what to say

The day of my last post, Marido and I left Navarra and went to the coast. I think all the togetherness was wearing on me, because as soon as we got there, I left him in the pensión and went to work on my article, which was sort of a pointless thing to do on a Sunday afternoon in Spain, because everything was closed. I took a breather in the plaza and tried to soothe my nerves and to coax myself into the loving place where Marido seemed to be, mentally, and that I seemed to be dancing around like a scared bird.

When Marido showed up to meet me, he had some bad news. He'd gotten word--through Facebook, of all things--that his mother was in a coma.

We had a less-than-pleasant evening, where I tried to take care of him the best I could. But when you don't know someone very well, you don't know how they react to stress and what helps them. We talked it through a bit, but it was a rough night where we sort of hated each other and felt helpless. While we didn't fight, there was a moment where I sat on a street corner and cried because I didn't know what to do but I was sure that I wasn't making things better and was actually adding to his stress just by being there. When you are exhausted and stressed out, the last thing you want to do is worry about how your date is doing. His mother died the next day.

I suppose many people would define this as when the honeymoon ended, but with the uncertainty gone and the finality of death, we were able to mourn for a while and carry on. He wasn´t expected to return to Argentina for the cremation, and he was at peace with things, so we moved on. This would seem callous to a lot of people, but maybe this is just another reason why Marido and I get on so well. We have similar attitudes toward a lot of things in life, and death is one of them.

The rest of the honeymoon progressed without incident, so much so that there is little to report. We motored around and observed each other as closely as we observed the countryside and the people. But while Marido poured his heart out to me about how he felt, I kept my cards very close to my chest, so close that he kept asking me what I was thinking and why I wouldn´t tell him. The truth is that I spent a significant amount of time thinking about Ex and Joe, and during almost every night I dreamed of Ex. That is not something you want to tell your new boyfriend on your faux-honeymoon in Spain. Whenever he asked me what I was thinking, I didn't really know what to say.

Something amazing about Marido is that he is extremely open. He would explain everything--from why he likes me so much to why he was changing lanes. This could be tiresome to some, but for someone like me it is kind of perfect, because I never have to wonder what he´s thinking. It´s too bad that I can´t really return the favor at the moment, but I am doing the best I can. At times I felt pressured to echo some of the sentiments he was expressing, but it is a little fast for me. I am surprised I even let him hold my hand.

I adore this man and I miss him, but I am glad we have this time apart now to slow it down a little. I actually think that my heart is full and I have to let go of some people before I can be in love with him. Surprisingly, the person I have to let go of is Joe. When I go to see Joe in San Francisco, I can't have sex with him, and this makes me sad, because that is something we do very well together. The thought of seeing him and telling him I can´t or won´t sleep with him any more makes me terribly sad. I thought of this on the honeymoon, that this is not something I could do with a clear conscience, even though I slept around when I was with Joe. And it's not just the sex. I was always waiting for the moment to be in love with Joe, to admit that I was in love with him.

Timing is funny like that. It´s not just timing, of course. There are other aspects of Marido that have landed us together in a way that never worked out for me and Joe. And while I spend nights gflirting with Marido, I feel ready to give up others to be with him, but it is still sad. I know that Joe will be sad, too. And this whole time, I thought the reason we weren´t committed to each other was so we could avoid being sad. And here it is. Again.

Any advice on ending things with your favorite sex partner?

feels like home

The two weeks in Asia turned out to be a good transition back for a week in the Chi. Singapore is homey while still being strange and exotic, and Chicago is just...homey. Strangely, it feels like I was just here last week even though it's been more than five months. It feels nice to be home with my parents and my dog, and part of me doesn't want to get back to Buenos Aires...yet.

The last week in Singapore was very exciting. I met up with a family friend who was in a sticky situation, and we played all week and went on a nice beach vacation for a few nights. It made me feel like a completely different person. I went from being the silent daughter to being the strong, older woman taking care of a friend, complete with tour-guidism, strategizing and dispensing of hard advice.

Being on three continents in three weeks makes me want to settle down, though I'm unsure of what that means. The need for stability is so vague that I'm not sure what form that would take. But all the girl talking reminds me that I desperately miss being in love, and I'm fairly certain that is a big part of the equation. I spent a large part of the past week talking about the highs and lows of my relationship with Ex, which made me both nostalgic and fearful for what is to come.

On the eve of my departure to Asia, I stayed up late with my roommates, feeling extremely apprehensive yet accepting. We are all in such loose situations that it feels like a strong gust of wind could just pick us up and disperse us in any number of directions. On the one hand, we are all ready for change and almost desirous of such a random change of course, but on the other hand we all wish we were motivated somehow on our own that we didn't have to wait for the tides to change for that to happen. We are all simultaneously waiting and seeking, and nervous to make any sort of proactive decision.

Someone asked me what I was up to lately and I answered that I had "just" graduated, but then I realized that "just" was a year ago. What have I been doing for the past year? When I think back on where I've been and what I've been doing, a dreamy feeling comes over me that is something like detached disbelief and suppressed longing. For all that I've been up to, I feel like I've yet to really get down to it. Something inside me is begging to say yes to the right question. Lately I've been saying yes to all these short-term tasks and really rising to the challenge, and I think I'm about to say yes to something else, something that I've never even considered before.

It is altogether terrifying and welcome.

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.

last minute freakout

I got pulled over (again) today. Welcome back to Illinois! It did not stay my day off right.

This is going to be a somewhat frenetic post. I've ingested a lot of coffee and cigarettes.

Packing tonight was a tricky maneuver. I want to bring nothing and everything. I am obsessed with my summer dresses but cannot bring them all. And, more like, I will end up going out how I went out in New York, in disgusting cutoffs and dirty tee-shirts. I almost don't want to bring them to force myself to look better. But somehow I crammed a bunch of clothes into a bag and am now contemplating this obnoxious thing of beauty, my tripod. It is a separate piece of luggage. I can't not take it and yet I can't imagine taking it. The tripod has become a metaphor for all of my problems with this endeavor at all.

