Make ’em Laugh

November 15, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I just texted the blind date guy to politely decline his
invitation for a second date. Beforehand, when I presented my case to my best guy friend saying that I just wasn’t
sparked by the coffee date but maybe I should try a second date, he said that ambivalence wasn’t a good sign.

So, if it’s not a good sign, it’s a bad one. And although my
gut had been telling me even before the date that I was having misgivings, I am a Libra –
and I need to thoroughly weigh everything from every angle until my head
explodes – This usually happens several times per month, or per day if I’m
overtired ;P

That isn’t precisely true – I’ve gotten more used to
listening to the voice of my intuition, the longer it hasn’t told me things
like “another line would *really* make this party awesome” or “his girlfriend
isn’t here, so…” I have since learned that this voice may not have been my
intuition, but that’s what I interpreted it as for years, and so it’s taken me
a while to get accustomed to the idea that perhaps my gut isn’t trying to kill
me (my brain is another story).

That said, I spent a significant amount of time and
brainspace on second guessing my gut today. “How much can you know from a first
date, anyway?” It just felt beige. He
wasn’t funny. “Oh, everyone’s on their best behavior on a first date – you
can’t really know if he’s funny or not.” He didn’t make me laugh. “Wouldn’t you
know more if you went out again?”

Maybe, or maybe I’d learn more if I actually listened to my
gut for once instead of hitting the override switch. Build up that muscle of listening
to myself, trusting myself, and also, caveat – if it’s meant to happen again,
it will. … But I don’t think it will.

I was talking with my actress friend today for my
“informational interview/omigod this is hella scary” phone call, and I was
telling her that this performance thing is a gut thing that just hasn’t gone
away. I recently found an exercise from when I was doing The Artist’s Way three years ago – it was a list of “Forbidden Joys”
– things I would love to do, but am “not allowed.” And on it was “Audition for
a play.”

So, my friend told me that first, I would just need to start
auditioning, and likely fall flat on my face. I told her that I already did
do that.

Earlier this year, I responded to a casting call on craigslist (you
can see how much credence I was willing to give to my gut!). We were asked to
prepare a monologue and a song – as although this wasn’t a musical, the
director believed that having actors sing was a good way to see how they’d do
when they felt uncomfortable. … So, I prepared “Make ’em Laugh” from Singing
in the Rain – it’s a hilarious outlandish
routine by Donald O’Connor – and it is OVER-THE-TOP.

See, I’ll show them how not uncomfortable this makes me! … Turns out, I made them quite
uncomfortable. Somewhere between the wildly gesticulating arm gestures and a
prat fall, I think I lost them. But hell, if it wasn’t hilarious … to me, at
least. Sure, I was a little disappointed – and I felt like I had totally blown
it by not being “more serious” or even a little serious – but for christ’s sake
the play was about a woman’s love affair with pot!

So I told this story to my actress friend, and she was
delighted! She said I’d already made a fool of myself, and lived (and laughed)
through it, so obviously I’m willing to try and fail – but I also have to be
willing to get out there again. So, she gave me some good advice and said I
could check in with her in a week, which seems like an awfully sweet thing, and
will help to keep me accountable to some of the tasks I have before me (buy a
monologue book – and that monthly subscription to Theater Bay Area I keep on shoving under my coffee table? take it out
and look at the casting calls in the back).

Because I want to be a woman who can be disappointed and
still follow my dreams, and my dreams also include a man who makes me laugh.

p.s. just got a text back that said he was offering sex not dinner – that…makes me laugh. Thanks, gut!… + seriously?!

coffee · dating · integrity · love · self-care · sex

Sex of Rockstar and Death Rattle Varieties

November 13, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Tomorrow I go on a b l i n d date. As in I really have no
idea what the guy I’m meeting looks like. He’s a friend of an acquaintance who emailed me on facebook to go out to coffee, and his photo is one of those
cartoon/sketches of a photo – and the rest of his photos are private.

That said, I have to be in the city tomorrow anyway – I have
mild suspicion about the suitability of this person judging from my
conversation with our mutual acquaintance – and he may or may not have an
addiction to adderall – but that’s based on circumstantial evidence – or that’s
the term they’d use on t.v.

