Juliette Miranda

Last night I typed the two greatest words ever to wrap up 50 chapters of my life. “The end” has never been so satisfying.

They certainly didn’t come without price: the past six days have been spent in near seclusion. My meals have consisted of swigs of Jack, handfuls of tortilla chips, and Orbit spearmint gum. (I switched to Orbit when I ran out of pen caps to mangle. Damn oral fixation. I would have made one hell of a smoker.) Aside from a Thursday night outing at my local rock club that I’m unofficially dubbing the, “Four chapters left, several shots to go” celebration, I’ve barely left my writing perch.

The result is a book that has been five years in the making: “Morning Neurosis is the true story of a girl trying to reconcile her rock n’ roll roots with reality.” Or at least, that’s what I’ll tell the publishers I plan to shop the book to.

My apologies to those whom the words ring too true. But this is my story, and, as I’ve said many times: be careful around writers, nothing is ever entirely off the record.

Enjoy, and look for the sequel, Afternoon Psychosis, coming soon!

J

PS – new blog coming soon, I promise! Until then, enjoy the picture. And yes, those are my boobs.

“You need a regular hangout.”

It’s probably the most sensible advice I’ve gotten on how to meet a guy, which is actually unfortunate, as it leaves me without excuse now. I took great pleasure in shooting down the myriad of idiotic suggestions I received from people whose main knowledge about dating was garnered from Meg Ryan and Jennifer Aniston movies. You want me to place a personal ad? Fuck you, Match.com’s archive of devoid losers hasn’t changed in five years. You want me to take salsa lessons? Fuck you, have you seen the havoc ten years of ballet reaped on my feet?

What insults me most about suggestions like these isn’t so much their lack of real world foundation (because really, the only people taking salsa lessons are women with their gay male friends), but the fact that they were offered with so little regard for who I am. Even when you get past my snark-soaked, I’m-smarter-than-you-are exterior, you are not going to find a deliberate “joiner.” Nor will you find a person who relishes meeting people, or even dating at all.

If I could skip the whole dating process, I would. But for as much as I hate dating, I absolutely love being in a relationship. The satisfaction I get from connecting with a person is profound, and, sadly, rare.

This is why getting over my last relationship is an ongoing struggle: it didn’t end because of “us” or our connection with each other. Of course, I can’t really say my commitment to getting over the relationship is all that strong, seeing as how I spent several hours the other night reading every single email he’s sent me in the past three years. Damn Yahoo and their unlimited data storage.

Along with making my drinking problem all the more vivid, reading those emails confirmed just how much being in that relationship meant to me. Short of egging his house or gouging out my eyes, I’m still searching for the best way to accept that I need to start over.

I’m doing better than I thought I would, at least in that when I play the “Last time I …” game, I don’t have to insert my ex’s name as often. Which means the last time I went out to dinner, and the last time I went to a concert, and the last time I had sex was not with my ex, and I’m told that’s a start.

The hardest part is to alter the game so that I can look ahead and say, “The next time I …” and not have it include phrases like, “…finish off a bottle of whiskey” or “…spend another night reading about serial killers.” These have been easy things to do, just as it has been extremely easy to settle for solitude.

But when my friend B casually suggested I find a place to hang out that wasn’t on my couch, I had to admit it wasn’t a horrible idea. She wasn’t telling me to take a pottery class (which ranks up there as the single worst unsolicited idea I’ve ever been given), and she wasn’t even really telling me to date someone. She just planted the idea that getting out there and finding a place to do what I like might be a decent way to ease myself back into the world outside myself.

Of course, I’m not entirely sure she meant for me to make a habit of heading to my local rock club every weekend, but a girl, especially a girl like me, has gotta start somewhere, right?

(I almost feel that this would make a better poem than narrative. Must be the Bukowski in me.)

There was no hello.

There was only the anticipation, the look, and the understanding that I would be relieved of myself.

And then my head slammed into the wall.

If I had wanted it, there would have been evil in the intent. Darkness often usurps my consideration when I wonder what it would be like to be own victim. To feel myself from the inside, to taste what it is that simmers in the basement of my mind would make my understanding all the more actual.

His hands know better than I do, and elicit satisfaction without the brutality. Where I would tear, they scratch. Where I would batter, they beat. It’s better this way. He gives me what I need when what I want would destroy me.

The blows are sharp. I lean into the pain and love it for its complexity. I shouldn’t internalize it as much as I do, but I think I would like it less if it came without explanation. I do not deserve this; it is not something I have earned. It is something I have asked for.

My body breathes in the violence. My sweat signals I need more. When all I have is my control, he forces me to release it. There is only more: more breathing… more screaming… more succumbing to strength that is comparable to my own.

There is pleasure, too: fierce jolts of it that free me of my reserve. My spasms do not stop him. From caress to squeeze to whip, it all equals the same reaction. And though I offer a piece to him, I keep most of it for myself. Intricate greed makes me the best and worst of submissives.

Perhaps one day I will offer my surrender to him – or another – entirely. Until then, if I cannot have what I want, he will give me what I need. And for this, I thank him.