Got home last night after twelve intense days in California. Top 10 Highlights: 1) Eating a burrito with the dog in Dolores Park an hour after landing at SFO, 2) crashing a City Hall function with booze and schwag and hors d'oeuvres, 3) seeing that Ex is still adorable, 4) a 24-hour date with my peripatetic life partner that included a) biscuits, gravy, waffles, and crab for breakfast, b)watching the Heimlich Maneuver performed at dinner one night, and c) Point Break Live, 7) tailgating with Raiders fans and getting drunk by noon, 8) a sleepover party with Joe, 9) spending soft time with my friends at my old apartment, and 10) the idea of family time.

Bottom 5 buzzkillers: 1) breaking my very-needed cell phone my first morning in SF, 2) a return to the serious boozing and ensuing sicking, and 3) witnessing the fallout of a long-standing friendship gone bad, 4) helping a bloodied, beaten up man to his feet just down the block from my apartment, about an hour after I passed him drinking what smelled like cologne with his buddies, and 5) pissing all over myself in a port-a-potty.

I slept a blessed eight hours last night and then set about freaking out today, starting with getting pulled over. Tomorrow I get on an airplane and fly for fourteen hours. I think what I like best about airplane rides is that the act of booking a ticket and then actually going somewhere works well with my mentality of shoot first, ask questions later. I hate obsessive anxiety, which is going to party out tonight with the three shots of espresso I had earlier this evening. I know it wasn't the wisest move, but I had a lot to do, and I was on a date with a sweet boy who I will probably marry. I will tell you all about it some time. The date had two purposes: the minor one was to take away four hours of pre-trip anxiety. But the real reason I had to go out on a date today is because one thing about me that you probably don't know is that right before I make a big move or decision, I have to fall in love, have sex, (and not necessarily with the same person), then leave. This way, when I leave I can direct all of my obsessive, cyclical thoughts to dramatic romantic fantasies rather than putting myself through the wringer of decision-making anxiety. I recommend it highly. Why second-guess yourself when you can just escape to a fantasy world where everyone is in love--it's just the timing that is off?

Timing: It is everything that matters, completely out of our control, and, in the end, completely inconsequential. It's the perfect abstract concept to take the blame for everything.

See you in South America.

Seeking Sebastien

I've regressed into cruising online dating sites the past few nights. I blame it on spending the weekend surrounded by intensely cute couples, and talking to Joe this week for the first time since he left New York. I miss him, and I'm just now understanding just how important he was to me this past year. I don't think I could have survived the winter without him, and I don't think there is anyone else on the planet who could have played the role that he played for me.

But I'm so primed for my next great affair, and as I peruse a thousand profiles (including coming across My Friend online, which was funny) I realize it's just not going to happen this way, because I'm just clicking through them halfheartedly, because none of them are Sebastien. None of these preconceived setups can measure up to the cliched backpacker romance I had on my Spring Break Sobriety Tour 2009. If you're up for a long, self-indulgent story, let's hop to it.

Ever since my romantic intrigue with The Hitchhiker, I have had a fondness for intense, short-term love affairs. Psychoanalyze me if you want to, but I don't care. They are perfect because they can never be flawed; they are always over before their time, and you are always left wanting more: perfect masturbatory material.

*

It's a little after sunrise and I'm attempting, in my typical, disheveled, insomniatic fashion, to board the wrong bus.

"Cor-di-llera" the bus operator reads off my ticket. He then points at the bus I am attempting to board. "Col-que."

I don't take this too seriously because I know all the buses, regardless of the operator, are going to the same place: Bolivia. Even though I've only been in Chile for a few days, and am ill-prepared to brave the cold heights of Bolivia, I am determined to get there. Last night I stayed up late at the hostel, watching a charming young Swede kill a bottle of cheap rum and break the $700 lens on his SLR after showing me some beautiful pictures from his expedition into Bolivia. I’d spent the day running around town trying to rent a motorcycle to drive to the nearest town, about an hour away, just to pay the $130 fuck-you-because-you’re-an-American-reciprocity-fee needed to cross the border with no luck, but was going to find a way into Bolivia somehow. I wanted to go to Uyuni as well, to shoot the train graveyard.

I have not slept much, and I blame my haplessness on this as I wander down the road to find the Cordillera agency, where there is no bus whatsoever, just the now-familiar sight of pairs of travelers rummaging through each others' backpacks and feeding each other. I’m past the stage where couples make me feel lonely, but have now moved onto the hunger stage where I just long for their increased variety of food. I've spent the first few days in San Pedro de Atacama scraping by on the bodega diet of pitas stuffed with greasy wrapped cheese and salami, an assortment of chocolate cookies, and Nescafe.

At the same time that I am excited to get out of this tiny town for a few days, I am kind of dreading this excursion because I will be with a tour group. I hate tour groups so much that I almost killed myself in the desert yesterday, in an attempt to do something I hate even more--bicycling--just to get away from the tour groups. I kind of hate people lately. I only want food, the desert, cigarettes, and water. But I can't do Bolivia on my own, and so I've signed myself up to be bound to a small group of strangers, most likely these charming backpackers feeding each other around me. I just might kill everyone. Particularly alarming is the fact that I have only two cigarettes on my person, and I don't know when I'll be able to purchase cigarettes in the next four days. I am also the only person here without a sleeping bag, but I am more concerned about the cigarette supply, because while cold weather will only kill me, lack of nicotine will endanger everyone in the group. This was not well planned. This entire trip was not planned at all, actually, but that’s what makes it exciting. And the group, though I hate them without even knowing them, will not let me die.

When the bus boards, the one lone traveler sits down next to me. We are the only non-couple on the bus. I wondered if he will make my life better or worse for the next few days. Men have a way of forcing these kinds of issues. I can’t tell if he is cute. All boys kind of look the same here: bearded, sunburned, and hungry. I wait until he finishes his juice box before asking him, "Como te llamas?"

