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.

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.

dispatch from chucktown

So much has been going on that I don't know where to start, so let's just say that I'm in Charleston, South Carolina, and that I kind of never want to come back to New York. Cigarettes are cheap, booze is cheap, I'm not wearing a jacket, and all the boys have that sexy, slow, southern air about them. Well, not all of them.

This is my first time truly traveling alone and I love it. I made the mistake of sleeping with my host here the first night (okay and the next day too), and he has been clingy and I've had to be alternatively diplomatic, aloof and selfish in order to get away from him to do what I intended to do here in town: see fucking everything. I also just had to get out of The NY for a minute and away from all the talk about boys and school and therapists who think I need more therapy and more drugs. In this latter respect it's been very successful and I feel good. I think that you can only really know who you are when you remove yourself from any defining context--the place you live, the people you love, the things you do. When all of those things fall away, who are you? It's too easy to define yourself by these things, and these are things that may say things about you, they're just hints at the real thing.

Of course I lost my phone Friday night, as I'm wont to do about every three months now. When I realized it was gone I was pretty excited because it meant I could wander about town without relation to anything, and it would be difficult for my host to catch up with me. He [oh Love Affair just IMd me. My heart always freaks out when he does that] got arrested Friday night and was in a bad mood. I felt sorry for him.

I was so liberated to be without phone, without contacts, and without a plan that I went a good two hours without food or coffee or nicotine. I think that being alone is good for me.

Oh god, Love Affair, why do you torture me? All right, now I'm totally distracted and can't concentrate on what I was thinking, where I was going with this. I guess this proves my point completely. I need to move to the woods.

We booze, we boozed, we will booze

Yesterday was a day to reflect on. It started with my exciting purchase of plane tickets to Alaska and ended, predictably, with my head in the toilet. I was so plastered that I first threw up next to the toilet, and I still haven't cleaned it up because...well, that shit is gross and I can't yet handle it.

But in the 14 hours between the beginning and end of my day, I had a lovely post-birthday walkabout with Papa. I was feeling the loopy high of 8 hours of drinking the previous night, and we took advantage of the lovely weather to walk from Chambers Street over the Brooklyn Bridge. We meandered through Dumbo for a while, went up the Brooklyn Heights promenade, and then traversed the Gowanus Canal on our way to the Brooklyn Museum. We did this all on foot. I'm actually sore today. The whole day long we were just giggling and chatting and pointing at dogs. Papa is such a great ambling companion, and we were definitely moving at the same speed yesterday.

I can't stop talking about how ecstatic I am that winter is over. I honestly didn't realize how much the winter got me down. And I bet that if you did a study, you would discover that blogging decreases significantly in the spring and summer months. We're all too busy having fun outside to pause, reflect, and gripe online.

But now that spring has sprung, we can turn our attention to love love love again, and the confounding state of relationships today. Let us pray:

Before omelettes with my lovely neighboroommate, I got a message from a former lover, a guy I used to call My New Best Friend, because I was trying not to sleep with him. (It didn't work.) It's the second time MNBF has messaged me this week, which is a little strange, but that's beside the point. The first message was a photo of him wearing this hat that I'd given him. And the second message was a photo of Love Affair. No words, just the photo. I don't really know what that's all about, but I had this vision of them talking at a party, fishing for some common thing to talk about, and that common thing being a common lover. Brrr. I usually try to avoid thinking about shared bed partners.

Seeing Love Affair last week was a mixed bag. I think I used every possible excuse to touch him and kiss him. I got him to help me with some cooking and it really made me miss My Former Life, where we would cook together, eat together, sleep together...I told myself I wouldn't allow myself to miss him. But it just felt good to be next to him. Baw!

Anyhow Papa and my day transitioned into this very entertaining situation when we decided to go meet up with the kid I met in Chicago, the night that I Crown-Royaled myself into sleeping in my car. Let's call him Crown Royale Companion (CRC). I'm not attracted to him at all, but he'd invited me to meet up with him for the Murakami opening at the Brooklyn Museum, and I said yes. From the text message, it seemed like he was going with people, and I should meet up for a drink if I was around. Let me add a disclaimer here that one of our friends was "sure" that CRC was "gayer than a picnic basket," and didn't believe me when I said that CRC was hitting on me, and so I kind of was seeing this as a playdate with new friends.

