Alone with the dream of a life

It's no secret to anybody that knows me that I'm a daddy's girl. I always have been. I'm 32, and I still call my dad "daddy". I haven't called my mom mommy since I was a teenager. In fact, I call her "mother" more often than anything else. I have pictures of me and my daddy when I was a little bitty girl on my desk.

There we are, totes adorbs!

A little known piece of trivia about me: had I been born a boy, my name would have been Phillip Gabriel Tucci. My dad is an intense Genesis fan, so the Phillip was for Phil Collins, and the Gabriel was for Peter Gabriel, and my mom was so glad I had a vagina.

Being the Genesis fan he was, my dad used to play Genesis for me when I was growing up. He played a lot of great music for me when I was younger...Oingo Boingo (Dead Man's Party is still one of my favorite songs), Duran Duran, Kate Bush, Suzanne Vega, Crowded House, all manner of great music that I still listen to and love. But Genesis was the most common.

No Genesis album got more play than Trick of the Tail. My dad played two songs for me more than anything of the other ones: Ripples, and Trick of the Tail. Even better, my daddy used to sing them to me. I would ask him to sing Trick of the Tail to me, because I loved to hear him sing, and sometimes, we didn't have access to a radio to play his tape. So I'd ask him to sing, and he'd sing, and I'd love him for it.

This went on for years. I remember telling my cousins Russell and Jeremy about the song, and that I loved it so much, and that I'd get my dad to play it for them.

As was common in my family, it wasn't long before Russell and Jeremy were spending a day with me and my dad, and when we all hopped into the car, I was quick to pull the trigger on asking my daddy to play Trick of the Tail for us all. My dad said he didn't have it with him, so I asked him to sing it instead. And he agreed, and started to sing.

Russell started laughing at my dad, and I remember my dad stopping his singing, shaking his head, and putting the car in reverse, leaving wherever it was we were. And my dad didn't sing the song anymore.

My dad doesn't have a classically good voice. I wouldn't even say my dad's voice is note worthy to anybody other than his daughter. I love listening to my dad sing, and it always makes me chuckle, but it's love that keeps me listening. I've poked fun at him from time to time, like hearing my dad sing Bob Dylan's "Isis" (it's a fucking hilarious treat, and it sends me into hysterics every time), but for the most part, I'll be sad when my dad stops singing for good. We all do, eventually.

I regret not telling Russell to shut up. I felt so much shame in that moment. Not for my dad, but for me. Because someone was laughing at something I'd previously found to be the most wonderful thing in the world. I wasn't embarrassed by my dad for his singing, but I was definitely confused. It was an eye opening moment for me...that my tastes were not universal.

I don't think my daddy remembers that car ride, but I do. We drive back to his house in silence, and when we got there, my dad put on a movie for us and went to his bedroom to read. I don't think he thought anything else of it, but maybe he did.

My dad didn't stop singing around me, but he didn't sing that song again. He moved on to Apollo Smile, a change I was thankful for. Genesis always makes me think of that day in the car where I didn't defend my daddy, who has almost always had my back. I'll have to ask him if he remembers.

Insubordinate...and churlish.

I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, when my dog started barking like an asshole. Three loud knocks on the door, and she's acting like someone is trying to cut my throat out, so I figure it must be the UPS guy.

And it was.

AND HE HAD A MRS. PRINDABLES DELIVERY FOR ME. MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

My very bestest friend in the world bought me the thing I had been coveting the longest: She bought me a Mrs. Prindables apple.

Check it:

Look at that sexy mother fucker. The photo is dark, but the apple is gorgeous, and oh my god, eating a piece was like tossing the salad of the lord hisownself. Because holy shit. It was fucking DELICIOUS.

Sidenote: I am fully aware that this is far from vegan. I know. I KNOW. But two things are important to note here:

Number one, it's a Mrs. Prindables apple, and even the most staunch of people can forget their morality and dietary restrictions to indulge in something they've been coveting for over 25 years;

Number two, go fuck yourself.

I must describe to you what was as close to a near death, religious, out of body experience as I will probably ever have.

I unwrapped the apple and marveled at its heft, because it's a very solid thing. There is no banana for scale here, but that apple is easily half the size of my head. According to the box, it weighs three pounds. That's ALL apple. I giggled to myself in disbelief, because I was unwrapping a fuckin' Mrs. Prindables. I never thought I would. As the last bit of cellophane peeled off, I laughed again, and made some kind of squealing noise. There's no approximation for it.

I brought it to the table, picked my most beautiful knife, and, after about ten minutes of debating if I even wanted to ruin the beauty, I did. I sliced into it, and it was magical. The chocolate flaked off into little miracle sized pieces, and the apple smell hit me immediately, and how do things like this happen?

I sliced the half into four gorgeous slices, and I really did just stare at them for a couple of minutes. They were gorgeous. The bright green of the apple, the inviting warmth of the golden caramel, the chocolate layer, and the fat stripes of white and milk chocolate hugging my treat seemed unreal. At least, unreal in my kitchen.

I almost didn't want to eat it. I went through a thousand arguments in my head. What if it's gross? This isn't vegan, Drea, and what if it's gross? What if  it's good, but not that good? What if it's just an apple covered in stuff and it tastes a little bit like you need to go to the dentist tomorrow?

I took a bite.

I ate the rest of the slice. With my eyes closed.

Savoring.