His name is Sebastien. Did you know that's quite possibly my favorite name in the whole world? No, I did not say that out loud! God, I'm not some 14-year-old girl. But seriously, I had the biggest crush on Adrien Grenier before Entourage when he was in The Adventures of Sebastian Cole. We poke at some awkward Spanish, switch to English for a few minutes, but that just feels disgusting so we move on to French while we wait in line at the Chilean border. The Swiss are smooth like that. The last time I spoke French was in Morocco, the summer I moved to New York. I feel like an idiot, but it’s okay. My Spanish is even worse, but at this point, I just don’t want to speak English, then I have an excuse for sounding like an idiot.

I honestly don't think that anything of the sort is in store for me and this guy, even though I think that about most people I meet. I am in hyper defense mode from traveling alone, and I imagine I am getting solo-vibes from him as well. Before running into the Swede last night, I was stood up by a local guy for vague dinner plans, and so I am a little wary of people at this point. Particularly when it comes to setting up for intense time together in cramped quarters under uncomfortable conditions, I think it’s best to keep things very aloof, formal even, like rooming with strangers instead of friends. We should maintain boundaries and such.

When we cross into Bolivia, I spy a burned-out bus and confess to him that I have soft spot for rusty photography, which is why I’m looking forward to Uyuni. I’m not exactly in conversation mode, but I think I say it because I know how to say it. To my surprise, he says he wants to shoot the bus as well, and he makes a plan for us to grab a quick bite at the chow line before sneaking off to shoot the bus and making our way through the pandemonium at Bolivian immigration. It's nice when someone makes it clear where you stand with them, that you're in this together. I'm so used to people being vague: you can do this, if you want to...I'm going to do this. You know. With Sebastien, from this moment on, we are in it together.

This, however, is threatened when the Cordillera agency attempts to split the bus into groups of five for the next few days. You know that panicky feeling you get when, say, you get to a movie with a group of people, or to a long dinner table at Thanksgiving, and you realize that whatever seating position happens in the next four seconds will determine the outcome for the next four hours? That's what is happening at the Bolivian border, only it is happening in Spanish, with an angry man holding my backpack hostage, and trying to stuff me into one beat-up Land Cruiser. He is telling Sebastien to go to another. I don’t look at Sebastien, because it is pointless. I look at the man holding my backpack and prepare to accept my destiny.

"Es mi amiga," Sebastian tells the man, pointing to me. The man looks furious. At the agency, we'd been two solo travelers. "Juntos," he insists. He looks at me and smiles hopefully. My little heart melts. The man hands Sebastien my backpack and directs us to the same car.

After being packed into the Cruiser with a Brazilian-Spanish couple and a Chilean-German couple, we make many pit stops at some amazing locations in Bolivia. We sit in the back together, struggling to keep up with the rapid Spanish going on in the front of the car. Each time we make a stop, Sebastien holds the door for me, waits on me, and we scout the location together, pointing things out, in perfect step with one another. I am shooting wide-angle landscapes; he is shooting mostly telephoto wildlife photography. It is a great pairing. Later in the day, after they deposit us at a remote outpost with no heat for the evening, Sebastien asks if I want to go for a walk. Most of the group, myself included, is suffering from some degree of altitude sickness, but of course I say yes.

The fondest moments of my life always involve desert photography with a cute boy. I can't help but remember the amazing trip I took with The Ex to Baja. It was a beautiful adventure that involved camping, puking tequila in the desert, and fjording a stream in a borrowed Mercedes, and we never spoke about the infidelities that had made the trip feel like such a necessity. This trip is cleaner, with no tinge of anything like that. We clamber over rocks exploring the desert, taking turns deciding which way to go in the wide open. He helps me scale walls and navigate the rocky canyon we discover, and I point out good lighting angles, offer him water. I think, “This is what a partnership feels like.”

As the sun sets, we return to the chilly camp and meet some of the other people from the other three cars, who turn out to be mostly French speakers. Sebastien pours me tea and when dinner arrives, serves me. I am exhausted. I try to hold my own with the French speakers, but am content to just try and understand.

That night the six of us sleep in an unheated, cement room, but I don't sleep at all for the second night in a row. I know I’m not going to freeze to death, but I feel like I’m going to come close. I think about three things in a continuous loop for seven hours: (1) my stubbornness about not taking drugs, not even the sleeping pills I have in my backpack, partially because then I’d have to take my hands out from under my layers of clothes, (2) Sebastien, sleeping not two meters away from me, (3) life amazing life.

I wait until dawn and wander out into the desert to shoot the sunrise. We are truly in the middle of nowhere. Off in the distance, I see a figure emerge from the hillside and I see that he has come out to check on me. Inexplicably, I hide. Sometime during the night, I have already started to feel separation anxiety. I don't like it when people leave. Yet, you say, you like short-term love affairs? How does that make any sense? Shut the fuck up.

In late afternoon, we come to another remote location, a building constructed completely out of salt in the middle of what appears to be an exploded minefield. Sebastien and I get a room to ourselves. Everyone is in good spirits that night because there is one working shower in the salt hotel, and it is a good ten degrees warmer and 1,000 meters lower. There is even wine at dinner, which makes me extremely uncomfortable, but it doesn't matter, because I was able to buy cigarettes during the day. We are fifteen people in the middle of nowhere I am the happiest I think I ever been in my entire life. I can only communicate good things, so it's like I can only think good things. I have a sneaking suspicion I'm going to have sex in a building made completely out of salt, completely sober, with a Swiss boy named Sebastien, in the middle of fucking Bolivia.

All of this is very charming and swell, but what really gets to me is when I am sitting next to Sebastien at dinner and I overhear him telling a French woman the story of how we'd met crossing the border and how he'd insisted we stay together. She thought we were a couple. She asks him what language we speak in, and he says, without hesitation, first in Spanish, then in English, then in French, and now, in all three: "Mira, une llama! It's cool, n'est-ce pas?"

I almost die. Or, rather, I immediately set to killing myself in the typical manner, by excusing myself to go outside to smoke a cigarette.

