resistance is futile

First off, movies. Saw two great ones this week:

The Man From Earth is a heady piece, the final work of noted sci-fi writer Jerome Bixby, who wrote some of the most beloved installments of Star Trek and The Twilight Zone. It all takes place in one room, making me think it would be perfect for a stage adaptation.

Mary and Max is a claymation loosely based on a true story of a pen-friendship between a young Australian girl and an old guy in New York with Aspberger's Syndrome. It was silly, funny, emotional, and altogether awesome. I can only watch movies with compartmentalized sadness these days, and my crying in this movie was limited to two brief moments.

With the rain, I am in full-on hibernation mode. I leave the house for about an hour each day, to exercise or run errands. When I'm hibernating, I like to cook and eat. And eat. And cook. And cook and eat some more. But being inside doesn't mean things can't be exciting! I keep things fresh by eating expired food. I think of it as an in-house consumer challenge. I really broke some personal records this week, eating yogurt that expired in November and canned beans that were, by Marido's estimate, "at least five years old." I cooked them first. I also pickled vegetables.

I've been sleeping deeply, with vivid dreams, averaging nine hours a night. I never thought I could sleep so much. And despite the nothingness-quality to my days lately, the sleep is not a depressing, escape-style sleep, where you wake up groggy and confused. I wake up feeling refreshed. This is a new thing for me.

Earlier in the week, I felt depressed. I weathered another lukewarm job interview wearing my newly purchased adult clothes. Following last week's interview, I went to Macy's to use the bathroom and, catching a sideways glimpse of myself in a mirror, mistook myself for a salesgirl. Further proving to the world that I am not cut out for corporate (or in this case, nonprofit--) America, I was able to bring up both drugs and incest at my interview this week.

Sometimes the days seem so thoroughly bland that I get extremely disoriented, as though I am in an all-white space with no walls, no ceiling, just your feet touching the white floor. The fact that it is white is important: it doesn't feel oppressive or claustrophobic--in fact, it is infinite, endless. The routine sometimes gives me a somewhat euphoric feeling. In the evening, when Marido comes home, I like to put my head on his lap and just experience his warmth and life. After a long day of me rolling around in these three rooms with only the ants for company, his presence can feel overwhelming--but in a good way. Things feel meditative lately: peaceful, happy.

Related: A Life Less Ordinary with Ewan McGregor, Cameron Diaz

this is what crazy looks like

I am totally insane this week. I have not been able to sleep, but I don't feel tired or even irritated. I wonder if I am just not used to being this happy. It has been hard to breathe without the aid of cigarettes.

Marido returned to Buenos Aires a few days early so we have been hanging out a lot. I was very excited to see him, to see if I would still feel the same about him. I did. It is not the excitement of meeting someone totally new and strange and beautiful. It is the strange sensation of being with someone who seems to understand you completely, without really knowing anything about you. I don't really get it, but I don't know if there's really anything to get.

During lunch of our second date he asked me if I wanted to go to Spain with him. Of course I want to go to fucking Spain with him. But whether I can, that is another story. And whether I should--well, I don't really traffic in those terms anymore.

Basically, this is what my brain and blood and body has felt like for the past three weeks--



Of course I have reservations about going on an overseas trip with a man I have spent a total of like 12 hours with. I asked him, "Is that a good idea?" And he said, "If we don't do crazy things like go to Spain with someone you just met--who will?"

You can see why I like this guy. My finger is on the trigger. But I am nervous--not because I think anything bad will happen, but because I'm pretty sure if I do go, I will fall completely in love. What a terrifying notion. I wondered aloud what the chances are of him being totally psychotic and he said, "I think you are more likely to be psychotic than I am."

I also just turned my remaining 5 weeks in Buenos Aires to 4 weeks, because I have to go to Montevideo next week to shoot another story (or two, hopefully). Jumping a plane to Spain would cut the 4 weeks down to about 10 days. That is just weird. It is all so much to handle that all I can do is lie awake and think about it until the sun rises. And the thoughts start with, "I need to sell at least three stories in the next three weeks," and then end up with "Hm, perhaps you should get the elastic fixed on that cute black dress of yours."

I have no idea what the hell is going on, but I only feel partially in control.

planning for the future

My computer is out of commission and I just wrote this long blog and then accidentally erased it because I´m not used to the foreign keyboards. It happened in an instant! Meh.



