Men are From . . .

"Oh my goodness, what a cute puppy! Is she yours?"

"If I say yes, will you pull my pants down?"

"Um, I just found out that I have to wait until April for the new Game of Thrones season, so that feels like enough disappointment for one day."

* * *

"This is the song Magic Cock Cake from our new album Smush 25:8."

I'm laughing so hard I'm almost peeing my pants. 

I'm grateful for a lot of things about my divorce. It was reasonably amicable, I got the cats, I lost twenty pounds, and I don't live in a house with anime scrolls and swords on the wall anymore. 

What I am most grateful for is that I seem to have won custody of my ex-husband's ex-girlfriend. 

He introduced us early on and we got on like a house on fire. She's well-read, likes to yell about feminism, loves to drink gin while yelling about feminism, and is a real weirdo. 

Oh, she also makes me laugh so hard I nearly pee my pants. 

I'm hanging out with her while she's on a lunch break and have been talking waaaaaay too loudly about my sex life. She decides to turn a recent story of my misadventures into a death metal album and launches into a rendition of the song on the spot.  

When I can finally stand up again she gets quietly serious. 

"Kel, you seem really happy. Like, really happy." She pauses. "I'm glad." 

Me too. 

* * *

"hey luv the black lipstick like my fav color cuz noone uses it"

"Thanks. It's actually a dark purple. I like my gothiness to be within the bell curve of work appropriate."

"u into latex?"

"I'm sorry?" 

"rubber?"

". . ."

"u goin 2 rubberball 2019? come suck my cock its so gooooood"

"Dude, if I wanted a mediocre dining experience, I'd just go to West End."

* * *

"You don't sound like yourself."

"I agree."

"Me too. "

Over the months, my makeup group chat has evolved into a lot more than makeup. 

It's become a place to talk about work and sex and relationships. I mean, it's also a lot of photos of me trying (and mostly failing, hilariously) to get the perfect cut crease, but it's more than that. 

"You sound mopey."

"^This."

"And most of the time you walk around like 'GIRLS I AM A BADASS AVENGING GODDESS WHO'S GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD."

"She's right. So stop being so fucking hard on yourself."

"Yeah, mope if you need to, but tomorrow get up and be your BADASS SELF."

"And stop being so fucking had on yourself."

* * *

"hey girl. you look so sexxxxxy."

". . ."

"i'm looking for a virgin so we can para-bond without any drama."

"Well, unless you have a time machine, I'm afraid I'm not your girl." 

"well, your sexual partners shouldn't exceed three people."

". . ."

"you look like you'd be good at fucking."

"Know how I got that way?"

"yessssssssssss." 

"By fucking more than three people." 

* * *

There are six different women in four different timezones howling with laughter. 

I've just sent a screenshot of a text that a guy has sent me after ghosting on me two months ago, apologizing for ghosting on me and (we're pretty sure) trying to make a booty call. 

"Honestly," I say, "I'd have more respect if he just came out and said "Hey, I didn't want to date you, but wanna fuck?""

There's a lot more laughter and I am not the only one who decides to pour myself a gin and tonic. 

It's a pretty stereotypical divorcee thing to say, but for the most part I am so over men right now. 

There's a lot about life that is going really well. This is the happiest I've been in probably two years. My life feels like my own again, and almost none of that has to do with men. 

It does have a lot to do with women.

I've always known that female friendships are powerful as fuck. Women in my life have served as mentors and friends and unpaid therapists (sorry for the extra emotional labor).  I thought I knew how special they were and that I valued them enough. 

Yeah, right. 

The past year has been all of the best and all of the worst of my life. I have sobbed over tea and snuggled my goddaughters and vowed that I was never going to date again. I've screamed with laughter over terrible pickup lines and toasted to XX chromosomes and made another woman a cake as a thank you for getting me laid. 

The women in my life have gotten me through the hardest moments of my life. If I could I would bake every one of them a cake.

These dudes, though. 

Here

“Oh, I use “May I be patient, may I be I be strong, may I be kind to myself” pretty often. I like the rhythm of it.”

“That’s a good one.”

“I saw you have another one written on your mirror. What was it?”

“Fear is the mind-killer. I write it on my arm when I’m doing open water swims, too.”

“Isn’t that from Dune?”

“Yup.”

“You’re a weird girl.”

* * *

Everything feels muffled.

My husband has just told me he wants a divorce. While I’m at work. Over text message.

In the coming months I’ll spend a lot of time wondering what I did to deserve this. Surely I didn’t marry the kind of person who ends a four year relationship and a two year marriage via text. I must have done something wrong. Yes, that’s it. This was my fault. I did something to deserve this.

Nearly a year out, I still don’t understand how it happened, but I know that I didn’t deserve it.

What I do understand is how at that moment I felt myself slam something down over my heart.

“No,” I told it. “We don’t have time to fall apart now.”

I don’t remember a lot about the rest of that day. It was like being deeply sleep deprived. Or drunk. I’m reasonably certain I worked out. I know I finished the project I was working on before I went home. I remember that the muffled feeling took awhile to wear off.

When it comes to brain vs. heart, my brain is almost never in control. It spends the rest of the day asserting itself in time with its own beat.

