falling in love and letting go

I am in San Francisco. It has been an intense week. Aside from a terrible attack of the giggles at the altar during a supremely Catholic ceremony, the wedding was enjoyable, beautiful. I reunited with Marido and he was the Best Date Ever. He chauffered me and the bride around town, entertained himself while I attended to maid of honor duties, and looked absolutely handsome in his suit. He even endured dim sum the following day with 15 members of my family.

Following the wedding, I plunged myself into his life, his apartment, his neighborhood, which is in Nob Hill, an area of San Francisco that is so foreign to me that it is like I am in a different city. It is the same buildings, the same street names, the same fog and coffee and sidewalks and gait--but it is different enough to feel entirely surreal. There's little chance of me running into anyone I know here. The people dress a little differently, the views are different, the streets are steeper, and there are tourists hanging off the cable car that passes in front of his building. I am also carrying around this feeling in my body, this feeling of love that makes everything feel so new and different, almost frightening. I feel like a stranger in my own body, in my own town.

Several times a day I pass by a place so full of memories that I feel as though I am in a dream. Marido lives two blocks away from the bar where I spent my 21st birthday, two months after I first moved to California. I had my wallet stolen that night. It was sad, lonely. We ate hamburgers across the street from the place where Ex bought his last motorcycle, a motorcycle he pointedly purchased with footpegs so he could carry me around town. And last night we went to the bar we used to go to every week, a shitty, homey place where we used the floor as an ashtray, picked up sleazy lovers, blew coke in the bathroom. It now has wood-paneled walls, burn-free furniture, and it is the same owner and bartender pouring me cocktails--only he's wearing a black satin vest and telling me, "We're not kids in tee-shirts and sneakers anymore. We needed a grown-up bar." And grown-ups smoke outside.

Marido told me yesterday that he loves me. You know what I said back? I said, "Thank you."

I love him too; it is obvious in everything I think and say and do. But I opened my mouth to reciprocate and was filled with panic that voicing my love meant committing myself to things I didn't know that I could handle. I tell my friends I love them constantly, and this is because I know that I can and will always be there for them. I didn't know if I could commit myself to what he wants from me. But I am going to try. I have never been with a man like him before, simultaneously a quirky, solitary, wise old man and a wide-eyed, innocent boy.

When I returned *home* to his arms last night, he told me he was nervous about me seeing Joe today. I am nervous, too. I didn't want to talk about it, but Marido has a slight jealousy that I think is easily tempered with kisses. I probably shouldn't have told him about Joe in the first place, but we are in this strange tell-all mode, and I thought he would be happy to hear that I'm relinquishing my favorite lover for our fidelity.

But he was still nervous. He thought that Joe would try and seduce me. I told him he didn't know Joe. Joe respects me, and would never try to coerce me into something I didn't fully want. "When I tell him I've met someone," I said. "I know exactly what he will say. He'll say, 'That's great. I'm really happy for you.'" And when I said this, I unexpectedly started to cry, which alarmed Marido and myself. I have been so emotional lately. I feel weak. I never used to be like this, so prone to have my emotions completely overwhelm me so suddenly.

He asked me why I was crying, if I was so sad to give up my lover if I still knew he would remain my friend. I suppose I know that he'll be disappointed, and you know I hate disappointing people. And yes, although I value our friendship tremendously, I am sad to lose my lover. I suppose a childish part of me wants to have them both.

I am going to see him in a few hours. I am so nervous. I know it will be fine, but that isn't going to stop me from smoking an entire pack of cigarettes.

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?

headates

Today I met up with Dimples for lunch, our third lunch date. I'd called him yesterday to invite him over for a dinner party I thought we were having tomorrow night (turns out it's Sunday), and he said yes to that, and then invited me to lunch today. I can't figure this kid out at all. On the one hand, he's totally not interested...and then he wants to meet up two days in a row? I don't get him.

He's mentioned some ex-girlfriends. Now call me old-fashioned, but whatever happened to that taboo of not bringing up exes on a first (or even second, come on) date. All these young lads seem to have no qualms about that. But today was exceptionally weird. He told me he was with a girl last night, but was into her friend, and blah blah blah. He was talking to me the way he would talk to his brother. Before I knew it, we were talking about an STD scare he had recently. This kind of shit I reserve for my closest friends. I had no idea how to respond to any of this because part of me is fascinated by it, and the other wonders "Why the fuck is he telling me this? And why do I still want to sleep with him?"

