nakedjen

Holmes for the Holidays

“There’s a blog post in this!,” I exclaimed to the Outlaw and his daughter yesterday when we were foiled not once, not twice but three times in our attempt to go to see Sherlock Holmes.  My experience, the previous year, with movies on Christmas day in Salt Lake had been cavernous, empty, theatres.  Me and the lonely boy selling stale popcorn.  I am not joking.  Even the evening screening of Benjamin Button had just me and about seven other souls.  As that was my first year for films on Christmas Day in Salt Lake City, I concluded that I was now in a land where people actually chose to celebrate the holiday with their families and perhaps even, gasp, in those temples to God that they erect so carefully on nearly every block. 

Either all the Mormons have left Utah or we’ve been inundated with a whole new population of Robert Downey, Jr. fans who decided that yesterday was a day of worship at his altar.  I am uncertain which it truly is, the 2010 census may tell us.  I can tell you that all showings of Sherlock Holmes within a 30 mile radius of my little bungalow were SOLD OUT.  Forever and ever, Amen.

This was quite disconcerting.  Who were all these people and why were they going to the movies on Christmas?  What happened to turkey and stuffing and football and spending time playing with the new toys delivered from Santa?

Heathens!

Briefly, ever so briefly, the three of us considered a festival of films on the couch, in the comfort of my tiny bungalow, but that truly felt sacrilegious to me in ways that perhaps only the most dedicated of film lovers can possibly understand.  I threw a spectacular temper tantrum worthy of any five year old and became a woman possessed, a girl determined to have Holmes for my holiday!

Do you dance the Fandango?  I’ve been going to films at movie theatres for how very many years?  Always just purchasing my own ticket right at the box office from a smiling teenager.  Yesterday, though, I learned a new dance.  Oh, Fandango and your paper bag puppets how very much I now love you and will sing your praises. 

Click of a mouse and we had three guaranteed seats for a late afternoon screening of Sherlock Holmes.  Thank goddess for all things technical and web controlled, as when we arrived the screening was, of course, SOLD OUT because, as discussed previously, we are now home here in Utah to every single Robert Downey, Jr. fan on the entire face of the planet.

Now, about the film.

My first words when it concluded? 

“Well, that was Guy Ritchie’s Brokeback Holmes!”

Please don’t let that dissuade you from going to see this film.  It is, actually, a really great Christmas present wrapped up in a fantastic steam punk bow.  Robert Downey, Jr. is awesome as Sherlock Holmes.  The man can act more with a raised eyebrow than a lot of his cohorts these days and while I’ll admit right here that I have loved that man since, well, since we were both small children and he was in my friend, John Sayles’ film Baby It’s You, he’s just gotten better and better and better.  He delivers a Sherlock we want to both hug and love.

Jude Law is equally lovely as Watson and the two of them together create just the right underlying, unspoken tension to keep things interesting.  It’s a good match, much like Redford and Newman, honestly. 

Welcome back to Guy Ritchie who has been missing for far too long.  He utilizes his bag of tricks to keep things really stylized, interesting and lovely to watch, even when the script itself was going in places it should not have gone.  In these days of kids who are spoon fed on Harry Potter and National Treasure, and, even,Indiana Jones, Sherlock Holmes delivers as an exciting ride with just the right mix of mystery, explosions and comedic fun. 

 

He Was Kind To Her

He was not a violent man.  In fact, there was absolutely nothing abusive about him.  He was kind to her.  Showered her with affection.  Allowed her to trust men.  Again.

Then he was gone.  Not even a pause for a goodbye. She’s eating books from frustration, sadness, to fill the missing of him.  The misunderstanding of abandonment and loss.  

It is impossible to explain to a dog that relationships some times just end. I can not tell her that it isn’t a matter of being better behaved or different.  Of not licking his face or sitting in his lap. Stella is a dog, so it is not even within the realms of possibility to have her comprehend that The Outlaw’s disappearance from our lives was a mutual decision. For her, he's just vanished.  Poof!

She was not abandoned.  I am choosing this, he is choosing this.

