curious summer

We've covered a lot of ground since leaving Vancouver the first week of June. A lot of literal ground. We drove from San Francisco to Chicago and then to Toronto before turning back for Los Angeles, where we are staying in Westlake for a week. I can't remember the last time I was in Los Angeles, but I'm pretty sure I never visited this neighborhood. It's one of the least diverse neighborhoods in LA, 75% Latino. On my morning jog, I heard someone call me 'Chinita' for the first time in a long while, maybe since living in Washington Heights. Seems like a lifetime ago.
Sometime during our three-week stay in Illinois, I thought of how odd it was to be sitting at my parents' kitchen table in the middle of the day having lunch, like a lazy teenager on summer vacation. There was something extraordinary in the ordinariness of it all. Then Marido came in to join me which seemed to normalize the scene and remind me that I'm not, in fact, still in high school, but then it seemed even more amazing that we were both there, half-nomadic already, preparing for an even longer journey than the almost 5,000 miles we've covered in the last six weeks. On a day-to-day basis, our lives seem mundane, but I'm fascinated by the way we've suddenly switched gears. It's amazing but a little alienating at times.

There's some photography about hermits featured in the NYTimes Lens blog this week, work by the photographer Carlo Bevilacqua. I had this fear that we would become van-dwelling hermits, but then again there is something beautiful about living simply and not having trouble with anyone.

bad news first

I thought I was going to let this blog die. It was getting too boring trying to maintain people's privacy and then a whole bunch of things happened that I desperately needed to write about. Instead I wrote many emails, addressed to people, rather than just posting things blindly to people who don't follow me anymore because I don't post consistently enough. Then I realized I'm not really writing for anyone but me. Even if I haven't posted in months, I do occasionally go back to try and remember a feeling, a time, an event, for reference. I like this blog. It's mine, and I don't want it to die until I consciously want it to, not because I just couldn't figure out how to make it work.

I have to say that this year started off on a very shitty note, and that it got better, amazingly better. I have gotten better at staying out of trouble, but sometimes bad things just happen and I'm glad that I had the know-how of how to feel better. I got a haircut. I spent time with my family. And Marido kicked me back to yoga. All of these things helped. But also, this blog helped, even though I wasn't writing in it. I looked back at a time--actually it was also New Year's, a new year that got off to a shitty start, and it gave me strength. I have been through bad things before.

Some good things have happened though, too, and they were so welcome after the bad. I guess it is better to get the bad news first. One of my short stories got an honorable mention in a fiction journal. And things with Marido, after being very hard, became better than ever. My writing has been going really well. I am slowly getting the hang of balancing the things in my life that are important to me--it's a work 32 years in the making.

This is a shitty post, but it is better than nothing. When I look back on this time, I want to remember that I was trying, not that I wasn't doing anything at all. Above all, it's not that I've been too busy to write. Writing is what I do. Sometimes I'm bad at it, but I do it anyway. That's what we all do.

And risotto. Yum.

boiled amphibians

I'm happy that November is over, aren't you? It wasn't the easiest of months for me. But now that it's December again, I can celebrate little anniversaries. Like it's been a year since I left for Argentina. It's (almost) been six months since I met Marido. And it's been two months since I quit smoking--all reasons to celebrate.

Everyone I know seems to be struggling with their relationships. Relationships are always complex and interesting, but lately they seem to be taking more from us than giving, which I suppose is only normal during the jolliest time of year. Things with me and Marido have been no exception. I really thought we were over, but we aren't.

I think this conversation sums it all up:

ME: I think we have communication problems. It's obvious to me that you've been unhappy for more a little while, but you insist nothing is wrong. Then all of a sudden one day you say you don't want to spend the holidays with me, can't live with me, and don't see a future for us. Of course I freaked out and thought you were breaking up with me. It was the most you'd said in a month. Why didn't you say anything before?

(long, thoughtful pause)

MARIDO: Well, it is like boiling a frog.

(Figuring this is some sort of cultural thing, I wait for him to continue. But instead there is an even longer pause during which I stare at him wondering if he is making an ill-timed joke about our communication problems, or if he is just insane.)

ME: Um, boiling a frog? I don't understand. You're going to have to explain that to me.

MARIDO: (genuinely surprised) Really?

