nakedjen

George

It’s a really interesting dance, this dance you and I do.  I find myself thinking about you, especially now that the leaves have changed from green to golden and have blown gently from their branches.  The nights are much, much colder than they were just weeks ago and I wonder as I walk the dogs in the very early morning hours, before the sun even begins to peak over the distant mountains, where you are, if you’ve survived another night, where you might have slept and if you were warm enough? 

You’re always there.  Each time I go to the over-priced grocery store for organic produce that has come from far too many miles away, produce I justify as necessary for my own health even if the miles it has traveled means it isn’t nearly as healthy for the planet nor me as it really should be, you’re waiting for me.  Well, probably not for me, exactly.  However, in the last eighteen months I can’t really remember a trip to that store when I didn’t encounter you, didn’t have you ask me for money.

I always give it to you.  Without hesitation.  I find myself considering carefully, before I even leave my house, if I can go to the store with an empty wallet, decide that no, I can not disappoint you, and go out of my way if my wallet is void of dollar bills to replenish it before I encounter you so I can pass them along to your anxious shaking waiting hands.

It seems crazy, insane almost, that I feel this obligation to you.  I’ve asked your story over and over and it is enough to know that it is rarely the same story twice.  It doesn’t matter to me if you’re using the money that I give to you for drugs and alcohol, though I encourage you often to come with me to share some food inside and sometimes you do.  Those moments are rare, but I know they fill us both with joy.  Your eyes have trouble hiding your real emotions.  Mine do, too.

George, my biggest fear is that one day I will be wearing your shoes and I will not manage nearly as well as you seem to do.  I know that giving you my dollars, some food, the warm blankets doesn’t solve your problems or make anything any easier for you.  My generosity also will never prevent me from perhaps one day actually being the same person who is asking for another’s kindness and shelter from the storm. 

My promise, though, to you is that as long as you’re there, George, I won’t ignore you. I will give you all that I can.  It’s the best that I can do for you.  It’s the best I can do for me.

Snow Angel

I'm on the road to wellness.  Of course, if a certain someone can't keep her clothes actually on her body, especially when it is snowing, can she really be angry at the universe for being sick?  There's a paradox there we all do not really need to answer. 

We had an evening of huge, beautiful flakes of snow this evening.  This morning I actually woke up and said it smelled like snow.  Snow arrived, bringing her soft blanket of quiet and loveliness to our Salty City here in the valley.

I can't help myself.  The snow makes me want to get naked. So that's exactly what I did.  These photos have a very ghost like quality to them.  It is because of the long exposures.  I promise, I'm not fading away. 

Not yet, anyway.

 

 

If it happens to be snowing where you are, where ever that may be, I encourage you to get naked and celebrate the snow.  I promise that you will not regret it.  A hot tub for soaking while the flakes fall helps, of course, but so does a fabulous pink umbrella and a 1000 watt smile. ♥

you turn me into somebody loved

i am not at work today because i'm still that sick. i called last night and said, "swine flu". that was enough. they called me and said, "do not come to the office until you are well, thank you." har!

i want to be there instead of here, quite frankly. i'm very much done with this illness. the outlaw has been here being quite kind and sweet, but i've been less than kind and sweet as i just become even more bitchy and cranky than usual when i'm not feeling well.

every time i start to feel better, i just end up feeling much worse. it's like two steps forward seven steps backwards. or something like that.

i had a real, "i live here now" moment this morning. i walked into the coffee garden and they all said, "nakedjen, are you okay?" and i said, "well, no not really..." and they all said, "we've been following you on twitter. you're really sick!"

it made me laugh. in a good way. i mean, come on?! the coffee garden peeps are following me on twitter? that, my friends, is rather comical. and makes me feel loved all at the same time. in january, i will have lived here for two years. two years. which isn't really that long in the grand scheme of things considering i lived in santa cruz for 20 years and salt lake is a much larger city.

and yet?

i've got a community here. i really do. i have genuine friends here. in mormonville. who truly do love me. and will bring me hot and sour soup in the middle of the night. and cook me rad indian food just because. and invite me to strange burning man activities in the middle of the desert. and take me to the top of a mountain to see falling stars.

it's a beautiful thing, this life here. i can't really complain. so if i do? slap me. and remind me that i am loved.

