Take a load off, Fanny

For many years he put the load on me.

Now my new guiding philosophy:

For the most part, I only help to carry the load of people who demonstrate a willingness to help me carry my own (with the exception of when I am volunteering or doing work that is directly related to the purpose of uplifting others without regard for whether they return the uplift, or perhaps because of a professional relationship wherein such reciprocation might be construed as or involve the crossing of boundaries). 

Caveats aside: I only help to carry the load of people who demonstrate a willingness to help me carry my own.


I've been carrying a lot for a long time, all silent and smiling but gasping for breath on the inside.

Now I am realizing what a responsibility it is to carry my own load.

Now I am realizing that I want myself to be happy.

Now I am realizing that my job is not to kill myself while other people derive their own temporary relief (however conscious or not, however assuredly un-malicious) from sucking me dry.

Is that a euphemism.

Now I am listening to Music from Big Pink and sweating a little in my black capri sweatpants. My stomach full of homemade green curry and sucking on a spearmint candy, a book about hating poetry splayed across my thigh.



It's been years since I've thought of her: perhaps the sexiest woman I've ever known in my life. I remember how badly I wanted to place my hands side by side on her hips, to press my forehead between her breasts and breathe in

How devastated I felt when she started dating another woman. How desperately I craved to be wanted, there amidst the soybeans in the center of the Buckeye State 


Yes and same with the mix tapes and lingering in your truck hoping you would kiss me

Same with draping my head on his shoulder in the back of that Geo Prizm, high and thrilling to his arm around my side


I drink wine chilled with frozen black cherries out of the massive red-striped glass that I bought for 50 cents at a yard sale, its partner safe and sound in the cupboard because it's too large even for the conventional wine glass rack. I fucking love those wine glasses.

Every other creature in my little interspecies family is asleep, and here I am waking up. I guess Wilson and Hanna don't really need the practice.