I've never heard of this allusion, but it apparently is so widespread that Little Brother understood it immediately (of course) and it has its own Wikipedia entry. If you're too lazy to click the link, the "boiling a frog" reference is an allusion to the myth that if you place a frog in a pot of temperate water and then slowly bring it to a boil, it will not react to the gradual rise in temperature and boil to death; whereas if you place a frog in boiling water, it will jump out and save itself. Whether or not it's true, this idea is a reference to people's abilities to tolerate extreme circumstances when subjected to them gradually.

Classic hilarity!

Anyhow, it's obvious we need to communicate a little better. Last week was pretty fucking dicey, and I packed up all of my stuff and came home, unsure of whether or not I would return. It is a hard thing to have my confidence in a relationship shaken, when I see that as mainly what keeps me attached to someone--my belief that they will love me and protect me and be a new source of awesomeness, not a source of infinite strife, and vice-versa. I want to make Marido happier by amazing him with love and people and new possibilities for adventure. I don't want to make him feel like a boiled frog!

When I left San Francisco, I was unsure of if we were boiling each other or making each others' lives better. Our lives have changed a lot with the addition of each other. We are both intense people and diametrically opposed in a lot of ways. My first step after leaving San Francisco was to consider whether I wanted to ask him to come to Chicago for Thanksgiving (as planned), because it meant a lot to me, or if he should hang back in San Francisco for a breather (as we both knew would be beneficial in other ways). While discussing this with my mother, he texted to tell me he would still come, if I wanted him to. It meant the world to me that he came.

I love Thanksgiving. This year, I am especially thankful for:

1) Delicious food (no boiled frogs!), particularly pie, ice cream, and turkey;
2) the miracle of aviation;
3) my friends, who amaze me with their patience, wisdom, and incredibly diverse range of relevant advice;
4) my family, who sometimes bring out the worst in me but love me anyway;
5) love in general, its resilience, its optimism, how it makes everything and everyone better;
6) Marido, for believing in us, for continuing to make memories with me, for giving me keys to come back to San Francisco, for destroying a dictionary to send me a love letter, for his pasta carbonara, and for his little-boy smile which makes me believe that we will grow old together;
7) the ability to step back and see where improvements can be made in one's life;
8) the ability to make those improvements with the help of all of the above.

I'm excited for my New Year's resolutions this year. Aren't you?

noted

Lessons learned these past two weeks:

Filed under Cooking:
Fried garlic is the perfect topping to many savory food items. Purple cabbage and apples keep for a long time. If you cover a rack of ribs in barbecue sauce and then throw it in the oven at 250 for 3 hours, the result is DELICOUSNESS. Artichokes are sort of a bitch to prepare, and their deliciousness is mostly derived from butter and garlic, negating most of their healthy properties as a vegetable.

Filed under California:
Even property 150 miles away from San Francisco without water or gas hookups is expensive. The further north you go, the more delicious the beer. Biking north into Sausalito is mostly downhill. You can purchase cocktails on the ferry. The town of Sea Ranch, though nestled on a beautiful stretch of the Pacific and purportedly full of hippies, appears to be uniformly oppressive, at least from an architectural standpoint.

Filed under Relationships:
Passion and dedication are interdependent. It is always better to be appreciated than tolerated--but if you can be happy alongside someone else, that is just as good; if you can't, it's worse than not being tolerated at all. Everything important about relationships can be traced back to the movie Say Anything. Everything else is petty fluff.

Filed under Writing:
Graham Greene is surprisingly funny. Alberto Moravia will consume most of my life for the next few months. Abebooks is a great source to get used books for cheap. Computer games and great writing do not mix.

Filed under Miscellany:
Peanut butter and birdseed alone will not self-adhere and dry into a molded form.

thank god for mountain time

I meant to write when I was in San Francisco, to keep on top of things, and now I have to write this bumbling post that will take us through the past into plans for the future. San Francisco was a marvelous time. The weather was amazing, very un-SF. Definitely my favorite part was just doing very low-key things with good friends, tooling around town, gorging on things, and talking about life. I also caught up with past lovers--Ex, Love Affair, My New Best Friend, and even Joe showed up in town unannounced, though I couldn't really say I was surprised. I "celebrated" six months of sobriety in San Francisco. I ate many great meals, went for long walks on the beach, and remembered how and why I love San Francisco so much. Strangely enough, I also do not feel compelled to move back there at all--at least for the moment--I think mostly because it is so loving and familiar. The two weeks lolling about SF only reminded me that I have a tendency to lapse into hedonistic complacency in such circumstances. Right now, though, I am looking for some slightly masochistic adventure.

