gee

Feeling a little one-upped by the bloggers, Matthew Klam? Good thing you didn't let your bitterness seep into your writing, Icko McBrattypants.*

* Though I'm sure you're a very nice guy, in the right company.

the scoop, for now

At this point, the only things about my new job that you need to know are:

1. that I don't have access to any - personal or work - email accounts while I'm there (yet); and
2. that I don't want to blog there (yet); and
3. that I'm pretty happy to be among the workforce again. As we toasted last night: To corporate stoogery!

beans, spillage of; see also: delight, happiness, etc.

Since I moved to New York, the toughest conversations I've had have begun, "So have you found work?" or, "How's the apartment hunt going?" I made an arrangment with my loved ones so that I could avoid this exchange as much as I possibly could. (I couldn't avoid having it with well-meaning strangers and acquaintances, so I got used to swallowing my pride, putting an optimistic look on my face and chirping, "Still looking, but it shouldn't be long!") The arrangement was this: Don't ask me how it's going, and when things start looking up, I promise to deliver the news immediately.

So here's the delivery. In a twenty-four hour span, I went from unemployed and facing imminent homelessness to "You're hired" and a fantastic studio in Brooklyn. (I mean that twenty-four hour thing literally. It was about 3:40 on Sunday and 3:40 on Monday when I was offered the apartment and the job, respectively.) It feels pretty good.

So I'll be a little less evasive about how things are going now, at least if I can remember how (I've been doing the "gloss over the hopelessness" thing for awhile now, so recalling sincerity could be difficult. Or am I just making excuses for my tendency to be vague?). I won't make any promises about not exaggerating the optimistic nature of things in conversation in order to placate intrusive (but, of course, well-meaning) strangers, but I am certainly acknowledging an upturn in events. If it's possible for an atheist to feel blessed, then well, that's how I feel.

And thanks for the crossed fingers.

And also for putting up with all the parentheses.

oh, no reason

Don't ask, just cross your fingers. Thanks.

Update: One down.

Update the second: You can uncross your fingers now.

new link, courtesy stan

This turned out to be a lot more interesting than I would have predicted. I started with the first post and read everything he's got so far. He's really starting to get into a groove. It could have been a lame gimmick, but it's not. It's funny. Check it out.

feelin' the love

I don't know what I did to deserve another present from Billy BigWords, but I'm not complaining.

dear self:

You won't forget what you did today out of drunkenness, but you'll have trouble remembering it all because none of it goes sensibly together. So here's a reminder.

After a bit of a lie-in, you took your visiting friend Felipe downtown and the two of you walked east over the river on the Brooklyn Bridge and then back on the Manhattan.

You looked in the mirror at home and thought, "I haven't looked this ugly in months." You said so to Krissa, and she scoffed at you.

Half an hour later, thanks to soap, makeup, a flat iron, a very short skirt and some very pretty shoes, you looked a lot better.

You went to two Fashion Week runway shows with Krissa. You got a goody bag. You got free cocktails. You felt very much out of place. However: free cocktails.

After some pizza, you and Krissa, being already dolled up, decided to splurge on one expensive Cosmopolitan apiece in a nice bar with couches and atmosphere and cocktail waitresses with low necklines. Unwittingly, you sat in a corner that was soon to be taken over by a large group of men, because it was the only space big enough for all of them. Since there was space for two at the table across the room, you moved cheerfully over. At your generosity, one of the men proclaimed that your and Krissa's drinks would be on him - anything you wanted, all evening.

You didn't have just one Cosmopolitan apiece.

Compelled to leave the bar because of another engagement, you two flounced to the subway and waved goodbye from opposite platforms. You proceeded with wariness to Williamsburg to meet a friend who assured you the bar would be worth riding the J train.

You ended up spending an hour and a half in a triangular bar listening to a live klezmer band, drinking shiraz from a highball glass and eating chocolate-covered rice krispies from the goody bag.

You had a hard time ending a blog post because none of the various elements in it shared a cohesive theme, so you just sort of stopped typing

on things, and the prying thereinto
: part two :

I thought about blaming technology.

Then I realized it would have been just as easy for him to avoid searching my AIM logs as it had been for me not to pick up from his desk the piece of lined paper with DEAR DENISE written in giant block letters at the top.

It had become dangerous to have him sleep at mine; every morning I woke with knots in my stomach, afraid I'd open my eyes to see him, yet again, at my desk with his head in his hands, a year-old instant message log open in front of him. It seemed like ages since I'd rolled over and kissed the side of his neck. Instead, I spent the mornings in questioning. You still smoked pot last May? I thought you'd quit by then. Or Why did you talk about me to your friends? Or Can't you understand why, even though part of me loves you, a lot of me hates you? It wasn't that he went through my files every night; but on so many mornings he seemed to remember the two or three times he had, and what he'd found.

