tallnlucky: blog

Naked Men in Windows, Errant Stomachs, and Wicked Pride

There's a naked man, visible from my friend's living room.
"Dude, the naked man is in the window."
"He appears at least once a day,"she says nonchalantly, plucking her race chip and examining her shoe,"I'd never know him on the street. You can't see his face."
"Ah.  Well.  That's good."
I crane my neck and stare, he is in the window of his apartment, directly across from Kgrrrl's third storey walk up and he is scratching his balls.  He is blurry from here, grainy like an underground porn movie starring slightly paunchy, middle aged men and I watch as his unit dangles and he gives it a languid pull. 
"Wow."
I struggle against the urge to run to my purse and grab my camera but we have bigger business to think about: we're about to run ten kilometes with 56,000 other Vancouverites and I haven't run a race in 15 years and my stomach is doing sommersaults.  K's friend arrives and we don our gear, set out on the street on a walk to torture our lungs and jellify our legs.  This is awesome.

***
I'm clausterphobic and slightly socially awkward, crowds make me nervous but there is something to be said about the gathering of tens of thousands of like-minded runners in the core of one's home city.  We pass a couple of young men in racing bibs, passing a joint.  There are old women with bunched up knees and small children hanging by their fingers to the hands of their rain-wick shirted fathers, wheelchair athletes in determined gloves,  and people of all creeds and cultures, wearing t-shirts emblazened with the background of the city: the atmosphere is electric.

***
The first 2 or 3 kilometers are exuberant; the crowd is pulsating and music blares from canopied stands along the way: a woman waves a camera high above her head and snaps a picture of the throngs behind her.  This is wicked, I am so glad I've been training for this because my body is just floating on automated wheels and holy shit, I feel good.

Around kilometer 4, at a slight incline on to a bridge, my stomach drops from its position and plummets to my, somewhere, and omg, I tell Kgrrl," I totally have to go to the washroom."
She is more practical, disciplined and athletic than me: " It's in your head,"she says. Only 6 kilometers to go."
We pass a man in a suit surrounded by signs in front of an apartment complex; he is bellowing furiously about Father's RIghts.  A waft of pot smoke passes by me; is that dude in the long blonde wig smoking a reefer as he lopes along?  Yes. I think he is.  And no one is noticing because this is Vancouver.   And that cute cop is busy not noticing Pot Wafter as he text messages someone, his illicit girlfriend, in the stage of my imagination.  I drop back a bit, my stomach is threatening to hurl itself out of my body without restraint, and as K pulls a bit ahead I search frantically for a port a potty.  There is only bridge deck.

***
By kilometer 6 I am loping on my own, desperately willing my shit to stay intact.  Uh, literally.  I knock back a paper cup of water at an H2O station and think, Jesus Gay, I have to do this.  I veer off the road, filled with sensory overload, boggled by the thousands of bobbing runners around me.  There is no porta poddy.  No Starbucks.  No relief from my now screaming stomach.  I am regretting the two glasses of wine from last night, I am regretting my frantic nerve-addled nature.

I am seriously and thoughtfully considering the rhododendren bush in front of an apartment skyscraper.  Could I squeeze my gigantic body into the leaves there, press against the wall and dump my stomach?  What the eff would I use as toilet paper?  Those leaves are no good.  This sucks.  The minutes are mounting.  I take off my hoodie and tie it around my waist.  I am about to cry.  I cannot shit in a random flowered bush in front of thousands of runners.  I have no choice but to keep going.

***
I don't turn on my iPod.  I can't handle Alice Cooper or Fergie or even Sebastian Bach, the only thing I can do is repeat,"Don't crap your pants, crapping pants on the street while running would really suck, think of something else, maybe that man beside you is naked man in the window!  Don't crap. Don't crap."  I repeat this undignified refrain past the 7 km mark, then 8, and then...I have 2 kilometers to go.  And there have to be toilets at  the finish line.  I can do this.

***
On the incline up over the bridge to the home stretch, the sidelines are littered with well wishers.
"Lookin' good, Sun Runners!"
"You can do this, almost there!"
Bells are ringing and kids are clapping and bands are playing and there are mountains and skyscrapers and a backdrop of steel blue water and dude, this city is magnificent.  It really, truly is. 

I don't see a 9 km marker, but I suddenly see the finish line and I am buoyed by the scrape and heave of the raspy breathing of the runners around me.  My legs are jelly and my lungs are brillo pads and my stomach is planning a coup but the exhileration mounts and pummels all my fears and the finish line is right there.  I'm making it happen.  I'm doing it despite it.  It feels fucking awesome. I sprint the last three hundred meters.