I think I've mentioned before that I hate my psychiatrist, but when I went to get a refill on my shhh-don't-drink-just-sleep pills before taking off for the west coast, she casually asked about my post-graduation plans. Because I don't take her very seriously, I just-as-casually responded that I had a crazy plan to travel around the world and do whatever the fuck I pleased, but it probably wasn't going to happen and would secretly drive me insane. It's something I've never mentioned to my detox doc/therapist, the one I love, because I do take him seriously, and I don't like to waste our time with my fanciful notions (of which there are many). But the funniest thing happened, which is that she said "Seriously, I'm a psychiatrist--and I don't give advice--but I want to say that your plan doesn't sound crazy." And we talked it through and she convinced me that it was worth pursuing, and that I should talk it through with other doc. After hearing her so unequivocally merit my plan not crazy, I pretty much decided that I was going to do it, though of course I've been secretly thinking of it all along.

I spent a lot of time talking through these new post-graduation plans in San Francisco, which are to spend an indefinite amount of time traveling and writing and shooting photos, and to do so ostensibly under the cover of research. More to come on this later, but every night now I have been falling asleep thinking of this, and it frightens me and excitens me so of course I know I have to do it, and I plan to leave in September. There is so much to plan and to worry about obsessively that it is almost enough to distract me from the overarching question of "is this really going to happen?"

Because it is. I stopped looking for jobs and decided, fuck, I'm going to employ myself this next year to do whatever it is I want to do, and I'm going to do a great fucking job at it. Also, I will hate myself forever if I back out of it now, and so this is why I've told everyone about it, including my family (and weren't they excited about it...).

The first person I called (and saw) when I came back was My Friend, whom I missed while I was away. I actually talked to him several times because we were finishing up a project together, and had to go over some stuff. I'd gotten him a graduation gift in SF and wanted to give it to him right away, so I scooted over to his place and we went for a walk. We talked about shit, plans, jobs, and as I sat there with him I felt both relieved and incredibly anxious. I wasn't sure what the feeling meant, maybe just relieved that I had made a decision of what to do and glad that we would have the whole summer ahead of us to fuck around, but anxious that I hadn't actually made any concrete plans. Then I wondered if the feeling had more to do with him and New York, because I'm not ready to say goodbye to New York just yet, or the people contained in it.

The next day we graduated. I hated graduation, but Mom came in to attend, so I had to go. My Friend and I were the only ones in our department who didn't buy graduation regalia; I appreciated his solidarity. Afterwards, Mom and I had dinner with My Friend, his roommate, and our families. It was cute. When dinner was winding down, My Friend squeezed himself between Mom and me and we chatted and I felt good until that weird feeling returned, the feeling of relief and anxiety, and I attributed it to having just graduated and being around proud parents and declining prosecco with a forced smile, and I tried to relax, but something was weird. Then our friend left, and I realized what was weird did in fact have more to do with my friend than the overall situation. The relief, I realized, was like this calmness I get from being around him, and the anxiety is the feeling I get that he is about to leave. It is like...being in love...why I hate being in love...why I have been quoted as saying "When I think I feel myself falling in love, my first impulse is to get into a car and drive as far away from the source as possible." The love-feeling is weird when it involves a friend, particularly when it comes at a moment when you are with your parents and theirs, and you could be getting married or something. Oof. The thought made me blush deeply. And then, in that moment, everything about our relationship flashed before my eyes and came into scrutiny.

Everyone knows I had a crush on My Friend way back when we'd first met, but then our relationship became completely desexualized because I never felt like the feeling was mutual at all, and I am pretty good at changing course. We are so safely couched in platonic-ville that it really can't go back there. But sometimes I feel so fucking attached to him that I wonder. Even more so than Joe, My Friend has been there for me this year. It's actually quite remarkable that we've not gone..there...because I do love the shit out of him. But rather than wanting to go there, I balk, because it's a desire that's completely asexual and I'm really not used to it. Because now it's just in a weird place of wanting to be a marriage without ever having been a romance.

