cellini's Diaryland Diary

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One of your possible pasts

Again with the handbags.

Trish had to do laundry at a laundromat near to my store today. On account of a bit of a regional drought and the well at her place out in the county being low. So I went over to keep her company for a bit while the machine finished up.

More talk about her making these handbags based on the samauri saddlebags we saw at the museum yesterday. She's talking about paying someone to cast fifty or more custom metal pulls for the zippers based on the stirrups. This would cost probably over a thousand dollars. She meters out her trips in her car carefully because she cannot always afford gas. For her, coming up with a thousand dollars would be like planning a trip to the moon. Even if someone would do it for a few hundred dollars, this would be a huge financial sacrifice.

She has literally never stitched two pieces of leather together. And she thinks that she is going to immediately make fifty amazing handbags that she can sell for hundreds of dollars each. This is just fucking crazy. Someone who wants to have a career making leather goods apprentices by working for an experienced leather crafter and spends some years doing that and learns technique, and how to judge and buy leather, and how to balance the cost of materials and the hours of labor and the cost of equipment with the potential market for their handbag idea. And certainly there are hundreds of people who have actually gone through this process and are now trying to sell their professionally made handbags for a profit. Trish thinks that she can immediately compete with all of those people, plus the major names in the business, right away when she has no idea how to use an awl.

This is fucking crazy. I think that she feels like she has to compete with me. Or maybe not exactly compete, but keep up on a creative level. I have all of these different art projects going at any given time. Some of them are becoming products that we will sell at the bookstore and others are just fun. Most of them are collaborative projects with other people who are smarter or more talented than me in some way. All of them are rationally attainable given the skill sets of everyone involved. I know when to aim low. The printable sheets of fridge magnets just arrived and manufacturing our "n@me your Th3sis" sets of words will consist of printing some shit out, running it through the paper cutter, and then finding an appealing cardboard box to put them in. My "M3mories of Str@ngers" vending machine just depends on people bringing in weird shit from their desk drawers and then I assemble those objects into plastic capsules and put them into the machine. The first "world's W1sest Toad" T shirts will arrive in two weeks and only required me doing a few sketches and then Ida drawing better versions of them. The "Great Beast" installation only requires the installation of the hasp that I put in tonight for the 1896 brass padlock with what seems to be a lion on the front and then a speaker in the furnace room playing the sound of an enormous creature snoring and grunting.

I make art with other people within the limitations of our skills and resources. I build bookcases and create displays and work magic after hours every week and sell rare and weird books for hundreds of dollars each. And I give away dozens of books for free every day on the free book table, and I put treasures on the dollar book shelves, and all day long I tell people ready to pay for books that this paperback priced at $9.50 by the previous owner will now be $6.50 because it is not physically possible for me to reprice 100,000 books that were in the store when I bought it but that I want them to know that we will do this systematically without being asked. In all things at D@edalus, my guiding principle is to delight people. To create a sort of Disney Land of books. A place where people can get lost and find treasures and humor around every corner. I am able to do this because I somehow own this building and because I have wonderful, smart people working with me who share that passion and help to make the things that I want to create become real. And because I know my own limitations.

Trish is trying to keep up with me with this idiotic handbag thing. She is tying to impress me. She doesn't need to impress me or keep up with me and the group of people who make me look good. All I need from her in order to value her is her affection. I know that she can come up with good, creative things sometimes. I know that she has insights into historical events, and I know that she has good ideas about design. She doesn't have to shove ahead on this stupid handbag project. I would be more impressed if she just said, 'this samaurai saddle could work as a handbag, so I'm going to make one for myself and learn how to use an awl and stitch leather and see where this goes."

What I need from her is her touch, and her acceptance of my touch. Just kissing her for real and spooning her and holding her in my arms and being inside of her. The words that she says in conversation are enough to convince me of her value. She doesn't need to do this stupid handbag bullshit to make me think that she matters.

I was talking to Katie about all of this at the bookstore today. Katie's boyfriend is a dude who is a non-binary poet who is basically a fucking idiot with a mustache who takes her for granted and she is 100% mentally checked out of that relationship. Katie thinks that this kind of jealousy between couples is real. She suggested that I ask Trish to plan our next date just to see if she can come up with anything where she does something in the relationship. That was good advice.

I do not want to have a next relationship. I want to spend the rest of my life with Trish. And she has given me what at least appears to be an opportunity for that to happen. I am trying really hard to do everything right. I buy her flowers, I take her to nice restaurants, I give her books, I tracked down the antique chair that she mentioned wanting in conversation and bought it for her. I take her on fun excursions, I listen to her, I never argue, I built her a laptop, I gave her an ipad, I have learned from years of experience in relationships how people fuck up and I do not do those things and I am sincerely doing everything exactly right and am prepared to keep doing it right for the rest of my life. I am committed to this woman but she treats me like shit without even trying. She reacts to my arm around her as if a snake had coiled up and she has to pretend that it isn't there.

She could sell a million fucking handbags and that would not eclipse the effect of how she reacts to my touch. I do not understand why she would solicit a romantic relationship with me and then act like this.

Katie has me on a pedestal. I put her on one as well. I do not want to have a next relationship. Katie is a 30 year old half Korean woman who just finished her MFA in poetry. Glowingly beautiful, curvy, brilliant. She keeps giving me hints that she is ready to throw her dipshit non-boyfriend aside for largely the same shortcomings that Trish has. No affection.

Katie is beautiful. Men throw themselves at her every week, trying to get me to pass their phone numbers to her. I know that she would enter into a relationship with me. She is in the running for a Fulbright scholarship that would take her out of the country for six months.

I am letting Katie pass me by in favor of Trish. I do not want to have a next relationship.

I do not understand what is going on in Trish's head. She is 47 years old. Her hands and neck look as 47 years old as they can look. I have loved her since I was 17 years old. I love her unconditionally. I'm not fat, I'm not bald, I'm accomplished and kind of brilliant and plugged into counter-culture and well-read and I have a little kingdom and I do not understand why she will not hold my hand after we have been dating for over a month and were together for 17 years.

I am watching season two of the series about Julia Child. And I think that Julia's best friend is so hot. She is, like 70. But I would so very much hit that.

A beautiful woman is beautiful at every age. I love every wrinkle at the edge of Trish's eyes. I just want to kiss her eyes for hours.

When we part, I tell her, "you know I'm crazy about you," which is shorthand for, "I love you."

I love her crazy bullshit with the handbags. But it is crazy bullshit.

I mentally added up all the women I have dated for the last 14 years in terms of who was crazy.

All of them were crazy except for Mary B.and Helenah. That includes Alex and Christa and Lindsay and Mary 2 and Brandy and Beth and Meghan and April and dozens of other women that I have dated or fucked. All crazy.

Dana was not crazy. I dated her because she was a life coach and was good at fixing people and I was pretty fucking broken a few months after 8/12 and had been investigating neo-nazis and people were trying to kill me. I tried really hard to be physically attracted to her but she was so lean and skinny and tall, I was programmed in for Trish,

I can be totally happy with Trish. She just has to actually commit and be affectionate towards me, This seems to be a heavy lift for her. And it feels really sad because I know that this is literally her last chance. No one else will ever passionately love the shape of her ears or kiss the corners of he mouth. I am the last man who will ever want to massage her shoulders or her feet. Her neck is full of tight, short wrinkles that I want to kiss. I love her. I love every part of her.

There are possible futures where I end up with Katie or with someone like her. There is a possible future in which I spend the rest of my life with Trish, Trish gets to choose which of those possible futures happens. Right now she is really bad at directing which of those futures will happen.

2:10 a.m. - 2024-07-09

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