Still, Stella truly loved him and enjoyed his company.  Perhaps even more than I.  Will a web of sadness weave around and squeeze our hearts if we let him in again?  What if we do not? How do we ever really know, if we don’t say yes?

you turn me into somebody loved

i am not at work today because i'm still that sick. i called last night and said, "swine flu". that was enough. they called me and said, "do not come to the office until you are well, thank you." har!

i want to be there instead of here, quite frankly. i'm very much done with this illness. the outlaw has been here being quite kind and sweet, but i've been less than kind and sweet as i just become even more bitchy and cranky than usual when i'm not feeling well.

every time i start to feel better, i just end up feeling much worse. it's like two steps forward seven steps backwards. or something like that.

i had a real, "i live here now" moment this morning. i walked into the coffee garden and they all said, "nakedjen, are you okay?" and i said, "well, no not really..." and they all said, "we've been following you on twitter. you're really sick!"

it made me laugh. in a good way. i mean, come on?! the coffee garden peeps are following me on twitter? that, my friends, is rather comical. and makes me feel loved all at the same time. in january, i will have lived here for two years. two years. which isn't really that long in the grand scheme of things considering i lived in santa cruz for 20 years and salt lake is a much larger city.

and yet?

i've got a community here. i really do. i have genuine friends here. in mormonville. who truly do love me. and will bring me hot and sour soup in the middle of the night. and cook me rad indian food just because. and invite me to strange burning man activities in the middle of the desert. and take me to the top of a mountain to see falling stars.

it's a beautiful thing, this life here. i can't really complain. so if i do? slap me. and remind me that i am loved.

Every Day Is Ice Cream and Chocolate Cake

You Can Go Crazy With Thoughts And Supposes

In what may quickly become a more familiar scene now, I am driving and Emily Gilmore is in the passenger seat.  We’ve just left one of a multitude of home craft shows that populate nearly every weekend in Utah like dandelions on your lawn.  You’re never certain where the next one might pop up, you just know there always will be at least one.

She’s peppering me with questions about The Outlaw.  The previous evening I had chosen him over her, choosing Indian food and a naked Friday soak in the hot tub instead of a cultural outing to a Mark Twain play production. I know she’s more than curious about this new paramour.

If she wasn’t now living here, just down the road, so close that we can now spend time far more frequently together, this interrogation wouldn’t even be happening, of course.  She does, it is, and so I try to breathe and answer her questions without compromising The Outlaw’s integrity nor my own.

He was married. He is no longer.  He was Mormon.  He is no longer.  He wrangles the crazy from midnight until dawn.

“Are you going to be his next project?” she asks in her completely serious way.

I laugh loudly, share that all my friends, bar none, have asked the exact same question and then I quickly change the subject to bread pans.  I just can’t talk this crazy talk anymore.

There Are Shapes, There Are Rhythms, There Are Signs That We Can Learn

My friends, my real Salty Lake friends, are gathered in my kitchen at the table noisily consuming small pita rounds smothered with hummus and guacamole as I try to finish up the ends of the meal I’ve promised to make to celebrate all of them.

I’ve told them nothing, really, about him.  Other than that he exists.  Their immediate response was, “But is he Nakedjen worthy?” and that made me smile inside as well as out.  Nakedjen worthy, indeed. 

They’re asking where he is, is he coming and, as I’m uncertain, since this relationship is still so not very certain at all, I am explaining how he said he would be coming, but you know, I don’t know if he actually will when, as if completely on cue, the Outlaw strolls through the door. 

I hug him, inhale him, the familiarity of his lips brushing mine, the whispered hello making me breathe more easily.  He keeps his promises.  Of that much, I am certain.

I worry, just a bit, about the unwrapping of this present.  Of sharing him with my world.  If the pulling off the paper might unravel all the strings to a point where we can no longer just hide beneath the covers, just be us two. 

The conversation never falters, the bonds of friendship buoy all of us along, the laughter is quick and easy and often and plentiful.  I already knew it.  He is Nakedjen worthy.

Your Hands Are Warm and My Body Is Wide

There’s something truly decadent about being in bed at 2:00 p.m. on a Monday afternoon when you’re neither sick nor tired, but instead just wrapped and entangled naked, uncertain which body part is yours and which is his.   

