Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The night before...

Tired and weary from the physical exertion and the many emotional releases, I am sitting naked on the floor with an old T-shirt between me and the cold linoleum. I never thought my last night in Atlanta before my cross-country move to Los Angeles would look like this. To get everything washed by the time I leave in the morning, I don't see any other way. Yes, I pulled the ancient, sheer, and torn UGA Bulldogs T-shirt from the trash. It was either that or use the remaining bubble wrap.

All those years of therapy, and I still feel responsible for the emotions of others. Let's see. How many people did I make sad today? I can think of 10 with no mental exertion, so I'm deciding not to count, remembering the zit theory from when I was young and obsessive-compulsive. I was convinced that if I counted the number of zits on my face I would get another one. So I'd spend hours going back and forth between wanting to know and afraid to know. While I am grateful that so many people care about me enough to miss me, I'm wondering if it would be easier if they were all pissed off at me. Though, if they were, I'm sure that I'd be flagellating myself for making them mad.

Sensing that something is awry, Shug Avery can't get close enough to me. Almost 12 years together, and I'm convinced that she's still embarrassed to see me naked. She's got her butt up against mine, but she refuses to look me in the eye. I've tried to explain to her that worrying and fretting doesn't do any good, but I'm thinking that my poor modeling in her early years contributed to the anxiety. However, I have to say that as I've evolved and grown over the years, so has she. Dogs, like children, tend to mimic the behavior of their owners. And like their parents, they sometimes regress when faced with change.

Phoebe is curled up on the depressed mattress that I'm leaving for my landlord. Every few minutes she wakes and chastizes me for unknown reasons with raucous cries, ones at decibel levels intolerable by the human ear. Nearly 18, and unaware of the long trip ahead, the old, slim girl is resting and dreaming. Her cat naps these days tend to last for most of the day, but that's when she's on my bed. In a moving car? I'll let you know.

I'm being summoned by the dryer buzzer, so I'll need to stand up and pull the T-shirt from my sweaty buttocks. Long hours sitting on a cloth seat, and I'm sure that I'll have five days of pulling and sweating. Tonight, though, I'm sleeping in a clean pair of boxer briefs, and I'm putting the thermostat on 68. I want to practice being cool. You can't live in L.A. and not know how to be cool.

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