I sent a card.

I don’t know if it will make any difference.

I don’t know if it will bring any comfort to her family, to have a random stranger who was in love with their daughter, pick a card, paste a stamp. Cards are stupid, but it’s what one does.

I hated every card I could find, on the racks at my local CVS, but starting from a blank page was more than I could manage. I don’t even remember what it said, but at least there was no odious religion.

Mostly it was an enclosure for something I typed out – my handwriting is awful – telling them who I was (the friend who once worked at Apple, who helped them with my employee discounts), that I am heartbroken at the loss. That she was my best friend.

I gave them my contact info and asked if they might tell me anything; at least about burial or cremation. It’s not knowing, I think, that makes this so fucking difficult for me. To have her gone with only three words – she passed away – and nothing else.

I chose a Disney stamp, because I know Disney was important to her family. anything to earn goodwill.

I mailed it today. It will be in Florida in a day or two, maybe by the weekend. I do not know when or if it will be opened. So I wait and hope I hear something – text, email, call, something.

I tell myself not to expect anything. But the gaping hole where she used to be needs some little thing to fill it.

I’m obsessing over her.

I can’t stop. I can’t stop thinking about her death. I know  next to nothing, so I imagine scenarios.

each thing I imagine is horrifying.

I finally broke down and cried today, real tears, wracking sobs. It did not help; it did not make it feel any more real.

My mind won’t construct a world without her in it;mI keep looking for on twitter, bsky or facebook. I keep thinking there’s been a mistake.

I miss her so fucking much.

I’m useless. I can’t work,  can’t sleep. I’m pretending I’m ok, because no one would understand.

I don’t know how people cope with this. I’m undone by it.

i feel like this will destroy me, and i kind of want it to. Oblivion sounds better than hole she left at the center of me.

I resent the way you make me like myself

When we talked the first time, she quoted, or sang, a line from Mike Doughty’s song Rising Sign.

I’ve seen 

The dangers of your rising sign, 

But I swear 

I’d like to drink the fuel straight from your lighter

It’s all inside the wrist, 

It’s all inside the way you time it 

I resent the way you make me like myself

She said it was how she felt when we started an email dialog.

She mailed me about a story I wrote, which she’d been asked to approve for publication on a site she managed.

She read it with low expectations. But when she mailed me, it was with entirely something else. I’d made her feel something, both as a writer, and as a person, which she hadn’t expected. I got to her, inside the armor, an arrow to the heart feeling.

We exchanged a dozen or more emails over a couple of days. And then she said she had to stop, that it’d gone too far already. Not sexually, but emotionally. She’d gone from liking my writing, to liking me, to something – something more than just liking, which she wasn’t ready to have happen.

I’m good at this. I backed up, told her I could stay in safe territory, but I liked her, and didn’t want to stop talking. The dialog was too good to just end.

That was it. My knowing how to stay outside a boundary, allowed her to extend, then retract, certain self-protections. By honoring the boundary, I removed it.

She wanted to call me then – she was a phone girl. always, phone first, writing second. She’d done voice work for a living, did for many years.

I looked forward to a call, even though I’m not a phone guy. She was too funny, too clever, I knew a call would be fun.

I expected a tough broad voice, not the velvet teen seductress I heard on the phone. Not that she was young, but she had what I always think of as an ‘is your mother home’ voice – the one where callers always used to assume you’re the kid, even when you’re a grown adult.

Her name was Pam. If you knew her, you may have known her with some other name. She went by PJ, only friends and family knew that.

She made me awkward, at first. I liked her so much, I was afraid I’d say something stupid, or start to take the conversation in a dirty direction, though as it turned out that would never, ever have been a problem. 

She quoted the line from Rising Sign then, told me that’s how my writing made her feel. 

My nerves jump like a boiling pan, 

Like a skillet full of oil spits rattling on the burner, 

When I stumble onto the thought 

Of the match you lit and dropped 

And set the dial to slow yearn

Can I spell it out? 

Should I spell it out?

I’d asked her, earlier in email, about those strange places that are unexpected erogenous zones – she’d said the inside of her wrist. The line from Mike’s song, It’s all inside the wrist, was where her brain started down that track, connected the song to me and my writing.  

It’s all inside the wrist. It made me want to touch her hands, to kiss her palms. I still want that. 

That was 25 years ago, that first conversation. Our email exchange started in late November 2003; I still have those emails, saved every one. Three days later, that first phone call. 

By the middle of December she had my heart, and I had hers, both of us knowing that was forever, no matter that she lived 3000 miles from me and that for far to many reasons to write here, she couldn’t ever meet face to face.

It turns out that forever meant 7571 days; she passed away, of some surgical complication I have no details of, on April 20, 2025. 

That’s how long she loved me. 

How long I’ll love her, is a number tallied only when I am in the ground, so we don’t know how long my forever will be. 

