocket
"You're missing her point," at my flank, with relish
No fear of me
my face out to the sun, yours a smile
You are this.

But you are also deliberate separateness, stinging silence, vague uncertainty
I am a place that you visit.
You leave and are fine, shaking it off, while I am wrung out, and empty
Looking for reassurance
So perceptive...but you don't see this

And Libby said the best thing in the world
She said,
"Do you know how long it took me to learn to do that?"

Maybe this is intimacy, too.
The learning
The falling down
The conversations on texts and voice mail and through eyes that aren't meeting that seem just as awful as these talks always have been
And yet aren't
A bit of patience
A bit of apology
Awareness
A breath
A glimmer
I'm not more trusting
I'm still me
I don't trust men, I won't, that won't change
Except I think that even though I don't trust you to come back because you're a man
I think you might
because you did before
I think I might be able to count again instead of spewing
protective venom shell around me
I think
maybe
no supernova this time
Maybe no gravel flying out from under my tires

And maybe this is intimacy
Not the kind I'm aiming for
Not the kind with smiles and laughter
Not the kind that makes me smug
But maybe the kind that I'd recognize from outside
If I wasn't crying
If you weren't learning how to hold me
If I weren't learning to respond to your, "Ouch."
I'm not receiving comfort now

But I might be ready, 

soon