i think i’m going to just start hanging out at jonesy’s all the time. maybe the horseshoe, too. last night i figured out that i am too old for sputnik, and i think that if i have any respect for my mental health, i’m going to have to leave the thin man and st. marks behind (at least from the normal happy hour and beyond).
i don’t know how to write an album review. i wrote many of them between 2001 and 2006, but it’s been years since then, years since i have even cared much about new music. i never read reviews myself, and i can’t think of anything to say that doesn’t sound completely contrived or subjective. even then, i don’t think i can shit out the standard 350-500 words that is required of me right now.
not to mention the fact that i am supposed to be having hot wedding night sex at this moment, and instead i am writing a review of an unknown local band’s cd while my childhood friend/would-be bridesmaid sleeps on a nearby air mattress.
here is what i have to say so far about this cd:
i think it is of the experimental music genre. track three kind of sounds like rap, though. there are vocals. a boy and sometimes a girl. and instruments. the normal ones plus some extras, maybe a glockenspiel.
“why does this still hurt?” the lead vocalist whines. ”and i can’t help but wonder where did this go wrong?”
i’ve played one particular track, “yesterday’s song” a few times. ”we’ve been doing this and doing this and doing this and doing this for years.” there are some other lyrics i can’t make out, something about seeing you at a cafe, head down, something like that. i’m pretty sure it is not something i should be listening to right now.
it would have rained on our wedding day anyway, i told him.
and it.
my brother just got back to portland and called me first thing to say, “i just wanted to make sure you didn’t decide to get married.”
like because he was concerned that was going to happen.
ohh.
a year ago tomorrow, jason took me to hooked on colfax for the first time. i spent nearly a year’s worth of saturday afternoons here, quaffing cold-brewed iced coffee with kosta after work. sometimes david would drop me off at greektown on weekend mornings and come back with a delicious caffeinated treat from this place. i don’t come here much anymore, but today i am writing an a.v. club article about its expansion.
i wore that shirt yesterday.
what a difference a year makes, doesn’t make at all.
this weekend is going to be full of gal pals and my brother, which is pretty much all i want right now. allison is here from sweden, getting back from san fran today, and tomorrow evening i pick up leslie and my brother from the airport. then we will head downtown to be not at all like i am for ashley’s birthday, and hopefully later collapse drunkenly at my suite at the hotel monaco. it was supposed to be for my parents, who would have arrived tomorrow for the wedding, but i decided to hang on to it anyway.
yesterday my feelings for david swallowed me up whole again, but we parted on a not-terrible note for once. it’s hard, this.
drew is officially moving into my old neighborhood and just sent me a link to a funny article about its recent developments: Columbia Heights Hipsters Stumble Into Target Territory
“At what point will suburban stop being ironic and just start being . . . life?”
i miss the days when drew and i actually kind of lived in the real suburbs.
i think this is a pretty accurate depiction of the me that would have existed half a century ago:
david and i were super obsessed with mad men last year. dunno if i will watch the next season.
a lot of my favorite quotes are from joan didion. she said, “i write entirely to find out what i’m thinking, what i’m looking at, what i see and what it means. what i want and what i fear.” that’s pretty much my justification for having a stupid navel-gazing blog, and it has been for a while. so perhaps my words paint a picture of someone who is immature and causes her own problems, but i don’t know, i’m pretty sure that’s part of being a human being. if you don’t like it, i don’t care. i don’t make you read it.
i am having a little self-destructive moment looking through my old photobucket albums and wishing i weighed 105 lbs again.
it started out innocently enough — i arrived at st. marks, ordered a cup of hibiscus tea, and talked to justin and his new lady friend for a bit. inspired by his trip to france last summer, justin is making a new version of his “put the fun between your legs” bicycle shirt of 2007. this time the girl version is pink, and i asked if he would make me a special one in yellow.
when justin made the last shirt, he asked people who bought them to take pictures of themselves and send them in. i took one with my old bike around that time, and tonight i felt like looking at it. my old bike, that is. but instead i got distracted by my old body.
i took fine in the bike picture… it was right before i lost a little more weight. i think i was 112 or so. fuck, more than anything, i miss having hair that long. it’s getting there.
by summer i was thinner, and even though i think i look gross and had lost muscle as well as fat, i still resent that version of myself for having so much self-control.
there are also older photos from when i was much larger, 145 lbs, before i started running and eating differently. but because i am still a little crazy, all i can think about is that i used to be smaller than i am now.
this is the picture that made me join a gym:
and here i am in the black forest about six months earlier, surrounded by chemists who were trying to get me to eat pig. that old man to the left of me is called pavel. he was the bill murray to my scarlett johansson in my own personal (boring swiss) version of lost in translation.
it’s not that bad. i felt strong working out tonight and came home and made an excellent dinner of sauteed kale and sprouted grain penne with arrabiata sauce, green olives and feta. i did not measure anything or worry about calories. and that i suppose is a bigger weight off my back than the fifteen lbs between me and 2007 me.
incidentally the first thing justin asked me tonight was, “so are you still talking to that asshole?” (that asshole being david.) for once i could say no, confidently. and maybe it’s terrible of me but justin kind of went off on how david is annoying and i felt good because these were completely his own observations, not based off anything i had told him.
blah.
someone is performing a bad acoustic cover of “i want you back” downstairs.
but apparently not gonzo, or me. there’s a slight chance that getting the internet chez moi was an incredibly bad idea.
