Gina

Tonight I’m writing (or, well, trying to) at Java Beach cafe way out in the Outer Sunset. I love this place, and I’ve loved the sweetly unexpected day of city wandering that I’ve just had. But that’s not so much what I wanna write about right now.

Pretty much every time we went to the beach, A. & I would come to this specific part of the beach (it was an easy BART + MUNI combo from my apartment in The Mission). We’d come to this cafe to warm up with hot chocolate after particularly cold beach days. And I, not exactly realizing what I was getting myself into by coming out here, am having another North Beach Effect moment. It’s nowhere near as intense as it was a month ago when I had the experience that actually made me coin the term North Beach Effect. But, well. It’s there.

There is a small soft voice in my head tonight, murmuring “Remember how hard you were falling in love this time last year? Remember, remember, remember?!”

She’s not a bad voice, is the thing. She’s telling me something important, about my capacity for tenderness & sweetness, about my awesome Elephant Memory, about my ability to have a lot of complicated feelings all at once. She’s sad and resigned and nostalgic and wide-eyed and lonely. Right now, she’s kind of a Difficult Bitch, because oh god do I have other writing to be doing, writing that is not about these particular contours of my heart, writing that is not about my ex. But my Small Soft Voice is not bad.

Because of course I remember. Of course, of course, of course. And even though sometimes that remembering is hard or maudlin or gloomy, even if it means I get up from writing to go cry in the cafe bathroom for a minute, even if it means my heart feels uncomfortably full to bursting, even if it means some things are still unsure and tender and teary, well. I sure as hell wouldn’t ever wanna forget.

Seattle has been extraordinarily healing for me. In a lot of ways, I am happier than I have been in a long, long time.

And? Last night, in bed, I still could not fucking sleep. I tossed & turned & gnashed my teeth & generally flailed about and saw the sun rise through my window and finally fell asleep after dawn and woke up around 10. I had a lot of Sad Sad Missing My Sweet Sweet Boyfriend thoughts, and a lot of angry “Why did it have to go down like it did & why did he have to be mean & adolescent & try to make me hate him towards the end?” thoughts, and a lot of “WAAAH, why does it have to be like this in general?!” thoughts.

And. It can all be true.

I can be getting better, being happier & more productive, finally writing again, seeing sweet old friends & cuddling their cats, walking all over Capitol Hill, telling stories & cracking wise & laughing hysterically. I can pop into the leather shop & have a sweet conversation about John Preston with the cute faggots behind the counter & buy my first orange hanky. I can write 1,000 new good words. I can talk shit with Qwo-Li & Colin over iced mochas & cigarettes at the Gay Old Man Cafe that is basically the Seattle version of Twin Peaks but with coffee instead of booze. I can walk for miles and feel really good in my body and NOT have an awful fibromyalgia pain day and be joyous about being alive, moving & zipping around on sturdy legs that know how to get me anywhere. I can get cruised the way I always get cruised in Seattle, and smile back, even if I don’t take anyone up on their offer. I can get myself a red velvet cupcake at Cupcake Royale & sit next to a hot punk fag in eyeliner & give him a flirty smile. I can eat lemongrass pork w/ Elisabeth & Meagan, and we can see Ivy out the window of the restaurant and I can shout to her like the loud bitch I am, and Seattle can feel small & tender to me in the way that San Francisco does — so many of my old friends & history, all in one gorgeous place. Elisabeth & I can sit in Cal Anderson Park watching the moon get bigger & brighter, catching up on our last year like it has only been five minutes since we’ve seen each other. She can stop me on a street corner when I tell her how sad I’ve been, and say “Oh, Gina, can I just give you a hug? When you say that, I wanna give you a hug.” And it can be the sweetest moment, being held by an old friend like I didn’t even know I needed to be held, out on the middle of Broadway Street while drag queens bitch outside the bar & teenagers roll up to Dick’s Burgers. Later, Elisabeth & Meagan & I can drink apricot cider at their apartment late into the night, tell stories that make us laugh so hard we get stomach aches.

