Cover Your Mouth When You Blog

I'm Out

Given that my time between posts is averaging around three weeks these days, I doubt anyone will notice my absence this week, but I thought I'd let you all know I'll be Costa Rica until next Monday. Maybe some time away from the jiggly jello of uncertainty my life seems to resemble lately will provide some clarity. Maybe seven days with two girlfriends at an all-inclusive resort in Central America is just a second helping of jiggly jello. Maybe trying to get my midwestern ass up on a surf board in the Pacific and swinging from zip-lines in the jungle treetops will inspire movement in my real life. Maybe I'm escaping. Maybe I should just fucking relax. This seems to be the place to do it.

Missing the Sweat

(Preface: To understand the context of this post, it would be helpful to read this.)

It was one of those moments that you find yourself in. Like last September when I found myself in the rain on top of a house overlooking a river and grapevines and a gravel road, asking a handsome boy with dark hair and a mole just beside his left eye, by way of makeshift Portuguese and hand gestures, for another bucket of “masa” to secure the red barrel tiles to the roof. This moment had not sneaked up on me; I could mentally map its culmination – a phone interview with Kathryn from Habitat for Humanity, a plane from Chicago to London to Lisbon, a train from Lisbon to Braga, a bus from Braga to Crespos and a shaky ladder from the patchy grass behind the house to the slanted surface of the roof. Still I found myself surprised by it, looking through the mist to the green mountains in the distance, imagining Spain on the other side, imagining my office in Chicago, my computer dark and resting, and thinking, How did I get here?

This was another of those moments. This time I found myself in a high-ceilinged garage on a 105 degree afternoon in Birmingham, Alabama, slouching in a fold-out camping chair, sweat having soaked through my bra and into my cotton dress, beads of perspiration tickling their way from the hairline on the back of my neck down my spine. Two of the guys in the band had been shirtless upon our arrival – reedy, white torsos bound by wide straps supporting electric guitars. The drummer had succumb to the skin’s gasps for breath and stripped off his white t-shirt. Soon after, Ralph’s paisley button-up was being folded onto a nearby piano bench, gray hairs springing from his bare, black chest.

I’d seen Ralph perform the week before in Chicago. His first time on stage in 25 years and I finally understood the term I’d overheard John using to describe him in a phone interview to promote the show two weeks before: Soul Shouter. This afternoon in Birmingham, John and the others who’d made the trip south for the CD’s second release party had gone to the gas station to get cold drinks, anxious to escape the thick, unmoving air inside the garage. I’d asked for a bottle of water and said I’d like to stay behind and watch the rehearsal. Ralph had walked the band through three songs, singing “eeeefffff, deeeeeeee, geeeeeeee” to prompt the correct chords and signaling desired volume with an upraised arm or low, hunched shoulders. “Liiike this, mane?” the lead guitar would ask, repeating a riff, tossing a long, limp lock of hair away from his eyes with a flick of his head.

“Slower, mane, slower,” Ralph would say. I listed carefully to their verbal inflections. The “i” that lingered on the backs of their throats a split second longer than I was used to, the “a” that spread across their tongues, giving words a wider, more relaxed sound. I grinned thinking of my Kansas accent being labeled “southern” by native Chicagoans. This is the South, I thought.

Now the band burst forth with an intro and Ralph was shouting a deep, gravelly, “Owwwwwwwww!” into a crackling microphone. “That’s why I bu-yy you diamond rangs,” he began, arching his head toward the ceiling, eyes closed. “And all of these beau-tee-ful thangs,” he pulled a handkerchief from his back pants pocket and drug it across his wet forehead. “Just because I, just because I, I love you.”

At first the heat of Alabama had annoyed me. Typically, I like to perspire only when working out or having sex. I don’t want to break a sweat just sitting or walking from the parking lot to the restaurant. But in this moment in this garage in the South, in a corner by myself, I gave in to the sweat. I wanted it to seep from my pores and soak into my hair and glisten on my nose and my chest. When I closed my eyes and the guitars and the drums and Ralph’s heartbreak words flooded the room, coating the floor and seeping into the grooves of the aluminum siding, it felt like my skin was crying, from joy or from sorrow - from something close to rapture - and it seemed that I was sitting close to the most important thing happening in the world at that moment. A 58-year-old musician given a second chance and seizing it, blooming in it. A chance record found and a chance curiosity by a man of a different race and a different era, culminating in this moment. I found myself wondering, How did I get here?

I knew it was because of John, his tireless passion for soul music and his fearless dedication to this project. I knew that the time spent away from me was for this and I understood. I felt lucky to know him, for his loving me, for his tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “Hey, look at this.” I knew I was witnessing something honest. It wasn’t cool in the way that I’d found so many in John’s circle of hip kids to be concerned with, because it couldn’t be cool. It was dirty and worn and it couldn’t be cool because it wasn’t theirs or mine to deem so. It just was, beading up and glistening.

When I returned to Chicago two days later, I found myself missing the sweat.

All-Inclusive

It's my first day back from my brother's all-inclusive resort wedding in Puerto Vallarta and my freezer at home is clearly not all-inclusive. I've dined today on coffee and white beans with toast.

My brother is the baby and the first to get married and I want to post about what a sensitive man he is, how his new wife is luminescent, warm, how their relationship is something you want to watch and learn to do. How during the shiny moments on the beach, on the dance floor, I forget that they bicker in the car about something he said to her in front of me that she's asked him a thousand times not to say, that he becomes disheartened by her stubbornness, that she is sometimes hurt by his tendency to criticize. During the vows on the beach, whispered and squeaked, while the wind gusted, strands of hair sticking to tears and perspiration, I have to remember that they are choosing all of this - the kindness and the criticism, the warmth and the hardheadedness, the beauty and the bullshit of each other. Marriage is all-inclusive.

I get caught up in the unchipped facade of things and forget that a relationship is work for every couple. I think, Look at how he dances when she wants to dance; I bet they don't fight as much as we do. Petty, childish things. And then I press these fantasies onto J until he can't breath and has to shout for me to let up. It happened again and we exhausted ourselves arguing in a kingsized bed in a marble-tiled suite overlooking the ocean.

I want to post pictures of the trip, but I'm too tired tonight. I'm sure I'll have my usual post-weekend, pre-work insomnia and will end up finally dozing on the couch during a late night Laguna Beach marathon. Lulled and disillusioned by the shiny simplicity of the lives portrayed. Then I'll wake, search the freezer for something edible to have magically appeared, crash into my queensized bed with the broken box springs and rest for reality.