This Is Not My Beautiful Life

In the summer of 2001, I met the man I didn't marry. I was just barely twenty and away from home with a friend, a city girl transplanted from the arid plains of Colorado and dropped in the sweltering humidity of rural Michigan in August. It was Amish country. When we could muster the energy, between lemonades and naps in the drowsy heat, to go for the mail or shout down the road to the neighboring farm, we'd see them rolling by in their carriages—sad, scrawny broke down horses, heads hung, leather reins clutched in the hands of men wearing round black hats from another time. They never looked at us.

We'd flown in for an O-Town concert. Too old to be chasing boy bands around the country and on top of that, we'd picked the lamest one. We'd missed Backstreet and N*Sync and I suppose we wanted to catch the tail-end of a fad when we still could. We were products of our Lutheran High School, held apart from the world, told we were above it. As a result, we were a little behind on everything. We'd worn shapeless Old Navy t-shirts and clunky white shoes all through high school. We'd take pints of ice cream to the magazine aisle and sit by the racks, browsing Teen Beat and eating Cherry Garcia, spitting out the cherries. We drove by our friend's house, honking the horn. We watched American Pie and cried when it showed us that boys were everything we'd always feared they could be.

Leila's family was from this strange, forgotten part of the country, like nothing I'd ever seen. Green rolling farmland stretching for miles, creaky old farmhouses, thick, impenetrable abandoned forests.  We were staying with Leila's grandmother, Leila's cousins lived in the nearest farmhouse, about fifty yards down on the other side of the dirt road. Her grandmother had given us the attic bedroom, up a stretch of stairs so narrow and steep I never once climbed them without clutching the rails. There were cobwebs around the drain in the sink, dried little gnat bodies suspended in old dust. The pipes creaked. For the first few seconds, the water always ran brown.

 I don't remember exactly when I met him. I think really it started the night we asked him to build us a bonfire next to the trampoline. We'd spent the day floating down the lazy river in black inner tubes. We thought it was a common enough recreation, but as the stream had meandered through back yards, people watching us perplexed from their back patios, we'd wondered. In the late afternoon we arrived, wet and dripping, back at the old farm house. We'd tied bandanas in our hair. Now the picture makes me laugh. I think we look like Friends of Ellen. For the life of me, I cannot remember how we thought we looked, except cool and hard and everything we weren't. There were fireflies in the red soaking light and goosebumps on my pale skin. We asked him to build us a bonfire, and he agreed.

We stood around the fire in the starry Michigan dark. He had to rise early for work the next morning but he stayed up with us. He still lived with his parents, it wasn't uncommon in farm country. He earned money and on the weekends he helped with the farm. He told us about castrating pigs. Our city indignance baffled him. How cruel, we cried, how sad, and he looked at us in honest confusion. Farm pigs must be castrated. So it had always been. As soon as the sun went down, the humidity on our skin left us chilled and shivering. Leila and I fell asleep, damp, on the trampoline. When we woke in the misty dawn, the sun pink through all that moisture banked over the cornfields, there was a blanket over us. We snuck back down the road to Leila's grandmother's house, bleary-eyed and possibly barefoot. He was gone.

That weekend he agreed to take us out on his boat. Most of the boys I'd met until this point hadn't been nice to me. I don't know why. In high school, boys ignored me, at best.(I count myself lucky for this now but at the time, it was devastating). The college guys I'd fallen in with were partiers and treated me as a circus rarity they'd developed a strange affection for. They'd cajole me light-heartedly to drink, to smoke, to do things I swore I wouldn't do. I was still under the spell of my upbringing, still equated normal college-aged behavior with the evils of the world. I still thought I was better than some people for the things I wouldn't do.

But he was different. He was relaxed and kind. He didn't speak much, he took our teasing with a slow, warm smile. I don't remember much about that day on the lake, only that it happened, and it was good. I have a picture he took of the two of us, me and Leila. I've got one arm over the wheel and one around Leila's shoulders. In pictures with other women, I always ended up looking like their boyfriends. There are still some feminine nuances I don't understand.

On our last night there, we piled into his Jeep. I rode in the back with him. By this point we were holding each other's gazes too long and I was looking up from beneath my lashes. You know the look. Leila and I fell into the role, adopted the personas of country girls, the highlight of our week a trip down dirt roads in the back of a Jeep, a hot summer evening, the wind in our hair, into town for French fries at the Hot & Now. I remember he was wearing a black baseball cap. His skin was tanned and rough with stubble. He touched my hip as I lit from the Jeep. I kissed him on the cheek.

The trip ended, I returned home to Colorado. He and I stayed up late, holding bashful conversations over the phone. Plans were made for him to visit me. I have a mind that spins wild fantasies quickly, before I can stop them. I saw myself back in the white farm house, overlooking the green fields, the buggy air and the evenings on the gators, by the fire. I ignored the insistent doubts in my heart and imagined a life for myself that involved tractors and pig castration and Amish people.

