Laid Out

“I’m going to say my peace to you David,” I began last night while lying in bed. Willie had just left after some group cuddle time—I swear I could see falling asleep between the two of them night after night incredibly inviting and plausible, it just feels so good and we all just love it so much.

I’ve had my big dose of Willie, some French bread pizza, and a few days to think over the things I’ve written and the comments that were left. I’m ready to say my peace once and for all.

“It’s not my place to tell you not to smoke, you’re a grown ass man and truthfully if you feel the need to have a cigarette to fit in with the cool kids or calm some chemical addiction, fine. Do what you want. But David, you do not have health insurance. Fuck cancer, what if you get bronchitis? And if cancer kills you how will your family survive? You don’t have life insurance. What if we get a house and you die?

“Furthermore, I’m on Team Terwilliger but I’m not on Team Jessie And David right now. I’m not your friend. I’m your wife but I’m not your friend. I love you, but I dislike you immensely. Because you know that you should have just come home and said that you fucked up and smoked, we’re closer than this hiding shit. Or I thought we were. Now I seriously feel like I can’t trust you and with the big decisions we’ve been making, namely the house exclusively being in your name and also the car and not to mention if things ever click and you decide to start seeing that Cutie Pie, I need to be able to trust you.

“And another thing is I think it’s going to look really bad on you with CHP. Now I worked hard and supported you emotionally and physically while you were going through that. I went to the meetings with you, I drove you to Temecula, we did that together. I love you, and I know you have goals, and I also know that you have a lot of struggles. But if you can’t come to me with your struggles, the one person at the end of the end who will love you no matter what and be there for you, I really can’t do much to help you.

“Do you need help? Do you want help? Because I will do anything I can to help you. And I will absolutely, whether you smoke or you quit, help you get into CHP whether I’m your wife or not.”

At this point he was facing away from me, but then he turned over slowly.

“What do you mean or not?”

le sigh.

“David, do you think it’s fair for me to stay married to someone that I can’t trust?”

“No.”

“Well…I’m just saying that this really isn’t about smoking, which is why I don’t care whether or not you do it. I just care that you don’t lie about it. Because I can’t be with someone who can’t commit to telling the truth, I just can’t.”

This cut him deep, I know. Being lied to cuts me deep. It was suggested to me that marriage is not a mind-meld and that we remain individuals, and that’s true in the sense that there’s stuff that I’ll never be able to participate in that he does but risking your health behind the other person’s back—I mean what if I secretly picked up crystal meth as a social habit? We all know that’s fucking stupid, and so is smoking cigarettes. They’re bad for you, and you can’t argue with that.

This isn’t a standing grounds kind of thing, it’s a wake the fuck up and look what you’re doing to yourself kind of thing.

Why, David?

I’ll finish this later, he’s home and we’re going to talk more…

Some Friend You Are

Willie tells me that I’m a future thinker all the time because I’m always going on about when this happens and when that happens and 20 years from now and when I’m 64, etc.

Right, I think about the fact that they’re going to look at his CHP application that he turned in in 2009 and the one he’ll turn in in 2011 and they won’t look the same.

There’s lots of good things, like better credit, maybe a house—by the way I’m off the loan and David’s just waiting for his middle score to update another 10 points which it should—more experience at his jobs, more personal references such as the Marlboro Man who won’t take no shit from an officer and straight up tell that Good Sergeant that “David is a fine young individual and you’d be a yellow bellied chicken livered faggot to not hire him.”

We might have to ask him to tone it down a bit but whatever gets the job done…

But going back and saying “Hi I’m 23 and for some dern reason I picked up smoking because all the cool kids were doing it. Yah, I know it doesn’t say I smoked on my application from when I was 21, I didn’t. I succumbed to peer pressure at 22.”

And they’ll say “David T. you’re weak minded and therefore you cannot do this job.”

Not that smoking is weak minded—I mean it kind of is, but you have to keep in mind that they look at these things differently. Why weren’t you strong enough to resist? Why would you do it when you knew you were supposed to be training for academy and getting healthier? You obviously don’t want to go to academy because you’d rather sit there and deteriorate yourself one smoke at a time.

