Wizard and sage.

Schuyler is less convinced that a good long kayak excursion has cured me. Also I cannot lift my arms to hug him when he greets me. Honestly he is a lot like Caleb in that way, he likes his lovers helpless, and maybe Daniel and I are more alike than Daniel wants to admit.

And also their lives are far less complicated so Schuyler spends virtually all of his free time keeping a close eye on Daniel's particular shade of blue at any given moment. I think because I am smaller sometimes I slip through the cracks.

But not tonight.

Aside from sore arms how do you feel?

Fine, I lie and he gives me a kiss, trapping one lock of white-blonde hair between our lips as I can't get my arm up fast enough or high enough to pull it away.

Liar, he hisses against my teeth. God, Schuyler loves a full house and people who need him. Hellbent on not being needy I push off and point out the time.

Already fixed, he says, pulling me back in. Daniel kisses the top of my head from the dark behind me and I can already feel myself relaxing but I step out from between them anyway.

I'm beginning to think you keep Lochlan running on purpose. 

Schuyler smiles. He's free to say no but maybe I do. 

You've got everything you need right here. I pull Daniel in front of me. He doesn't actually move but it's the thought that counts.

Schuy nods. I do. Daniel holds my heart and my soul. 

Then why am I here?

It's nice to have a pet. They both laugh and I am gone now, high on attention, wound out on the warm affection I crave more fiercely than oxygen. I make mental notes, as always on the way they check in with each other. A look, touch or a word. A pause. A rush in, too fast, so intense and then I blink and I am awake and no one else is and I don't remember falling asleep, I don't remember this night ending only I do remember smiling as I watch them lavish their affection on each other, a truer love existing nowhere else that I can think of.

And now I feel like I want to cry.

Schuyler wakes up and sees the look on my face. You okay? What's up, Bee?

Just had a massive attack of jealousy, that's all. 

He pulls me in close, talking into my hair. I will definitely be washing it today. Because of last night's antics, and because of his breath. It's not bad, exactly but it's not really good either.  There's no place for that. With Loch you two have the love for the ages. It's withstood wars and birth and death and sabotage and the Collective. That's something to be jealous of. 

I never see him though and when I do see him we fight. 

I didn't say life isn't hard, Bridget but you've got everything you need and I've already put the word out for some people to replace Loch so he can actually retire instead of just talking about it.

You say that every six months. 

He's a fixer. I don't meet many people like that. It's going to take six people to replace one of him. That takes time. I'm sorry. He's sorry. But you know he likes to be busy so I get it. 

Maybe I could keep him busy. 

You're the only thing he can't fix. That makes him crazy, you know that? He's scared to death someone else will be able to before he can. Jake was the biggest threat of his life and he's always got Caleb breathing down his neck-

Caleb isn't breathing down anythi-

He is, and it doesn't matter if he's not a threat. If he helps in any way then Lochlan sees red. It's not a bad thing. It'll get better. Everything will. 

I wish I had your optimism. 

Look around. I'm so lucky it's almost criminal. 

Me too.

Everything is better after you exercise or something (bah humbug).

Ectoplasmic. You know, when I need someone else to keep me warm.

He bursts out laughing. That's ectothermic. Ectoplasmic is ghosts.

Figures. I'm not actually picky. Living or dead is fine.

You should get up. We'll have a fun day.

I'm fine right here. Go live. Come back when I've had some sleep.

You don't need anymore sleep, Bridge. Whens the last time you washed your hair?

Sunday.

Wow.

I think.

That's a sign when someone isn't doing so well. They let their appearance and their hygiene slide.

LOOK AT MY PRETTY NAILS, DANIEL

What have those done for you? They keep you from being able to do anything. Bet he's happy to keep you helpless.

Oh, a rare comment on the devil from Mr. Impartial.

I'm not impartial, just quiet about it. I have a nice life here and my brother keeps a good eye on you so I can stay out of it. 

And yet here you are.

Look, I get lonely too and I wanted to know if you want to go kayaking. That's all.

Of course I want to go kayaking. What a ridiculous question. 

Then get your lazy ass out of bed and go take a shower. Christ. It's almost breakfast. 

(For the record, I am not helpless. We kayaked for almost three hours. I'm tired now, that's what I am. I thought I was before, though.)

Of no consequence.