Anyhow, I was talking about all the dangerous thinking that´s been going on during the past extremely insomniatic two weeks. I´ve been in this utopic state of mind where I can do no wrong, and nothing bad can befall me, and so of course I´ve been entertaining all sorts of ideas that involve Djibouti, Dakar, Micronesia, Bucharest, Budapest, Macau. You know.



I was stressed out because I have six weeks left in Buenos Aires and a decision has to be made concerning my apartment--whether to sublet it, or to leave it completely--and I am terrible at making decisions more than a few weeks out. I have basically tabled my plans to return to San Francisco in the fall, seeing as that would doom me to a happy life surrounded by the people I love most, and decided to strike out into new territory. The two top contenders at the moment are Mexico City and Budapest. Dreaming about places I have no knowledge of is great company for insomnia. But I also took a long time puzzling over if I have totally forgotten how hard it was when I first moved here, deaf and dumb and lonely and wandering. Yet I haven´t forgotten. I suppose I am just so surprised that I found so much peace and happiness here, that I want to look for it everywhere.



There are plenty of people who can understand this point, of not wanting to just sit back and enjoy beautiful something they´ve discovered, and would much rather move onto the next heartbreaking challenge. I am just now beginning to get this. But with people, it seems, and looking for love--I´m not sure how similar these things are. It seems to me that looking for a perfect place to call your home is kind of like looking for your true love, and it is especially true when you think of it in terms of finding those perfect pieces and truly "settling down." I mentioned my Marido last week and I wasn´t kidding---I know I say that a lot---but what is up when you know you could be happy with someone and somehow just aren´t ready for it? What does that mean? That you prefer to be single? Or just that you love the thrill of the chase?

I have been looking for love for so long that I think I may have forgotten that there was a goal to all this dating...and it wasn´t just for free drinks.

forced friendships and social norms

Last night I had to struggle to go out. I was really tired--been riding the insomnia train again--and I was chilling at home, enjoying some whiskey and a nice joint with my roommate. But I had been invited out by some fellow urban Americans who are all here in Buenos Aires for an extended amount of time.

They're nice kids--and I say 'kids' because they have certain ways of making me feel all of the five years older that I am. It is nice to have a crew to hang out with. But it is obvious to me that we would not be friends back in New York, that they are only hanging out with me out of either A) obligation, or B) boredom with each other--perhaps some fine combination of the two. And I think these are the options because that is what I am doing with them, with the addition of C) masochism/self-improvement. Part of me hates being with them, because I act differently around them--the way you would around people you don't know very well but want to get along with, but also in a way that I find very troubling, where I try to play up the qualities I see in them that I don't admire but understand that they value: their obsession with being in-the-know, their careless spending habits, and their self-confidence, which I find both alluring and repulsive.

Maybe it is what makes me feel old. I feel like I was like that once, in some small way. Anyhow, I feel like they bring out small pieces of me that exist but I don't like to play up so much, and part of being around them is literally not buying into their scene completely, and consciously trying to be me instead of one of them. It always fascinates me when I find myself as the outsider in a group. A balancing act emerges of trying to observe and understand the dynamic, absorb yourself into it and taking part in the rituals, or standing apart completely. This is the story of my life, deciding how much of a participant I want to be. With these kids, I got so caught up in wanting to be accepted that I forgot that I have a choice of not even caring if I am accepted. Because I don't want to be accepted on those terms. Being with them also makes me feel like an insecure teenager. Sheesh.

So last night I declined dinner and thought I would just meet them at the bar, and forego the after-hours club as well. I'm having a cash-flow problem. I thought, "If I can't make it through the night on 34 pesos (about $8), I am hanging out with the wrong people." But I was in good spirits in the end, and accompanied them to the club, but was already out of money by the time we got there. Somehow we avoided the 20-peso entrance fee, but then I was convinced to split a table with bottle service. Ah, yes. Spending money I don't have. Well, the decision was made, and I danced and had fun. Then one of the boys tried to take me home. We had been dancing a little and making out, but I didn't want to sleep with him. I don't know what it is more awkward--hanging out with someone you slept with drunkenly, or hanging out with someone you rejected. I guess it depends on the person. I try to minimize awkwardness.

