devil may care

friday morning: discuss.

woke up to more passive aggressive post its on the fridge after drunkenly demolishing my roommate's leftover pizza last night when I got home from an evening about town that smacked of my trite and exorbitant first year in town as dj motley c. I suppose that's what I should expect from cruising around to hipster bars to flyer for a band called the downer party in a car full of barely legal dudes in leather jackets driven by a 19 year old girl with a sonic youth tattoo who I didn't care to ask how many sparks she'd had. nice kids, admittedly, one of them being max scoville, who has barely begun his excellent san francisco adventure... and it's fascinating to see that the kids are indeed alright, but they're still doing the same old shit. somehow I became the docent of my own milestone memory tour, passing the crunk station, the marrakesh joint in the tl, the old arrow (cum matador), the thursday night beat poet society at 16th bart, delirium, 330 ritch, and finally, the rickshaw. looking askance at its menacing orange door, I knew it was time for grandma to go home-- I don't play that game anymore. as much as some things never change, I'm no longer dolled up to get a photographer's attention for my 2 minutes of myspace bulletin fame, I don't have room for your glossy 4x6's in my purse, and the drug dealer is not invited to my afterparty. motley c and the girl gang formerly known as 3P is finally dead.

I'll never forget this blurry exchange from a couple of halloweens ago, spun out on god knows what and dressed up as an electro ladybug. sometime around 4 in the morning I passed stefan who was laying on the floor in a hallway of the warehouse with his head and shoulder propped up on the wall at an unnatural angle, drenched in sweat so that his dyed black bangs were slick and plastered across his furrowed forehead, wearing a dress shirt that could have benefitted from a proper wringing. I'd stopped and knelt down beside him, trying to heft his dead weight up into a posture that might do a double service in being more comfortable and also making him look less like a wasted burnout.

"what are you doing still here?" he asked.

"party goes 'til 6." I replied.

"getting your twenty bucks worth?"

"I was on the list."

"smart ass."

"what? I was!"

"no, I mean, what are you doing... still here." he widened his eyes dramatically as he asked. "because you need to get out."

"I am not sure I follow." I could feel my stomach lurching, full of pills and some acerbic alcoholic concoction.

"you know," stefan snorted, a signature character tic, "you know why I was such a dick to you when you first came around?"

"because you're an asshole?" I smiled sardonically.

"yeah, and also because I know you're too good for this. you're wasting yourself on this. take a look and tell me what you see." a rivulet of sweat streamed down his pallid cheek, his face stern. "I see the same old people doing the same shit. I'm 38, and I know, I know what they've already taken from you, but it's not too late. these people are vampires."

we sat there, locked in a stare that felt an eternity long with our dilated pupils boring into each other.

"I'll go when I'm ready." I said, incapable of mendacity.

"he's not coming back, and you won't either. look, I'm sorry. I don't want to see you around anymore, and I mean that in the best way possible."

"I know. but for a second there I thought you were just being a dick again."

I stood up, adjusting my wings. a group of people scuttled by, trying to find an inconspicuous place to do key bumps, stilettos glinting like switchblades with their faces bearing uniformly blank, unctuous expressions. later on when the warehouse was shutting down, lindsay, maren and I were standing in the middle of polk street and flagged a cab that was hotly pursued by a girl dressed as a zombie who was sobbing hysterically and banging on the trunk, wailing about how she'd been waiting longer than us. I turned back around, avoiding eye contact with her as I asked if my friends thought we should let her in.

"honey," maren said prudently, "good girls don't hang out in the tenderloin at 6 am."

limbo

better today. actively squelching self-doubt, making progress, slow and steadily. I talked to jay in brooklyn this morning and firmed up plans, and the next paycheck I get, the first thing I'm buying is my one way ticket. I'm proud of myself for following through with this. I can't wait until I'm all set up and can say that I did it myself. my way. myyyyy waaaaaaaay!

