The Two Laura's

Long before it's most recent regentrification, Over-the-Rhine in downtown Cincinnati is where most of my friends lived. It all started when my friend Dhyanna moved into an apartment building at the corner of Liberty and Main, which is there to this day.

I met Dhyanna when I was working the door at a now defunct bar called JR's in Clifton, checking ID's and taking money. My friend Kevin was the bartender/entertainment booker, and hired me on the weekends. Working there changed the face of my social life completely, it's where I first met Patrick as well. I was living on the corner of Jefferson and Nixon at the time, so I could drink on the job and walk home if I had to, which I almost never did.

The apartments on Liberty and Main had strange configurations, with what is known as a "Dutch split". This means the kitchen and bathroom were across a common hall from the living room and bedroom. That meant you had to leave your apartment, go into the public hall, and back into your apartment to get to the other side. (Why did the punk rocker cross the hall? Because he was safety pinned to the chicken who crossed it to get to the other side to use the bathroom).

The building, which was probably over a 100 years old even back then, was actually made up of two buildings connected by catwalks. Hidden behind the front gate was a court yard that both buildings shared.

Dhyanna lived on the third floor. Laura C. lived on the floor below, with Tamara living in the building across the catwalk with her boyfriend Bill. Our friend Jimmy lived next to Dyanna, and then their were these guys that lived somewhere in there as well. Most of them were artists and musicians, at the very least appreciators of these things. That's the role I fell into, and may have been considered by some to be a muse.

The first time I met Laura C. was while we were both at my friend Derricks. Derrick owned a small shop on Main Street that sold African American art, and it got broken into like five thousand times till he finally gave up. He lived in a courtyard apartment and had hung chinese lanterns all over.

We were sitting in the courtyard, in the summertime, drinking espresso from tiny little cups with little gold spoons. Not being the sophisticate at the time, I had no idea what a ton of espresso in little cups could do to you. Laura C. and I ended up sitting all night talking talking talking, smoking, smoking, smoking, talking, talking, talking, well, you get the idea.

Laura C. could do a lot of things really well. She knew all about music, and cooking, and world travel, and literature, and art. She was so brilliant that I got an instant girl crush on her. Maybe I should define a girl crush. A girl crush is not a sex thing, it's meeting someone that you just admire everything about, and I wanted to be just like her. Laura C. and I were way too busy chasing men to chase each other.

Laura C., along the way, introduced me to Laura B., who lived over on Court Street over a dry goods store front. Eventually, both Dhyanna and Laura C. moved next door to Laura B. on Court Street. They lived in these apartments that were huge and the rent was like forty dollars a month, no exaggeration. Instead of going into the front, where the stores were, you had to go to a back alley where the entry to the above apartments were.

Laura B. became one of my dearest friends. She is the most profoundly talented person I've ever personally known. Most of the really great pieces in my house are Laura B.'s creations. She was in the artist's union, and was a scenic artist, first for the Cincinnati Ballet, and then for the movie business. She always went to the best opening night parties, post production parties, just really great stuff that you wouldn't expect to find in Cincinnati. Whenever she didn't have a date, I got to go with. A post all in its own.

Laura B. and Laura C. have already come up in a few posts so I wanted to introduce them to you. Laura B. was with me when I met Carlos aka New York Boy, and spent that incredible night in Manhattan with me. Laura C. showed up in a post but with an alias.

During my married time, I lost track of both of them. I keep an eye out for them on Facebook and Myspace but can't find either of them. If you see them, could you tell them to call Paula? They'll know who I am.

Zen and the Art of Self Awareness

For the last week or so, I have been having what can only be described as an out-of-body experience. This is bigger than an epiphany, more like ten epiphanies at once.

I am not what anyone would call self aware, if I was, all of this wouldn't have shocked me. It's no accident, my total lack of self awareness, it's something I've worked on my entire life. To me, self awareness is almost a luxury, a self indulgence I can't afford. I've lived the kind of life where you learn to pick yourself up by the boot straps, suck up whatever the emotional soup Du jour happens to be at that moment, and move on.

Trisha has always said that "you can't go around things, you have to go through them", and it's always bummed me out every time she's said it because I know it's true. But I hate that shit, you have no idea how much I hate self reflection. Let me say that one more time, damn I hate that shit.

So, listen to this story. On this blog, I am lucky enough to have people that actually follow my adventures. This is different than just reading it, to follow it you have to actually set up an account, which in my short attention world is a real commitment. I appreciate my ten followers because they are my audience, and they are to whom I am speaking. Without knowing they were there, I probably would stop writing.

I used to have eleven followers but I recently lost one. The profile name was Noam Dplume, which to me was just a profile name and I didn't really read much further into what it meant. I don't know who half my followers are, so I just try to be myself, and hope I don't offend anyone with my base, twelve year old humor.

