And on the seventh day...

This blog is an effort to blog without a point. Inspired by a dear friend responding to my crisis of 'tween project boredom (though I think she was just tired of having to amuse me on gchat all day...) I've decided to write something about the thing I know best.

Not pharmaceutical strategy.

So last week I experienced an entire birth and collapse of a relationship. In my head. The week started out normally: I asked out a girl I thought was cute not knowing she was overly invested in one of my best friends or that she had previously, as she would again attempt, five days later, ask out said friend in my presence. (Par for the course when you have hot friends. A blessing and a curse.)

Back to the story. So we went out. It was great! It was great in that very topically oriented, amusing but superficial, energetic but a-chemically inclined, first date kind of way. I wasn't astonished to learn that my preconceptions of her were entirely wrong though, despite falling short of insta-love, I didn't mind drinking beer shooters across a tiny table and would have, in fact, done that repeatedly for some indefinite amount of time. Perfect. The wooden shelves that the beer came on were bigger than the plates our burgers came on and this was helpful because, as I mentioned, I clearly didn't get the memo about her sustained preoccupation with my friend and the beer helped a LOT to keep me in the dark. (One could argue that I did get that memo, but dismissed it in a convenient kind of way. And if one would like to argue that, they can start their own blog to do so. <3)

After Monday, still absorbed by my delusion, I was unclear if we had plans to get together again. We have about a billion mutual friends so I figured I'd undoubtedly 'hang out' with her soon... (A billion mutual friends is a sure sign that if things move past 1 week they're going to either blow up or be fantastical-- until they blow up.) Needless to say (I totally spoiled the twist in the third sentence) the whole adventure didn't get anywhere NEAR a week. And I have to wonder how I came off with such a different idea of what we were up to (achem, on a DATE).

I think I thought we were on a date because: I paid, I maintained 'engaged' body language, I told her about the time I thought waxing my legs was the most desperate, selfless thing I could do to win a girl back, I only referenced an ex girlfriend 5 or 6 times (to make it clear that I date women), and I made an awkward attempt to hook her belt loop when we were walking aimlessly around the park. Maybe the un-date-ness of the situation should have been confusing/telling/obvious when I/we never managed to kiss (her) after 4 hours of banter. On the upside this means we're able to maintain a semblance of propriety around our friends sans furtive apologetic email writing to all those that share the room with us.

I see all this in retrospect but what I had started to write about was the insecurity that comes with dating. (You know, back when I thought I would see her again. Alone. On another (used loosely) date.) At what point do you really need to figure out how you feel about someone? Day 2? Date 2? Date 574? At what point do you chalk something up to just wanting to be enrolled in classes again without really paying attention to whether you end up in a history of WWII or a figure drawing class? And how do you know you're ready to deal with homework and tests and 'that guy' again?? I'm leaning towards going back for a masters but I can't even decide if I want an MFA or a masters in finance... I hear both are equally useful these days. Oh how my father is cringing right now...

Eff. I've lost track of my metaphor.

So far this birth-year (clearly starting at the dawn of march) I've chased a wife, a wounded warrior, a divorcee and an auctioneer. None of which were actual candidates for a sustained relationship. And that was just the last 2 months. Aside from all those unhealthy undertakings, my very first girlfriend and her FIANCEE are staying with me (femme meets flamer. I'm unclear if that's ironic or a stab at the Republican Press endorsing same-sex marriage), I talk to my proximal-ex daily, I txt my favorite 'mexican' whenever I 'accidently' land on Fox News, and more than anything, I can't stand when someone tells me what to do. I'm a child with a blog.

Oh! I have a point!!!

I don't know what I want right now but I know what my objective in this whole department is. And getting there is proving difficult because failing at stuff is REALLY REALLY bogus. But I'm getting used to it. Like it's less of a failure and more like highschool. You remember: that time people dated people based on who got new kicks that week? I missed highschool. Missed like skipped. I was a lesbian (lesbian = married) in highschool. Did I mention I kissed a butch lesbian this weekend?

(Tav, I love you, now pick your jaw up off the floor.)

Whitewashing the Sepulchre.

So in the back of my head, lingering like the aura of pheromones on the cuffs of a teenager (literally - from my own stab at being 14), I've had this idea about what it means to die.

