more dating in BsAs

Tomorrow I was supposed to return to the states, but I'm not! It is a funny feeling to make it to a deadline and realize how meaningless/arbitrary time is. I definitely cannot imagine leaving tomorrow. I went on a date last night who asked me where I am going when I go back to the states and it was a very profound question.

Actually, I went on two dates last night, accidentally. I have a hard time keeping track of days and made a date for 'Sunday' and then also for 'tomorrow'; they happened to be the same day. The dates were interesting. Both the guys were so soft-spoken that I kept having to lean in and say "What? What?" It made me feel like I was stupid and hard of hearing.

It is a bad idea to do dates back-to-back, even if you have enough time. As soon as I realized my mistake, I wanted to cancel one. It's just not fair and it's exhausting and by the second date I was already kind of drunk and sleepy. But the problem with online dating is that once you have made plans it is kind of difficult to break them at the last minute. That is also just poor form.

My first date was with a third-generation Argentine-Japanese boy. He was sweet. It was interesting to hear about his experiences as a minority here, things that I can obviously relate to. My second date was with a porteño who nicely took me to see a Romanian movie with both English and Spanish subtitles. It was called 'The Happiest Girl in the World' and it is not a good date movie. I think the movie was done as well as it could have been done, but I don't think it should have been a movie at all. Date #2 kind of weirded me out because he told me he couldn't stand it that people eat popcorn in movies. I thought, 'Oh god, one of these pretentious, humorless, must-focus-all-attention-on-the-CINEMA guys.' But afterward, we went to a great bar and had cocktails and somehow got to talking about a favorite bar we have in common, and how last weekend I bought some bad coke there and got so sick that I couldn't get out of bed until 6 pm the following day and had to puke in a plastic bag next to my bed.

Well, I think I omitted the last part. But he did tell me that the next time we go out, he'll make sure I don't get bad cocaine. Now there's a second date to look forward to.

la vida riquissima

Yesterday I fell in love with Buenos Aires. I spent the morning writing, then went off to a Spanish lesson (after four months, I finally decided I needed a boost) and had a 4 pm lunch at this old-school restaurant filled with men of all ages in uniforms that made them look more like mechanics than restauranteurs. I enjoyed a large mug of café con leche and then went off to play piano at the cultural center where my roommate works, and ended up playing for almost two hours on this gritty old grand piano overlooking Avenida Callao, a bustling avenue. When I came out it was dark.

There is something about playing the piano that is extremely good for me. It makes me focus and listen and work. I found this great music store that sells their own crappy copies of classical sheet music--you know, with terrible page breaks and strange key signatures, but if you know the piece, it's okay. I start off by playing something new and easy, and then work into something harder. I have been trying to learn Beethoven's Pathétique and Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu forever. The second is very difficult. But here is a 7-year-old playing it:



Sigh. I have been intermittently trying to play this piece (and the Beethoven) since high school. Anyhow, I came out of the cultural center feeling a million fucking bucks and then returned home to celebrate my (new) roommate's birthday. And as I was seeking a bottle of champagne, I fell in love with life, with the city, and with everyone in it.

Hello, fall! It is a transitional period right now, to be sure. My handful of friends who were just here for the summer have left or are leaving soon, and it is the start of a new phase, I think. You know, the part where I suddenly start speaking fluent Spanish, fall in love with an Argentine, finish my novel (in English), and then of course leave it all and go back to the States.

Because, folks, that's (my) life. Although when I woke up this morning, this strange thought entered my head: I want a family and kids.

Whoa...wtf?!

on turning 30

I had sort of a birthday fail and spent the day traveling, largely alone, in the middle of nowhere. There was a big chunk of the day where things were getting a little desperate and I was feeling like a lost, pathetic, idiot. Fortunately, I was able to pull myself out of that zone and give myself what I needed to rescue the day: a shower, a movie, a soda, a joint, some dinner...who says I don't know how to take care of myself?

Have you ever seen the movie Lars and the Real Girl? I liked it so much that I have probably mentioned it before. While I was coddling myself into a better state of mind, I found this movie on the television of my creepy but life-saving hotel and I lay in bed to watch it. There was a particularly poignant scene that was about growing up, "what it means to be a man." They concluded that becoming a man is about making decisions that aren't just about you.

