sexy shoes and dying plants.

Last night I wore heels while I brushed my teeth.  Not just any heels, my Betsey Johnson heels.  I read somewhere that in deciding whether or not to buy a pair of shoes, you should divide how much they cost by the number of times you think you’ll wear them.  I bought the Betsey Johnson shoes almost a year ago.  Last night’s teeth-brushing date cost me a little over $50.

Yesterday I wrote out a list of questions for a porn starlet I’m interviewing for GV’s online magazine.  This afternoon I started thinking about how few people have seen my body, and how many people have seen hers.  And then I remembered this blog, and stopped walking in the middle of the hallway. Stopped cold.  Within the past three years (or so), I’ve lifted the skirt of my life, pulled back the curtains to my bedroom and my heart.  My body is clothed and wrapped up in some sort of modesty, but still, in ways, I’m naked on the internet.  The woman I’m interviewing is also a writer, a good one.  She bares her body and her words, and I wonder where she feels the most exposed.  Maybe opening everything lets more in.

And when I went to my reunion last month, like I said I would, I was happy.  Twice this year I’ve returned to somewhere I started.  I’m back selling sex toys, and sex videos, and talking about sex and making jokes that only sex people will laugh at (deciding what to name a paddle today, a coworker suggested “Spank the Night Away”; I commented how that name should be reserved for the next version of the Tenga to come out.  We thought it was hilarious.  Perhaps most people would not).  I feel like I’m at home in myself again.  Flying into New England, I was nervous, scared.  Then I saw Dunkin’ Donuts, and remembered eating a whole bagel in five minutes before lacrosse practice on free bagel day.  And I remembered crying on the floor of a friend’s house, crying on the couch in my own, making trails in the leaves behind our yard, having sex in a tent on the side of a road.  Maine holds stories more than I do; staring out the window I wondered how many I had left there, and noticed how good it felt to gather them as they gently welcomed me back.

There’s a plant in my bathroom that’s been dying for the last year.  Every morning I try to remember to remind myself to water it.  And every night I forget.  And now, at the end of this post, the most perfect full circle would be to say that as I brushed my teeth last night in my fancy sexy heels, I shared a little water with the plant.  But that’s not what happened.  I brushed in front of the mirror, yoga pants pulled up past my knees so I could flex my calves.  I caught a glimpse of the brown leaves in the pot behind me, and tensed my shoulders for a second with guilt. How hard is it to water a fucking plant?  And then I relaxed.  In time I’ll be good at these daily pieces of responsibility.  Some day I’ll find a picture of this apartment and remember how young I was, and how many stories I lived between now and then.  Until that day, though, I will write about things only my girlfriend should know, and trust that not everywhere I’ve left needs to stay abandoned.

Here’s to the fancy shoes costing only $25 the next time they’re on my feet,

jameson.