There's the immobilizing fog of grief that slowly turns into rage and hatred and eulogies and tributes and toasts and drunkeness. There are the empty stomachs that slap into ribs as bodies rock in the night pressed close to pillows being pelted by sobs, temporarily embedded with the musk of depression. There are the foundations, the buildings, the hospitals, the libraries, the orphanages and the subsequent naming boom. There are backs to be rubbed and calories to consume and ignore and streets to wander and laps to be made into head rests. There are monuments. There are wars. There's confusion. There are embryos to nurture and dollars to be birthed and spent and donated to your namesake. There's the blaring silence of an undetectable disappearance. There's the next year. There's the next month. There's the next week. There's tomorrow. There's acceptance. There's triumph and defeat and resignation and perseverance and the veritable phoenix preening through the ash. There's a tightness around the holidays. There's nothing. There's the waste of something.

All this, as a child, and not a thought about finality. About forgetting as you turn to face the empty chair, the chair is empty. Nothing about an unmanned email address becoming a virtual vortex of lost thoughts, empty promises and broken plans, collecting kbs only as the autosave updates the timestamps. There was nothing about the expansion of the soul to absorb and muffle the blows... A transcendence out of reality just to check-in to a new day.

That said, I never thought I'd live past 17. I couldn't imagine being older than that. I stood in front of a mirror when I was 14 years old and searched for my 17 year old self and I decided that if I couldn't even know myself in three years, how could I know myself in 10. Sometimes I think I was unprepared for all this. Like every day that passes I'm surprised by the very life-like things that crop up. Like rent. Every month. Surprise! Like my 26th birthday. BIG shock.

But I'd never want to be 17 again and I'm glad I've stuck around to see 26. I mean, at this point, go big or go home, right? Because who wouldn't want to juggle all the shit that comes with being alive? At least it gives you something to think about. What does it mean to be battling the slow death of the soul as you slip into a routine you didn't plan for in a year you didn't think you'd see? What does it mean to never have acknowledged an afterlife but be constantly aware that you're always looking to refute it? To always remind yourself that your thoughts are chemical and they manifest very corporeal reactions and you won't find anything eternal in the process? Like you don't WANT this to go on, endlessly. What does it mean to want to accomplish something significant, someday, and yet be lost in an abyss of today? Like tomorrow isn't a big enough adventure to prepare for but 'someday' is?

My father once posed, on a particularly long car ride to one of a thousand Brookfield Bullets soccer games, "What matters, in the face of infinity?" And though I'm sure we haven't spoken about that conversation since I struggled, an idealistic 12 year old, to prove that SOMETHING mattered, I remember the conversation like I've had it with myself a million times since. Predictably, I wasn't able to sway my devil's advocate of a father from his, now I see, easily defended argument. But in his insistence that I did not matter (obviously extrapolated from the idea that 'nothing' matters) he gave me a lens with which to scale the impossibilities of life.

I'm now embarassed to announce that despite a 15 year incubation period, I've only recently learned to use this lens-tool as I grapple with being 26, adrift in a drying sea of potential, challenged by the people I love in ways I never thought I'd have to grapple with alone, trying to figure out what it means to be alive by having recently been exposed to a situation wherein I could only be relieved that the love of my life wasn't dead. I guess I've realized that in the face of infinity, we can only hope to matter, but how we're gonna make it through tomorrow is probably a much more useful exercise.

So I don't care what the numbers say, today I'm the oldest I've ever been and I sure hope I can stick around to be perplexed by tomorrow-- and death, while an interesting process that to ignore would be like ignoring how ovaries work, is definitely not the only way to understand life after 17...

Oh, and last night I had a dream about nursing an infant. What. The. Fuck.

Lie to me. Please.

In a city of 9 million people – where the cab drivers are qualified to perform surgery in more than a few (sizeable) countries and your barista will someday be your boss, is it surprising that my most consistent relationship of late has been with the man who hands me my morning tea from the breakfast cart on the corner of 35th and broadway? When he handed me my steamy cup and exclaimed, “You’re early today!” should I have had to ask him to repeat what I had missed – three times? I was expecting our usual back and forth that always followed the following, informal yet rigorously enforced rules:

1) Observe and comment on the weather without referencing the specific impact it is having on any present individual;
2) Inquire as to how the morning is progressing (on the typical ‘stay in bed’ versus ‘face the day with gusto’ scale);
3) Impart some banality that implores the other to seek safety until the next morning – or – if Friday, shelter through the weekend. This exchange is often looping around to reference the weather: “Stay warm! (insert pause to reinforce feigned enthusiasm here)” or “Enjoy the spring-like morning that will turn into a blizzard of an afternoon! (ironic chuckle)”

Is it so hard to believe that this man with a gentle a demeanor and an endless supply of inexpensive breakfast wares is the only person I’m not PAID to see everyday? When I think about why I was engaging in the usual banter, almost 45 minutes early, I couldn’t help but be grateful that there was SOMEONE who recognized the inconsistency in my schedule. My roommate, as I write this, probably still doesn’t realize I’ve already left – and if she has the late shift, then she wouldn’t have expected to see me anyway. My latitude friends were probably not focused on my whereabouts at a quarter to 8 in the morning and I didn’t run into anyone I know on my way to work – though I looked! I mean, I didn’t look because I expect to know someone in this city I’ve been tripping around in for over two years, but because I know ONE person who happens to have a similar morning commute within that exact (early-for-me) timeframe and the chances of being on the train with her were staggering. (Staggering by the informal survey that I performed with bias and without any other information than time of day and a pathetic count of express trains flying by.) I digress.