Every morning now I wake up at five or five-thirty, untangle myself from an embrace that makes me feel feverish but safe, and hop in the shower. Sometimes I wash my hair and then comb it out with a wide-tooth comb, squishing up the ends so it will twist up and curl like Lochlan's, though it is almost too long for that now. Sometimes I pretend I am bald and fail to address it at all. Then I hop into a vat of cocoa butter because you've never met someone with skin as dry and hideously sensitive as me. I've swapped out to cocoa butter for my tattoos as well which is part of my own personal aftercare routine a week after the latest round. It just works better for me, might not for you.

Then I come downstairs, make coffee (currently swapping between Tully's and a no-name grocery store brand Mexican dark roast that I really freaking like) and read some stuff, mostly things like CORONA VIRUS WILL KILL US ALL, TRUMP SOMETHING SOMETHING IDIOT and HOW TO MAKE NONFATSMALLBATCHORGANICNONDAIRYYOGURTINYOURINSTANTPOT.

Yes, those are all real headlines on my black mirror today and I'm sorry I looked, frankly.

Instead, I peruse the new Vesey's seed catalogues, the latest of which they've sent me is one all about bulbs, and I wonder if I should plant some or if I should maintain the illusion that I am helpless and unable to be that pulled together.

Oh, but I am pulled together. Look at my nails. I tap them against the side of my coffee mug. So pretty. I'm so pulled-together I orchestrated a fun day out with my sugar daddy footing the bill so I would be pretty and fed and that's something, isn't it? It's how I was taught.

(That isn't how it went at all though. Caleb touched my hand, compared it to 80-grit sandpaper and looked at my short ragged nails and eight-year-old's hands and suggested I doll up for Valentine's Day and maybe we should get some lunch, as my stomach growled right then, blocking out his words briefly. I hedged my bets that this was his Valentine date so I agreed.)

(Apparently it was not.)

Caleb and Lochlan went another round last evening concerning their age-old war between the finer things in life and the plebian things in life. Caleb would like to fly us to multi-Michelin-starred restaurants for dinners, Lochlan's idea of a balanced meal is a corn dog AND a candy apple, though I never ever had room for both. And sometimes if we were very hungry, completely poor and he was feeling extra guilty, Lochlan would eat the candy layer off the apple and give me the rest, something we both hated but he didn't want me to die from a lack of fruit and vegetables but also couldn't afford to feed us both without stealing but he could jack up his blood sugar until we could get a meal so it was good enough.

Good enough became a battle cry for us, something that has built character and kept us ridiculously grounded all the while it's been a level Caleb will not stoop to, no matter what. He is rigid and resistant and jealous beyond reason.

Lochlan on the other hand is also jealous but simultaneously angry at me for feeding the beast, as it were, and also for having 'stupid looking nails' (ouch) and even for wasting an Olive Garden trip on Caleb when Lochlan would have liked to go and I will only go once every ten years or so because it's awful, honestly.

But the breadsticks-

The ones from Little Caesars are the same thing only not as salty, thank God. 

They're smaller though. 

Boy, Lochlan gets hangry now. He's probably making up for years of forcing his metabolism to run at the pace of newly-poured concrete so I wouldn't be hungry.

Want me to make you some non-dairy yogurt?

What?

Nothing.

You taught me this, Locket. All of it. 

You weren't supposed to bring any of them home, you were just to take what you needed.

This is different.

OG breadsticks.

For my grand finale, since I look so pulled together or something, Caleb let me pick the restaurant for dinner.

I picked Olive Garden.

Just to see the look on his face, mostly. I figured he would refuse. He did not. We went. That was interesting. More tomorrow.

Baby doll #214 is the shade.

OMG. I may have to take a month off. I got gel nails this afternoon and I am Baby-Yoda levels of helplessness.

I can't type. I dropped Caleb's credit card at the nail salon and had to stand and stare at him until he picked it up so I could pay. I left it on the counter when we came home because I couldn't get it put away properly and I can't stop staring at my hands because they put tiny little gems on my nails and it makes my diamond rings sparkle hugely.

Worth it.

But I can't type. Or do anything for that matter. Kind of fun but also frustrating. The nails are lighter than the acrylic solar bulletproof ones I had before though so maybe I won't be trying to pull them off with pliers and turpentine two days from now.

I also look completely pulled together and that NEVER happens.

Fire, sugar and pavement.

The sun appears to be shortlived, and we are back to the land of heavy petrichor, rippled windowglass and damp dreams, wrung out repeatedly but never enough to dry fully and so they remain smeared and blurry with thick wrinkles that never smooth.