Filed under: dear diary | Tags: it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
oh never mind i’m too lazy to cut and paste. they are all weird. this one is funny/sad tho:
Wealthy Jewish Bachelor – 65 (Denver)
Date: 2009-08-02, 11:16PM MDT
Tired of being alone
Seeking soul mate for the rest of our lives
i had a pretty idyllic sunday. i got a huge iced coffee from the starfucks drive-thru and attempted to get my big greek eyebrows waxed at file-n-style. unfortunately ashley has sundays off, so i scheduled an appointment for tuesday and went next door to greektown to say hello. it was a good time. i left sort of giddy, as if i had been at a high school reunion. it always feels like going home.
after that i headed up to city floral to immerse myself in plants and look for a dwarf citrus tree. i bought a meyer lemon plant and some basil and ornamental peppers, plus cat deterring spray. gonzo has really put a damper on my indoor gardening projects — only the money tree has survived his wrath.
i also went to pete’s fruits and vegetables and got some insanely cheap peaches and apricots and blueberries and tomatoes. the neighboring summer hill market was closed so i will have to make it up there again sometime soon.
driving down 6th avenue, the part above colorado boulevard, i had an intense feeling of happiness. with all the trees and the houses (how those houses are), it seems like portland or somewhere else. somewhere verdant, not here. i listened to public radio with the volume down (this i have been doing a lot lately). frequently there are people from the uk and the middle east speaking very proper english in soothing tones via rebroadcasted bbc programming. it’s comforting to me.
speaking of accents, tonight simon and i went to jazz in the park. we sat by the water and did not listen to the music while eating picnic foods and drinking an entire bottle of chardonnay. when it got dark and quiet, we wandered down to the thin man and drank cucumber vodka and sodas. i am a little sloshed right now. i need to go to bed soon, actually like immediately.
i should not have been drinking but what are you going to do.
a couple days ago it was cold enough that i was wearing my little boy space-print pajamas to bed. now i am naked and only half under the covers, and my body is thinking about working up a sweat.
uh.
still no one has noticed i am not wearing makeup.
gonzo is purring like a pigeon and i think this is the time when cats go to sleep.
… according to of montreal, and i would have to agree. french toast, however, is less annoying to make for one person. this was my inaugural attempt, and it was quite a success.
(excuse the shitty camera phone pic again, though it is not quite as bad with the aid of natural light. gonzo ate my camera’s usb connector and it is sort of hard to find a replacement.)
anyway this is the recipe i made up (by spying on the cooks at work) and the weirdo ingredients i used:
1. crack two large organic omega-3 eggs in a bowl.
2. add a bit of organic vanilla, a squirt of agave nectar, a dash of sea salt, and a hefty amount of viennese cinnamon. whisk together.
3. soak two pieces of ezekiel bread in said mixture.
4. heat some organic cultured butter in a pan, cook soaked bread on each side.
5. adorn with sliced fruit, a drizzle of agave nectar, and more cinnamon.
this took approx. five minutes. sunday is off to a good start.
i did not wear makeup today and no one noticed, or at least no fewer people than usual told me i looked hot. gay men i wait on are always telling me i am the shit, probably because i smile a lot. anyway i decided that in honor of the fact that it is summer and i am lazy and slightly less wan than usual, i am not going to wear any makeup besides mascara and chapstick till labor day. unless i get a zit. then i might have to reconsider. i am still going to have fake nails because i am weird.
i guess today is my friday. i am off till tuesday night — was supposed to work sunday but i traded because i’m taking next weekend off anyway. that is good… i am tired.
i figured out that the best thing to wear on my bottom half is running skirts. when i am at work, that is. i think running skirts for actual running are silly. it looks like you’re going to play tennis. but they make a lot of sense for wearing to work when you are me. i do run around a lot, after all.
a lot of times i feel like my job is kind of cool, in the way that it was cool to be a flight attendant in the 1960s. it wasn’t like that at greektown. i still miss working there sometimes but this is way better. greektown was like being in purgatory a little bit.
i should go to bed right now but instead i am drooling over leica cameras and thinking about perfect things.
when i wake up i think i am going to make weirdo french toast. and also i am possibly going to bust out my yogurt maker at some point. next week i am getting a new stove because my oven is broken. i hope it has gas burners like my current model, a relic from 1950-something i think.
and took a picture with my crappy camera phone. i decided this blog needs more visuals, less complaining.
this is a mache salad with kasseri cheese, sauteed zucchini and peppers. also pictured are some fresh figs, which were delicious.
