Letter to a Lesser Love

Through sorrow comes the tiniest understanding, a lesson learned too late sometimes. As I flail in your ambivalence I have to wonder if the seed ever rooted at all or why too long I danced the clown's part? There is no hope in you settling for me nor wondering if I was your fear's reward. Gradually loving less is a slow mercy for the most heart sick of broken men. Rejection erodes into wild obsession by loving you more. May the tides quickly level themselves steady and my soul complete itself alone and return to something new, something worth giving away all over again. 

Luck of the Drawl Ya'll

Unluck of the Draw

          Las Vegas, home of the 10Am gin and tonics and old folks tapping those blinking blissful buttons into the next morning. Nickel after nickel they click their retirement away one hopeful sip at a time. Hookers and heat stroke make up this dirty desert pop-up town that looks very much like a one sided Hollywood movie set. The hot wind burns my eyes the second I step outside the hotel sliding doors and I'm pissed I didn't bring my expensive eye drops. I guess I'm too vein to break the line of my skinny jeans with one extra thing in my pocket. God I'm sick of me sometimes! My contacts are singed and sizzling with the dry heat and immediately I begin to sweat bullets. I wish I had the money to sit my fat ass down right now at the nearest Figure Skating themed slot machine, smooth out a crumpled twenty, and kiss it goodbye forever, anything to not have to venture outside. But I can't bring myself to set what little money I have on fire at the moment. Unemployment doesn't taste good in my mouth especially here where the dice are always rolling and pent up soccer moms and homeschool house wives give themselves license to dress like cheap whores with tranny shoes. These ladies make that skin tight choice that NOBODY in this world needs to see. These are the rural ladies of 'Merica feeling sassy enough to strut their stuff in dresses they wouldn't be caught dead in back in their hometown of ol' Altoona Wisconsin.       

         Four AM waffles at the Tuscany diner are a dream but the daytime boredom makes me wanna climb the walls of this hotel because it's too damned hot to venture out mid day for any reason whatsoever. Night time is the only time of day here and midnight might as well be noon. Its a city of gambling addicted vampires and when you wake up from your cat-nap at ten in the evening you know its going to be a long night. The scorching sun blisters my pampered little pooch's paws on the side walk during our daily walks and she skips around like an excited tap dancer on a red hot plate. Poor little Harley is hating her life in the desert because she's either outside wheezing like she has full blown Mesothelioma and struggling for every breath, or she's stuck in the hotel room like Ann Frank all day. I've been known to pull one over on the housekeeping ladies as to avoid an astronomical pet "deposit". Occasionally mama slips through the cracks. She might as well be a fried egg on the hot asphalt that turns her perfectly groomed white paws into black hairy Gaga boots. The melting pavement is literally dying my dog into a different breed all together from the ground up. Black leg warmers are not part of this equation if you know what I mean? Let's just say a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel isn't known for it's desert temperament but more for lounging around like a furry accessory pillow on a 7,000 dollar Donna Karen denim couch on HGTV. I guess the apple doesn't fall far for my furry child since my idea of roughing it is finding out the Candlewood Marriott Suites doesn't have a pool.    

           I've watched my favorite people on earth stuff twenty after twenty into Gold Fish machines with little to no pay out other than the temporary rush of hope that comes from a dazzling spin with blinking lights. My favorite quote of the entire trip was a hustler who was promoting a free limousine ride to some obscure gentleman's club off the strip. "Warm titties in yo' face guys....free limo and warm titties in yo' face?!" My country Tennessee roots and fifteen years experience in Manhattan couldn't have prepared me for what lay in store on this cross country adventure to Vegas. The biggest and only obstacle has been filling this endless down time. Three days in Las Vegas.....Hell yes! Three weeks? Kill Me! My year has gotten away from me alltogether and seems to be slipping through my fingertips like a fine powdery sand. My personal control issues always allow me some form of a French retreat and a way out of almost any scenario but not this time. Have I given up or just given in to forces stronger than me leading me where I need to be?            