It would have been easy to just let the day pass me by completely and it kind of did. I drank a liter of beer and ingested a huge sandwich composed of a flank steak, an omelet, cheese, ham, and, I think, another egg. I smoked cigarettes under the Pepsi sign of the restaurant in this small town and watched the townsfolk greet each other. I thought about the movie, about growing up, and how to grow up if you are by yourself. If you don't have a family to take care of and are kind of a drifter, it must be that you never truly grow up--or that growing up means finding your meaningful place in society. Which I have not done. I am a single, unemployed woman now in her early thirties. So hot, right?

Last night I went to party where I engaged in a pattern I am becoming used to now. I try to be social for a while, but then I get tired and bored, and kind of drift off on my own. It's the language thing that becomes tiring, that and the not understanding men here and feeling done with casual sex for...forever maybe. I had a dream about the party, a flashback to when I was dancing with a boy I should have dated but instead the first time I went out with him I did a bunch of coke and went home with someone else. I opened my eyes this morning and this thought crossed my mind: I am only attracted to men who expect nothing of me. It was such a weird thought to wake up with. I wondered why it was there.

Turning 30 is more than just brooding over the typical thoughts of some of the things that seem to make a person whole: a partner, a job, and a home. It is also a time to say, "Well, what kind of person do I want to be in this new decade?" Because really, by now, we are pretty much fully-formed beings with personalities and sufficient life experience to know ourselves. And with all that, what kind of person can we choose to be?

I would like to be a non-smoker. Not because I don't like smoking anymore, but because turning 30 was my ultimate deadline for quitting and I am so unbelievably addicted that the only thing to do is quit. I would also like to be thinner. And really, I would love to return "home" but I don't know where that is anymore. I would like to have a home, but that requires commitment. I am not sure what to do about that.

the perfect past

Last night I tried to clean out my email, which says I have more than 1,000 unread messages. It took me to the strange place of 2004, when I first got my gmail account, and I was breaking up with my boyfriend, becoming an alcoholic slut, and trying to get my life back on track by leaving the comfortable womb of San Francisco and diving headfirst into grad school in New York. The emails were so schizophrenic---filled with so much grief and excitement, hyperactivity and insomnia. They made me extremely nostalgic for that time of my life. When I feel really lost and lonely and confused, I like to kick myself for ripping myself out of that situation where "everything" was so good.

Do you ever feel like maybe the best part of your life has already happened? I had that terrible feeling last night. Let me step back a second to say that I am not as miserable as I was in my last post, and that I have somewhat successfully coddled myself with the Hallmark encouragement phrases that "dreams take time" and "genius is 99 percent perspiration..." This isn't about feeling discouraged or disappointed anymore. It is more about feeling as though that combination of naivete, optimism and determination was the magical combination and that ever since then, things have definitely been awesome in different ways, but never again have I felt that excited about life and its possibilities. And this makes me a little sad.

Of course, we cannot retain innocent hope forever. Maybe I still experience joy and wonder and fear, but it is all couched in this underwhelming, familiar cynicism that seems to be telling me that all these emotions are somewhat deceptive. Before, the appearance of these emotions were signals to me that great change was underway. If I was scared shitless or raging uncomfortably on euphoria, I knew that something incredible was happening and I just had to hold on and soak it in. But now I find myself in these tenuous places constantly, and I have begun to see it as a sign of permanence rather than change. I don't feel like I will struggle through these nerve-wracking times and come out with answers anymore; I've been through this before and none of these things got resolved. Now the struggle is just a state of being.

I am embarrassed to admit that I still feel like I broke up with my Ex in the recent past, and that I will be stronger and smarter once I get over it. That was five years ago. As a writer, I naturally live somewhat in the past, trying to understand something in order to package it and present it in some kind of frame, some kind of context. But I think that has a detrimental effect on my life, because sometimes things can't be packaged and explained and the attempt to do so can prevent us from keeping pace with what the future brings us. It is one thing to want to avoid repeating the same mistakes, but another to become so fascinated by history that we forget to vote.

I don't really know what I'm saying. I know that there is no such thing as figuring things out once and for all, that tough decisions have to be made repeatedly, and that pursuing a problem-free existence is like trying to outrun your shadow. I also know that as shiny and happy as parts of my past may seem in photos and emails, the fact is that I wasn't content to stay wherever I was, which is why I am here---and it would be foolish to think I could have stayed there anyway. Things change. I guess I just like to be the one to incite the change, rather than have it forced upon me. I'm not one for regret, but I do wonder what it would have been like had I stayed with my job, my boyfriend. I wonder if I would have put on all this weight. Or maybe I would be dead by now. It's hard to say.

midlife crisis

I spent the past four days sick in bed, streaming Spanish movies. Only I am too cheap to pay for them, so I would stream a movie for the alotted 74 minutes, and then I would have to wait an hour to finish the movie. Good thing I had nothing else to do.