I do get him in some ways. I told him straight out I knew he was trying to get over someone, and this shocked him. When he mentioned going to a hospital for some reason, I said, "You thought you had herpes, didn't you." He said a lot of things, and it was pretty easy for me to piece things together. This is one of my specialty areas, seeing what people are really trying to say. But in the end, it I came home with the worst headache I've had since I thought I had dengue. My brain was just furiously trying to process all this shit. My roommate came home and I had to rehash everything through with her--how he talked about dating girls with borderline personality disorders, this 21-year-old he's infatuated with, as well as the 36-year-old pathological liar he practically allowed to move in with him here in Buenos Aires. Oh, and a girl he met at a party who flew from Japan to stay with him...and then he decided he couldn't stand her. But she was hot.

I tried to understand what he was telling me. Like I would ask him if he really thought it was a good idea to date sociopaths. Or if he really believed good sex alone could keep him intellectually satisfied for very long. But all this shit kept coming out. Mind you, this was our third time going out, and our other two lunches consisted mostly about talking about various Spanish phrases that we found interesting. The whole thing was so weird and maddening. Massive headache.

I kind of felt like he was trying to keep us on a buddy level. But on the other hand, one of the lessons I am constantly relearning in my thirty years of existence is that men always want sex. I put all the weird, un-matched pieces together in my head--the indifference, the sex tales, the juggling of ladies, yet the insistence to hang out--and none of it makes sense until I say "Oh, he just wants to let me know he's only interested in NSA sex. Because he's fucked up in this and this and this way."

And you know what, I'm okay with that. In fact, I think I had the same conversation with Joe in New York, only I was a lot more concise about it. My exact words were probably, "Don't expect anything more from me than this. I'm totally fucked up." And with that out in the open, everything was just hunky-dory from there on out.

Of course, I also just think that is the coward's way of saying, "I am hereby relinquishing all thoughtful matters to the custody of my genitals."

What a sad state of affairs. But I can dig it down here in the dirty south.

home in the rain

I left my new house this afternoon to go shoot the pato semifinals at the Campo de Polo in Palermo, but it started sprinkling the second I stepped outside. It was also deadly hot and humid, so I thought about it and reluctantly turned home. Twenty minutes later, it was POURING. You could probably paddle across the cobblestone street right now.

Because it's raining, let's talk about a few of my favorite things (thus far in BsAs):

Colectivos
The city buses here are a crazy jumble of different colors, designs, and breakneck drivers. Some of the buses feel like mobile discotheques, decked out in glitter and stars. They're a great way to see the city, and cooler than the subway.

Heladerias, Librerias, Empanderias
These are my favorite 'ias.' The ice cream here is great, there are so many bookstores, and cheap empanadas.

Movie Clubs
I've been to see two movies so far, one for free, the other super cheap. Both were shown in tiny theaters (less than 20 people), and were just DVDs projected onto a screen. They were fantastic.

Jasmine
Everywhere, they sell jasmine flowers for 10 pesos a bunch. The other day I was on a bus and the bus driver had a few flowers sitting in a jar next to him.

Cute boys, all sorts
The men here are attractive without looking like they care or notice. There are men of European and Latin descent, bankers, artists, hippies. It is a little overwhelming. I have been unable to talk to the men here. Then yesterday a cute British boy said hello to me and I was too unused to talking to respond. I have only met one American boy so far, and he turned out to be a good friend of Joe's, which I found out later. I don't want to have anything to do with any kind of boys at the moment. (Except, of course, for the man I'm going to marry, who is providing me with a nice email affair for the moment. )

My new home
It's nice to have a real home to hide inside when it is raining. I think it would drive me a little crazy if I were stuck in the hostel downtown right now. But I'm not! I have moved, and I now have keys to a beautiful split-level home on the edge between Villa Crespo and Paternal, about a 40-minute bus ride from where I was before. I'm sharing the home with a charming gay couple, both of whom are extremely attractive, so it is the best of both worlds for me. I get to look at cute boys but not deal with any drama. I also have a beautiful terrace where I can hang my underwear to dry. Turns out I kind of love doing my laundry by hand.

alone in argentina

I got into Buenos Aires yesterday morning. After the very friendly taxi driver tried to charge me more than twice as much for the fare, I was deposited onto the bustling Calle Lavalle, a pedestrian-only strip surrounded by restaurants and shops and portenos marching around at a NYC pace.