In the taxi home, I am pretty sure the cab driver used our conversation about the manual transmission as an excuse to touch my legs repeatedly when talking about which feet you use to work which pedal. The touching thing is something I never know how to handle. I'm okay with casual contact, but with men I can't help but feel like they are just being lecherous. When I was out with that old guy last week, he kept putting his hand on my back or on my arms and part of me wanted to freak out and scream "DON'T TOUCH ME!" But I feel like that would be inappropriate; people are just more touch-y here. But it's like the situation with the forced-friend, like the allowance of physical contact is a slippery slope. I am still negotiating all this social terrain. It is good stuff for sleepless nights.

the voices in my head say to chill the fuck out. oh, and i love you.

The 90-degree weather keeps on coming, and I am just cruising with it. Okay, so I allowed myself to suffer a bit, and then decided it was not getting me anywhere.

I thought about Detox Doc the other day, and how he would have coaxed me out of that bitter mood I was in. Sometimes you just resign yourself to a fate, you know? I had resigned myself to being lost and hot and miserable. I don't know why. But another take-away message from my State of New York-sponsored detox program is that guilt/suffering/certainties are gifts from Satan that you do not have to accept. So, no thanks, darling of the darkness: return to sender.

I slid into this world here with some totally random rules for myself that have been making my life unnecessarily difficult. Like I told myself I wouldn't socialize with English-speakers (so I could accelerate my Spanish learning), I wouldn't go out with boys (distractions!), and that I would really live within my means...a steady diet of cheese, salami, and sliced bread. I don't know why I thought I should come to Buenos Aires and live like a fucking nun. I guess that is just how I am. And every time I faltered on these rules, I would feel really bad about it. But then Detox Doc came to me in my insomniatic haze last night and spoke magical things to me, mainly calling me silly for placing these unrealistic--and sort of pointless--expectations on myself.

I sent him a Christmas postcard. But I don't think he got it. Out of the dozen postcards I sent, I have only heard that two made it through. One was to San Francisco and one was to Chicago. I think the NYC post office just dumped them in the East River, which sucks. They were damn good postcards, and rather expensive to send.

Anyhow. I'm relaxing my rules, relaxing myself, and all is so much better when I'm not constantly berating myself for being a failure. Okay, so I'm not exactly a huge success story. Living off your savings in a country with a favorable exchange rate is not go-getter material, particularly if you're not even 30 years old. But the phantom Detox Doc said to me last night, "Who are you comparing yourself with?" And I was like...um...you know, my friend Playboy who is like an international telecommunications consultant and just bought a fucking Ducati. In New York City. And then there's Girlfriend, who is moving in with her girlfriend, and finishing up her fifth year in her secure and satisfying teaching career. Or, Christ, my little brother, who owns his own place in Chicago and regularly makes payments to his 401K. I guess I'm just jealous of people who don't go through life feeling like they're constantly walking on the wrong side of the street.

But I have other heroes too. Like you and you and you. Let me digress for a second.

For a hot minute I was sure I was going to marry this Straightedge Vegan I met in Chicago. And barring the obvious inherent WTF? in that imaginary coupling, there is the feeling that when you make open-and-shut decisions like that in your life, you miss out on a lot of the tortuous angst that makes you the well-rounded, articulate individual who can get along at most dinner parties. What is a cocktail hour if we can't discuss some sort of existential crisis? My whole life seems to be about toeing the lines between creativity and criminality. I think that is why I don't have any friends who are doctors, lawyers, or accountants. I like to start with people from the netherworld of "Okay, people, where the hell are we and where are we going?" If both of these premises are understood, I really don't know where to go from there.

There are people in my life like Playboy and Girlfriend and Little Brother who have more solid ground than I do, but the reason why we can still relate is that they are constantly changing their footing. We are all antsy in our own ways. Some people are accepting--of their jobs, their cities, their friends, their lovers. They are into settling down in some ways. And then there are those of us who don't know the meaning of settling down, no matter how secure they may be. I am in awe of people who can commit to their careers, their partners, and their cities. But I know they have a lot to do with people like me who can't commit to a damn thing. This great American travel writer once said, "You can't shoot a cannon from a raft," or something like that. And it's so true...! But if you did try it, it would certainly be a hell of a ride.

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.

Spring Break Sobriety Tour 2009

I´m going to try and make this quick because this Internet booth seems to be filling with gas fumes. Tonight I was going to go on this space tour, where they show you all the constellations. It´s amazing how many stars you can see here. I forget about the stars sometimes in New York. The tour, however, was canceled because it is cloudy, and it is actually raining a bit in the driest place on earth. Amazing!