CHP is the best of he best.

You have to understand that he’s trying to get a job to be the best of the best.

And he’s fucking it all up.

I’m on Team Terwilliger right now. I’m doing dishes and sleeping in our bed and making sure there’s lunch. I’m Mrs. Terwilliger but right now I am not David’s friend, and to those of you who know me you know that it’s a big deal for me to say that. For without the friendship we’re just husband and wife, and we’ve never functioned well as husband and wife.

After we talked yesterday morning I left it at that. I never mentioned anything to him again, about whether he should or shouldn’t fuck things up by smoking—and seriously, those who thought that this was only about smoking probably don’t get it and probably never will.

Straight up, I don’t like being lied to, and I don’t like the one sided effort here.

“Oh he needs to have something to help him relax,” you say.

BEER, BEER AND MORE BEER.

That was supposed to be his thing, his thing that he does, that he makes and drinks and is merry with. Not that we can’t all have more than one thing, but I think it’s not so much the battle here so much as it is the war.

I’ve been thinking about it, and I totally want to smoke some sonic with Dad. Weed with Willie. Because I am not a happy person, haven’t been in about a year—it’s been fleeting, anyway. I’m fucked up and stressed, I want to do this, I want to relax. I want to have something. Even writing stresses me out these days, though it does allow me to sort my shit in a semi organized manner. That’s the only reason I force myself to do it sometimes.

But you know what? If I smoke pot, I fuck it all up too because then he’d have to say that yes he associates with someone who smokes pot and that someone is his wife. I wouldn’t fuck him over like that.

This isn’t just a job. This is his life. His career choice. I would never let my husband down.

But I think about how he’s hurt me as a friend and I know that if I didn’t care about him so much, I’d figure out how to suck on that pipa thing and do as I want.

Look, lying is a big deal to me, which is why I got upset at my mother in law’s accusation of me sleeping around with Steppy when nothing could be farther from the truth. I’ve got nobody I can really trust, no parents, no unconditional love unless you mean David and—oh that’s right, I’m mad at David. Because he’s being a stupid cunt and because he lied. That’s all there is to it. I don’t care if I’m overreacting, I don’t care if I’m just reliving old feelings from five years ago. I need to let this out.

Hey, some chicks get jealous when their man looks at another woman, and I laugh at their piddly little snivel fests.

You look at this and you think I’m being a total drama queen.

I’m not perfect, but I am awesome. And I’m trying my best to handle my shit and not lose sight of what’s important. Right now, David is what’s important. I don’t want him to smoke because I worry about his health and how it will look on his next application, and I wouldn’t do something stupid like smoke a bowl with the neighbor boy even though I really want to because I know it would fuck it all up.

Even though perhaps sometimes David isn’t always as considerate.

Even though he knows that I handle things better when I know he’s being honest and up front, like saying right away “hey I fucked up, can you forgive me?”

So I’m on Team Terwilliger, and honestly whatever he’s going to do with this smoking business is his business. I thought we were closer than this but if he feels he needs to do it then he’s going to do it. Simple as that. I’m just going to keep working with Willie to get him off the stuff because he’s been wanting to quit for a while and has never had a reason or any encouragement, and I’m going to turn a blind eye to David because that’s what he wants me to do. And I’m not discussing the matter with him any further unless he asks for my help or opinion.

And I cannot stress this enough—Willie is my soul mate and David is more than fine with that, and no he’s not lying about how he feels for my benefit. David loves Willie just as much as I do, we’re all very close, it’s a very tight circle and so no he’s not stressed out because I’m playing at Willie’s every day. He actually prefers that I’m there because he knows that I’m safe and he has one less thing to worry about. Not having to worry about me really helps him a lot, but since I haven’t been over as much he’s stressing about it again.

Is he watching me cook dinner and interact a lot more with Willie right now than him? Yes. And I hope he misses the fact that usually I am super jovial and friendly with him when he gets home but that I stuck to hanging around Willie and talking to him more last night.

