sailors with stories to tell
The summer had been spent drinking every night of the week with remaining student-loan-money and feeling sorry for myself. My air-conditioner and my heart were broken, but the education goal had been met.
Somehow I landed a construction job on top of waitressing at a local burger joint. It was working on a building on campus, a huge 4-story student-union with a post office, restaurants, offices, labs, etc.
The owner of the construction company paid me off the books, and what began as a part-time job turned into over-time.
I lived one cigarette away from campus, as I've said before, so I'd walk to the site at 7 every morning, then not leave until 7 in the evening on most nights. Some Saturday's, too.
I was the only woman on site, and they called me Tiger. The painters and masons were my favorites. Electricians were trouble-makers but harmless. Welders are bastards.
I learned how to bathe in WD-40.
I went to bars alone a lot during this period.
This lasted for a few months, and then the building was completed. It's rather impressive, in my opinion.
The job was very rewarding, in so many ways. I learned how to rise early and sweat all day long, and to become addicted to the feeling of the energy of manual labor, and to not be able to go home until I was thoroughly exhausted.
The reward was a car I bought - for $2,500 - and the decision to re-enroll for a second bachelor's degree.
Owning the car was satisfaction like I'd never known. She's a beat up ole piece of shit � and doesn�t run now - but she really belonged to no one but me, and I was not accountable to anyone besides myself for her upkeep.
Right now I have a new laptop.
After a year working a once-in-a-lifetime job as a nanny (paying my dues) I've awarded myself again with a vehicle.
The name of my little Dell is "the gypsy wagon for the ramblin' rose", because it's the place where I can keep all my shit.
You see, when something belongs to only me, it means it doesn't belong to anyone else.
This seems simple to you, but it humbles me.
When one has been raised as a middle child, youngest cousin, on child-support, always renting homes, always moving... one is accustomed to knowing "that doesn't belong to you" means your rights are not your own.
This lack of ownership - I believe - is indicative of my seminal lack of feeling like I belong.
I do belong to myself, though. And since the age of sixteen I have been gathering information about myself so I know just exactly who I really am.
My body is the one thing that has and will always belong to me. It is my original vehicle.
In the last nine years I've studied and loved and ached from season to season and this body-unlike-any-other has neither abandoned nor betrayed me.
In the last nine years I've learned that I am born to communicate. With all that I am. And when something is solely �mine� it becomes another medium through which I can transmit a message.
Like the stickers on my car.
The clothes I wear.
The music I play.
The expositions I write.
And the adornment of my body.
It tells my story, and keeps me reminded of who I am and where I belong. My body is my home, and wherever I find myself is where I am.
These symbols that I indelibly inscribe upon my flesh are links between my soul and my body. To remind me that we are not a separate two. Not while I am on this Earth.
My body receives my utmost respect. I am grateful to it for its loyalty.
So I am Michaela, named for the warrior-angel Michael, protected by the seraphim and guided by the Spirit.
