So she asked it.

"Are you it? Are the big deal, the big shot, the one that everyone talks about?"

"I am the only deal, the only shot, the only thing to talk about."

"That can't be right" she said.

"Why not?"

"You're not enough."

"I am what you make me. You are my god, my creator, my beginning and end. I am yours to build and define."

"Damn. That's a lot of pressure."

"I know, that's what most people try not to think about me too much."

"Well what did her eyes say? Did they look happy?"

"They looked...they looked green."

When I heard the water I rolled over and grabbed her pillow, pressing it hard into my face. I had noticed during our first tumble into bed that her pillow wore a familiar smell. Alone in the dark I wanted to breath in as much of it as I could. I wanted to fill myself up with it.

Logically I know that everyone has a different body chemistry so no two people ever smell exactly the same. Perfume, lotion, soap, all react differently with different people's skin. Knowing that doesn't make the scent any less familiar.

In its original form it was a combination of fruity shampoo, Johnson's baby lotion, and Irish Spring soap on the skin of my first lover. During the months we were companions we spent most of our time in bed. Opposite schedules, different outside interests and the abject poverty of being two college students left little time, interest or cash for much else. So our days and nights together were spent on a mattress in the corner of her bedroom, in her shitty third floor apartment.

At 18 the fact that I was having sex was nearly as exciting as the actual sex itself. Afterwards she'd fall asleep almost immediately and I'd watch her, unable to sleep because of the excitement still running through me. When she was sleeping deeply and her breathing was rhythmic I'd concentrate on it and try to hear nothing else. Just her, breathing in and out. If I concentrated hard enough her breathing would drown out everything else. The sound of the ceiling fan, the traffic on the street below, the drunk roommates running up and down the stairs, would all be gone. Then I could sleep.

We'd been seeing each other for for three weeks and I was completely smitten. Then she told me to catch myself.

"Catch myself?"

"Yes. Catch yourself. You're starting to fall in love with me. Don't. Catch yourself because I'm not going to and I'm not going to fall in love with you back."

We were having fun together and she didn't want anything more than that. She liked seeing me, liked sleeping with me and didn't want or need anything more than that. The woman before me had broken my lover's heart into a million pieces. Even if she'd wanted to give her heart to me, which she didn't, she didn't have a whole heart to give.

I didn't listen to her and I fell hard. I took the bits and pieces of her heart and herself that she offered up and I was in love.

Resting in the showering woman's bed, breathing in this new scent that smells so much like her, I realize I wished I still hated my first lover. I wished I could still remember how she broke my heart and spitefully wish the same for her. But she warned me. She told me she wouldn't catch me when I fell and she didn't.

I should warn the woman in the shower. I should tell her my heart still aches for another. I should tell her I only want to have a good time and then move on. I should tell her that she shouldn't love me. I should give her the chance to leave now.

I won't though. When I leave her crying and hurt (and have no doubt, I know I'll leave her crying and hurt) I'll have the decency to leave in way that lets her hate me forever comfortably.

It's much better to think that the one who broke your hurt isn't capable of love instead of knowing that she just wasn't capable of loving you.

When most people find this out they immediately congratulate me (for what I'm not sure since it's not even close to finished) and then demand to know what it's about. At first I wasn't sure what to say. Obviously I know the plot and characters of my novel but the main story is a bit unique and I don't want to share all of it just yet. The answer I finally formulated is "it's a very non traditional mother daughter story." That statement is completely accurate without giving the entire novel away or revealing the unique elements. It is a good answer.

The more progress I make on my novel the more I think about its genesis. Where did this idea come from? What seed of thought planted these characters in my head? What made me focus on a mother and daughter?

I can think of things that were happening when the main concrete thought of writing this book first sparked in my mind. I can think of things I was thinking about at the time. But when I force myself to look hard inwardly and be completely honest with myself I then must confess that the conception of this book began over 20 years ago (I'm 28, do the math).

Though the specifics of the book I'm writing in no way mirror my real life the general topic of it should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me well. Truthfully, there was only one option for the topic of my first novel. It would of course have to be about a mother and a daughter. Well duh. Seriously.

The inward looking and honesty that finally made me aware of this obvious fact came from the film version of Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club. The book, at its heart, is a mother daughter story as well. It's filled with mothers and daughters who lose sight of their connection to one another and find themselves nearly drowning in their disappointments with themselves and with each other. The film version makes me cry nearly every time I watch it. I see the mothers sacrificing and hurting for their daughters and I see the daughters not being able to recognize the love and sacrifice. It's not the daughters' faults exactly that they can't see their mothers' love. It's just that the kind of love they most want from their mothers is not the kind that seems to flow freely and directly. It seems wrapped in expectations not met and in near constant disappointment. Of course in the film nearly all of the mothers and daughters have a moment of clarity and love where they finally see one another through the layers of disappointment and, at least for a moment, have the mother daughter relationship they've always wanted.