About a month-ish ago, I posted a rant on middle managers, which was fairly mean spirited. Soon after that, I lost Noam Dplume as a follower, and felt really bad about it. Ironically, it wasn't the face sitting or booger stories that finally ran a follower away, it was a middle manager rant.

It surprised me so much, that I went looking for Noam Dplume. All the profile description said was that she/he lived in the midwest and was born in 1942. So, now, in my head, I was sure that this was an older guy in his sixties who had spent his life being a middle manager, and I felt horrible about it. It became my personal mission to reach out in reconciliation to this poor guy.

The only thing else on her/his profile was that they were writing their own blog. It was called some Latin mumbo jumbo that I didn't know what it meant, and it had a picture of a flower. Once again, I read absolutely nothing into what the Latin might mean...details, details. The story was about this guys first love, of which I read the first two paragraphs, and, having the attention span of an eight year old on crack cocaine, moved on to my next thought.

(I'd like to state that having attention deficit doesn't mean I'm the one with the disability, it just means that everyone who doesn't have it is really fucking slow and I can fit entirely new topics into a conversation while I'm waiting for you to form your first sentence, kinda like I just did.)

My next thought was that the poor middle manager who was writing what could almost be described as a love letter to a woman he once loved, and she never showed up to read it. This made me even sadder, and I felt an even stronger connection to my once ago follower. To make it up to him, I became his first follower, thinking that this silent gesture would let him know that I, for one, had noticed his presence and his absence, even if no one else did.

That was about a month ago, and Noam Dplume never came back. I never read any more of the blog because of that attention span issue I have. Plus, I generally do not give much thought time to things after my initial impression. I like to go through life with no real facts, just vague impressions, things are so much more pleasant that way.

I had recently, by chance, ran into my old friend Zen, who has always loved talking to me in riddles, perhaps because he knows how shallow I really am. He's always driven me crazy, always talking in riddles, when I prefer that he'd just get to the point. I had noticed that for the last few weeks, Zen, whom I almost never heard from, or for that matter, really even thought of, was becoming more cryptic in his conversations with me than ever. I could tell he was becoming annoyed with me and my inability to understand him.

Finally, one day, Zen says to me "How about that Noam Dplume?"

"What do you know about Noam Dplume?" I asked him, "What does Noam Dplume mean anyway"

To which Zen replied "That's what online dictionaries are for"

So typical, make me go Google it for myself instead of just telling me the answer. It turns out, and perhaps you already knew this, that "Noam Dplume" means "no pen name", the writer is anonymous.

So, I say to Zen "Well, maybe I didn't know that fancy name, but I still knew it was anonymous",

"But what do you make of the Latin around the flower" he asks me.

Now I'm starting to freak out, the out of body experience has begun, and Zen knows it. How does he know about the Latin?

"I have not idea what the Latin means, and it's too much work to type it into Google, so I'm going to live without ever knowing" I tell him.

He laughs at me like I'm his student and says "Did you always love the story of the Scarlett Pimpernel?" I always did, it was true.

After much ado, Zen explains that the picture is of a scarlet pimpernel, which is what the Latin means. A Scarlett Pimpernel is a flower that closes up when bad weather is approaching. The Scarlett Pimpernel is the name of a romantic story, where this average aristocrat is meek and effeminate by day, but at night becomes the Scarlett Pimpernel, rescuer of damsels in distress, who love him by night but do not recognize him by day.

Ok, fine, so somehow Zen is following the same blog, maybe he saw the follower on my blog, of which Zen has been known to read from time to time. Then he asks me my opinion of the story, and isn't it strangely familiar, which, of course, I haven't actually read. So I mutter something about how it's about some guys first love, named Cola (hated the name, may be why I stopped reading), who was once the guys babysitter."

"Babysitter? What the fuck are you reading?" Zen says, and I realize that he really has read it and knows that I'm making this up. Apparently, there was no babysitter, and I have to confess that I never actually read anything that's not summed up in the first two paragraphs.

I put Zen on hold, and run to read the "The Story of Cola, My First Love" which by now is up to several chapters.

I couldn't believe what I was reading. Though thinly veiled, it was our story and I was Cola! Zen was telling the story of our love affair and it was so beautiful it made me cry. I'd forgotten all the things we shared, and had just moved on when it was over because it was too painful for me to reflect on.

Since reading it, I have realized so many things that I just never knew. It was almost as if Zen dragged me kicking and screaming to reflect on what was a really important part of my life. That Zen, he made me go through it instead of around it, without me even knowing where I was going! Damn that Zen and his riddles, he got me again.

Someday, when he is ready to share our story, Zen will leave the address to his blog for you. Until then, it belongs to he and me, and it was amazing.