Ciao, bella! I'm going to Italia...

In two days, ladies, I am flying to Italy for a much-needed vacation.  Just me and a friend, no kids, no responsibilities...sipping vino, drinking espresso and checking out chicks.  I can't wait.

So in my free time, I've been practicing some cheesy Italian pick-up lines, you know, just in case.

Want to hear them?

Ahem.

Sei uno spettacolo! — You are spectacular!

Ho perso il mio numero di telefono, potrebbe prestarmi il suo? – I’ve lost my telephone number, could I borrow yours?

Fa caldo qui, o è perchè ci sei tu? -Is it hot in here, or is it just you?

Che fa una ragazza perbene come te in una mente sporca come la mia? What's a nice girl like you doing in a dirty mind like mine?

Hai da fare per I prossimi cent’anni? – What are you doing for the next hundred years?

And if any of these actually work and I end up naked...

Non dormo sulla chiazza bagnata.

(I'm not sleeping on the wet spot.)

In the meantime, to deal with your great sadness at my absence please feel free to read the older posts, comment on your favorites, and share with others (there's even a little Facebook button you can click on below each post.)

Arrivederci, ragazze!  (Goodbye, girls!)  See you in two weeks...

My own personal brand of heroin

     "Can I survive
     All the implications
     Even if I tried
     Could you be less than an addiction?"

                                                                    -Melissa Etheridge

Despite everything, it's tempting to say yes when she calls and asks if she can come over.  I remember soft skin and soft lips and hips and hair in my face, and it takes all my strength to wiggle out of that offer.

It occurred to me that if I needed cuddling, I could crawl into bed with the man who sleeps downstairs in the guest room. But I know that in his happy comfort, I would lie awake staring at the ceiling (still empty inside) and wonder why those hands don't feel good to me, as I did for more than a decade.

But ultimately, either option would be a false-start, you know before a race and that guy shoots the gun into the air, and then they realize that someone crossed the line before the shot and everyone suddenly stops running and they have to return to the starting line?

Training for months for this one moment, finally getting your body and mind to come together, perched, ready, on the starting line...and then some jackass can't hold his wad long enough to wait for the gun.

Yeah, just like that.  Except I'm the jackass.

The next day as I drive 75 miles to her, I bargain with myself. 

I'll meet her for lunch but not at her house. 

Okay, I'm at her house but I'm not going into the bedroom.

"Wait," I breathe into her ear as she moves above me, "We need to think about what we're doing.  We need to be deliberate about this."

"I am deliberately going to fuck you right now," she whispers.

I run out of excuses.

I'll be able to walk out of here as long as I don't say I love you.

Wedding Ring

 

I never realized how much
I fondled that ring on my fourth finger
Until I took it off

Eventually the white stripe
Faded in with the rest of my skin
Erasing every tangible proof
That I used to be his

(Originally published in Connections literary magazine Fall 2005)

When one door closes...

I set out to find new friends since my old friends hadn't spoken to me in months.  Yes, folks, even in 2010, and even in Seattle, a grown woman can lose all of her friends just by coming out.

These people were not just my neighbors.  We spent holidays together, drove each other to the emergency room with bleeding appendages, watched their children while they went on vacation. 

My ex-husband and I were about to name one couple as guardians of our children in the event that we died together.

But none of that mattered when it came right down to it.

I could just hear the Desperate Housewives sneering at me as I walked my dog down Wisteria Lane, "Ooooh, there goes the scary lesbian!"

Bitches.


Anyway, in my quest to start feeling like less of a freak, I had to find other queer girls to hang with.  So I joined this local lesbian networking website, kind of like Facebook for Seattle dykes.


I made some awesome new friends, but I didn't pay too much attention to the site since I was in a relationship.

On the very same night my ex-girlfriend screamed at me and hung up on me, I received a witty email from an adorable woman.  Here's what she wrote:

Hi there, Sassy.

If you have time in your busy schedule as mom and Superwoman to putter around and do something like eating, walking, or pretty much anything on the spectrum between lazy and adventurous, give a holler.

I will have to look at my own superhero schedule (some people call me Dani the Superwonderful). But, I tend to be flexible as a result of being dutiful towards my commitment to not work too hard!"

Two days later, I was on the ferry going to meet her for coffee/brunch thing. I deliberately picked the day where she had plans later so if it was a total bomb I wouldn't have to stay too long.

She was about 15 minutes late and a mixture of annoyance combined with relief accompanied the thought that I was being stood up.  But then I saw her walking across the street and the first thing I thought was, oh. my. god, she's gorgeous!  Then I thought this:

Mmmmmm. 

Dani walked up to me and gave me a huge bear hug, like we were already friends.  I liked her instantly.  She had super-short hair and the most stunning blue-gray eyes.  To top it all off, she had a kick-ass little body AND she smelled great.  Mmmmmm indeed.

We ate at a little French bistro (my suggestion) and drank mimosas.  Champagne before noon--could this date get any better?!  I smiled and leaned forward across the table.

Both being from the East Coast, we had no shortage of topics to discuss.  She explained that she moved out to Seattle for a relationship that recently ended, and wasn't "ready to date yet."

But here you sit across the table from me.  Whatevs. 

We walked all over the city for hours.  She laughed at my jokes and made fun of my antique flip phone.  I had to restrain myself from continually smelling her neck.

Dani drove me back to the ferry terminal, and I said, "We should take a picture of us together.  Just because you never know the significance someone will have in your life."

Kim Coronel

I smirked the whole way home.  Damn, that was fun.

I have reached a new low in my adult life.

I just Googled: "How to get over a break-up"

Yes, that's right, folks.  SassySeattle is single.

My first girlfriend.

And a relationship that turned out to be more of a mindfuck than I ever bargained for.

...filled with extreme peaks that left me elated and knowing, without a doubt, that I was previously missing something vital in my life

...to valleys that left me hating the person that I was when I was with her.

The night after we officially ended it, she calls. 

"Whatever happened to the girl who would have previously told me to shut the fuck up? Whatever happened to her, huh?"

She's slurring her words, and I know I should end this conversation, quick, but I can't.  I need to hear what the liquor says.

The liquor tells me that I'm a spoiled white girl who doesn't know how fucking easy I have it, that I have nothing better to do than write a stupid blog, that I will never know how hard her life has been.

Does this sound like someone who loves me?