This is a small snapshot of my current life.   I am astounded that it is really mine. 

 

 

 

 

I Wish That Your Hair Was Orange

He's over as he often is these days.  It's that golden hour, or two, when neither of us have anywhere we're supposed to be.  So we're on the couch and he's reading aloud to me the words he's written.  Poetry, actually.  With a gentle cadence, the words trip off his tongue and fall not only on my ears, but all over me.  We all know I'm a girl that's all about the words.  If you can use words well, I might just follow you anywhere.

There's one line of his, in particular, that pierces right through and sparks a deeper memory.  Sweeps away some very heavy cobwebs and re-minds me of a long forgotten monologue from a play that was perhaps far more autobiographical than I am still willing to admit.

Inspired, I walk over to the bookshelf where those ancient words have rested, dusty and unread. 

His girlfriend comes to visit and she's one of those girls -- you've seen them-- the kind who have everything together and look like Barbie dolls.  Well, she comes and suddenly I'm nobody.  I mean, it's like he's never met me before or something.  Here I am trying to talk to him about the latest situation with Gorbechev, or the motives that influenced Pollack's last painting and this man, this man who usually hangs on my every word, this man who finds me so "intriguing" and all that, this man is looking right through me like I"m not even there.  It's enough to make me want to scream.  I mean, he's talking to her about what they ate for lunch that day and I'm sitting there wondering what he sees in this chick, other than she looks beautiful and all and then I notice that he's just walked away and left me standing there.  Alone.  All alone.  Alone.  (PAUSE) It's how I've been feeling lately.  Very alone.  (PAUSE) I know that I've got you to talk to, but who comes to see me in this place?  Who'd want to? My friends all abandoned me pretty quickly, didn't they?  They were never really friends, anyway.  Just some people I knew, people I passed the time with. (SILENCE)

I made a really big mess on her oriental carpet that night.  She probably thinks that I did it in there on purpose.  It wasn't enough that the dog pissed on it every time she left him alone.  It was his revenge.  I'm sure she thinks that it was my revenge. 

But it wasn't.  I never even intended to do it in there.  I wanted to do it outside, so it would take a lot longer for them to find me.  So that they wouldn't be able to save me.  I was saving myself.  But that night...That night...It was too impossible; it was too hot to even breathe.  I had walked in there to sit and play the piano.  (PAUSE) I did play.  I played "Fer Elise" porbably better than I had ever played it before.  But when the dog started howling, started singing...(LONG PAUSE) She had to throw that oriental away.  The blood stains just wouldn't come out.  Blood and dog piss.  I hated that rug.  (SILENCE)

They probably think that you fucked me that night.  You spent the night in my room, even slept in my bed, but you didn't touch me.  I was screaming inside-- my whole body was waiting to jump at the slightest brush of your hand.  I was sure you wnated it just as much.  All I needed was the signal.  But it never came.  I wished you'd fucked me.  (PAUSE) You didn't even roll over on to my side of the bed.  (LONG PAUSE)

An interesting that, isn't it?  By the time you were ready to do it, I wasn't even really interested anymore.  You were old news.  And your insecurities about --well, they almost kept us from ever making love. (PAUSE) Still, it was good, wasn't it?  Remember the first time we did it?  You were worried about getting pregnant.  (GIGGLES) I told you that I knew my body better than anyone-- I knew when it was safe.  It was safe.

We spent the entire afternoon rolling around on my brother's double bed.  First, you climbed on top, then it was my turn.  It lasted forever.  Our bodies lying tangled in an exhausted sticky sleep.  Your lips gently sucking my lips...Whispers to each other of promises we both already knew we would never ever keep...The breezes whistling from the fan propped dangerously on the windowsill...Champagne.  It was never that good again, was it?

A Magic Bus of An Entirely Different Color

My trip to Santa Cruz was sublime.  No, honestly, it was truly a trip that was chock full of love and goodness.   I am a girl who is, above all else, well loved.  I don't always truly appreciate just how well loved I am nor do I understand exactly how this actually came to pass, this well loved business? 