I’m not trying to make him jealous, I’m simply not interested in being friends with him at the moment. I’m sure this feeling will pass.

Willie though, he goes over and hugs David and lays on David and even kisses David. That’s fine, Willie can do that. I’m kinda apathetic right now, leave a message and I’ll get back to you.

“Y’all’s grown ass adults and y’all’s gonna do what you want,” the Marlboro Man says and passes me the pipa. I scrunch my nose and say no, again. Willie says his dad never passes the pipa to anyone but him and now me, and the fact that he continues to pass it to me despite how many times I’ve rejected it says that I’m still being a part of the ritual. I’m smoking their peace pipe even if I’m not smoking anything. I’m there, and that’s a very big deal.

I’m getting really super upset though that my friend has hurt me, and I wish there was something I could do for him that would make him less stressed out and less prone to wanting to do unhealthy things.

I wish he understood that I fucking care.

Maybe nobody else in the world does, maybe he wouldn’t do the same for me, but I fucking care, and I won’t stop for anything.

Sore Subject

Many years ago David betrayed my trust, and for that I may never, and will never forgive him. And what was it that he did? He lied. And there are two things I can’t stand and that’s being called a liar or being called stupid, or treated as such either way.

Do not give me the opportunity to not trust you, because I will take it and run with it.

However, though I don’t forgive David for lying, we’ve built up enough trust over the past six years that everything pretty much smoothed over. I trust him immensely, I’m closer to nobody when it comes to David, not Steppy not Willie not anyone.

And that’s why I’m pretty hurt over something right now that on the outside is stupid, but you need to know that it runs deeper than you know. I can’t make you know this if you don’t know the history.

For eight months when David was 16, he smoked. Secretly. And at the time he was stealing the cigarettes from his work (Staters at the time) (and yes CHP already knows about this) which I didn’t find out about until later. The smoking, I knew about. He just wouldn’t come clean, and for this I was ready for the first and only time in the two years we had been together and the whole seven years till now to cut my losses and start the paperwork. Sad because we’d only been married a year at the point where I was ready to file.

It’s not about cigarettes.

It’s about the fact that I found evidence, time and again that he smoked. Lighters, matches, lingering smells, tastes, and cigarettes stashed in the bushes outside our apartment. I’m not stupid, don’t treat me like I’m stupid, “Are these yours?” I used to say and he would tell me straight up no, or come up with some excuse, some lie. And that’s what it was about.

When he finally admitted to it, I was so livid because he lied to me. Multiple times to my face. And he quit cold turkey because I pointed out that he was also putting his family in jeopardy by stealing from his work. What would we do if he lost his job? At the time, it was his only job and we were barely scraping by, so you can imagine my outrage at the notion that he’d ever do something so stupid to the ones he loves.

So this is not about cigarettes.

Except that this time it just might be. But the same old stuff as well.

Flash back to the night I ate those cookies by mistake and sat around waiting for their affects to settle in because why not enjoy whatever was about to happen to me? You can’t un eat what has been eaten.

Sitting on Willie’s balcony, Mr. Marlboro Man passing me his pipa and me putting up my hands saying “no thanks, I’m all set.” David was there to witness what Jessie was like on accidentally consumed pot cookies, and David is also passed the pipa, which he has to turn down. Remember, I don’t have anyone to answer to. I can take a hit if I want, who really cares? I’ve got nobody I need to report to, but David does. Not only right now, if they randomly decided to drug test him at The Cans or whatever (because the pizza place would lose too many employees if they did) but he’s got CHP coming up in another year and three months. He went from writing down all zeros on the drug questioner to, if he were to take a hit, having to write a one, and having to wait another few years. David knows this, and so he puts up his hands and says “No thanks I’m all set.”

Begrudgingly.

But he says no because he knows he has to.

And he knows I didn’t mean to eat the cookies.

And then Willie cups my face in his hands, puts his lips on mine, and breathes his smoke into my lungs. A shotgun, I guess it’s called.