The four-story climb to my hostel is worth it. My room is set with three single beds, separated by two nightstands. The senora of the house instructed me to sleep in the middle one. I would have laughed if I hadn't been so confused, because she had also just told me that the room was all my own. But, like a good houseguest, summarily took a shower and passed out in said middle bed. I love my room. It has a perfect one-foot-deep balcony with French doors draped in transluscent yellow netting, bathing my room in a golden glow of sun and cigarette smoke.

It is something like heaven.

Because I will be here for so long, I don't feel compelled to charge around in tourist mode. I spent a few hours yesterday and today trawling around and perfecting my use of three words: hola, si, and lo siento. "Hola" of course is hello. Then I say "si" to show that I can understand, but not really respond in a much deeper manner. And then I say "lo siento" to everyone who asks me for money or any further information, because I neither have the language capacity nor the pesitos to be of much help at all.

Last night it was my intention to take a nap and then go out for dinner, but I was so exhausted and overwhelmed that I just ate a granola bar and went back to bed. And, although I'm no stranger to eating in restaurants alone, the thought of it made me lonely more than excited.

Cue surreal single-note piano music.

I thought it would take a few days, por menos, for me to feel lonely and confused, but it only took ten hours. The night before I left, I dreamed of the boy who I went out with on Monday. Last night, I dreamed about Joe. And during today's highly unsettling afternoon siesta, I dreamed of Ex. This is not the kind of loneliness I was anticipating. It is deeper and weirder and more unwanted than any loneliness I've had before. But it is not alarming, mostly because I have nobody to talk to about it. And it only surfaces in my sleep. I guess that is reason enough to stay conscious.

The big-city aspect has a lot to do with it. My last two solo travels, I went to small places, where people would stop and talk to you and welcome you. When you come to a buzzing metropolis, the world does not slow down to fold you in. Big cities are all alike in that way. Part of me wants to leave and go to a smaller town, but I know I will stay here at least until Christmas. I am definitely the kind of person who pushes herself through things, the more distasteful the better, just to prove that I can do it. I also believe that the harder something is, the bigger the reward: no pain, no gain. But this trip isn't really about proving anything to anyone, and besides, I just pushed myself through a crappy two-year program and I really don't think I'm any better for it. This trip is supposed to be just about doing whatever the hell I want to do. The problem is, a really large part of me just wants to go out and drink tons of booze.

Why is that always what I want to do?

But no, mother, that's not what I'm going to do. I'm going to be patient, try to enjoy myself, and finish up this novel that is apparently too long according to first-novel publishing guidelines. All this not-being-able-to-communicate is going to be good for my novel. I can tell.

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.

thank god for mountain time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

strange peace and happiness

I've been meaning to write for a while. I started a post that was about my 5-month sobriety anniversary. And then I started a post about this weird Joe-related story that I was obsessing over for about 8 hours. And then I wrote about living in Neighbor's apartment in her absence, even sleeping in her bed one night--escaping the claustrophobic mess of my own place, but also trying to absorb her calm, uplifting aura just by being here, surrounded by her. I don't know how I'm going to live in New York without her.

Part of the reason why I felt crowded this weekend was because I had a couchsurfer for the past four nights. I don't usually like people to stay more than 2 nights but initially I was feeling generous. When I woke up Wednesday morning I suddenly HAD TO HAVE SEX like never before, it being the critical three-weeks-without-sex combined with ovulation, and it was crazy. That was the day the couchsurfer contacted me and I thought, hey: maybe this will be just perfect. He was a very, very sweet guy and a photographer to boot, and I have had some pleasant surprises with couchsurfers before. But PMS swung the other way and honestly, two hours after he arrived, he could have been Prince Sebastien of Switzerland painted in white chocolate and rolled in macadamia nuts and I would have been pissy. Poor guy, there was nothing he could do to win me over. I mean, I was nice to him and everything and even let him stay an extra night because he was in a pinch, but FUCK I hate these goddamn mood swings. Actually, let's be honest here. I wasn't attracted to him, and if I had been, the story would probably have been different. Life is just kinder to the lovely.

I guess I sent out only the link to the last page of the hipster grifter story that had Joe in it, whoops. There's the real link. But my mind was laid to rest knowing he didn't fuck her, and I believe him. That would really make me want to throw up. I know, I know, it's stupid because in these exciting times you should just assume that everyone you're with has been with someone like that. Essentially we're all fucking each other in the six-degrees-of-separation sense. Sex degrees of separation? Is that a term? It should be.

