perfect stranger

When I was in late elementary school and junior high, I watched a ridiculous amount of TV. These were the in between years. When I was younger we were in Oklahoma and lived on a big patch of land in a small town. I was outside a lot. When I was older, I was at dance class or a voice lesson or a rehearsal or cheerleading practice. I had a life.

One of the shows I watched was Perfect Strangers. It’s hardly a memorable show, but there you go. I loved it. Balki and Larry and the happy dance. It made the adolescent version of me giggle.

Flash forward many years and I found myself in London’s West End watching a production of Stones in His Pockets. Stones in His Pockets is a fabulous two man show set in a little town in Ireland . We happened to be there during a week when the regular London cast was on a break so the cast who would be opening the show soon on Broadway could have a chance to really get the show on it’s legs.

I was in awe. It’s brilliantly written stuff, to be sure. But it also requires each actor to play many many roles. Both men were fantastic. One of them, was Bronson Pinchot. During the show I was completely able to forget that I was watching Balki.

After the show, LH wanted to get autographs. So we hung around. Across the street. Finally one of the actors (not Bronson) came out. He went to the take-away window we were standing next to, ordered some food, and then lit up a cigarette while he waited. We struck up a conversation.

The other memorable thing about this particular trip is that we were in London in Sept of 2001. As soon as we’d identified ourselves as Americans by our accents, it didn’t take long for a very animated conversation to ensue. He was from New York, so we talked about the bombing. We told him how we’d been in Pisa when it happened. He recommended that we take a trip to the Embassy to see the memorial (something we did the next day). Then we got on the subject of theater.

So we’re chatting away, having a completely sane, rational, intelligent conversation, when he sees Bronson exit the stage door. “Bronny,” he calls, waving him over. Bronson approaches us, we’re all introduced. And then tragedy struck.

Now, today, if you stick me in front of someone famous, it doesn’t really phase me much. Not unless you’re talking about super, super famous. Today, I know too many people, casually or otherwise, who make their living in entertainment. But back then, the only famous, or semi-famous, folks I knew were still in the “when” stage of I-knew-you-when.

It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Or listening to it. Before I could stop myself the words came tumbling out of my mouth. “I used to watch Perfect Strangers all the time when I was a kid. I loved that show. It is so cool to meet you.”

Yup. Not, you were fantastic in this show. You played such a wide range of characters. You’re going to be great on Broadway.

No. I let loose with unadulterated geekiness over Perfect Strangers.

I think LH’s jaw actually hit the ground. Needless to say conversation was pretty much over. We got our autograph though.

detour

We were on our way home from Italy. We’d taken a road trip. I think he’d had to go for work and I had tagged along and we’d stayed a few extra days. Not something that was an option very often, but we took advantage when we could. I don’t remember him working, but I know that we weren’t driving our own car. And we wouldn’t have rented a car for a trip like that.

At any rate. He was driving and I was navigating, per our custom. At that time there were three tunnels through the Alps that you could take when driving from Germany to Italy. On our way down, we took the only tunnel that we knew was open. (The autobahn is awesome for driving fast, but there is perennial construction.) We’d met up with a high school friend of his who was stationed in Italy and he’d said that one of the other tunnels was open. Thinking we’d be able to trim some time off the drive home, we set off on our alternate course.

For a while everything was fine. We were cruising along and I fell asleep. Falling asleep was one of the seven deadly sins of road trips in my marriage. But he just let me be. Until it happened.

Two things you should know about driving in Europe. Exits are a pain in the ass. Unless you’re in a major city, rarely can you get off the autobahn, turn around and get right back on if you miss your exit. There won’t be an overpass. And often you have to drive 20 miles or more between exits. Rest stops with big gas stations are few and far between. And when there’s construction or a detour, they give you no warning. You’re pretty much on top of it before there are any signs about a road closure.

Or in our case, a tunnel closure.

I’m sleeping, snoring away in the sun, and all of a sudden I hear him screaming at me to wake up. To grab the map because we have to change our route. Anyone that knows me can tell you I am not a girl that wakes up in a hurry. My head was in a fog as my hands scrambled for the map. I have no idea where we are. I’m trying to get oriented, trying to blink away the cobwebs, and trying not to listen to him yelling at me.

I located our spot on the map and quickly started looking for alternate roads. I found one. A tiny little red road that looked like it ran through the mountains and eventually rejoined the autobahn. “Here,” I said. “Get off at the next exit, head toward Salzburg.”

“Are you sure?”

‘Yes,” I said. “Just keep heading toward Salzburg, we’re good.”