The day he was booked to fly in to see me was September 12, 2001.

I can't remember if classes were in session that day. I think they were. I do remember that campus was far quieter than usual. I remember walking across the green to the building where many of my English classes were held, my Jansport sweaty on my back. I was on my new cell phone with him. He was sitting at the Sturgis airport, just in case flights started going out. They didn't. He went back to the airport the next day. No flights went out the 13^th, either.

In the days that followed, we got to know each other better over the phone. What can I say? I was a feminist, a budding liberal, a college girl writing papers on bell hooks and Claudia Card. I was too young yet to understand my own nature: a lone-wolf who needed emotional wide open spaces, a dreamy heart and precious little pragmatism. He was a Midwestern farm boy, salt of the earth, hard-working and family-oriented, a builder of bonfires, castrator of pigs. I know clearly the moment things between us fell apart. For some reason, it was important to him that a wife would sit and watch the basketball game with him, not because she loved basketball, but because she loved him. I told him I would do no such thing, all my sensibilities piqued. We bid each other a terse goodbye. We never spoke again.

Just two or three weeks later, I would meet a boy who had a J.R.R. Tolkein tattoo and feminist leanings of his own. Who kept a picture of his three fierce-looking sisters in his wallet. Who would call our house and leave silly messages for my roommate's dog and who would, unbelievably, be attracted to my rougher edges. Just under one year later, I would marry him.

When things first ended with Leila's cousin, I was devastated. I'd never had a serious boyfriend, I thought something was terribly flawed in me and that I would never be loved. At nineteen, it seemed the world brought good things to everyone, but not to me.

What I feel now is lucky. To have come so close. To have danced with, and then escaped, a fate that wasn't mine.

And To That Isle, One Day I Shall Return

When I was a teenager I had this poster sticky-tacked to my bedroom wall.


This St. Patrick's day, in honor of the Irish, I have liberated myself from tyranny.

The tyranny of corned beef and cabbage.

I don' t like corned beef and cabbage, I don't like the boiled potatoes and carrots, and yet I'd allowed them to ruin my only March holiday for years. This year, I declared: no more.

I told Mr. V I wanted something elegant.

For St. Patrick's day?!?! He cried in disbelief.

Pub food then, I answered. Fish and chips. With Guinness.

Fine, said he.

I declared I should bake us a chocolate cake with green icing.

Corned beef and cabbage has released its icy grip, and our hearts can celebrate the Irish once again.


My grandma always wears a "Kiss Me I'm Irish" pin and for years we thought she was "just joking". Then we discovered we really do have ancestors from Ireland.

I'm not going to get all smug about it though, because we also have ancestors from England. They came in the 1600's. Which means there's a good chance some snobbish Saxon grandfather of ours spent his days hanging "Irish Need Not Apply" signs in his pub windows.


When I was sixteen, I landed in Shannon, Ireland.

We drove in a tour bus along the Shannon river. The bus broke down and we wandered around the most charming, perfectly Irish village you could imagine. Thatched roofs, cobblestone streets, and a pub bursting song and fiddle and clinking glass into the emerald and gold tinted evening. We bought Adidas pants with orange stripes down the side, they were uncomfortable but in that year.

Everyone called me "love" and I liked to fancy it was because I looked like them.

Ireland was stunningly beautiful and I felt those old pagan people in my blood the entire time we were there, listening to Natalie Merchant's "King of May" over and over again on my discman and letting my imagination take me on beautiful adventures in other times.

I turned seventeen in Dublin. I went into a music store and talked to a young Irishman about Irish music. It was brave of me, at seventeen I was afraid of boys.

Somewhere in County Cork, or maybe along the Ring of Kerry, I bought the claddagh ring that I wear today as a wedding ring, because my aquamarine wedding stone offered itself up to the gods of the Pacific.

Ireland was lush, tropical. There were palm trees and enormous flowering plants. I still don't understand that.

Once on St. Patrick's day I went to Starbucks.

I was sitting by the door.

An older gentlemen with a white beard and a newsboy cap passed me. As he did, he spoke in a thick brogue:

"A redhead wearing green on St. Patrick's day! Takes me back to home." And he winked in a charming Irish way as he passed through the door.

It was way better than that time the homeless busker on the 16th street mall called me "little freckles" and said I was "looking good" mid-improvised song.

I was only eleven.


I am Vesuvius and I dream of everywhere, but today I dream of Ireland.

Sunday. Snow.

Sometimes I forget myself.

Like last night, I was reading one of those damned Somerset Studio magazines where all the art looks the same. It was called 'artful blogging' and featured a slew of artful bloggers who all took beautiful pictures of their beautiful damned woodland estates and groomed children and oh yeah they were all so precious about everything.