Text messages have brought communicative ambiguity to an entirely new level.

Anyhow, Papa and I started to wonder if I was going on a date, so I made sure to mention in my next text that I was bringing a friend. I think this caused him to hustle to bring someone with him as well. It ended up being me and Papa, and CRC and CRCroommate.

So the four of us are strolling around the museum, and the dynamic was just funny because Papa and CRC and CRCroommate don't know each other at all, and I don't really know why we're there, because I'm not into CRC really. I thought CRCroommate was gay, so I was trying to give Papa and CRCroommate some space. I was also trying to give me some space so as not to make CRC think I was all into him, but I also didn't want to lose anyone. It was a little challenging because it was such a scene last night, with the collision of opening night and free first Saturday. The ambiguity of the arrangement was very funny to me. CRCroommate (not gay in the end) was probably disappointed that Papa isn't a hot chick, but was being a tremendously good sport about it all, and we had a nice time.

After the museum we went to the boys' apartment in Williamsburg and had beers. I started acting like a dipshit, just chattering to keep the energy up, but also to avoid thinking about the funny social dynamic. I was entertaining myself by rotating us about methodically so I wasn't just walking with CRC and such, and I was a little disconcerted to discover that I liked CRCroommate more than CRC. That kind of stuff amuses me. We then went to Barcade, which was great fun. It was just as crowded and noisy as the museum. We played a bunch of video games and then got crunched into a corner of the bar, where I connected with CRCroommate about architecture and urban planning. I decided I liked him a lot more. Then CRC came to break us up, and in response I went outside to smoke a cigarette and exchanged phone numbers with two boys who I got to talking to about pinball.

Anyhow, CRCroommate left after 3 drinks (smart guy) and we went off to a fancy bar where we somehow dropped more than a $100 drinking wine and eating prosciutto. What the fuck. I was so la-la by then I probably would have agreed to anything. Over the first bottle of wine, we got into a heated discussion about capitalism and the role of the financial markets in New York City specifically, and I found myself hating CRC because of the way he was arguing. He kept saying, "Wait, let me finish," as though we were just taking turns talking. To me that's such a power play in a conversation amongst peers. Part of the conversation is negotiating points and delimiting your own speech in the interest of participation. Again I went outside to smoke cigarettes and demanded to sit with these three guys who were talking about black holes. When I went back into the bar I ended up making out with CRC.

Now that I write this all down, it seems far less amusing. But now I'm stuck with wanting to see CRCroommate again, but not really CRC. Is it possible to make this switch? I didn't get CRCroommate's number. If I want to see CRCroommate again, I'm going to have to set things straight with CRC.

Then this morning I got this weird text (fucken text messages--although they are a hangover's best friend) from him that says:

"All the passionate talk of politics and social reform. Yet I sleep here alone. A man not of capitalist greed or liberal anarchy. But of loneliness."

Does this message give anyone else the creeps? And does anyone have advice for me on making the switch?

Do you think this will work?

I swear they all coordinate.

I wasn't feeling good so I came home today and cheered myself up by making a flyer for my birthday party. This always cheers me up. This year is my "golden" birthday, meaning I'm turning 28 on the 28th. Although the party starts at nine, my nearest and dearest are invited to start early with me with a fried chicken dinner at 7:30 p.m. If you're reading this, you're invited to join me for a long night by coating our livers with a protective cushion of grease!

When I was done with the party flyer, I went to the bathroom to smoke a cigarette and call Love Affair back. I like to make hasty decisions after a long period of indecision. As soon as it doesn't seem like a big deal anymore, I can follow through on these stupid things that really aren't big deals. I was also feeling sad because I left school without my orchestrated run-in with PhD crush, so I needed to inject some kind of imaginary romance into the day.

It was a good conversation, one where I managed not to feel sad, bad, or even lusty. My only trigger was wanting to ask him how things were with his Ex, but refraining.

Then I told him that I'd sent him an invite to my Golden Birthday. To my surprise, he said he could probably come, because he'd planned on coming to New York that week anyhow. In the following three seconds it took me to say "Wow...that'll be so great!" I thought to myself: Yaay! No Shit? Love Affair? Here? Yaay! Wait--my head will explode in the presence of My Friend, Love Affair, and PhD crush (whom I haven't even invited). But I'm sure he'll be visiting his Ex. I wonder if he'll bring her. That'll probably be better. Then we can transition into the Friend Zone. But I still want to sleep with him. God I hate being in the same room with a guy I've slept with and still want to sleep with, and his new girlfriend. Grr. This cycle actually repeated itself in my head three full times in during my response to him.