Filed under: dear diary | Tags: the days go by too slowly and the years go by too fast
i tried on my engagement ring again today. it still fits.
here i am, contorting.
Il a mis le café Dans la tasse Il a mis le lait Dans la tasse de café Il a mis le sucre Dans le café au lait Avec la petite cuiller Il a tourné Il a bu le café au lait Et il a reposé la tasse Sans me parler
Il a allumé Une cigarette Il a fait des ronds Avec la fumée Il a mis les cendres Dans le cendrier Sans me parler Sans me regarder
Il s'est levé Il a mis Son chapeau sur sa tête Il a mis son manteau de pluie Parce qu'il pleuvait Et il est parti Sous la pluie Sans une parole Sans me regarder
Et moi j'ai pris Ma tête dans ma main Et j'ai pleuré
-jacques prévert
Filed under: dear diary | Tags: takes a teen age riot to get me out of bed right now
half a decade later, here i am:
(please excuse the bottle of liquid silk in the background. sometimes we all have to, um, take matters into our own hands.)
it will be weird to see evan in three weeks. we have remained good friends since i left, but i wonder if that is because he is still en suisse, an ocean away. incidentally it is almost time for me to renew my passport. i haven’t been out of the country in a long time but it is all worn out anyway. one night a few years ago in d.c. i lost my old driver’s license, which was actually from colorado, while doing a complicated cell phone answering maneuver on my bike. i didn’t drive a car then so i didn’t get a new license until my brother gave me my old jetta over thanksgiving. i just carried my passport everywhere.
my dad sent me a new license plate and it says “1 CAT.” how embarrassing.
i need to get a bike again. like really soon. one thing that is good about my job is that it only takes me four minutes to drive there (and it is also two blocks from the thin man and st. marks). it is about two minutes to get to the onion. but it would really make more sense to bike, and then maybe i could go two months without getting gas instead of just one.
speaking of my one-mile radius, tonight sonic youth performed four blocks from my house. i probably wouldn’t have gone even if i was off, but still. work was okay, very busy. patrick came in, and so did kosta, for the second night in a row actually. pete laughed about that. i also saw this guy named tyler who was in the journalism school with me. i said hello. i should have said “let’s be friends” because i always wanted to be his friend in college. i made him a mixtape once but did not give it to him because i was shy. he liked good music. i bet he went to the sonic youth show.
i spent most of the day in bed, honestly. i just didn’t feel like doing anything else and sometimes you need days like that. before work it was raining and i tried to go to the gym but apparently it closes early on fridays. instead i went to the thin man and sat in the burning man bus with john for a while. i saw david briefly when i was walking in and just nodded. oh well.
the onion beer society/writer’s meeting last night was dumb. the people who came for free beer made an annoying background for a bad movie about people in their twenties. the “writers” stood around a table and pretended to talk business, or at least some people did. i was quiet because i don’t really know what makes people read articles, and probably that is why i will never be a journalist.
“okay guys, let’s talk about how we can get more people to visit the site,” said the new editor. i felt like i was at a student council meeting except with a bunch of awkward writers, who, you know, are grown ups made from the kids who weren’t on the student council back in the day.
an exception maybe is this one guy who is a comedian and used to write for the westword. he seems pretty funny and i had a crush on him for five minutes because he has a face that kind of looks like drew or an elf. he went out for a cigarette as i was leaving for work, and in some possible world i might have tried to talk to him, except for the fact that he was smoking a cigarette and i had to go to work.
i don’t know.
***
in the summer fiction issue of the atlantic, there is a collection of little vignettes by paul theroux. it is called “voices of love.” i was reading this on the toilet the other day (i was really just peeing, but everybody does it you know) and they are all good but a couple paragraphs of the one called “twenty-year-olds” stuck out to me.
here are some parts of it:
This woman was in her 20s. A woman of 20 doesn’t know if she has a place in the world; something about her age or our age. What will happen to her? Will she find a job? Will she find a husband? Will she ever have a child? Where does she belong?
She has no idea where she is going. She is anxious. She needs someone to intervene.
…. She is so relieved to be rescued, like someone plucked from a deep sea, that she believes she is in love with her rescuer. Not long after they meet she is secure, and happy, having been brought to safety, onshore at last.