Admittedly, it doesn't take much for me to fall in love. I fall in love at least once a week. But at the same time that I use the word, I use it haphazardly, fleetingly, convinced that love is something that can't really be had, just glimpsed. I'm like that. I suffer from an affliction where I believe that anything truly worth having can't really be had, and so I think that the best kind of love is ephemeral. But at moments like those where things seem so fucking precious, where you can't help but think to yourself, "I want to hear that story told on my fucking wedding day," my first reponse is to get up, go outside, and yep, that's right, smoke a goddamn cigarette. I don't know why that's my response. It's like I can't believe it's happening, or I don't think I should be there, or my personal being can't handle that kind of perfect moment, so I have to fucking leave. I wish I was the kind of person that could like squeeze your hand under the table and gaze at you sweetly back, but instead my response is to try and light a stick of cancerous toxins on fire and inhale the poisons as rapidly as possible in seclusion in the freezing cold. My body can handle pain all right, but it repels perfect moments with absolute disgust.

Luckily, the night wears on, and my sober ass is forced to bask in the glow of this ridiculously wonderful evening in the middle of nowhere, largely because there is nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. I forgot about my clunky French and miserable Spanish with this charming Swiss boy and this international crew of travelers, and just remembered that like them, I had wanted to be there so badly that I had forgone my comforts, almost frozen to death the night before, gnawed my way through some pitiful means, battled altitude sickness, incomprehension, and indigestion, and am still ecstatic as all hell to be there, and savoring the last hour of the power generator like it is our last night on earth. Indeed, although we feel like we are in the lap of luxury compared with where we stayed last night, it also feels like a movie set for some apocalyptic fantasy. It is, in a way. The next day we will all go our separate ways—some, like Sebastien, will venture further east into Bolivia, many are going into Argentina, and I am going back to Chile. But during these few evenings we’ve shared in the heights of the Bolivian desert, I really feel like I’ve come to understand and appreciate myself in the context of the world—or, at least, in the context of these people. “Sometimes,” one of the men says, “we have to go so far away to meet our true neighbors, those who are really like us…at home, everyone thought we were crazy to leave for so long. But out here, to meet so many people traveling…so many people who will take care of each other without question...who do the same as you...it feels right.”

Part of me wants to have a long, meaningful conversation as I snuggle up with him that night, but it is going to be sad, so I just tell him I will miss him and I kiss him. I've done this so many times now I know how to do it. After we have sex, he holds me tight and simply says, "Vas dormir." Go to sleep. And you know what, I finally do.

The next day, we part after shooting the train graveyard in Uyuni. I am so distraught about leaving him that I also leave behind my most critical piece of clothing after my favorite pair of jeans: my crucial hoodie that I've had for almost a decade. Talk about major losses.

And I'm not kidding at all when I say that as we leave town, the next song I hear is Roxette's "It must have been love," but en espanol.

*

I saw Ex when I returned to New York, and I told him that I’d met the guy I want to spend the rest of my life with. Let me clarify: maybe it’s not literally Sebastien, the same exact Sebastien I met two weeks ago on a bus in San Pedro de Atacama, but the guy I spend the rest of my life with will be Sebastien, because I will look for him in whomever I seek to date. When Ex asked me to describe him, I couldn’t do it. I missed a lot of nuances of his personality due to him being Swiss and all. All I knew about him was that I trusted him from the moment we crossed the border into Bolivia, that he took care of me, and that when I was with him, I felt like we could do anything together, like we were unstoppable.

When Ex and I were together, I also felt like we could do anything together. It’s such a high, this feeling. But he was never good at taking care of me. I never knew I wanted someone to take care of me, that this was a priority. I try to take care of myself. But it’s nice to have someone else looking out for you as well, without you asking them to. Because I look out for other people without them asking me to, so I guess I want them to do the same for me. And the trust got eroded between me and Ex as well, which is an entirely different story. He didn’t really value me after a while. I don’t think I ever heard him tell a cute story about us.

A character from college, Fentry, once said, “the key to a successful relationship is to marry a foreigner.” He went on to elaborate that cross-cultural relationships breed tolerance, which is largely lost in today’s customizable society, where we demand everything to be just so, down to matching lifestyles, compatible music tastes and so on. When you marry a foreigner, you chalk up all the differences to irreconcilable cultures, and are more forgiving from the get-go, he explained. You can then focus on what’s really important, like respect, family, taking care of one another.

But these things, I realized tonight, are hard to look for when perusing ads on OkCupid and craigslist.

I know I'm a dreamer. I know that vacation affairs are different than real-life relationships, but I want to hold onto this one. I don't know how, and that's why I've held off on writing about it and have just been thinking about it a lot, and what it means to want to hold onto something without holding onto it at all. I want my dream-life and my real-life to be one and the same. I think things will be less schizophrenic that way.

re-entry

Monday morning I landed at 10 a.m. and was back at $chool within two hours. I spent the next two evenings with The Ex and two other surprise visitors from San Francisco that night and the next, making it a very exciting but stressful re-entry to civilization. I actually forgot to go to a class Thursday, and it just might screw me, seeing as I've missed the first two classes now.

My last few nights in the desert were so tranquil and amazing, and I keep looking back at my photos to try and return to that mental place where I felt so calm and in control of my destiny, but it is hard. When I returned to my apartment in New York it was bathed in a blue glow and the next morning The Ex was snoring on my futon and there were workers drilling on the fire escape and I was in the midst of midterm hell and running on an average of 4 hours of sleep per night for the past few weeks.

In San Francisco, when insomnia got really bad, I could feel it as soon as I got on my motorcycle. I knew it was bad, because it felt dangerous. I thought to myself, "I could die," and I would force myself into hiding, usually with booze and a retreat into the Bat Cave, my windowless bedroom. I would take sick days. In New York, things are different. Things don't seem to stop. The city seems to encourage insomnia. You don't have to drive here. You can get on the subways and ride for hours, always find people who are awake, people who are just as damned if not more than you, people running on even less, and it makes you feel like a pussy. So you don't stop, you just keep going. And then, inevitably, your friend Ti asks you if you have a black eye, and you just say, "No, this the way I look."

I am tired. I drift in and out. I hear my voice and it sounds strange.

