Today’s cloudy, damp and cool. To need heat in the middle of June is insane! Never did we need heat at this time back east. How I wish I were at the beach there if only for an hour or two! Then I’d jump right back here to the state that’s almost as bad as the New England states.

At least this kind of weather keeps next door quiet. Yesterday I was headed in to pee when I heard the chick tell the guy, “You gotta wait for it to heat up,” which told me they were going to barbecue. So I shut the window to keep the smoke out and then they lit a firecracker. The kind that whistles for a few seconds and ends with a pop. Fortunately, it was just one.

Yesterday, however, was perfect for walking to and from the Black Bear Diner. We both got the special which was the sirloin steak. It was a little tough but nice for a change.

We had a little scare there for a minute when he started having an allergic reaction to the cucumbers in his salad. Fortunately, he only had a little bite because his throat started to swell shut. A little more might have suffocated the guy!

His coworker who lives nearby honked at us on the way down. Someone we couldn’t see honked on the way back and Tom jokingly said, “Someone you know?” 

I said, “Oh, sure. It’s my secret girlfriend that only comes around when you’re at work.” Sometimes I wish I had one for real, though it wouldn’t be worth the trouble she’d probably cause, and like I said before, I may still feel guilty even though Tom and I are just friends. And I’m not stupid either. I know no bed will magically change things. We had beds in Maricopa and that didn’t seem to make us want to get it on much.

Sure enough, not a damn thing from the queen in the mail. Not even an email message. This means that she could be waiting for his birthday to send something, though I highly doubt it. I’m almost positive she won’t send shit, but that’s okay. I will! We’re not as broke as we were last fall, so we can live without her cheap $25 anniversary check just fine. It’s worth it just to tell her off and get their blood boiling, and believe me, what I have to say will do just that! They’ll be fuming 10 times more than all the times they’ve pissed me off and offended me combined and I don’t care if God punishes me for it since it’s never okay for Jodi to anger people while it’s perfectly okay for others to piss off Jodi. They’ll hear from me just as soon as I hear from the publisher. If they by some miracle accept the manuscript, I’ll want to do a little bragging before I let them have it. They make me sick. They really do. I’m usually pretty good with reading people, though these are just about the last people I ever thought would turn out to be so selfish and uncompassionate. And I know they’re not failing to send anything because they lost the address since they do have our email addresses. If they cared enough to send anything but lost the address, they’d email us. They’re not sending anything because they don’t want to, but this doesn’t piss me off nearly as much as it did when they sat back on their pampered little asses while we were homeless and did absolutely nothing to help us but write to brag about their wonderful new purchases and accomplishments.

Later…

I have been quite depressed today, believe it or not, missing some things I never had that I once wanted, yet still grateful that I never did get them. I can’t believe I’m this bummed out over him after all these years. I haven’t talked to him since the last time I lived on Woodside Terrace in Springfield and that was around 1990. “His” name was Mike M. He was my music teacher in high school and I know he knew I liked him. I’m sure most of the girls did. I can’t believe I never wrote about that final talk we had when I called him 15 years ago. I checked my New England journal and couldn’t find any mention of his name, so maybe I called him the first time I lived on Woodside which was before I began a journal. I mentioned sending him the wacky letter I sent 5 years ago in the Maricopa journal, though. I see that I was pretty vague about him in my autobiography, so I’ll now do up a detailed entry of Mr. Michael M, the one and only man I truly desired. I hate to say it, but not even my initial attraction for Tom, which quickly wore off, came even close to the magnitude of my crush on Mike.

I was only in the real high school for the last part of my freshman year and the first part of my sophomore year, so I didn’t know him for long. Mike was 25 at the time I met him and I was 15. He was the masculine version of Kate Jackson, probably the biggest female crush I’ve ever had, LOL! He was tall, dark and handsome in every sense of the word. He married a student named Daryl who was a year older than me. I never met her, so I couldn’t even say what she looks like. Today Mike would be 49 years old.