I shot tons of photos, a handful of which I actually like, and experienced moments of extreme social anxiety despite being surrounded by people I've known and loved for quite some time. Saturday night I was thrown back into San Francisco--some kids I've known for years played a show at The Delancey--and I was hesitant to say hello to all of them. Ex was their photographer for a while--maybe still is, I don't know, and I guess I wondered if they still remembered me, since it's been a while. I also just have this complex where I never feel like I belong anywhere, and that people won't remember me. But they all did, and that felt good. I'm so excited to go back to San Francisco next-next week. It's been so long. I'm so excited for $chool to be over and for the time to begin where I'm doing what I want to be doing, all the time. I'm so excited for another gorgeous weekend, to shoot more photos, to go out with the sweet boy I met on craigslist who sounds exactly like me, but with balls. I'm excited for all these things.

I'm not afraid anymore, just socially awkward and sometimes sleepy. I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

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.

no country for old men

I watched that movie the other night and only one thing stuck with me, the scene where he is laying there in bed and he can't sleep, so he gets up in the middle of the night and leaves, and his wife is asking "Where you going, Lou Alan?" And he just says, "Oh, I'm fixin' to do something dumber than hell, but I'm going to do it anyway." And sure enough, it is dumb as hell, and he does do it anyway, and it leads to even more dumb shit, and even more dumb shit, and instead of anonymously smoking away $2 million with his thumb up his ass, he ends up bloody and dead in some crappy motel far away from home.

Somehow, that is how I feel today. Like, I look back and I try to pinpoint the exact moment where I made that statement, the exact moment where I got out of bed, where I was lying there in that comfort zone and I got out of it and plunged myself into this confounding reality.

How did I get here?

Yesterday I ate about 4 pounds of sugar. Everything started to vibrate. It was pretty intense. I felt funny all day. There was a cocaine-addled mirror on my table taunting me. I held it in my hands for about ten minutes and then threw it away. It's strange to throw away something that is in perfectly good condition. It made me feel like I was insane. I felt hungover, even though all I did was smoke cigarettes and eat every fucking thing in sight. Oh yes, and then I did something very odd, which was to spontaneously crack out on spending the next 24 hours applying for a Soros Foundation fellowship. When I finally got to school today I realized I'd slept more in the past three days than I had in the last three weeks, probably. It made me feel really weird, almost woozy.

As I was leaving the house I checked my mail, and got a sweet little postcard from Joe. He told me he missed me. It made me hate him with all of my heart, because I am feeling lonely and spiteful.

not helpful

I am not a happy camper today. It has been a most stressful week, and today I was supposed to get shit done, and instead I had a rude awakening and could not get over it, and wallowed in anger all day and got NOTHING done on a day that I could not really afford to waste. I literally sat here all day and was just angry as all hell, so I ate candy and smoked cigarettes and don't think I took a real breath in seven hours.

Stress management much?

Do you ever have a moment where you look back on several distinct moments where you said to yourself, "I'll deal with this later," or "I'm going to hate myself later for this," or "Fuck it, I'm sure everything will be fine," and then you just want to go back in time and bitch-slap your former self eight times over --- because really, what did you do then instead of taking care of business? Who the hell knows? I sure as hell don't.

And yet I'm doing it again. I'm like, "Oh, it's okay. Everything will be fine. I'm just going to sit here until I can go to sleep, and when I wake up tomorrow, rested, I will be able to deal with it, because today...well, today...today is just not a good day. Today was never meant to be. And tomorrow...tomorrow will be better."

I never said I was good with stress.

Thursday I am leaving for the Atacama Desert:





















I will lay my eyes on something along those lines on Saturday probably. I don't know how, but somehow between now and Wednesday I am going to make write 20 more thesis-like pages appear out of NOTHING and then vanish into the desert for a week or so. I think it'll be good times. I want some peyote. Psychedelics are not on my list of banned substances.

Sobriety has been very, very hard this week. I miss Joe, and I miss the carefree feeling I had a few weeks ago that everything was going to be okay. Because I don't really feel that way anymore. I am really excited about my trip, but something about traveling and not drinking suddenly seems even lonelier than I ever imagined. I must be masochistic. And I can't stop thinking about the fact that I'm graduating in two months. TWO MONTHS. It's like reality suddenly decided it wants to be my new, annoying new best friend and I don't really like her very much.