This morning I had the uncomfortable revelation that my as caffeine dealer commented on my shifted morning schedule I was uncharacteristically tempted to crawl into the cart and sit down at his feet and fill him in on the happenings in my world beyond the corner of 35th and Broadway. If I could have broken the shackles of propriety, when he said, “You’re early today!” I would have said, “I couldn’t sleep last night and then I up woke up at 6am after which I couldn’t fall back asleep because I knew that this girl I had a thing for (I would use that phrase as an irreverent and cavalier understatement) was getting up at exactly 6am and I laid in bed thinking about how she was faking out her morning by sleep-standing through the shower, sleep-staring in the mirror, sleep-dressing, sleep-uggs-shuffling down the street, sleep-passing within a block of me and sleep-commuting to work.” And he would say, “Wow, what happened? What brought her to the absolute center of your reality at 6 in the morning?” And I would say, “She crushed me. I begged her to lie to me and in the face of a masochistic interrogation wherein I was verbally assessing her fidelity in light of our established non-monogamy clause, my heart was begging her to lie to me. I grilled her because I wanted to hear that she hadn’t slept with the girl she ‘wouldn’t marry but is fine for now.’ And in the middle of this interrogation it became clear that she was a selfish truth-teller and refused to lie to me and/or wasn’t capable of lying to me and/or was consciously/subconsciously giving us both an exit strategy for this lesbionic maze we’ve been breaking our faces on. And as I heard everything I never wanted to know, I almost hurled. And then I couldn’t sleep. Because the finality of the situation is something I haven’t had to face and never wanted to face but this fence I’ve been perched on is getting really uncomfortable and before I could pick a side it damn near sliced me in half.”

And he would pause, reflectively, and I would take the moment to sum up why the situation itself (misapplying the term 'infidelity' to a relationship that is completely unrestricted) isn't nearly as damning as the implications inherent to the situation and I would continue with: “When you choose to risk the thing you love, you’ve lost it before you began.” And he would say, “Two dollars, please.”

After all, it IS a recession, even therapy should be cheap.

Falling out of like...

Like the preponderance of daisy dukes and UGGS, seemingly mutually exclusive clothing that had new york city by the cahones this temperate and tempting winter, the holiday season has, so far, been antithetical at best.

For all the Ho Ho Hos: yes. Holidays are hard when you're not hard-up. And for the hooked-line and swingers, a partner in crime is really just a cash-burn when the economy is crumbling (read: the devil wears discounts). And this year, out of nowhere, I'm caught somewhere between single and sworn so I'm not even gonna try to decipher how that factors into my temperament.

But romantic status aside, my own personal holiday season, like most of the rest of my life, has resembled a kiddie ride more than a roller coaster and yet still seems hard to navigate. Take away the dissenting aunt, the jewish factor, a little sister and the mom's-mom/dad's-dad 1-2 political polarity-- and add a few mood-stabilizers, new cousins, old friends, napping, and 17,000 empty calories and you've got, right there, the baseline in my 3 days without leaving the house (and counting).

But it still seems void of something weighty and meaningful. Maybe it's the distance between Massachusetts and Malawi... or the disparate family pockets that made for a higher frequency of emotional peaks but destroyed the amplitude of the holiday as a whole. I think, more than all of this personal mumbo-jumbo, there's an underlying current of religion that I can't hold on to. As many a jew has pointed out of late, Channuka really isn't a big deal. And Christmas, to me, isn't at all a religious testament. I know the word for that 'baby jesus meets adoring fans in a barn' scene but I can't tell you why they're up.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm falling out of like with the holidays as they've been defined for me. I think the religious facade is waning in the face of hardship- which is absurd, right? And without the public ramming religious enthusiasm into every wrinkle of my brain, without a family intact, without a land-bridge to africa, or a rented room in an NYC bar stocked with finger-food and karaoke and everyone I love in the moment, I'm losing track of WHY we do this to ourselves. WHY we engage in this over-stimulating, far too infrequent voyage to some pre-destined safe-space wherein we pay tribute to where we came from and who-all got us here... Baby jesus? Really? What could we possibly be celebrating!?! The idea that I'm celebrating something esoteric and religious is mind boggling when I spend 99% of the holidays trying to hold on to what keeps me put together. Family. Adopted, newly discovered, aging, rock-solid family.