When I found myself prying through his computer files - he wouldn't stop playing dirty, so I had to start, what else would I do, break up with him? - a piece of me died. I felt wretched. I knew it was pointless and wrong. Of course I found things that made me unhappy. Of course I did; I'd expected to. Self-fulfilling expectations suck so much meaning from living. I was miserable and ashamed.

He tended to invade my privacy while I slept. I started doing it in front of him. I'd be at his computer while he sat on the bed and I'd say, "What's this? On your desktop? This text file here?" I'd open it halfway through his answer. He pretended not to care. God, our relationship was a sham, wasn't it?

After we broke up, we spent a month or two decidedly apart before falling into the habit of sleeping together several times a week. In that month I'd slept with one other person - an unfortunate incident involving (oh the shame, the horror) a sauna (BEFOREHAND, at least ... oh god, that doesn't make it any better), red satin sheets, and my ducking out of the house at three in the morning, considerably lightened of dignity. "Have you had sex with anyone?" he asked once. None of your business / God, I can't cope with this conversation / Yes, I thought. "No," I said. We repeated this line of inquiry three times that spring.

Of course, I'd completely forgotten to expect the obvious: waking up to him poring over AIM logs. "You did have sex," he said, indignant, one morning. "You practically bragged about it to Olivia." Ironically, to relieve the humiliation, I thought. Is this an appropriate time to use the "You fell in love with someone else" card? "Um ... yeah," I said. That was a long day.

The weird thing was - I mean, one weird thing was - that he had no interest whatsoever in my blog. I'm pretty sure that if I recorded my every vice and sin in my blog, but just never mentioned them in instant message conversations, he never would have known me to be anything but the fall-over-backwards-for-him girl I was in nearly every respect. Intrusion is a funny thing.

can't fight this feeling

I have a feeling in my stomach that I'd describe as "butterflies" if there were anything to feel butterfliesy about. As it is, I have to attribute it to some bodily disruption, which is far less interesting. But it feels so much like nerves - I'm reminded vividly of the fifth grade spelling bee, the first time I had to defend my title - that the day has turned into a mental game for me, a game of Figuring Out Why My Stomach Is So Tingly. Perhaps it's a presentiment of some kind. Perhaps I'm about to get interesting email, or a present, or a job.

More likely I just shouldn't have eaten when I got home last night.

thanks stan

You rule.

on things, and the prying thereinto
: part one :

I don't like prying into other people's lives or things, and not because I'm morally upright. It's a practical thing; snooping has made my life miserable before.

Some early exceptions aside - poking through my mom's closet before Christmas to see if I got the sweater set I wanted; rummaging around in my dad's desk drawer for whatever reason thirteen year olds do the stupid shit they do - I was never a snoop. Again, this has nothing to do with moral uprightness. Though I never bothered to delineate them, I had two practical reasons for not snooping. One, vaguely based on principle (do unto others as you would have done unto you), might not have held sway with other kids, but as my journals and notebooks held material I felt strongly about keeping private, it seemed a relevant ethical standard. (There I go mixing up morals and ethics; clealy I learned nothing from Election except that Tracy got really wet.)

The other thing barring me from the temptation to pry was experience: the only childhood spying I did was on my parents while they argued, and this was never, ever a rewarding experience. While the voyeur in me wanted to know exactly what the problem was in their marriage that kept them up yelling after I'd been tucked into bed, the child in me was only hurt by what I heard and saw. What was the point in seeking out information that I knew would cause me pain?

Like I said, I never bothered to put these things into words. But looking back, it makes sense. I was intuitive enough as an adolescent to know certain things without solid evidence; my parents' behavior essentially ingrained in me the ability to spot some unspoken lies. Because of that, I didn't need to pry; because it would hurt, I didn't want to pry; and I probably shouldn't pry, because it was a karmic invitation for the world to do me the same injustice. (This was before I developed my strong - even, perhaps, furious - opposition to the notion of karma. I hold the same principle now, but while it was "karma" five years ago, now it's simply a matter of what I've got a right to expect from other people.)

The upshot of all this is that you could hand me a folded slip of paper with the secret to eternal life written on it, and if all I knew was that the paper belonged to you, well, you could count me out of immortality. It just wouldn't occur to me to look.

mad props

Thanks to the stylings of Miss Delicious, thekate.net - the front page - has a new banner. Please feel free to drool. If you're feeling envious and want one of your own, it can't hurt to drop the artist herself a line - she just might be able to take time from her busy schedule of rocking the urban warrior lifestyle and work some magic for you.

my type

I never understood the utility of claiming to have a "type," but as long as I kept getting crushes on people who looked the same I figured there was no harm in saying so when asked, and apparently girls in high school really care about that sort of thing because I remember being asked quite frequently.