I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.

* * *

“I know it seems like a silly exercise, but for someone who is perennially hard on themselves, it’s an important one.”

I groan. “Fine. I have grit.”

“What else?”

“I’m bright. I’m articulate when I’m not nervous. I’m adventurous.”

When she asks a chirpy “Anything else?” I remind myself that I am paying to be here.

“I care. A lot. All the time, actually. About everyone.”

“Yes. Warm-hearted. And open-hearted. Neither of those are bad things.”

I think about the jar over my heart and its quiet insistence that it exists.

I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

* * *

In the months after the ex leaves me, I reach for everything.

I meditate. I reread my favorite books. I stop drinking and start exercising and eat more vegetables. I belt out my favorite musicals alone in my apartment. I write down things that feel like they’re helping. I consider getting them tattooed on my body and immediately put a one-year moratorium on any permanent body alteration.

Impossibly, I start dating again.

Somewhere in the midst of it, my protected heart finally breaks. And I keep it covered.

“No,” I tell it. “It doesn't matter how handsome or funny they are.We’re going to keep you here forever.”

* * *

I’m laughing so hard I can’t breathe.

It’s late and I should be asleep, but I’m up texting and a dumb play on words has set me off.

Life has been like this for a little while. It came on so gradually that I didn’t realize what was happening. I’ve stopped needing to meditate for an hour before bed to fall asleep. I’ve started reading again. While I’m still working out, but not frenetically, twice a day.

I find myself up late, texting and laughing.

One of my goals for myself during my divorce was to come through it with my warm heart still intact. I made that goal even after I secreted it away and told myself no one would ever get to see it again. It sounds contradictory, but I think even as I was falling apart I knew (believed, maybe) that it would happen.

I’m still surprised by how swiftly it did. Handsome and funny with a smart mouth certainly helped, but it's been more than that. Time, likely. Good friends, too. I won't lie, a few liberal applications of gin and jazz standards probably helped me along as well.

What shocks me more than the swiftness is how ready my heart is to try again, even when I know that things probably aren't going to work. It keeps asserting itself over and over again.

I’m here.

I’m here.

I’m here.

Delicate

"Can we pop in here?"

"Why?"

I feel like screaming. I feel like screaming a lot lately. 

"It's a bookstore I love. We're walking past it. We don't have anywhere to be." 

He's annoyed. He's been annoyed a lot lately. 

Bookstores are one of the few places I can go when my anxiety is really doing a number on me. There's something about tidy stacks of alphabetized books that I find calming. I abandon him to his simmering irritation near the door and browse the stacks. 

I don't actually want anything. I've got a houseful of books I don't have the attention span to read right now. I want a few moments of peace and calm before we head home to ignore one another for the rest of the weekend. When I return to the counter where he's scowling at his phone, I pause for a moment to read a framed print for sale. 

Months later, I'll wonder if this moment in time was a portent. 

For the time being, I start to cry. 

* * *

He has a smart mouth. 

At least, that's what my mother would call it. 

I mainly call it fun. 

It's the kind of sense of humor where a wildly inappropriate joke is out of your mouth before your brain has a chance to realize how inappropriate it is, something that's just happened. He takes a look at my shocked face, realizes what he said, and immediately starts to backtrack. 

I start laughing so hard I start crying. I get out of bed and he immediately reaches for my hand. 

"No," he says. "No, come back." 

I was only getting up to switch on the fan, but there's something in his voice that makes me crawl right back into his warm arms. Our best case scenario is three, maybe three and a half months at the outside, and who knows if it'll even be that much. 

These things are so delicate. 

For the time being, these snatches of three or four hours at a stretch feel impossibly precious. So much so that I treasure even his awfully timed jokes. 

"Next time," I say, "I'll just bring you a warm apple pie."

* * *

"What is it?"

I'm wiping tears off of my face.

"This print. It's beautiful." I grab his hand and pull him over to read it, keeping hold of his hand the whole time. I feel so hopeful in this moment, like he'll read it and whatever this stupid impasse is between us will break up and we'll cry and kiss and everything will go back to normal. 

"Huh." He says when he finishes and turns to me. My heart leaps. 

"Are you ready to go?" 

* * *

I'm midway into a long videochat when one of my best friends says something that stuns me. 

We've been talking about a lot of stuff: tri training and public health and science fiction podcasts. At some point I end up deep in a post-mortem about my love life and she interrupts, something unusual for her. 

"You need to stop confusing what's normal with what's rational." 

"What?"

"You seem to believe that everyone except for you acts perfectly rationally 100% of the time when they're making decisions about romance and love. Most people aren't, ever. Stop believing that you can or should."  

We talk for awhile longer, but I'm distracted. When we finally hang up, I walk off to read something hanging on my wall. 

It's the print from over a year ago. As far as art goes, it was never much. Just a printing of a quote from a book I have come to love. 

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.

After reading and re-reading it for awhile, my phone beeps. It's the guy with the smart mouth and warm arms. Just seeing his name on my phone makes me break out laughing again. 

Three months or three days, it doesn't really matter to me anymore. Badly timed jokes and all, this is something worth having.