Universe Calling

I get the feeling that the universe is trying to tell me something, only I'm not entirely sure what it is.  And I suspect it may be something I don't want to know, so my inability to hear it could be the result of my putting my fingers in my ears and my atonal la-la-la'ing to drown it out.  This hasn't been able to squelch the tiny rumbling in my gut, however; the tiny rumbling that indicates that - just possibly - it might be something I need to know, wants aside.

My love of stasis notwithstanding, it's become increasingly impossible to ignore the signs

that things are changing, and not for the better.  Sigh.

First, after things started going wacky at work, I finally had the chance to take the job I want ... only to find that it comes with an enormous salary cut.  Next, I discover that the job I have is not only whacky but is getting worse - it is going to be altered so as to be unrecognizable.  And then I find that they're willing to change it in ways that will improve the altered version, but still make it undesirable.  I also got a job offer out of thin air - flattering and tempting in some ways, but not a job I'd get excited about every day.  And there's another such possibility - same money and benefits as I now have - work I would only partially enjoy.

One of my co-workers had a heart attack.  He's fine, but then another (a dear friend) dropped dead unexpectedly.  A third (no, I do not have dozens and dozens of co-workers) ended up in the ER with chest pains.  She's fine, too, but it's hard not to see these episodes as potent reminders that life is short and uncertain.  Of course, we all know this, but living as though we know it is something else.

It should be such an easy decision; do I go with more money and benefits and settle for tolerating my job or do I do work I love with significantly reduced salary and benefits?  With the former, I have more money to enjoy life outside of work - eating out, theatre, traveling, etc.; with the latter, I can get excited about what I do and feel satisfied that I make a difference for people.  With the former, I can expect to actually retire someday, by sacrificing 40 hours a week for the next many years.  With the latter, I'll be happy for the majority of those 40 hours a week, but may have to work till I die.  

And if I were to die tomorrow?  Which plan would have made the most sense? 

I don't work because I want to.  Given my druthers, I'd never work another day in my life.  I'd do volunteer work and would otherwise just enjoy the plethora of things this life has to offer.  But as my parents were unkind enough to refrain from being obscenely wealthy and as I've yet to win the lottery, even though I have played it - once or twice - if I were to quit work, I'd have to live under a bridge and root through trashcans for food, which is not my idea of enjoying life.

And if one works, and works many hours a week, how much of life can one truly enjoy if all those hours are spent in near-drudgery?  In my experience, being unhappy at work drains one of the energy needed to enjoy hours spent elsewhere.

....

So, of course, I made my choice.  I took the pay cut and the greatly reduced benefits and hope that I'm doing what the universe prefers, even if I'm doing it with my fingers stuck in my ears.  In the meantime, don't be offended if I decline all invitations to go out - I can't afford a social life anymore.

Why Are All the Good Ones ... or As Susan's World Turns

Years ago, I explained my love of soap operas by saying that I watched them to feel better about my own life.  After all, my life seemed quite normal by comparison!  A few years later, I'd changed my explanation.  Now I watched them to see how "normal" people live.

Okay, I suppose my life doesn't technically qualify as a soap-opera existence.  I haven't had eight marriages (or any, come to think of it), a heart transplant with said heart coming from my husband/brother/arch enemy, or discovered a grown child I didn't know I'd given birth to.  I've never had the kind of cat fight where I dunked someone's head in the toilet or wound up grappling in a chocolate fountain.  Shoot - I've never even had amnesia!!

But if you take what I imagine the average midwestern housewife's life to be (admitting that I know no midwestern housewives, few midwesterners and fewer housewives), I think my life comes somewhat close.

Take my romantic past.  Or what passes as such.  First, there are the men I didn't want.  The son and one of the two heirs to a jewelry dynasty that puts Cartier to shame.  (He never called in advance for a date. How rude!)  A charming gentleman four times my age who shared his penthouse on Park Avenue only with his housekeeper - who lived in the housekeeper's wing.  (Four times my age....)  A former self-proclaimed "dentist to the stars" who lived in one of the richest neighborhoods in Beverly Hills and owns the kind of movie memorabilia sold at absurd prices by snooty auction houses.  (Narcissistic and boring, the type who is oh-so-impressed with himself.)

