blogalogadingdong's revenge

playboybacon.tumblr.com

get into it.

riddle me this.

if well-behaved women seldom make history, and good girls don't have time to keep diaries...

then who do these bitches think is writing this shit down??

I'm making a comeback, so prepare for some hot blogalogadingdong action.

in the meantime? CATPIZZA.

Frodo and His Many Rings

This is an account of my experiences in the trenches of online dating, the Not OKcupid Chronicles, and you can read part one HERE!

Sean, 28, was a web designer for a startup in Manhattan and his profile clearly reflected his nerdy nature and sense of humor, but his photos especially piqued me. He had ten (the maximum amount allowed), which red flagged him as a potential egomaniac, but they were all different or unique in some way, most photoshopped in an artsy manner, and universally rendering him ridiculously good looking. Even with a Tom Selleck mustache. His response to my message was cute and quick, as well as engaging. Right as I was about to write back, he IMed me, so we got to chatting and when my battery life started running low and he still hadn’t asked for my number, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

“Would it be terribly presumptuous of me to suggest we meet for a drink this week?” I tapped onto the keys tentatively. I hit enter and bit my lip in anticipation.

His response beeped as it popped up on the screen, “If we’re going to be presumptuous here, I’m going to have to presume that you are one of my friends pulling a prank on me, because I never get messaged by cool, witty, mega babes on this site, and if that’s the case then fuck you, Randal, this isn’t funny!” followed by, “But if you are a real girl, then I’d love to get a drink with you.”

Strategizing my angle for virtual bachelor number three was a little different. First off, I had messaged him, then I asked him out, and now that he had my number, I felt it might be wise to let him move the next pawn. Two or three days went by and I’d not heard from Sean and had figured perhaps he was not that into me, and after attending a dinner party at a friend’s house I found myself the last one standing and curled up on their couch in a snuggie with their 30 lb Persian cat named GusGus and my computer. Boredom and insomnia got the best of me, and when 3 AM rolled around I found myself signing into my slightly shameful secret social network of lonely hearts, and immediately had an IM from Sean wondering why he hadn’t heard from me. I felt mildly incensed. As a postmodernist woman, I don’t mind exploring gender role reversal spooning, but I wasn’t sure how I was feeling about having to woo this guy, who I couldn’t for the life of me understand why he was on a dating website if he could walk into Union Pool on any given weeknight and easily have his pick of the lady litter. We ended up on the phone well into the wee hours, and made plans to meet for drinks at Pete’s in Greenpoint the next evening.

I woke up to this message in my email: “Just in case you were wondering, I am actually not mentally disabled despite they way I just sounded on the phone. Sleep deprivation just seems to have that effect on me occasionally. You however are pretty goddamn charming. I almost feel a little intimidated... which is why I've devised a foolproof plan to get completely shit-house drunk right before we meet. I promise it will be one of the top three best OKcupid dates you’ve ever been on.”

I wrote back: “That email made me laugh harder than I did when I woke up on Jen's couch wearing a zebra print snuggie to GusGus dropping his slobbery fetch toy (a scrunchie, I shit you not) on my face. I swear, that cat looks like an Urban Outfitters ottoman. You sounded just fine, and I'm totally hip to the ways of the folk who live in nearly-perpetual sleep dep. I'm just glad I didn't sound like a stoned, rambling weirdo! (Or, if I did, at least an entertaining one.)
 I very much look forward to feeding you vitamin water through an eyedropper and carbs as you drool in my lap, tonight.”

