Cheep

Well this is awkward. Read the Museum Plaque Introduction»

I didn’t mean to treat you so bad
You shouldn’t take it so personal
I didn’t mean to make you so sad
You just happened to be there, that’s all

—Bob Dylan, One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later), (Blonde on Blonde)

[Figure i:  Strangest places. Right after they started dating, he wrote a solitary song about her called Strangest Places—about the Darren Aronofsky film they saw, the windy conversation they had, the surprise connection they found—on their first date. She used to tear up when he played it. Every single time. For what is a lover but a muse?]

When I saw you say “goodbye” to your friend and smile
I thought that it was well understood
That you’d be comin’ back in a little while
I didn’t know that you were sayin’ “goodbye” for good

[Figure ii: LTR groupie. After they broke up, they still lived together, they still slept together, for 3 unwittingly cruel and unusual months while she searched for an apartment that fit her early 20th century character and cat ideals. He wrote song after song about some imaginary girl who just happened to have a real name, Facebook account and lips. Finding the yellow legal pad with the song titles would leave her livid, sobbing for days to The Lumineers’ “Stubborn Love” on repeat, especially the line, “It’s better to feel pain, than nothing at all. The opposite of love’s indifference.” Crushed under the import of this phrase, she couldn’t get enough on her pressure points. She still went out to see him play. Often with sunglasses on, tears streaming below, she alone hearing the hidden meaning in that rare Paul Simon choice. Because this was how they had always communicated. He a playlist. She a presence. These were their dates. Even still. Her alone dates.]

But, sooner or later, one of us must know
You just did what you’re supposed to do
Sooner or later, one of us must know
That I really did try to get close to you

[Figure iii: The blues. The first time, she let him pick out the color of the Studio. He chose blue, but when it came into contrast with the new kitchen, it seemed to endorse BSU overtly, with slight Smurf fetish undertones. Secretly, she hated it. Less secretly, she hated the carpet. She hated that the entrance to her debut home makeover made such a poor first impression. So the second time, she let him pick from one of 3 preselected paint swatches in varying shades of what she called, “Rock star red.” By then, she had learned a thing or two about relationships.]

I couldn’t see what you could show me
Your scarf had kept your mouth well hid
I couldn’t see how you could know me
But you said you knew me and I believed you did

[Figure iv: Put a cork in it. Flooring was her biggest live-in girlfriend decor move yet, but she was somewhat of a known daredevil in that arena. Flooring though. That’s a leap of faith. That’s commitment. It took a few years of research—plus ceaseless daydreaming as she stared disgustedly at the Studio carpet and color from the kitchen—before she settled on cork. “Cork. Seriously, cork! Cork is amazing,” she exclaimed to him, to the postman, to the checkout clerk, to anyone who would listen. Natural. Sustainable. Renewable. Acoustic. Mold repellant. Cheap. All that jazz. Cork man. Yeah!]

When you whispered in my ear
And asked me if I was leavin’ with you or her
I didn’t realize just what I did hear
I didn’t realize how young you were

[Figure v: Stripped bare. She ordered it on Lumber Liquidators, but he agreed to pay back half by letting her slide on rent for the next few months. That seemed like a fair trade. Plus, she wouldn’t have to live with carpet for the unforeseeable future. That seemed priceless. The day they stripped out the carpet, and she painted over the Smurf jizz blue with brick red, she found nirvana. Her evil plan for absolute decor domination: working. She was a benevolent dictator. It ruled.]

But, sooner or later, one of us must know
You just did what you’re supposed to do
Sooner or later, one of us must know
That I really did try to get close to you

[Figure vi: Lay it down. They did it together, starting in the early evening and extending to fume-aided early morning delirium, spreading out a bastardly sticky glue with every arm muscle and laying down the floor tile by tile. They argued a skosh about the cracks. How wide they were. But the glue dried faster than their debate. Later, the cracks always bothered her. If he had just listened to her, and spaced them closer together, the cork would look more seamless. But still, the floor was beautiful. It was silly to notice the imperfection in this newly perfect space. Still, when it came to floors, you only had one shot. Maybe they blew it, being too hasty? He hand carved beautiful switch plates from the cork tiles. He found that his dream studio speakers, forgotten and untouched in a box in the back room for years, matched the new color perfectly. Call it kismet. Fate. The power of cork.]

