Now he moves slightly,
his lips in a remote smile.
He must be dreaming.

Last night I was whiskey-filled proud,
ignoring the lines in the mirror
drawing a portrait
of years, fear, and loneliness.

I had to look no further
than into his eyes
to know that I loved him,
and maybe he loved me.

Now, I wake to remove my sleepy arm from his waist,
hoping that as I turn
he will engulf my small body with his own.

I feel an unstable chill in the morning air
as the warm embrace that surrounds me
comes only from a soft blue wool blanket.

I wonder when I stopped believing
that sex is just sex.

This morning I am afraid of everything.

but I would have never admitted that to you
because even though I was only eighteen
and had just graduated high school
and my life revolved around dances
and text books,
I knew the world.
You have it all figured out then-

all doors are thrown wide open
and there’ll be no stopping you.
But time is a funny thing

as a life that wasn’t in your plan
creeps through a door left slightly ajar
from which comes a cool breeze
that you’re surprised you hadn’t noticed before.

The pigeons are screaming outside my window
it’s driving my fat gray cat crazy.
He’s not really fat, he’s big furred,
he likes to sit on the windowsill
alone, talking it all in.
He’s very affectionate sometimes
head butting me,
he is himself
loves me for what I am.
He’s the most perfect boy I know.
We live in the middle of the city

there’s almost always something going on
I can hear it through my closed blinds.
Maintenance men removed the air conditioner
pigeon eggs were on the ledge right outside.
It’s seven months later and they’re still there
just as perfectly preserved as the day I first saw them.
This is a nice place

heat and hot water are included
I keep it warm and cozy.
My friends are all in my computer
the television is good company.
I’m very happy here.

Sebastian ©Tammy/Rubicat.com

Don’t call me Pookie, or Puffy Boy, or Angel Face
-do I look like a little prissy girly cat to you?
I don’t think so.
That would be my sister
or whatever you want to call her,
she’s not my sister.
Pfft sister.

I am Sebastian.
You’re the one who gave me the name
that day you came because you wanted a friend.
You had a boyfriend
but wanted me so when this one left
you’d have something left to love you.

You didn’t like the name Buddy,
the name they assigned me when I came in.
I don’t care, it’s not like that’s my real name.
I don’t know what my real name is.
I don’t know why I was there,
why the ones I loved left me.

I was sleeping quite soundly in my litter box.
I used all the energy I had to lift up my head
and turn to look at you
standing there with this big goofy smile.
You wouldn’t go away, just stood there staring.
I thought maybe if I ignored you, you’d disappear.
Pfft. I turned back around and pretended to sleep.

I lived under your bed for a week,
you’d lie on the floor
lifting the bedspread to talk to me.
Eventually I got hungry,
you obviously weren’t going to get out of the way
so I came out.

It’s been three years since then
and we’re not living in an apartment much bigger
than the cage I met you in.
What you call a closet
is my own special place-
I get very cranky if you open the door all the way.
At night I might allow you to sleep on my bed.
I wait by the door for you to come home,
make like I’m looking
for the opportunity to sneak out
then run and hide in my special spot
so you’ll never know
I’m happy you’re here.

I’d use names much less cliché than bitch
far more intuitive,
use better reasons than “you hate her cause
she’s thinner than you,”
far more intelligent,
my nasty notes to you would be more grammatically correct
than you will ever be.

What you say
about me,
what damage you can do,
can’t even come close
to the harm I can do myself.
So then why is it

that with every single word you say
I start to believe you more and more until
I become those words.
So maybe I have let you see into me

maybe I have shared myself with you
maybe you know me better than anyone ever has.
But what gives you the right
to dissect me, to turn me inside out,
to say these things,
and on top of this all, to make me believe you.
I have given you that right.
I have no one to blame but myself.
And I hate you even more for that.

This is not directed at SATC itself. I’ll admit, the characters were fun and parts of it were really funny. But because of who I am, I can’t get past the, let’s list it:

girl’s husband cheats on her

girl loses herself completely in a relationship

girl gets stranded at the alter

girl sleeps through half her honeymoon, which she actually goes on with friends because she has been jilted

man is a immature wuss from hell whom i would want to bitchslap until he fell over

and then someand don’t forget the whole conversation of how once you are over 40, if you’re not married, you have no chance

The beauty of this movie is all of this is very realistic. And the ways the friends stick together incredible. All of this very true.

But there’s my problem. I don’t like true. I see true every day. Out of that list, there are only two things I haven’t experienced. True doesn’t work for me. Especially true depicting hardships.

Depict the hardship of a vampire sucking out someone’s blood or a serial killer especially if it’s a Bianchi, woot, bring it on.

Give me fire (fire! fire! fire!). Give me explosions. Give me blood. But give me an every day situation in which someone’s heart is broken in a situation that has mirrored something I’ve experienced–give me the car  keys, I’m leaving.

Which I almost did but I kept hoping for more funny parts (which did come, as well as a happy ending for all). But I was with a group of girls and how weird would that have looked?

That said, it was a really good movie. If you’ve followed the show, you’ll love it. Even if you haven’t and you can handle those kinds of movies, you’ll love it.