After dinner, as Mom and I were walking home from the subway, I said, "I think I'm in love with My Friend." She just laughed. And that night, I did the typical girl thing of attributing every weird interaction between us to him being in love with me while simultaneously recalling every conversation in which we had specifically talked about various incompatibilities. I stayed up very late that night. The funny thing is that I actually thought everything through to a logical solution, which is to do nothing different and just to love on him the way I do. I love the way our relationship is now. Raising the stakes when I'm about to leave has always been my modus operandus, but I think that has changed. I really don't want to lose him as a friend, and will continue to get my kicks elsewhere if that's what it means. It's going to definitely be on my mind every fucking time I hang out with him now, which is weird, but I have owned this decision not to act on it.

I am now in the Catskills with Mom and Dad, staying at a hotel owned by the B-52s. It pretty much rules. There is no cell phone service up here, but of course there is wireless Internet. Tomorrow I am coming back to New York and I will have two guests waiting for me, kids I met in Bolivia who have been traveling through South America all this while. I have no idea how long they're staying with me.

I've just been bumbling around for a little while now, and I have work to do. I guess I better get used to all this motion and lack of structure.

jobseeking

“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

Gustave Flaubert

One Friday every month, I have a nexus of mental wellness appointments, where I see my therapist, my psychiatrist, an hour in-between where I treat myself to a Korean lunch, followed by bikram yoga. It's like take care of Seriously day. Korean lunch is awesome, because they give you like an assortment of six different pickled delicious treats, and I sit there and pick at them with my chopsticks and think about how fucken sober I am and then when you think the meal is over, they give you this bowl of cold, cinnamon-flavored liquid that goes down like "ah."

I'm gradumucating in about six weeks and I now spend at least two hours every day thinking about what I'm going to do be doing following this massive, life-changing event. It fills me with unspeakable anxiety. For the past two years, I have been on a Mom-and-Pop-endowed vacation, with my rent and living habits generously supported, no questions asked, because they believe in higher education, and are largely unaware that this degree is preparing me to actually make less money than I was making before as a graphic designer.

Ha!

Jobseeking is the most demoralizing activity, even more so than smoking crack, cleaning up cum in peepshow booths, online dating, and going through detoxification. It asks you to trade your life and time for the illusion of security and self-preservation at one low, devalued price. While you're doing it, you always feel this strange mix of nausea and excitement, kind of like a fourteen-year-old girl giving her first blowjob. It's very dirty. You're thinking, "This feels inherently disgusting, but everyone does it...and maybe if I do it right, someone will give me a bonus." And this is just the first step into one of many of choking down something that just doesn't seem right, thinking that this is the way the world works, and you better goddamn get used to it and do it better than everyone else.

But today I am ready to say fuck it! I had a very supportive conversation with Keetens last night. I don't much like to talk about how terrified I am about The Future, mainly because I know what I have to do, I just don't like the idea of hard work and poverty. It sucks. I've been poor before, and it sucks. But I've also worked a job that I've hated before, and I think it largely contributed to the rapid escalation of my alcohol consumption. What good, really, is a decently-paying job, if you just use the extra funding to numb the gag reflex? I'm older now. And sober...so maybe I don't need all that extra money anyway. I don't want to have to numb the gag reflex. I'm sick of choking down life. I only want to add things to my life that I like. If that's too much to ask, well, then, I'm asking it anyway. I just don't want to add more meaningless shit to the world. If I can start with just me, with only adding things that mean something to me, then that's where I'm going to start.

wanderings

I don't know how to describe the past fifteen-odd days with my family in the motherland, but it's been an incredible mental extravaganza. There was a week in the middle where I hardly spoke, mostly because of a combination of the close proximity of my sister-in-law and the patch started to make me extremely ill. I was also spending an inordinate amount of time in speeding vehicles, which make me very very very very nervous, particularly when they are being piloted by my father, who gets distracted by his many gadgets while driving.

I've learned a lot about my family on this trip, and in a way it makes me understand myself more and feel less fucked up. My father is descended from the Hakka people, a Chinese subgroup he says was kicked out of northern China. Hakka means "guest family." My mom comes from all sorts of weird family drama and is now speaking to aunts that she hasn't spoken to in 40 years. She's still not really allowed to talk to her only brother, nor are we allowed to see him. I wonder if I'm going to be a wanderer like my ancestors, and kind of deranged and fixated on the past like my grandmother. If so, I have lots of genes to blame it on.