deconstruction zone

today, after much procrastination, I've begun to dissolve my belongings. the idea of getting rid of everything would seem like such an enlightening process, a certain freeing venture to simply trash the bits and pieces that help me remember who I've been, sell what I can and run. it's going to be a lot harder than I thought. the first drawer I opened I found dried roses from jorge's memorial service, an empty coke baggy, and a bunch of letters I wrote to jon but never sent. I've got a dresser full of skeletons, and I can't take them with me. if I've been in a cocoon for the past year, and now is my time to re-emerge as a different woman, I don't know how to manage the remembrance of my past. is it necessary? maybe I should just say fuck it and make a bonfire on the street corner full of duralogs and dog-eared pictures and movie stubs and incriminating journal entries written on cocktail napkins and stained shirts that my grandma darned for me and everything that will ever remind me to miss anything. I know this all sounds a bit melodramatic, but christ, isn't it? stuff, it's just stuff, bullshit stuff I've been dragging around with me. half of it I haven't touched in years, but having it safely jammed in the dark recesses of a cabinet makes me feel better. it's proof, it's evidence. it's morbid to think at all, but if I met some tragic and untimely end in a freak accident or even a rather ordinary one that you might skim in the obits and think to yourself, "thank god I didn't ride the n train that day", and someone were to excavate my living space, what would they think? what would they learn? what secrets and unturned rocks would they pore over? 5 years of important papers and pay stubs and unpaid bills in various heaps and a trunk full of diaries, half finished art projects and moldy coffee cups. sequined hot pants. complete discographic collections of bright eyes and britney spears, respectively.

without junk, I feel like I'd be nowhere girl. but then, say my house burned down? I would survive. I would survive without 700 dried up nail polishes in a purple caboodle I got in 7th grade and a stack of 40 photobooth strips. even rationalizing through all of these frenzied thoughts doesn't make sense to me. this must be why people get tattoos... no matter what transpires, it's marked forever.

I'm currently toying with the idea of a giant cursive "L" on my forehead. somebody shoot me with a xanax blowdart, please.

34 days

having been sick for a month has really brought my quality of life down, and that's most likely the last thing I need right now as I'm bolstering my brass balls for a gallant move across the country and trying to work as much as possible to pad my modestly furnished (to say the least) bank account. this morning upon waking up I became excited that I'd regained some of my voice and triumphantly only woke up 3 times during the night. only 3! stop the presses! flush that bottle of tylenol pm and burn your eye pillow! that's practically a full 5 hours!

part of the melancholy mood is my faulty immune system, and the other part could be seasonal affective disorder, but as the dawns break and sundowns fall, each day feels shorter and I am coming to terms with leaving san francisco. my main focus is that I want to let it go, rather than run away. I have some preconceived notions of how living in brooklyn will be, and some are so heartening and fresh, and then there is the one that I'm sure of, and that is that I will be lonely. I am at this moment, surprisingly calm about it. my maiden voyage to a new city all by myself is a rite of passage that will help me grow into the woman that I want to be, no matter who stands opposing my decision. I've heard discouraging remarks from people close to me under a paper thin veiled guise of "concerned friend", and that is disturbingly puzzling. what could someone possibly get out of instilling doubt and discouraging another person you care for from pursuing their dreams? at any rate, as chris so succintly summed it up, "it's all part of the plan", and I'm more than prepared to play defense.

in other news, I'm undersexed. I found myself scraping smart balance on my english muffin this morning thinking of funny euphemisms for sex having to do with spreadable condiments. then I immediately realized that the sexiest thing to happen to me in weeks was watching my hot roommate mop the kitchen in his beavis and butthead boxer shorts from the dining room with my hair sticking askew in several directions while sipping on my morning coffee. I unconsciously slipped into a steamy pine sol reverie. "you missed a spot," I'd say, "right over there. lower. loooowerrr.... right there! yes! YES! YES! don't stop... mopping!!! my god, you could just eat off of it!"

come to think of it, it seems that the kitchen is making me hot. that sort of makes sense because food and sex are right up there with air and water, although it would seem that no one quite gets enough of the latter. and also, do roommate rules still apply if you're leaving the state in a month? would it really be so harmful to pass a note under his door demanding that he meet me in the laundry room with cool whip and a butt plug at midnight?

I'm going to have to steal the batteries out of the remote, again.

