Going away BBQ

I decided to throw a barbecue of sorts as my going away present to Steve and George. I started out by having dinner with Steve, and George. Then Paul came home and joined us, and Mark (who is Mark?) joined us too. Only Alastair and Sonny were missing from the home gang. Then Trygve pulled up on his motorcycle. Wow. Full house. Yeah, I liked the odds. I was holding court with five men, and Edwin had called today. My planets must be in lust.

Trygve and I went for a bike ride to the vineyards at Mark West Creek. Piper Sonoma, or Mark West Vineyards, some of those grapes go to DeLoach as well. Anyway, it was a chardonnay field. We parked the bike, after having ditched the helmets, we were riding free among the vines. Delicious chill of summer night against my skin. Here I am at 43 and a half, riding through the vineyards in the dark without helmet, without headlights, on a vintage Triumph, and having naughty bits.

Trygve dropped me off at the doorstep and I went over to visit Steve. I'd had a bit of wine. Wild Hog Pinot Noir and Foxhollow Cabernet, both good 1991 vintages. The Wild Hog was a light wine, with the Foxhollow being a robust fruity wine. It was one of those wonderful gossipy summer nights that makes California a special place to live.

I am no man's woman, and so I enjoy them all on one level or another, getting what I need from each man, not flirting, not acting coy, just being exactly who I am. No games no pretense. On my terms.

Then, on June 12 I'm off to Amsterdam.

Journal entry, 5/29-6/12/96 bbq long v.

5/29 my high school classmate, and sometimes boyfriend, Trygve Tryggestad came over on the 19th and we went for a long motorcycle ride on Willow Road, a dirt road that connects Coleman Valley Road to Highway 116 at Bridgeport, near the river mouth. It's a special secret road that I haven't been on in years.

I figured Trygve wouldn't show up again because I freaked him out last time wanting more than this mutual masturbation thing. And he so afraid of AIDS, so he says or is it also his way of non-commitment? Your Honor, I’m innocent, I didn't actually fuck her. Then, there’s the girlfriend.

I figure I wasn't all that interested in sex, but on a sunlit hillside meadow far from civilization, shades of spring, it seemed the right thing to do to roll in the grass. Hooray hooray, it’s 1 May. Outdoor sex begins today. We had a good day but I needed to work, and didn't succeed. I was so tired.

We went out to Goat Rock and Bodega Head. Each smell was sharp like a door opening into another world. New mown grass, fresh cow plops, amorous skunks, apple orchard in bloom, the odor after rain. Petrichor. One is so much closer to nature on a motorcycle. As we traversed the ditches and potholes, I realized it was somewhat like riding a horse, something that I missed terribly.

5/29 fragment from the Edwin Drummond piece, Stood Up

Trygve, out of the blue, came over an hour before Edwin was supposed to arrive, but I knew Edwin would be late. Trygve threw me down on the unmade bed as I was trying to clean the cabin for Edwin's arrival.

I was a little slow getting started and finished. Anyway Trygve got off quickly and there there are some advantages to walking off, but he thinks he needs me to get off too. Because I excite him when I touch myself. I must be putting out pheromones. Or starring in a porn movie. I was so horny in the morning I already got myself off. I, who can go for weeks and months on end without any interest whatsoever. Scary.

I am the wanton woman. I was too freaked to come again, and Trygve was laying around with his pants lost somewhere in the rubble of clean laundry, telling me how he much loved me. Yeah, lust wears many hats.

And when I said an old boyfriend was coming to visit, he wormed it out of me, he started saying he was going to hang around and bad vibe him. And I was feeling a bit frantic by then and I shrieked, You have no rights! And he said, I hope he doesn't come back for two or three more years, when I told Tryg the last time I had seen Edwin. It really was quite funny. Trygve finally leaves on his motorcycle. I needed a drink.

I barrel out of the cabin. My neighbor George snickers, and asks, The wrong one? as I run past him to take a quick shower. I laugh at my escapades and how it must look on the outside it's either all or nothing. 

6/4 I decided to throw a barbecue of sorts for as a going away present, as it were, to Steve and George. I will really miss these guys. I started out by having dinner with Steve, and George, then Paul came home and joined us, and Mark? joined us too. Then Trygve pulled up on his motorcycle. Wow. Full house. Yeah, I liked the odds. I was holding court with five men, and Edwin had called today. My planets must be in lust.