I have many fond memories of Malaysia and Singapore, most of them having to do with eating and prancing around in tropical weather. This time around, I'm struck by how homogeneous the population is, and how much time we actually spend indoors, hiding from the heat. Singapore is aiming to be a largely indoor city. The malls here are the size of entire city blocks, and are connected underground. Yesterday I went to a city exhibit to see the master plan for Singapore and I thought of how funny it would be if I came to work for the city planning department of Singapore, to live as an expat in a country where everyone assumed I was from, and where my parents were from, but I have spent a total of about two months in. It would be totally bizarre. Even though English is one of the official languages spoken here, I am greeted in Mandarin in most of the smaller establishments, and am at a complete loss. The last time I was here, I felt very at home, and now I feel so strange here.

I was going to buy a pretty batik dress the other day when I remembered that it will be winter when I get home, and also that in my real life, I don't really wear batik prints. It was a sobering thought. A couple of reality thoughts struck me since returning to Singapore from Malaysia. The morning we left was my older brother and sister-in-law's fourth wedding anniversary. I can't help it, but they really depress me. I was chatting online with Joe one morning and he was telling me that he was really looking forward to jury duty, and possibly subletting his room and moving home for a month to save some money. I found this depressing, too. Then ACLU emailed to say he would be coming through New York next week. I kind of told myself I was going to de-complicate things and focus on Joe, but there is this restless part of me that just can't focus one one person, one place, one thing, even though I do miss him and like him a whole lot. I just can't do it right now. Little Brother says I should be careful of older men, that ACLU is probably married, and that I am not being honest with myself about what I want.

And then I got this weird email from The Ex that was an attachment of a Weekly Report I used to make him read when our relationship was on the rocks. I'm not kidding. I used to write him a weekly newsletter, lay it out in InDesign with photos and such, with different columns and icons, print it out, and give it to him every week for him to read, because I am clearly a psychotic woman who is obsessed with her relationships. The report would tell him every fucking thing I thought about every fucking thing, summed up neatly because he had a short attention span, and it gave me a chance to weed out all my mini-hysterics throughout the week and just tell him at the end of the week what was still pissing me off. I wanted everything to be out in the open.

And now, I can't even date one single person at a time, because I am clearly a psychotic woman who is obsessed with her relationships. Multiple relationships. They are just as addictive as The Cigarettes, The Booze, The Drugs, and The Caffeine. Sister-in-law said: Wow, you sure need a lot of substances.

Honestly, what do I want? I still wish things worked out with me and The Ex, even though I know they could not and will not. I wish that I were innocent and virginal and uncomplicated, even though I find those people terribly boring. Little Brother and I went to see the new Miyazaki today, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. It was beautiful. I am into fairy tales. No, I CANNOT accept reality. Isn't that obvious?

yes, keetens, i really am busy

My week has pretty much been a swift return to the boozeness, peaking Friday night with My Friend's brilliant idea to get me to drink six shots of whiskey on the roof of his building before I needed to go out to Brooklyn. Needless to say, I peed on someone's German automobile and woke up at 4:30 in the morning, confused, hungover, and in Park Slope.

That day was a rough day. I made my way out to Little Neck for an epic BBQ involving at least a dozen chickens, a duck, a turkey, lamb gyros, a repeat of the amazing Brazilian picanha (expertly prepared by my current obsession, Tyler), and several thousand dollars worth of beer. Tyler is driving me fucken crazy. I don't know why I have to want someone who is clearly emotionally inaccessible, but that's just the way it is, I guess. The boy just won't give me a damn inch. I hate hate hate love love him. I spent the evening wondering how to connect with him, aside from showing him my many bruises and scrapes from the past few days. Incidentally, this is also how I connect with eight-year-olds.

On a happy note, I finally grew the makings of a spine--albeit a flexible, cartilage-based one--and broke it off with Joe. I had failed on making the transition earlier this week, and I am horrible at ending things with nice boys whose only mistake was to show me how truly interested they were in pursuing a meaningful relationship with me.