Tunnel closure avoided we cautiously settled into the drive. We were crossing through the Austrian Alps. It was breathtaking. It was absolutely everything you can imagine. It was a beautiful clear day. The colors of the grass and the sky were so vivid. Little gingerbread houses dotting the hillside. And cows. So many cows. I’m a girl that has seen lots of cows. But never on steep hills like this. So steep that it seemed that they must have shorter legs on one side. We called them climber cows.

After a while we arrived at the entrance to a national park. Grossglockner National Park. I fished around in my purse and found the DM50 we needed to pay our entry fee. That’s when LH got nervous. He started worrying that maybe the road we were on wasn’t going to go all the way through. What if it was one of those roads that took you up the mountain, but the only way to get back down was to go the same way you’d come.

I assured him we would be fine. It was false confidence.

The park was spectacular. But as we climbed higher and higher, the temperature started dipping lower and lower. We’d left Italy in the sun. We were in shorts and t-shirts. It had gotten really cold outside. And it had started to rain. We stopped near the top of the mountain, at the observation center and restaurant. We got something to eat because we knew we’d be able to use a credit card. (Europe likes cash in my experience.) We went to the gift store in the observation center and bought some eidelweiss schnapps for our land lords.

Then we got back in the car. We had to climb a little higher before the road started to make it’s way back down the mountain. There were sighs of relief. But there was a new cause to be nervous. We were low on gas. Low. And we knew that there wouldn’t be a gas station in the park. And who knew how long before we’d find one.

I’m pretty sure he popped the car into neutral and coasted his way down the mountain. I just sat in the passenger seat and tried to think good thoughts. We didn’t really talk much. Was hard to enjoy the scenery.

Fortunately for us, we’d had our drama for the day. We made it down the mountain. We found gas. We got back to the autobahn. We did make an unplanned stop in Salzburg. LH needed to get out of the car for a while. We took a walk around the city. Plotting and planning our return trip so I could do all of my Mozart sight seeing properly.

I have taken many detours in my life, but this one remains the mother of them all.

navigating

I was always the navigator when LH and I were together. It’s funny how we fall into roles like that with our partners. He always drove. I read the map.

Which is probably just as well. He’s one of those types that has a natural sense of direction. I couldn’t find north with a compass in hand. But I’m incredibly visually oriented. I can read a map like nobody’s business. I can look at it and commit it to memory. Stand on a street corner and still see the map in my head.

So he drove and I held the map on many road trips.

It was not always easy. Imagine trying to tell someone what exit to take or what road to turn down when neither of you speak the language of the country you’re in. You’re trying to pronounce some crazy word and your partner envisions a completely different spelling than the sounds coming out of your mouth. So you start spelling the names of streets and towns. Try doing that fast enough to keep up with turns.

We almost killed each other in Milan trying to navigate our way around the city. When we moved to Germany, one of the only things I said I wanted to be sure and see before we moved back to the states was La Scala. That glorious Italian opera house with so much history.  So there we were, zipping along tiny streets in a rented car and way too much traffic. I’m trying to spell street names for him and we’re both trying to find seemingly nonexistent street signs. He got progressively angry. I started to shut down and began to cry.

“Fuck it,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not worth it.”

“No goddamn it. We’re here, we’ll figure it out. I’m not having you be pissed and resentful later.”

Eventually we made it. And it was worth it.

I learned how to gauge kilometers. To judge how far we could drive before we needed to look for a bathroom or for gas. And then we drove from Germany to England. Taking the ferry from Calais into Dover. And everything in England was listed in miles. And I’d forgotten how to tell time in miles.

In most of continental Europe, freeway directions are not listed as north or east or south. You go in the direction of a town. You take A6 toward Manheim. It’s rather convenient actually for those of us with no natural sense of direction. You just have to have an understanding of where cities are in relation to each other. Easy.

We took a trip back to the states exactly once while we lived overseas. We were in the south somewhere. South Carolina, Georgia. I forget exactly. I remember the destination, not the route. I was looking at the map. On the page I had open, the freeway we wanted to join ran from right to left. I told him to turn to the west. When we found our junction the options we had were not east or west. We had to choose north or south.

Well fuck.

“Which way? I thought you said west?”

“Shit. I did. I don’t know. Left.”

“I can’t go left. I need you to tell me north or south.”

“I don’t fucking know. Head towards Atlanta. Doesn’t something say Atlanta? Which way is that?”

He picked a direction on instinct. Later I turned the page and saw that the freeway we wanted did indeed run north to south. It just took a little jog for a while. So on my particular page it was going technically east to west, it’s just that north to south was the path in the greater scheme of things.

Often we’d be walking around a city and he would get turned around slightly. We’d want to go to some monument or museum or restaurant. He’d think he remembered which direction something lay from where we were.

“We want to go down this street,” he’d say, pointing to the right. I would correct him. Convinced that he was wrong. “But that’s east,” he’d insist. “It’s to the east of us.”

