I watched this video of a woman who played the accordion while her dog would stand on this lime green fabric office chair next to her, and dance to the music. The lady has since passed away and was being commemorated on Mother’s Day. I took in many different aspects of the video as it faded into a new scene every few seconds. A compilation if you will. I noticed how content she looked, and also the stoic painted portraits of her holding her accordion without a trace of one fuck to give on her face. And if there was, it did not seem relevant enough to the artist to transfer and represent it on the canvas. How stoic could she be though? In the videos, the floors were sometimes very filthy and made of dirt. I wondered where she was, why this dog liked to dance on this particular shade of green, how old the lady was when she purchased the chair, and how she discovered this dog liked it. By the end of the video, I realized I had lost focus or perhaps the purpose of the video and finally brought myself to a closing observation of it all. That lady seemingly never made it to some level of fame or success, but someone loved her and would hold a phone camera up as she bounced from side to side, and her dog fucking loved her too. The green chair was a treasure as it was packed up and moved to different destinations. I made note of the unmistakable red sand of a baseball field where one performance embraced the plastic wheels of the chair instead of a multitude of cleats belonging to the bodies of athletes. However, no one seemed to mind, as this lady owned the field and attention of the people in the stands. She was loved, she found her tiny little thing that made her memorable, adored, and more than tolerated, she was treasured. She was everything to someone and although she looked like she could give two flying fucks about loving anything other than her tri-treasures…AKA, accordion, dog, lime green office chair…I am certain when her eyes were closed and her ears flooded with the sound …she still held love inside of her for her own special people. She was not a fucking luxury, though she found luxury in loving her corner of the world, and others wanted to reside in it with her.

I think it is pretty obvious I remember a lot, some things stick out to me, and others one will have to jog my memory with odd details to remember. I do like full-circle moments though. Full-circle moments take a lot of magic from the universe, sometimes a lot of time, and also a lot of goodness and love from everyone involved. I like healing and closure, peace between me and others. I can however live without it, everyone can. But it takes something away from us every day we choose to live in that state. I genuinely can blow someone off and temporarily let things go in order to just keep on moving forward. However, at some point, it is all going to resurface and I will recall my truth while they will recall theirs, and then I inevitably will want to sort through it as I have discovered we have not at all moved forward. I want to find that place of rest and renewal together, the lesson, the reason our paths crossed, the misunderstandings we lived with for too long, or maybe just the right amount of time. I am very strong-willed, very strong-mouthed, and a total fucking brat and asshole when need be. And sometimes just when I am tired, bored, or want to be. However, I am also the most delicate, sensitive, and gentle person. I will say it again, not everyone gets all of me. I am entirely content with someone living their entire life thinking I am the snobbiest, rudest, trashiest, delusional asshole they have known. Hi, Dad. Kidding-ish, I am not even sure what he thinks of me, I kind of-ish stopped trying to analyze his issues with me a long time ago and started asking myself what my issues with him were and how that impacts my outlook on men. And here we are all these years later with a variety of men telling me forcefully that my issues all lead back to him as if I was unaware, explaining to me that I am just a “luxury”, an additive, “nothing more, nothing less” as if it were a compliment and honor to be such, and dedicating “Maneater” by Hall and Oates to me while emphatically shouting “You are not a maneater, you are a man hater!” Damnit, I love that song, can I pleaseeeee keep it? That was not a real question, Brad. I fucking kept it, duh. I did not in the slightest try and hold back my facial expression and pleasure to his statement. As the last word left his bottom lip, the one that lies rolled off of so easily for our entire relationship, my face shifted into the Grinch who was ready to fuck Whoville upppppp. You know the one with the raised eyebrow and the yellow eyes filled with thirst for trouble. It is not lost on me that the common denominator here is me, but it is also not lost on me that on a larger scale, the common denominator is them. Look, I love me some men, but come on, own your shit, dude(s)/dad(s).

I think transparency freaks most people out. I also think a lot of people are afraid to be who they are in their entirety and to seek and ask for what they want. We forget there is this corner of the world to carve out for ourselves, that the right kind of others will want to reside in this corner with us, but that unfortunately some of those people are also currently residing where they don’t necessarily want to. Most people struggle with a moral compass of some sort, religious beliefs, family traditions, expectations, and some storyline we all play for ourselves. While I understand both the true and perceived value in this, I have always challenged these things because, at the same time, I think we deserve the luxury of doing so. See Brad, there is a true “luxury”, and please make note it is not a fucking human being. I will always question things, and always push the limits to see what is true and how that differs for everyone and why. Look, if you try and put me in some fashionable/trendy outfit that shows too much leg and too much cleavage at the same time or fits too tight, I lose my shit. I happen to enjoy clothes that make the other “common denominator” pause and question if I am worth imagining. This eliminates a lot of the heavy fucking fucktards right away because even the average regular fucktards still will take the time to imagine. I like it when the brain gets devoured first and then excitement sets in with the bonus of “ok now what vessel is carrying you into my human visibility?” But my point is some things make us uncomfortable. For me, that happens to be anything that touches parts of my body too closely and makes me wish I were home and in my usual nighttime rags. The ones I have put many hours of sleep into making comfortable. I get it. We are comfortable with things for different reasons, but I also get that life is short, people are people and different strokes for different folks. For instance, I cannot stand the sound of an accordion but this woman loved it and became something special in her life because of it. Did she know this was her thing or did it simply become all that people knew and remembered her for? In that case, I am fucked. Please paint all, if any portraits of me with so many fucks to give on my face, and loose-fitting clothing. Title it “Man Hater?” for these are my “Tri-Treasures”…