Dear Vincent,
Happy New Year! You will be so
thrilled to know that in addition to weekly penetrative masturbation, my list
of 19 for 2019 includes sending you my very last email. After that, perhaps one time
per year is acceptable. Maybe I am almost ready. Maybe not.
[dot dot dot, by the way, I
also wished Vincent a happy Solstice and I told him I had a dream that he had a
shaggy hippie haircut and this is not something I would not recommend. .]
I got on the podcast, Grownups
Read Things They Wrote as Kids. It is my memoirs from when I was fifteen and the
conclusion makes me cry every other time I read it. Hearing myself is neither
deeply empowering nor deeply embarrassing. The host asked me if I had advice
for my teenage self and before calling in, I wrote out my answer on fuschia
post-it’s.
Grown-ups Read Thing They Wrote As Kids
[dot dot dot, I ordered Vincent’s
medical records of my appointments and they came on Tuesday, December 4, 2018 and
in the records, Vincent calls me Mme. and he speaks of us doing a bunch of
things together in the première personne au pluriel, for example Concluons,
Tramons, Co-regulons, and and Co-regulons means, let us co-regulate, and my
favourite part of the records was when he referred to my 2017 New Year’s Eve Oblivion Fuck til
you get rug burns from the carpet as empty calories in brackets (calories
vides).]
The Fushia post-it says,
I am both humbled and a bit
heartbroken by my teenage self’s enormous expectations for perfect healing. I
love that part of myself who yearns for life to be deep and meaningful and
spectacular. To my teenage self, I would say, keep your courage and sincerity
and don’t give up. Try not to measure your so-called successes and
failures.
Though you will struggle for a
long time, perhaps even your whole life, you will get to make beautiful
connections and meaningful experiences and these bear more weight than the
voice in your head that says, you’re a broken disaster and that your life is a
series of mistakes. Bam.
Maybe one day there will be a
podcast called, Grownups Read Things They Wrote to Their Therapists and
Grownups Read Things They Wrote As Cleaners.
My friend Benjamin Hunting is
coming over tonight to even out my crooked DIY haircut for my pragmatic and
optimistic bestie’s wedding.
Love you! Happy New Year!
Best wishes as always, Erica.
Tuesday January 8, 2019
Subject: [dot dot dot Maybe I
should get my clients to sign a contract that they will fire me within the next
year, forcing me to go to funeral school, or join CSIS, or become a nurse, or a
sexologist. Or maybe I can become the next Marie Kondo except I am likely not
tiny and sweet and adorable enough]
Dear Vincent,
On January 1, 2018, I wrote on
my wall,
My goals in life are,
Creativity, Service,
Buy a new roll of masking tape.
deep love for all of my cells,
a clear and cleared and generous heart, what is a cervical orgasm? Ultimately,
I pulled off the creativity and the service. Nailed the masking tape. The deep
cellular love was a little hit or miss, as was the clear and cleared heart, but
I would say my heart was mainly generous. What is a cervical orgasm? This
remained a question, and so a no-go. Overall, would you say I pulled off 43% of
my goals in life? Possibly 52-63% depending on the generosity of my heart.
Love, Erica.
Subject: Dear Vincent, You are
my jardin secret
Dear Vincent,
You are my jardin secret.
Except I also send these emails to my sister, Maxine, and sometimes Benjamin Hunting.
[dot dot dot, one time I had a lucid dream about Vincent, but unfortunately he
evaporated almost immediately. Another time I told Benjamin Hunting, maybe I don't need to eat out all my feelings. Plus something about how I might make an
excellent sexologist]
The poet Mary Oliver died this
week.
My favourite Mary Oliver words
are,
'Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this
too, was a gift.' And,
“You don’t have to be good.”
And I remember one Friday
afternoon last winter, weeping pretty hard underneath my pink and purple polka
dot duvet, and I’d taken out Mary Oliver’s book of essays from the library, and
though I never finished the book, I remember the sentences,
“You must not ever stop being
whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your
life.”
These words, exactly the truth,
and yet I stayed weeping under the covers. Maybe I fell asleep. Eventually my pragmatic
and optimistic bestie phoned, and convinced me to come meet her at Indigo,
repeating Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, all the way there. And it was about -20
degrees and every few fucks, I laughed and every few fucks I cried, and at
Indigo, I melted down on the expensive Casper bed that they have diagnol to the
kids section and the magazines, and all the pillows and candles and scarves
that they have to sell because not enough people buy books anymore. And the
Faraway Polyamorous Client walked by with his son, and a gorgeous blonde woman who was not his extra hot girlfriend. He said hi and gave me a hug.
[dot dot dot, I started to
interpret my dreams on the advice of the ludicrous bastard Jordan Peterson, of
all people. I don’t know much about Jordan Peterson, except I heard he is a
ludicrous bastard and I could not stand what he had to say about transpeople]
On Sunday, I tried making a
FetLife profile, but then my dashboard was bombarded by enormous tits and asses
and impossibly waxed vaginas, and I bailed. I tried Bumble for the seventeenth
time. My profile says,
Looking for my next beautiful
blogging fairy tale. Acute sense of smell.