Every Day Is Ice Cream and Chocolate Cake

You Can Go Crazy With Thoughts And Supposes

In what may quickly become a more familiar scene now, I am driving and Emily Gilmore is in the passenger seat.  We’ve just left one of a multitude of home craft shows that populate nearly every weekend in Utah like dandelions on your lawn.  You’re never certain where the next one might pop up, you just know there always will be at least one.

She’s peppering me with questions about The Outlaw.  The previous evening I had chosen him over her, choosing Indian food and a naked Friday soak in the hot tub instead of a cultural outing to a Mark Twain play production. I know she’s more than curious about this new paramour.

If she wasn’t now living here, just down the road, so close that we can now spend time far more frequently together, this interrogation wouldn’t even be happening, of course.  She does, it is, and so I try to breathe and answer her questions without compromising The Outlaw’s integrity nor my own.

He was married. He is no longer.  He was Mormon.  He is no longer.  He wrangles the crazy from midnight until dawn.

“Are you going to be his next project?” she asks in her completely serious way.

I laugh loudly, share that all my friends, bar none, have asked the exact same question and then I quickly change the subject to bread pans.  I just can’t talk this crazy talk anymore.

There Are Shapes, There Are Rhythms, There Are Signs That We Can Learn

My friends, my real Salty Lake friends, are gathered in my kitchen at the table noisily consuming small pita rounds smothered with hummus and guacamole as I try to finish up the ends of the meal I’ve promised to make to celebrate all of them.

I’ve told them nothing, really, about him.  Other than that he exists.  Their immediate response was, “But is he Nakedjen worthy?” and that made me smile inside as well as out.  Nakedjen worthy, indeed. 

They’re asking where he is, is he coming and, as I’m uncertain, since this relationship is still so not very certain at all, I am explaining how he said he would be coming, but you know, I don’t know if he actually will when, as if completely on cue, the Outlaw strolls through the door. 

I hug him, inhale him, the familiarity of his lips brushing mine, the whispered hello making me breathe more easily.  He keeps his promises.  Of that much, I am certain.

I worry, just a bit, about the unwrapping of this present.  Of sharing him with my world.  If the pulling off the paper might unravel all the strings to a point where we can no longer just hide beneath the covers, just be us two. 

The conversation never falters, the bonds of friendship buoy all of us along, the laughter is quick and easy and often and plentiful.  I already knew it.  He is Nakedjen worthy.

Your Hands Are Warm and My Body Is Wide

There’s something truly decadent about being in bed at 2:00 p.m. on a Monday afternoon when you’re neither sick nor tired, but instead just wrapped and entangled naked, uncertain which body part is yours and which is his.   

This is a small snapshot of my current life.   I am astounded that it is really mine. 

 

 

 

 

I Wish That Your Hair Was Orange

He's over as he often is these days.  It's that golden hour, or two, when neither of us have anywhere we're supposed to be.  So we're on the couch and he's reading aloud to me the words he's written.  Poetry, actually.  With a gentle cadence, the words trip off his tongue and fall not only on my ears, but all over me.  We all know I'm a girl that's all about the words.  If you can use words well, I might just follow you anywhere.

There's one line of his, in particular, that pierces right through and sparks a deeper memory.  Sweeps away some very heavy cobwebs and re-minds me of a long forgotten monologue from a play that was perhaps far more autobiographical than I am still willing to admit.

Inspired, I walk over to the bookshelf where those ancient words have rested, dusty and unread. 