… Never mind; no matter—such meetings are always a disaster. She leaves him. She has a life. He is destroyed by this love. And even if you know in advance what the consequences will be, you still pursue her, as I did…
this particular tale concerns a man of 60, but i know the scenario well. i have lived it a million times, from the time i dated a 38-year-old writer when i was 18. but for me it is not really a question of age, it’s the fact that i have always been anxious, not knowing where i am going, and looking for someone to swallow me up and make me forget about what i don’t know yet (all the while making my future more clear). i have tried to hide these tendencies because most of the time i am quite good at coming across as independent. but really i am somewhat conventional, stereotypical as a woman.
last summer david and i reclined on the bottom bunk in his tiny hostel room in new york as he gathered his things. the heat was humid and i might have wanted to kiss him more under different circumstances. he brought up something he had mentioned the night before, when we were sitting at a cafe, catching up while drinking pastis. he said he was sure he already knew whoever he would marry. i agreed. later we knew we would marry each other. actually i think we already knew that day.
i was so happy to be rescued by him. i really needed rescuing at that point. it made it very easy to fall in love, take things too fast. everything, the rest of my life, made sense for a little while. until i had to mess it all up.
i don’t know where i’m going with this. it’s just what i’m thinking about.
i am now figuring out what dating is like in your late twenties. for girls i mean. it’s different for men, i think. i have really only dated people in their late twenties and early to mid thirties, ever. but i can see how some girls, women of this age become how they are, chronically single because they need too much. my older sister had that problem for a long time. i didn’t get it back then but i do now. it is really much different dating, needing stability, when your motivation is no longer anxiety about life in general but because you are feeling the tick tock of your biological clock.
anyway i am not sure i am interested in participating, so maybe i will just step back and be single for a long time, something i have never been able to do. i am being pursued ruthlessly by a lot of men, but i can’t bring myself to waste time on any of them. this is negative so i’m going to stop.
for thence,—a paradox
which comforts while it mocks,—
shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
what i aspired to be,
and was not, comforts me
-robert browning
i bought a pair of tortoiseshell ray ban wayfarers. if only it was sunny.
this is what i’ve been having for breakfast lately, like at 4:30 this afternoon:
raspberries are very cheap right now. 97 cents a package. that never happened last summer, not in d.c. anyway. jesse and i saw something that looked like a raspberry bush on our walk yesterday. it had fruit but it wasn’t ripe.
i am thinking a lot about graduate school again, and it’s starting to seem like a good option for something to do next. (i am also thinking a lot about “next” lately, maybe because tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of my last day in d.c., at my job, all of that — how did it go by so fast?)
when i first arrived in denver, the only further education that seemed to make sense was law school. and that’s all, it just made sense. it wasn’t something i really wanted to do, just something i thought was a good match for my qualifications and abilities. and plus, saying i was going to do that next was a good justification to fuck around as a waitress for a year or so.
i couldn’t think of any old master’s program that seemed worth it. philosophy? one should really get a Ph.D, and it doesn’t interest me enough to invest a decade of my life. journalism? it wouldn’t be much different than the undergraduate degree i already hold. i could get my MFA in creative writing but that seems silly. i had too many friends doing that in 2002 and none of them are really any better off. for a while there, charles wasn’t even putting it on his resume. and he has published a novel!
recently it came to me, what i would actually enjoy doing. i want to get a master’s in education. and i am sort of thinking a little bit about applying to peabody at vanderbilt, because besides the fact it is located in my hometown, the program was also recently ranked first in the nation among schools of education. and vanderbilt has a ton of money, so maybe it would not cost me so much.
i sort of think i want to be a high school english teacher — there is a program especially for that. a lowly position, perhaps, not as cool as “a writer” or whatever the hell i thought i wanted to be when i was 18. it has the qualifications i am looking for: interaction with people, ability to influence them for the better, not tied to an office/computer screen, somewhat creative, involves kids, etc. summers off would also be a plus. and the time it would take to complete graduate school is, i think, a nice digestible amount to spend in nashville. i cannot see myself staying there very long, but maybe i would change my mind.
i need to talk to my father about this; i am sure he will be pleased. i need to talk to mr. croker, too. he was my creative writing and ap english teacher, and more or less one of the best grown ups i have ever met. adam ross is another person i should give a call — he was my first editor back when i wrote for the scene. then he started teaching at my high school after i graduated, and now he has a book deal and is some kind of “writer in residence” because basically harpeth hall is a university these days.
anyway, grad school seems like a less extreme measure than spending a couple years in morocco with the peace corps. but i would probably like that too. maybe this is all just really making sense today because it is like 55 degrees and cloudy and feels like it is time for back to school.
still i can sort of see myself amidst coffee cups and textbooks at fido more than the alternative. a major trip in the not-too-far-off future is needed, though.
i had lots of visitors at work last night: lacey and tracy shortly after i arrived, cody and her friends during the bar rush, john very early this morning before he opened up st. marks. i hope tonight is fun because i will be sleepy. patrick and i are going to the onion gathering at the atomic cowboy before i go in. no beers for me.
the weather this evening is incredible: like fall. it rained, and after that the sky got dark and i could have sworn it was late september. tonight i came home from the gym, cooked dinner, and walked across the street to whole foods for a gluten-free ice cream sandwich — which i suppose was a very summery thing to do.