***
My parents brought Nolan to watch, and as I cross the line, simultaneously with at least 50 other runners, I see my boy in his running gear on the sidelines, the two jackets he insisted on tying around his waist.  I'm heaving and dying and could fill a barrel with sweat, but I smile.  I can't recall the last time I felt this fantastic.  I'm doing it next year, and the year after, until I can't do it anymore. 

***

Someone just called me the C word

I've found a whole new nether world on the Internet, since becoming a single Mom.  Single parenting blogs have exploded this last year, it seems, and there are a whole lot of talented multi-tasking Mamas (and Dads) out there. 

Remember the lady who kinda told me I was an asshole for wearing a fake wedding ring to business meetings?  Well, I wasn't ever really going to admit it but... she was kind of right and two things have happened since then:
1) I've made my engagement ring into a necklace
2) I've become really good friends with Alaina: in fact she and her sidekick are coming to hang with me and my sidekick here in Vancity, in a few weeks.  Weird and cool right?

Anyway, where am I going?  Here.  Morgan has compiled a list of the best and brightest single parent writers on the Internet and I'm totally flatttered to be inserted into the mix.  Inserted?  I know.  I still owe you part 2.  Now I've built it up, and it's really not that scandalous.  But it did involve a back seat crotch grab.

Universal Hatred, Gen X, Strippers

I was on a writing streak last night and wrote about the omnipotent torture of running as well as the determination of Generation X.  Go read if you're into that sort of thing because it's going to be a day or two before I write anything here, I'm too busy contemplating Part II of the stripper story.  Because, oh yes, there is more. 

I put these on Facebook and Flickr but for those of you who are not my contacts there (and why not? There are pictures of Mike and Dustin and my cast of real life characters in there and I also find it really interesting to learn about my readers, especially those of you who don't ever comment) let me leave you with various springy radness:

Magnolia trees about to burst on the banks of a quiet Cove in Vancouver.

Needs no explanation.

Peeled

"Do you have to use the restroom?" she asks.
She is diminutive, with shiny black hair, tied halfway in a ponytail and she's wearing a loose purple sheath and expensive jeans.  I like her, I liked her the moment she arrived at the restaurant with Mike's best friend, her roommate.

"You're really pretty,"she'd said earnestly," You look like the girl...what's her name?  From Gossip Girl."
She's nearly ten years younger than me and I've never watched Gossip Girl.
"Well, thank you,"I said, but I don't watch TV and I am pretty sure the Gossip Girls were all still in utero when I was getting drunk off four liter Rockaberry Cooler bottles in the backseat of a pockmarked boy's Camaro.

I've finished my asparagus and one glass of white wine, I'm going to be driving Mike's Toyota, because it's his good buddy's birthday and I can't be tipsy for what I'm about to experience.

"I don't really..." I say and she opens her black doe eyes wide and signals me the Universal Chick Signal for Omigod Come to The Bathroom With Me Now and I pull my napkin from my lap and set it beside my plate.

"I'll be right back," I tell Mike.

"OK."  He and his friends look at each other meaningfully, and she and I snake silently to the back of the restaurant, where the important conversations go down.

"I just want to warn you," she says, when we push open the double doors and enter the Safe From Men Respite ,"They're kind of friends with the girls there, and they're sweet and huggy and stuff, but they're not like you and I. And it's all a little weird."

"I'm grateful you're coming,"I say, sidling into a stall,"I'm far from a prude but..."

"They've been going a lot less since I've been hanging out with them," she says,"I wasn't going to go but since you are..."

"I have no problem with it,"I say unconvincingly.

"Either do I,"she says and we look at each other.

"But,"I say.

"I know," she replies.

***

It smells like leftover smoke and burned hashbrowns and there's a purple black light casting a glow over the room.  The first thing I notice is the black lace thonged ass of the shooter girl.  She's wearing a light pink dress, held in place with invisible tape and she must be my age but her boobs defy gravity.  She turns toward the bartender to refill her tray and there's no accompanying back to her dress.

"Hey you." I watch as she hugs Mike, and then Colin, and then Mark, and I watch as a stitch of electricity bolts between her and Mark and I know instinctively that she and he have slept together.

I busted in on a strip joint when I was 17, when my boyfriend frequented the local peeler joint, but I haven't been in one since.  There is a 40-something man in coke-bottle glasses, sitting solo in front of a finger-smeared pole, and I feel inexplicably sad for him.  There are 2 underage guys sitting in front of the TV screens, staring at the criss crossed leather contraption of the silly-putty limbed girl on stage, waving 5 spots and yelling with drunken confidence. 