The trip has been incredible. There has been a good mix of Serious stupidity (typical move of getting ripped off by a cabbie after many hours of traveling and not knowing the exchange rate), serious sunburn, excellent romantic intrigue, language lessons, sweeping landscapes, freezing temperatures, contemplation, sober conversations with drunken individuals, and more. The one thing that hasn´t been happening has been SLEEP.

Yes, that´s right. I´m on fucken vacation andI haven´t been able to sleep more than a few hours a night. I brought with me a bunch of my knockout pills but refuse to take them. I don´t know why. I guess this kind of insomnia just doesn´t bother me that much, because when I get up, I can face the day because there´s so much to do and it´s exciting. I guess I don´t want to take the pills because I don´t want to be groggy. The other night I couldn´t sleep and I lay awake thinking about this boy, and how much I love the desert and photography and traveling and blah blah blah and wondered if I could possibly make this my life. Like, how can I make a living like this? And will I ever see this boy again after this trip? How can I make my life all about travel and photography and cute boys? That´s what I want my life to be like.

It wasn´t until the next day that I realized...huh...this is my life. At least, for the moment. That´s the big human condition though, isn´t it...not being able to enjoy the moment...struggling to prolong it always...staying up late at night wondering, worrying about how to make it last...

I will write some more about this romantic intrigue but I can´t now because it still feels like a fresh and lovely gift and if I write about it I think it will start to feel like a loss. So I will say that the desert is so humbling. I will have to ruminate on it some more, but it makes me feel like an idiot for living in New York. It makes me realize that so many of my most important and enjoyable moments in life happened in the desert.

I realized this as I wrote this in a postcard to Wonder Woman that I came here to figure things out, and all I´ve figured out is that it is pretty misguided to think that you can just sit down and think things through and come up with solutions...at least for me. I can´t just sit down and make plan that will work for me. All I can do is tell myself that as long as I have my wits about me, and can continue to wander the way that I want, everything will be okay. No, better than okay.

Solo travel is incredible. I don´t know what I was so worried about. Now that I´m away, I remember the scariest part of traveling is returning home, or¨re-entry,¨as Sharp calls it. I miss everyone, but I miss this feeling too...

interconnectivity biting me in the ass

The Internet is freaking me out tonight, which is unfortunate because (a) I've been missing it while my free connection has been acting up and (b) I was just beginning to trust it with all of my mental vomit.

This past year or so, I've jumped from the usual use the internets to find jobs and email people, and have started two blogs, joined Facebook, hosted a number of couchsurfers, and went on a wild internet dating spree that ended with that horrible horrible horrible crazyblinddate date. Tonight I got one of those random emails from one of the many dating sites I logged into ONCE, and instead of ignoring the email, I decided to go check in on what I actually disclosed about myself on the site. Then I ended up spending a few hours on it taking tests and uploading a photo. Haha! I guess I was somewhat inspired by an evening spent with two of my favorite people in the world, both of whom have are currently in committed relationships with online roots.

While my internet connection dawdled me in and out of okcupid, I got a message from a couchsurfer I hosted a few months ago, telling me he found my blog because I'd mentioned his comic in it by name. He wasn't offended though, and wondered when we could hang out again.

Horror of fucking horrors! I was appalled. This is my anonymous blog and even though I write about everything from period sex to puking on subways, I felt extremely exposed. Then he went on to explain himself in defense of a comment I'd made about him. BAD internets, BAD! This made me want to puke all over my laptop (and then write about it, of course). Is it normal that I am okay posting all this shit online, and then feeling cheated when someone connects the dots? But this is how I felt when Boy started keeping up with my Myspace blog...hence my new blog, unconnected to anything...anything except a semi-detailed account of my existence, I suppose.

And how do I tell couchsurfer that I just don't have time for anyone new in my life with whom I'm not specifically obsessed? With any luck he'll just read this blog while I am systematically going through all my defunct dating profiles and removing them all. But I don't even know which ones I've joined, it turns out.

brought to you by Starbucks!

I was at a piano lesson with my piano teacher from high school because I missed her, because I had time, because I wanted to work on my classical music again, and we were trying to set up a recital time for me, but time was short because I'm leaving for Ecuador on the 19th. We opened up a schedule and she asked me when my flight was, and I told her I hadn't yet booked my plane ticket, but I would probably be flying Wednesday evening on Delta, because they had the most convenient flight to Miami, where I would have to catch my connection to Quito.