I wasn't actually that sick, just a bad cold. But sometimes I look for an excuse to lay up and be worthless. Then last night I went and baby-sat my friends' three-week-old baby. I met him the day he was born, and hung out with him a week later, both times of which his eyes were mostly closed. Now they are open, and I cannot imagine what he is seeing--shapes, light. He has no emotions or thought, just perception. He hicupped for about an hour, like, eh. Every time I put him down he would start to make these fussy noises, so I picked him up and danced with him for a while. We listened to Patti Smith and Wilco and David Byrne and Mark Farina and I think he liked it. Then we sat down and I talked to him for a long time about what I wondered his life was going to be like, after being born in Argentina to two very chill parents who are fixing to take him and their dog off to Paris in a few months and then...where? The where seems to matter less and less these days. These are some of my best friends here and we are all the same, just ricocheting around, stopping just long enough to fall in love, eat a steak, squeeze out a kid.

I know I am turning 30 next week. I felt a midlife crisis coming on when I looked into the eyes of that baby, because I kept thinking this one sad thought to myself: I hope you can do better than I did. 'Did'--in the past tense, like my life is fucking over or something. And I am not big on regret, but hey, there it was. I blame it on this cold.

When they came back I walked over to the bar where my friend was DJing. I danced for an hour before I began feeling incredibly sick and tired, so I took the bus home. I thought of the baby, the dog, the music, the cute boys, and the enormous quantity of snot in my head that seemed to be blocking both my air passages and my optimism. And I let myself wonder again what the fuck I am doing here, and I began to get a little despondent. I still have a ticket back in a few weeks, a ticket back--to what? I planned on changing it. I think that being sick makes you want to be at home. But this is a word that has largely lost its meaning--home. Home is where my computer is, pretty much. And for now, that is here. I also said that I wasn't going "home" until I finished this novel that seemed close to completion when I got here, but is now looking like the ultimate fail. What do you do when your plans seem to be failing? Do you keep going, or do you move on? It was like this with Ex. I could have stayed, but I left. I don't regret it, but sometimes I think that was the beginning of the end of all faith I had in commitment to people, to plans.

Obviously, life is complicated and whether to keep going or to drop it depends on a lot of things--how much you want something, how much the game has changed since you started playing it, and what resources are available to you. This is the problem. Instead of actually doing anything, I am just thinking about it all the time. God, it's hard to be this fucking lazy.

heeding advice

I listen to people. Sometimes more than myself. Yesterday I went on what was supposed to be an overnight trip with my FC love affair. It was a test trip to see if we could travel together to the desert soon. I was very conflicted about going with him, because he is way into me and I am not so much into him. But he's a nice, decent guy, and if he could stop touching me we could probably travel together and split costs.

Pricey tequila happened Monday night, which always brings out the let's-talk-dirt in me. I was with my young friend who was complaining about not being able to get laid and so I asked him how to deal with this FC who is not a love affair after all. I like to keep my options open, but I can see how that is confusing. You are always wondering--am I going to get laid with this person or not? Earlier in the evening I'd asked my friend what to do, and he advised me to just tell the FC straight up that I was not going to sleep with him. But the young guy laughed when I told him. He said, "Even if a girl tells me no, half the time we end up sleeping together anyway." I put up the standard disgusted-feminist facade for a second but then he asked me if I'd ever said no and then done it anyway, and it turns out that I'm not exactly advancing my cause here. But one of them was a gross situation where I was definitely taken advantage of and I guess the other times I just changed my mind or gave into persistence. Sometimes persistence can be flattering.

Anyhow, the moral of that conversation was that you can say no, and you can just not do it. It doesn't matter if you say no but don't take the steps to follow through. I can do this, but it is just harder if you are planning to share a bed with someone, particularly if you are of the popular male mindset than 'no' means 'wait for it...' In the end, my young friend echoed my friend P's sage advice: just don't do anything you're going to regret.