Have you ever seen what happens to cotton candy when it gets wet? That's me, through and through. Sticky, clumped together, dissolving right through your fingers.You have to consume it quickly, as flames does to almost everything it touches, or it goes to waste.

It's still better than snow, still better than forty degrees in the shade sunshine too, truth be told. I have a nice umbrella or six and a plethora of volunteers to hold them, and barring that, a good black raincoat with the sleeves rolled up three times and a plan to sit by the fire all night to warm back up. That's sort of the best deal going. I also have a really great technical running suit that keeps me from getting waterlogged but it's also comfortable, seamless and breathable. Leggings and a long-sleeved top. I feel like a superhero without a cape when I wear it but Lochlan, crushing those dreams with his hands underwater, says I look like a four-year old in too-small pajamas on Christmas morning. He isn't a runner so he does not truly appreciate this set, and it has saved my skin (yes, literally) many times over living here.

We didn't go to church today. Sam did and I was given a long hug and a blessing this morning on his way out. He said the entire congregation is sick and he's down to faith as protection but didn't want to subject the whole house to it as we are struggling with colds anyway. I've been sneezing and huffing to catch my breath while laundering every coat, scarf, hat, sweater, bag and blanket in the house to stay on top of germs. I've been wiping down our shoes and boots on the regular. I've been replacing cups in bathrooms almost hourly but I'm worn out and am now banned from any more of that because it was pointed out we'll either get sick or we won't and since we already mostly are, there's no point left. I have wiped my life down with Clorox wipes to the point where it is bleaching my very bones.

I'm still running though. It's been helping a lot.

Northern Cold.

Sunshine is coming! I saw the yellow dot on the forecast page, the one with the rays. I remember what that shape means. I'm watching the East coast get slammed with snow and storms and I don't wish to be there, this is fine. A little wet, but fine.

Okay, a lot wet and highly depressing. There's more than a couple of the boys who are beginning to struggle just enough that we have tightened up the Collective space and are in each other's faces virtually all the time, it seems and I wouldn't change a thing. I'll go ask someone for help doing the most mundane things and it works. We've made a list of fun stuff to do and we're ticking through it. We're trying new recipes, restaurants and film styles, hence the Taylor Swift documentary the other day. We're trying to wear brighter colors and we're turning on all the lights. We're holding those who need it constantly.

We're trying to get rested but not too much as sleeping all the time is weirdly just as bad as not sleeping at all. I'd love to test that one out personally, but I am not a sleeper.

Oh. Ben's up. Gotta go. Time for my walk on the beach. Bye!

Ignore my technological ineptitudes and I will ignore your judgement and we're even.

I tried to break up with iTunes again, but then I realized I don't actually have any other options and so I came back, we made up at least halfway and it has promised to behave better, at least for a while. There's some fun new bug that means I sync and around...oh, three hours later the songs populate my phone. But they aren't there when I eject it from iTunes. Which meant I was unable to play Woods of Ypres and had to go without and that's not a good scene for me.

I mean, the HORROR.

Right? 

I was very frustrated. I also spent like two hours researching and changing ID tags for my Miss Saigon soundtrack only to find out it did nothing.

I threatened to go back to Blackberry and Lochlan showed me the news that the handsets are going away. I said I should probably buy a few Key Ones or whatever to stock up (I still have my Curve and my Bolds!) and he laughed and said support would also end shortly so no point.

Great. I mean I'm not techy at all but the day I realized I could stuff fifteen thousand songs in my pocket I was pretty happy. Now I'm perpetually frustrated.  Everything just keeps leaping forward and I'm not able to keep up at all. It equals the exact same feeling I had when I was eight and the boys would run ahead, down the path to the ball field and I couldn't go as fast as they could and I got weirdly scared.

Wait, this is not anything like that feeling. Nevermind.
 

Taurus + Pisces.

Kerosene in my hands
You make me mad, on fire again
All the pills that you take
Violet, blue, green, red to keep me at arm's length don't work

There's things I wanna say to you, but I'll just let you live
Like if you hold me without hurting me
You'll be the first who ever did
There's things I wanna talk about, but better not to give
But if you hold me without hurting me
You'll be the first who ever did

He pulled the law of surprise and requested just the evening for a little self-care, a tiny-mini spa night which mostly involves checking my ear-healing progress, drawing a warm bubblebath, drinking a lot of champagne and deep-conditioning my hair. We get through all that, including at least three glasses of champagne each and I climb up into Caleb's lap, using my fingers to trace a Himalayan charcoal mask onto his face, avoiding his eyes and mouth, scraping my skin against his five o-clock shadow.