i saw jesse today for the first time since i left three weeks ago for my vacation. it was nice. we walked for over an hour, talking about nothing i guess. toward the end he asked about me and david and it was a little weird. it wasn’t that bad, though. then we got back to my house, his old house, and i made him an avocado and cheddar sandwich on spelt crackers (because my ezekiel bread contains sprouted lentils and soybeans, and jesse is allergic to legumes).
i want david so badly, lately. i don’t know what to do about that. i am hoping once i get through the next couple weeks it will pass, even though it probably won’t.
tomorrow i am going into the onion office to do some work.
a one-legged man timidly approaches the garden, uses his crutches in a manner that suggests they are new appendages.
for instance, there are some things even i can’t write about on the internet. not right now, anyway.
yesterday a friend sent me a text message that read:
you are willing to take risks which shows your confidence in your own ability to face what the world may throw at you.
i am not so sure that is true anymore.
Your results are in!
The BattleaxeDeliberate Brutal Love Master (DBLM)
Sharp. Hardened. Dominating. The Battleaxe sweeps all before her, smiting and what not.
You’ve had a number of serious relationships, so you obviously have many attractive qualities. You’re well experienced in dealing with other people’s weirdnesses, and it’s likely you’re good in bed by now, too. Also, like the drunken housewife chucking Heinekens at her no-good husband, you’ve got a lot of energy.
People can tell you’re sophisticated, and so you find yourself the object of infatuations quite often. But it’s how you handle yourself in your relationships that gets you the ‘brutal’ tag. Controlling? Imperious? Overbearing? Yes, please.
Remarkably, you don’t mind the same from your men. You’ve experienced enough to take whatever you dish out. Overall, you’re a very good person and a capable lover, and when the time comes you’ll make a fine divorcee.
i wouldn’t be horribly surprised if sometime in the next year, i picked up my shit again, fled to portland, and got back together with zach. that might be fun, especially if my brother returns from russia. i could finally fulfill my plan to make him my roommate. between the three of us, there would be a lot of cats.
or not.
i am feeling kind of gross right now. yesterday rachel colored my hair too dark and cut it too short… rather, she cut off about half an inch instead of approximately, well, not at all. meanwhile i am turning into a fertility goddess, with huge tits and a swollen lower abdomen, thanks to my monthly visitor. and it is hot outside and i do not feel like putting on makeup or real clothes.
i figured out what i want, incidentally, and the fact that it is missing could be contributing to the fact that i feel gross, despite the fact that i get hit on by assorted men on a near-hourly basis sometimes. a fucking sex life. i really miss having sex with david all the time.
going to stop complaining now.
Filed under: dear diary | Tags: do i have to tell the story of a thousand rainy days since we first met?
i was supposed to get married in two and a half weeks. it seems as if that life was a thousand lifetimes ago. and yet as i think about this now-meaningless date, i still get a knot in my throat, a feeling like i am choking back tears. i’m not sure what i will do that day. leslie and my little brother will be visiting, so it shouldn’t be too bad. i don’t know… actually it will probably fucking suck and copious amounts of booze will be required to distract me. (i should note that, in general, i think abusing alcohol is a bad way to deal with one’s problems, but the day of one’s cancelled wedding is an exception. fuck, maybe the whole surrounding weekend is an exception.)
incidentally, yesterday i went to the argonaut and picked up a bottle of kim crawford sauvignon blanc, which was supposed to be served at our wedding reception. i don’t know why i did it. i mean, i know i like the wine, and it occurred to me that it would be the perfect thing for sitting on my front steps some night soon. it’s now in my refrigerator, waiting to be quaffed. hopefully before august 9, which will probably require something more along the lines of scotch.
i have no idea what i want right now. i am just going to go to the gym and run and then go to work and make money and not think about it until it happens.
a fat little boy is walking across the whole foods parking lot with his mother, carrying a large pepperoni pizza. he makes me smile.
i can’t remember the last time i actually paid for a drink at st. marks — that’s probably yet another sign that i need to find a new spot. i am here again, though this time i am sipping oolong tea instead of bitter beer, killing half an hour till my shift starts. last night i went on, um, a date, and we ended the night at a potential replacement coffee shop pretty close to my apartment. i hear they’re not really into internet poachers, though, so maybe i just need to suck it up and call comcast again (meanwhile, the fuckers who sent me the modem have started an “investigation” into its improper delivery… and it should take 30 to 60 days).
i don’t really have anything to say. i’ve been digging my new gym and i’m meeting with a trainer for a couple months because i really want to put on some muscle this time around. it feels so good, though, like it did when i started running again at 22. the last year i was in d.c., even though i had started feeding myself, my body was just so fucking rundown and tired. by the time i got to colorado and joined qi, i was over it. the fact that they had like five weight machines, no mirror in front of the free weights, and treadmills that depressingly overlook colfax didn’t really motivate me either. yoga kind of saved me, reset things. but i am ready to go back to what i am really good at doing.
denver marathon in the fall? maybe.