To be fair, I did drag out the "Wow..." part.

I thought of this one night that I was at the Uptown in San Francisco (a fancy name for a really divey bar), when Karim helpfully pointed out that three of the last boys I loved (both physically and emotionally) were all kind of playing pool together. Love Affair was one of them. It made me happy more than confused. I knew I was leaving San Francisco shortly, and I felt like I would be leaving behind a legacy of love, although that night I slept alone.

Is Love Affair really going to be here for my birthday? I have to get to the place where I don't care again, to make everything okay. I don't know how I'm going to do that, but I wish it would magically happen that I would fall into a serious New Affair with PhD crush. That's the only way I know how to get over someone, is to fall in love with someone else.

What it comes down to is that I just need to get laid.

Dinner with Papagayo and Muffin was great tonight. I almost feel human again...though it had to be a nonalcoholic night. Papagayo made "mocktails," i.e., grape juice and seltzer. All this hurting is for good cause, though. I finished my stretch of 14+ hour-long days at school with a riveting studio presentation Friday, and commenced the assault on my liver immediately thereafter.

I went to meet my youngest cousin and his new boyfriend for drinks. Per his usual M.O., we ran up an almost-$300 bar tab in completely over-the-top surroundings, this time at the Hudson Hotel bar. His new boyfriend, aside from being 12 years older than my cousin, is French, and pointed out a "very famous French talk show host" sitting just next to us in the lounge. In his sexy English and my ten-year-old French, we managed a wonderful three hours talking about all the important things in life, including growing old, saving the world, conquering fears, finding love, and digital textile design in the fashion industry.

Although I didn't consider myself hungover yesterday, I did eat a leftovers for breakfast in bed, with a generous side of ibuprofen, and reflected upon the two current crushes in my life, both of whom share the same first name and equally unattainable status in the underdeveloped area of my brain reserved for junior high fantasies-cum-obsessions. But I'm sensing something weird with My Friend, and I think it might be sexual tension.

I don't think I fully grasp the meaning of sexual tension. Usually for me, sexual tension only exists in the four seconds it takes to open a condom. I guess that's more like sexual anticipation. When people talk about sexual tension, they're usually talking about the "will we or won't we" hanging in the air between two waffling individuals. I tend to make my mind up early on that we won't, so the uncomfortable tension isn't an issue. And just because my mind precludes it, doesn't mean it's not going to happen. However, I think that this foregone conclusion actually inspires the thought of sex. It's like they can sense that you don't want them, and of course this makes them want you.

I like him as My Friend. I hope the sexual tension is in my head. But if it's not, I'm sure it's probably pretty obvious to everyone else. Someone told me that I had this shit-eating grin on my face when PhD crush was commenting on our group presentation. I giggled and admitted that I had an eensy-weensy crush on the guy. He laughed: "Oh, you think? It's pretty obvious!"
(He also said, "Well, who doesn't [have a crush on him]?" But that's a different story.)

I don't know what it is that I do that makes me so transparent. In my writing it's different, because I say what I mean. But really, what is it that I do that just gives me away? I want to know. And, more importantly, if an outsider can tell, can PhD crush tell? Maybe I should just decide not to have sex with him, which will make him instantly want me. I think that's how it works, at least.

On another boy tangent, Love Affair called me tonight. I have paralyzed myself into inaction about whether or not to call him back. Call him back. Don't call him back. Don't write to him. Don't open his letters. He lives in San Francisco, for fuck's sake. I don't know why you want to keep dragging this out. Seriously, you gotta let this one go. Think of the last time you talked to him in San Francisco. Think of how he couldn't manage to make time for you. Think of how hurt you were then, and how much scotch you drank that night before you had dinner with him because you were afraid you would show him how you really felt. Think of how you were supposed to have coffee with him the day before he left and how he left you hanging, so you didn't even get to say good-bye. Even better, stop calling him Love Affair and start calling him Love Lost. I don't remember exactly what I wrote to him last month, but I must have said something along the lines of sometimes feeling like our affair didn't actually happen, that it was all a dream. If he had never written back, I would have relegated him to a world away.