The following evening I became terribly nervous after we exchanged texts throughout the day… I had developed a legitimate, sizeable crush on Sean without actually having met him. What if the tables turned and I ended up being his nightmare OKcupid story? I’d looked at the personality deciphering questions he’d filled out on his profile and one of them indicated he would never date someone who posted intimate details of their life online. When was a good time to drop the TMI blogger bomb on someone? And the Cancer bomb? He was sure to ask what kind of novel I’m writing—it’s not exactly a prudent situation to lie in, and to answer that question vaguely could be so much worse. What if he automatically assumed that I’m writing homoerotic fan fiction based on the Legend of Zelda? Or a young, hip guide to coping with living with herpes? Right as I was about to go cross eyed with irrational pre-date jitters, I beat him to Pete’s by about five minutes (even though I’d been strategically 5 minutes late) and sat fidgeting with the foam head on my pint of Magic Hat while I waited. When he arrived he revealed one of his most fetching traits of all, which was his gorgeous toothy grin, and followed that up with a big, warm hug. I could feel the butterflies moshing in my guts in a flurry of unbridled pheromones as I marveled at his pearly smile and disarming dimples. Maybe Cupid was OK, after all?

A couple of hours into our fun, effortless date, we discovered that we shared several friends in common… one of whom being a bartender I met 4 years ago on my first visit to Brooklyn who I’d gotten to know biblically a handful of times the summer before and then shifted gears back to the Friend Zone. This bartender was Sean’s best friend, and he and his brother had grown up with him since they were toddlers in Arizona. I felt a wave of panic welling up in me, not wanting to have poked holes in the bottom of my dreamboat by suffering a small world dating coincidence, and promptly changed the subject by complimenting him on a ring he was wearing, of the gumball variety. It was slightly chintzy looking and had a Celtic design grooved in the middle, and the edges’ copper stain was rubbing off to reveal the silver metal underneath. He reached out and grabbed my hand, manicured with chipping fuchsia nail polish as per usual, and slid the ring on my finger.

“I want you to have it.” He said. I leaned back, slightly incredulous and now on the verge of a potentially dangerous category five swoon.

“I couldn’t possibly.” My cheeks were getting hot. “Bad form to accept an heirloom on a first date.”

“It’s true, I’ve had it forever, and I wear it every day, but it’s yours now. You just have to promise not to lose it.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise.” He pulled me closer.

“I promise.” I said, and Sean leaned in and punctuated my vow with a sweet, long kiss that tasted faintly of whiskey and chapstick. I was completely done for.

“You wanna get outta here?”

“Like the wind,” I said breathily, trying not to reveal how hopelessly twitterpated I’d become. One short walk later that I’m sure felt more like a 6 block float, we’d gotten back to my place, and I threw Rufus off the bed who shot me a disgruntled look before slinking off to curl up on a pillow across the room.

The next morning, I woke up not wearing much more than my Cracker Jack prize of runaway romance. Sean hit the snooze button on his Blackberry alarm until he was an hour late for work, kissing me on the forehead while he exclaimed how amazing he’d slept, and that he hadn’t for days. For some reason, this didn’t alarm me in the slightest. He left for work saying he’d text me to make plans for the weekend and I laid there listening to Billie Holiday for about a half hour until my roommate plodded down the stairs into my room. Maren pulled a chair up to my bed and straddled it, with his twinkling hazel eyes hungry for gossip.

“How was it? Spill.” I flashed him a boob, and we both squealed. “I take it the date went well?”

“Indeed. You missed him by a bee’s ass.”

“Ha! I wasn’t sure, the fish was nowhere to be found.”

Maren was referring to the “Fuck Fish”, which was a large rubber koi that I’d permanently borrowed from Jay’s mantle in LA on a road trip I took years ago. When we first started sharing the apartment in February we devised a foolproof plan for his covert knowledge of when it was not safe to walk through my room to get to the shower. The fish was our BFF secret handshake of “do not disturb” signs. The Fuck Fish had actually not yet been utilized and in the heat of the moment it hadn’t occurred to me to get up, locate the fish, and attempt to stealthily place it on the stairwell. Stealthy was not a word that came to mind when the subject was a big rubber goldfish, and neither was sexy.




“It slipped my mind.”

Maren grunted a knowing harrumph, and I held up my hand, fanning out my spirit fingers like a blushing bride to be.

“Check this out. He put a ring on it.” I grinned like a jack o’lantern.