Okay, me stop now, because this...this is not helpful. But I don't know what would be right now. Or...I do know...but...I don't do that anymore.

serious end to a not serious relationship

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

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

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

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

Sobriety is a bitch.

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

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

...and unhealthy obsessions

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

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


















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

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

I longed for his cocktail more than anything else.

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.

yes we are having fun yet.

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

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

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

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

I think it makes sense.

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

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

Life is funny like that.

manning up II

Something strange happened the other night at Joe's and I'm not sure if I can explain it right, but I'm going to try. I showed up around half past midnight and he was playing cards with his neighbor and a guy I'll call Roger, who I've met several times but have never really had a real conversation with. He is a nice enough guy, but he is hard to connect with, and hard to understand because he tends to be a low talker and he is always drunk. He is so drunk all the time that he wears that expression of squinty eyes and stuporous grin and when he talks it's like a wad of gum is falling out of his mouth. But he is very genial and harmless in general, although he seems to have a serious drinking problem and a tendency to want to drive home, even when he is passing out at the same time.

I was trying to talk him out of driving home and a little frustrated with Joe and his neighbor for not being more forthright in just taking Roger's keys from him and putting him on the sofa, particularly given a history of certain episodes, but he was just mumbling something about me needing to go to sleep. Joe and his neighbor vacated the room for a moment, and then Roger suddenly said, "You should wait for Joe." It was an odd thing to say, and I didn't know what he meant, but when I asked him to explain it, he just repeated it, over and over, sometimes adding, "Joe's a good guy. You should wait for him."

This struck me as hard because just last week I got disgusted with the Joe situation and decided, in light of his leaving, that I wasn't going to see him anymore because it was going to make me sad. I informed a friend of this decision and she said something pretty elegant to me that put it all into perspective: Seriously, you're going to be sad anyway. You might as well spend time with him.

Then this past week Joe and I have taken our "relationship" to the next level. This means several things. It means that I am actually engaging with him, talking to him, telling him things. It's pretty amazing how long we've been faux-dating and how much I've managed to not tell him. It's also pretty humbling to see how transparent I am...to see how much he's discerned just by osmosis. It also means that I am allowing myself to actually like him, something I haven't let myself fully do this whole time. It is scary and I am remembering what it is like, just trying to enjoy the moment. Hearing Roger, who is someone who is known to me, but really a stranger, just say to me point-blank that I should wait for him, was quite surreal.

I gave up trying to understand what he meant and tried to refocus the conversation on the merits of not driving drunk, when Roger asked me for a hug. I obliged. I sat back down across from him and watched him drink his water. He continued looking around us in a glazed fashion with that grin on his face, and then he mumbled some kind of question, something like, "What gives?" I didn't know how to respond to this, and told him so, and then he suddenly became very lucid and articulate and told me he was really attracted me.

I've noticed that since entering Soberland, there have been so many instances in which I've been rendered completely speechless. This was one of those times.

Then he returned to the "You should wait for Joe," mumbling, adding, "Joe is more of a man than me."

The mood in the living room, which had been all jolly and sleepy and drunk was suddenly so intense and dark. It was really fucking shocking. He began saying very intense things, punctuated with mumbling more "what gives," which confounded me. He finally said, "I don't know how to talk to you. I'm just attracted to you. How should I talk to you?" I completely ignored his remarks about being attracted to me and said he'd have to ask me a real question that required an answer that was more than "What gives," so he said, "What are you looking for?"

This was a question that really begged for a response, but the whole situation was confusing me. Not five minutes ago, this guy had been passing out upright. And not fifteen minutes ago, the card game had ended because he had lost his hand...literally; he misplaced his cards. And yet right then and there we began to talk to each other in a deeply personal way, leaning over the coffee table. I told him about how I always looked for things that I thought I wanted...only to find out that the things I thought I wanted...weren't really what I wanted. And he started to tell me about how everything he wanted always turned to shit.

He stopped talking the second Joe walked back into the living room. He sat down next to me and said something like, "What's up, guys?"

At that point, Roger leaned back into his chair very easily, and his dark expression disappeared, the drunk mask resumed, and he just shrugged and smiled at Joe and mumbled "Eh?"

I felt like I was fucking insane.

I couldn't tell Joe about it. Would you have? In our previous realm of keeping him at arm's length, this wouldn't have been an issue. But now that we are talking to each other, I feel like I have to tell him things. I tried to let it pass. Then the next day, Roger called Joe and asked him to apologize to me for him. He kind of wanted to know.