I lie awake, but I rest. It is getting better. Last night I slept for 6 hours. It was startling unconsciousness, and then I was awake, so different than the past few weeks.

I think of the desert. I think of my desert love affair. I think of The Ex, and the brief time he flitted in and out of New York, and how I was barely present, how it was to be with someone I still love so much. I wonder what I've been doing lately, what I've been thinking, and I don't really know.

It is my 29th birthday tomorrow. I'm having a birthday party. I'm excited. New Crush is coming, or so he says. I haven't seen him all semester, and then I ran into him on Tuesday and invited him, and he said he would come! This makes me very happy indeed.

When you feel so close to death, it is so important to celebrate life.

There is so much I want to write about, but I just can't at the moment. I want to wait for the moment when I can do it justice. I want to write about my desert love affair so badly, actually I want to write to my desert love affair so badly, but at the moment I think I am finally ready to crash and to sleep for several hours, then to wake up, eat a bunch of food, and then sleep some more.

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.

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.

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?

home again

I'm back in the Chi, and it is even colder and snowier than the NY. I was stranded at home without snow tires, so I was thwarted from my hotly-anticipated day of hanging out with New Crush, which was a big letdown, but I went took the train downtown to wander around in the slush and see E, which was marvelous.

I was so charged to get out of the house today that I embarked on a three-mile walk to get to the train station. Let me tell you that this is no small order of business in my town, but being at home makes me crazy. The bickering with Mom & Pop has been steadily escalating since sobriety happened, and I'm crazy anxious about the massive amount of time we're going to spending together. We haven't spent this much consecutive time together in about a decade (yep, that's right). It makes me want to gnaw through my wrist bone. Somehow I will get through this, and somehow I am going to do it without (a) drinking (b) smoking and hopefully (c) a murder-suicide. It's a lot harder for me to handle my parents dead sober.

WonderWoman told me that I've lost at least one blog reader because I've gotten too depressing. She also asked me one night if I was bored, because I seemed bored, thus pandering to two of my worst fears about sobriety, that I would become boring and depressing. I know she didn't mean to do this, but hey, there it is. I don't know what to say to that. I hate the idea that my adventures in booze are so much more entertaining than my repetitive battles with reality.

I've been distracting myself by thinking of how I'm going to de-stress following two weeks of vacation with M&P. I've become totally obsessed with the idea of going to Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas. I really want to go to the desert, and have some kind of near-death-by- dehydration experience. I know this is totally specific, but I envision this as being a kind of natural high, and remember that I'm totally fucken sober, and I could really go for some kind of out-of-body experience. I imagine that almost dying of thirst in the desert would get me very close to the kind of high that I need lately. Maybe I would have some kind of epiphany. I am a big fan of epiphanies. I would be like "Oh my god, everything is going to be okay. No wait, everything is okay." That is the kind of epiphany I want. That is what, I think, my adventures in booze gave to me most nights.

M&P do not think it is a good idea for me to spend a week camping by myself in the desert. This is understandable, because I've only been camping a handful of times in my life, and always in the company of some burly dudes. But this lack of faith, of course, makes me hate them. This is why I hate coming home. Instead of having a dick and flying a plane, I am like a eunuch without a driver's license. Everything I've done in the past fifteen years evaporates and all I want to do is run away from home, or smoke cigarettes in the bathroom and read comic books.

But, back to Big Bend. I talked to Ex the other day, as I waited for my flight home, and he was interested in coming camping with me. Camping with Ex is fun. In fact, most of my camping experiences have been with Ex. He's been to Big Bend before. He would be a great sherpa. He would probably make sure that my near-death wish doesn't accidentally go 100 percent.

Or maybe I should come home to the NY. I miss it already. Funny when you realize a place has truly become home. Even when you don't really want it to, because it's so cold. Then you go someplace even colder.

more on sex and love

Friday night I kind of went on autopilot and decided to go out with B, even though I am thick into Soberland and I think it's been three years since I had sex sober, with possibly the exception of Love Affair. I met up with B and was intensely bored. We went to two bars in the West Village that provided good fodder for some serious crowd-bashing, which was only mildly entertaining for a little while. I was frustrated at not being intoxicated. Then we took a long, awkward subway ride back to my apartment to have sex, which I desperately needed. In the absence of drugs and alcohol, I thought at least sex would fill some kind of void. But the void I wanted filled had more to do with feeling loved, I think, and B did a very bad job of feigning interest in me. I tried to recapture the drunken feeling of being infatuated with just about everyone, but it wasn't working, and I just felt bored. Secretly I think I just wanted him to fawn over me, but I think he was feeling self-conscious because I was so sober and antagonistic. I accused him several times in the evening of having no soul, and I wasn't really kidding. It came to a hilt when he told me he wasn't really into music.

I've never heard anyone say that before.

Flash back to earlier that evening, about an hour before B texted me, and you'll find me outside a cafe on the Lower East Side, answering a phone call from the Ex, who just broke up with the girl he's been dating ever since we broke up, almost three years ago. I'd called him last week just to see how he was doing, and wasn't planning on discussing anything farther, but then I found myself plunged deep into a conversation with him about how I felt I had failed him as a girlfriend, and how my inability to have a relationship since him is just emblematic of my fear that I can't be trusted with anyone's heart anymore. I told him that all of the short-lived relationships I've engaged in over the past few years only remind me of how mistrustful I've become of my own judgment, but also that I truly feel like I don't deserve love anymore because I had it once, and I just let it go. The other part is that it's a bad feeling to chase love all your life, only to find out that it's just not enough.

It was a great conversation. It's not like we've never talked about our breakup before, but I guess I just felt it was more permissible to speak frankly with him now that he's single. He told me that he felt the same way, that now after two failed three-year relationships, he's really certain that he's totally fucked up, and questioning when to compromise, when to accept, when to commit, when to quit. We both had the same questions but no answers.

Actually, my answer to all of this confusion was to go out and get laid, and I think his response was probably the same. And that's why the sex was so unsatifsying--not because of the sobriety, but because of the lack of love. But...I think they are related.

singledom

I am sick of being single, I am leering at babies, and I am not happy about either of these things. I don't know what to do about it, because I am basically attracted to EVERYONE and their best friends, brothers, roommates, cousins. It's kind of gross. I don't know when I turned into such a drunken floozy, but the transition has been kind of a good time.