Trygve and I went for a bike ride to the vineyards at Mark West Creek. Piper Sonoma, or Mark West Vineyards, some of those grapes go to DeLoach as well. Anyway, it was a chardonnay field. We parked the bike and after having ditched the helmets, we were riding free and crawling among the vines. Delicious chill of summer nights against my skin. Trygve taking my breasts in his mouth, the hard green fruit on the vine like tiny nipples, with the promise of what was to come. 

Somehow, outside I don't mind this no muss no fuss, zip up and we're ready to truck. Here I am at 43 and a half, riding through the vineyards in the dark without a bra or knickers, sans helmet, without headlights on a vintage Triumph, and having naughty bits. 

Trygve dropped me off at the doorstep and I went over to visit Steve. I'd had a bit of wine. Wild Hog Pinot Noir and Foxhollow Cabernet, both 1991 vintages. The Wild Hog was a light wine, with the Foxhollow being a robust fruity wine. It was one of those wonderful gossipy summer nights that makes California a special place to live. 

I am no man's woman, and so I enjoy them all on one level or another, getting what I need from each man, not flirting, not acting coy, just being exactly who I am. No games no pretense.

June 12 I'm off to Amsterdam. A new adventure awaits.

Housesitting the Heart

Yesterday I left Marsha Connell's place, homesick, no real reason to stay there, other than to feed the cats and collect the mail. I had to fight with myself all day long just to stay there, which I managed to do until about 4 PM, then the blues settled in, and I was crying for my mother, for it's been a year since she died.

I was happy to be on my home own doorstep, sitting amid the scattered rose petals, weeping, when Steve duBois came by, and invited me over for some beer and pot. We watched reruns of Northern Exposure and giggled over nothing and everything.

I confessed to Steve that my strength and self-reliance was a front. I'm very fragile, and lately the facets of being responsible have weighed too heavily upon me. I just can't do it anymore, I said, and added something about feeling out from under Sonny after my last letter, thinking of it was pretty final, when Steve pipes up, That's not what Sonny said.  Shit!

Steve said: The other day he seem to think you had a relationship after all. He didn't know what kind it was or where it was going, but he acknowledged it. And he began talking about it before he had some brandy, and he talked some more after having some brandy. He admitted he had a hard time opening up. 

That's what made me perk up and take notice. It was before the alcohol. So it all really is on a positive note and I was blown away. Here I had gambled and lost all, only to discover my observations weren't accurate. Of course Sonny said nothing to me. Thank God for the intervention of friends. Frickin' Peyton Place.

I didn't even care when a couple of hours later Sonny came home, I could hear her voice. He came over to Steve's to check up on Nathan who was snuggled up into me. And I was smelling his hair, snuffling like a mother dog or a horse those family pheromones uniting us. 

We ordered pizza, Alastair Ingram came over and we all watched The Gods Must Be Crazy. Sonny and Pat went over to the Hacienda to her brother's place to get something. Nathan didn't want to go and snuggled back into my arms. I stared at the TV, not wanting to be a part of this action anymore, knowing Pat was here. 

He didn't know that I knew what was up, of course, and I was curious to see what he would do. Knowing that his kid would Velcro himself onto me, here I was again watching him while Sonny was out with Pat, a sticky situation.

Steve said Nathan could stay, so to technically I wasn't watching the kid, but I needed him in my arms. Solace. I would've loved to have Sunny hold me too, but it was a little too crowded, a little too loaded, but if I had asked, I believe he would've done it. Even with Pat being there. There was something different in the air. And I didn't know what, perhaps, hope. 

Both times when Sonny came over, he was trying to pay attention to all of us equally, but there was certainly a charged aura between us. It's like we could almost see each other better by not looking directly at each other, by using the other senses. I know I must've shone like a lantern when he walked in the door. He wasn't expecting to see me there. But as he entered, he must've had some forewarning, perhaps my laughter drifted out into the night. But he had his poker face on. All bets were off.