It can be a Perfect Day. And, then it can still be a hard night. There can still be the parts of me that are messy. That feel cracked and hurt and mad and fucked-up and wounded and hesitant to trust and scared. All of it can be true & real, the messiness & the happiness. The joy over what we had, and the sadness & anger that it’s over. If I am learning anything new from this break-up, it is just how incremental & slow healing is, and just how much there is still sweetness around me, even when some things feel awful & rough & lonely.

It is so simple, and it is so new, not giving myself a set of “Shoulds” about how I need to be. I don’t have to be Over It, and I don’t have to be Miserable. I get to be everything that I am in the moment. Angry & sweet, sad & joyous. Tender. Open to whatever comes next.

I got lost in Sausalito tonight, on the shoulder of the road.

I don’t know Sausalito at all. The bus driver told me that I was at the right stop and waved me off with a smile, but once I was off the bus, it was clear to me that I was not in the right place. I was supposed to meet up with my friend Sara at the Spencer Avenue Bus Pad, which is a transit hub. Then we were going to drive somewhere — I’m not even sure where, actually — to watch the fireworks.

I got off the bus, and I was not at a transit hub, not at all. I was standing on a spot on the side of the highway, surrounded by tall green trees creeping up tall green hills. I’m sure in the daytime it’s beautiful, but it was past 9 o’clock, dark, and it all started to feel pretty creepy and ominous pretty fast. There were no people on foot or bike in sight, no parking lot, no other busses, not even a sidewalk to walk on. Just the side of the road and random cars whizzing by. By the time I registered that I was very much in the wrong place, my bus had pulled away and I couldn’t flag it down again.

To top it all off, my cell phone had died on the bus over to Sausalito, so I couldn’t call Sara. I panicked hardcore for a good five minutes — heart racing, muttering fuckfuckfuck to myself, trying to breathe and figure out a plan. I tried to wave down the occasional cars that drove by, to get a ride to the Spencer Avenue Bus Pad. As time passed, that turned into looking for a ride over to the other side of the highway, so I could at least get a bus back into San Francisco. Meeting up with Sara became a lost cause. I’d just get back into the city, charge my phone, and call her to let her know I was okay once I got home.

Of all the cars I tried to flag down, only one woman actually stopped for me. She wouldn’t give me a ride — she said it was because she didn’t know the area well enough — but she also kept her window up very high the whole time we were talking. I understand being guarded with total strangers, especially at night, especially while driving, but it honestly felt very… Marin, you know? In that snooty, class-related way. She directed me to walk under a random highway bridge to the busses that would take me back to the city. I wasn’t sure if I could actually walk under the bridge, but at that point, anything was worth a shot. I thanked her, and she pulled away. I fought back tears of frustration and started walking.

I could hear the fireworks bursting in the air as I walked, but I couldn’t really see them through all the trees — just a glint of green or purple or white here and there behind the leaves. But I reached a clearing to my left, and the fireworks, the thing I’d come to Sausalito to see in the first place, suddenly they were going full blast, and they were beautiful. The first thing I saw was an exploding pink heart surrounded by shimmering white. I was in awe, honestly — fireworks get me every time. Then I felt myself feeling bitter around the edges, resentful, because it was an exploding heart. Then I had to laugh at myself for being so heartbroken that I was actually getting resentful over a fucking fireworks show.

My very recent ex-boyfriend loved Fourth of July. Loves, I mean, present-tense — it’s not like homeboy’s dead, we’re just not talking right now, the idea being that space and time apart will make the eventual transition into friendship easier. Which is smart and caring and compassionate and adult and which also really sucks, because of course all I want right now is to be talking to him. This is the longest we’ve ever gone without talking since we met. It hurts like hell. It is miserable and sad. I’ve been gnashing my teeth and punching pillows and not sleeping and not eating. And I know this is the right thing, still.

We had a really sweet picnic watching the fireworks this time last year, with lots of making out and Dark & Stormies and Italian food and strawberry jam courtesy of my grandmother, who I’d just been to visit that day, who took it upon herself to pack me and my “new friend” a dinner. Sitting in that park watching the fireworks with that boy — who I wasn’t even calling my lover yet, but I think we both knew it was heading there already — it was downright romantical. Says me, the girl who thought she didn’t like romance. He definitely changed that about me.