So wealth and power and prestige obviously aren't what I was after.  (That's my father's voice in the background, sobbing.)  What sort of men did I choose?

No, I've not fallen for drug abusers/dealer, criminals of other sorts, or even married men.  But introduce me to a guy who loves musical theatre, feels passionate about sequins, and loves to decorate, and I'm a goner.

The question, of course, is why would gay men be attracted to me?  It's not like I have this long litany of unrequited loves.  I have a long list of ex-'s, quite a few of whom turned out to be gay.  In truth, sometimes I knew they were bisexual up-front.  And sometimes they lied and told me they were straight. (And who wouldn't believe that, coming from an actor/hairdresser who has a small poodle?!?)

For years I harbored a secret fear that I must be masculine.  After all - a gay man dating a woman - wouldn't he want someone who is butch?  Turns out, from years of casual research and talks with my gay male friends (one of whom told me he was afraid he was a closet heterosexual since he wasn't attracted to me), when gay men are interested in women, they tend to be interested in extremely feminine and usually petite women.  As well as in women who are comfortable taking center stage and refusing to give it back.  (Liza?  Barbra?  Bette?)

Still, I went blithely on my way, assuming all women had relationships with gay men until an acquaintance called me one day to tell me that my best friend's love life was the talk of half the town ... and my own love life was the talk of the other half!  Granted, the tabloids didn't appear to be interested, but everyone else apparently was.

What caused this fascination with my personal life?  In true soap opera fashion, I had begun doing a play where I was less than enamored with my male co-star.  He was rude when I first met him, and at our first rehearsal, he was wearing more eye make-up than I was.  (I later found out he'd been mugged over the weekend and was trying to cover up bruises.)  As any soap fan knows, if two people dislike each other up-front, they are doomed to fall for each other.  And, over post-rehearsal drinks and a shared love for singing tv theme songs, during rehearsals where we learned to trust each other totally, and in an unspoken way, fall for each other we did.  If there is such as thing as "soul mates", that is what we were.

I'd convinced myself he was straight.  He'd convinced himself we could be "friends".  Let the cameras roll.

Pathos is required.  He was swimming in new territory - he had always been gay and falling in love with a woman just didn't compute.  So he would delight in my company, then avoid me for weeks.  (I can be hard to avoid when I know what I want, so he was seriously determined at those times.)  We would go out till 2:00 a.m. or so, then talk on the phone till 5:00 when we both got home.  He would ask me to marry him on Saturday night, then call on Sunday to explain why that was out of the question.  We'd have huge arguments, sometimes in the middle of the street in the middle of the night.  I cared for him, night and day, when he'd been hit in the head with a cast-iron skillet and left for dead during a robbery.  I broke his foot by stomping on it with my stiletto heel while we were fighting in a bar.  We always, always knew we could count on each other, even if we weren't speaking at the time.  We loved each other passionately, but in the end, he couldn't handle feeling that he didn't know who he was.

Our big finale:  one tear-filled evening, we held each other in a long hug while admitting to each other that this simply couldn't work - not in this life-time.  We both knew our connection was too strong to end, but neither of us could handle more off-stage drama and we had to walk away from each other.  We promised we'd try again in our next life-time and parted with feelings of love and compassion.

Sometimes, soaps have happy endings.  But they also have tragedy and misery.  We saw each other only once more over the next few years; he came to town on business and we had dinner together and laughed and shared beautiful memories before saying good-by again.  The next time I saw him, he was dying of cancer and he lasted only a couple of months after that.

In soap operas, death is rarely final.  People fall out of airplanes, are shot dead and buried, undergo autopsies ... and still return, live and well, to pick up where they left off.  In my own personal soap, I fully expect this type of "ending".  Okay, not in this life, but I fully plan for us to laugh and love and fight and create scenes and pick up right where we left off in our grand romance.  And I am not worried about this show being cancelled.