I do love with abandon, it is true.  I always have.  If I love you, I give you everything I've got and I never hold back.  I sparkle with it, shine it on you, beam it all in your direction. 

Still, I am not that awesome.  Nor am I someone who has ever been very good at the accepting of praise or kindness or love thrown in her direction.  I'm working on it, I am.  I want to be much better at it, I do.  Because I know that this love expression is a two way street.  I can not just keep beaming it out, shining it all over, splattering it about without actually scooping it up and letting it rain down on me, as well.  It's just hard, sometimes, to take off the galoshes and the rain coat and put away the umbrella and truly wallow in the love.

But I did just that over the weekend in Santa Cruz.  Oh did I wallow.  Soaked and sopped and filled myself to overflowing.  The people of Santa Cruz, my dear and lovely friends, they love well.  They truly do.

I was also the recipient of many beautiful gifts. 

Again, I love giving gifts, but all those who know me intimately will share with you that I'm not so very good at receiving them.  I'll gush and make a huge fuss over the fact that you've thought of me, insist that you shouldn't have, thank you profusely and then....I'll leave the very gift you've given me right on your dining room table.  Completely forget to take it home.  It is TERRIBLE, I know.  Awful.  I'm a horrible recipient of kindness and love and all things beautiful.  Don't waste it on me!

One gift I did receive didn't need wrapping in fancy paper or even un-fancy paper.  The good and kind and lovely large hearted Max (who I am tempted to tell you is a savior dressed in every day clothes) has been my friend in Santa Cruz perhaps the longest of all my friends.  No, really.  We've been friends for what feels like forever plus another day after that.

He provided me a very soft bed, a softer pillow and chocolates on this visit.  Max and I are always sharing the latest and the best finds on the Internet as we're both fans of things that open our minds and our hearts.  This time he had a beautiful present for me.

The Moth.

I can't believe that I had not heard it before.  I'm sure most of you probably already know all about it and shame on all of you for not telling me sooner.  Of course we receive the gifts we're to receive exactly when we're to receive them so I'm certain The Moth came flitting into my life at precisely this moment because this was the moment I needed it to arrive.  However, that doesn't let you off the hook for not sharing.  I'm all about the sharing!

The Moth, for those of you who don't know, is a not-for-profit story telling organization that encourages people to tell real stories without notes to an audience.  It is fantastic.  No, truly.  It is superb.  I can not get enough of it.  It is available on a podcast, but it is also available on many public radio stations nationwide.  Of course, I'm going to be lobbying those good people up at KUER to start broadcasting it for these fine beautiful people in Salt Lake City, but in the meantime, I can always listen to the podcasts.  Thank goddess for the Internet.  Isn't it just a beautiful thing?

I'm sharing with you one of my most favorite stories that I've heard thus far.  Honestly, this woman, Bokara Legendre, well, I can only hope to be as fabulous as she is one day in my life in the not so distant future.  Let's face it, I'm a divorcee myself.  With an outlaw for a lover at the moment.  I believe in the healing powers of potions.  Can my own story such as this be too far away?

Do give it a listen.  I promise, it will give you a smile, a delight, some love. From me to you.  Because we all know, I really like to spread the love around.

Better Than Ice Cream

The three of us, old friends, are all in the car that morning along with their luscious Chocolate Labrador.  Bound and bonded as chosen family, I have spent the previous night at their house on the hill and we’re currently headed home from a quick trip to the Saturday farmer’s market.  C is at the wheel and as he expertly navigates the car up and around the steep curves, L asks, “So, Jen, what if anything have you heard from Dave?”

The question neither surprises nor upsets me.  Instead, I am rather expecting it.  This query, about my ex-husband, has spilled from the lips of all those I’ve encountered during my own love-fest weekend in Santa Cruz.

I tell L, quickly, that I have not heard anything because I have not spoken to him in over a year.  I know nothing of Dave.  I also wish to know nothing of Dave so I’ve not gone searching for clues or answers or suggestions of him in all the obvious places.  What surprises me, again, is to hear that C and L know nothing of Dave, either.  At all.  This has been the common thread amongst all my friends.  Together, along with me, we know nothing. 