So I thought, I should write like this too!

Precious precious. Precious day. Precious children. Precious tea cup, precious bookshelf, precious me, precious life.

Then I remembered that I'm not. You know.

Precious.

Thank god I remembered before it was too late. Otherwise you might be reading some ode to the snowy fields right now. While staring at heavily photoshopped children. Or something.

***

I spent more time than is healthy in Boulder this weekend and I can confidently tell you that I am the only woman in the world who doesn't own a pair of knee high boots.

But ohhhhhh lordy, do I want some bad. I want them buttery and tromping.

***

I was reading Whole Living. I always think I should read all these magazines I see every day at Black Ops Job and then I read them and they are faith-in-humanity-losing boring. Whole Living was about losing weight and, best I can tell, learning to match your oxwool slippers to your throw blankets?

Shit, man. Just. . . . shit.

****

I'm not good at reaching out to people but sometimes they reach out to me. So what happened was this: Me sitting in the wrong city reading the wrong magazines getting the wrong ideas about my life. Be more precious be more holy be more ambitious be more better. Then Kimmy calls me and I start to remember.

Thanks Kim. Carry on, my wayward authoress.


****

I am Vesuvius and I think a blog is like a polaroid in print.

Who I Met and What I Saw

First things first.


This was to be the first of many blades I would see at the Excalibur that evening.



Hippie-sters at the bar where we saw Brad Garrett and Carl bought me a $20 Grey Goose vodka tonic. Thanks Carl!


These are the other blades I was talking about. Sadly, TFDU contained no full Monty.



Feeling the love.



More love.



She just looks so dang happy.



Again with the love.



Before they stole the flask away.



Sisters from some other misters.



Copa, Copa Cabana.



This shirt is What Happened In Vegas.


Just yum that was followed by a lemon drop martini. Double yum all the way.



Ready? One, two, three: Awwwww.



Photobomb!!!



The Tuttle's can bomb their own photos, thank you very much.



Blue Steel.



I kept telling them they had the 'same energy'. Yeeeaaah.




City of Light?


The only picture I got with the bride.



Are we human? Or are we dancers?



Bromance.



Some members of the tribe.





And click here dears to feel the love that just keeps coming. If I took pictures like this guy, I'd protect them too.


I am Vesuvius and I'm a dancer.

Bacchanalia

Your mother will have warned you—repeatedly—about bed bugs so after First Things First (that being a stop at In 'n Out), when the bellhop brings the bags to your room, you will pick them up off the floor and place them on the chair. Because you grudgingly told your mother you would.

(You will refuse to go so far as to check under the bedsheets for drops of blood. You hate media hysteria. At least you think you do, until, at a greasy buffet, Le Gourmand Vulgaire points out that anti-bacterial wash is doing more harm than good, and you use it anyway)

You will fall back onto a bed that is more comfortable than any you have ever slept on. Sleep for two hours, three, maybe four. Pile with your husband's family but not your husband into a car and drive down the strip to a hotel casino. When the divorcee's make divorcee-humor jokes to each other, laughing heartily but making everyone else uncomfortable, you will try to make another joke to relieve the awkwardness. No one will laugh.

The bachelor party will have started hours ago. You will go back to the hotel room to get ready. You will have been a little nervous, in the days before, about this party. You won't know anyone there other than the bachelorette. Then you'll get to the party, where they're handing out what can only be described as penis tchotchkes, playing penis games, laughing at penis pictures on the walls. Someone will hand you champagne. Nobody bothers much with introductions because already it's starting to feel like you've always known these people. These beautiful people who are too beautiful to be so nice.

You and a friend you have just met will declare that more alcohol is required if you are to make it through the Thunder From Down Under. There will somehow be both too much and not enough thunder You are embarrassingly shocked, and yet not shocked at all. There are a few naked bums and lots of pirate costumes. The tone feels slightly off. Wonder: What is the RIGHT tone for a male strip show?

You will laugh at the bachelorette, pulled up onto stage, given a private—ahem—viewing. Spirits are high. The last time you partied like this, with a group of other women, you were all dressed like teenagers, like brightly wrapped candies or Christmas presents. Now you all look more like sexy martinis. A bartender will shout for free drinks for the women at the bachelorette party. They want to pour it into your mouth straight from the bottle. When you turn away, shaking your head, the others will laugh good-naturedly.

A man named Lion will escort you to a club, deposit you in a VIP area, reassure you he's going to take great care of you ladies, then disappear. This is your first real club experience, and you're feeling spoiled and important. You and these women get to dance together behind a rope. There are lush velvet benches wrapping around. Men edge their way to the rope, looking in sideways. Like vampires, they cannot enter without an invitation. A tiny blonde woman wearing a warrior princess get-up will come round every ten minutes to refresh your drinks. You ask her to pose for a picture. Later, you will search her out to love-tip her, but she will be nowhere found.