I had kind of thought/hoped/feared that I had "broken up" with him via drunk voicemail on the night of my whiskey greyout, but then I kept getting more messages from him. I just want to share this with you, because this was a good one. It worked for me, and maybe it can work for you, too!

Ending a 6-week affair via text message, in less than 100 words:
Joe: Hi! Hang out tonight?
S: Sorry i cannot
Joe: Pssh, I give up. (this was the third night in a row)
S: Sorry it's nothing personal--i am really busy this week. To be honest i didn't really expect to see you anymore because of our travels. (it took me a half hour to decide between saying 'didn't' and 'don't')
Joe: Ah no hard feelings. Its a bummer, I'd squeeze in time for it (by it I think he meant fucking, what do you think?) but we can call it even.
(Ten minutes later)
Joe: Ah heck with it, if I dont see you - good luck out there!
(Awww! What a sweetheart!)
S: Thanks doll, say hello to the cali for me.


Done and done. Now, back to my secret plans.

so many things

There are so many things I want to write about but I am horrendously drunk for 6 pm on a Tuesday, so we'll start right here and see what happens.

First off, I only 10 percent remember writing that last post about...soup? This is what I write about when I'm drunk? Soup? My Friend and I have a tendency to get unexpectedly drunk together. This is what happened this afternoon. But our newly cemented Friend status makes getting drunk together totally awesome, and we are even considering living together next year
because my Neighbor confirmed that she got into SCAD and is probably taking off late summer.

Exciting, daunting, everything all at once. Cheers to: The Future...!

I had my one and only final exam this morning at 9 a.m. Instead of studying yesterday, I celebrated Cinco de Mayo by eating nothing but "Mexican" food all day, and staying up until 2 in the morning chatting with Girlfriend about the latest development in my junior high love life. Strangely enough, I only had one tequila drink yesterday, on the holiest of holy days for my preferred beverage, and I realize that there are now three things I have to ingest on a regular basis in order to keep my bowels in motion: cigarettes, coffee, and tequila.

Something happened to me Saturday evening, and all of a sudden I needed to have sex. And when I say "need," I mean it in a very comprehensive way, where my body and my mind and the stars all aligned to make sure I got some action. When I left my apartment Saturday night, I knew I wasn't coming home. I was being pulled by some force greater than me to some form of casual encounter, and nothing could stop it, not even Netflix. I even put my overnight kit (i.e., eyedrops and a pack of gum) into my purse as I left.

There were some days that I recall last year in my months of severe drunkening where I just didn't give a flying fuck and although I wasn't particularly happy, I wasn't sad either, and I couldn't stop laughing, which gave me the feeling of light satisfaction. There was one day I remember where I thought I was holding it together at the office pretty well because I was sating myself by holding an unlit cigarette in my mouth, thereby making me less edgy and pleasant despite being quite dry in the head. It wasn't until late afternoon that I had sufficiently rehydrated enough to pee, and when I got into the bathroom, I saw that I had what looked like several day's worth of eye makeup drying on my face. This was also the time that I stopped brushing my hair (which I still don't do, but now it's about a foot shorter so it's harder to tell), and when I attempted to pull it back into some semblance of dignity, I saw that I had dried blood all around one ear. I don't think I was bleeding out of my ear, so its source was unclear to me. In any case, I found this terribly funny, because all day long some people had commented that I looked like shit, and somehow it never occurred to me to go and check it out.

Sunday I was vaguely aware that this might be one of those days, because I found myself vaguely singing and dancing on the subway platform the morning after popping my NYCherry and heading to school for a crucial review session, during which I volunteered to clean the blackboard with my clothing. I have been blessed with an insomnia-free streak for a little while now, and I also have not yet slept out a single night in The NY, so Sunday was a little jarring for me. Also, Sunday, if you remember, was about thirty degrees warmer than it was Saturday, so I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt under a heavy sleeveless item, and I felt fucken ridiculous. So I tried to alter what I was wearing accordingly, then passed out in the sun for a while after indulging in a much needed slice of Koronet pizza.