“Shut up.”

“I will not.”

“Jesus, this guy is good.” he said, leaning forward to inspect my new jewelry. “Look at you, you’re dickmatized!”

“You’ve got that right, my friend.” I said, collapsing back into a pile of pillows and pulling the covers over my head.

The following morning, Sean texted me, “Hey you. How’s things?” which sent me into a complete frenzy, bouncing up the stairs to Maren’s room in my pink Ikea slippers to report of the textual healing. I’d been terrified that perhaps I was a little too swift to relinquish the proverbial cookie to Sean, whose I’d nicknamed Frodo because of his bestowing me with the one ring with which to rule my spring fling. I hadn’t taken it off since he’d put it on, and it was starting to turn my finger green in addition to clashing with my outfits, but I didn’t care. I held up the cell phone to Maren, hopping from foot to foot.

“’Hey you, how’s things’? That’s so… bro-ish.”

“Right? What do I say?”

“Ask him if he has a box of gumball machine rings labeled “For Gullible Hoes” under his bed.”

“Maren! I’m serious.”

“Me too!”

“You’re useless. Dead to me.” I said, stretching out on his yoga mat in the sun, still clutching my clunky flip phone for dear life, which is how I would remain for good portions of the following three weeks. We’d made solid plans to hang out Saturday evening, and I spent half of Saturday afternoon in the shower shaving my entire body like an Olympic swimmer, exfoliating, and trying to make my winter-gnarled feet less frightening. I changed my outfit no less than ten times, accessorized with the ring, did my makeup perfectly, and curled my hair. I looked and felt amazing, filled with the burgeoning hope of the first blush of flirtation. And then, he stood me up.

Sunday morning came and I trudged to the bathroom to grudgingly wash the makeup off that I’d been too miserable to bother with the night before and the Fuck Fish sat atop the toilet tank, mocking my pain.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” I growled, fully realizing that I was talking to a rubber fish and not caring, as I knocked it onto the tile floor vengefully with the back of my hand, hearing Maren’s telltale gait down the stairs.

“What, no fish?” He called through the room.

“Yeah. No date, no fish.” I said, sitting back down on my bed.

“Wait, what happened?”

“A whole lotta nothing. He hadn’t called by ten, so I did, and there was no answer.”

“And still no word?”

“Nope.” I glanced woefully at my dormant phone.

“Baby, I’m sorry. Please tell me you’re not still wearing the ring.” I sat on my hand.

“God, no.” I lied.

Later that night Frodo surfaced and apologized profusely, promising to make it up to me, having excused his completely wack behavior by trying to convince me that he had accidentally slept for over 24 hours and hadn’t heard his phone. I thought it was a little weird, and potentially a total load of bullshit, but I really wanted to get to know him, and thought it’d be too hasty to kick him to the curb over one mistake, especially after the long lonely winter I’d just endured in a serious relationship with a heated blanket and Netflix streaming.

Joking graciously about the time released roofie I’d slipped him at Pete’s, I opted to give him another chance, and we met up later that night at our favorite bar and debuted our courtship where our mutual friend pours drinks. I finally triumphantly cast the fish out my front door for Maren. But a few days later, we’d made plans to meet up in Williamsburg in the early evening, and Frodo did not contact me to tell me the location until 4 in the morning. I was exceedingly nonplussed and considering sending him a bill for a can of Skintimate and a very fancy loofah. I decided (stupidly, I might add) to give him one more shot after our mutual friend assured me that I had hit the jackpot with Frodo, and he not only gave his blessing but insisted that I “couldn’t possibly find a better guy”. The third time he stood me up in a span of three weeks, I was distinctly hoping that said claim held no bearing. Another night was spent waiting for a phone call dressed for a black tie affair donning my finest tranny lashes, watching Glee with my roommate and his boyfriend. I was right back where I started. His excuse, which came some time around what would have been last call, was another epic nap, and Maren and I theorized he was either secretly married or a pill popper, and my last text to my own personal Van Winkle read, “Wow. Lame. Spare me the sorry this time, and lose my number.”