At this point in the evening you are all hot on drink and declaring openly your love. You love them, they love you, they love eachother, everyone everywhere is love love love. Who can blame you? You dance dance dance. You realize it is someone's job to come round with a towel and wipe up all the alcohol you spill. You find yourself in a gogo cage with all the other women at the party. On your raised platform, surrounded by people below watching, it feels as if there's only ever been the group of you. Those of you who are in relationships somehow emit a vibe to the crowd and no one bothers you. Those of you who aren't emit a different vibe, no one minds. You used to be so uptight about these things. Looked down on clubs. Worried overmuch about how you looked. Now it doesn't matter. You are dancing, you are young, your breasts are—it must be said—spectacular, and surrounding you is this unexpected tribe that has never been yours. But is, tonight.

You leave the bar and end up in another. Your group constantly fluxes in number. People leave and come back with unlikely quantities of food. Twenty sausage mcmuffins, fifty chicken nuggets, one order of fries. It is Vegas, it is 2 am, and the only thing open appears to be McDonalds. Two different people will basically fall out of their chairs when they find out you're NOAH'S wife. You're married to Noah??? You watch them stare, searching your face anew, trying to reconcile the person your husband was in high school with what they see now. Your husband is infamous here. Somehow, that night, you end up back at your hotel room. You think you kissed the bride on the head, well, you get kissy at weddings. Your room is on the 20th floor and has a view of the strip. Vegas is glittering. You tumble into bed. Later, much later, your husband comes home. He wakes you opening the door, your eyes crack open just long enough to see it: Vegas at dawn. Dawn is beautiful everywhere.

It will seem there are too many people gathered outside the chapel, but somehow you will all fit into a tiny room. The bride comes out and everyone cries. She is crying, you were not expecting her to cry, and fear you might sob. She is radiant, she is trembling. You all cheered heartily when the groom walked in and now here's the bride and no one can breathe. It is not the polite warmth directed at other brides at other weddings. It is a moment. A holy pause. An intimate room of people, intent on one thing, experiencing one all-encompassing collective emotion. Nobody moves except this bride in her 40's glam, film noir dress, her vintage veil, her lively eyes. Nobody moves until finally she says, 'husband-weird!', and you all laugh.

After the wedding, the air actually crackles. Cocktail hour passes on a balcony that makes you dizzy. It is warm, it is evening, the lights and eyes are bright. Someone will indicate that it's time to progress downstairs, to the dinner. You will cram with an impossible number of people, including the bride and groom, into an elevator. You are all a bit dizzy, you are all much too loud. The elevator stops early, the doors move open—to Dede, the patriarch, and Shirley, his wife. The passengers raise their hands, spill their drinks, cry an uproarious welcome. As if by cue you will all take up the cheer: "Dede, dede, dede, dede!" You are making the elevator bounce and no one is afraid. Dede is a Czech, he likes a good party. "Free drinks for everyone!" he will cry. You holler like the pagans you've become.

Again, you feel spoiled and exclusive. An elegant room, behind dark glass. Visible to but apart from the hoi-polloi. Waiters bring tiny tasty sushis and glasses of spirits. These people have shown you the best of everything; you know you'll never return to Vegas again because why slum a city after you've done it like a queen? Eat, drink, the love fest is on again. This wedding, these people. So intimate. Everyone is a cousin or a friend from way back. You'll keep telling them they're so beautiful, you can't help it, they are. Your husband strikes up a bromance, what better a place? Everyone is overcome. They are pulsing and rolling around you, swelling like a warm, joyful wave. A bride, a groom, a long time coming, a love, surrounded by love. You declare it openly because of the drink, but the feelings aren't false. This is your husband's history, his other life. They seem to accept each other as they are. You will ask them to be your surrogate friends. They will throw wide their arms and cry, they are your real ones. They open up and envelop you. It is warm, the air is thick, there is always room for one more.

They next morning, in the day light, everything has changed. You end up at a buffet, greasy serving spoons, the scents of too many foods intermingling and upsetting your party-tummy. You're all exhausted, you've wrung yourselves dry. The next day you will repeat, get me out of Vegas. You hate Vegas, the people, the excess, the waste. When you get home the dark prairie will sooth and comfort your eyes. But it doesn't matter, none of that matters. You are wasted, but before that was something else. Other cultures have names for what you encountered, what you touched. A clan, an energy, a raucous, reveling joy. You've felt it at other weddings and once at a Tori Amos concert. Something wild, something maybe primitive. The words spirited away come to mind.

Anything good that Vegas has to offer, you have had it. Maybe someday you will have a little more, but for now, this was enough. Good food. Good drink. Good people. Wild nights. Wild joy.

Love.


I am Vesuvius, and when I panic I say, "Grey Goose".