Now here’s about where the trouble started.

Right when Willie did that, David got a little upset, because now it became an intentional thing. Not that it’s a super bad thing, but now David really wanted to participate. Peer pressure. Everyone else is doing it. I never get to have any fun. Poor David. Woe is me. And so angrily he asked Willie fir a cigarette. I raised my eyebrows, but he did it anyway. He smoked it. And then a second one. And then the lights went all fuzzy and I don’t remember much other than arriving at my door and discovering how cool it was that we live in apartment G. “Oh hey, this is apartment G, that’s cool.”

Later David would tell me that he smoked because he was seeing me at my worst, and he wanted me to see him at his worst. Okay then. And that’s fine. Except that David, for about two weeks before the pot cookie incident had been saying that he really really wants to smoke again because everyone else does around him, and though his body never really stopped craving nicotine, he’s been able to mentally block it. Trouble is, now that he’s around Willie who smokes and Marlboro Man who smokes and Cutie Pie who smokes and on and on and on, he’s losing that mental block. He wants to smoke. He wants to have a cigarette.

Only he didn’t tell me this.

You know me, I’m a woman and somewhat manipulative. I waited till Steppy was here with the hookah to tell David that Willie told me that he started smoking secretly again. Willie said no such thing, but I’m a bitch and I like it.

“He gave me a cigarette at the bar, it was one time.”

“Oh really? Because Willie never said a single word, I was just fucking with you. You just told on yourself.”

Sorry to drag your name into it Willie, but you’re a bastard in this situation too.

This was last Monday when I cried because our car needed fixed and we didn’t have the money, but Dad said he’d cover it for us and we could pay him back whenever we came upon the money. Willie lovingly gave me his key and they set me right up with a chair on the deck with a beautiful view of the mountains, told me to stay at their house while the three of them went to the bar to play pool.

No one can stare at the wall as good as you, my baby doll.

And you’re aces for playing along, you’re almost human after all.

While at the bar, David went out with them to smoke and said that he really wanted a cigarette, and the Marlboro Man reminded him that he’s a grown ass man and he can do what he wants. This isn’t like when he was 16, it’s just one smoke, you’re almost human after all. So they lit one up for him. One.

And Willie, I find out, was waiting for David to tell me.

Dad, I find out, thought David shouldn’t say shit because he’s old fashioned that way.

And David…he said nothing.

And this is where I’m pissed.

“We’re closer than this David, why couldn’t you just come home and say ‘look I screwed up, I smoked a cigarette at the bar today?’”

“I don’t know, I didn’t want you to get upset.”

“It’s unfair! They pass me the pipa all the time and I always refuse for your benefit. I didn’t even like being high, but I love the idea of participating in the whole peace pipe aspect of it, but I never fucking do it because I don’t want to have to come home and tell you that I messed up—and if I did mess up I’d fucking tell you. That’s the difference here. Now you’ve proved that you’re just keeping shit from me and that makes me nervous, because what else would you just not tell me?”

“I was going to, but…I didn’t. Because the truth is that it’s really hard to resist, and I really, really want a cigarette sometimes.”

“So why not tell me that? Am I not the most approachable wife in the world? Did we not just go on a double date to San Diego this weekend? Did I not leave you alone on a beach with a girl I’ve met all of three times because you want to get to know her better? Do I not include you and tell you anything I do? Why in the fuck would you hide something so stupid from me? Look, you’ve got a problem, a craving, and whatever you decide to do with it I want to know, I want to know and I want to be included. I love you, and I need to tell you that. You and I are closer than this.”

That Monday, they called. They both called, and though I was in the middle of writing something and certainly not big on losing my train of thought, they both left voice mails saying that they loved me and they hoped that I was feeling better and that they’d be home soon.

Not just one now, but two. And I love them both dearly.

And I do not like being lied to. I do not like being kept out of the loop. I do not like that after everything I’ve come to both of them about, I wasn’t included in this situation. Willie apologized for even giving him the smoke, and apologized for sitting idly by when it was clear that David wasn’t going to say anything about what he’d done.