I couldn’t see when it started snowin’
Your voice was all that I heard
I couldn’t see where we were goin’
But you said you knew an’ I took your word

[Figure vii: So you think this is funny? When she entered a month-long stand-up comedy contest the July of their live-in break-up, he cheered her on. From afar of course, he had gigs. And priorities, obviously. She made jokes about their break-up fuck it bucket: her 1970s porn star bush and his back hair and unclipped toenails. Underneath a public face of “this is the best break up ever,” it was the worst of times. If only for her. Alternately baffling then wounding her deeply in waves of revelation, it grew painfully obvious that, in the end, this break up just didn’t impact his life all that much. It did not crack open some rich yolk-like core of care she’d always imagined existed at his manly center, beneath the smooth, pale veneer. Instead, all she found was shell, then albumen. And in place of something deeper, omelet after omelet after consolatory omelet. No matter how long she masochistically lingered there to see it—no matter how biting her attempts at humor—his indifference to the shattering of their life together never lifted. This broke her heart freshly, every waking day. Especially waking up in a bed she still shared with this time-released man who, frankly, could’ve put any other person there beside him and seemed just as happy. Because comedy equals tragedy plus (no) time, she won the stand-up contest. In a state of perfect misery, she was crowned Boise’s Funniest Person. She went home after. He came back from a gig. They made love in celebration.]

And then you told me later, as I apologized
That you were just kiddin’ me, you weren’t really from the farm
And I told you, as you clawed out my eyes
That I never really meant to do you any harm

[Figure viii: The final gig. Even after the break up, she still went out to see him play. Just like normal, once or so a week. Until a friend of his, a stranger to her, struck up a casual conversation one night on the patio of the comedy club. They spoke about break-ups, about his recent divorce. At that point, she had just moved out too. He said, “But my friend Dan, playing over there, just told me how great it is being single.” Her stomach hit the floor. Because that’s where emotional shrapnel strikes first. Here, in black and white reportage air quotes: firm confirmation of his utter indifference. Unfettered joy even. She had planned to see Dan play that night, so she still went over, sheepishly. She told him about the cat his friend had let out of the bag. “Come on man,” he said, playfully looking at his friend, smiling. “Don’t do that to me.” She smiled too. She could take a joke. So she sat there, just a regular audience member now—next to this guy who unknowingly just jack-knifed her heart in six words, and a blond burlesque dancer/unabashed fan—hearing him play that 90s cover song again for the millionth time. Thick skulls require direct blows. Finally, it suddenly dawned on her, “What am I doing here?” And she got up. And she walked out. She didn’t say goodbye. She didn’t turn to look back. This was the last time she would hear him play. This was her final gig.]

But, sooner or later, one of us must know
You just did what you’re supposed to do
Sooner or later, one of us must know
That I really did try to get close to you

Seriously, WTF? Read the Museum Plaque Introduction»

Nobody feels any pain
Tonight as I stand inside the rain

—Bob Dylan, Just Like A Woman (Blonde on Blonde)

[Figure i: Read the headlines. “Hey, I probably won’t have a job when I get back,” she said to him, nonchalantly, reading the headline on the cover of The Oregonian while they were on vacation, walking through the foggy drizzle of a coastal town. It was September 2008, and the headline read: Dow drops 500 points. Seriously, like she knew what that meant. But she did know her smallish advertising agency—where she had been employed as a copywriter for barely a year—just went through a second round of lay-offs after similar bad news earlier that summer. When she was called into the conference room the next week, she already knew. She had presaged it via mass mediums. She mostly felt empathy for the woman who had to lay her off. Then she went to the back parking lot and called him. “It is done,” she intoned, with near Biblical prophecy.]

