Yesterday was our annual Easter party.  We usually make some Mexican food, get some confetti eggs, margaritas, etc.   I didn't want to do it, just wasn't feeling it this year.  George insisted we keep up the tradition for the sake of the LeKid.   Nice of George, but on the actual day, he decided he wasn't going to help out with the party and that maybe he'd show up at it later.  I called our friend Lem and with my sister and I,  Lem cooked, cleaned, arranged furniture and joked around in his British accent.  He knows the deal with George and stepped in without making me feel too pitiful.   

Today George's cousin, who was sporting a new camera at the party, sent over a bunch of photos he had taken.  There's LeKid having a blast with little cousin Nick.  There's me with the cake, LeKid with a hotdog on his head, there's the magician, kid's running around with eggs in a bag, then there's George.  He's laughing.  Lem is with him and apparently has just said something funny.  George looks so happy, so alive.  Coy almost with his tilted head and hunched shoulders.  George is ON.  It's upsetting to me in a way I can't explain to myself.   I've never seen George happy like that with me.  Have I?  

Circa 1987,  my brother Sam is a small, scrawny freshman in high school.  Asymmetrical haircut, a little eyeliner.  Like I said, it's the eighties.   I had spent the previous summer driving him and his friends to all-ages clubs where they wore black and danced to The Cure.  He’s at a sleepover on this particular night with a bunch of his asymmetrical haircut comrades.  Some girls they know tell them to meet up at a kegger an upper classman is having.    They sneak out and make their way to the party.  Once there, they kind of walk around, don’t see the girls, feel kind of unwanted being the youngest and most asymmetrical,  then leave.  As they leave, a parent who also happens to be a teacher at Sam's school is getting out his car - he's come to  break up the party.  From across the lawn he sees the group of boys leaving and he can’t make them out, except for Sam.  Because he’s Asian.  The teacher calls my parents to tell them my brother has been spotted at a party where there is an abundance of alcohol.  Mom demands the address.  She goes with Dad to the party.  Mom at a kegger!!  You don’t get it, she’s not a MILF, she’s not even five feet tall.  Her hair is permed because Koreans were really in to perms for a while.  I can only guess she was clutching her purse to her side because that’s how she walks.  She goes rambling through the party asking every kid she passes if their parents know what they’re doing.  She calls out my brother’s name in case anyone was wondering who she was looking for.  She passes a large pyramid of emptied beer cans and yells “Beer!  No good!”  then swipes her hand across the bottom like a ninja before heading out the door, a path of topped cans in her wake.  

So my older sister Sasha is coming to town.  She's bringing my brother Sam's oldest kid with her.  Nick is five and is coming for his break from New York to destroy everything he sees in LA.  Sasha  doesn't know about George and I.  Sam doesn't know.   Nobody in my family knows.  George and I sort of discussed it and decided that we would tell everyone down the line once we were actually getting divorced.  WTF does that mean, we're broken up right?  I guess we're both a) holding on to some hope that the other will "come to their senses" or b) we're too chicken to tell our family because of the dramatic fall out or c) all of the above.  If I tell Sasha,  she will tell my mom. 

Here's the deal with my mom.  Before Le Kid was born, before I even got pregnant, I was at work one day between clients and got a text from Sasha.  "MOM HAS CANCER"  followed by:   "colon, Stage III," and my personal favorite:  "six months to live."  I know, right?  Thanks Sasha. That's exactly how you break devastating news to someone.  I called my mom who answered the phone in a forced cheery tone.

Mom:  Oh hi Frankie, how you doing?
Frankie:  Mom!  I just got a text from Sasha!  She said you have cancer!!
Mom:  Oh... yeah?
Frankie:  yes!
Mom:  Oh...well….I guess she right.
Frankie:  Mom, what is going on?!  What do you mean?!
Mom:  Well, I was having stomach problem, like sree weeks I couldn't go basroom.  You know sometimes I drink milk and then I can go basroom, but I just couldn't go, so Daddy said, go see  doctor and doctor said oh, you gotta get  cat scan.  He walk me over to get my cat scan, then after  cat scan, he walk me over to  hospital. 
Frankie:  And he said you have cancer?
Mom:  I have tumor.  It like remon.
Frankie:  What?
Mom: Remon.
Frankie:  What is  Remon?
Mom:  Size of a lremon.  In the colon.
Frankie:  La...La mom.  Lemon.
Mom:  LaRemon.
Frankie:  When did this happen?  When did the doctor tell you this?
Mom:  Oh…about yesterday.
Frankie:  Sasha said you have six months to live, what is she talking about?
Mom:  Oh yeah…uh…..plobabry.  
Frankie:  What do you mean??
Mom:  They found some lresions on liver, that mean it metastasize (she said that perfectly!) and you can't control it.  They going to operate and take out tumor, but you know, that one means it already spread to all my body plobabry.
Frankie:  Mom. 