I do this to myself. I'm a love junkie, and it's a sick disease. Part of me sincerely believes that love cannot exist without pain, and I hold onto those things that are the most painful, because those are the times when I felt the most love. I'd rather hold onto love and pain simultaneously, then let them both go. Of course, I'd rather figure out how to hold onto love and only love, and I'm working on this. This is why I want to call Love Affair back--not to recapture pain, but to replace lost love with friendship.

Hm. Does friendship involve less pain than love? Who can weigh in on this?


And now, this:

Online Videos by Veoh.com

I really identify with all three of the people in this clip.

shitty weather, wisdom, and banana cream pie

One by one, people are hearing that I have a blog, and then they ask why. Usually I give them an answer like, "I write my blog purely for the entertainment of One Ms. Keetens," or "Some stupid asshole reads my myspace blog too much and has made it hard for me to be open there anymore," but those are not my real reasons.

I just want everyone to know how I feel. There are fewer misunderstandings when everyone knows how you feel.

This week in San Francisco, I am allowing my feelings to mirror the shitty, grey, cold, weather. Basically, Love Affair turned into Reality Check, and we did not go on the road trip that I'd been so looking forward to for so long. I thought I handled it well, but when my buddy Karim happened to be with me when I ran into Love Affair on the street, he later asked me, "What the hell was up with that? Why was that so awkward?"

I'm also terrible at poker.

When I knew it wasn't going to happen, I did three things that are typical of me in any sort of crisis that threatens to turn my unicorn-filled dreams into gross reality: I went to the beach and consulted the ocean, I spent three hours drinking scotch with a good friend, and then I plotted what kind of pie I would make and consume. These, my friends, are the ingredients of dealing with disappointment. One of my very wise friends (who happens to also be a fantastic therapist) told me after a dinner one night that most of life is about how we deal with disappointment. I think he's right. I think about those words a lot.

The flipside of disappointment, of course, is expectation. This is something that my buddy and I could laugh about in the middle of Scotchfest 2008, the ridiculous expectations that I had built up for the road trip with Love Affair. I'd thought that it was a harmless little fantasy, but it turned out to hurt a lot when the fantasy was exposed to the light of day. Not so harmless after all.

I'm trying not to be hurt by it all, but it is hard. I'm trying not to blame him or myself, but blaming myself is so fucken easy and almost comforting, in a sick way. I still believe that Love Affair is a handsome prince, and that I am a good person who tries to make herself happy without stepping on other people's toes. Mostly, I am trying to enjoy myself in San Francisco which, even in the shittiest of weather, is not so hard to do.

And, as I have learned, it is hard to feel bad about anything when you get to eat banana cream pie for breakfast three days in a row.

Bonus Recipe:
Three-Layer Mushroom Lasagna (Where Each layer is a Different Kind of Mushroom)

Ingredients:
Some Gruyere
Some Ricotta
Brown Mushrooms
White Mushrooms
Shitaake Mushrooms
One tomato
One apple
Some brown sugar
Half a stick of butter
An egg beaten with some water, thrown in by miracle roommate chef, who always does something to help bring it all together a little better
basil
garlic
red wine
white pepper
some of your favorite chili sauce
Scotch-fueled determination to pour all of your attention into making this lasagna and avoid showing to your secret Love Affair how hurt you feel

Okay so the shtick with this lasagna is that you are making each layer with a different kind of mushroom, and this time around we did one sweet layer (white mushrooms, apple, brown sugar, butter), one savory layer (shitaake, garlic, red wine, white pepper, basil), and one spicy layer (brown mushrooms, chili sauce). So fucken good!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Homecoming Anxiety Queen

Yesterday at LaGuardia my friend in Alaska called me from my apartment in San Francisco, where he is staying right now. (Yes I still call it "my apartment," not "my old apartment." Just like my house in Illinois is still my house in Illinois. I have many homes. Strangely, it makes me feel homeless instead of homeful.) Anyhow he couldn't get in, and he had me call all my roommates (not my old roommates, of course) but it just brought me back there right away.

Last night I dreamt of my return to San Francisco, which fills me with anxiety. In my dream I unlocked the front door and everything inside was...pink. I found Girlfriend in her...pink...room, stretched out and on her laptop, and next to her was Love Affair, reading a book. I gave Girlfriend a massive hug and lay there with her for a little while before giving Love Affair a kiss on the cheek. The pink room was very small.