And secondly, in favor of coffee with a stranger, why not?
It’s good to keep my dating muscles toned or at least not atrophied – my last was a date a few months ago with a near-friend. You know, that person you run in to
at shows or gatherings and always seem to flirt with obscurely in one of those
“*wink* we’re totally flirting but so totally covert about it that I’m not
actually sure if we are but I think we are and isn’t this charged ambiguity
totally exciting” kind of ways (!) – but one or the other is always in a
relationship, or you don’t want to ruin the quasi-friendship with the quagmire
of sex, or neuroses.

My date with the quasi-friend went well, but in terms of
continued romanticism, it was a case of mutual “i don’t think this is gonna
work” and luckily we both said as much a few days later, and so we still get to
be friends.

So, tomorrow’ll be my second date in … a lot of months. It’s
cool. I have a pretty good idea that I’m marinating – getting seasoned for the
right time. – I almost wrote “right now” – which is also true – as I’ve said
before, I tend to believe that once I have x y or z in place, I’ll be really
ready to be in a relationship. But, I got out of a long term one in January
that had a few death rattle trysts through August, so until I was ready to stop
beating a dead horse – or beating off an ex – just kidding – I haven’t really
been available to date anyway.

Although, about a month ago, around the time I started doing
the Calling in The One exercises, along with the Cousin contacting me out of
the deep blue, an old SF fling contacted me to say what’s up. It’s a good thing
I’m convincedly sure he’s a bad idea, because, have.mercy. that sex was awesome.
He and I “saw” each other for about a month about two years ago, and it was
like the kind of stuff you read about or see in “movies” or just fantasize
about – I actually said to him, Do you ever forget how great sex can be? (He
said no.)

But, alas, said hipster (who really wanted me to wear his
torn skinny jeans and loved that my dishware was all in some “state of decay” [I’ve recently tossed all chipped dishware…]) is not a viable option for me –
rockstar sex or not. Well, not right now at least.

honesty · integrity · self-care

Good Idea/Bad Idea

November 12, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Some of you might remember a weekday afternoon cartoon in
the 90s called Animaniacs. On the show
they had a segment called “Good Idea/Bad Idea” which according to my memory of
it, showed two scenarios with a strange looking animated skeleton-like fellow –
or maybe it was a mime? – who would go through two versions of the same thing with a very droll voiceover narrator who would says something like: Good Idea: Going Ice Skating in the Winter; Bad Idea: Going Ice Skating in the Summer – and other, more creative than I can come up with right now nonsense.

This afternoon, I had such a moment. Good Idea: Drinking tea
on my couch under a blanket with my new copy of Real Simple magazine, tearing out inspiration for the handmade
holiday cards I intend to make (a failed intention I’ve set several years in a
row!) with my cat curled up on my lap as it rained and was ugly outside.

Bad Idea: Later walking past the indie movie theater by my
house, and deciding to go see the about-to-start showing of Martha Marcie
May Marlene.

This was a bad idea ~ and I heard that Animaniacs voiceover tell me so as I walked back out into the cold feeling like I hadn’t breathed properly in two hours. The movie itself was wonderful in all
the ways art films are supposed to be wonderful – skilled, raw actors;
absorbing, believable plot; creative camera & sound work. But, it was also
emotionally wrenching, violent and sexually violent, tragic and concluded in a
sudden and unsettling way.

I used to have a much greater tolerance for psychological
dramas; perhaps as a way to cathartize other emotions I was having – in my
Shakespeare class this semester, we’ve done a lot of reading about the role of
theater as mass catharsis. But, lately, I just can’t really handle it. Give me
something a little less intense, wrenching, honest. Ironic then, isn’t it, that
I’ve said that my own poetry has recently become more of all of these.

Maybe as I find the ability to put words to my own drama, the
drama of others just over-flows the well. Maybe as I work to open myself and my
heart to the world, I’ve become a more tender human being.

Or maybe, I just want my entertainment to be
entertaining these days.

I sort of am ashamed to say it, but I’ll take the fluff
right now, thank you very much. Sure, I feel like I’m no longer in a set of
intellectual elite who are discoursing on their favorite Kurosawa – but then
again, really, when was I?! I’m not a true cinefile – Don’t get me wrong, I
love movies – but I haven’t seen any Kurosawa. I *am* the kind of person who will sometimes
just walk into a cinema and see whatever happens to be playing then, but it
seems to me that ending this cozy afternoon by unknowingly walking into a tragedy about rape, murder,
and PTSD was a Bad Idea.