Two weeks passed and I was a little bummed that my spring fling hadn’t sprung very far, but I pressed on in my online dating field research. I met another OKcupid guy who was an independent filmmaker who made a very strong point of telling me he had a car, (an ’89 Hyundai) because his friend had told him girls would think it was sexy. Aside from mentioning his ex five times in the first five minutes, he ended up boring me to the brink of tears, as he detailed his current project, a musical short film that he described as “Requiem For a Dream meets The Little Mermaid”, and showed me several photos on his iPhone of the set design comprised of day-glo, blacklit paper mache forests of coral. I furtively eyeballed his bald spot, gleaming under the lamplight, which had been undetectable in any of his photos on his profile as I weighed my options for a swift escape. There was no second date, despite that he texted me after claiming to have had “so much fun”.

The night baseball season began was Easter Sunday, and I ended up at a sports bar with some friends after a day of lounging in the park and eating my weight in marshmallow peeps. Right as we walked in I ran into Frodo, sipping a PBR in a cozy with his knit cap pulled too far down his forehead, nearly causing his blonde curls to completely obstruct his vision. I braced myself for the crash dummy impact of awkwardness and eked out a forced smile and a greeting. There was no toothy grin or warm hug, this time, and he asked some obligatory socially graceful questions; how I’d been, if I was liking my new job, and whether or not I was rooting for the Yankees. As I looked down to grab my wallet from my purse to get a drink, a glimmer of metal caught my eye. Frodo was wearing a ring almost identical to the one that he had given me on our first date.

“Hey,” I said, gesturing to his pointer finger, “You got another ring…”

“Oh, yeah.” He said, shrugging nonchalantly. “They’re only a quarter.”

The NotOKcupid Chronicles

Of all of the things Cupid has been to me, “OK” is not one of them. From the humble beginnings of a love life that was predestined to be tumultuous, gut wrenching, awkward, and often hilarious, to where I sit now, a little weary and worse for the wear, I’ve far from given up. I still believe in fairy tale love, the poetic and deep entwining of two souls who want to share their lives with each other, or at the very least the city equivalent: semi-regular, great sex with someone who has a clean bill of health and won’t fuck your friends. The closest I’ve come was to throwing in the towel on the hunt for a mate was to join an online dating website. Nevermind the fact that I’ve had no trouble meeting philanderers, drug addicts, schizophrenics and compulsive liars by other means with much more tactile introductions, one way or another the somewhat web chic explosion of OKcupid amongst my peers intrigued me. I had friends who were on it, who I considered to be normal (within reason) and dateable… so why wouldn’t there be like-minded fellows on there? Maybe I was being a luddite, not utilizing a whole new medium with which to entice someone into buying my proverbial cow.

The night in February that I joined OKcupid, there were 2 feet of snow on the ground, (the news had called it “the snowpocalypse”), and I’d been sitting on a couch with a gay man for seven hours, watching Bravo network television. Half a season of Shear Genius, three episodes into Millionaire Matchmaker, and one extra large meat combo pizza later, I had a revelation. Dying alone in the dead of winter was not at all an attractive prospect. I tentatively broached the subject to Brandon who flicked his wrist at me while still looking at the screen explaining that he loved this part, and then recited the following scene word for word. When the commercial came on and he turned back to me, my mouth was agape in an admittedly judgmental “o” shape, and he replied, “What?! I have DVR.”

“What do you think about OKcupid?” I asked.

“What’s there to think? That’s like, online dating, right?” Brandon closed the pizza box that was littered with abandoned crusts and chili pepper flakes with his big toe.

“Right.”

“What kind of lame retard has to join a site to meet people?”

“What kind of super cool retard knows the entire 3rd season of Shear Genius by heart?”

“Touché, bitch.”

“I think we’re past the point of being apologetic for real talk.” I replied ruefully.