Everybody knows
That Baby’s got new clothes
But lately I see her ribbons and her bows
Have fallen from her curls

[Figure ii: Work it out. Obviously, one of the first trips she made was to Pier 1 Imports, where she bought vine-like curtains on sale for $22 each. She recognized that one probably shouldn’t start self-employment by spending money on drapery, but this was like, an investment, in her like, business. She then went to the paint store and bought a vivid acid green color to match. She spent a week decorating her “office” (slash guest bedroom in a pinch). She reclaimed a desk from her parents’ house that her dad had made for her when she was a teenage girl. She stripped two branches off a dead cherry tree in the front yard, polished them with lacquer, and turned them into curtain rods. As she painted and primped, she remembered all those times, sitting at her mod ad agency desk, surrounded by posh, creative and hip people, tapping out a headline or two about HP printers to sear the souls of the consuming class but not disturb the red-penned ire of the corporate legal department, when she thought, “Is this as good as it gets?” Glee is probably not often associated with lay-offs, but in her case, she long knew there had to be a different way to spend your life, your days, your words, and she would find it, here in this room. A room of one’s own.]

She takes just like a woman, yes she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl.

[Figure iii: Queen Mary. Terror in her belly tinged with pure thrill-seeking adrenaline, she launched Jessica Holmes Copywriting, and a year later (practically by random side project accident) became the co-creator and driving force behind Story Story Night. Both endeavors grew wildly successful, fast. She never seemed to have enough time for all the copy work that came in, seemingly unbidden; clients not only lovely and interesting but readily willing to sign off on her estimates. The storytelling program quickly became a sold-out phenomenon every month. She had expected the underdog struggle, but not the flagrant demand. When the responsibility and weight and deadlines and public nature of everything began to pile up, she found ways of blotting it all out. She found ways of staying in the groove. Because the days were hers, and carpe diem muthafucka.]

Queen Mary, she’s my friend
Yes, I believe I’ll go see her again
Nobody has to guess
That Baby can’t be blessed
Till she finally sees that she’s like all the rest
With her fog, her amphetamine and her pearls

[Figure iv: Alone party. No matter what, she thought, she kept her shit together. She got shit done. She never missed a rent payment. She never royally screwed up a show (though she still saw herself as terminally shy, and was somehow surprised every month to find herself on a stage). She never felt the want for money in a hazardous economy. Though she lived a somewhat bohemian life in this mid-century house with her musician boyfriend, she had it made. She had cracked the creative’s poverty code. She would walk around the house, procrasticleaning in the middle of the day, and think, “This is the happiest anyone could possibly be.”]

She takes just like a woman, yes she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl.

[Figure v: Burn out. It was both a sudden shock to the system and a deep crevice tirelessly etched by the glacial wear of ingrained patterns and looping habits. Her burnout. Her depression. For her, it sort-of felt like one day, about four years into everything, she was so happy she could barely breathe, and the next day, she was lying on the pullout that acted as a guest bed in her office, heart beating wildly in some unnamable flight-or-fight anxiety terror, tears streaming down her face but eyes still wide, wondering, “WTF is happening to me?”]

It was raining from the first
And I was dying there of thirst
So I came in here
And your long-time curse hurts
But what’s worse
Is this pain in here

[Figure vi: Seriously, WTF? She began to move through time and space as if through quicksand. The luster fell off everything. Her vision for her future became a slow beat in the back of her mind, then ceased to throb entirely, transforming each day into a pointless list of meaningless to-dos. Her heart was a firebomb, detonated. Her insides Dresden after the storm. She didn’t know where to turn. She went to hot yoga and let her tears blend with the sweat. She read self-help book after business productivity article after self-help book. Journey Into Power. The Happiness Advantage. Everything on the Harvard Business Review by Tony Schwartz. Eventually, she began rethinking her reality, her intrinsic routines, her friendships. Where were they now, when I am drowning? Where was he now? Who and what is to blame for this hell?]