Throw your creches to the mystics and let's just admit it. We're celebrating Kwanzaa here, folks! And next year, we're gonna do it right. We're all hitching a jumbo jet to Africa. Fo shizzle.

Snuggie Wuggie Saves the Sales

We're approaching the exact middle of Epilepsy season and, as I feel like I've been no where near the big bang of consumerism, I think I've been fairly unexposed to the egregious consumption of the holidays. (Virtual shopping and mouse clicking my way through checkout has definitely helped!)

But, I DO work in herald square. And my office building DOES have an external support system as the ppsi of the air emanating from Macy's across 35th street tirelessly keeps our I-Beams from crumbling like cheddar straws. Yet it doesn't feel like a holiday tide has crashed down on the city... it feels more like mid-July stampedes. Though maybe that's because my desk faces a corner. Far from the windows. Directly beneath the heat. And I missed the entire snowstorm as Office 2007 blew up my computer.

Or MAYBE feels like July because the struggle between debit and credit reminds me of the war between my bathing suit and my belly as one stretches to accommodate hot dogs and watermelon and the other just stretches...

Anyway. I think that while the world watches the government toss zeros around like doughnuts and hypoallergenic dogs like they're available at the local pound, there's a bigger micro-epidemic happening that I'm just beginning to be annoyed by. There's a struggle between saving the economy on the macro level, which, we're learning, involves spending, and there's the micro-status of our own personal bank accounts that should revolve solely around not spending DESPITE the RIDICULOUS sales (that seem awesome but are actually very very sad). And it feels so GOOD to save money!! Right? I mean, you know, it feels good to save money as you spend money because you're saving all that money (you never had) by buying things for ridiculous prices! And you're lending a hand in the bailout of the economy to boot!

I think this gravitation towards sales is called being Italian. (50% guilty!) Or young (poor). (100% guilty!) Or manic. (125% guilty, except when I'm not.) I guess, what I'm trying to say, is I'm bemused by the irony of spending to save and how in the back of my mind, every time I click through a checkout I feel like Rosie the Riveter, doing my part to rescue the anorexic-bulemic economy.

Well fear not. Yesterday, as my boss left the office waxing poetic over a gag-gift, I realized: we don't need the feds to cough up some cash. What about SNUGGIES!!!! I did some research, 1 snuggie per person would raise, approximately (not accounting for relative shipping costs), 1 Billion dollars. And if everyone bought TWO snuggies? Well, as we all sat in our homes and sweated out the new year, that would reduce our dependency on foreign oil AND raise 2 billion dollars! And, what's more, if you BUY 1 (for a limited time) you get a FREE snuggie!!! You're saving yourself 19 dollars and 95 cents!!! And all you have to do is SPEND a twenty to GET a (virtual savings of) twenty!! That's a collective SAVINGS of 1 BILLION dollars!!! So 2 Billion raised, 1 Billion saved, that's a 3 Billion stimulus package right there, right? I totally did my part and bought a snuggie.

Hmm.... And then my credit card was charged $37 dollars. Because, suffice it to say, in my excitement over net zero spending on snuggies, I failed to realize they had to not only ship - but also HANDLE my snuggie and because they're sending me a free snuggie, that's double the shipping and double the handling. Now, double the handling... I can get on board with that... BUT EFFING PACK THEM TOGETHER!!

Long story short, when it's mid-July, and I'm in a snuggie instead of a bathing suit (and I hope it's here by then, 2-12 weeks is a wide open window), you'll all know why. And until then... happy shopping and best of luck avoiding the pitfalls of being young (poor), manic, and Italian in a virtual reality awash in 2 for 1 sales.

SQL: UPDATE dbo.MyLife SET Complications NULL

This is an update post (obvi).

Over the last 1 month and 13 days...

I have shed a tear as the tyranny of the religious right was shackled by a minority - both from the executive and the legislative branches of the government, though, admittedly, in different ways.

I have been rejected from (honestly) 17 would-be employers bringing my tally up to over 40.

I have been accepted by 1 would-be employer and, consequently, I've started working, I've disappeared into a fog of pharma, I've slid around a learning curve like a bowling ball on a concave see-saw desperately converting potential energy into heat and sound and light and everything except the other effing side of the kiddy toy... and I've gotten paid for the first time in 4 months.