Minutes later, I had pulled up the main page of the site, tentatively clicking around as if an alarm would sound and a mass email would be sent to everyone I’d ever met informing them of my inherent desperation. Though I initially clicked through the website as if it were a virtual minefield, it seemed not to be of sinister nature. The user interface was easy to navigate. I liked the cobalt blue background and the testimonials of its hipness and success rates in the sidebar… it didn’t seem so bad. Besides, there was an option in the search feature that allowed me to set a height requirement, and I was excited at the prospect of meeting someone who wouldn’t get emasculated when I felt like wearing heels. So, I bit the bullet, and began filling out my profile. The basics were easy: female, 5’10”, Caucasian, owns cats, some college, drinks often, smokes sometimes, speaks fluent English and some pig latin.

The details took me a little longer—what were you supposed to reveal in these fields with the expectantly blinking cursor to sell yourself to a prospective mate? This is obviously not the place I’d mention that I’d just been laid off (again) and that my snore sounds akin to the death rattle of the Rock Biter from Neverending Story. The music/movie/food interest section is a tricky one, too, because everyone knows how much it matters to at least share some similar predilections to recreational activities with a mate. Yet, if I rattle off 20 indie bands who are so far below the radar they don’t even register on it, I sounds like a pretentious record store brat. If I dare tell the truth and list Bright Eyes as one of my all time favorite bands, I sound like a suicidal teenager who is 7 years late to the pity party, and will probably cry about it. I almost closed the window and gave up right there, before I realized that I was taking my social experiment entirely too seriously.

After changing my self-summary from the tongue-in-cheek, “I’m spontaneous!!!!! I hate DRAMA!!!!! I love funnnnn!!!!!!!!11” to something a little more accurate (but still quirky), I set to surfing around for potential matches. Within moments of completing my profile, I had received several instant messages, some from underage broheims in New Jersey (actual quote: “dam ur sexy bitch gimme your #”), and one from a Bulgarian bodybuilder in Queens who requested “nudie pix” from me. So far, I wasn’t impressed. Though to be fair, the situation was that I was on a dating website at four in the morning on a Tuesday. The next IM came in from a certain “ColonelMustard”, a 25 year old Brooklynite who had a simple, basic icebreaker by saying “Hi! You seem very nice. I’m Alex.”

I stole Brendan away from Bravo to inspect his pictures and profile together. Alex’s photos were cute; he was bespectacled and scruffy, appeared adventurous, maybe a little outdoorsy (not my thing, but I don’t begrudge people their treehuggy moments). His profile claimed he was good at dancing, cooking, massages and sex. Getting dipped, fed, rubbed and loved down didn’t sound so bad… so I messaged him back. Our repartee was witty and we shared similar interests, and he even hearteningly addressed first that he was aware it probably seemed a little off color that he was on OKcupid at dawn. We agreed to meet for happy hour tacos the next day in Greenpoint and then go thrifting at my favorite spot on Manhattan Ave., The Thing.

The next day I primped a little in preparation and headed out to meet my very first online date, and Brendan sent me off with a pat on the back and reassured me that if I was found dead, bludgeoned to death with a candelabra in a thrift store, he’d avenge me. Trudging through the snow up to the taqueria, I recognized him on the sidewalk from his photos, though the proclaimed 6’2” on his profile was more like 5’8”. I’d worn flats, just in case. I wasn’t sure whether to hug or formally introduce myself, so I extended my hand to give a handshake that was a little more limp than I’d have liked due to my buzzing nerves and low blood sugar.

Once seated, we ordered the bargain tacos and engaged in a getting to know you chat where I realized several things. For one, he lived in a “renegade co-op” in Bushwick with [literally] starving artists and musicians who were “Freegans”. (For those unfamiliar, Freegans dumpster dive for trashed produce in the city, in a sort of Robin Hood-y lifestyle that better befits inhabitants of a 3rd world country than trust fund kids squatting in a unzoned commune in Brooklyn.) The questionable stains of unknown origin on his ill fitting Carhardts utility jacket seemed more appropriate, given the new information. Next, I discovered that his only employment was with himself, as he was a weed dealer. Moments later, when the bill was dropped that came to a whopping $5.45, he put down three dollars and excused himself to the restroom.