I started bawling. She was crying quietly on the other line.

Mom:  Oh Frankie, I be all right.  
Frankie:  So they're going to operate?
Mom:  Yeah, tomorrow.
Frankie:  Ok, I'll fly down tonight or tomorrow morning.
Mom:  Oh no! Don't come!
Frankie:  What?  Of course I'm coming!
Mom:  No, don't come now.  You too busy.  Come in six months when I reary dying.
Frankie:  As opposed to now when you're just sort of dying?
Mom:   You got to take care of George.
Frankie:  What does George have to do with this?  He's fine!  You're crazy, I'm coming!
Mom:  He be lonely without you.  What he gonna eat?

My parents don’t know that we are separated and they will never know.  You see, I’m Korean and if you separate, then you might as well throw yourself off a bridge.  Or have a video of yourself taking a shit go viral because that would be the equivalent.  To top it off, as you can see, mom has cancer.  Stage three.  Seven years ago she went into surgery with the prospect of living six months.  After surgery they thought maybe she would hang on for three years.  It’s been seven years and she still has the energy to yell about how messy my house is, how messy my hair is or to freak out over the fact that I voted for Obama when the debt is… etc.  In any case, she has enough energy to yell at me and I want to keep it that way.   After she was diagnosed was when my brother and I started trying to get pregnant.  No, not together.   It was a race to have a baby for a bunch of reasons – I was getting older, feeling my mom slip away from me made me want new life  and I wanted her to meet my child even if she was going to briefly hold it with feeble dying arms.  I had a baby then my brother had one and mom lives on to yell at us and we love it.  

I don't know about you, but music is a must for me.  It doesn't heal me, but it's my friend, sitting there, chiming in in just the right way.  I listen to everything and when I do, I hear  every instrument, every ding of a cymbal, every beautiful crack when a singer strives to reach something higher than she was meant to.  

I survived high school through the use of mixed tapes.  You know - when passing along music meant sitting for hours with a double cassette recorder, really thinking about the order, how the person you were passing it on to would be taking it all in, about what each song meant to you.  You really felt something about it and you put yourself in there somewhere.  Every mixed tape I received was a magical gift and when I listened to them, I could feel a part of the giver in there.   

When I was eight, I was sitting at our card table in the living room doing my homework.  My brother Sam, who was three walked up to me and stood about a foot away.  I smiled at him.  He pulled down his pants and started peeing on my leg.  Years later when I was in college, he mailed me a mixed tape, scrawled on the label at the top were the words, "I PISS ON YOUR KNEE."  It was mostly New Order, Cowboy Junkies, Velvet Underground.  I pictured him with his asymmetrical haircut rummaging through his collection, cuing up the tape over and over, writing the playlist in his uneven handwriting in the liner.  I pictured him searching for a bubble envelope, I pictured him writing my college address on it, then asking my mom to drive him to the post office.  That's how you share music.

And George is back.  Heavy heavy.  A cordial but frosty household.  Without the cordial part.  Is this really my life?  It feels so surreal like a Bergman film.  Almost Lars Von Trier-ish except for the sex and nudity.   I am trapped here with George.  I can't leave because Le Kid is my responsibility.  George can't leave because, well, he just can't seem to.   I guess he has no place to stay.  I want to say "go stay with all those folks you hung out with in lieu of hanging out at home with me and Le Kid, go be with them, go be jolly and good George with them, go post of Facebook and Twitter where peeps can see how clever you are."  Where are they now?  Thought so.

Guys with good hair are so fucking entitled..  Ask yourself:  are they actually handsome or do they just have a lot of hair?  

I hope some day George is  humbled by a receding hairline.  You think your good head of hair entitles you to juvenile behavior?  Go ahead, try it bald  and see where you get.  

So George left for a few days.  Ahhh.  Le Kid and I hung out with friends all weekend - went to the zoo, went hiking, planted some things, went to the farmer's market, played chess. We had  lots of snuggles.  It's sort of like all our other weekends - no George in sight.  Sometimes he would make a cameo for meals, but much of the time he seemed glum about it.   No negativity.  No heaviness.  Just friends who  I love.   And Le Kid, who is made of fairy dust.  When I think of him, that he is healthy and happy and safe, I wonder how I can focus on the pathetic shit so much.   I should be grateful every day and I don't mean that in a shitty yoga teacher kind of way.  I really mean it.  