This whole not-even-two-weeks since he’s broken up with me has been a minefield of “This time last year, I was falling in love…” memories. I really wanted to be around friends and distracted tonight, because I knew July 4th would be especially hard, the same way Pride (which was our anniversary, and which is also when he broke up with me) was a total emotional rollercoaster.

I spent Pride curled up on the couch of two beloved friends, who kept me very stoned on hash and drunk on fancy booze and who fed me three different kinds of chocolate cake, and gave me klonopin when even the hash and the alcohol weren’t knocking me out, so I would sleep instead of just lying in bed sobbing. We watched movies — some bad, some pretty good — and listened to Black Sabbath (a first for me). 

But tonight, I ended up alone, on accident.

I’m spiritual, or religious, or whatever you wanna call it. But that part of me is also very private, and very old-school, and actually, very Catholic, which some people get, and some people don’t, and I don’t feel compelled to explain it too hard. And yes, I’m Southern Italian, and yes, much of my spiritual practice is about connection to ethnicity and culture and family and class. But it is also, genuinely, about faith in things I can’t see or understand. I’m much better at, say, talking about sex explicitly than I am at illuminating my spiritual beliefs. In part because I was raised and schooled by an old-world Calabrese magic practitioner who would never in a million years actually call herself a strega. “No, Gina, we’re Catholic!” is the line Nana has always thrown back at me when I try to push her. And she’s right, in a lot of ways, but she also isn’t. And what some Paisanos call omertà isn’t just a mafioso thing, either, even though that is where the word most gets used. Omertà is not just about the secrets of bullies with guns — it’s also about not running your mouth off about how you worship, because that shit’s private. Precious. So whenever people talk about things like “God moments,” like, I’m sorry. I am a DEEPLY EARNEST person and I am honestly down with whatever the hell people wanna believe that helps them through their days. But I also laugh up my sleeve a little bit at hokey new-agey spiritual talk. “God moment” just sounds too close to “Amateur Hour” in my head.

And all that said: There I was, standing at the side of the road, at this gorgeous clearing with a perfect view of the perfect fireworks, feeling totally alone, freaking out, wishing I could just call my friend on my cell phone, wishing one of these fucking Marin bitches would actually stop for me and help me get somewhere safe, wishing I just had my boyfriend back, my boyfriend who I miss more than anything right now. Shit, wishing I had any kind of lover, and hadn’t had what feels like a year of break-up after break-up, this break-up by far being the worst and most devastating, and this break-up leaving me not just without a primary partner, but completely and totally single for the first time in years.

And this little voice crept in amidst the sad, scrambling wishes. It was me, but it wasn’t me. Or it was the me who’s far wiser than I give myself credit for being. As long as you’re here? Enjoy the fireworks. Enjoy how beautiful this is, this moment, right now. You’ll get yourself home. You know how to handle things on your own. You always have. Going it alone doesn’t have to be a punishment or penance or purgatory.

I listened. I watched the fireworks.

And I did get myself home. It involved flagging down a highway patrol officer, and taking a backtracking winding walk to a weird little parking lot off the side of the road, and a salty dog old-school Sausalito cabbie who called me “dear” in the least sexist, most endearing old man way, who talked to his wife on his cell phone about their neurotic dog who was freaked out by the fireworks. He only charged me $35 for what was easily a $50 or $60 cab ride back home to The Mission.

This isn’t the end of my grieving process. If anything, a lot of the harder stuff starts now. But I’m defrosting my red sauce — my recipe, but influenced by my Nana — because I finally have an appetite again. I’m going to bed soon, because I finally feel tired again. Something in me broke open tonight, and that breaking, that opening? I needed that. I finally feel like I have some of my spine back.

Going it alone is not purgatory. It’s not punishment. It’s not penance. I of all people should know that — I’ve spent many more years of my adult life single, or at least un-partnered, than I have partnered up. And my heart is resilient. And brave.