This was about being deceitful, but now it’s about cigarettes.

David before work this morning told me that he’s stressed that he never gets to see the kids, stressed about the car, about money, my safety—and that he wants to just be allowed one or two cigarettes a day. Away from us, just on his own time. He says it’s hard. He craves it. It’s hard to fight the craving.

Aside from being upset that he wouldn’t just talk to me about this before, it’s like, I want just one vice. One bad thing that I do that I don’t really need to. I don’t care for alcohol, the hookah is more of a social thing and I don’t even really like it nor can I taste the flavors, and one puff of the peace pipe is still something that David would have to answer to on his application to because they ask who you associate with who smokes pot, and if he has to say his wife, well…I can’t imagine that would go well.

And I could just do it, you know. I’m a grown ass woman. Hell, I didn’t like the high but Willie’s telling me about Chronic (or what his dad calls Sonic) and how I might like the flavor and the high better than the stuff that the cookies and the shotgun did to me. My birthday’s coming, I don’t much like to drink but some kind of good time would be fun, plus I’m almost 26 years old. Why can’t I just smoke it, or have Willie give me a shot gun when my kids are asleep and there’s no driving or anything responsible to do? Why can’t I just not tell David that I’m doing it, that way he won’t have to answer that I do when they ask him? It’s not lying if he doesn’t know. Just like it wasn’t lying when I didn’t know about his cigarette at the bar.

It all depends on what the definition of is is.

But I wouldn’t do that. Because that would lower me. And I wouldn’t be able to respect myself.

I would not lie to my husband.

I would not hide something from my husband.

I am seriously hurt that he did these things to me, especially over something so completely stupid.

So he picks up his old habit and does it once a day and that seems all well and good until he needs more and more and more and then he gets to academy and his lungs are all black and hacky and things are even harder on him. I prefer he drink beer because he’s not addicted to beer, he doesn’t need beer, and in the small amounts he has it’s not giving him any ill health effects.

And then there’s cancer.

It’s never been lung cancer to take out someone I love but oh good golly how I totally want to bury my husband.

This after I’ve been working with Willie to get him to slow down on drinking and stop pulling the filters out of his cigarettes, yes I’m all ready for David to up and die on me. Right. My plan all this time was to make Willie healthy so David could get unhealthy and then when he’s dead I can live happily ever after on Willie’s bunk bed in his dad’s apartment.

Because I love feeling like I’ve got a back up plan.

And perhaps I over react just a little. But I mean it when I say that I do not like this smoking business one bit. It’s a sore subject for me because it only reminds me of David at his worst—when he didn’t have enough respect for me to tell me the truth and ask me for my help or even my opinion.

I’ve put a poll in the sidebar. You know what to do. I’m off to chat with Willie.

My Day Was Beautiful

It consisted of wind and cold and leaves.

Framing pictures I've taken of friends and starting a "friends wall" in my hall way.

Free prints because Wal Mart kept fucking up.

Ramen with hamburger meat topped with Sun Chips for breakfast.

David's grumbly stubbly bear hug.

A hard tickle from the old man.

Wade counting backwards from 5 to 1.

Willie's kiss...Willie's existence.

A clean house.

A candle's smell.

No underwear, because fuck it.

A hand knit sweater and flip flops and jeans.

Steppy.

An excited 12 year old who got to kiss his girlfriend, twice.

Fuzzy Navel flavored tobacco smoked from a hookah with my three favorite persons.

Groping in the kitchen--secretly.

A big old fashioned lawn wrestle.

Baking and then eating banana nut bread that contains banana nut cereal.

A meteor shower coming soon.

Willie's mashed potato tacos.

Saying "I love you" at the same time.

Saying "You're my soul mate" at the same time.

Wade telling his Grandpa the Marlboro Man not to die because "I'm your best friend."

Being called Darlin' and Sweetheart.

A beer that tastes like apples that was made in my kitchen.

$45 found dollars.

And 13 solid minutes of locked lips and laced fingers.

Because I'm trying to see things more beautifully.