"I like to use 'I can't believe it's not butter' on my toast in the morning, because sometimes when I eat breakfast, I like to be incredulous. 'how was breakfast?' 'UNBELIEVABLE!'"

-demetri martin

best in show

I'm dying my hair today... a special ritual that I reserve for times that I am legitimately doing something I like to call, "losing my shih-tsu".

we shall see!
edit: 3:51pm
3 dyes later...

welcome to the ginger zone.

ps. my second missed connection!

afraid not scared

the freakout has commenced... I haven't felt like writing, but then I haven't sat still long enough to physically accomplish as much. yesterday night I went home early, but was drunk enough for it to have been 4am. lost my phone at my apartment after having lost my keys in my purse and then literally tore my room to shreds in true hurricane fashion, woke up this morning taken aback amidst an eruption of shit that resembled dorothy's house post-relocation to oz. the week had unforeseen hiccups that I tried to shove under the carpet instead of face head on, so the blow up was inevitable, and cleaning it up later is going to be appropriately symbolic. I'm going to throw most of it away.

I'm off at 4 today and I need to have some down time to really focus and think rationally about everything I need to get in order before I leave. thinking while specifically, sober and calm.

I have always wanted to do what I'm about to do, and I am lucky enough to have the love and support of my (cheeseballs coming) amazing friends and family. I think that is perhaps the most daunting part-- I've never been away from them. new york is going to teach me what I haven't been able to learn, and that is to be alone, and be okay.

is this for real?

it's a good thing that the poop scare was just that-

I found out a couple of hours ago that I'm moving to new york march 1st. brooklyn, here I come! holy shit!

half baked

this morning I became momentarily convinced that I was dying because there appeared to be blood in my stool. immediately thereafter I remembered that I ate two packages of red vines last night at 2 am after getting stoned out of my gourd with my roommate.

time to lay off the pot.

trapdoors

I may have found a perfect escape route to brooklyn for march. that is only 7 weeks away, but then, fuck it. what the hell am I waiting for, anyway?

milking it for free

2008's whirlwind end and 2009's beginning on wobbling bambi legs have left me bereft of a sense of assuredness of anything except that the time is ripe to get a firmer grip on the bull's balls. the winter doldrums still set in despite all of the overwhelmingly wondrous and unexpected adventures of the past few weeks, and I'm trying to claw my way out. as much as I appreciate the beauty in ephemerality, my nostalgic streak counteracts rationale; sometimes I forget that moments can be kept, but not held the way I want to. hedonism isn't about buying the cow.

it's a struggle to stay in stride, but today (even despite having woken up at 4am having gone to bed at 2) I'm meeting up with brent at mcsweeney's and will get some new projects to work on for wholphin, and next week I'm going to start job hunting for a restaurant gig to start saving money for le grand city swap.

the prospect of the wild blue yonder that is the world beyond the city by the bay is daunting, but it's imperative that I continue to learn to be self sufficient. by summer, a good portion of those that I call my closest friends will have scattered across the globe to embark on journeys of all kinds. some are merely running, some are searching, some are creating, but our common denominator is growth. I'm willing to show myself that I'm ready by taking some action.

as for the resolutions, I'm doing okay. the green phlegm goblins I've been hacking up have made it pretty easy to involuntarily quit smoking (day 3), but I'm going to have to throw on an addendum, which is to lose the weight I gained on birth control and didn't drop when I got off of it. this is probably do-able providing that I'm willing to give up delivery pizza, insomnia snacking, laziness, and beer. maybe I'll fill the voids with baby carrots, DIY pedicures, yoga and prozac.

here's a few snaps from the last week-ish.

mm & me (thanks cass!)


back to sf from christmas in the 707


rufus copping a cheap feel on NYE

pornament fiesta with the girls

disco ukulele dance at teatro zinzanni

life, as a cabaret

chris vick turns 28 @ the 811

my favorite room in all the land! my favorite goose!

the Womanizer Dance

lyds, ghostriding the basement

schleepy

me 'n tobs

ms. lindsay, my new year's kiss

keep on runnin'

the next vacation I take is going to be permanent.