Celli Cabin Cat Chronicles

In a united furry front, the cats made a steady parade of dramatic and entrances and exits in ans out of our cabin doors. Alastair's cat Angus, was renamed Ankles, Anguish and Anxiety. Evan's cat Hucky (Huckleberry) had other plans for the evening. He was the most doglike of the litter, and followed Evan everywhere. (Evan's girlfriend Heather Granahan brought over a box of kittens and nearly everyone at the cabins adopted one—except me.)

Nathan and Sonny's cat, Mucky yowled for attention in his scaredy-cat way. A timid one. And I cuddled him to sleep. Steve says, It must be you, he he never comes into my cabin on his own accord. Mucky never much for cuddling, made his escape.

It took Mucky a few tries to get the hang of opening Steve's screen door. At first, he was too timid and too slow and the screen door kept slamming on his head. Finally he gave it a big push and manage to shoulder his way through the door, but got a little too nonchalant towards the end, too slothful, and the door slammed on his tail. Startled, he took off, having blown his cool cat exit.

Mucky nags me some more, he wants me to go over to my house and pet him by the food bowl, he doesn't want food, my door's been open all evening. He wants the ritual of being patted and fondled in his special space. Eventually I indulge his little furry whims while on a beer run to my house.

Steve said Sonny was supposed to be back soon, but it was hours later, and the necessity to drink beer and to get stoned was an order, so we partied on into the night. At one point, Nathan wanted to watch a new program on TV, and went to my house, but like Mucky the cat, he also wanted to be petted in his own special spot, which happens to be my spot on the bed.

So we went back to Steve's cabin next door for pizza and returned to my cabin until Sonny came home. He called in around midnight, and I was asleep. Nathan nearly so. We were watching Raising Arizona. Mucky was quite pleased to have both of us in the same place at the same time, and acted silly, flopping all over, ecstatically wiggling his whiskers to be scratched and all those secret little places.

I tell Nathan Mucky prefers it when we're all together especially at his house, then wonder am I anthropomorphizing this too much? No. Mucky comes unglued if I'm at Sonny's with Nathan on the couch bed—definitely his idea of the cat's pajamas.

Meanwhile Anguish is chewing on Nathan's dogtags. A cat eating dog tags? Woof? We give him some pizza and he's in hog heaven. It's only a tiny scrap of pizza but he is ever so grateful that it requires a full body bath before retiring for the evening.

I take notes from these little fur godlets, they give me metaphors to live by, parallel structure. I wasn't forceful enough with Sonny, so he kept slamming the door in my face. I did a good shoulder shove and the door opened, letting me in. But if I linger I'll get my tail caught in the door.

Then there's poor timid Moppet who wants to please everyone, but psychically follows the energy. Whenever important stacks of paper I am working on, becomes her new nesting spot. Even the laptop isn't exempt from her radar scanning. Maybe she's just a heatseeking cat, but the papers don't generate heat unless the words combust on the page.

Once I yelled at her for sitting on the self-portraits from Windsor High School that were on the chair. I want her to sit on the chair, not on my desk. Now, that she's finally gotten the idea of place, not things, it's no longer okay. Each time she's on the chair, when she sees me, she scurries off. And I feel so bad. Sometimes I'm able to intercept and cuddle her so it's not such a big deal. Place, not things, is her reality.

I begin to think of what Sonny and I are going through is of a similar mistranslation. Action/reaction but to the wrong things. Place oriented versus object oriented. Place becomes conceptual. Objects become a list of examples. He sums things up in generalities, sweeping the chair and the table slate clean. Offering me estimation.

While I need to see all the stuff that was stacked on the chair, or on the plate. in order to understand the concept. The place above the chair is a conceptual space, potential. It is potentially could harbor a body which leads to the heart and to the head via the genitals.

The chair becomes an extension of my own overcrowded table that doubles as a desk, storage space, etc., which upsets the cats, they know chairs are their turf. I fill the chairs with stuff so no human or cat can occupy that space. Chair equals an intent to eat, intent to talk, intent to study. Activity takes place there.

I need to open myself and my living space up to the possibility that's why we exist to fulfill our human potential, not to hide behind our own misery. Yes, I've told a man that his very presence gave me courage to go on, and for once, he's not slamming the door in my face.