I can’t stay in here
Ain’t it clear that.
I just can’t fit
Yes, I believe it’s time for us to quit

[Figure vii: Your world. “Remind me who I am. Remind me who I am,” became her silent conversation with her friends, who she quickly isolated by dint of unresponsiveness and self-sequestering, partly due to the adult acne that returned suddenly with a vengeance, exacerbated by the swampy climes of hot yoga. Her internal torment blazed across her face; her very skin betrayed her soul. She began cutting out things that she thought might be at the source of this pain. Friendships. Projects. Demands. Habits. Yes, even him. Finally him. She eventually knifed her self-made universe through the very heart. Because she had to face that no, he did not remind her who she was. Because he was never really present, in this house of her own creation but of his very real ownership, to do that. Because his core personality centered on relentless public-facing positivity. So of course, what was he to do, when he would come in the room and see her on the bed, shaking, pimply and dry crying in the middle of the day, but look bewildered, annoyed and think, “WTF?”]

When we meet again
Introduced as friends
Please don’t let on that you knew me when
I was hungry and it was your world

Chew on this. Read the Museum Plaque Introduction»

I’ve seen love go by my door
It’s never been this close before
Never been so easy or so slow
Been shooting in the dark too long
When somethin’s not right it’s wrong
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go

—Bob Dylan, You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Blood On The Tracks)

[Figure i: The bourgeoisie hunting party. She knew it the first time she saw his house, one week in. This was never going to work. The kitchen curtains depicted a hunting scene with British bourgeoisie on horses sporting riding crops and foxhounds and bloodlust on thick plasticized 1970s polyester that only hung 3/4 of the way down the window. The dingy oil-based yellow paint that started in the studio ended halfway down the kitchen wall, picking up in dull white primer where that left off. One and a half years later, she found herself driving 30 miles to a second Pier 1 Imports in Eagle to snag a second panel of those $11 (org. $55) chocolate-hued sale curtains with the orange wavy streaks embroidered up the middle. When she brought those curtains to the paint store, she picked out “Burnt Coffee” to match that twist. Obviously, this synchronistic color swatch was a sign that this kitchen, this time, was meant to be.]

Dragon clouds so high above
I’ve only known careless love
It’s always hit me from below
This time around it’s more correct
Right on target, so direct
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go

[Figure ii: Just eat it. A day after she saw his kitchen for the first time, they went out for sushi. He could see the switch in her. She was feeling it before, but suddenly not anymore. This, obvious in her indifferent and distractable eyes. He said, “You know, I have a lot of friends I could be with right now, but I chose to be with you.” Burn. She looked at him again, directly now, eyebrows raised in piqued interest.]

Purple clover, Queen Anne’s Lace
Crimson hair across your face
You could make me cry if you don’t know
Can’t remember what I was thinkin’ of
You might be spoilin’ me too much, love
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go

[Figure iii: Ex marks the spot. On the fridge hung photos of his ex, who had moved out over a year and half earlier to go to a grad school in Arizona. For a month or so, she continued to date him, but her mind subversively plotted a hesitant retreat. She just could not get past this place, this dust-coated house of his, and the stagnation and disregard it signified. Until the face on the fridge came back on Christmas Day. She remembered seeing the back of the ex’s long red hair through the kitchen window, as she drove away to let them talk it out. When she came back the next night to hear the lowdown, he told her the ex wanted to get back together. It was an ultimatum proposal of sorts. “Give me some time to think,” he said. She sat at the kitchen table, reeling with shock, like someone had punched her in the stomach then immediately proceeded to hot-box the room. Tears lit up her eyes. They talked all night. About what this still tenuous connection meant to both of them. About what he wanted in life. “I am better for you than her,” she thought, trying to remain superficially neutral in his decision making, but seeing the force of her raw emotion in that kitchen chair as a clarifying moment of love, “I can tell by this house. That she did not help you with it. I will show you what love is.” She held him all night, too. Seven years later, taking down pictures of their couple-dom from the fridge, she left a few up, wondering how long it would take for him to strip them off at last. Or, more likely, for his next girlfriend to get tired of the eyes staring at her from the Frigidaire, and finally do it herself.]