It took one dark-haired, dark-eyed crush to convince me that my "type" was, well, dark-haired and dark-eyed. I was fourteen and head over heels for someone who could make me fall to pieces anytime he just said my name. And the eyes - it took me four years to find a pair that could bowl me over with as much impact. Anyway, after that I liked a series of people who, really, were cheap imitations of him - dark-haired, dark-eyed and utterly unspectacular. My type was failing me.

College changed all of that. Actually, a period of a few years that happened to coincide mostly with the time I spent at college changed all of that. College didn't do jack shit for my love life. But I digress: sometime in there the pattern shifted. I didn't notice it until I was describing to a group of friends someone I'd been seeing, and one of them said, "Let me guess. Nerdy and malnourished?"

Nerdy and malnourished is my friends' deliberately obnoxious way of rephrasing intelligent and lean, which in the past few years has described nearly every person with whom I've been romantically involved. (Exceptions, I'm ashamed to say, have included one or two dumb and lean individuals and, in those cases, a number of double vodka tonics.)

Which is why I wasn't altogether surprised when Stan called me last night to say, "I'm on Melrose in front of a store with a shirt in the window that says GEEKS (HEART) ME," nor was I surprised to hear myself replying, "Buy it for me."

happy birthday, little owl

Click on the picture to see more.

use what you have

My stuff is finally here, and while looking at it reminds me of fresh wounds from my battle with the company that got it here, the point is, it's here. Of course, by now, my next move is less than a month away. Anything I pack will have to be re-boxed and re-moved soon. So I'm trying to live in peace with the boxes that I'm leaving fairly untouched. I don't destroy them...

...and they don't stand in the way of my having something that at least resembles a decor.

and not a cloud in the sky

A camera was the only thing missing from my lunch date with the lovely le fish. I must have looked happy or pretty or something, because as I walked up the ramp towards the exit of Grand Central Station, an elderly man walking in the opposite direction tipped his hat and said, "Beautiful, miss." My step felt light and my skirt flounced as if to say, It is gorgeous today, isn't it?

I waited for Fish in the shaded corner outside and after not long I saw her approaching with a lithe bounce and an outfit to die for. We trotted off to buy fruit and water and eventually settled on the steps by the library with our lunchtime loot, kicking off our shoes and sticking our teeth into twin nectarines.

It always surprises me, how happy some sun can make me. While we perched on the steps, our chatter was interrupted only by a wandering spa promoter, whom Fish shut down with stylish efficiency, and by a handful of short pauses for glancing at the cloudless sky. I felt as rapturous as Fish looked.

We got up before the heat became uncomfortable and, as though our midday outing hadn't already been pleasant enough to make me forget All USA Moving & Fucking a Stranger in the Ass, Inc., then we hit the shoe sales down the street. She now owns a fourth pair of pink heels, and I, a silver pair I'm pretty sure I once spotted on the feet of Carrie Bradshaw.

After my date went back to work and I spent a half-hour plundering the library, I headed home, wishing for pictures of the perfect lunchtime. But remembering everything that would have made a good photograph - our bare feet on the steps, the nectarine cores lying juicy on the ground, our sticky fingers, our new shoes, our sun-basked smiles - made it all that much more vivid in my head. Thursday, I could kiss you.

note to self: never move again. ever. ever.

Imagine somebody punching you in the face. Some guy. Imagine him punching you in the face repeatedly. Rhythmically, even. Over and over and over. Pow. Pow. Pow. For awhile you try to block your face, but then he gets mad, and not only gets around your block so he can punch you in the face, but also kicks you in the shins to punish you for fighting. So you give up on fighting. And then you become so resigned to being punched in the face that you start punching yourself in the face.

That's how I feel right now.

waiting, and waiting

So, last night didn't turn out to be so bad. My movers didn't show, but they called to reschedule early enough for me to dash downtown. Even the fact that all the standing around on subway platforms I did made it a ninety-minute commute to the bar couldn't diminish the fact that I eventually got there, had something to drink, made a couple of imperfect appearances in photographs, got the dish on protests and parties and closed out the night in success.

But now I'm waiting again. And whereas last night, for all my boo-hooing, the movers kept within their own stated time frame, this morning I've outlasted both their estimates - first the "eight to nine o'clock" estimate, then the "it's 10:10 now and we're just getting started so we should be there in an hour and a half" estimate. And it's getting unbearable.

Anyone who's ever been stood up knows what I'm feeling. The only times it has happened to me, it involved my college boyfriend. Once, before he had a cell phone, he was over at my apartment and he said, "Let's do something, but first I have to run a quick errand on campus, and then I'll be right back," and didn't come back for six hours.

That wasn't the only time he kept me waiting, but it was the worst. And for some reason the remembrance still fills me with frustration and rage, even though the heartache the actual breakup caused me has long passed and faded. I don't know why that is. But I do hate waiting.