It was really important we get together before then, so together we counted backwards to today to see how many days remained until the 19th. There were 10 days.

"That's so soon!" She said.

"I know," I said. And then this rush of anxiety came up. "I have a lot to do in the next 10 days."

Then I woke up, the oh-god-insomnia kind of explosion into the dawn, where you don't gradually wake up and blink your eyes a few times, you are just suddenly AWAKE, and you know you're not going back to sleep any time soon.

Not that I didn't try to, seeing as it was 4:30 in the morning, and I couldn't just get up and throw all the lights on, because there were two French boys sleeping a few feet away from me, and they were tired.

So instead, I waited around until 6 a.m. and left the house for the only place I knew would be open: Starbucks. I read a fascinating indictment of San Francisco's BART system in J. Allen Whitt's "Urban Elites and Mass Transportation," and then finished watching DIG!, this pretty-good documentary about the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. The first was all about how BART was conceived of (and, therefore, serves primarily) downtown business interests, yet was paid for by tax-financed bonds under the guise of affordable transit. Booooo! The second was mostly about what happens to you if, despite being a musical genius constantly compared to Bob Dylan, you are an egomaniacal asshole on heroin.

I have overwhelmingly negative feelings about the corporatization of America's public spaces. But, this morning the Bucks was a great hideout for me. When I walked in at 6 a.m. and asked for a decaf, both of the guys laughed at me. What do they know that I don't?

e-flirting and e-breaks

Tonight I restrained myself and had only three cocktails before calling it a night so I could come home and, yes, do economics homework. The fact that my lover Insomnia spent the night also made this an easier decision.

So I come home and there are two emails awaiting me, one from The Ukrainian, which was sweet and saying that he had fun with me, with a link to this and he was telling me about. I happily responded that I would love to go out with him again, and that I thought he was cute.

The second one was from Boy, and it set of a totally unexpected e-nd to our CL affair. I think.

Boy is one of the many of us who spends way too much time in front of a computer, and when we first met via craig, I sent him a link to my MySpace for photos, and I guess he combed through my blog for clues as to my personality. Well this morning as I was waiting for the sunrise, I posted a dumb blog about Boy 1 v. Boy 2 as well as many sappy two-bit comparisons about This Life v. That Life, and on and on.

Following the first two emails, I consulted with Girlfriend, and she thinks I was right to let this one go. She says he expresses too much "entitlement" to me in his first email. Really, I would have let it pass, but I feel like we were heading nowhere anyway, and the person at the bar I reference in my first response was because I was saying this earlier tonight, about the friend zone. Keep in mind that this email from him was totally unsolicited, i.e., he happened upon my MySpace blog, and decided to tell me exactly what he thought of it.

> > > Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:35:44 -0400
> > > From: Boy
> > > To: seriously
> > > Subject: i want to read your secret web log
> >
> > >
i'm curious about boy number one. unless i'm boy number one, in which case i'm curious about boy number two. if i'm neither then i'm curious about both. i think i'm most comfortable being boy number two.
> > >
you made a comment in an email about being glad i wasn't bored with you yet, or something. i found that funny because you are the interesting one, the one who *goes places* and *does things* and plays piano and writes two web logs and used to ride a motorcycle. i like to stay home and watch reruns of house. but i believe that you like me. at least a little.
> > >
the truth is that i know nothing about adult relationships either. i'm not going to lie -- i have wondered how things would be if after getting drunk on one of our *dates* we went back to someone's place and did it, whether you would suggest it, what you would say if i did, whether i really wanted to, and what, eventually, you would write about it afterwards, if anything, on your secret web log. and so, in response to your suggestion of sex (not your suggestion of *having* sex, just of sex itself, so clever or careful as you are to make such a heavy thing float so effortlessly in an email) is that i like you. a lot. there are parts of me that say yes, which don't discriminate, and there are other parts of me that also say yes, which do discriminate (there are also parts that say no, but those parts will always say no; they are curmudgeons), and that is enough for me. but all my parts say no if you are already doing it with boy number one, or whatever his name is.
> > >
i guess this email is in case my actions or attitudes are confusing. girls sometimes tell me i can be that way.
> > >
> > > Boy
> >
> On 10/15/07, seriously wrote:
> >
you're funny. congratulations, you have actually managed to come quite close to flooring me with such an honest email, and i really don't know how to respond. but since i have a few cocktails in me, i will just go with whatever comes out of my fingertips in the next 4.3 minutes:
> >
number one, you cannot read my secret blog, so let's just leave it at that. it's secret, duh. don't you remember our conversation about the things you elect to tell, and those things you elect to keep to yourself? well, this is one of those situations. live with it.
> >
if i was going to be brutally honest, which i guess i will be, hey why not, i guess i would say that i have no idea what is going on here, but i'm inclined to take it as it comes and also just leave it at that. i am not supposed to be with you; that is honestly how i feel. but i like you too; i appreciate that you and i have both "been to the dark side," as my (former) roommate would say. and in spite of these similarities, i like that your brain functions on a different wave length in terms of your problem-solving abilities, and i like the way you explain things. to me teachers are so fucken hot. but i feel like we could be walking into friends territory, which is familiar--and not bad--ground. someone just said to me tonight, "if there can only be one, then i'm glad i didn't fuck up all my friendships along the way by sleeping with everyone who wasn't that one." so what if i don't know how i feel. i like hanging out with you, so let's just do that. hang out. have fun.
> >
i'm not trying to be discouraging, and i'm running out of my 4.3 minutes, i'm just saying that i think i know what adult relationships consist of now, so if you think you can still hang out with me given all this brutal honesty, on these terms, let's just have fun and not put any undue pressures on either one of us. how does that sound?
> >
this friday night, the cross street is allen and delancey. i would love it if you could suggest a place to meet at 7 and grab a bottle of wine. of course if you're freaked out by the thought of us just being friends, then you should bail on this right now.
> >
xo
seriously
> >
> >
> > ________________________________

> Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:56:08 -0400
> From: Boy
> To: seriously
> Subject: Re: i want to read your secret web log
>
yeah, well, i came home from work and ate a truffle and got to thinking. (i love how, even when we are being up front about being honest, we have to mention a cocktail or pot filled snacks.) and then i cleaned my room.
>
i *was* feeling a lot of undue pressure. i really don't know how adult relationships work. your expectations, etc. you kept calling our meetings dates! i don't think i had ever gone on a date with someone i wasn't already sleeping with. seriously. i just... didn't want you to think i didn't like you because i didn't try anything, or at least mention anything. that has happened before.
>
i don't think i'm supposed to be with anyone.
>
i like that you have been to the dark side, but i *really* like that you are done with it. i don't think that i am. and i kind of envy how you go full speed all the time, out every night, talking,
drinking, feeling. i kind of wish i was capable of that, because i fear that i miss a lot while at home, resting. but it's not me.
>
anyway, i'm definitely not freaked out by being friends. intimacy freaks me out, not friendship. but, to borrow your favorite phrase and be brutally honest, i already have friends.
>
Boy
>
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 00:12:23 -0400

RE: i want to read your secret web log

From: seriously

To: Boy

Boy, i don't know about this.

this is a gross email chain, but now i feel captivated by it so i have to continue.

it sounds to me like you have a lot of things you need to work out before you can be in a healthy relationship and i'm not sure i want to be the one to work with you through it. i don't want to be anyone's sherpa, especially the sherpa out of the dark side. i also don't want to feel like i have to hide the fact that i'm dating, that this is what dating should be like, or be defensive about it, and your earlier email to me really put me off though i wanted to just brush it off. i think we both have different ideas of what we want right now. i just want to have fun and enjoy life, and i don't think you're there with me right now.

look. something's telling me to let this go right now, and maybe for a little bit. i don't want to give you the wrong impression of anything, but i guess i do want you to think about why you're dating, what you're looking for when you get on craig. i thought i was pretty explicit.

let's call this friday off. i have a friend in town, midterms next week, and i think you're tired and stressed, and i can't deal with this right now, and i don't want to feel like i have to. it is hard for me to say this over email; this took way longer than 4 minutes, but i think it is best. i am out here to have a good time, and you should do the same.

call me next week if you want to talk.

----

This whole interaction feels totally evil to me, and gross, and I am kind of mad at him for pushing me into it. I was going to not respond to his third email, just go to bed, meet up with him Friday as planned, and just forget about this whole weird exchange, but you know what would have happened? That would have been inviting my lover Insomnia back to bed with me to think about how fucked up this whole thing was, and I would have laid awake wondering why I was subjecting myself to this kind of scrutiny for a Boy I've only been on 5 dates with, who doesn't even like to consider them dates, but "meetings."