This week I've been especially faced with the gross realization that I am a shameless flirt, which could explain a lot: why I'm single, why I love to drink so much, and why I always attract the wrong sort of guys. Above all, it explains why I confuse people so much. For most people, flirting is the precursor to serious business like sex and relationships, and for me it's more like an end in and of itself. Flirting is about all the interpersonal engagement I can handle these days.

I got some phone numbers last night (great party, keets!) and someone has been texting me today. With some help, I am trying to figure out if it is this guy who I thought was so so cute or this other guy with whom I had a crazy connection and would probably be someone I could marry. (what did I just say? what?) But that is the way I am feeling about EVERYONE lately. I could love you forever! Stay away.

The farewell to The Ex may have something to do with my rage against singledom this week. My friend and I were talking yesterday about how it hurts to be around exes when you're single, because that person has a piece of your heart, and your heart wants to reclaim it, make itself whole again, whenever it gets near that piece. Kind of like magnets I guess. This made a lot of sense to me. At the same time, you don't want the piece back, because you gave it to them, and you want them to have it. But the ache is still there. It's not as bad when you're attached, because someone has given you a piece of their heart, and it helps to fill that void.

You know what else helps? Escalating quantities of booze. Except then the next day you get to hang out with your hangover all day, and think about why you are single.

bits o' blab

In my few minutes of working Internet, let me just holla from the rooftops that

I LOVE SUMMER '08 IT IS THE BEST!

Just got back from a lovely weekend in The Cape. Bet you didn't know I was so glamorous did ya? Well I'm not. I just happen to have glamorous friends who are okay with me showing up looking like vomit. The weekend involved many seafoods dipped in butter, cheering from the sidelines, feeling like an outsider, feeling beloved, and boating with the yellyfish. How did I find this life?

The better my life gets, the more afraid I get of losing it. And by "it," I mean both my mind and this awesome life. I know it's coming--this awesome life, not my mind--because summer is drawing to a close, and I am already thinking to myself "ohmygodnextyearihavetogetajobohgodihateworking!!!!" But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Right now I gotta concentrate on fixing the things I promised I'd fix when I got to The NY.

Some of this came up when I was in The Chi last week for my little brother's birthday. Moms likes to ask me what I'm doing with my life, which makes me sad because I don't know. Then I decided to unburden myself by telling her My Dirtiest Secret, that I'm still a smoker, to which she just sighed and said, "I know."

Talk about anticlimax. I told her partially because I was fiending and sick of lying about it, and then I was able to go and enjoy the company of my most cancerous friend. But then the rest of the time I smoked significantly less. I think I'm on the road to recovery.

My friend Knockout, who is swapping coasts this week, also has similar boozeness issues to mine, and we have decided to do a month of sobriety, starting the day after Labor Day. Oh hell! It makes me feel like an alcoholic because just the idea of it terrifies me.

I'm just chattering while I await my afternoon at the beach with The Ex, who is visiting this week around a job thingy of his. We hung out last week and it was...nice. And by nice, I mean it was wonderful to see him but also soul-crushing, which evens out to...nice. When I'm around him I just want to climb on top of him and lick his face. This was always a point of contention between us, because he's not into my clingy tendencies. I honestly have to fold my hands on my lap sometimes to avoid grabbing him. Either that, or I chain smoke to keep myself out of his hair, another habit of mine which he hates. All in all, it is good that we are separated by three time zones, because it keeps the sadness at bay. At the end of our relationship, my biggest take-away from it is that I promised him I would always be there for him, and I am trying not to make our breakup the end of that promise.

eternal sunshine in The Last Frontier

Just got back last night from a weekend excursion up to Denali. I think it's the farthest north I've ever been. We spent one night on the Big Su River in Talkeetna, setting up camp next to a bunch of boys who were drinking away the money they'd made playing banjo and fiddle on the little tourist strip in town. We posted up next to their fire until the rain drove us into the tent with the dog.

The next morning we drove into Denali to meet up with our friend, and camped on Dragonfly Creek, precariously stumbling down to the river with a liter of whiskey poured into three cups. In the morning we got up and hiked Mt. Healy, a good five-hour hike, legs burning, and the farther up we got, the more mountains we could see. We went up so far that I made snowballs! I only fell once during the descent, and then we bumbled into the lodge where our friend had gotten us a room, and took much-needed showers before heading into town with a gorgeous 19-year-old boy and having crab legs and such at The Perch. At this point, stuffed and full of wine and beer and booze, I was ready to pass out. Instead we went to the bar, swallowed a bunch of ecstasy, and boozed until the bar closed at 4 a.m. Yes, the sun was still shining at this time. It is insane here! But that makes camping so much easier: you don't need to bring a flashlight.

It's been wild meeting all these kids who just come up to Denali to work for the summer, many of whom work the ski resorts in the winter time. This is not something that I have ever done, or had ever even thought of doing, but it makes so much sense. You meet a lot of people from all over, make some money, and get out of town. And everyone is so chill, I love it. Almost makes me want to move up here, only there's this period of nine months known as winter.

Oh, Alaska. What peace, what space, what a life. Being up here in all these adventures really makes me miss my Ex. This is my first time camping without him. He would love it up here.

Summer Regression Theory

I have serious San Francisco nostalgia this week. Even though I have my last week of classes and then finals, I was *this* close to buying a $200 ticket for next weekend. I think this warm weather is doing it to me. There are motorcycles out on the streets now and I am daydreaming of the ocean, the hills, and sunbathing/beer-drinking/dog-watching in Dolores Park.

This is the feeling I get when I think of San Francisco:



Just got off the phone with The Ex. I realized it had been a long time since we talked and I caught him on gchat and asked if it was a good time to talk. This happens to me a lot now. I get to gchatting and then it's like, "Wait...we could be having a real-time conversation, you know. Should we be crazy and ...chat-chat?"