There is a time in a marriage, when you’re in the very center of it, when you believe that you will know everything of your chosen other always.  You cannot possibly fathom not knowing.  Your heart is not capable of traveling that byway that might take you to a place where not knowing could be a possibility because not knowing would mean things too horrible to contemplate.  

Of course it is naïve to believe and to wish and to hope that this always knowing will always be possible.  Things happen.  People change.  Hearts break.  Nothing, not even the knowing, is forever.

What I really longed to share with C and L though, to shout from the back seat, was not about the knowing of nothing, but about the discovery of something. Something else entirely.  Something that I know is quite lovely indeed.

“I’m wondering how you taste?”

Those five words, in a text to my phone, caused the very finest hairs on the back of my neck to stand at attention.  I had truthfully given up on him, decided that he was not the least bit interested in me, concluded that he had younger and more beautiful women to enchant when those five words came flickering across my screen.  The small of my back prickled with anticipation as I realized the fate of my future with The Outlaw might honestly rest in my response.

“Ice cream”

Truly seductive, I know.  I will admit right now that The Outlaw has a way of turning my 45-year-old brain to that of a 17-year old horny teenager.  It is as if anything and everything I know about the rules of seduction, the laws of attraction, the wily ways of womanhood get flung to the rafters along with my bra, my panties, whatever clothes I might be wearing and I just want to fuck, fuck and then please, sir, let’s fuck some more. 

The Outlaw tastes really good, Internet.  Better than ice cream.  Better, even, than anyone else I’ve ever tasted. 

That part, that part right there?  That part about tasting better than anyone else?  Is truly curious to me and has me a bit flummoxed only because I suppose with all those previous sexual partners (and I have had more than can be counted on my available fingers and toes, but let’s stop counting, shall we?) I did not attribute the fact that sometimes I just had to HOLD MY BREATH because of the way he smelled to me a contributing factor to my own non-enjoyment.  I honestly thought, “Well, he stinks?!? His breath makes me gag.  I can’t really change that about him.  I like lots of other things, so I’ll just BREATHE THROUGH MY EARS!”  Years of that breathing through my ears and I suppose I just got very good at it.  I became a Gold Medalist in the Ear Breathing Olympics and carried on having sex without knowing how anyone else truly tasted or just how horrific they may have smelled.

I’m no longer breathing through my ears.  I’m barely breathing at all, but for completely different reasons.  Everything tastes just yummy.  I do mean everything.  I’ve been cautioned not to fall in love with The Outlaw, as that is a story that never ends well.  I’m trying very hard not to despite how delicious he tastes.  Despite how much I want to devour him.  Despite how very much he makes me truly feel, at last. 

For now, I am truly just enjoying the very lusty ride.

Birth and death are easy. It is life that is hard.

Well, hello there.  Did that get your attention?  Snap your head right back around and have you say, "What?"  Yes, me too.

As some of you may have gathered, those who were paying closer attention than others, those who stop by this sometimes very lonely space even when there's really no reason to stop by this very lonely space, I was on a journey last week.  It was a spiritual journey.  Well, kind of.  Oh, no, well, maybe not?  I don't know?  It certainly felt spiritual in some spots, in others it felt like having surgery without anesthesia.  Not that I actually know what having surgery without anesthesia truly feels like, unless we count that time I was living in London and had that god awful tooth ache and had to rely on the good old National Health Services to take care of it for me and while I absolutely still am an advocate for socialized medicine, I will share that having the National health Services perform dental work without the use of any anesthesia is not your idea of a good trip to London.  So make sure you brush and floss regularly.

Where was I?

Oh, yes.  Last week. At my mother's home.  Where she's lived with all her earthly belongings (as well as everything she's believed it was oh so important to savesavesave) for the past 20 years.  That she sold.  That she needed sorted, boxed and packed into a moving truck.  Because guess what everyone?  In case you have not heard, have not received the National Emergency Broadcast Alert, Emily Gilmore is moving to Utah.  Last time I inquired, with those who know such things, there is only one Utah in these United States of America.  The same one Utah that I currently call home.