If you’re me, well then, you might want to stay home, make your own popcorn (lowfat even), and see if the Harold and Kumar movie is on cable again.

she then gave me a smiley face sticker and asked me if there was anything she could help me with. so i told that an aunt i am very close to passed away not long ago and just hours before i heard that her boyfriend, whom we all love, had joined her last night.

the student said she understood and had felt like that before and that when it happens, she just thinks that it will happen to all of us one day. and that thought makes her feel better.  she then asked me if that made me feel any better. she said she wanted to say something that helped me.

and experiences like this is just one of the reasons i really love what i do.

and know what i am going to do right now? i am going to go watch some roller skating/dancing vidoes.

r.i.p. we will miss you but are very happy you can be together now as you should be.

before i stated the movie each time, i prefaced the showing with a little tidbit of personal information. and yes, in these cases, the kids more often than not couldn’t care less. kind of like you, dear readers. but not the point.

that tidbit was that i read the outsiders when i was in junior high school and as a reward when we were done, our teachers took us to see the movie. in the theater. that’s how long ago i was in junior high school.

back then, the stars of this movie were total hearthrobs. and yes, we did use that word back then. these boys (c. thomas howell, ralph macchio, rob lowe, emilio estevez, matt dillion, patrick swayze, and tom cruise, and at that time, i didn’t realize leif garrett and tom waits (tom waits!) ) were on the cover and pages of all the tiger beat and teen beat magazes, that is until i cut them out and put them all over what i called “my outsider door.” yes, i admit it. the back of my bedroom door was covered with any photo of these hearthrobs that i could find. give me a break, i was in love.

my two favorites were ponyboy and johnny, played by c. thomas howell and ralph macchio respectively. i think even back at age 12 i had that fatal girl trait where i wanted to fix the sad, mopey bad boys. a trait that followed me well into my 30s and never did me well.

before the movie began, i told the students that these boys were the “justin biebers” of my day. now stop cringing and think about it for a minute. and let me tell you that over the last couple of weeks, i have been in quite a few conversations with seventh and eighth grade girls who have told me that justin bieber is “just sooo cute” and have tried to explain why he is so great. and from their eyes, i can see it. mine, not so much, but not the point. also off point, but kind of on the same subject, i also stood in for an adult education class in which i witnessed a fist fight almost erupt based on the question of whether or not justin bieber is the new michael jackson. that question, dear readers, i will let you contemplate on your own.

i wasn’t sure if these boys, so many years later, would appeal to the young girls watching them. but you know what? they did. i mean really did. i mean so much that i had to stop the inappropriate conversation about just how hot ponyboy and johnny were. for me on the other hand, not so much. maybe my need to save (and kiss) the broken bad boy has finally been replaced with my need for a confident and strong man like my husband, but for most of the first hour of the movie, i just wanted to slap the dirty, whiny pony and johnny silly.

now of course, as an adult, part of me does still feel sorry for the characters and and understands why johnny winced every time someone looked at him sideways. thank god he redeemed himself in his later years when he kicked some karate butt as the karate kid.

now, a young shirtless matt dillon, or rob lowe stepping out of a shower with barely a towell wrapped around him? let’s just say i wasn’t just talking to the girls in the class when i told them to stop drooling (at least so loudly). that said, i remember when i first saw the movie, i wasn’t a huge fan of either character, including the tom cruise or patrick swayze ones. at the time, they were too old for me.

sigh.

so i’ve told you a lot of things that i have specifically said are not the point of this post. so what is the point? well, i thought i had one, but the more i write, i realize that i guess there isn’t one after all. maybe it’s how things change. maybe it’s how things stay the same. maybe it is just a literary post about the timelessness of the book the outsiders. maybe it’s the sadness i felt when in order to get kids to pay attention to emilio estevez’s character, i had to introduce the actor as charlie sheen’s brother (to which someone yelled, “winning!). or maybe it’s just that i wanted to talk about a shirtless matt dillon.

and even though i’ve missed writing here tremendously, i haven’t really been feeling like writing. but instead of going yet another day without posting anything, i’m going to go back to some of my older work and post it here.

i promise soon i will be posting less recycled poems and more musings. but really, the poems are musings in themselves and even though they are old, they still ring true today. perhaps that means they are timeless. or more likely it means i am just as neurotic now as i was when i wrote them all those years ago.

either way this is an alpha poem that i wrote for an adult creative writing class. we were told to write the letters of the alphabet and use each one to start a word that describe our teenage years. you know, kind of an “a” is for apple, “b” is for boy kind of thing. then, as you probably figured, we were to use each of those words in our poem. of course we were allowed to use other words otherwise to stream then together otherwise the poem would probably not make any sense. although i’m not sure if it will to you anyway even with the extra words. but it does to me. and like i’ve said before, it’s my blog.

xoxoxoxoxoxo

Boys

Boys.
Dates – or lack thereof.
I am just one of the guys.
I am the pretty girl’s really really cool friend.

Cars.
My mom’s black Mercury Marquis
That Jill took one night when we were drinking
and drove in circles – sans license -
not not on her, but nonexistent -
around the parking lot of what used to be something called the Mo-No-Pole (or something like that).

That was right down the road from where Mike used to live.
We lost him shortly thereafter.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.

I’m feeling icky.
I’m kind of fat -
not really, but sometimes eating disorders disagree.
That’s what happens when you are whacked and quirky and stumbling
and terrified by your voracious need to fit in, to be rebellious, to be unique,
to make an impression,
to be something.
Anything.

I am something.
I am oppressed and lonely
and I have pink hair.
Mom cried when I came home with pink hair.
it would not be the last time she would cry for me,
but I bet some of those other times, she was wishing that it was just pink hair
that she was crying over.

I would give Xena, Warrior Princess, a run for her money
if I wasn’t grounded so much.