Patina

“The shiny wears off,” said Gay Husband.

“Yeah, but I like the patina,” I quickly responded.

That was the end of a conversation we recently had while sitting at Six Feet Under. A conversation about my latest unrequited love and the possible reasons as to the why’s. He was trying to make me feel better, saying that I don’t need anyone, that the shiny wears off anyway, as if people were cars, or new toaster ovens or something.

He is unreservedly convinced that people overall settle, that there is no true love or anything remotely akin to it. What?!? Did he not read Cinderella? Did he not watch Pretty Woman? Did he not watch Serendipity- or any other John Cusak movie for that matter? His saying this is just a front. He says people like him were not made to be in relationships. And while he may have a point there, I still think that if he did find someone to put up with his bottomless cup of bitterness, his intense desire to salsa-dance to any type of music when drunk, his incorrigible way of making out with my dog when I’m not in the room, his scooter-riding-beeping trips thru the cleaned-up hood and his occasional good deeds he would take him in a heartbeat.

Recently found a website that puts into words a lot of what has happened to me lately. It's rather uncanny and corny me saying this: all this time thinking I’m so unique and shit, apparently this kinda stuff happens to everybody. The ongoing midlife crisis, the falling for someone so hard you can’t see straight, the feeling out of control and then the realization that, though there were moments that were indeed good, the whole of the experience wasn’t after all what you thought it was. Except at the time it was all you could see. Oh well, at least now I know I’m not quite as crazy as I thought I was. But the problem there is……I like to be crazy. I prefer different. I don’t particularly care to be referred to as “special” as it implies I rode the short bus to school back in the day. Not that there’s a problem with that, just clarifying that I did not, in fact, ride the short bus- anywhere. Ok, I did ride it once. But it was only ‘cause we got caught skipping school and were sent to inschool detention, where we were made to spend three days helping (read: keeping sometimes grown people securely tied to child-sized desks to prevent them from self-inflicted injuries, finding couples hiding behind trees in the throes of serious passion, continually wiping drool of nonexistent chins, feeding numerous hungry mouths and the ocassional hiding in the bathroom swearing that skipping was not in my future plans) with the physically and mentally disabled children housed in the trailer classrooms of our junior high school.

I wonder what this guy thinks of when he reads his old stuff, the stuff I read is about 2 ½ years old or more at this point. I wonder if he smiles or simply shrinks from it. Who knows? I haven’t always written, I haven’t always kept a journal and it seems that only when I’m extremely sad is when I attempt my hand at poetry*, so you can imagine how tragic, dramatic and just plain ridiculous most of it is. Of the stuff I’ve kept over the years, some of it I can’t read with a straight face. I cringe. I shudder. I laugh and inevitably tuck it back under piles of stuff in a junk drawer where no one will find it. Ever.

I really need to get a move on with my planned “Burning Ceremony.” I’ve only been talking about it for years it seems. This ceremony is supposed to cleanse me of all my old attachments that keep bringing me down. I’ll let you know if it works. It seems like a good idea though; to watch mementos of past events I should no longer hold onto burning in the hungry, lapping flames. Not ever having to “run” into these items while cleaning or rearranging, surprised every time, surprised at how a note, a card, an old doll can take me back instantly to those darkened corners of my mind I’d rather not visit.

I guess it’s my affinity to patina that causes me to hold on to all these items or maybe my pathological need for constant irritants in my Life, don’t really know. I do like patina though, a lot. I mean old stuff. Old furniture, old cars, old relics, old dishes- just old stuff. So I know what I’m talking about when I speak of patina. You should see my house.

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*
In an attempt to better illustrate here's one I'm specially fond of:

I do other things

Fill my time with sort of escapades.

Try to fill my mind to stay afloat

But still I make the time to think of you.

Of where we've been

And where we'd be if you were here

And why exactly you're not near.

There is no answer in my reality

Then I see I'm this duality.

This hardened core I bring on first ocassions

Seems to evaporate with unknown trepidation

Upon examining that which in you laments

As if your broken heart to mend I could attempt.

Tah-Dah!!!!