When I got married, there was a small moment when the world stopped, and it hung in place for a microsecond, and all of it belonged to me. And I don't mean my big showy wedding, I mean my legal marriage. At the DMV, in a plain dress, with all of the hubub of dozens of impatient people buzzing behind me. I remember signing the paper, and in the moment between signing and squeezing my husband's hand, physics weren't real, and it was just us, and that was all that mattered.

I love my husband a lot, but that moment was magnified by at least ten fold when I ate that apple slice. Just me, my apple slice, and my mouth orgasm, alone in a universe without rules or limits.

WHAT THE FUCK.

The secret to time travel is somewhere in the molecular structure of these apples, I fuckin' swear it is. Because nothing in the world is that pure and amazing.

I lovingly put the remainder of my apple in a ziploc bag, put it in the fridge, and had to immediately sit down and catch my breath.

This is not hyperbole, this is how the moments played out in my head. Like an edible melodrama.

Perhaps this seems silly to anybody reading it. It didn't feel silly to me. It was a wonderful gift, from my very best friend in the entire wide world.

 See? That's love, right there.

Wait until she sees what I bought her.

The rhythm really IS going to get me. Just kidding, it won't. I'm white!

The drive from my apartment in Texas to my house in Colorado takes 12.5 hours if you drive the suggested speeds, and about 11 hours if you do it my way, which is illegal, but recommended if expediency is your thing. Even with the three or four stops I have to make (I made six on my last go to....because I REALLY had to fucking pee. A lot), I make excellent time. Eleven hours is still quite the trek of time to be alone with nothing but my repetitive Spotify playlist and my thoughts. After hearing the same five Maroon 5 songs in the span of an hour....seriously, Spotify, what the FUCK is your algorithm like if thirteen hours of music means playing the same twenty five songs for thirteen hours instead of changing it up...it becomes more interesting to talk to yourself.

I thought a lot about my childhood this go around. Not out of some burst of nostalgia, but because I was curious to know where I had exceeded young me's expectations, and where I had failed young me, and where I had diverted off of the expected trajectories into bizarre and unfamiliar territory.

Young me had a lot of ambitions. First and foremost, I wanted to be Madonna. I think I succeeded at that, because I am also old, irrelevant, and pretty fucking desperate to be considered cool. Score one for me.

I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was younger, too. I feel a little bit slighted by Barbie, because Barbie's coolest profession when I was a kid was Ice Princess, and while my frosty bitchiness certainly earns me an Ice Queen title more often than not, Barbie never stood for the kinds of jobs I wanted like she does know. Barbie DID go on to leave her Ice Dancing behind to pursue the sciences, and I commend her for that. Perhaps I would be a veterinarian now if Barbie had been a bit more progressive and not so into the liberal arts when I was a kid. Then again, I was ATROCIOUS to poor Barbie when I was younger. Barbie always got the real bad shakedown from her husband, Ken. Ken was working out some deep anger issues about his Ken parts, and he beat the piss out of Barbie instead of talking to therapist Barbie (who still doesn't exist. If Mattel would read ANY of my letters of suggestion...) and working it out like a normal person. Maybe Barbie and I are even.

The first REAL desire I remember having concerning what I'd be when I was a beautiful grown up (I always assumed I'd be beautiful. Don't let little me know how hard I fucked that shit up, please. She'd be devastated) was wanting to be a Rockette. I watched them every Christmas, and I bitched and whined about dance lessons until I got them, because that's what I wanted to be. I tell people I wanted to be a ballerina, but it's not true. I wanted to do high kicks in a line in Rockefeller Center.

That wasn't just a childhood dream, either. That extended into my young adulthood, and sharing it was embarrassing. But then, in the late nineties, dancing became THE thing to do in the music scene. Fucking music. Who would have thought that music and dancing would be so radical together? Fucking everybody, but shut up. When boy bands and pop princesses made dancing fresh and awesome (sorry, Michael Jackson), I thought to myself, "holy fuck, this is it! YOU CAN BE A BACK UP DANCER!" Because I set the bar high enough to be in the spotlight, but low enough that my cripplingly low self esteem didn't have to answer to the media and the public at large. I danced all the time. It's all I wanted to do. There are HOURS of video of me dancing and singing, and I really fucking hope they've been taped over, or lost in a fire, or thrown down a garbage disposal (somehow) and torn to shreds, because...here's the thing...

I am wildly uncoordinated, and also chubby, and neither of those things is conducive to looking smooth and awesome when dancing.

I lack grace, both physically and socially, and my love of music and dancing does not transcend my inability to move like I have rhythm. Really, I look like a blob of gelatin that someone rolled around on the floor and then poked a lot to get it to wiggle. If you put that shit to music, that's what I look like on any dance floor.

There are pictures of me dancing at my wedding, and holy fuck, do I regret them. Thank god they're not moving pictures, because I would ask for my money back from my photographers.

An inability to dance is sadly inherent, and I see this in my son all the time. He and his best friend like to dance, and my son looks like a sloth choking on a hot dog when he boogies. It's this weird, jerking, depressing movement that he transfers into...I don't know...some kind of shimmy. Of course, I would never in a million years tell him this. He loves to dance, just like I did. Just like I do. I bought pointe shoes a couple of months ago, and late at night, when nobody is awake to embarrass me over it, I put them on, and I dance in them. Poorly, painfully, and with all the suave grace of a decayed pineapple, but still, I dance.

Gloria Estefan promised me that the rhythm was going to get me. Tonight. So many tonights have come and gone, and I have not been gotten by the rhythm. Gloria and Barbie have some explaining to do.