I have been home. I have been to other people's homes. I have not yet learned to knit as it appears daunting and consuming and painstaking.

I have worked on a sunday after working on a saturday. I have seen a pole dance on the subway.

I have been to 5 fundraisers. I have not drank at 1 of them and have been forced to buy bottled water even after tipping for tap.

I have lost my voice to karaoke. I have woken up to a view of horses.

I have been sobered by sadness and certainty after ceding smitten-ness and success.

I have watched people struggle with the concept of 'time zones'. I have been not amused.

I have intended to buy a flight to San Francisco to be, again, a part of my sister. To see a girl I miss perpetually. To not wear a coat in december. To recover a sense of reality. To slow the atherosclerosis in my heart.

I have dethroned suffocating confinement.

I have played with a puppy.

I have listened to an endless, pedantic life story (begrudgingly) and yet still adore the people who introduced said endless, pedantic life story into my realm. (tremendously)

I have decided that mocha is an art and coffee-bean-roasting is hot and sexy.

I have updated countless databases and merged endless tables and queried for pointless statistics and adjusted font on decks over a hundred times. I have tried to explain my job, unsuccessfully, for at least 47 minutes, aggregate.

I have discovered eggdrop soup with wontons. And chicken broth. And my roommate's stash of delicious steak marinades.

I have spent 12 hours discovering something I didn't know existed and have spent the time since lamenting their indifference.

I have written lists. I have written txts. I have written melancholic gchats to long distance friends. I have circled the 'send' on my phone for minutes and hours and torturous, long day (sic).

I have, literally, (sic)'d my own ramblings.

I have written another blog.

(Shhhh.... Is it over??)

Halloween. How cathartic. A bandanna to hold the brains in, a leash to tether me to the barmaid, a tee-shirt that passes judgement, combat boots and pants to match - fine fare on any militant lesbian... all for the sake of a costume. It was rough being that cool. Sadly, the one day of the year I get to break out my leathers, my chains and my BDSM riding crop is over!! Though, in truth, I'm not really a BDSM fanatic. In fact, when my riding crop was lifted by a very sexy Sarah Palin (nope, not the one I walked in with, who knows better than to whip me), I was presented with a conundrum. Here I was, dressed to the 9's in 'tough guy' apparel, and yet I couldn't fathom getting whipped and enduring physical pain on an otherwise bright and cheery night. If ONLY the second Sarah would have consulted the Sarah I walked in with!!! I'm not a TOUGH guy!! Leave me to my delusions and don't take my TOYS!

Regardless, I bent over. Because what ELSE do you do when asked to present your backside to a woman in a power suit?? I played the mantra in my head that I've so far only had to listen to at doctors' offices when getting shots or having blood drawn: "It'll be over in a second, the prick will subside, it's no more painful than every other injury you've accrued playing monstrous sports and being clumsy in the kitchen. Chill! Be COOL! (Deep breaths, watch the needle, control the pain with your super-powers.)"

Back to the dimly lit bar, the overly cute (and overly straight) barmaid (at a GAY bar??), and the 2nd Sarah Palin of the evening... I was ticked! Don't WHIP me! I may be wearing a whole lot of front can't you tell it's all a facade?!!! I don't want to be whipped only slightly less than I don't want to dress in drag and 5 inch heels! (Again)

And what ABOUT that front? In the costume party of life, I now have to say, I think the hardest costumes to pull off are probably the easiest costumes to overlook. It's the label-less, the ill-defined, the hardest to explain: the toothless vampire, the sex-less nurse, the frumpy kitten and the 'cereal killer' without the 4 ounce frosted flakes boxes skewered with plastic knives, that should get the accolades. As only my parents, with three grown kids in three different time zones, a stint abroad and a couple AARP memberships to boot, can put so eloquently, sometimes the hardest thing to do on a holiday rife with facade, is be everything but something else. In response to my overly excited message about my costume, and, presumably, my sister's similarly excited message about hers out in Cali (yeah, we're related), a ten PM text last night from my mother read: "You kids are so cleaver! Dad went as dad, I went as me."

So true! It probably would have been a whole lot harder to go as myself and STILL avoid the whip!! I should just wear a label to define my labels: Butch: yes. Tough: no. Thrilled about admitting this to everyone with a riding crop: Definitely, definitely not.

So next year, in an attempt to regain a sense of self on an otherwise self-less holiday, I'll lose the boots, keep the tee-shirt, avoid the handcuffs... Oh, and I won't bend over for ANYONE. I'm not that kind of butch!!!