Mots préférés: effervescence,
exigeant, multiple, humanize, vaguely, impossible, liberation.
I forgive myself for not being
Lena Dunham.
My other favourite word that I
forgot, is perpetuate. So far I asked two people if they liked the snow, and
this seems to be a dealbreaker.
All over Facebook, people are
quoting Mary Oliver’s sentence, What will you do with your one precious life?
and obviously I am thinking I am probably not doing the best job.
One time in India, my temporary
gay travel buddy Hugo and I rented a scooter, and we went for a ride outside a
little town in Rajasthan called Bundi, and we found a beautiful waterfall, and
standing under the waterfall, I thought about Simon jumping, but I was not sad
and I convinced Hugo that we should go swimming in our underwear and as I stood
under the waterfall, the words, I am so free, came into my head. About seven
seconds later we had to swim back to shore because a bunch of monkeys were
stealing our bags and our clothes.
Happy Full Moon!
Love, Erica.
Monday, January 28, 2019
Subject: Life is a musical
quest you’re supposed to dance to
Dear Vincent,
Got cervical orgasms on the
brain, and that’s probably not the best spot for them.
On
Sunday, January 20, at approximately 1:47 P.M., I embarked upon my third daily
7-10 k walk in a row, and I was wearing one layer of pyjamas, and one layer of
enormous sweatpants, and I hadn’t showered, and there was a snowstorm, and I’d spent
the entire morning watching a half shit half magnificent Netflix documentary about
the perils of root canals, and swiping every male face on Bumble between the
ages of 33 and 53, and none of them was you, and none of them seemed to be
excellent candidates for my next beautiful blogging fairy tale. For example,
they sought someone chill and didn’t want anyone who took stuff and themselves
and their lives too seriously. Or for example, they smoked, and/or wanted
children. Or maybe they summarized their philosophy as, “Life is a musical
quest you’re supposed to dance to.” Or “5’4 is a must. Taller girls please
abstain.” Or “I heart curves.”
Approximately
1.7 km in, I found myself weeping in the foyer of the TD bank, even though this
is not my bank, and I have plenty of cash hidden in a jar [dot dot dot, I
landed four shoe boxes for the folding workshop, and these are meant to mimic
civilized dresser drawers], and I mourned the waste of the day slash my life
and the endless long weekend, and I took it all so seriously. The Dead Inside
Man was not around to hear my meltdown and so I walked down Mont Royal to
[dot dot dot, And anyways, the
best thing that can happen to you is not necessarily falling deeply and madly
in love and getting your brains fucked and then cuddled on the couch until all
your cells dissolve.]
My
wall now says, “Listen to the sound of your dealbreakers,” and the colours are
two shades of blue, plus bright red.
Got
cervical orgasms on the brain, and this likely is not the best spot for them.
Happy
Monday!
Love,
Erica.
Monday, February 4, 2019
Subject: 47 377
Dear Vincent,
Happy New Moon, and I suppose
also Belated Groundhog Day. So much of my life is Groundhog Day. Do you feel
that way too?
If I had been you last week, I
would have been so proud of me, and not because I consolidated all of the Dear
Vincent emails and blogposts, plus a few deeply embarrassing poems into a Word
document, and the total was 47 377 words. You beat the Married Man by almost 15
000 words, and sometimes the Married Man wrote back.
Now is the season for 6-word
love stories. My six-word love story is, All my friends are super heroes, and
as fate would have it, I am reading a novel by this exact name, which was
written by Andrew Kaufman, who I met once, and the novel is short with a whole
bunch of pictures, though I should mention that in fact, I am a pretty good
reader these days, even if the books do not have any pictures, and if I were a
psychologist, I would recommend that my patients try to become pretty good
readers, since reading makes for a soothing and democratic activity, that tends
to be low in self-loathing.
 |
All My Friends Are Super Heroes,
by Andrew Kaufman
Buy Book Here
Follow Andrew Kaufman on Twitter @several moments |
As fate would have it, the best
super hero that everyone wants to be is Mistresscleanasyougo, and as fate would
have it, this is the super hero who most resembles me.
“The most powerful superhero of
all, the one everyone wishes they were is, Mistresscleanasyougo. At the end of
every day, she folds her clothes. She never leaves scissors on the table, pens
with no ink are thrown in the trash, wet towels are always hung up, dishes are
washed directly after dinner and nothing is left unsaid.” [p. 81, All My Friends Are Super Heroes, 10th Anniversary Edition with extra superheroes, and more pictures! Mistresscleanasyougo wholeheartedly recommends it.]
I put pens with no ink in the
recycling, but this may be wishful thinking. Otherwise, nothing is left unsaid.
My other love story is me and
all of my clients, especially the Self-Mutilating Parrot Family. I love all of
my clients deeply and equally, especially the Self-Mutilating Parrot family.
Happy Monday!
Love, Erica.
I omitted approximately 7.7 threads of my life, plus 4.3 odours, and 11.9 miscellaneous details. Otherwise, nothing is left unsaid. Email me and/or Vincent at the secret email address ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com.
Mistresscleanasyougo