You leave it on for five minutes and then use a super-hot facecloth to soak it off and wipe it away, okay?

I'll put yours on. Come back here.

I can't do another one this week. My skin is too sensitive. It burns.

If you do it more your skin will get used to it.

I'm sure Caleb is just trying to toughen me up, to help me navigate through life without so many bruises, knocks and a bleeding heart that floods every room it enters. Scar tissue is a great stand-in for fierce confidence, something I can't buy so I'll never possess it. My heart floods blood into my sleeve, dripping down off the edge of my hand. I'll forever be almost, kind-of, not quite all the way there.

Like Pluto.

Hmmm? Caleb is sleepy-relaxed and leans back against his end of the tub.

Pluto's nitrogen lake is not only shaped like a heart, but when it's day there it thaws and wraps the planet in a vapour, and then at night it freezes again and contracts, so it looks like a pulse. It also, I pause for dramatic effect here, is the only planet in our solar system that has an atmosphere that runs in retrograde. The winds flow to the west while the planet turns east.

You run in retrograde.

I told you years ago I was Pluto.

That makes sense. Who am I, Bridge? 

You're....The Narada. 

Narada. The messenger to Vishnu?

No, the Romulan mining ship that comes whipping onto the screen in warp speed with all the pointy bits in Star Trek.

What happens to the ship?

It disappears into a black hole that Spock makes. I think it does, anyway. 

Funny how you know everything about Star Trek but nothing about Star Wars. 

I don't, I just really liked that ship. 

I'll take it personally after all, then.

This post is about Taylor Swift. I'm not sorry.

August and I are simultaneously watching the documentary Miss Americana and texting each other. I was not allowed out (it was too late and too awful outside because RAIN. We've had something like 1478930532 days of it so far this year, and it's getting old again. But it's not snow, so look on the bright side, people. You know, your SAD light.) and he figured that was a sign. It was, most likely.

Oh my goooood what a cute cat. It's one of those grumpy ones, right? A Scottish fold maybe? I don't know

She's got her diary, front and centre. And a kitten. This is some 13 going on 30 shit

Oh yup. 13

Wait. She said ink jet. Not well but jet. And a glass quill? Jesus. Early Cinderella here

Suddenly heartstring-pulling as she seemingly is self-aware and that surprises me. I have this vision of her as a cold-hearted music machine. Granted, I've heard maybe one of her songs. Uh. I don't remember.

August interjects here (and will be purple text)  I knew you were trouble when you walked in

Oh, right.

Cat #2!

"I just need to make a better record". Jesus, woman. Do it for you.

Oh here's mom. Isn't this weird need to please everyone her fault?

I really like the raw songs and not the stylized overproduced stuff. Joel should be ashamed.

It's so lonely at the top. At least mom's there. And Joel. Does Joel have a family?

What airline staff serves the food before takeoff? LOL

Taylor looks surprised at the C-word and then tells us cancer was hard for her. Taylor, she means.  Um..

Omg my dream fridge!

Cat. is. ON. the. table.

What's in that bottle that she's drinking? Wow, she cries alot. Love her.

"We" don't do that anymore. "This" is fine. Odd tenses. I like it.

Oh my fuck. You GO GIRL. STAND UP FOR YOURSELF.

Oh no. Mom, don't be a yes-man. Hug your child. There's dad and Joel. They just stare. For fucks sake

This is called Burnout, Taylor.

Aaaaaaand you fixed it!

Oh, I like that song. Wait, wasn't Jack Antonoff engaged to Lena Dunham?

She's starting to look like she's checked out live.

Brandon Urie?

Oh fixing the wooden expression on stage. Gotcha...

 And here's where I admit I got one hundred percent sucked in and failed to find anything wrong with the rest of it and am a huge fan now! Though I still don't know any of the songs, she seems like she is stuck at whatever age she was when she became famous and with a few quirks she seems like she knows and has learned and is game to admit she's still learning. I wanted it to go on for hours but it stopped way too soon and I realized I stopped texting completely.

I guess that's the story so far.

Aug

Augieeeeeeeeee

You awake?

Sweet dreams