After a while Love Affair disappeared and I realized that, in addition to everything being pink, a lot of other things had changed. Like there was this bitch named Naomi living there and my former roommate Gabe, though he was still the same, and there were samurai swords dusted in coke to prove it.

(Then there was a spontaneous buffet that started with shredded cabbage and ended with a chunk of blue cheese so large that I joked to the guy doling it out, "You could make a sculpture with that thing." The label read that it was the "largest legal lump sum of blue cheese in the United States.")

Love Affair kept flitting in and out of the scene. It was a pink party full of strange outfits, strange people when I was supposed to be at home. I didn't want to hang out with strangers; I wanted to be with the friends I was missing. Then I got a telegram--yes, a telegram, it was handed to me buy a guy dressed like a toy messenger, but it was a digital tabloid--from Love Affair that read: I want to hang out with you; I want you to know I care, but I have so much to do. Why do I always leave things like this?

If I continue to think about it, it will be awkward and I will be uptight and psychoanalyze every moment we spend together for the next six months. I need to just let it go. My subconscious has other plans. Also I hate my haircut, even though I'm not dwelling on it. But every morning I wake up and I see my reflection and I wince. Not a good way to start your day. Maybe I should just lie to my face? "You look awesome! Have you lost weight?"

But I am filled with so much anxiety that I'm chewing all this nicotine gum again. Yesterday I fell asleep with it in my mouth.

november i loved you but you brought me down

It's been *so* long since I've posted that I thought I should do it now, before it got to be so long that to write would have required too much explanation.

My dear friend's disclosure last week left me feeling detached from the world. When you live in New York and someone is breaking your heart from Alaska, I get the feeling your insides dump out somewhere in northern Montana, a cold and mountainous place, from what I understand. It's jarring, but then again, what are you going to do? After you cry about it for a while, you've got to find your heart thumping somewhere and swallow it back in to where it belongs so you can smile when some good-hearted soul buys you three shots of tequila for looking so down. Organs in glaciers are good finds for the explorers of the future, but they don't do as much good right now.

Speaking of right now, I read a book this week called The Power of Now, which I want to tell you all about. Seems I was ripe for an injection of spirituality, because when my mother offered it to me over the break, I jumped at it like she was offering me a pack of Winston Lights. And yes, yes, YES!--this book was on Oprah Winfrey's Book Club.

When I told my little brother about it, he asked me what "the take-away message" was. I love him. Basically, there are two themes of the book: Forget time, and forget yourself.

Forgetting time is hard. I, for one, am always brooding over the past: how it fucked me up, how it's still fucking me up. I am also one to pin all my hopes on the future: things will be better once I get through this, once I figure this out, once I meet and marry Joey Comeau. (He writes! He plays chess! He's cynical and edgy but maintains that idiotic faith in life that I adore!) But, simply put, how can we be happy in the future? We never live in the future. We live in the present.

Forgetting yourself is even harder. Eckhart Tolle writes that one of the most damaging spikes to inner peace was Descartes' proclamation "I think, therefore I am." The notion that we are our thoughts seems obvious, but we really are not our minds. There is a challenging dualism that we so frequently face, evidenced in cliches like "My heart says yes, but my mind says no," or the author's wake-up call one day: I can't live with myself anymore.

There's so much in this book that I found really resonated with me, and it's written in a question-and-answer style way, for all us non-believers who are quite skeptical and, perversely attached to our pain and our thoughts, as tortuous as they may sometimes be. But I really have to believe that kicking my Self to the curb is the way to go, because so far all my mind does is fuck with me, urge me to compulsive and self-destructive behavior, in addition to keeping me awake at night.

In trying to settle my mind, ease my utterly worthless anxiety, and in general lead a healthier life, I have more or less retreated into as much solitude as is socially acceptable. A random kid I met the last time I went out...uh...two weeks ago...found me on MySpace. I was self-medicating that night, so it took more than a few moments to remember who he was, and his message (Subject: You Are Fun. Message: Let's Hang Out!) didn't do much to jog my memory. What kind of sorry sap thinks that a depressed drunk girl is fun? Turns out he's a comedian. We live in a fucked up world. He invited me to his show Monday night AND gave me his number, which I thought was funny (I tend to laugh *at* comedians rather than with them). I didn't go to his show.