           This year an unavoidable foot surgery parlayed itself into forcing me to leave my show in Tennessee, something I've never done in my entire career. This was a true first for me. That break for surgery turned into a mandatory vacation/recovery period and from there into a three week trip to New York City to kill time. New York accidentaly morphed into four days in Amsterdam my favorite city in the entire world. The Amsterdam daze was followed by a huge wedding in Scotland and both were capped off just brilliantly with a horrible long distance breakup that dragged on and on with some seriously regretful aftershocks to follow. Sometimes the universe strips you of everything in one devastating blow for your own good even if you can't see it at the time like me. Being blindsided is an understatement in regards to my smoldering summer's emotional wreckage. But the grace in which we deal with the aftermath of such epic breakups depends on how tempered our reactions are to them. Needless to say mine were short, ineffective, and in fact paralyzing and did more damage than good. I couldn't find a graceful perspective if I had a GPS!       

            It seems Love is the most terrifying word in my vocabulary because it means that you allow the worst, most flawed parts of yourself to be transparent and hopefully accepted......or not. Dating and auditioning run a shockingly close parallel to one another and when I think about it I smile and a little nervous laugh pops out. After three months it's out there, all of you...the good, the bad, the frustrated, the elated, the bored. No matter how badly you wish you could get that first fart back that slipped out next to your significant other you can't! Just let it go friend....literally. If you think the romance and mystery is over in that exact moment get over it because it's quite the opposite. You have just arrived at the starting point of honesty, a beautiful place to be.  A perfectly fucked up, confusingly clean slate levels the playing field for you both. To forgive others I have to first forgive myself for my raucous twenties that are still a bit of a blur. And to be able to have a full cup to offer someone else I must cut loose all the baggage I'm dragging through my adulthood for no good reason. The guilt can't follow me forever right? Because it hangs and lingers in the air like a smoke ring floating over the black jack table. Hit me. 

This is War......This is SPARTA!

     Today I find myself standing before huge piles of my things heaped together on a filthy garage floor. The remaining ruble of yet another smoldering failed relationship burns before me and singes my nostrils leaving them ashy and charred. Wadded up a dress shirts still on hangers and precious personal artwork were urgently packed for me in an attempt to erase my memory as quickly as possible. Cue tips and band aids spill out of my picnic backpack along with all my medicine cabinet supplies proving it was a hasty and angry packing job indeed. It's a quick attempt to remove all traces of me, to be completely wiped clean of any and all painful remembrance. Its a shedding of the prickly snakeskin that my truest self so badly needed to wiggle out of six months ago and was long overdue. It would've eventually encrusted me into a false sense of self anyway and it had to loosen and fall off before even more damage was done to either party. Sometimes everybody looses in the gritty game of a love filled life and the risks involved. Old inspirational cliches just seem to fall flat to unsympathetic ears. How can you know when your time is up and movement is required? My stagnant Tennessee life has demanded immediate action and a facing of the beast herself...New York! I know the answers to all my stupid questions actually but I'll press on anyway because I so rarely have any comment at all. I figure I'll judge myself and edit later.

 

      I stand broke and vulnerable, open to my close friend's kindness. Their true colors have presented themselves amidst this cloudy confusion much like a rainbow after a heavy unavoidable storm. Ghosts of close VIPs have slipped into the shadowy background while trying to stay politely uninvolved while others have stepped forward into the light to show themselves as the radiant human beings they truly are. These are the people who are open and willing to listen and bleed with me and be patient. These are the kind of folks willing to help me see the forest through the trees when all I taste is bitter bark and anger. Kindness, in a emotional desert like this one, stands out like a mirage that tempts you to drink freely. But you blink and you're all of a sudden spitting out sandy mouthfuls. 

