DIJA'S SECOND ACT

Dear Lorenzo, In exactly one week I'll be boarding a flight to Philadelphia to see Cap. Alone. No Mira, no Butters, no girlfriends. No staying at my sister's house where he'd pick me up and take me out, before dutifully dropping me off after our date. No, this time around I'm STAYING AT HIS HOUSE . With him. And his penis. FUCK! (No pun intended.) If there's one thing I've learned in the aftermath it's that everyone grieves differently; there's no right or wrong way to mourn the passing of someone you love but... I certainly took my sweet time, didn't I? I mean, I have friends who lost their partners after I lost you and have since started new and fulfilling relationships. They've moved on.  I , on the other hand, just finished packing up the rest of your old clothes to be donated to the Salvation Army. Five years later. Apparently, I'm in the slow class. The remedial grieving group.  Up until now I couldn't even IMAGINE myself with any...

Dear Lorenzo, It's Thursday, October 21, 12:42 p.m. and today I am going to be brave and tell you a few of the things I've been too scared to say until now. I'm pretty far gone. I had no idea that this was going to happen but... It's happening.  My father was my favorite person on this planet. He gave me James Baldwin and Toni Morrison and Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance and Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party and the Naked Gun and The Marx Brothers and Toscanini's and Mary Chung's and August Wilson and Alvin Ailey and Miles Davis and John Coltrane and Chick Corea and so very many of the best memories of my life. When I walked into Cap's apartment over Labor Day Weekend, all these years later, a part of me felt like I was coming home again. I spent many, MANY years imagining this moment. I loved him for a really long time and even when I realized that I couldn't love him anymore... I loved him still. He is patient and hilarious and too-fucki...

"Hello?" "Hey Dij. Do me a favor and go to your front door." "Cap..." I begin, feeling the still-too-unfamiliar start of a smile ( this smile, the one reserved solely for him ) begin to spread over my face. "Just do it."  I walk to my front door expectantly, having already done this dance a few times since coming home from my Labor Day weekend in Jersey.  "Do you see anything yet?" "Not yet." "There should be an Amazon truck at the corner. Is it there?" "Cap..." "Do you see it?" "Yes." "Okay, call me back after it's been delivered."  "Cap..." "Bye Dij, call me when you get it."  Click. This is what it's like now. Phone calls and text messages and Marco Polos all day long. Fun surprises via Amazon. He is sweet and funny and raunchy and fucking brilliant. I NEVER saw this coming but... I really like him a lot.

Dear Lorenzo, When I was 18 years old I was dumped by my high school sweetheart, sending my world spinning on its axis and my entire sense of self-worth PLUMMETING. It was a despair I'd never before experienced and I had no idea what to do with the pain. One day, during my first summer break home from college, I sat in the living room listening to my parents chatting amiably and without warning, began to SOB. My parents looked on in shock while I ran to the bathroom to pull it together. A few minutes later my father knocked on the door. After allowing me time to cry in his arms, Daddy said something to me I've never forgotten. "You're going to get through this, Baby, you're going to be okay. Living well is the best revenge. Never forget that." And I never have. It remains one of the best pieces of advice I've ever been given.  (Side note, many years later I shared this story with my sister who replied, "Fuck THAT . Daddy was wrong about that one, REVE...

Dear Lorenzo, It's Friday, August 13th, 8:09 p.m. and I'm in bed, listening to music and half-heartedly watching an episode of BBQ Brawl on Food Network. I'm exhausted.  For the past five days I've gotten an average of four hours of sleep per night and I've finally figured out why. I haven't smoked since Sunday. That may not seem like a big deal to you but to someone who's smoked damn near every day since the pandemic began... It's a big fucking deal. For the past few months I've been telling anyone who'd listen that I was going to cut back. I'd make half-assed, haphazard plans to stop smoking that I knew damn well I wasn't going to keep. And by the end of each workday my black ass would be out on the back porch, blazing up.  But on Sunday night I just decided to do it, to detox for thirty days. And after months of agonizing about how hard this was going to be... So far I haven't missed it at all. Not the weed, not the alcohol, not ev...

Dear Lorenzo, It's 12:28 p.m. August 9th and I'm sitting down, eating my lunch (a big salad with blue cheese, walnuts, and two tablespoons of light balsamic dressing; only 10 WW points total!) listening to Tank and talking to you. The listening to Tank is the problem. I've been listening to Tank since my I'm-Ready-To-Move-Forward Memorial Day meltdown and haven't bothered listening to anything else since.  I'm stuck. I've been stuck. This is what I do when things are really bad. I freeze.  When I am hurt (or scared, which is the case here) I do my best to keep everything in my life exactly the same as it ever was. Monday through Friday I wake up, workout, put in my eight hours a day as a contract administrator and my twenty-four hours a day as Amira's mama. When work ends I walk my dog, cook and clean and watch TV before falling into a deep, Benadryl-maintained sleep for the rest of the evening. And my weekend routine is just as predictable. I clean my ...

 "I wish I'd met you one year and one fuckboy from now." I told Captain America in a phone call we had this afternoon. (He's fine as hell but super sweet and ridiculously, old-school polite; much like my favorite of all the Avengers, Captain America.)  "WHAT!?" He laughed nonplussed. "What did you just say?" "I said 'I wish I'd met you one year and one fuckboy from now!' " I repeated, a bit indignantly. "Okay, you have to explain that to me." I took a deep breath before beginning the conversation I'd realized only hours before that we needed to have. "You've come back into my life, in this way, just as I'm starting to bounce back from the worst tragedy I've ever experienced. And God forbid , but I might be entering another 'worst tragedy I've ever experienced' phase pretty soon so I am going to FUCK THIS UP COMPLETELY, I already know that. That's why I wanted the next guy I got in...