Trash

Oh, man. It’s a good year for the ghosts. Important people seem to keep vanishing from my life. Two major losses in six months. First Mr. Badger, and now…


I’m not exactly sure where to start. It’s almost too big to think about.

But here’s an arbitrary beginning: Once upon a time, there was this fella. And he and I were really, really close. And we went on trips together and made art and made 800-mile (one way) trips to visit each other’s houses and we talked to each other nearly every single day for over a year. And things got intimate and intense and complicated. And during our last visit, things got even more intimate—and therefore, more intense and complicated—and we had a fight. Then he was leaving for a trip that was going to last for a month, and he called about a week before his departure. I told him that I stopped sleeping after I left his place, and how our situation made me feel really unsafe (stupid PTSD), and how it sounded like he was breaking up with me—like he was just going to take off and stop talking to me. And he said no, no, no, that this wasn’t it. He swore that I’d hear from him on the trip—not as much as usual, of course, and not conversations about our complicated situation, of course—but that he’d text or message me. He found about 100 ways to promise that I’d hear from him while he was on the road. In fact, the last thing he said in that phone call before he said “Goodnight” was a final “You’ll hear from me.”



And then…nothing. He vanished into thin air. Well, that’s not exactly true—he contacted other people plenty. Just not me. So maybe I should just say he vanished from my life.



God, it sounds so simple when I write it down. Funny—it doesn’t feel simple at all.

The thing is, I never imagined we’d get as intimate as we did. Our friendship really began with a road trip, which I figured would just be a bunch of vacation hijinks and frolics and yay. You know, road trip stuff. But right out of the gate, he started testing boundaries with language and flirting and such, which I still thought was fun and funny, but at the same time, he started upping the ante in terms of emotional intimacy. He asked really deep, personal, charged questions that I never expected, and he shared an amazing amount of stuff about himself. It was really fast, and I was a bit shocked, but he presented himself as so open and emotionally accessible and mature that I thought, “Okay, sure. If he wants to go someplace genuine with this, I’m down.”


So this fella and I got really tight really fast. And it’s funny, but to me, it felt like each step that brought us to a new level of intimacy was initiated by him. He’d probably say otherwise, but that was my experience of it. We’d have these moments, and I get the jolt of surprise, “Oh, we’re taking it there now?” I felt like I was constantly following his lead, which I thought was okay partially because he was younger than me and I didn’t want age to create an unspoken power discrepancy. But it was also because he seemed so lovely and open and I felt really connected to him, so I was perfectly happy to just go along wherever.


But then the lead started getting really messy, I guess—going one way, then another, then another. And things got really Complicated, as they do. But every time things seemed too complicated to stand, somehow we’d just end up closer. Like, really intimate. He started sending me goodnight texts before he ever knew how sweet I thought it was and long before I really needed them. We’d use the L-word with each other. We’d say how much we missed each other. He told me he thought about me all the time. Like I said, really intimate.


And then he was just…gone. After everything we had been through and done and said. Gone. Like nothing ever happened.


I don’t know if it was more like a slap in the face or a kick in the gut, but it was like one of those. Or both. And it has completely toppled my previously-unshakable faith in the people I love. I mean, the people who love you—that’s your team, right? The fellow SuperHeroes and sidekicks, the partners-in-crime-fighting and all-around good guys everywhere…they’re your people. They’re the ones who stand with you in the face of this dangerous world and its villains. They’ve got your back, just like you have theirs. You can trust them. Always. No question.


But then…this happens. And it doesn’t fit in with the logic of the universe. I mean, how can someone be that close to you, how can someone say they love you, and then just throw you away like a piece of garbage? How can you be so important to someone one day, and then suddenly become so…disposable? Obviously, I was wrong about how the universe works, and now I have no idea what to believe in.


I should be angry about all of this. I know that I should be so, so angry about being pitched like a piece of trash, especially after everything that happened, and I get it intellectually, but I don’t feel it. The only thing I feel—except for immense sadness, of course—is shame.


I’m really surprised at the overwhelming shame of it—the shame of being left without a word—because shame is something I don’t tend to feel. Maybe because I try to make sure I don’t do things that inspire it. And it’s stupid, I know, but now when I see people, I feel like everyone can read that shame on my body. You know, like I’m a modern-day Hester Prynne, only instead of being emblazoned with a scarlet A for Adulteress, it’s a T for Trash. Like now people just look at me and see the kind of girl who drives people to abandon her. Because goddamn, what kind of shrieking harpy do you have to be for someone you’re so, so close with to think his only recourse is to just vanish?


And let me say this: if I heard a friend saying this exact same stuff, I’d be pissed. I’d be all, “You’re super tight with some fella; things get intense and complicated; then things get rough; he promises to contact you soon and then he falls of the face of the earth…and YOU’RE the one who is ashamed?!?!” I’d get all RuPaul on my friend and throw some sequins on her and take her out and have strangers tell her how fierce and fabulous she is. But since it’s actually happening to me…it might be ridiculous, but I still feel ashamed. Because I don’t know how this boy could have done something so awful unless I inspired it somehow. I hate it, but the shame is still there.


This is what I mean when I say that maybe we become the SuperHeroes that we ourselves actually need, and maybe we save others when we cannot save ourselves.