And (resigning to/embracing) the fact that I’ve
actually made plans to see the new Twilight
with a friend is a Good Idea. Bring on the innocuous brooding fluff!

integrity · letting go · love · recovery

The Cousin.

November 9, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

When I was 19, my brother’s best friend’s cousin (got that?)
came to visit NJ from Ohio. His name was Ben, like my brother, so we just
called him “The Cousin” for clarification.

And, oh, how we fell. I wrote a poem about that too. (pasted
an excerpt below). The cousin and I have been each other’s… well, he’s been my
“if we’re single and 40” contingency plan. I said to him once that if I were
willing to let myself fall into the painting of the white picket fence
with him, I would. We were very good painters.

He was the first (and only) guy to send me flowers on
Valentine’s Day. He sent me a poem about my hair (that it was “everywhere” ~
not like that! ~ like it’s so unruly) and it had little hand-drawn cartoony
pictures of me with my unruly hair. Enclosed was a “self-portrait” he’d done in
Microsoft Paint or something, with a backwards cap, because that’s what 16 year
old boys did back then.

Yes, 16. He was 16; I was 19. Be grossed out – but that’s
how it happened. My best friend dated my brother’s best friend that summer
– of course it was summer – and the 4 of us were a raucus ball of Summer
Lovin’. We had a blast. I was his first. And although it sorta sucks to say, I
think part of what has kept our link for so long is that the fiery kindling of
that summer romance never had time to extinguish. The summer ended, he went
back to Ohio. But for the next five or more years, we kept up semi-regular
correspondence, lots of meandering, poetic, off-kilter emails. Jokes, and
references, and randomness – a randomness that almost, well, it made sense
between us. Our individual off-kilter-ness made sense to each other. We felt
understood; I felt understood. (I’m sure you understand) 😉

Last I visited him was on my drive out to San Francisco in
2006; we had another lovey weekend together – sensitive, understood, silly –
and drunken. Last we were both in New Jersey, I was no longer drunken, and he
couldn’t remember the mildly offensive things he’d said the night before. Then
it’s 2009 and he says maybe he should come out to California … and I tell him
that California didn’t fix me – I had to do a lot of work to get out of the
mess(es) I’d been in. And he says, Oh, and we hang up.

And I hadn’t heard from him in two years … till a month ago.

I was in New Jersey and I get a text from him. He hadn’t
heard that I was in town, he just decided then (cosmic Universe oo-ee-oo sound)
to text me. Remarkably, a “Calling in the One” exercise of that very week was
“Renegotiating Old Agreements.”
(“Marry you when we’re certain we won’t find anyone else & are done
doing everything else” Agreement ring any bells? ~ cue music again.)

So we talk on the phone the next day, and I play “friendly”
catch-up because, really, what is there to say? … What is there to say when I’m
standing at the threshold of letting go of a promise written in gossamer? How
can I say, I’m getting “over” you. Because that’s not the truth either. I will
always be that 19 year old in NJ August heat in my best friend’s bed with my
hair strewn across his vibrating body. I will always be her, but I will also
always be the every-other-age-woman that I’ve been, including today’s ~ and
that woman is very desperately sorry to disappoint her 19 year old, and to
disappoint The Cousin ~ but I am available for a different kind of love now.
One that isn’t a painting of a picket fence, but one that breathes, is adult,
is still random and off-kilter, but, frankly, is no longer available for “if I
can’t find anything better” ~ because everyone is worth more love than that.

I still have a renegotiating letter to write and likely
burn, ceremony-like. And a potential conversation to have. Or maybe, as has
been suggested to me, a promise written in gossamer will simply fade when I
stop re-writing it.

***

(from “Love Poems”)

There’s a
voicemail I’ve pressed 9 to save for two years—it’s a joke, without preface,

and he just hangs up when it’s done—and there’s a text poem about a porch and twilight

and hands I can’t yet erase, and there’s him, 16, in August heat, on the bench seat
of my dad’s cutlass.

***