The story that started this – a novella about a girl who was unattainable, a man whose desire was so intense it almost killed him, and in the end, did kill her, and and an ache that will never go away, was written before I met her. That novella, and the girl at the heart of it, was named Wanton, because I had a dream where I met a girl with that name. 

A year or two ago, I re-wrote much of that story, but there’s one more change it needs now, which I’ll make as soon as I can do it without tears. 

It will be a dedication:

For PJ. 

You will always be my Wanton

find me in the sky

Ok, auto-post-to-bsky seems like it works, though I don’t think it’s inserting a link to my blog post yet.

For the 0.5% of people who may actually still follow this blog (what’s wrong with you), I’m mostly done with twitter (for obvious reasons) and am more active now on bsky, which so far seems to have it’s head screwed on correctly, at least as far as not being run by an insane far-right fascist (that just got autocorrect ted to racist, which is also true).

karlelvis.bsky.social if you want to come find me.

Meanwhile if I’m. not writing, I need to be playing guitar, instead of vaguely avoiding both things.

no titles, no time

I keep telling myself I’ll post here more, but that requires – hell, I dunno. Something.

I can’t seem to sit still long enough anymore to string more sentences together than would fit in an original-lenghth tweet.

Add to that – well, let’s not start on politics yet, shall we? I might wind up on a watchlist.

In any case, this is really just a test post to see if a new bsky plugin works, but test test test is so fucking boring.

Maybe I’ll have more to say, what, tomorrow?

I have ideas for things, I just can’t. sit. still.

#moronosphere

Gin and Kisses

I went to leave a comment on a post by the lovely Bree Leto (https://secretthoughtswithin.com) but she has comments turned off, alas.

But I thought I’d say here, what I would have said there.

I used to drink a lot of gin, particularly with one friend. I wrote, in this blog and elsewhere, about gin, about martinis, about sex.

I have a line in my novella, and again, the piece Bree posted made me think of this, and about the taste of non on someone’s lips.

My line was:

When I kissed her, her mouth tasted of gin. She’d tossed one back, was sipping another. She looked fucking good in a towel. I kissed her, realized I’d never seen her naked. Kissed her again. I’m not usually a gin guy, but she tasted amazing.

Bree’s piece is below. It’s beautiful. You should check out her blog, it’s all beautiful.

Gin Kiss

With gin on my tongue
I head off to find you
because my body remembers
it’s better when my skin is on yours
and your hands tangle in my hair as you taste me

Come, join me on the bed
change my breathing
and watch my flushed cheeks fade
as I fall asleep naked beside you
–Bree Leto

Yeah, sure, soon

I keep trying to come back and update.

Good fuckin’ intentions and all that.

It’s weird how I seem to be doing almost nothing, and yet feel busier than ever.

Dogs, guitars, home, health, mumble, mumble.

More coming, I swear, because why even have this thing if I don’t write?

ADHD is a hell of a thing – how did I cope with it so well for so many years without even knowing I was doing so?

At least I look good.

semi-yearly what the hell am I doing post

I used to write every day, or at least try to write every day. I used to strive to keep up with, if not everything in my life (in a classic journal sense), at least, or major events and strongly held opinions.

Today, I have to look back and thing, where the fuck was I, since I can’t even begin to remember which upheaval I was in the middle of last time I put (virtual) pen to (virtual) paper.

…checking back, I find it was July of last year, when last I updated. SO that would have been just after I left my employer of 23 years, under technically voluntary, if not exactly positive, circumstances.

Wow, a lifetime ago, kind of, and hardly any time at all.

I’m not gonna spend of bunch of time catching up, but, at least a little bit is appropriate, I think.

I spent last summer acting retired – some travel, some projects, some just-not-doing-anytyhing in a good way. My dogs loved this, if they got a vote, i’d just be a full time dog-cuddler, with excursions to the beach regularly. And i’d be ok with that.

By fall, I decided I needed more time to effectively plan retirement, so causally thougyt about going back to work. I uplaoded a fresh resume on linked (and wow, isn’t linkedin stupid).

Almost immediately, I got contacted by a recruiter major social media company who also have a sideline in VR gear. I interviewed once, for 1/2 hour, and then was offered a full time contract gig; what I do is specialized, fortunately, and it’s hard for companies to find people with the mix of skills I have (a combination of IT, HPC/batch  queuing, engineering management, and user support).

went back to work the first week of December.

Honestly, it’s been incredibly gratifying to have a company value my skills and experience; my last employer utterly failed to see what i’m good at (despite be being great at it), but instead focused only on what I wasn’t good at, and which I officially didn’t do, given my job description.

There’s a reason people hate big corporations; corporations are fucking stupid.