after i wrote that little treatise about my time in d.c. the other day, a boy came up to me and told me he wrote a poem about my smile after i waited on him three weeks ago. sometimes it is strange, you know, when things happen that make you realize you aren’t floating through life unnoticed.
so, that is all. i have really been enjoying coming home to a warm animal sleeping on my bed. and yo la tengo is playing at the ogden in the fall. these are good things.
cannot stop listening to light of love by music go music. best treadmill jam ever.
wow. i need to find some new spots with free wi-fi. i’m at st. marks, obviously, because that is where i compute at night, when i am probably in the mood to enjoy an adult beverage. a dude just walked up to me and asked, “weren’t you on your laptop at whole foods this morning?” and yes, i was, because whole foods is where i steal the internet in the a.m. hours when i need coffee or kombucha or juice made out of leaves and grass. i did actually sign up for the internet at home, and it was supposed to be installed on wednesday, but fedex lost or improperly delivered my free modem while i was out of town.
speaking of — i think i am removed enough from my trip that i can write about it now. at the same time i think i’ve forgotten most of what i wanted to say.
so here is sort of how it went: i got off work at six in the fucking morning, went home and showered, went to whole foods and drank a green juice, then drove to david’s house so i could leave my car under his carport and so he could drive me to the airport. this was perhaps a mistake. jesse had offered to drive me, and i had decided i wasn’t going to talk to david, but, well, perhaps i am a glutton for punishment after all.
anyway, i shot into the sky with david on my mind, and actually it was sort of nice that i hadn’t slept yet, because i zonked out immediately on both of my flights and didn’t have to think about him anymore. by the time i arrived, i felt a little rough, but it was nothing that a shower and some of justin’s adderall couldn’t fix. ha ha.
walking out of the airport to the metro station immediately conjured up a feeling of regret about uprooting my former life. there is something about the east coast summer heat and humidity that swallows me, embraces me in a way that is comforting and familiar. i feel similarly when descending the escalators into the underground metro stations, as if i’m entering a beehive or the warm belly of a whale. (which probably sounds weird, but when you are the sort of person like me — one who sometimes intentionally isolates herself and generally feels apart — it feels good. d.c., i have always said, is a good place to spend time alone.)
i did that. i walked all of my old routes, to cleveland park and dupont circle and georgetown, then across the border to arlington. and i spent time with friends, mostly justin and (oddly?) john. i was surprised to see that not much has changed, including them. i immediately realized that i fit in much better in d.c. — that i feel most comfortable in that weird swarm of the patrician and the ghetto fabulous. colorado is in general a uniform sort of place; people seem to gravitate toward average. i have enjoyed having a very different sort of job that gets me away from the beige mentality, but it has made meeting people socially sort of difficult. in a meaningful sense, at least. justin and john, the intellectual and the aesthete, both reminded me of this. colorado doesn’t make their kind.
at the same time, while i lived in the most diverse neighborhood of northwest d.c., i saw how little it actually affected me when i was walking down columbia road one afternoon last week. the columbia heights/mt. pleasant/adams morgan area is populated with burgeoning yuppies and hipsters — as well as latinos, ethiopians, african americans, and foreigners of various mediterranean-ish descents. they served me fresh coconuts and injera and falafel, sat next to me on the metro, or maybe worked as doormen in my apartment buildings. but while they were part of the background of my lifestyle, they were… just the background, the scenery that i took for granted. that sounds racist perhaps, but i don’t mean it to be. d.c. is just a weirdly integrated but segregated place, full of gentrification controversies and economic stratification.
working as a waitress this year, i’ve interacted with latinos, ethiopians, african americans, and foreigners of various mediterranean-ish descents on a pretty much daily basis. when i was at greektown, ethiopian cab drivers were on the other end of most genuine conversations i had. many a time i have had a i-can’t-believe-this-is-my-life-but-i’m-glad-it-is moment at work when a mexican dishwasher is making my night tolerable by showing some completely random act of kindness to me. and i think we all know by now that i have basically become greek.
but when it comes to my demographic, overprivileged white kids in their mid-twenties to early thirties, give me d.c. any time. i haven’t even gotten to the part where no one i know in d.c. is married or having babies and giving me a ridiculous complex about dying a spinster. which reminds me : i got a phone call from julie on thursday night, actually a series of phone calls that i didn’t answer because i was sleeping a million hours trying to readjust to my life as a vampire, and it turns out she’s pregnant. this is not very surprising considering we’ve been joking about it since basically the day it must have happened. she and yuli are moving in together in a few months, and they’re going to try to make it work… which i really think will be good for both of them. but the messed up thing is that what i first felt in my gut, or perhaps my uterus, was a pang of jealousy.
ughhh.
there are other things to say, i guess, like that i visited the new awi office and it was super fancy and there were all these new people and they were dressed like typical office workers, in the pencil skirts and oxford shirts i owned but never wore. it was nice seeing chris and serda, but i think going there is what made me decide that moving to colorado was actually a good idea after all. that, and the humidity started to feel crushing instead of swaddling.