This is when I got the call that suggested that Tyler, this boy that I'm so incredibly into, might maybe be at this BBQ back from whence I came in Brooklyn that evening. I have many scruples about anything that seems even remotely duplicitous, so I was torn. On the other hand I really wanted to see Tyler and I didn't have time to go home and shower and make it look as though I had chosen to wear the clothes I was wearing. So I did the only thing I could do: I took a paper towel bath in the restroom, asked my unsuspecting friend to smell me for ball stank, and headed back to Brooklyn.

Tyler wasn't there, but it was still a great time, and I was happy to be with such a mellow group of people who never once referenced anything relating to the existing dominant Manhattan paradigm, any struggle with it, or any acknowledgment that that world existed. I was with people who just...were. And this made me incredibly happy. It made me think that here I was, all stressed and worried about trying to be Somebody, without taking the time to realize that I already am Somebody. Right now I'm Somebody who doesn't do what I want, and the world is feel of Somebodies who are always trying to be Somebody Else without just being who they are, and doing what makes them happy.

This brings me back to my exciting Friday night, which consisted of watching Little Miss Sunshine, which made me (a) miss my family and (b) just want to "Do what you love, fuck the rest." I really, really, loved this movie.

Anyhow, I want to write more about this new boy, whom I will also call by his unidentifiable first name, Joe. I went on a hilariously awkward post-sex, sober, daytime date with him yesterday, and some interesting things were revealed to me, things that I couldn't even respond to because I was so sober, and of course self-censorship and BAC are inversely related. I said so little and ate so much (as you can see, my diet and no-drinking phase lasted all of 48 painful hours) that I was surprised to hear from him again last night, and I am now trying to sober up by blogging, napping, and heading back into the night to see him again. He is a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, or something like that, which makes me trust him infinitely more than anyone I've met via craig. And this is why I slept with so many people in San Francisco: there, everyone is separated by a maximum of three degrees. Of course, that's also what made it kind of creepy, and why most people don't advise sleeping with roommates or co-workers.

Foolish? I think so. But it's amazing our capacity for self-distraction when faced with an inordinate amount of work and requirements, either self- or publicly imposed. I react poorly to rules.

happiness

Howdy world! I'm feeling so much better after being so sick for so long. It is a world of difference to not have your head and eyeballs throbbing with snotty pain.

I had a farr-bulous day yesterday on my first day of feeling back like a member of society. Lemme tell you all about it!

First off, I made some stops downtown on my way to an interview for an article I'm writing. I stopped at a health food store to buy some bulgur wheat for the vegetarian chili I was making. I've never used bulgur wheat before, and it was well worth the stop. When you add it to chili, it gives it a consistency much like ground beef. Next I stopped at Knit for some cobalt blue yarn to make a requested beret for Beauty. I love this store for their amazing selection of Noro yarn, and they sell coffee and tea there as well.

Next I headed off to my interview, which I'd had to reschedule from last week due to snotty illness. I was kind of nervous because (a) it's been a few years since I did anything journalistic, (b) I want to eventually work for this organization, which is sort of why I chose this piece, because obviously I want to work for a place I admire, and (c) I was still pretty out of it.

I was early and he was late, so I bumbled around the West Village for a while in the cold, stopping for a timbale and tea at Bonsignour on Jane and 8th Avenue, and feeling happy to be living in The NY, where bumbling around can be considered a legitimate pasttime.

My interview was with Aaron Naparstek, the editor of Streetsblog, a blog that is currently transitioning from being more of a DOT watchdog to being one of the many epicenters of the livable streets movement. He was a great interview because he is just a really fucken cool guy, but also a not-so-great interview in that he's so humble and softspoken. If you're looking for any killer pocket quotes, you're going to have to listen hard. It was a great time. I rested a little easier because Neighbor lent me this kickass Belkin recorder that fits right into my iPod, and it worked like a charm. I fit our hour-long interview onto my nano easily, and it didn't kill the battery or anything.

I loved getting back in the journalistic groove. Being a writer is great in that you can just call up anyone who you think is interesting and ask to talk to them. Streetsblog is published (i.e., funded) by Mark Gorton, the developer behind LimeWire, who I can't wait to corner for a little chat someday.

The great news is that halfway through the interview, he brought up that they are looking for writers, and asked if I knew anyone in my program who would be interested in writing. Uhhh....yeah? I told him I would definitely be interested, and when we circled back to that topic in the end, he told me to pitch him some ideas and he'd pay me for the stories. It all played right into my master plan so perfectly that I felt stupid when I left...stupid happy!