So I went to Tigre yesterday with the FC, trying to be open-minded. And as soon as he touched me I told him not to, and he largely respected that. Tigre was beautiful, but I felt a little stressed all day about what was being expected. It wasn't until nightfall that I fully understood that I didn't want to stay overnight. We had the hard conversation. And, yes, he told me I could still stay overnight without sex. But I have tried that before, and with guys that I don't know very well, it is just cheap talk. I'd like to judge every guy separately, but when the odds stack up like that, it is just foolishness to ignore the trend. I was exhausted but I went home, feeling incredibly shitty about everything. He had gotten a really nice hotel and I wanted to believe I could have enjoyed it with him, just as friends. But I was right about one thing--he thought the fact that we had kissed the other night meant we would definitely have sex if we shared a room. He came right out and said it; he was disappointed and being honest. I guess it wasn't clear to him that he had been coming on hard to me and while I hadn't reciprocated all that enthusiastically, I hadn't exactly pushed him away. But making out is one thing, fucking is another. Amiright?

My roommate has been stressed and sick the last week or so, and I am right there with him today with a terrible headache and a sore throat. Stress really fucks up your immune system. And I am confused as to why I wasn't into this guy. It feels like I am walking away from a fucking perfect love affair--temporary, traveling, foreign, sweet, tall, and financially able to pay for things like nice hotels and long lunches. But for some reason I just don't want anything to do with it.

the comfort of friends and strangers

Sorry. I've been writing a lot this week. It is because I have been awake a lot, with my mind going like a loosed freight train downhill. Notice that things only go out of control DOWNHILL. Because, I suppose, if you lost your brakes going uphill, you would then be going downhill. That is physics, people.

I miss people a lot this week. Yesterday I thought I was cracking up and then I talked to Little Brother. Somehow he makes everything okay. Then I was saved by music, music that helped me sleep. There is this glorious photo site that I like full of people who are also photographers, who have lived in places that I have lived, and take me back to places I want to go, and places I have never been. One of the guys posted an album he recorded recently, when he was going crazy and also saved by his brother. I downloaded the album and fell asleep listening to it, a glorious 3 pm cradle-me-to-sleep nap.

It is not really music I think I would normally like, but I feel like I sort of know these people, their stories, and one of them sang me to sleep. I suppose it is the way people feel about celebrities, when they follow their lives and loves and careers but don't actually know them. I never understood those people until now. And now I am someone I don't understand. Because I will probably put on that very album and (hopefully) fall asleep listening to it again. The post isn't properly linked for permanent ever-ness, but for the moment you can find it here. It is the album Basketball by Pat Parra as well as a free download from Baby Dino called All Our Friends Are Dead, also very beautiful.

I have been kind of hiding out this weekend. I am on the fence about my latest love affair, and we are going on a trip this week. It is probably the worst idea ever. I am such a moody bitch. I asked him to go with me on this big road trip but am now having second thoughts because he seems way too into me. I foresee nights of me rejecting him. That is not the way I want to spend my 30th birthday. We are going to go on a test-drive one-night trip on Tuesday, and then I will decide what to do about it. I don't like the idea of me driving around the desert on my own, but I like the idea even less of my driving around the desert with a guy who won't give up on trying to fuck me. I really hate that feeling. It makes my skin crawl.

My relationship with the entire male sex seems to be become increasingly polarized. The more I hate them, the more they want me. And the more I want them, the less I like myself. My friend told me recently that she is terrified of sex. It is a funny thing for two equally promiscuous women to bond over. But I've been thinking about it a lot. I kind of thought that having sex with as many people as possible would get rid of my fear of sex, or at least reduce my discomfort with it. But I've really only come to one conclusion with sex--once you have sex with someone, one of you expects it at any given moment. And for me, the fear involves being put in a situation where you have to reject people constantly. It is better to just reject someone the first night and never have to do it again, or to just fuck complete strangers you will never see again, hence never reject again. Of course, then you only have sex with strangers, which is never as good as long-termers. But with long-termers, you have to deal with rejection of sex every once in a while, which I think so few of us know how to deal with. Certainly not me. I really don't know what to do about this. Some sort of strategy-change is needed. It probably involves drinking less than I do now as well as, I don't know, thinking differently. You know, being a different person.

It seems only fitting that today I got my first-ever message from a woman on my dating site, and that I was like, "Hell, yes."

I miss you guys so much. I have so many questions and misunderstandings and you have so many answers. Or, at least, hugs.