His girlfriend comes to visit and she's one of those girls -- you've seen them-- the kind who have everything together and look like Barbie dolls.  Well, she comes and suddenly I'm nobody.  I mean, it's like he's never met me before or something.  Here I am trying to talk to him about the latest situation with Gorbechev, or the motives that influenced Pollack's last painting and this man, this man who usually hangs on my every word, this man who finds me so "intriguing" and all that, this man is looking right through me like I"m not even there.  It's enough to make me want to scream.  I mean, he's talking to her about what they ate for lunch that day and I'm sitting there wondering what he sees in this chick, other than she looks beautiful and all and then I notice that he's just walked away and left me standing there.  Alone.  All alone.  Alone.  (PAUSE) It's how I've been feeling lately.  Very alone.  (PAUSE) I know that I've got you to talk to, but who comes to see me in this place?  Who'd want to? My friends all abandoned me pretty quickly, didn't they?  They were never really friends, anyway.  Just some people I knew, people I passed the time with. (SILENCE)

I made a really big mess on her oriental carpet that night.  She probably thinks that I did it in there on purpose.  It wasn't enough that the dog pissed on it every time she left him alone.  It was his revenge.  I'm sure she thinks that it was my revenge. 

But it wasn't.  I never even intended to do it in there.  I wanted to do it outside, so it would take a lot longer for them to find me.  So that they wouldn't be able to save me.  I was saving myself.  But that night...That night...It was too impossible; it was too hot to even breathe.  I had walked in there to sit and play the piano.  (PAUSE) I did play.  I played "Fer Elise" porbably better than I had ever played it before.  But when the dog started howling, started singing...(LONG PAUSE) She had to throw that oriental away.  The blood stains just wouldn't come out.  Blood and dog piss.  I hated that rug.  (SILENCE)

They probably think that you fucked me that night.  You spent the night in my room, even slept in my bed, but you didn't touch me.  I was screaming inside-- my whole body was waiting to jump at the slightest brush of your hand.  I was sure you wnated it just as much.  All I needed was the signal.  But it never came.  I wished you'd fucked me.  (PAUSE) You didn't even roll over on to my side of the bed.  (LONG PAUSE)

An interesting that, isn't it?  By the time you were ready to do it, I wasn't even really interested anymore.  You were old news.  And your insecurities about --well, they almost kept us from ever making love. (PAUSE) Still, it was good, wasn't it?  Remember the first time we did it?  You were worried about getting pregnant.  (GIGGLES) I told you that I knew my body better than anyone-- I knew when it was safe.  It was safe.

We spent the entire afternoon rolling around on my brother's double bed.  First, you climbed on top, then it was my turn.  It lasted forever.  Our bodies lying tangled in an exhausted sticky sleep.  Your lips gently sucking my lips...Whispers to each other of promises we both already knew we would never ever keep...The breezes whistling from the fan propped dangerously on the windowsill...Champagne.  It was never that good again, was it?

A Magic Bus of An Entirely Different Color

My trip to Santa Cruz was sublime.  No, honestly, it was truly a trip that was chock full of love and goodness.   I am a girl who is, above all else, well loved.  I don't always truly appreciate just how well loved I am nor do I understand exactly how this actually came to pass, this well loved business? 

I do love with abandon, it is true.  I always have.  If I love you, I give you everything I've got and I never hold back.  I sparkle with it, shine it on you, beam it all in your direction. 

Still, I am not that awesome.  Nor am I someone who has ever been very good at the accepting of praise or kindness or love thrown in her direction.  I'm working on it, I am.  I want to be much better at it, I do.  Because I know that this love expression is a two way street.  I can not just keep beaming it out, shining it all over, splattering it about without actually scooping it up and letting it rain down on me, as well.  It's just hard, sometimes, to take off the galoshes and the rain coat and put away the umbrella and truly wallow in the love.

But I did just that over the weekend in Santa Cruz.  Oh did I wallow.  Soaked and sopped and filled myself to overflowing.  The people of Santa Cruz, my dear and lovely friends, they love well.  They truly do.

I was also the recipient of many beautiful gifts. 

Again, I love giving gifts, but all those who know me intimately will share with you that I'm not so very good at receiving them.  I'll gush and make a huge fuss over the fact that you've thought of me, insist that you shouldn't have, thank you profusely and then....I'll leave the very gift you've given me right on your dining room table.  Completely forget to take it home.  It is TERRIBLE, I know.  Awful.  I'm a horrible recipient of kindness and love and all things beautiful.  Don't waste it on me!