November has always been an interesting month for me. But, as I'm forgetting time, right now is quite pleasant. My internet, after a week of vacation, has returned, and the heat in my apartment is on.

Falling Off the Wagon and Into Your Arms

One of my favorite new activities is sitting in my quiet apartment in front of my computer and putting things in my mouth. I like to have fifteen different internet tabs going at the same time, three different downloads, and, for good measure, Microsoft Word running, so I can pretend I'm writing or doing homework. I also make tea, eat cookies, chocolate, ice cream, and pasta. Some people call this ADD, but the people who treat me gently, like psychics and therapists, like to call it "multi-tasking."

Tonight I'm distracting/rewarding myself by focusing all my non-eating attention on this 2-3 day trip with Love Affair. So far I want to go to Mexico, Yosemite, Mono Lake, and Big Sur, and hike in the desert, the mountains, along the ocean, get a massage and a facial, relax, drive, and not be cold for one single second. In the middle of January. I also want us to make a soul connection so deep that it is unquestionable our lives will be inextricably, romantically intertwined forever and ever and ever. Also, we are both students, so this trip should cost very little money.

Apparently quitting smoking has made me delusional in more ways than one. I also thought it was okay to smoke cigarettes four nights in a row last week, twice with the sorta predestined notion that if I got drunk enough to not remember that I had quit, it wouldn't be like cheating. My NicA meeting today was especially effective in showcasing my weakness and shame. But god I love recovering addicts; they are so positive and supportive.

At today's meeting I had a flashback when the woman next to me said her perfunctory "Hi, my name is Seriously, and I'm a nicotine addict." There are a lot of people in this city are named Seriously, and it confuses me. I feel like once a day, someone yells "Seriously!" to someone standing within seven inches of me. I've never met so many Seriouslys in all my life. Anyhow, the first time this happened to me was when I was institutionalized for one hot minute, and this woman came into the smoking lounge during one of our two 30-minute smoke breaks. She sat right down next to me, which was bizarre because she wasn't from The Ward and none of us knew her. But she knew who We were, and she said, in a parody of The Ward (from which it was obvious that she had been recently discharged), "Hi, I'm Seriously, bi-polar, manic-depressive," and she stuck out her hand, and I said then as I did today, "Uh...me too?" Moments like that act as horrifying mirrors into your soul because you realize that despite all these horrible problems you think you have that drive you to attend 12-step programs or to self-incarcerate aren't so unique; in fact they're so commonplace that they have these systems in place for a reason. And when someone says EXACTLY what you were about to say, then you feel foolish for repeating the same thing, so you just stare back at them like a baby seeing its reflection for the first time. Except the baby that looks back at you is haggard, just like you.

After the meeting I treated myself with a trip to Whole Foods, where I allowed assorted yuppies to bang into me with their miniature shopping carts, and purchased three-dollar organic chocolate bars with love poems printed on the interior of the wrapper.

In the arms of chocolate and dreams of Love Affair, I thought about two wonderful conversations I had last night with two friends from San Francisco, Sharp and Sleepwalker. Sharp is an old co-worker whom I almost want to name Too Sharp, because the things he says to me are so on point that sometimes I wonder if he's just humoring me. He seems to know exactly what I want to hear. Did you ever tell someone about your deepest and darkest fear, and then forgot about it? Like have you ever been at a bar wasted, and then reveal, for example, this dream you had, then you woke up and realized your life is spinning out of control and that you're clinging onto your deadbeat boyfriend for distraction? Not only do you forget you told that person, you forget this crowning realization altogether. Then, weeks later, that person said to you, "It sounds like you really fear that your life is spinning out of control and that you're using your boyfriend as a distraction." And you look at them like they're the most insightful genius ever? That is how I feel about Sharp all the time. Sometimes I realize that he's just a very good listener to all of the many things I say, but other times I think that he's just very intuitive, and he knows exactly how I feel, and what to say to make me feel good about the world. He had so much news to tell me that I couldn't really explore any one topic; I kind of just let it all wash over me as a package of "San Francisco News." Sharp is also a very good confidante. I never realized how important it is for me to have a confidante because I'm a very open person. I kind of think that secrets lead to shame and shame leads to self-deprecation, so I try not to have any secrets. I also feel like by sharing the burden of my issues, it really lightens the load on me. Like if everyone knows that I'm slipping at quitting, it's okay, because I'm not trying to hide it, and now people will know what I'm going through and they won't smoke around me, or they won't make fun of me because they know it's hard. A few years ago, however, I ran into my first thing that I needed to share that I couldn't, because it involved someone else, and I found out the hard way that some people actually try to maintain some sort of privacy. For me, privacy is an illusion. Anyhow, that's why I wanted to have a secret blog, so I could write about anything and everyone, and nobody would get upset. But then, what use is it telling your problems to a wall? You need people to respond, and it's so much better when it's people you know, because then you actually care. Confidantes are so very important. That's why it's nice to have separate social circles sometimes. We all need confidantes. I need several. We all need support, and it's so important and wonderful when you find people to fulfill these vital roles.