I think I dreamt about him the other night and that’s what may’ve triggered these memories of him, not that I ever did forget him. It’s so weird. Here I am jealous of a woman I never met. She got the man I once wanted. She got the child I once wanted. She got to go straight from school to a nice, comfy home in East Longmeadow and then Longmeadow with love and money at her side and then a family, while I went through one loser after another and struggled my ass off. Lust certainly was never meant to be for me the way it is in my fantasies. Anyone I wanted didn’t want me and all that was available to me were those I didn’t want. So with my loveless, lustless life of poverty and my so-called true friends, it seemed she was getting it all while I was going all kinds of wild places. The only problem was that they were all leading to nowhere. Yet at the same time I have to wonder, would I have been happy if I had nabbed him and somehow managed to have kids? If I’d been the one to have him, would he have tolerated my inability to keep a schedule? Would I be happy still stuck back east? Would it have even lasted? Are they themselves still happy? Have they ever cheated on each other? Fantasized about others along the way like I have no matter who I’ve been with? Either way, I know that if I could snap my fingers, jump back in time and be the one to be his wife and have his kids, I wouldn’t do it because nothing could replace or equal my love for Tom and his love for me. The only problem in this marriage is that it’s lustless. I’d rather that than all kinds of other problems like I’d always had in the past. If I could get a buck for every problem I had before meeting Tom, I’d be rich. We were off to a rough start with me wanting a child, needing to get off the cigarettes, then dealing with the damn freeloaders and their tormenting us, but now look how few my problems are compared to then and especially compared to back east. My worst problem right now is that we have no sexual desire for each other, we need more money, and we’re living in the wrong state. I’ve been through many changes, places and adventures, both good and bad, as an adult. Meanwhile, I’m sure Mike and Daryl are doing the same thing they’ve been doing ever since – going to work, then coming home to the responsibilities that family brings. Still, I have to wonder – what makes some of our lives so different than others? Why are certain things meant to be for some of us that aren’t meant to be for others? Daryl went on to have the kid she wanted with the one she loved while I went on to just dream about it. Why did Tammy and Larry get to live in nice houses in nice neighborhoods while I had to live in various apartments in the slums? Why did I have to struggle while everyone else in my so-called family got to live comfortably? Who’d have thought that all these years later I’d be so pissed about that? I guess the only reason I wasn’t at the time was that anything I could get was heaven to me after being in Brattleboro, Valleyhead and Dureen O’s house.

I don’t know, maybe Mike and Daryl have had a million problems along the way. I mean, could they really be that happy all these years? Maybe he beats the shit out of her. Maybe she’s become fat and ugly and he no longer desires her. Maybe she wishes they’d never had kids to come between them. Maybe they do struggle financially. But why did God deny me true lust? I guess it’s better than being denied true love, but why? Why was it important to Him that I never experienced an attraction I could actually act on that went as far as Kacey did, but that never came close to comparing to the young Kate or Gloria or Linda or Mike or Mary C from Valleyhead or Norah M from the Harley hotel? Why did He want me to be teased with Teddy Bear? I was more attracted to her than anyone else who was ever attracted to me in return. We almost were, but never were. Why is that? It was almost as if God was saying, “See? You can be attracted to someone who’s attracted to you too. You just can’t have them!”

Like I said, it’s just so weird. I’m so depressed that I want to bawl my eyes out. I know it’d make me feel better. However, Tom will be in anytime now and I wouldn’t want him to see me crying. What would I tell him when he asked why I was crying? That I was missing my high school music teacher and wondering what his life was like these days? The one I had a huge crush on and was devastated not to have gotten? The one who gave me my first taste of loss and rejection, even if he never meant to hurt me by ignoring my advances?

I’d be a total liar if I didn’t admit there was/is a definite pattern of rejection in my life and that I am not, under any circumstances, meant to have anyone I lust for. I can get close to flirting with them like I did with Teddy Bear, but other than that, all attraction must be completely non-mutual. I can think of numerous people that rejected my advances, other than Mike. There was Mary C, Norah M, Nissan and Rosemarie from the Phoenix apartments, etc. Meanwhile, all the ones I could’ve had like Fran, Nervous and a million other losers, I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. I wonder why this rule was laid upon me. Not that I’d ever want to be without Tom, but if I were suddenly single, I’d never in a million years even bother to approach anyone I thought was hot. I’d either learn to settle or just be alone because I’d know that’d be all I could do.

Oh, the fantasies I’d have about Mike! While stuck in that miserable house with those miserable people called my parents, I’d fantasize about getting out of school one day and going straight to his house or apartment, wherever that was, and waiting for him to get home. He’d let me cry on his shoulder and then he’d make me feel so much better by cooking us a nice romantic dinner while I took a nice hot bath in his Jacuzzi tub. We’d chat, make love, and I would move in with him and we’d live happily ever after.

Other than a 5-minute attraction for Don Johnson back in the 80s, he was the only one I was very attracted to. What does he look like today, I wonder? Probably put on some weight, got some gray hairs. Would I be attracted to him still if I ran into him right now? Probably not. I think that once we get over 40, most of us just aren’t very appealing.

That damn spider just won’t die. The huge one that’s between the living room screen and window. It’s as immortal as the queen, even though I keep spraying it.

I can still hear her TV next door, but it’s not as loud. We’ll be out of here in 3-4 months anyway and I can’t hear it in the bedroom.

I wonder if we’re about to have the same problem with the internet connection that we had around the time Bev moved out because I couldn’t get online for a while there.