“He could at least have put a nug down for a tip,” I thought to myself.

Portrait of me as portrayed by my baby brother Jack, circa 2006

The conclusion of my first OKC to IRL meeting analysis was that my taco imbroglio wasn’t a scarring disaster, but it wasn’t exactly impressive or dazzling, either. I was discouraged, but I couldn’t cry over spilt Grey Poupon. I chose to approach bachelor number two a little differently. I searched through my “matches” for a while one afternoon and found two I thought were intriguing, and then formulated two thoughtful and and pithy personalized messages to each. Within 24 hours I had a reply from the Joel, the musician from Kensington, which sparked an email correspondence that lasted a week and eased my fear that I may meet him in person and have absolutely nothing in common, as was the case with bachelor number one. He was a lanky young lad in a band that played in a sort of circus folk style and dressed like Oliver Twist, so I opted to take him to my favorite eccentric spot for free music in Williamsburg. What I hadn’t anticipated was that I was about to meet up with the alter ego of the charming gent I’d been writing to: The Blacked Out Drunk Guy.

I beat him to the bar, which was more crowded than usual, so I was trying not to crane my neck around too conspicuously with eyes akimbo in search of my date. This time I didn’t have to worry about how to go about the introduction because as soon as we recognized each other, he had launched himself/fallen into my arms in an embrace that smelled equally of Old Spice and Jameson.

“Pleased to meetchew!” he exclaimed, slurring. “Sorry I got a head start on you… been drinking since 5 when I got off work.”

Less than charmed, I glanced at the coo-coo clock on the wall, which indicated 5 minutes to eleven. The only thing I’d had to drink that evening was Tropicana No Pulp, and my date was lurching side to side like a peg legged zombie adrift on a stormy sea of booze. For the first few seconds I’d been pleased that he turned out to be more attractive in person than his photos (which were already pretty handsome), but it was canceled out by the prospect of having to give him a piggyback ride to the subway later. Conversation proved impossible due to his uncontrollable nervous giggling and intermittent hiccupping, so I took the liberty of relocating us to the music venue in the back of the bar to take the pressure off, and hopefully deter his garbled chatter. My disaster aversion tactic only worked to a certain degree, as he had become significantly less interested in making conversation but not necessarily noise. There I was, on a date with an attractive, gainfully employed, talented musician with a suspender collection… who to everyone else in the cramped venue space was just the obnoxious drunk guy in the back making hooting noises and whistling at inappropriate intervals during an emotional singer-songwriter’s set.

When I returned home that night after an equally awkward goodbye, I was irritated, sober, and wielding my pepper spray willy nilly all down Richardson St. thinking to myself how pissed off I’d be if I was jumped again walking home from a date I wish I’d stayed home from. I’m fairly sure an assailant would have come out of a scrape with me that night one nutsack poorer. Back inside my studio, I changed into my flannel cat pajamas and grabbed my Macbook, heading for the stairway of my apartment building, which is the only place where the stolen internet connection comes in. I found myself back on OKcupid, where I had a few new messages; two were from random goober-y dudes wanting to know if Dr. Pepper chapstick really existed and if my carpet matched the drapes, and one from “dotcommiebastard”, who I had written a week before, forgotten about, and never heard back from.



... to be continued! Part Two: Frodo and His Many Rings.

ACK!!

“two more hours should tell the story, one way or the other. either I’m right and a catastrophe will occur, or it won’t and I’m crazy. in either case the outlook is not so good.”

