Bottoming and Returning
“Sometimes it snows in April, Sometimes I feel so bad” - Prince
I hid from the cold in the Chase bank on the corner, pretending I needed cash.
“April, I really want to say good riddance to 2015 with you at Slo ‘Mo but I might hop back in an Uber home,” I texted.
“Oh, I feel you. But just wait, I promise I’m almost there. It will be fun to dance this year off.”
If April can brave this then I have no excuse. Plus it’s the queer party in Chicago, Slo Mo’, and it’s their first New Year’s bash.
April retrieved me from Chase and we made our way to the Chicago Athletic Association, a Venetian Gothic tower of a building on Michigan Avenue. It was an exclusive men’s club from 1893 to 1972. Tonight the queers were taking over.
At some point in the evening we managed to secure prime selfie real estate in front of the wall-sized mirror in the bathroom.
“Let’s get a photo.” April said as grabbed my hand. April adjusted her silk white floor length dress and looked directly into the mirror. I fixed my phoenix-colored bob, pretended to do a little dance and looked down at the floor.
“It’s perfect.”
We danced until it was 2016 plus a couple of hours. As we made our exit, April was stopped by some friends. I was looking at the ornate wood ceiling when I realized there was one person not talking to April. They were looking at me.
“I’m C.”
“I’m Andrea.”
Shit, another C. Maybe this one will redeem the name.
“I like how you sparkle.”
“Oh yeah I think the glitter is coming off the dress.”
“I wasn’t talking about the dress.”
“Oh.”
This C felt safe.
I wondered if my body was ready.
“Me missing Brother Mike like something heavy, my heart just wasn’t ready”- No Name
A Saturn return first occurs around 28. Saturn doles out the toughest love because:
“Wherever you find Saturn in your birth chart you are unlikely to be like, ‘That’s chill. That’s easy for me. Everything is nice here,’ even if you have a lovely, happy, well-adjusted Saturn. Saturn is work. Saturn has to do with the lessons we learn over time. Saturn requires effort. Saturn requires patience, and Saturn loves to hand you your ass.” (from Jessica Lanyadoo)
No wonder 28 and the end of 2014 nearly took me out.
Five days after my birthday I opened my phone to a text from Jamila “Hey, is Brother Mike OK?”
Me: “I think so, we were supposed to get dinner last night but I forgot to text. Why?”
Jamila: “People are saying he’s not OK.”
Me: “What do you mean? What is not OK?”
I call him three times. I text him five times.
Jamila: “They’re saying he died.”
Elizabeth carried me out of my office, a closet in the corner of the high school with little heat. I don’t remember how I got home or what the December air felt like. I remember sitting across from Jamila in mostly silence for three hours, an untouched sandwich and a million questions between us.
By the time I crashed on my bed the only thing that I could fixate on, the only thing that revived my body to red, hot anger, was to write the most hateful email to the person who had violated my body. Our situationship ended, according to me, a few weeks prior.
“I am angry at so many things. A great man who was a dear friend is gone and a piece of shit like you still breathes”
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I never sent it. I never deleted it either. I turned it into a cry for help exchanged with the queer femmes in my life.
“I didn’t share my happiness with him, he doesn’t deserve my anger.”
A month later my mother called to tell me my grandfather, Big Al whom we called papa or she called pop, had died. I knew my papa when he’d mostly gotten sober and transformed into a doting elder. I only saw flashes of what pre-dated me as he got older. When the dementia began to rewind his mind, the cruelty returned.
When his neighbor called the police to do a wellness check on him, he’d said he had no children so the state took him and his house. We found him in a home, softer and confused.
I asked the bus driver to stop and let me out in the middle of the street please.
“Ma, are you all right? I’ll try to get there as soon as I can.”
“I just hope he’s in a better place now.”
“But Ma, how are you doing?”
I wondered what forgiveness feels like after you die.
“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine”- Patti Smith
When 2015 started, I took a vow: no more poets, no more cis penis. Then I clawed (mostly crawled) my way out. I didn’t do it alone.
It is observed that “when wild elephant females reunite after a separation, they greet each other with great ceremony.” This reunion includes tears followed by pissing and shitting out of delight.
This sounds familiar.
I hope I never forget how my wild elephants gathered all around me. How all the shit turned to joy.
Blessed be Marissa for making her dad fly me to New York so we could see Patt Smith’s birthday show, for the key necklace engraved with “strength” and the hershey kisses at my doorstep because “it was all the gas station had.”
Blessed be the lesbian-owned shelter, Felines and Canines, for giving me my pocket rocket pit Studs.
Blessed be Kate who mirrored back my “h(e)art, and the enormity of it, and reminded me“the holes happen, . . and how, amidst all this, life keeps popping up wherever you turn around” with a poem.
Blessed be Lisa who moved back home to Chicago just in time.
Blessed be the students and strangers who gifted me a rosary, rose quartz and smoky quartz.
Blessed be the floor to ceiling windows of my Nola Darling meets Sarah Jessica Parker-era solo apartment.
Blessed be the nurse who took the time to apply lidocaine before inserting the catheter for my monthly bladder installations.
Blessed be Betty who tattooed lilacs and peonies on my hands because my grandmother grew them.
I wondered what would grow from all that was poured into me.
“We’re so glad you have come back
Every living lion will lay in your lap” — Cat Power
Tomorrow is the 8th anniversary of Mike’s death. Today I sit across from Mia over zoom as we debrief the second year of our transformative justice training. As our conversation comes to a close Mia asks “So, what do you think — what roles do you want to be called into for 2023?”
“I think I could run the accountability support team for the harmer.”
“I could see that.”
A month later I made it to my fifth consecutive Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA) meeting in Nashville. We read a section on ACA bottoms in the Red Book, the program’s fellowship text written anonymously, collectively and published in 2006. A paragraph on page 68 turned out to be the missing piece of a puzzle I thought I’d finished. After taking turns reading, attendees (aka fellow travelers) can take 3–4 minutes to share.
“I’ll share. I’m Andrea.”
“Hi, Andrea.”
“I am really sitting with this line ‘the level of pain that adult children can tolerate without admitting they have hit a bottom is astonishing. . . we have learned to endure a colossal amounts of abuse. . .’ because I realize what I shared last week as a bottom wasn’t the first one. I’m realizing that the first, big bottom I can remember happened around 2014/2015. . .”
ACA bottoms are described as a “soul wound” with meaning. When we hit bottom we may obsess over a person or behavior instead of feeling the pain. Embracing the bottom means we “give up, ask for help and accept the help offered.”
What a basic bitch queer for having a bottom at the start of my Saturn return.
I wonder if Saturn helped write the Big Red Book.