Every time I watch that movie I ask of these fictional daughters "how can you not see how much your mother loves you? How can you not see how much you hurt her?"

When I caught the movie on cable last week I asked these same questions again. Only this time I put similar questions to myself. "Can you not see your mother's love? Even if it's not the kind of love you wanted can you not see it? Can you not get over the disappointment you've carried with you all these years? Can you not forgive your mother for all the trespasses real and imagined? Can you not get over it all already?"

Apparently I cannot.

Each of us suffered at the hands of our parents. Each of us was failed by them in some way. Each of us is as disappointed in our parents as they are in us. I suppose one of the greatest tests of adulthood is how we deal with those failures and disappointments.

So far, I think I'm getting a D on that exam. But I'm working really hard on the essay question and hopefully about 50,000 words from now I'll have jumped up a letter grade or two.

My novel is a non traditional mother daughter story.

How could I have been different she asks herself. How could I have seen what was coming. Better yet, why did I open my heart in the first place? She remembers when you pleaded "love me best" and she did. She remembers trying so hard to be there for you when you needed her even when you didn't know you needed her and even when you didn't realize that she was there just because it would help you.

Her disappointment reminds her why she doesn't like people and why she doesn't frequently open her heart. She was a temporary replacement. She realizes now that she was, as always, purely expendable.

Main Entry: expend
Pronunciation: ik-'spend
Function: transitive verb
2 : to make use of for a specific purpose : UTILIZE ; also : USE UP

It's just like the time he whispered I love you in your ear. You hated yourself for pretending to be asleep but you pretended anyway. You hated yourself even more because you knew that you're really bad at pretending to be asleep. So then you hated yourself even more still because not only did he tell you he loved you and you pretended to be asleep but you pretended badly and he knew you were really awake and just not responding to his declaration of love.

Later, when he blew Anthony Jenkins behind the swings in Goren Park, you were relieved because his extracurricular fellatio meant that he was always unworthy of loving you and that meant you could stop hating yourself for the pretending to be asleep incident.

You'll be waiting a good long while for an out to hating yourself over the lipstick thing but people never fail to disappoint you so you've no doubt that eventually a reason will come.

Having that knowledge meant they knew me at my absolute most vulnerable. That's power people, I don't do vulnerable well. Maybe that's what I miss about them most.

It is a strange phenomenon that those who no longer want us can still hold such a pull over us.

Like the song says, I think of you and I start to smile. It really doesn't matter that you don't love me anymore. Doesn't matter that you don't want to know me. Doesn't matter that we are as distant and apart as two people can people. None of that matters. The deep canyon in my heart with your name on it still exists and waits for you just in case. So much blood has pumped through that canyon that the once rough edges have been completely smoothed. It doesn't hurt to say your name anymore. Doesn't hurt to think of you. Doesn't hurt at all. Just a small bit of hope remains and a sincere wish that you are well.

Set in the 1960s (with flashbacks), like the novel, the mini-series featured an astonishing cast of women including Oprah,
Jackeé Harry, Robin Givens, Lynn Whitfield, Paula Kelly, Lonette McKee, and Cicely Tyson. Each main character of the story all came to be at least loosely connected to each other by virtue of their residence in an inner city neighborhood on a run down street named Brewster Place.

Although every story told in The Women of Brewster Place was compelling and moving to me on one level or another it was the joint story of two characters that was permanently imprinted on my brain.

In the spring on 1989, before I even turned 13 years old, I knew who I was and more importantly I knew what I was. I knew I was "that way." I knew there was no changing it and I really had no desire to. I also knew that it wasn't common, that it was different and that when my parents found out there would be hell to pay for simply being who and what I was.

On The Women of Brewster Place I saw two women like me. No I didn't have their skin color and no I didn't live in the inner city during the 1960s but they were my sisters just the same. For one night in March of 1989 (they were only in the final episode of the mini-series) I saw women were like me, who were "that way" on ABC television. They were real. They were beautiful.

I knew at 12 what lesbians were and what gay men were and I knew the horrible shit that was said about us and was done to us. I knew how we were portrayed for the most part on television and how "fucking faggot" was an insanely common insult. But then there were these two women.

They were real. They were beautiful. They were what I imagined it could be like.

They flirted with each other, they teased each other, they held each other, they kissed each other, they cared for each other.

They loved each other.

The portrayal of that relationship on my television screen had the most profound effect on my life that you can imagine.