   

       My blind trust-fall back into the dirty city makes me freeze in my tracks and my spine tingles like Pop Rocks candy on my fat tongue. Paranoia and anxiety set in as soon as I realize I overslept and missed moving the car by 10:30 am before that merciless, hard bitch of a meter maid slaps a bright orange envelope on the pigeon poop covered windshield. Just a few days back here and my wheels are spinning out of control and my thumbs can't type fast enough. My gut is churning with the idea of high rents and weekly Broadway show rejection but it's not the same New York it was when I left because I'm not the same person. I've been still for the first time in my life in a good way. Best friends have moved away and gotten pregnant. I've lost people....grandparents and loved ones. Gorgeous, stunning babies came giggling and burping into the world this year while I was gone such as little Dawson, my butterball of a self proclaimed god son! Big Broadway shows I never saw have opened and since sadly closed. The blood and tears of my show friends stain the sticky subway poles with vein attempts at squeezing themselves into a role that couldn't be further from their type cast. I haven't written a thing in months nor cared to comment on the world or my questionable part in it. But something cracked me open that Jim Carrey said in a commencement speech on you tube, "You can just as easily fail at what you don't want, so why not take a chance on doing something you love?" Precisely my point Ace Ventura! 

 

      The subway crackles like fingernails on a chalk board, shocking my body into stark urban reality while the hot air from the train makes me want another shower. Getting the dirty subway under-arm sweats in the muggy summertime takes me right back to the good ol' times. My Tennessee detour was originally only supposed to be no longer than two months but ended up morphing into what has become almost three years now away from my friends and the city life I've known since 1998. You do the math! This blog has remained virtually dormant with not so much as glimmer of literary inspiration since I last hobbled around these city streets with my shin splints. I could've punched a Gerber baby right in the fucking face when I left three years ago and no amount of giggling infant beauty could've cracked this jaded gay exterior no sir! But now happily my NYC friends tease me saying that "Tank's lost his New York edge!" when I get taken for an idiot in a gypsy cab. A big piece of me smiles inside and knows that was my original goal all along, to loose that sharp edge that was quickly becoming a permanent mask that was all too real underneath. My quick-to-judge protective responses were becoming a problem. My Berlin Wall was flying up upon any weirdness which is totally unavoidable here. Weird is the norm in New York and almost a daily occurrence so get over yourself Tankersley and look into people's eyes again and acknowledge the human race before you because it's a beautiful thing. 

      A subway car represents a rainbow of colorful genetic DNA spanning through all the worlds nations and every possible race is represented in immediate eyesight. I've missed it. The best and worst of us all jammed on top of each other like sweaty summer sardines. It's dirty and real....the hug of human nature. Two years ago I would've tazed an old lady before she could've even formed the words to ask for my help across the street! It was certainly time for a serious intervention of sorts and some therapy that didn't involve H&M or my debit card. My Tennessee home gave me that chance to salvage what was left of my shipwrecked New York state of mind and allowed me to hit the long over due reset button on my life. My best friend in life told me one day that the goal in his own life was to make his anger-fuse grow longer with age instead of shorter.(Like mine) Wise words from a grounded and sound mind clear of pointless distraction. 

     

     Far too long have my fingers been absent from this notebook application. I've had nothing but time to write and gush out any and all things that flourish inside my cloudy, smokey haze yet nothing ever came. I'd wait every morning with coffee in hand for an actual family of bunnies to come hop-hopping across the front lawn for inspiration but still nothing. A blinking cursor on my touch screen has mocked me many a night with its modern dance and the silence around me just grew louder. The green Tennessee fields are brilliantly sprinkled with countless lightning bugs twinkling like Christmas lights strung up in mid air just for me. The scent of honeysuckle and pine wood burns from the neighboring chimney into my country soul but the city still calls me back like a deranged distant wolf. This is the necessary inner peace platform one needs before taking the blind leap into the unknown. Taxi honks and turnstile clicks bring me all the noise I need to fill that epic canyon of silence. What is it about this bustling hustle that makes my mind explode with creativity as the images and thoughts sizzle in the synapses of my brain, shooting like divine lightning through my finger tips and out into the universe? The freaky Japanese bubble teas, five dollar cinnamon muffins from the upper best side, and overpriced bad coffee seems to always set the world straight again for me. The panic is actually  part of that alive feeling that keeps me feeling young while welcoming daddy's crows feet with open arms like an express train when you're running late. New York.......where every stop is either delayed or a skip stop....no grey area. It's exactly where I wanna be.