My brother as shadchan

A few years ago, my youngest was down My Eldest is down with COVID (again) and was working on a treatment for a show she calls 'Adventures in Babysitting: Doyle Style,' where Jake and Leslie need a childminder and end up calling in Jimmy. Entertaining chaos ensues.  I'd watch that, you know?

About this time my Hawaiian shirts have gone, apparently, in the recent room shuffle. It was heartbreaking and makes me narrow my eyes, but my dad had just died and I was still in delayed processing mode, so I let it go instead of voicing my discontent.

 However, it does allow for a mental retrospective flick through moments and one of them was my fishing hat.  My friend Betsey bought the hat to wear with my favourite shirt because there is an aspect of my personality that is definitely a 77-year-old running a telegraph from my bookshop/general store in a middling beach town.  I mean, who hates on Hawaiian shirts?!

My love of the fine line is definitely linked to childhood.  And it's inherited. There isn't a family member on down the line that hasn't had a side hustle, who hasn't pushed the envelope.

A friend sent me a PSA-meme that week which made me laugh so hard, I snorted.  So I return to it periodically to remind me of examples of things I don't enjoy. 

It's funny on a variety of levels, given that my brother - currently doing serious time at USP McCreary - has evaluating my options in prison, taken up the mantel left by mother.

 Also, it's not like I haven 't spent time at the mercy of an imperfect system.  I learned the hard (yet easy) way that the US system is jacked and that jail has its own rhythm. In a way, it is more honest. In a weird way, I felt safer inside the walls of Montgomery County Jail than I ever had at Fort Leonardwood. But that -again - is a tale for another time. 

This is the meme:

My mom longed to be a lawyer but trained as a barber in 1974-1975. 'You'll need a trade in case your husband dies,' my grandfather said, trying to keep her safe and keep her in line. The boys, they could be wild, sow their oats. But Peggy, well...she was held to baffling and damaging standards. When I think about how 

My brother and I took a walk in 2019, trailed at a not-so-discreet by Steve and Tony, the leads on the investigation I call the DEA Radio Drive Hour.  Jay was under indictment for 'holding' 3 lbs of methamphetamine, one pound over three separate occasions.  The payment for acting as weigh station was $15,000 (I think) a pound. Let that sink in: $15,000. For doing very little, except that little doing could get you killed. 

He had also taken to using the product, mixing it occasionally with heroin. A batch of bad synthestic heroin - Krockodile - would eat through his arms, leaving him with deep rivers of scars from necrotising fascitis. He sank fast and deep and we almost lost him to the udnertow. We still may, but we do what we do, you know?

The divorce wasn't final yet and he was worried I might backtrack, safety in the devil you know, etc. 'It's not that I don't like Mr B (the co-parent). But he has a temper and he doesn't let you shine.' He starts to cry. 'He just doesn't let you shine. And he hurt you.' He reaches for my hand. 'I don't want anyone hurting you anymore.' 

'Oh, flower. We hurt each other.' We're standing back in the driveway at this point, near James Robert's angel. And I know I won't be moving back here and my heart breaks open, sheds another layer. 

The legal system is imperfect, to be sure. And biased. I got off easy: my handling stolen property (a VHS - it WAS 1996, after all - commemrative boxed set of Laurence of Arabia, 2 PJ Harvey CDs, a John Mellancamp CD, and enough laxatives and diet pills to keep me in my hard won 102 lbs - 7.3 stone for you UK types; 46.3 kg for my EU'ers - being a successful bulimic takes dedication and I have that 'hell for leather' streak that must have driven Foxy Dan straight into the motel room that would lead to his body winding up in a dumpster in 1964) was pled down to 'Misuse of Public Property,' and I was given a suspended 6 month sentence. Why did I get off so lightly? I am white. At 18, I was 5'6, 102 lbs, lightly sculpted from a summer of boot camp. My hair was a blonde and fire wave that fell past my waist. I had bookish specs but my mom made me wear contacts.   My grandmother chose my outfit, a dress that deliberately turned my eyes so green, they could have been emeralds and she hid my specs, forcing me to wear the contacts that made my eyes itch. She made me wear her pearls. I was in the dog house for years, but I was a fine specimen of a labradoodle. 