***

I order a Coke, I'm driving, and I watch with fascination as a lineup of women parade onto an X-shaped stage, first wearing kinky red-riding hood shit, slowly stripping down to nothing.  No pasties, just the occasional star tattoo on the crotch, a five-letter word on the small of the back. They're all clean shaven, only one stripper has fake boobs.  This is effed, I'm a Mom, I'm dating a dude who's a regular at this suburban strip bar.  Is this kosher?  Should I be making mashed potatoes at home?  Mike's friend Colin is talking to me, beckoning toward the stage and I think he's going to ask me something about Bored Stripper's unnatural backward somersault split move but he's looking at the screen behind her, at a bunch of adrenaline junkies snowmobiling through powder.  I feel like I'm stuck in a cement foot dream.

***

Sometimes my life feels like a cloud above my head, a series of contradictions.  I am finding myself in situations that weren't meant for women in their thirties, and I don't know what to do with them.  I told Shiny Hair Girl  that I have no problem with peeler bars, as long as the girls there are of age and treated with respect but as I stared at all those fake-tanned abs and trained limbs and patently bored faces I felt vaguely ashamed.

Mike is great, in every way, but he digs the peelers.  I am not sure yet whether this is a deal breaker.

Mock Speed

I've been overwhelmed with the speed of life lately, with the astonishing lightening rod of time.  In many ways, life ambles on in its deceptively leisurely pace: my son and I take nightly forest walks, read books about hockey and dinosaurs and rockets, paper bag princesses.  We eat frozen yogurt and race to see who will be first to touch the ocean, and he always wins.  I sift through photos, though, and I realize: shit, this is happening too fast.  Slow, slow, I want to savour and I can't, it's tumbling by too quickly.

My boy, with his still pudgy hands and babe-soaked face, one year ago yesterday.

Last night: my big, tender hearted boy, with lean limbs and intelligent questions and no sign left of babyhood.  The year has ricocheted by and I am in awe of the wise little person he has become. 

Becoming a parent is the best way to speed up time, to witness in real time the consequences of a minute, a day, the hugeness of a year.  Last night he rode a bike with no training wheels, sailing off down the crests of the street, our street, whose name he can now recite, his voice floating in the early spring evening, "I can do it Mommy, I can do it Unky, no helpin me!"

With this, my heart exited my body and hovered for a while, eventually landing in one of those tiny spokes where it spun and fluttered and then burst with pride, somewhere on the road my son is traveling, too quickly.

***

With 5 years of blogging under my belt, I have finally learned that I need to keep some details of my life to myself, but since so many of you have been here for so long, I feel compelled to say: man, I'm happy right now.  Happier than I've been in years.  I have a core group of vibrant, mildly debaucherous and warm-hearted girlfriends, I am fit and active, I'm doing well in a career I love, my boy is well-adjusted and happy, and things with my ex are tolerable.  And without going into details I will say this: I followed the advice of many of you who told me to leave well enough alone, and you were totally right.  He is rad, amazing really, and I am so glad I didn't chick out and eff it up before it had the chance to get started.

***
In other news, I hate my wrinkles.  On the weekend, I used a gift certificate to a spa that I've had crumpled in my wallet for months.  I don't like anyone touching my face, and I have an atrocious nail biting habit and horrendously ugly feet, so I didn't want a facial, manicure, or pedicure.  But my good friend Shel had microdermabrasion a few weeks ago and omg!  Her skin was lovely and pink and glowy and her small eye wrinkles seemed to disappear.

I've had a decade-long, secret war going on with my forehead wrinkles: when I concentrate, I totally jack up my forehead and the result is three fairly deep wrinkles that crease my upper face and cause me major angst.  They're the entire and sole reason I have bangs.

Anyway, I used the certificate and did the microdermabrasion thing, with the hope that it might lessen the appearance of this shit.  I'm especially conscious, dating a slightly younger dude, and thought this might boost my  confidence.  The procedure did make my skin dewy, but the wrinkles are still evident, and the beauty tech advised Botox as she applied green sludge to my neck.

"They're not remotely deep," she said,"You notice them way more than anyone else.  But I bet a shot of Botox would get rid of them entirely.  I have a Doctor's name, I am happy to refer you."

She confessed she is 43 and I gasped, I would have put her at my age. 

And, though I know I shouldn't and it's retarded and vain, I keep thinking: shit, should I just do it?  And finally be able to doff these stupid bangs?  I was looking at the naked pictures of Cindy Crawford the other week and thinking, damn, she looks good.  And then read that she started getting Botox at 29.  Internet, I am ashamed but I am also tempted.    I never, ever would have contemplated considering this crap in my twenties.  But that was before I hit almost 34.  Things change, things morph, delaying oldness becomes more urgent, inherently and physically.  Would you do it? If you had big, bad, premature wrinkles?  Secretly? If money weren't an issue?  I need to know.