Saturday, February 28, 2009

serious end to a not serious relationship

February is officially the month of lost lovers. Or something, I don't know. As if the sudden, dramatic appearance of My New Best Friend wasn't enough, or the funny text message I got from John at the drunken hour, I also got a letter from Love Affair this week, and word on the street is that Tyler is in town.

Tomorrow Joe is leaving, and what feels like The World's Longest Goodbye to the Relationship That Never Was can finally end. I feel like I have been holding my breath forever. I don't know how to say goodbye. I hate goodbyes. I tried to say goodbye to Joe so many times, and it never worked out. I think all the lost lovers cropping up is just evidence of how bad I am at ending things. I always leave the door wide open for reunions.

I am really going to miss Joe. I can't help but hate myself for it. This whole time I've been so blase about him because I've always known it wasn't going to last, but for what? I am hurt in the end anyway. I might as well have had a balls-in relationship...I was going to say...that might actually have meant something...but it did mean something in the end.

I still haven't decided whether to see him tonight or not, because true to the very end, I cannot make it appear as if I give a fuck. Also, I am so stressed I feel like I might implode. The first draft of my thesis is due in 11 days, the day before I leave for the desert, and all I want to do is...I'm not even going to say it.

Sobriety is a bitch.

I should see him. I should call Love Affair and ask him, how did we do this before? How did we live out our doomed relationship to the end? I don't remember. I was a different person then. I think men are better at it than women. And I think men are like, "Mmm, sex. Good."

I wonder when I'll have sex like this again.

Monday, February 23, 2009

...and unhealthy obsessions

Yesterday I spent a significant amount of time ducking people in uniforms, jumping fences, and getting snagged on razor wire for some photos and adrenaline. It started last week and has just escalated where all I look forward to is being places where I shouldn't be, all alone. I don't know how I went from shooting pictures of trees and rocks to shooting abandoned construction sites, but...there it is.

Oh wait, yes, I do know: Roosevelt Island.


















I allowed Joe to come over so I could say goodbye to him (in theory) but instead he spent the night and went with me to Roosevelt Island at 5 a.m. the next day. On the southern end of the island there is an abandoned hospital that takes some...maneuvering...to get to. Let's just say that you have to be somewhat desperate to get there, and I had to return Saturday morning to get the photos I needed without being arrested. This is the view of the south-facing facade. It's like a magical fairy tale, with the Queensboro bridge in the background, and this grassy expanse of uninhabited island, all alone, but sandwiched between the UN and Long Island City. The sensation of that, the serenity and beauty and history and triumph of not dying and being caught...yes, I acknowledge that it's completely juvenile and it's something I did back in San Francisco when I was craving attention from boys and all souped up on drugs and booze, and it's something I am doing now when I am completely by myself and sober. But I told you!!!! I can get addicted to just about anything. Fucken try me.

Yesterday after doing sunrise and sunset shoots, I got a surprise meetup call from My New Best Friend, the guy I was desperately in love with back in San Franny, only he had a girlfriend, so I tried to just be friends with him...right. I haven't seen him or spoken to him since leaving SF, though I have gotten some random texts and emails from him. It was crazy to see him. What was even crazier was how amazingly attracted I still was to him. I think it was because of some comment he made about something dark I had once said to him that he still remembered. That always gets to me, when men think that my dark side is somehow attractive and/or tolerable. I began to overheat immediately so I continued my sneaking around trend and led us to smoke a cigarette in the bowels of the club and I thought I was going to lose my mind so I did the thing where I just talked really fast and hoped that I didn't accidentally have sex with him. It was lovely yet horrible. What was even worse was that as soon as I realized how badly I wanted him, I decided to leave and then he asked me very nicely if I wanted to hang out later this week because he's in town until Sunday, which is, incidentally, the day that Joe leaves for San Diego.

I longed for his cocktail more than anything else.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

healthy obsessions

I guess photography can be considered one of my more healthy obsessions. It has me on a super wicked schedule, although if I'm not careful it could get to be more expensive than cocaine, knitting, and boozing combined. I'd like to say it's keeping me out of trouble, but I spent the majority of the Saturday trespassing and while for the most part of it I felt very peaceful and happy, there were a few moments of panic were I thought I was about to get murdered, run over by a train, and/or arrested. Obsessions help me to stay sane, in a way, in the absence of nightly diversions. Last night I had my first boozing-dream, only it was a sad, whoops-I'm-drinking-High-Life-at-a-shitty-party-dream. Gross.

Nevertheless, check out some of my work if you have a minute. I'm shooting a nature in New York series about the resilience/dominance of nature over the built environment. It's kind of turned into a hunt for serenity in New York City. And if you have recommendations on where to shoot, I'd love to hear that, too. Any ideas on where to shoot crumbling buildings where nature has taken over...you know, that kind of thing. I didn't want to embed the gallery here. You know how I feel about the internets. I have this little used flickr account and I'm considering migrating a large account somewhere to have it all centralized with some of my best shots elsewhere...I kind of hate the flickr interface...but I don't know. Suggestions? Picasa scares me. But I kind of like to have little bits and pieces of me scattered everywhere.

All right, anyhow, apologies if I have not been in touch lately. I miss you and love you.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

i love new york

This morning I went with Neighbor and her boyfriend at sunrise to shoot in Highbridge Park. I've been getting up really early every day to take advantage of good lighting conditions. Thursday I got up at 4 a.m. and went out to Jamaica Bay to look for interesting things to shoot. It would have been awesome but I had a slight camera malfunction. I'm tempted to go back, but it's a long fucken ride and the sun just keeps rising earlier and earlier every day. I have trekked all over the city lately and I love it. It is really nice to start the day off doing something that is exciting, while there aren't too many people awake. Sometimes it doesn't really pan out, but it's still interesting.