One gift I did receive didn't need wrapping in fancy paper or even un-fancy paper.  The good and kind and lovely large hearted Max (who I am tempted to tell you is a savior dressed in every day clothes) has been my friend in Santa Cruz perhaps the longest of all my friends.  No, really.  We've been friends for what feels like forever plus another day after that.

He provided me a very soft bed, a softer pillow and chocolates on this visit.  Max and I are always sharing the latest and the best finds on the Internet as we're both fans of things that open our minds and our hearts.  This time he had a beautiful present for me.

The Moth.

I can't believe that I had not heard it before.  I'm sure most of you probably already know all about it and shame on all of you for not telling me sooner.  Of course we receive the gifts we're to receive exactly when we're to receive them so I'm certain The Moth came flitting into my life at precisely this moment because this was the moment I needed it to arrive.  However, that doesn't let you off the hook for not sharing.  I'm all about the sharing!

The Moth, for those of you who don't know, is a not-for-profit story telling organization that encourages people to tell real stories without notes to an audience.  It is fantastic.  No, truly.  It is superb.  I can not get enough of it.  It is available on a podcast, but it is also available on many public radio stations nationwide.  Of course, I'm going to be lobbying those good people up at KUER to start broadcasting it for these fine beautiful people in Salt Lake City, but in the meantime, I can always listen to the podcasts.  Thank goddess for the Internet.  Isn't it just a beautiful thing?

I'm sharing with you one of my most favorite stories that I've heard thus far.  Honestly, this woman, Bokara Legendre, well, I can only hope to be as fabulous as she is one day in my life in the not so distant future.  Let's face it, I'm a divorcee myself.  With an outlaw for a lover at the moment.  I believe in the healing powers of potions.  Can my own story such as this be too far away?

Do give it a listen.  I promise, it will give you a smile, a delight, some love. From me to you.  Because we all know, I really like to spread the love around.

And Sometimes You Get An Award!

Sometimes, you just get an award for your blog for no particular reason at all.  I'm all about coming in first.  My sisters will tell you that since I'm the oldest of the three children in our family, since I'm the first grandchild, since I'm just FIRST, period, I like to win and I always get A's and I always have to be first, thank you very much. 

So, when the lovely Stephanie bestowed this blog award on my little blog, I wanted to be oh so gracious and say some kind words that would make even Audrey Hepburn blush, but of course life and travel and all that sex got in the way and here I am WEEKS later, frumpy and unkempt, not even dressed for the occasion and hoping that all of you will just know that I'm grateful, GRATEFUL, to have been acknowledged by such a lovely person.  At all.  The blog world is full of amazing and talented and truly expressive and fun writers.  I'm just glad someone bothered to notice this one.

So this award came with RULES!?!?  We all know I'm the girl that bristles at rules, likes to break the rules, hardly follows rules, would rather ignore the rules, but for Stephanie?  I'll abide the rules. 

The rules say in order to accept this award I have to answer the following questions with only 1 word answers...

1. Where is your cell phone? missing.
2. Your hair? blonde
3. Your mother? here
4. Your father? crazy
5. Your favorite food?Indian
6. Your dream last night? rollercoaster
7. Your favorite drink? kombucha
8. Your dream/goal? self-sufficient
9. What room are you in? kitchen
10. Your hobby? holistic
11. Your fear? baglady
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? london
13. Where were you last night? here
14. Something you aren't? mean
15. Muffins? cranberry
16. Wish list item? peace
17. Where did you grow up? washington
18. Last thing you did? run
19. What are you wearing? nothing
20. Your TV? missing
21. Your pets? adored
22. Your friends? multitudes
23. Your life? blessed
24. Your mood? happy
25. Missing someone? lots
26. Vehicle? Honda
27. Something you're not wearing? clothes
28. Your favorite store? sundance
29. Your favorite color? orange
30. When was the last time you laughed? yesterday
31. Last time you cried? october
32. Your best friend? beautiful
33. One place that I go over & over? dogpark
34. One person who emails you regularly? universe
35. Favorite place to eat? san francisco

I now have to gift this to 6 other bloggers.  Only six.  I could make a list five times as long.