You all know where this is going, don't you? 

The unearthing, sorting, and packing of my mother's house last week unearthed plenty of my own childhood demons, as well.  Stuffed into the back of closets, into the bottom of drawers, back in the corner of the basement and forgotten for years were scraps and tokens of memories that dusted themselves off, paraded around and practically shook my shoulders in their glee to be remembered. As with any visit between me and Emily Gilmore, old behaviors surfaced quickly and even the matter of how many coffee mugs to truly pack for the long ride across America became a subject of debate. 

I was doing my best to be gracious, to be understanding, to realize that for Emily, this is all rather traumatic.  I kept reminding myself that she is an adult.  This is an adult decision.  She is choosing to leave her home, really the only place she's lived her entire adult life, to move 2000 miles away and live in the land of Mormon. 

At some point, though, in that short 36 hours, I just became far too overwhelmed and found myself, as I often did as a child, crammed into the back of a dark empty closet, sitting on the floor, knees to chest, sobbing.  The scariest part for me was that I was not at all sure why?

(It seems almost anti climatic to share, right here, right now, at this moment, that I have met someone.  However, it is at this point in the story that he makes an important appearance.  So, Internet?  I've met someone.  He will begin appearing now.  Perhaps with some frequency.  We'll call him The Outlaw.)

Inside that closet, in the dark, my sobs drowning out the world of chaos that swirled just beyond the closed doors, my phone buzzed inside my jacket pocket.  What surprised me, completely, was that The Outlaw, who honestly barely knows me, called at all, but even more so, that he called at that moment because "you seem forlorn."  Calmly, gently, carefully, he talked me back into this orbit, back from the oh so scary places that my childhood self can navigate without a compass, back into my own body with the tear stained cheeks and snotty nose and out of the closet.

Of course, we all know, especially I know, that even if The Outlaw had not called that night, I would have eventually found my way back into my body and out of the closet.  I always have in one fashion or another, sometimes leaving a bit of myself there behind, but always pretty much at least somewhat in tact.  What hit me, though, squarely in my chest that evening, in the darkness, in the closet, was the compassion and kindness I felt being shared with me so utterly freely, completely and unconditionally. 

It scared me.  Yes, it scared me. Could I actually be on the receiving end of thoughtfulness and understanding at this juncture in a new relationship?  Was this real?  Was The Outlaw truly so kind and generous or was my heart beginning to race because this was just another set up to shatter it?

His words, my words, our words kept flitting and tripping and falling and flowing until it just didn't matter what my heart or my head felt.  The only thing that truly mattered was the moment we were in. I was here. I was present. I was.

The car packed to overflowing, my sister, NeverNakedBeth and I spent the next four days navigating, moment to moment, the Interstates that connect our childhood home to our current one.  The Outlaw peppered the journey with a heart-skipping staccato of messages that always made me smile.  It's a curious thing, honestly, this sharing such proximity with my sister.  Until I crash landed here nearly two years ago, my sister and I had what could best be described as a formal familiar relationship.  We saw each other once a year.  We were kind, as sisters should be.  We loved each other because we were family.

I shared with NeverNakedBeth, as we wove our way through the orange and red and yellow speckled valleys of America, that while I could have never gazed into any crystal ball two years ago and have predicted that I'd be living in Utah, I was both glad and grateful for her love, her kindness, her compassion and, most of all, her friendship.  I took that opportunity, crammed in the front seat of our mother's car, snacks of Triscuits between us, to share with her that I truly loved her and to thank her for being my sister.

I talk often about how family is not the family we are born with, but the family we choose.  My family is quite large, it is vast, it encompasses many beautiful faces and souls from all facets of my life on all continents of this planet.  What I learned, though, on this journey, is that my family, the family that knows my secrets and has kept them stuffed deep in closets, that pushes my buttons and keeps childhood treasures boxed even when I insist they be thrown away, that will love me fiercely despite my obvious chinks and flaws, is very much mine and is very much here. 

Welcome to Utah, Emily.  Welcome Home.