Meanwhile, over the summer and fall (and now winter), I made up for lost time in terms of getting tattooed. I’ve kind of lost count of the appts, but recreating, two pieces on my calves, four on my chest (i’m now at the gap-filler point on my chest, just finding things to put in small open spaces), three on my neck, one on the insides of my fingers (L A S T  C A L L), finished up a long-ago started piece on my stomach, a big piece on my side, and probably at least one more i’m forgetting.

I’ll have to put together a big post separately with an inventory of all that, but too much headache right now (and I need somebody to take photos for me, it’s too hard to do myself, even with a selfie-stand with ring light).

Meanwhile, i’m gradually re-imposing order on my life, which has been a long, long process, and will continue to be a long process. Forward motion is everything, though.

 

 

 

Balance, later

It’s been a weird year.

(how long has it been since it hasn’t? I don’t know that I remember that far back)

HST once said “It never got weird enough for me.”

I once would have agreed with that sentiment, but honestly these last few years, i’m it being weird. Weird isn’t as much fun as it used to be.

IN the last year i’ve seen such fun things as:

  • being threatened with job termination because of a disability accommodation request (and then all the rigamarole surrounding fighting over that)
  • Winning the battle over termination, only to be punch-fucked with a followup threat of termination for under-performance (ie, no matter how good you are, we want you to be a different kind of good)
  • Finding out my adult daughter had a severe drinking problem, and having to sort THAT out (rehab, in an ongoing process)
  • Opting to leave my employer of 23 years when it became obvious I was at an impasse with my management’s view of what I was supposed to be.
  • Dealing with my diabetes and the side effects of a new medication that tends to make me feel really ill, but which has induced significant weight loss.
  • Beginning a job hunt at 61 years of age, in an industry that favors the young, cheap and over-educated.
  • Asking myself if I really want to be doing this, or iof I want to re-set and figure out how to live a different lifestyle for whatever years are left to me.

Weird, as I said.

 

This ain’t all bad, though certainly there’s bad in there. After leaving my job June 1, i’ve done a few things put off for years while I struggled with family issues, tried desperately to be effective at work, and generally put myself second or third in priority. Pre-pandemic, I had accumulated a long list of tattoos I wanted to get, starting with finally tattooing my neck. That all got kiboshed by pandemic, but since I have time now, i’ve finally started to get that moving, including tattoos on neck, collar bone, and calves. I’m basically filling in spaces at this point, while getting ready to do a couple big pieces.

At 61, after a 40+ lb weight loss, i’m finding my skin is finally showing age, so I feel a ticking clock on how much longer i’ll feel like tattoos will look good. There are already spots that no longer feel tattoo friendly (losing weight at 60 is ALSO weird). So i’m hoping to interconnect a lot of smaller pieces with fill-in things.

This post won’t have pictures, but i’ll follow up with them.

I’ve got two appts on the books now, and as soon as I can schedule travel, several more by tattooists in SO Cal.

I’ve also spent a great deal of time getting organized. This includes hacking through years of accumulated stuff (a family that tends toward hoarding present a physical challenge, but i’m finally winning that); i’ve consolidated two stores spaces into one, and FINALLY have my garage back to the point where I can start to remove big racks used to handle all the crap that over-flowed my kids bedrooms when they lived with me.

I’ve begin to travel, at least a bit, though there’s more of that to come, and i’m finally catching up on my own health care, getting stupid but needful tests out of the way.

What I can NOT stand to do, at this point, is be at a desk and near a computer, which has impedes my feeling that  should be writing. I still have a sense of urgency, though it’s not quite clear what is urgent; I feel a ticking clock which tells me not to start things I can’t finish, though in fact I have time to finish things. Only hard physical effort relieves this feeling, so I’ve become a perpetual motion machine until fatigue poleaxes me. Tasks I can do with muscle are getting done, but the ones that need focus – despite my ADHD meds – are being avoided.

Balance eludes me, but I am pursuing it. There are things I want to do that require sitting still; I have two guitar customization projects, not to mention just playing  more. I have paperwork and phone calls that similarly need focus.

But not yet. I’m mot ready for balance, so long as it’s warm outside, and the doors are off my jeep, and the dogs want to go play. Balance tomorrow, maybe.

But I owe myself posts:

  • My new jeep
  • Inventory of new tattoos
  • My fitness and health progress
  • some erotica, because my head is there, if I could just sit down and do it.

Later.

 

 

 

Job Hunt

Well, it’s been a long and interesting ride, but, after 23 years in one of high tech’s leading companies, i’m job hunting.

 

There’s a whole story here to tell, but it’s not gonna get told as yet.

 

Changes happen, for good or ill, and I do tend to land on my feet. Meanwhile if you happen to need an engineering infrastructure person with 30+ years experience, or a batch queue administrator with extensive experience in LSF, Altair Accelerator, and RTDA Network Computer, go have a look at my Linkedin or leave me a comment.