i went to galaxy hut and smoked a shitload of cigarettes at the bar, which was awesome and weird and also made me decide i am definitely not a smoker. i went to the portrait gallery/american art museum and sat in the snails installment for a long time and felt okay. i ate pollo ala brasa and also my favorite chicken analog made out of wheat gluten. and the whole foods salad bar and a salty oat cookie. i came home feeling a bit like a foie gras duck.
one morning while john and i were eating lox and bagels from so’s your mom, i saw david clifford ride down 18th street on his bicycle. that was about as much interaction as we needed to have.
i had lunch with drew and his very neat girlfriend. was kind of bummed we didn’t get to spend more time together.
a funny thing: the real world is currently being filmed in d.c., and because it is sort of a small place, the camera crews were everywhere. the first time i came back to colorado, two years after i graduated from college, the real world was being filmed in denver. i did not notice any cameras then, however. my guess is that they were confined to lodo.
so anyway. i came home and david picked me up from the airport and did not really talk to me on the drive back to his house, and i hated it. i miss so intensely the way we used to be able to talk for a hundred hours. oddly being in d.c. brought back those feelings more than ever, i guess because i spent last summer falling in love with him from a distance of 1,500 miles. i thought about him every time i went out flaneuring back then, so i guess it makes sense that i did it again when i revisited those old streets.
incidentally, i did not make it to new york. i felt like i needed to stay in d.c. till i got sick of it, and i am pretty certain that was the right decision. autumn in new york, if i am lucky.
this is perhaps my most prolix blog entry ever. i think i will stop now.
there is so much to say and i don’t know how to say it yet.
in the meantime my corepower yoga membership expired on the 14th, so yesterday i decided to sign up for a proper gym – the same one i eschewed last august in favor of qi, that stupid east-meets-west gym i joined perhaps as an intermediate step to becoming a yogini. i don’t know… i actually miss weights and treadmills all of a sudden. and then there was a two-weeks-free coupon in my junk mail and i took it as a sign.
i don’t yearn to be back in d.c. like i thought i would. well, the way i though i would until maybe the fourth day i was there. i kind of feel like leaving by plane was a more concrete end to an era. and that i finally left on my own terms. i returned to see denver both with new eyes and with the same sense of wonder that i experienced when i first moved here late last summer.
but, oh, d.c. — columbia heights is starting to resemble my old neighborhood in arlington, with its big box stores, starbucks, gastropubs and a fucking chipotle. at least mt. pleasant street is still the same, all bodegas and day laborers and pollo a la brasa.
it seems relevant to mention here that i just renewed the lease on my apartment for another six months. and that my rent did not go up. oh, denver.
i’m going to name them milo [edit: make that milan] and minou [i will call them milo and mina].
in the meantime:
(at least i have a cat)
i’m in d.c. right now. it’s something.
Filed under: dear diary | Tags: this might be the last time i mention david on the internet.
sometimes you just have to realize that a person is inherently bad for you, even if he or she once seemed to be your everything. i kind of hate how often i’m coming to that conclusion these days, in various degrees.
after an emotionally destructive experience with david on saturday afternoon, i finally decided to cultivate some avoidance techniques. i did what i said i was going to do months ago: i deleted his number, i decided not to contact him again. i haven’t talked to him much recently anyway, but i needed that formal process to further let him go.
yesterday i had also planned to tell jesse that i needed to run away and not keep spending time with him, because i felt like he has been getting entangled in unnecessary drama due to the fact that a. i like him, and b. he knows david. but instead i saw him and instantly felt better. we did a really stupid but awesome yoga tape and erich made dinner. later we talked about how i wanted to run away and why i changed my mind. he’s very patient with me and this messed up situation, and it’s nice to feel a connection with someone but not feel the need to make him my boyfriend asap.
today david contacted me on gchat and asked if i wanted a ride to the airport, which seemed like a weird offer considering how we parted ways on saturday. we talked in the way that we always talk lately, and i quickly became frustrated. i told him i didn’t want to talk to him under the terms that he has set, and that associating with him is harmful to me. he didn’t seem to care very much about those statements, but when i added that i had decided to start seeing jesse, he responded with something along the lines of “fuck you, bye.”
my attraction to jesse is not new information to him — i mentioned it a week ago, and he saw us together at the thin man on friday. and i’m fairly certain he’s dating, or attempting dating, himself. which leads me to another recent realization — if i just met david today, i wouldn’t even be attracted to him, physically, mentally or otherwise. so why torture myself? i figured out a while ago when i was starving myself that there is no point in making my life harder than it has to be. i just have to apply that logic to other appropriate situations.