The Joys of Summer

It is summer.  For at least three - long - months, the days will be hot, humid and long.  Friends talk of boating, swimming, picnics, softball, and lazy evenings spent on the porch.  I talk of nothing.  I can't.  I have to save my energy to get through the day in spite of the sun-induced headaches and the overwhelming listlessness that comes with the sort of heat that presses down on you, forcing you to walk slowly, if not crawl.

In truth, I should be genetically disposed to love the heat.  I grew up in the deep south and days in the 90's were routine for almost half the year.  In my youth, I relished high temperatures.  The slightest whiff of cold air would send me shivering for a sweater and movie theaters required heavy coats.

But something changed.  In my early 20's I moved to NYC.  In January.  When making the plans for this move, I decided that I should find out early whether I could tolerate a winter up north, and if not, I could move home sooner rather than later, before making friends, getting comfortable - settling in.  I arrived in early January to find snow on the ground.

The room I had rented via mail, in a hotel for women, was nothing like the charming pictures in their brochure.  Those showed smiling women in sweater sets and pearls sitting and reading by warm lamp light in a cozy, nicely furnished room.  They were obviously taken several decades before I arrived.  The actual room - er, suite - had beaten-up furniture, a stove with two burners, one of which didn't work and the other which would not get hot enough to boil water, a minuscule sink and fridge and NO HEAT.  Forget the cockroaches that fell through gaps in the ceiling.  Forget the women who sat in the hallways during the day, drinking from bottles concealed in brown paper bags and screaming obscenities at those of us who passed by.  There was NO HEAT.  Did I mention that this was January?

Surprisingly, this did not cause me to run to the airport and catch the next plane home.  Intrepid adventurer that I believed myself to be, I simply went out the next day and bought an electric blanket, which I wore around myself whenever I was in the room.  I also quickly found a job which enabled me to spend my days in a heated building.  Finally, I began to realize that my winter clothes had not been intended for real winters and they didn't keep me very warm.  In addition, I learned that open-toed shoes in 20 degree weather, especially when worn while trying to catch a cab on Broadway post-theatre (which means there were no cabs free for a very long time) - were an invitation to frost-bite.

Still, I stayed and I learned to dress for the weather and ... slowly ... I guess my blood thickened.  A couple of years down the line, I realized that my new favorite month was - February!  I loved the grey skies, the cold, the yellow slushy snow - all the stuff I'd hated such a short time before.  I'd walk miles in my heavy coat and hat, savoring the winds that bit my face, laughing when they whipped so hard that I had to turn my head to catch a breath.  I loved the ritual of dressing to go out - the scarves, the layers of sweaters, the thermal underwear, the coat, the gloves, the hats, the boots - knowing that I would not be beaten by the elements.

So after this transition, when I had begun to loathe summer, dreading the muggy heat as much as I looked forward to snow drifts, I moved again.  To New Orleans.

Then began the task of re-learning to dress for heat and not just for four to six weeks, but for months at a time.  I discovered that sweating is downright unpleasant and that my energizer-bunny style of walking slowed to tortoise speed as I pushed through the steam of summer streets.  My beautiful wool clothes sat on shelves, gathering dust.  My heavy-with-warmth coats were used as costumes in plays.  My hair refused to curl.  This was not the happy heat of my childhood memories; this was stultifying, lethargy-creating leaden heat.

Of course, as humans do, I adjusted once again, though I never did regain an appreciation for temperatures above 75.  In New Orleans, the heat is a character in one's life.  As one tolerates a bigoted, ignorant uncle, or accepts a beyond-eccentric aunt, one comes to terms with the weather and learns to overlook the daily annoyances it causes.  (One also learns that one can stay hydrated if one drinks a great deal of alcohol, as long as the alcohol is stirred into fruit juices, milk, sodas, etc.)  So this new character in my life and I found something akin to a truce.  I went about my days much as usual, only at 33 rpms, rather than 78, and I traded in my woolen chapeaux for straw sun-hats.

I no longer live in New Orleans - or NYC.  I live between the two, in a land where summer is long and oppressive and winter comes with snow and frigid temps.  In the former, as I am now, I fondly recall struggling through feet of snow and reverently stroke my cashmere sweaters.  In the latter, I  remind myself to treasure the moments, no matter how long the wait for the bus or how icy the streets.

Genetics, be damned!