Gwendomama

Miss Grace's Disgrace

The Aloft Blog

Smithical

LaFlacaD

Purvis Family

All of those blogs are blogs worth checking out if you have not checked them out already.  I read them all for very different reasons, but I can also claim the writers of all those blogs as very dear friends.  Which for me is something I hold dear and true.  I'd give them all an award just for that.  They come FIRST in my heart. 

Love in Three Parts

WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING LEASHES

I am running, nearly out of breath, my lungs filled with the smells I love and know so well of sea water and rotting kelp.  The sand gives way beneath my feet and each step reverberates up to my heart thumping it just a little bit harder, bursting it open just a tiny bit further with joy.

I pass the fallow field.  The same field I fought so hard and diligently to keep filled with happy tail-wagging dogs and their smiling owners.  Dogs chasing balls and frisbees and each other off-leash. Dogs communing.  Dogs being dogs.

The field is empty and sorry and sad.  Trash billows against tree trunks and no one even ventures to cross.
It is a wasteland of used condoms, discarded syringe needles and taco bell wrappers.  It is a loss to everyone, but mostly to the dogs that I now pass tethered to leashes, pulling towards the ocean, longing to run free.

If I lived here, now, surely I'd be an outlaw.  My dogs don't live at the end of a leash.  Neither do I.

GOOD VIBRATIONS

I've landed on the planet Saturn for lunch.  Not truly, but it might feel that way to the casual observer.  It certainly feels that way to my two BFF's who have never eaten at this all vegan restaurant before and have agreed to meet me here for lunch because if I'm in Santa Cruz, I'm going to eat a Cowgirl Blues Salad at least once, if not twice.

I'm so happy to see them and they're both already tucked in to beers and sweet potato french fries having learned that the menu is void of any meat at all.  Courage, they said.  For the non-meat food items.  I love both of these women more than I can possibly ever express to either of them, but I do my best and we spend the entire lunch laughing loudly (oh boy do I laugh loudly) and sharing deep and emotional and heart-felt secrets of the sorts that you can only share with the friends who have known you forever and a day plus one. 

The lunch lingers and I don't want to say goodbye.  I never want to say goodbye.  I'm terrible at the goodbye.  I assure them I'll be back soon, perhaps even in two weeks and maybe we can squeeze in hugs and kisses and a hello when I'm here?  Life is so full of hellos and goodbyes and some days.  I linger on the sidewalk, not wanting them to go, knowing we have to leave Saturn and return to our lives on Earth.

Lives on Earth. Lives that don't come with batteries included.  Lives that instead of ending in goodbye ended with the three of us discussing the various best and worst attributes of twenty different kinds of vibrators in one of Santa Cruz's only adult sex toy stores.  Lives that celebrated my BFF's purchase of her very first vibrator.  Because, well, sometimes life needs some vibration.  Or a lot of vibration.  Along with the love vibrations of your very best friends.

FISH FULL OF LOVE

There's a spider web, made from white crepe paper, carefully woven on the ceiling.  The first time I ate at this sushi restaurant, I had to stand in the pouring rain, outside, waiting for one of the twelve available seats at the bar.  That was it.  The bar.  It was all that was available.  Now, the restaurant has blown through walls on both sides, sports two different sushi bars, and seating for what feels like the entire town of Santa Cruz.  It is overwhelming, but the same waitress I have always had is still here and so I don't even have to explain my allergy to avocado, I barely even have to order, I just smile and basque in the love of my friends who will always be glad to join me at a table here.  Always.

We're noisy, full of laughter, sharing stories about this, that, oh and yes, that too.  I can not believe how very blessed and loved I truly am.  I live thousands of miles away from this small hamlet by the sea in a city that has, I will admit, wrapped its tendrils around my heart is holding it gently and steady.  I am loved now in Salt Lake, and I am loving Salt Lake right back.  With all my heart.  I am also so very well loved here.  Santa Cruz wraps its arms around me, squeezes me very tight, tucks me in its bed at night, kisses my cheek and wishes me only the sweetest of dreams.  Those dreams?  They're very sweet, indeed.