Flowers on the hillside, bloomin’ crazy
Crickets talkin’ back and forth in rhyme
Blue river runnin’ slow and lazy
I could stay with you forever and never realize the time

[Figure iv: Monsters in the cupboard. She bought the kitchen island at Big Lots for $125 and they dubbed it garçon. She replaced the knobs with hand-painted porcelain ones from Mexico. The sleek futuristic toaster oven that sat on top became a center of great culinary invention. Coffee, as it does, became a ritualistic relationship meeting ground, but their tastes regarding grinders and makers and milk styles differed with jittery passion. Still in the morning, often up first (but never early), she would bring him coffee, set the cup on garçon boudoir next to the bed, kiss him on the cheek. Even now, this corner of the kitchen sparks mostly happy memories. Of smells in the making. Of tea and games. Of feeding three cats. Of feeding one other.]

Situations have ended sad
Relationships have all been bad
Mine’ve been like Verlaine’s and Rimbaud
But there’s no way I can compare
All those scenes to this affair
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go

[Figure v: Scratch the surface. The white primer paint covered the kitchen cupboards too. “A shame,” she thought, spying the original woodgrain underneath the scratches. “These cupboards are beautiful below,” she declared to the reality TV home makeover show crew in her mind, over and over. Then, there they were. All the cupboards spread out on the lawn. He and his dad sweating it out for hours under the relentless summer sun, painstakingly stripping the primer off, sanding down the surface, and smoothing in linseed oil. The cupboard doors gleamed there in the blazing light. The wood more beautiful in grain and glow than she had ever dreamed possible.]

Yer gonna make me wonder what I’m doin’
Stayin’ far behind without you
Yer gonna make me wonder what I’m sayin’
Yer gonna make me give myself a good talkin’ to

[Figure vi: Stir it up. She is terrible at math, but if you have 3 meals a day, say just 2 a home, for 5 years, that’s some 3,640 dishes concocted in a single kitchen. Added to say, a rough 1,000 creations consumed while dating. A fantastic cook with a musician’s timing and taste for nuance, he made her mouth melt in so many ways. The happiest times in their relationship were almost always food-related. Sometimes in the exquisite tasting of it, but more often in the making of it, or in the spectator sport of it. Watching the crepes flip or the clafouti rise though the oven door. Listening to Anthony Bourdain read Kitchen Confidential while cleaning up the aftermath of some wild mouth-watering scheme. Watching the plating and professionalism and passion boil over on Top Chef or Chopped. The thrill of it all. They just couldn’t get enough.]

I’ll look for you in old Honolulu
San Francisco, Ashtabula
Yer gonna have to leave me now, I know

[Figure vii: Clean your plate. She left her dishwasher behind in the break up. She left a lot of things (garçon included). Though this was the one thing she warned him she might return for, when she has a place that fits it. Her dad had brought it all the way from Minnesota, a free gift from a friend of his. Her dad then moved the washer and dryer (she always hated doing laundry in the sticky kitchen) to the back room, refigured plumbing for the sake of it all, and installed the dishwasher. She paid for all the incidental parts. She was so excited. Finally, the end to that endless chore of a sink full of dishes. He did not share in her delight, complaining of the silt the dishwasher left in the bottom of their glasses. At this point, he liked to detail the various ways new home projects were expensive, time consuming, not usually worth it. Even a free dishwasher. Possibly even her unique way of taking up space, then her endless revisions of it.]

But I’ll see you in the sky above
In the tall grass, in the ones I love
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go