It's hard to believe that we're so fully separated now. We're in the phase that I dreaded but also wanted, where we are supportive and friendly but have no idea what's going on in each others' lives. I guess that's what you want with a clean break-up, but it's jarring to hear someone say, "So tell me what's going on with your life...you dating anyone?" The Ex makes it hard too because he's always in a rush, and so conversations like these just beget very superficial conversations, and I hang up the phone still wondering how he's doing. At the end of our brief conversation he told me he loved me. He does that from time to time, and it always catches me off guard. One minute he's telling me about this new sandwich place where you can get outrageous toppings (like mozzarella sticks...MOZZARELLA STICKS!!!) and then, pulling me back into the last embrace where I felt really, truly loved.

Man, that fucken killed me.

So yes, San Francisco is on the brain this week, even though I am really excited to party party party all summer long in New York. I am not keeping my promise to myself not to obsess over the latest boy, but it is hard. I really want to see him again but I want to exude patience and confidence and play the Tao of Steve: Be Desireless, Be Excellent, Be Gone...

scralifornia! or 2008: the year of total...something

At the last minute, I decided to drive up to San Francisco a little early to ring in 2008, a year for which I have very good feelings. After an extravagant meal with my glorious family, I charged up to the old apartment and spent 12 hours in my current most favoritest 1-mile radius in the entire world.

Here's an hour-by-hour breakdown of what transpired last night:

10:30 pm: Arrive at my apartment, have hugs and kisses from Sleepwalker, Sharp, Girlfriend, Karim, Gina, and two of Girlfriend's buddies. Being around Karim makes me happy. All anxiety disappears. Take appropriate notice of updated hair styles, etc.

10:45 pm: While walking, tell Sharp about DJ E's assessment of me: The thing about Seriously is that she has all these 'disciples,' but nowhere to lead them.

11:00 pm: Arrive at the Ex's for the New Year's Eve party. He opens the door and gives me a wonderful hug. There are many hugs. Sleepwalker introduces me to her friend Max who proclaims, "I know you! You're on my fridge!"

11:30 pm: Sharp and Girlfriend leave, but I don't go with them.

Midnight: 2008 kisses with friends. Sleepwalker is love-hammered and keeps telling us how much she loves us: "But seriously, guys? You guys are the best! Oh man! I love you guys!"

1:20 a.m.: Girlfriend reappears with her buddies. Ex is instructed to take her to his room to lay down.

1:30 a.m.: Sleepwalker stands, falls over immediately. Gina and I have to practically carry her the six blocks to her house. On this treacherous walk, which Gina does in heels, she tells me that she fell over chasing Girlfriend down the block as she ran away. This concerns me, but Gina is sure that Girlfriend is safe at the Apartment, sleeping.

2:10 a.m.: Back at Ex's, we have a soul dance party.

2:45 a.m.: I have a nice cigarette break with Ex. He wants to have some one-on-one time later in the week, and this makes me happy. He's irritated with his 20-year-old sister, who is there tonight.

3:00 a.m.: I talk to the Ex's little sister. She is crying over a fight with her brother, claiming wildly that Ex loves me more than her. She says he's mean, that he can't express his love, and that she misses her other brother, who really loves her. It takes me almost an hour to calm her down. It doesn't help that she's drunk.

3:55 a.m.: In line for the bathroom, I see a guy that I used to date in Chicago named Greg. The last time I saw him was on an airplane about two years ago. I ask how his wife is doing. It's not Greg after all, but Cutie, a Greg look-alike I used to have a crush on about six years ago, back when he was roommates with Ex.

4:05 a.m.: I like Cutie's little brother. But Cutie is claiming to remember how many times we sat on the couch next to each other and almost made out. I don't remember this at all.

4:20 a.m.: I am making out with Cutie and dancing.

4:50 a.m.: Cutie and I are roaming around San Francisco smoking Parliaments.

5:15 a.m.: Back at the apartment, I realize that Cutie and I don't really have a place to occupy. There is a guy sleeping on the couch, and did I mention that Girlfriend is missing? I frantically dial Gina and ask what Girlfriend is wearing, since her shoes are there, and her phone.

5:16 a.m.: The door next to Girlfriend's opens and Love Affair pokes his beautiful head out. I didn't realize he was even in town. He says he found Girlfriend passed out in the bathroom several hours ago. Cutie says she is no longer in the bathroom. Love Affair straggles out of his room. I wonder briefly if he has someone in there with him.

5:18 a.m.: I hug Love Affair and kiss him on the cheek.

5:22 a.m.: Love Affair finds Girlfriend crumpled into a weird upright position, covered with a blanket, in the corner of another roommate's room.

6:00 a.m.: Getting whiskey-dicked by Cutie in my roommate's bed. Trying not to make noise, because Love Affair is in the next room, separated by not even a wall, but French doors. Pretending that Cutie is Love Affair.

7:00 a.m.: Falling asleep, trying not to think about anything. Falling asleep naked with someone for the first time since leaving San Francisco...and now I'm back in San Francisco. Why can't I have sex in New York?

8:50 a.m.: I can't sleep. I'm paranoid that my roommate will come home from wherever she is and freak out that I'm naked with some guy in her bed.

9:15 a.m.: I get out of the shower and go into the kitchen to look for coffee, and Love Affair is awake, making himself a breakfast croissant. We sit out in the sun for a few moments and I ask him if he wants to go to Monterey for our road trip to stay with Ex's little sister.

9:35 a.m.: I go for coffee with The Dog. We walk to the park. I love San Francisco. California makes me happy. There is so much energy, so much idealism, so much innocence and hope...

The Ex

The Ex was the longest relationship I ever had (just shy of three years). The Ex started out as a fuck buddy. The Ex used to call me "My Darling" in such a way that eradicated all his stupidities, all of my doubt about us, and made my heart melt and wrap around his. The Ex gave me my first motorcycle, my first dildo, and what I recalled in Morocco as the happiest moment of my life in the past five years on a weekend trip to Las Vegas. The Ex became my ex almost two years ago, and I still dream about him.

