I stole that title from a line I once heard on the Drew Carey Show. So now I have given credit where it's due. In the interest of asteya (non-stealing), one of the many yamas my yoga teacher training is shedding light upon, I feel it necessary to give credit where it's due. Even if asteya was last week's yama.
This week's yama is brahmacarya, or chastity. Whoa. That's a big one, right? And there are some hardcore yogic texts out there that take it to mean what it means. Chastity. Totally and completely. Lucky for me, I am not being instructed by Pattabhi Jois. Beth and Lisa, my lovely and wonderful instructors, have decided that for our purposes it means not engaging in any interaction that is sexual in nature (now this can be anything from flirting to doing the deed) that is not mutually uplifting. Word. I am so down with that. And being as I am kind of operating under a universe-imposed brahmacarya anyways, I didn't think I'd have to give this one much thought. But I forgot that the universe will kick you when you're down just for the fuck of it. The universe can be a bitch like that. So. I was wrong.
Here's my brahmacarya situation. I met a dude at a snuggy pub crawl with whom I have been spending some time over the past couple of weeks. There's mutual flirtation and it's been mutually uplifting, and being that I'm spread thinner than parchment paper with all my other commitments right now, that has totally been enough for me at the moment. So. Check it. I had a reading coming up today at the Big Blue Marble. Pub Crawl Guy (as he will henceforth be known) lives in Philly and is into literature and such, so I shot him a text on Friday night and told him about the reading and asked him if he would like to go. I also said if he wasn't into it, it was totally cool. About ten minutes later I get a text back saying "of course I'll go!!!!!" and then another one asking if we could hang out before or after the reading. So this had me pretty stoked cuz it's not too often I find hot guys in my age bracket (yes, PCG is hot) who are into the same shit as I am.
Saturday morning rolls around, and I wake up sick as all hell and find that the cold with which I have been sparring all week has hit me where I live and absconded with my voice. This sucks an unheard of amount of ass for two reasons: 1) I have yoga teacher training all day on Saturdays, and it often involves talking and 2) I have the reading coming up at Big Blue Marble. But, as yoga has taught me, none of us are unique in our suffering, and I decide I am gonna solider through this. I go to yoga class and make it through teacher training, and all the wonderful souls in my teacher training class do not even give me dirty looks or try to inch their mats away when I am coughing my head off like I should have been in a TB ward. One of them is even kind enough to stay and help me clean up the 16 ounces of scalding hot tea I spill all over the Wawa check out counter during a break from class, instead of running away in embarassment because half the population of Collingswood is staring at me trying to use paper towels to sop up the dripping remnants of Lemon Lift from the impulse buy racks of candy and gum. Serves them right for putting that shit there to tempt people in the first place and props to Katie for not leaving me alone in that situation.
Fast forward to the end of my yoga training day and I'm feeling physically like hell but mentally and emotionally buoyed, and I get home and call PCG to finalize plans for the next day. I tell him I'm sick but still gonna make a go of it and that at this point it sounds worse than it is and he says my barely there voice sounds kinda sexy and I joke that I sound like Kathleen Turner. And when he doesn't laugh at that joke, I figure maybe the three years my junior that he is really are like dog years and he doesn't know who Kathleen Turner is. Oh well. Knowledge of Kathleen Turner is not a requirement to date me. And I am still feeling pretty stoked. Until I go into the bathroom mirror and see that my eyes are totally hangover bloodshot and oozing and I realize that I now have pink eye on top of the cold that has infiltrated my chest, cochlea, and sinus cavity and robbed me of my precious pipes. I go to sleep and wake up several times throughout the night due to either lack of adequate oxygen intake or unbearable eye burning or both.