I was a little alarmed at some developments of which Sharp apprised me involving our friend Sleepwalker, so I called her up too, and we had a great talk that ended up being a pep talk to stop being such alcoholics. At one point though, we started talking about not knowing what we were doing with our lives, and because she is facing a potential layoff, about job security. I told her to stay doing what she was doing because she likes it, and no job is ever really secure. My parents are doctors, I said, and I remember them constantly talking about moving to Canada whenever shit with the health care system was called into question. And...maybe there's no solution, there's no security, and there aren't any answers to any of these problems. We just accept the uncertainty of it all and talk about television.

Despite our lapses into alcoholism, running from crazy bitches who want to kill us for no reason, and adolescent angst about the purpose of life, we are more or less having adult conversations. It dawned on me then that maybe these thoughts about Life are what cause us not to care about neighborhood melodrama, and, addictions in mind, our individual lives. Maybe, just maybe, that's what separates the men from the boys and then the men from the Men. Boys have melodrama; men have Life struggles, and Men live life.

I don't know where I fall. I have a vagina.

masochism

Tonight I am paying for my blatant disregard of doing things I know will hurt me, and part of this is indulging myself in this gratuitous post that will take me further down the spiral of emotional masochism. Let us pray:

My pagan new year's resolution this year was to love indiscriminately, without fear or expectation, which started the year out with me having a big crush on a boy with a girlfriend who I met on New Year's Eve, and that led to lots of wrenching pseudo-dates, threats of a roller derby chick clocking me, and me being The Other Woman and trying to be okay with it.

After that mess cleared up, this resolution also led me to an incredibly intense, anticipated, and much mourned love affair with my roommate, that began on a 3-day chautaqua to SoCal while I was crippled. On this spiritual journey, Sexy Roommate and I were trying to decide which graduate school to attend, and I told him that one of my last goals in San Francisco was to have an intense love affair, and we defined an affair as a relationship that (a) is finite, with a foreseeable end, (b) more or less exclusive, and (c) emotionally involved, despite its predetermined time span. Sexy Roommate asked me if I had anyone in mind, and though I had him in mind, we had a seven-hour drive ahead of us, and so I evaded the question cowardly and proceeded to think about it for the next four weeks.

While visiting grad schools later that month, I decided that I had to go for it, and when I returned, I put a plan into action and Sexy Roommate turned into Love Affair. It was one of the strangest times in my life. Our affair lasted two months before he left for the Middle East, and when he returned, I was living in The NY.

Tonight, while at happy hour with fellow urban planning students, I made the mistake of checking my voicemail and whaddyaknow, Love Affair had left me a message. It was the first time I'd heard his voice in three months. Yes, we've now been incommunicado longer than we were actually affair-engaged. I knew it was a mistake to call him back but I had a few drinks in me, so I kissed Beauty goodbye and said Ihavetogomyloveaffairjustcalledmeandihaventtalkedtohiminthreemonthsandihavetocallhimbackrightnow.

We talked for about 15 minutes as I made my way over the A train and we talked about how life back in school is going, how we miss each other, parties we need to throw in order to support our graduate student lifestyle, and the Queen of Sheba. In short, nothing. But, like our love affair, that short conversation is going to have massive emotional repercussions on me. I shouldn't have called him back. I should have kept drinking with my fellow classmates, talked about Millenium Park, asshole TA's and the I Hate Columbia club, but instead I left to torture myself with a tentative outreach to a boy I only allowed myself to half love.

I'm going to be paying for that move for days.

Of course I don't regret the affair, but FUCK...! Love hurts, man.