Forever And Ever And Ever

Weirdly, people come into your life, some with purpose, some without. And that's why you'd go and drag them to San Diego and pay $7 for a plate of deep fried mashed potato balls and eat them in a beach county garden.

You learn things.

I need to learn to be more open to the idea of friendships with females, particularly since my husband seems to be rapidly making a new female friend, one who ate the mashed potato balls and can put a cool bump thing in her hair without use of a hair bump maker like you see on TV.

David needs to learn how to have friendships with females as well, as he's only ever really had me and as I know from every guy best friend I have, guys need girls as friends. Or maybe I just happen to be awesome. But I have to learn to consider the possibility that I'm not.

There's stuff that's been learned though, and I think we've learned that it's good.

In the spirit of there being more good, Willie and I ditched David and his Cutie Pie friend on the beach somewhere and ended up at some tide pools. He helped me to climb around on the rocks very very carefully as we looked for hermit crabs and the black abalone shells with their iridescent paintings inside, poking at sea anemones and scraping barnacles off of the shells we found. We were both barefoot and someone asked me to take their picture with their camera, and Willie gushed to them that I'm a pro and that I take really nice pictures of people. I try, anyway.

Looking for sand dollars, reaching out for balance, Willie's eyes are green today and focused on me. "David agrees," he says. "About what?" I ask. And he tells me that David agrees about what was said the other day.

David believes very little. Only what he sees. In that, he knows that he and I are kindred spirits, that we've traveled the world and the seven seas over lives lived and lost through the centuries. No joke. There are memories built up that we both have, things we've found, things we know to be true.

David has been my constant forever. Probably longer.

What David is not is my soul mate. Soul match, maybe, but the left sneaker or the pepper shaker has never been where we go. We fit into something else. The thing that we are. The friends that we are.

Soul mates could be mother and daughter. Or husband and wife, even. Best friends. Bros.

"Who knows how it's got this fast," I say to Willie.

"I don't know, but it feels natural, and right. Like this is all supposed to happen."

Days ago there were tears. Because it seems like every time we talk and get deep, not even about sad things but just anything deep and meaningful we spill tears. Before this crying jag we got into, I hadn't cried since the funeral. And refused to even there.

"It does feel natural, that's what I'm saying. That's how I know. It's very different with you."
David had nodded immediately and said that it all made sense, because it would explain why it was so very easy for him and Willie to love each other the way they do. "I've known for a long time," I told him. "And I wasn't going to say anything because it's pretty heavy shit."

"I knew for a long time too but didn't say anything for the same reason, plus, I always thought you had to be married to your soul mate but I see now that's not the case. You and I are definitely soul mates. No question."

How you wander the earth looking for them and then boom, you have new neighbors and something to break the ice like flame red hair and home brewing.

"I knew," I told him as I stepped off of a flat rock back onto the sand, "that day your dad called me and asked me to watch your kids at the pool because you were leaving to go do something, the day David's aunt died. You hugged me, and I totally felt a spark."

He grabbed me and whispered in disbelief, "You felt that too?"

It's not really a crush thing, or an infatuation thing. Even David, who knows me more than anyone else fucking knows that I've found something I wasn't even looking for. And that at the end of the day I don't care how Willie is in my life, be it lover or friend or whatever we end up as down the road (hopefully excluding enemy,) I just want him to be in it. And he will be.

It's a really tight bond, and I can only explain it as, well, we're soul mates, and I know the feeling. I know the opposite feeling, too.

David, in finding this friend, is not trying to find someone to be his soul mate or lover or cheap thrill or anything like that. But whatever gets found is hopefully going to be fulfilling. Like a spark from a hug or just sort of fucking knowing.

It's not a quest, it's not something to rush and draw conclusions or nail up against the wall or anything weird like that. It's learning, discovery, and the idea that two people, though made for each other, aren't the proverbial "soul mates" we're all set out to look for.

And then when a soul finds its other, and it knows, you know the difference. You just know the difference.

My Willie, my soul mate. I love you, you goofy looking bastard.