When this morning rolls around, I decide to say eff you pink eye, and eff you sinus infection, and eff you what I think is now a left ear infection, and eff you green stuff that I am now coughing up, cuz I have a reading and plans with PCG, and I will not be defeated. I shower and make myself as presentable as I can possibly make myself without the option of a) wearing eye make-up and b) using a white marker to color in my eyes and make me look like I haven't been on a 10 day bender or a crazy crying jag or both. In the midst of all this, I realize that my usually corpse cold skin is weirdly hot yet I am shaking with the chills and upon taking my temperature, I realize I am now also running a low grade fever (which, because I am normally so corpse cold, consists of actually having a body temperature of 98.6). I consider for a moment calling the editor at Philadelphia Stories and PCG and just canceling the whole thing. But then I think, "Goddammit, if it weren't for the fact that I get called out on the mat every time I take a sick day at work, I would have been able to stay in bed on Friday and get the rest that I needed to fight this thing off, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let it ruin my weekend now." I decided to mount up and make the trek to Mt Airy. I figure my germs will not be a threat to PCG or the other peeps at the bookstore as long as I don't rub my eyes and touch anything.
I am halfway across the Tac-Pal Bridge and proud as hell of myself for taking my probable ebola virus like a champ when my phone rings. I dig it out of my purse and see that it is PCG. I figure he needs directions. When I pick up, he asks if I am on my way and I say that I am and then he says, "Would you hate me forever if I backed out?" Those are nine little words that no self respecting sick, single girl who just dragged her sick, single ass out of bed to fulfill a commitment cares to hear. But I keep an open mind and tell him it depends on the reason, to which I receive this reply, "I was drinking with my buddies last night and we ended up tailgating, and I didn't get in until almost four in the morning, and I just wouldn't be much fun." Fail.
There was a time when I was so self destructive and self hating that I would have let him off the hook. There was a time when I would have made excuses for him and accepted his offer to come and see me read in New Jersey next week instead. There was a time. That time is not now. Now, I know about brahmacarya, and I know that this relationship -- using the term loosely -- just became not uplifting for me. So here I am on the bridge and bleary eyed and spiking a fever and I tell PCG that had I known he was gonna bail, perhaps I wouldn't have dragged my sick ass out to fulfill my obligation of meeting up with him. To which he replied that if I sounded terrible and maybe it was for the best, at which point I told him that maybe more than 20 minutes notice to cancel plans he's known about for two days would have been nice. My tone was icy. My demeanor was impenetrable. And I am sure that when I told him I was going to get off the phone because I was driving, he knew he fucked up. Whether he cared or not is something I can't know, but he knew he fucked up.
That scenario marks PCG's exit from the stage of my life. It's not like we were hot and heavy and shopping for china patterns, but I figure when a grown dude can't give me the courtesy of being responsible enough not to get shit faced with his buddies and blow off plans with me because of the resultant hangover, it's time to kick him to the curb. I'm proud that I love myself enough to do that.
Here's the part I'm not so proud of: I am still hurt. In fact, I was so hurt, that I pulled into the Rite Aid parking lot and cried for ten minutes. Here's what a lot of people don't realize: it's not too easy to be single, and take care of yourself, and be the one responsible for everything, and be sick, and be fairly sure the infection in your left ear is now affecting your ability to hear out of it, and look like a leper secondary to oozing eyeballs, and be fairly certain you can actually hear your polycystic ovaries dying at night, and be stood up. It is a bit much. Enough, in fact, to make you forget everything you are learning in yoga teacher training about everyone being united in their experiences of sukha and duhkha and start to think that you really are just fucking alone.
The truth is, no matter how independent we are and no matter how self-sufficient we are, I think deep down, there is no one who doesn't ultimately want someone to look into their eyes and tell them that they are worth caring about. That they are worth sacrifice. That they are loved. Even if those eyes happen to look like this:
Brahmacarya is a hell of a lot easier to abide by when you aren't dealing with the hell that is being single in America in the new millenium.
Asato Ma Sat Gamaya
Tamaso Ma Jyotir Gamaya
Mrityor-Ma Amritam Gamaya
(Lead me from the unreal to the Real
From darkness to Light
From mortality to Immortality)
Oozing brahmacarya (among other more unpleasant things),
Colleen
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