I don't know why this is bothering me so much. But really. That exchange made me feel like I was fucking insane.

manning up

Coming back to New York has been taxing. Sharp always refers to it as "re-entry," a terminology which to me accurately portrays how difficult it is to readjust. I find re-entry and readjustment to be very difficult. I guess I am not as good as an adapter as I'd like to believe I am, and this week has been one of "fuck first, ask questions later." Or, more accurately, "fuck first...then go to sleep." When confronted with details that don't seem to fit with my reality, I find it easier to just go ahead and have sex...and then...go to sleep. This happened to me twice this week. The fallout the next morning is harder, only now I can't blame my actions on boozing. Now it's just my inability to deal with reality. The first was with the lawyer when I woke up in the hotel room the next morning: "Wait, did ACLU imply that he's...married?" (Goddammit, Little Brother, why are you always right?) And then with Joe this week, in a more prolonged state of confusion: "Why am I still sleeping with you if you are leaving?"

Yeah, so Joe told me when I got back that he's moving to California probably at the end of next month. This news made me incredibly sad but also somewhat relieved. I was beginning to wonder how long our relationship could continue in this balance. The day after he told me this, we spent most of the day together lounging around in my apartment. In our now 9 months on and off of not-dating, we have never done this. I am not good at chilling with people really, only by myself, and I was only able to do this after getting up at 730 to go to a yoga class. Usually I kick him out of my apartment, but I told him he could stay and that I wanted him to help me chill that day.

I realized, after that day, that I felt closer to Joe, just because I had spent time with him, doing nothing, forcing myself to be still with him and not go anywhere. Maybe the reason why I haven't been able to get serious about anyone is because I haven't been able to sit still with anyone for long enough. But nobody has ever demanded it of me, including Joe. He has never demanded anything of me. He has never demanded more of my time, better treatment, anything. I think he was probably scared of scaring me off. But honestly, I really think, looking back, that had he demanded these things, I would have given him these things. We'll never know, I guess. Maybe I would've just told him to fuck off.

Anyhow, now it just feels even weirder to be around him. I've always kept him at arm's length to avoid giving him the impression that we were getting more serious than we were, but now I feel like I can suck the marrow out of him before he leaves. Is that fucked up? Like I want to be really close to him now and I feel like it's safe because he's going to go. I want the intensity without the commitment, I guess.

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?

newest crush: life

After a twacky morning with Detox Doc numero uno, I spent the day with Joe, the human tranquilizer, and for the first time in ages, felt...relaxed. Joe and I are in this weird place of dating-land that I have never been in before. It is nice. It is totally no pressure since we have been doing this for so long. We hung out all day at his house while I worked on secret plan 437b, and I took portraits of his roommate's dog. I'd almost forgotten how soothing animals are. I think my anxiety levels dropped 90 percent. Then I came home and slept seven glorious hours.

Today, awaiting the arrival of WonderWoman, I decided to throw an impromptu dinner party so I can spend the day indoors, cooking my favorite foods. In a bummer turn of events, some of my favoritest people cannot make it, so I invited a slew of random inviduals, including New Crush. Let's talk about this for a moment. Yes, New Crush broke my heart several weeks ago when he dropped the g-bomb, but I won't let that stop me from admiring him, because he is so fucken cute! Every time I see him I can't help but...stop breathing. I kind of love it. Anyhow, last week he made a pointed issue of asking when I'd be in the Chi, and getting my number so we could hang out there next week. I'm so excited for our dedicated day of hangout in the Chi! I'm convinced that I misconstrued the g-bomb situation. I haven't heard back from him, but that's okay. Gap model and Curly are coming, which will be nice. I haven't seen them since Red's going away party. I was thinking that I probably wouldn't see them anymore because Red was a crucial organizer in that crew, but this makes me happy.

Speaking of romantic intrigue that has nothing to do with Joe, I almost had a heart attack Tuesday after leaving the Guggenheim (the Catherine Opie exhibit is great) because Love Affair called me and we are meeting up tomorrow for coffee. I haven't seen him since my golden birthday. It's very exciting. It will be nice to see him.

Sobriety has been good to me this week, despite the sleeping problems. Yesterday when I was working on secret plan 437b, I had a not-so-minor flash of understanding about what life was all about, and it had to do with the tiny slivers of reality that can be brutal and painful, but the more we deal with them, the more we can appreciate this struggle between love and freedom and the desire for a Viking funeral.