When will it end?

Memory is retarded. The Ex also gave me my angriest moment in the past fifteen years of my life when I found out from a friend at a bar that he'd cheated on me. The Ex was cold and distant half the time we were together. I broke up with him after a strained year of living together in Oakland, separated from our friends by the Bay and the idiocy of our continued relationship. I know that it was right to move out and move on, and I don't regret it. My heart and memory, it seems, have other intentions.

When will it end?

The Ex started dating someone who looked like me (Asian) but much younger and hotter within weeks after we broke up. They're still together, pretty much. The Ex lives in San Francisco, approximately 3,000 miles away. The Ex is totally and wholly The Ex.

Why, in my dreams, is he still my boyfriend? Am I fucken retarded?

craigslist dating III

Uh oh, I'm back on craigslist. Ever since my last posting got flagged and taken down, I convinced myself that I had an addiction and cut myself off. (Okay, I scrolled through one night last week, but I didn't respond to any.) But, like a true addiction, I came back to it.

I found a boy from San Francisco (my true goal here in New York: to find a boy from San Francisco. How fucked up is that?) who is coming here next week. That could be fun.

What about Boy, you may ask? Didn't I tell Boy I wasn't going to date any others? ...Well, Boy is out of town. Boy has left me high and dry to entertain myself for the next two weeks. And I haven't even kissed Boy yet. So there.

Also I had a mildly depressing e-conversation with my Ex, who just broke up with his long-distance girlfriend because he needs to get laid. Oh Ex. It's so fun to talk about relationships with your Ex, because who knows you best? Ex cheated on me more than once, and I accused him of breaking up with her just so he could sleep around without guilt.

Ex admitted I was right.

Oh Ex.

sex, love affairs, and loneliness

I woke up feeling like crap today and blamed it on going to bed feeling depressed last night, which I blamed on drinking too much Wild Turkey with Boy the previous night. Like most people, I have a love-hate relationship with The Booze, the love side consisting of (a) its legal status and socially accepted nature, and (b) its perfect fix with my oral fixation; and the hate side consisting of (a) its unpredictable nature concerning the morning after, and (b) the gut it seems to be producing.

My Wild Turkey evening produced the hunger hangover effect, where all I wanted to do yesterday was eat starches: cookies, pizza, pasta, apples, potatoes, and bread; and today all I want to do is continue eating. This leads me to believe that it wasn't really the Wild Turkey looking to be absorbed out of my bloodstream, but a deeper hunger that has to do with loneliness, in the physical and emotional senses.

It has now been two months since I've had sex; the last time being in the wee hours of Thursday, July 19, three days before my departure from San Francisco. And also, like most people, I have a love-hate relationship with sex, mostly consisting of (a) I love it when it's with someone I love, and (b) I hate it when when I'm not having it.

Of course, there is a whole spectrum of loves and hates in-between, including thinking I miss it, when I'm actually missing love, and this is what I think I'm missing lately.

In the past year and a half, I pretty much doubled the number of men I've slept with in my life from about 10 to about 20, in a more or less conscious effort to try and habituate myself to thought of being with other men after breaking up with my boyfriend of three years. I'm not a very good one-night-stand-er, but one of my biggest mantras in life is Fake It Till You Make It, and I figured that if I did it enough times, I would not only get over the whole association of love with sex, and be better at enjoying random sexual encounters. Then I would be a truly liberated woman.

Well, that worked and it didn't. Although I feel a lot more comfortable sexually and have learned to enjoy sex with people I don't necessarily care for, I also realized that sex isn't as big a priority for me as I assumed it would be at this time in my life, and I'd rather not have sex at all than go through the hassle of random sex that has a fifty-fifty chance of being good. I guess this shows that I'm not truly sexually liberated, because if I were, I wouldn't think that good sex is something that happens accidentally, it would be something that I would be in control of. But I'm just not, and men have much more control in bed than I do, both physically and mentally. I also hate the condom dynamic, the fact that I always have to ask for it, and more often than not, compliance with this request is accompanied by bitching or whining. I have a hard time standing up for myself in bed, and I have to admit that sometimes I let myself be coerced into having unprotected sex, because I don't like being made to feel like a whore. There's this huge mindfuck that only whores wear condoms, because decent people don't have diseases.

I could go on forever, but basically in moving to New York, I decided to put my easy-breezy days behind me and stop sleeping with people just for the sex. I've decided to earn good sex, and surprisingly it has made my dating efforts much more stress-free. Instead of wondering, "Hm, do I want to sleep with this guy?" I go home at the end of the night, and I don't wake up feeling any sense of regret. It also makes dates more fun for me, because I'm not seeing the whole evening as some kind of pre-sex farce; it's actually an event in and of itself, leading to the nothing else. I like that feeling. It's not a question of where we'll end up...because we're already there.

Today when I came out of my class, I felt a crushing loneliness and wanted nothing more than to be in my old apartment in San Francisco, crashed out on the couch with my roommate, missing the physical comfort of draping my legs over someone, leaning on someone's shoulder, kissing them on the cheek, holding their hand, etc. I missed my Love Affair intensely, and closed my eyes as I walked down 123rd Street, remembering what it was like to lie in bed with our limbs interlocked and my nose nestled in that perfect place against his neck. I missed my ex-boyfriend too, even though we broke up almost two years ago, because he was the last person who loved me.

I am a fucken love junkie. It kills me, but it's true. It kills me because I think about love more than anything. I care about love more than sex. When I'm dating someone, I care about my boyfriend more than my friends, even though my friends always outlast my boyfriends. I will do things for my boyfriends that I won't do for myself (like quit smoking). I spend more time thinking about past, potential, and imaginary love than I do engaged in my $36,000/year master's program. And it's not an exciting, passion-filled obsession. It's a boring obsession that means nothing to anyone except for me.

I mean, I just moved to The Greatest City in The World to attend a world-class school, and all I want to do is find my next great love affair. I try to fill my life with intellectual pursuits, literature, music, and my social life, but all I really want is to fall in love. And this state of affairs makes me feel extremely lonely and deeply misguided.