 I was also on crutches because I had run into a wall and my knee - cracked and chipped in 2 places - was a marbled blue and mauve. I looked like a scared Hitchcockian female lead, maybe a TV variant of 'Marnie.' I kept my mouth shut (a chore for me even then) made eye contact with the judge. 'Yes, sir.' 'No, sir, I know what I did was foolish.'  

I wasn't sorry I got caught. I was relieved. And I was scared. But I had been a successful shoplifter for so long, it terrified me, and I was tired. I needed help but I didn't what kind or how to ask for it.  What's worse than not even knowing how to begin? I never told outright lies about it.  'Hey, that's a gorgeous jacket! Where'd you get it?' 'I stole it from Macy's Closeout.' 'Girl, you are so funny!!'

I mean, I am funny. Not with conventional jokes...I don't ever nail punchline. But yeah...This? This wasn't funny (I mean, it was funny and it is funny, in that darkly comic way that you can only see when you let the shame and guilt subside, when you learn that you own be your actions and keep your integrity but you still have to actively acknowledge that your actions - deliberate or otherwise - have hurt others. It takes time, forgiving ourselves our sins and vices. And when you carry those of others? Well...stones in your pockets, lead in your boots.  How many ways can you try to silently disappear from this world?

Anyway, I digress. By 22, my mother was worried that I didn't have a proper boyfriend. So she started recruiting from her barber's chair, giving out my home number to oy the most eligible, or what she thought I should need. Projection is a weird thing, you know? We'll ignore the fact that for a few years there, I made getting engaged a hobby.

  The expansion of the internet and my bringing home first a lovely North London Jewish boy then my Very English former husband bought me a place at her acceptability table. I became quantifiable, knowable even. Then, there was a cloud of smoke, the oily lingering smell of chard skin and she was gone.  

Jay took up her role, especially how that he's reckoning with his own ghosts and the underpinnings of his own addictions.  'You know, when I get downgraded from Maximum security, I'm gonna be keeping my eye out for the right kind of guy for you. And my cellmate, his working on a matrix for you. We got you, girl.'

I mean, I'm pretty simple, some may even say basic. I love a good pair of overalls and I can run a trout line. I could date a one-off murderer (people do things in moments of limbic overdrive, under duress), but no serial killers or repeated violent or sexual offenders. No people trafficking.  No sexual offenders, as a rule. No GBH, no assault with deadly weapons, etc.

I'd prefer to stay away from the Ponzi scheme types - the Epsteins and the Madoffs. Also enforcement types for  traffickers. But again, exceptions for rules. Someone walking a dime for antibiotics smuggling? That I can get behind. Also not opposed to a dodgy accountant or lawyer. An art thief, a counterfeiter, a forger...these, I can work with. 9-5 jobs are overrated. 

With confidence types, it's always tricky. A fun con is one thing, especially if you know you're sitting down to a con. It's the dark cons that get you. And I am reminded by the throw-away one liners that stay with us, like this one, by Victor Garber's character Garrison Steelen

'Life is short, Jake. Don't waste it with inadequate lovers.'

But con men are just that - smoke and mirrors. And when you've been raised by an institution (in my case the warped marriage of the Department of Defence and the US Army), you are steeped in the language of 'hurry up and wait,' 'the mission comes first,' 'I meant to turn up but work...'

You learn to circumvent your basic needs for a larger other and that creates problematic attachment styles and issues leaning into being your own cake, as Victoria Albina so beautifully talks about on her podcast 'Feminist Wellness.'

Last night, the ugly crying that comes with death and major skin shed started and I couldn't breathe. It is horrible, mesmerizing, vital and breathtaking, all at once. I could feel all of the rush coming up. I haven't stopped crying since, in slow drips, a leaky faucet intent on repair. No way not to let it out now 

I don't need to go anywhere fast, and the thing about all the work is that we don't just stop evolving, or shifting. There is no permanence, even in death and perhaps one of the greatest lies is that there can be permenance. It's a hard lesson to learn, especially when you're someone who has dedicated a significant chunk of their identity to the myth. 

Late Spring/Summer always makes me a little boy-crazy, and it has been tempting to peek out of my corner snug to see what might be available. Combined with the gorgeous relief, the hideous sense of abandonment and feeling very much in uncharted waters. In 5 days, I leave on a long trip, am stepping back to trust that others can handle what need to be done whilst I am away.  Trust is a commodity I have been reluctant to buy into, but I also believe people genuinely want to help. 

But we also have to know when