I also cannot date a guy who calls having sex "doing it." He is a nice Boy, but a boy nonetheless. Do I want to deal with someone who confronts me, before our sixth date, with his lack of adult relationships, intimacy issues, and threats to retreat back to the dark side? This is not my deal. It's not fair for me to have to worry about the feelings of a boy I haven't even kissed. And that's not attractive. Ever have child fantasies where you have sex with the frail creature you're trying to protect?

Yeah, me neither. And this is why I shouldn't have gone out with him in the first place, because he was younger than my age requirement, but since he ignored it, I thought I would, too.

Now I can go to bed feeling like I have washed my hands of this. Eww, no. I have a conscience. I still feel bad.

---

insomnia overkill

Last night was the worst insomnia I've had in months. I was still awake at 6 a.m. when my neighbor's boyfriend left her place. It was a good thing my first class was at 11 instead of 9, because I was able to get in about 2 hours of patchy sleep before getting to campus.

I had to show my ID at the campus gates because the President of Iran was speaking there today. We could hear the uproar from our classroom; all the windows were open in honor of the beautiful weather, and it made me pissy at the school that we were sitting in the classroom talking about pretty straightforward process outlines of urban planning instead of what was going on outside, with its contentious nature and high relevance to life.

I decided that if I took a nap, I would probably fuck up my sleep clock for the rest of my life, and am desperately trying to stay awake until 11 p.m. But I also can't afford to not sleep for two nights in a row, so I made myself a revised insomnia dinner, consisting of two baked turkey wings (fat/bone:meat ratio 9:1), a salad with tomatoes and feta (instead of the recommended baked potato with a shit ton of cheese), and a giant chunk of cheap, yellow gouda. Then I drank a bunch of red wine and smoked while looking for a good dive bar at which to meet Boy this Wednesday (tee hee!). Since we pretty much live in different states--he's on the Lower East Side and I'm in Washington Heights--the middle ground is the greater part of Manhattan.

Tonight Neighbor's boyfriend knocked on the door and, thinking it was Neighbor, I hollered at her to come in and instead I had a semi-awkward conversation with her boyfriend while sitting in front of my laptop, smoking in my underwear. Yes, I would rather pretend that it's normal to conversate in my skivvies than to leap up at the sight of him to scramble for a cover-up. I'm still on the fence as to how I feel about this guy, and I don't want to give him the satisfaction of embarrassing me, so I just chose not to be embarrassed.

Of course, something similar happened last year when I was just visiting and staying with them on the futon. Instead of hobbling into the bathroom (I was on crutches) to change into my pajamas, I just fumbled around on the futon, and of course he emerged from the bedroom at that moment to say goodnight. I think that moment might have had something to do with why he popped the threesome idea on her later, so I hope the same thing doesn't transpire tonight. I've already said no to one guy this week, and I don't like doling it out any more than I like receiving it.

Maybe I should start wearing more clothing at home. But...ugggh....that's one of THREE perks of living alone, the other two being that I can smoke indoors and that toilet paper seems to last forever.

she loves me

I have this on-again, off-again relationship with insomnia, which apparently leads to hyper-blogging. The good news is that if it's not too late, I can call California.

While looking for more insomnia information tonight, I came across a website called dailystrength.org that had an insomnia support group with 918 members. I can just imagine 918 people online typing "can't sleep, you?" "no, me neither." It's actually probably a pretty lively chat room, if in fact there is one. I didn't bother to check.

A few years ago, I quit smoking and joined QuitNet, which was a lot like that. It sent you daily affirmations and gave you a count of how much money you'd saved and how many hours you'd added onto your life. I logged into the chatrooms when I was fiending and they were pretty rowdy. 'Course then I picked up smoking again, though I still occasionally get "quit anniversary" emails from them, reminding me that if I had just stuck with it, I would now have been smoke-free for a few years now.

Anyhow, on daily strength, they've got probably several hundred online support groups. The biggest community I saw was for Depression, with 11,146 members. Next was Breakups and Divorce, with 6,739 members. A lot of obscure diseases only had 1 member (isn't that just a big fuck-you to someone who already feels estranged). Bedwetting had 60 members (that probably isn't a big bonding point, I'm betting that a Shame community would have the same amount).

Fructose Intolerance had 9 members.