“Um OK. I’ll take your word on that, but I promise you we want this other street. I was the one looking at the map, remember?”

I think about how many fights we had over navigating on road trips and wonder that we ever made it anywhere at all. I think of how many fights we had trying to make our way around strange cities and marvel that we ever managed to stay married as long as we did.

Some of our best stories are from the times when we got completely lost. Something that would (will) always stress me out to the max. Something that he loved. He probably still does. I don’t go anywhere these days without my portable GPS. But I will almost always mapquest something before I leave so I can look at the map before I actually start driving.

impending travel

I’m leaving on Friday to go see Aaron. I haven’t seen him since he was here in the first week of January. People keep asking me if I’m excited or anxious and nervous. The truth is, I’m all of those things. But I also haven’t been thinking about the trip much.

My head has been other places. Work drama is never ending. Better than it was a few months ago, but still more than I’d like to be dealing with on most days. I’m feeling the drain of running my activism project on my own. Counting down the days until my partner is back from his European travels. I had family in town. Always a busy social calendar. And I’ve met someone who has my head spinning. In a good way.

There’s been plenty to keep me occupied.

And there’s just so very much with Aaron that is up in the air. The baby is due in a few weeks. On pins and needles about that. Still not sure what it will be like after the baby is born. There’s so much baby stuff I’m working through. It’s such a complicated issue for me.

He half asked me to take in his cat while he’s on national tour. I’m happy to do so. But I’m a little frustrated that he hasn’t made any real plans for that. For being gone on tour. He still doesn’t know if he’s going to keep both of his apartments or let one of them go. There are no plans for his car to be taken care of.  There are certain business matters that need to be wrapped up one way or another. And if I am keeping the cat, am I flying there to get it? Is he flying here? Is kitty being shipped? He’s a big boy and perfectly capable of making his own decisions. He hasn’t asked my opinion so I haven’t offered it. But it’s a source of irritation all the same.

I’m really not going to see him much while I’m there. We’ll be sleeping together. Which is more than we’re doing now. But in many ways it’s like I’m going on vacation on my own. Sans room service. I don’t think there’s a single day while I’m there that he doesn’t have some place to be.

When I think about it. About the not seeing him. About the baby. About the boundaries we’ve established. I get worked up. And that’s just not healthy for me. Not when there’s so much that neither one of us know. I’m letting myself get worked up over stuff that hasn’t even happened. Stuff that may not ever happen.

So I’ve just not spent any time thinking about the trip. It will be what it is. I’m bound and fucking determined not to be a crying sobbing mess while I’m there. He’s seen enough of that from me. I’m feeling the inclination to put up walls, so that I don’t get hurt. But I’m trying like hell not to do that either. I just don’t know what’s going to happen. So I don’t quite know what to think about this trip.

road trip

I’ve always done some of my best thinking while I’m driving. Maybe not always, but certainly since I’ve been of driving age. That’s a big part of why I took this little weekend trip. To have some quality time in the car. Alone with my thoughts.

I got up early on Saturday morning and drove down to West Hollywood. To crash with an old buddy. Someone who is truly one of my best friends even though we’ll go months without talking. We always pick up as though we just saw each other. And since we were once roommates, impromptu sleep overs just fit in with our rhythm.

We caught up on love lives, on job developments. A grassroots advocacy campaign he’s started. That’s already so big it was featured on the website for a national magazine while I was here. Something about which I’m equally passionate so I’ve signed on to help in whatever way I can. We smoked weed. We ordered pizza. We talked about life and death.

Sunday was sleeping late. Some waking and baking. A stroll through a flea market where we both bought things we didn’t really need. Sweltering in the sun and getting tan. A late lunch. And then I drove to the valley. Where I’d booked myself into a swanky hotel. For some room service and cable and a comfy bed and wireless. And an evening with Hollywood.

Which was weird at first. So much of our relationship is built on chats and phone conversations. Seeing him face to face is always a little weird. Because of boundary issues. Because of acknowledged differences in our lives. Because of the things we don’t talk about. He and I would not have picked each other up if we’d met in a bar. And yet here we are. Two and a half years into a relationship. If you can call it that.

It was nice to be with him. It was nice to do the things we usually only talk about. To lie together afterwards. Touching. To smell him. Taste him. To simply be together in silence. Intertwined.

But I was sad afterwards. Not to the point of tears. But there was sadness. It will be written about, I just can’t go there yet.

Today I’ve decided to take the long way home. Up the pacific coast highway. It will add a couple of hours to my trip, but the views will be worth it. An ocean drive. That’s the perfect way for me to reflect.

On the weekend that was. On the things that await me at home. On the state of the union in all of my relationships. On the loss of friends. On who I am and who I want to be.