Better Than Ice Cream

The three of us, old friends, are all in the car that morning along with their luscious Chocolate Labrador.  Bound and bonded as chosen family, I have spent the previous night at their house on the hill and we’re currently headed home from a quick trip to the Saturday farmer’s market.  C is at the wheel and as he expertly navigates the car up and around the steep curves, L asks, “So, Jen, what if anything have you heard from Dave?”

The question neither surprises nor upsets me.  Instead, I am rather expecting it.  This query, about my ex-husband, has spilled from the lips of all those I’ve encountered during my own love-fest weekend in Santa Cruz.

I tell L, quickly, that I have not heard anything because I have not spoken to him in over a year.  I know nothing of Dave.  I also wish to know nothing of Dave so I’ve not gone searching for clues or answers or suggestions of him in all the obvious places.  What surprises me, again, is to hear that C and L know nothing of Dave, either.  At all.  This has been the common thread amongst all my friends.  Together, along with me, we know nothing. 

There is a time in a marriage, when you’re in the very center of it, when you believe that you will know everything of your chosen other always.  You cannot possibly fathom not knowing.  Your heart is not capable of traveling that byway that might take you to a place where not knowing could be a possibility because not knowing would mean things too horrible to contemplate.  

Of course it is naïve to believe and to wish and to hope that this always knowing will always be possible.  Things happen.  People change.  Hearts break.  Nothing, not even the knowing, is forever.

What I really longed to share with C and L though, to shout from the back seat, was not about the knowing of nothing, but about the discovery of something. Something else entirely.  Something that I know is quite lovely indeed.

“I’m wondering how you taste?”

Those five words, in a text to my phone, caused the very finest hairs on the back of my neck to stand at attention.  I had truthfully given up on him, decided that he was not the least bit interested in me, concluded that he had younger and more beautiful women to enchant when those five words came flickering across my screen.  The small of my back prickled with anticipation as I realized the fate of my future with The Outlaw might honestly rest in my response.

“Ice cream”

Truly seductive, I know.  I will admit right now that The Outlaw has a way of turning my 45-year-old brain to that of a 17-year old horny teenager.  It is as if anything and everything I know about the rules of seduction, the laws of attraction, the wily ways of womanhood get flung to the rafters along with my bra, my panties, whatever clothes I might be wearing and I just want to fuck, fuck and then please, sir, let’s fuck some more. 

The Outlaw tastes really good, Internet.  Better than ice cream.  Better, even, than anyone else I’ve ever tasted. 

That part, that part right there?  That part about tasting better than anyone else?  Is truly curious to me and has me a bit flummoxed only because I suppose with all those previous sexual partners (and I have had more than can be counted on my available fingers and toes, but let’s stop counting, shall we?) I did not attribute the fact that sometimes I just had to HOLD MY BREATH because of the way he smelled to me a contributing factor to my own non-enjoyment.  I honestly thought, “Well, he stinks?!? His breath makes me gag.  I can’t really change that about him.  I like lots of other things, so I’ll just BREATHE THROUGH MY EARS!”  Years of that breathing through my ears and I suppose I just got very good at it.  I became a Gold Medalist in the Ear Breathing Olympics and carried on having sex without knowing how anyone else truly tasted or just how horrific they may have smelled.

I’m no longer breathing through my ears.  I’m barely breathing at all, but for completely different reasons.  Everything tastes just yummy.  I do mean everything.  I’ve been cautioned not to fall in love with The Outlaw, as that is a story that never ends well.  I’m trying very hard not to despite how delicious he tastes.  Despite how much I want to devour him.  Despite how very much he makes me truly feel, at last. 

For now, I am truly just enjoying the very lusty ride.

First, We'll Make Snow Angels

There, just at the end of those two leashes, lies my heart. Cleaved so gently in two. Beating gently on eight paws. Diamonds of large snowflakes glittering on their backs.  Large, puffy clouds of dog breath remind me on this very cold Utah morning that we are all, truly, gloriously alive.