 Do I miss George? No, I don’t.  I miss the thought of having another person there.  A partner.  But it’s not like he was a partner really.  He paid for and still does pay for things.  He is a patron of St. Frankie.   But he was in no way otherwise engaged with us.   I’ve had relationships before with kind, present people.  People who wanted to partner with me.  I just didn’t want that then.   I wanted something challenging and difficult didn't I?  I wanted to win someone over.   In the end, it was stupid.   And George is not a bad person.  In fact, he's a good person.  If you met him at a bar, you'd want to know him.  He's a shitty husband but a great person.  Does that make sense?  Those are the worlds of our mutual friend LEM:  Great guy, shitty husband.  

George just told me he’s leaving on a business trip today for a few days.  I don’t know why that pisses me off.  It’s not like we’re together - he’s just crashing here.  He doesn’t have to give me ample warning when he’s not going to be here, does he? But fuck me, I'm still in marriage mode.  It would be nice for him to let Le Kid know he's going away.   Ugh!!  Now is the time for him to be super organized.  To communicate and show me I was "plain ol' wrong" about him - but instead he’s stickin' it to me over and over again.  And I'm reacting like a four year old.  I hate myself.

Want to know the truth?  I think he doesn’t love me anymore and on some level, whether conscious or not, is making choices that make it impossible for me to stay with him because he's too chicken to pull the plug.   I think he subconsciously sabotaged our relationship.  I’m not saying I’m an angel through all this.  I am just saying, he sent me these subtle and not so subtle messages that basically told me that I could feed him and look after our child, give him three put ups a day but other than that, I should buzz off. 

I’ve been through a lot of relationships – George is difficult.  He’s difficult but is he worth it?  He’s not.  I’m difficult.  Well, I’m not.  Well, am I?  Yes and I’m worth it.  Wait, am I?  YES, I know I am.  And I’m not that difficult – I’m just sort of saying I’m difficult because it’s uncool for me to say he’s difficult without me saying that I’m difficult too.  But I’m not – really I’m not.  And even if I was – the  level of care I’m capable of is worth it.  The amount of love and connection I offer is worth it.  The language I want to develop with another person is deep and full of joy.  Totally worth it.  George doesn’t go that deep for another person.  His self-involvement gets in the way.  Other self-involved people may not notice. Or other people who feel desperate may shrug it off.  But I want the chance to live a relationship to the fullest.  And if not, I’m ok with cats.  I can’t have sex with a cat – I know that.  That’s not legal.  

I’m at a party and again, it’s at Sarah’s apartment.   By this time I’ve learned on the most part to stop chugging punch before eating so I’m all good.  It’s winter and I’m adding my vintage moth eaten red pea coat to the top of the pile growing on Sarah’s bed.   Inches from the peak of this mountain of jackets, lying on the bed, is George.  It’s been over a year since that night when I threw up.  Since then I had moved on, released George from my mind.  I had a wildly romantic nine month fling with Ludo, a Russian romantic and often gotten together with my on and off again boyfriend, Cal. Let’s just say, I was busy with my own shit.  But I see George and catch a flash of Animal Architects sitting on my shelf.  The only problem is George’s arms are pinned down up above his head by the woman straddling him -  slender, tall,  blonde and thankfully wearing a loud blue taffeta dress.  Her face is up close to his and they are both laughing.  Neither of them notice me walking out.  

My ring.  I’m still wearing my it.  I’m not totally ready to take it off.   As of today, George is still wearing his. The one on George’s finger isn’t the original– it’s Ring 3.0.    He lost Ring 1 years ago when he took it off to properly moisturize his hands at the end of a business flight.  Who the fuck does that?  Who takes their wedding ring off to moisturize their hand while they're on a plane?  He got a replacement, then lost that one in a hotel room.   I didn’t think about it too much at the time, but I guess it does seem a little strange.  

So like a pedophile going around the neighborhood announcing his guilt, I call my friends one by one and tell them that we are split because I can see it’s actually happening now.  Part of me was holding out I guess, not believing it is really happening.  Some of them come over and sit and nod while I bawl it out.  Some of them cry too.   I think this is how it’s supposed to happen.   Right?  I’m supposed to be sad all the time.  I’m supposed to be a mess who has a glass a wine before talking to her kid.  I’m supposed to break down with strangers and friends alike. How much more of this until I pull my shit together?  Over ten years gone.  But gone? The feeling of uncoupling has been there for so long, since the birth of Le Kid, but this was the wrong way to do it.  In a fight, in contempt and in anger.  As sloppy as it gets.