the perceived stability of being with david was in many ways a replacement for the perceived stability of my former career. oddly i am in a better place to “date” than i was a year ago, when i moved here and had no idea about anything. i was totally dependent on david and our relationship was probably messed up from the start because of it — i felt insecure and out of place here. ironically i suppose it wasn’t until i first started feeling at home in denver that our two months of hellish fighting began.
i am still mourning my relationship with david, though, and anything that does happen with jesse will be slow moving as a result. the other night pete, being my surrogate father/grandfather and all, pulled me aside at work and asked how i was doing with everything. i told him i was upset about david and he said, “why can’t you just not have a man for a while?” (though i wonder if he would have said the same thing if he didn’t consider me an 18-year-old for all practical purposes). i told him i got a cat and he was pleased. i didn’t tell him about jesse.
but you like who you like, i guess. i don’t know. i am going to try not be fucked up about it this time.
man, it’s a good week to get out of town.
I wrote a poem on a dog biscuit
And your dog refused to look at it
So I got drunk and looked at the Empire State Building
It was no bigger than a nickel
And if it don’t improve
Then I have to move
I never thought that I would end up here
Maybe I should just change my style
But I feel alright when you smile
I stayed at home on the Fourth of July
And I pulled the shades so I didn’t have to see the sky
And I decided to have a Bed In
But I forgot to invite anybody
And when I fell asleep
The neighbors had a peep
I never thought that I would end up here
Maybe I should just change my style
But I feel alright when you smile
i really want to go to waterworld and the botanic gardens when i get back from the east coast.
just a reminder to myself.
incidentally i am sad that i did not get to see jonathan richman at lions lair on wednesday. i was a couple blocks down the street at work. oh well.
thunder road by bruce springsteen
kodachrome by paul simon
this must be the place by the talking heads
(i don’t want to go to) chelsea by elvis costello
hot child in the city by pat benatar
i think it’s pretty safe to say that i am no longer cool.
***
the 30 hours or so since i got off work very early yesterday a.m. have been strange, minus the 12 or so that i spent not being awake.
i guess at this point nothing is that weird because everything is weird, but let’s just say running into david and getting along, then bonding with his friend tynan (my former arch nemesis, when it mattered) was not exactly how i expected to spend my evening. unfortunately, because we are a couple of scumbag 20somethings, bonding involved a shot of tequila that knocked me on my ass, pretty much literally — soon thereafter, i climbed on the giant see-saw behind the thin man with not so sexy results.
thankfully at this point jesse showed up (jason also came by and was surprisingly the only source of bad vibes all night) and escorted me home in a cab as it started to rain. we waited — rather, i made myself horizontal — on the steps of castle marne, and i blabbered on about how david and i stayed there once. we got to my house and i puked up some tequila and the salad i ate earlier. he put me in bed and gonzo curled up next to me and somehow i didn’t die. actually, i woke up quite early this morning and felt pretty good despite the circumstances.
i got dressed and walked across the street to whole foods for some spinach-parsley-cucumber-apple-lemon-ginger juice. it was amazing. so now i am here, and in a few hours i am supposed to eat lunch with david and his little brother and his little brother’s girlfriend. what?
last night i also ran into this chick lacey who works at salvagetti, the bike shop right by where i used to live with david. i keep waiting on her in pete’s establishments. anyhow, i’m going to drop by the shop later for a swap they’re having and hopefully i will score a bike.
in other news, as i was walking to the thin man last night and questioning the safety of being a female pedestrian on colfax at 10 p.m., i saw two drunk girls and figured if they were okay, i probably was too. then they started shouting my name and i realized it was jess and katy from greektown. oh denver, you are finally becoming a small town to me.
home is where i want to be / but i guess i’m already there.
indeed.
i came to visit denver one year ago today. david and i went to tynan’s house and that is when i decided he was my arch nemesis. i went to steuben’s and the thin man with jason and justin and saw fireworks from justin’s stairwell. later on david and i made out. and that is how i got here, i guess.
things are better now, actually.
i have been reading the works of pablo neruda lately and today i stumbled a poem i liked a lot when i was in high school. reading translations of poetry written in a language you don’t understand is kind of weird, but neruda translates well.
Naked
Naked, you are simple as a hand,
smooth, earthy, small. . . transparent, round.
You have moon lines and apple paths;
Naked, you are slender as the wheat.
Naked, Cuban blue midnight is your color,
Naked, I trace the stars and vines in your hair;
Naked, you are spacious and yellow
As a summer’s wholeness in a golden church.
Naked, you are tiny as your fingernail;
Subtle and curved in the rose-colored dawn
And you withdraw to the underground world
As if down a long tunnel of clothing and of chores:
your clear light dims, gets dressed, drops its leaves,
And becomes a naked hand again.
***
later, when i was in college, jonathan told me he aspired to be a japanese poet… or something like that. he read a lot of translated japanese poetry and i made fun of him. next week i will be in new york and i am looking forward to doing that thing we do whenever i come to visit. wandering around lower manhattan, in some kind of parallel universe.