I'd signed on Joe to make the trip to Highbridge with me. It's the one park I won't go to by myself even though it's about eight blocks from my house. The reason for this is that it's depressed (literally), sunken into the river bank, and so there's really no foot traffic that goes through there and so it's rumored to be pretty shady. So, Joe was supposed to go with me. But then...I think I sort of told Joe I don't want to see him anymore...? I've been a moody bitch this week. So Neighbor and Neighbor's boyfriend graciously got up at 6 a.m. with me and tromped through the mud and homeless encampments with me and then we had a glorious pancake breakfast. All in all, the best Valentine's Day I've had in recent memory. Being single is going to be so effing good for me. I'm going to swear off boys for the month of March, I really am. I'm off the Booze and the Drugs and even off the Coffee now, so I might as well go off the Boys...

I met some interesting people yesterday, none of whom I will ever date. Have you ever read Andrew Sean Greer? I love him. He wrote The Secret Confessions of Max Tivoli and The Story of a Marriage. I went to a reading of his last night at NYU. I was shocked that there was hardly anyone there. I don't know any celebrities, so I'm always shocked when the people I think are famous turn out to be less than that. I mean, he was on Oprah's Book Club. He's like a god to me. After the reading he told this story about how this past fall he RSVP'd to his 20-year high school reunion and when they emailed him back with the details, one of the events was "an evening with author Andrew Sean Greer." He didn't want to do a reading and no one had asked him, but he went there anyway, and then nobody showed up ("I wasn't one of the popular kids," he explained).

What the fuck? I didn't go to high school with ASG, but I still went to his reading. What are they, illiterate? Anyhow, I love him, love him, love him. You should read him. Maybe you would love him, too. It was great talking to him about writing, and talking to other people about writing, too.

I am feeling better about life.

In my last post, I wrote that I had been missing Ex, and then two days later he called to tell me he is coming to visit. He'll be here when I get back from Chile. I haven't seen him since the summer. The summer. Holy jesus. That seems like a lifetime ago.

Monday, February 9, 2009

adventures in sobriety

Today is my three-month anniversary of my sojourn into Soberland. I wonder how much longer this is going to continue.

In honor of this milestone, I booked my air tickets to the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, where I'll be going in March. I'll arrive on Friday the 13th. It will be my first solo travel expedition, not counting my journey to Charleston.

Yesterday with Lucho I was forced to articulate a weird battle that has been raging in my head since beginning these adventures in sobriety, which is the ambiguity of living in the moment v. planning for the future. The Drunk Life is largely about living in the moment, and so are my short-term love affairs, including the Joe situation. The preliminary struggles with sobriety were about living in the moment as well, and the critical AA mindset of taking it one day at a time. But long-term sobriety is about changing your lifestyle, your life, and that is about planning for the future. It's about, oh, you know, maturity and shit. I'm not really good at thinking about the future. My mind reacts to thinking about the future like a bad organ transplant. This.will.not.do. It's still the same effect of not drinking, only the motivations are shifting from a daily affair from a long-term strategy, and suddenly everything feels like it's shifting along with it, Joe included, and this is why suddenly after spending every day with him I've not seen him all week, and I'm experiencing a renewed crush on My Friend, and a sudden fierce pining for Ex.

Yesterday Lucho took me to an affair full of successful people our age. At one point I looked down and my backpack, with a camera tripod attached to it, was sitting next to some dude's motorcycle helmet, and it made me miss Ex so badly that I left five minutes later, even though I was having a fine sober time, and had finally figured out what to do with my hands: eat cookies.

Monday, February 2, 2009

yes we are having fun yet.

I didn't watch the Super Bowl tonight, did you?

I don't have much to say tonight except that I felt like calling someone only I didn't because I figured everyone would be at a Super Bowl party. Even my mom was at a Super Bowl party. I was supposed to go to one, then I backed out at the last minute because I felt cranky and remembered I had all this shit to do that I had been putting off all weekend. Also the SB party I was supposed to go to was being hosted by someone I kind of have a crush on, and I think it was going to make my head explode.

This week was a Joe extravaganza. I saw him every day and spent 6 of the last 8 nights with him. I was actually going home to hang out with myself on Friday night when I went down the wrong subway platform and ran into him around midnight. Holy fucking shit, right? Of course I listened to "fate" rather than my extreme exhaustion. I trust things like that more than my inner monologue. That shit is boring.

$chool is crraaaazzzy busy but I'm in Joe-land. He's now officially homeless and I'm about to do something crazy, namely give him keys to my apartment. Idon'tknowIdon'tknowIdon'tknow! It makes me want to scream. I don't know what the fuck I'm thinking. I guess I'm thinking that school is crazy and yet there's this guy who is completely removed from school and who I can talk to about other things and writing and fall completely in love with and then in a few weeks he will be gone so I might as well lose my fucking mind.

I think it makes sense.

I am so far into sobriety that it's ridiculous. I am almost three months sober. I feel like I will never drink again. I bought wine for a baby shower the other day. Carrying the bottle of wine in my hand gave me a rush. I got real excited. There was a game played where people had to drink shots of vodka out of baby bottles. This was after I had to play a game where I changed a diaper on a toy bear. I did very badly because I was wondering how I was going to get out of this. I almost told them I was pregnant so I didn't have to play. I was wondering how I was going to get out of this.

Later on in the night I went back to a party at the McKibben lofts with Joe. It was the party where we first met, probably nine months to the day. Only now I'm sober and he's leaving and I could have had his baby by now.

Life is funny like that.