So Trudie came to town to visit last week, and due to her travelling schedule, we hadn’t seen each other since January. I was so excited for her to come, and we made plans to go swimming at the state park and make art and eat soft serve. So she shows up, and everything is great and fun and happy, and then around midnight on her first day, we went out to eat at this 24-hour diner. Trudie eats really fast anyways, but we were both starving, so she positively inhaled her eggs and hash browns. Afterwards, she put her hand on her stomach and groaned a bit and said, “Oh my god, I ate too fast.” I burst out in laughter loud enough to fill the whole diner, and my right hand instinctively reached over to my phone so I could text this fella about it. When the three of us were on a trip together, he was the one who first observed that after every single meal Trudie says, “Oh my god, you guys, I ate too fast”, and he busted her chops pretty hard about it the whole trip. And what do you know, our first meal, and “Oh my god…”


And there I was, phone in hand, and I remembered, “Oh, that’s right…he’s gone.” And then I burst out into tears in the middle of this shady diner on the south side of Rust City.


And the rest of the visit was pretty much like that. Trudie and I would be having a great time, but then I’d just get hit with that huge sadness, and I couldn’t keep it under wraps. And I was embarrassed and kept apologizing. I mean, she was already seeing me jump out of my skin every time someone lit a firecracker on the street outside. (Nuts to you, Fourth of July!) And she knew that I stayed up long after she went to bed because I couldn’t sleep until dawn. (Which is how I know it’s really bad—I still can’t sleep even with someone as comforting as Trudie in the house.) And she could tell that my fight-or-flight response was constantly in high gear. All that was embarrassing enough. But then she had to see me randomly burst into tears because I couldn’t pack away the sadness for the length of her visit? It was too humiliating.


So on her last night, we decide work on this art project—taking pinup pictures. And we spend all this time turning my bed into a revised version of Elvegren’s “Love Letter”, and we fix the lighting and do hair and makeup and costuming and figure out the right composition and camera angle. And after all of that, I finally get into position in this vintage bra and panties, garter belt and stockings, and short little kimono. I’m glammed up to high heaven making art that I think is awesome and hilarious, and…I couldn’t feel any joy in it. I just felt so, so sad.


I didn’t want to mess up the shots or let Trudie down, though, so I launched into a frenzy of apologies: “I’m so sorry I’m like this right now. I’m sorry I’ve messed up your visit. You came all this way, and I just wanted put all this aside so we could have fun. I’m so sorry I’ve got this big bag of crazy that I can’t seem to get control of.”


And she climbed onto the bed next to me and was all, “Dude, it’s okay. You don’t have to apologize.” And I was shocked at what came out of my mouth in response, but as I formulated the sounds, I knew it was what I really felt:


“I’m afraid you’re going to disappear now, too.”


Trudie’s eyes got really wide for a second and she saw I must be in a really, really bad way if I could question for even a moment the sacred trust between partners-in-crime. And she nodded her head for a second to acknowledge the fear, but she didn’t contradict it. Maybe she knew that if you’re really not going to abandon someone, you don’t need to say it. She rested her head on my shoulder and said, “Dude, you’ve just had a really bad year.”


Then about a minute later, she bolted upright, really excited-like, and turned to me and said, “That would be a great children’s book! Lulu’s Big Bag o’ Crazy!”


Trudie’s gone now, and so I’m left here in the Gingerbread Cottage with a new ghost, this one in the shape of this fella that I genuinely loved, and who said he genuinely loved me. This fella who, just over a year ago, sat in the passenger seat of my car and proclaimed with such bravado, “We are going to be in each other’s lives forever.” This fella who is now just a ghost because, for some reason or another, he decided to drop me like a box full of live rattlesnakes.


And since that’s not something you do to someone you love—or really, even someone you like, or someone you respect in any kind of way—I’m left to wonder what I actually was to him then. Was I a distraction? An escape? A game? A joke? Was I a personal challenge or test somehow—you know, to see how long he could charm an older woman? Was I one of those experience-collecting trips to the sideshow—did he just wonder what it would be like to stick his hands up a fat girl’s skirt?


I know, my mind goes some ugly places. But where else is it going to go after something so ugly has happened? The thing is, once one big lie is revealed—“this isn’t it, I’ll be in contact from the road, you’ll hear from me”—how can I trust that anything this past year is what it seemed? I know what it looked like and felt like. I know the way he acted and what seemed real and honest and connected. And I know what everyone else saw when they looked at us together. But to me, all that added up to Something That Wasn’t Garbage, you know? Something That Wasn’t Disposable. And apparently I was wrong about that. So I must have been wrong about all of it, right?


But I guess I’ll never really know what I was to him. Whenever we would argue, he had this uncanny knack for getting me to say what was special about him and why I liked being around him, but never answering the same questions in return. And since he’s vanished, I suppose it wouldn’t really make a difference, anyway. I’d still feel just as bad.


I suppose if I could know only one thing, I’d want to know if it was worth it. You know, those, say, 20 minutes that it would have taken to write me 4 or 5 texts over the five weeks he disappeared. Just a few texts to say “Hi there, I’m keeping my word, and you’re still in my life.” You know, did something so amazing and transformative happen in those 20 minutes that it was worth triggering in me all these weeks of disabling PTSD reactions? Because he knew. I told him. I told him what’s happening with us makes me feel so intensely unsafe. I wonder if whatever happened in those collected 20 minutes was worth throwing away a whole person, a whole year.


So as it ends up, Vera the Oracle of South Central was right about one thing: the prophecy did come true. But I think she was wrong about me having The Gift. I mean, yeah, the South Central Prophecy came true, but I can’t laugh about it.