Lovesexy

If David Bowie represents to me the cocoon and emerging butterfly of adolescence and Alan Rickman symbolizes romantic love (clearly I’m of the “Truly, Madly, Deeply” generation vs. “Harry Potter”), than Prince is sex.

I mean, Prince IS sex - to anyone, really.  He embodied sexual freedom.  I discovered him - really discovered him beyond “Purple Rain” - when I was eighteen, a college freshman and a virgin.

My kids sometimes read my blog and I always look at it with an editing eye before I publish.  But, yes, totally fine with me if they read about their virginal eighteen-year-old mother.  Kids, I highly recommend it.

UCLA, 1988.  The true birth of my sexuality - what has - surprise, surprise - turned out to be an essential part of my being.  And the soundtrack was Prince.  I danced with abandon to “Kiss” and "Alphabet Street" at theater department parties, I all but did the deed with a sweet boy in a dorm room to “For You” (the whole album a couple times over - it was a process).  And, once that deed was done (an even sweeter boy, another dorm room - to Fine Young Cannibals, truth be told), I fell in love (last stop, apartment in West LA, total heartbreaker) to “Lovesexy”.

Prince, for me, is/was about being in my body, not hearing/not caring what people think, moving to the rhythm, being myself - vulnerable, powerful, maybe ugly.  Prince is not giving a fuck.  Or, alternately, really and truly giving a fuck.  As I write, I can feel him writhing at my center - alive, moving to the beat, ready to let loose.

Sex sometimes is the truest.  Often it’s false, contrived, obligatory, pretend.  But at it’s best, it’s true, it’s essential.  Prince was that.  The human experience boiled down to a precipitate, life in a teaspoon.  A five-foot-two, heel-wearing, purple-lycra-encased, electrified teaspoon of soul.

So far this year, Bowie has died, immersing me in my fourteen/fifteen-year-old self - the girl that was struggling to become the woman on the horizon.  Rickman has died, cementing himself in my heart as the ultimate romantic hero, reminding me of what I’ve had - and I want - in that arena.  And Prince.  Tonight I’m back in my dorm room, Santa Ana winds blowing through the open window, body naked to the breeze, every sense awake.

Greece Is the Word

Last week, I pulled out my credit card and bought myself a ticket to Greece.  Can I afford it?  No.  When I’m eighty, will I look back and be glad for the trip or regret the cost?  I’m thinking the former.

It’s been a busy couple years.  I disbanded a marriage, moved into a rental, negotiated a divorce, bought a house, moved again, replaced a kitchen and a sewer lateral amongst other fixes, fended off scorpions, rats, ants and termites, stuck my toe in the dating pool (and fended off scorpions, rats, etc), hand-built one shop and then another (we opened an adorable little shop in Fairfax last month), all while teaching ass class, feeding and sheltering children, and most importantly, trying to keep the hearts and minds of said children intact and whole, never mind mine.

I’m tired.  I could use a vacation.  The last time I got on a plane was a very long time ago.  Ben is taking the kids on a trip for a couple weeks at the end of June so - on my birthday - I’m headed for Greece.  Alone.

When I was twenty, I went to Europe for the first time.  I spent a month in Oxford studying acting and then I took off for the continent for another month.  I was lonely.  I almost lost my sweet little mind in Paris.  My last stop was supposed to be Greece but homesickness got the best of me before I made it there.

Something that totally slipped my mind until the day after I bought my ticket is a recurrent dream I’ve had for the past year or so.  In the dream, I’ve bought a ticket to Europe.  I’m going for two weeks, alone.  I’m terrified.  Terrified of leaving the kids, terrified of being lonely.

So here’s what weird.  I don’t feel any of that fear now that I have pulled the trigger on the plan.  Who know’s, maybe it’ll be awful.  Lonely.  Or, maybe, and this is feeling more likely, I’ll find a little island and read and swim and eat and sleep.  I’ll rest and listen to my own thoughts and return ready for another round in the ring.

I’m going on an adventure by myself.  Or more accurately, I’m continuing the adventure with myself.