Happiness is knowing what you want to do, and being able to do it.

Next up was our vegetarian dinner party, which was wicked fun. My favorite new tradition in this old tradition is our post-dinner dance, where we rock out and get stomach cramps.

I have a beautiful girlfriend

My Girlfriend was here this weekend, and it was fucken glorious. I was so excited to see her that I hardly slept Thursday night. When I came home after class Friday morning, she was in my apartment, passed out in my bed after her redeye through Las Vegas. We had a fun girl afternoon of trying to decide what to wear, which was difficult because we were going from an architecture party to that hip-hop/dub show that I got free tickets to. Friday night was a typical alcoholic haze that started off with margaritas and free tequila (actually I think it was Tequiza) shots at Mama Mexico. The architecture party found us cruising with plastic cups of Budweiser and Oreos. Hmm. We had a great dinner at Cafe Habana in Nolita, which was exciting because I have heard about the corn on the cob there FOREVER and it did not disappoint. Decent margaritas there, too. Then we headed over to Motor City, this rockabilly bar with a sweet pinball machine.

We headed over to a friend's house to drink champagne on the roof and ended up getting stuck. Yes, stuck. On the roof. The door somehow shut behind us, and we had no way off the roof. Beauty was able to locate a friend at a nearby bar, Odessa, who came to rescue us. We threw him a set of keys and he heroically climbed up to the sixth floor on a bum ankle to save us from our stupidity. Or, rather, potential stupidity. I was volunteering to hang off the ledge and drop onto the fire escape. Ah, liquid courage.

Of course we had to escort our hero back to Odessa to buy him drinks and eat french toast at the diner next door. Around 4 I dragged my poor tired Girlfriend into a cab. Alas our adventures were not yet over, as we got stuck in stop-dead traffic on FDR and, after smoking a cigarette in the back and watching people get out of the cars to chill, I woke up Girlfriend and we ran inland to get an illegal cab back to Washington Heights. Never did make it to that show.

Saturday we went to the show at Randall's Island. We ended up walking across the Triborough Bridge to get there, which was cool. We found a joint on the way in, I got my free tickets to the show, and we spent the next six hours each occupying roughly one square foot of space and enjoying Les Savy Fav, Blonde Redhead, LCD Soundsystem, and Arcade Fire.
Each set was awesome. There were so many cute boys there that I became convinced that the whole concert was some sort of Hipster Vengeance plan to exterminate all twenty-something PBR consumers in greater New York. Why else would they have the concert on an island? And why were all those helicopters hanging out overhead? Very mysterious.

We showed up at Muffin and Keeten's place for dinner at midnight, exhausted and starving.

Yesterday we bummed around Williamsburg and championed another long day of drinking. After an awesome brunch at Juliette, a bright, laid-back little bistro, we went over to Rock Star bar where there was some kind of birthday party happening, and I got a huge $5 shot of Maker's Mark in a plastic cup. Did I mention you can smoke there? Awesome.

From there we went to another smoker-friendly bar, the Cyn Lounge at Bedford and 5th. It was fine but we were restless and hungry, so we found our way into the Charleston at Bedford and 7th. This place rules. You get an 8" cheese pizza with every $4 drink, so we ate about 7 pizzas between the five of us, and the bartender didn't give us a hard time for being drunk and hungry. The jukebox was full of Talking Heads, Joy Division, the Make Up, Donovan, everything. Highly recommended.

One more bar...Union Pool, also in Williamsburg, has a spacious outdoor patio, and a functional black-and-white photo booth, where Girlfriend and I took some of our only photos together.

I really, really love my Girlfriend, and I was glad I was only half-awake this morning when she left for her 8:30 flight out of JFK. The last time I said good-bye to her in August was so painful, I guess mostly because I didn't know when I'd see her again. I feel better about things now, because I worried that, like some of my past roommates, we would fall out of touch despite promises to the contrary. Having her fly all the way across the country to drunkenly bumble around the city with yours truly meant so, so much to me. And she didn't falter from her recent smoking quit, which was pretty incredible.

The best part about her visit is that I don't feel miserable like I thought I would. I feel happy and lucky to have such a beautiful girlfriend, even if she is 3,000 miles away.