-walker percy

the past few months have been challenging, to put things lightly.

as much as I would like to pretend that my life has no semblance to a cathy comic, the unforgiving facts have other plans. It’s 3am on a saturday night and I’m stoned in my studio apartment, listening to rubber soul, trying to reason with myself so that the other half of the brick of extra sharp cheddar in the fridge will make it through the night. my ambitious goal to go from dark red to blonde turned out giving me a mop of hair that is several different colors (including but certainly not limited to) a hue I can only accurately describe as "cheeto dust". I took out the trash wearing a button down blouse, pink slippers, and a pair of spanx earlier-- in broad daylight. christ, I belong to an online dating website and carry around pictures of my cat. (cameraphone, but still.)



despite these discouraging admissions, I’m willing to cut myself some slack. cathy probably wouldn’t have spent the afternoon at an antique book expo in the upper east side, then to stroll alongside the horsedrawn carriages to watch the sunset in central park, scribbling in a moleskin to kill time between art shows. on the other hand, I did end up going to the plaza hotel just to pee, and was later humped by a flagrant hobo on a crowded f train.

luck has never been my strong suit, but I excel in steely resilience and hope, though I’m conditioned to be perpetually braced for impact from my crash course thus far. since I moved to brooklyn, I would describe my financial situation as “vaguely impoverished” or “fashionably starved”, but lately I’ve just been pathetically, depressingly, horrifyingly penniless. we’re talking mayonnaise sandwich broke. jumping turnstiles in heels busted. as bukowski would say, “without a pot to puke in”. being fond of the finer things in life, I’ve always had a propensity to hanker for a higher grade of material goods, but I don’t need them in order to be happy. further still, I have learned, is that it always helps to be able to buy a new york post and a coffee every day in order not to be miserable.

if the first two of my so-called quarter life crises were fakeouts, this one has been relentlessly difficult and feels quite official for two reasons; I’m legitimately confused and panicked about what the hell to do with my life, and I’m actually about to turn 25. my mom’s favorite new thing to remind me of is that I’m “not nineteen anymore”, right behind “don’t fuck on the first date”. she’s getting married to her longtime boyfriend/fiancée in about a week in maui and when she pondered aloud the peculiarity surrounding the whole name change phenomenon, also took the opportunity to confess that she never really liked the spelling of my name and that I should seriously consider losing my “h” to seem more european.

“wait, would that mean I could stop shaving my pits?” I asked.

“just think about it. woody allen’s cristina didn’t have an ‘h’.” she replied with a judicious tone, slightly perturbed at my lack of seriousness.

“this is true,” I countered, “but she wasn’t european either, she just balled a spaniard in the movie.”

I actually entertained the thought for a moment after we’d gotten off the phone. was it possible that my mother had just offered me the holy grail of ridiculous parental advice? would I be more responsible, without an h? would my life miraculously change? would I get a book deal easier without wasting precious ink on my silent consonant? is my inevitable destined metamorphosis riding on semantic aesthetics and alternate spellings?

probably not. I still suspect that "h" is not the problem. the problem remains frustratingly at large. what I do know for sure is that my slate is wiped clean for me to change my identity in a manner that doesn’t require the drawing up of legal documents, all over again.

the jack of hearts

the night that I met owen felt distinctly like autumn though it was the first blush of spring, as the leaves had inexplicably begun to fall in late february of 2004. I was packed like a pubescent sardine into a jetta full of girls stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on a friday on telegraph avenue in berkeley, listening to a liz phair mixtape, when an audible gasp of a mentionable decibel erupted from the front seat. taylor, resident loudmouthed redhead of the crew who supplied everyone else with a hoard of endless adderall pills as well as pretentious anecdotes, had spotted a prime specimen.

"oh... my god," she said, "ohmygod."

the god she was referring to was about 6'2", lanky and lean, with tousled dark brown locks protruding in a curly mop from underneath the brim of a trucker cap, wearing an amoeba records bag slung haphazardly across his shoulder. he walked with his moon colored eyes to the ground in a shuffling gait, and the brooding affect he embodied made my heart skip several beats. he had the essence of a young bob dylan incarnate, save for the stupid hipster hat.

taylor continued, "would you look at that."

rose answered without skipping a beat, shifting the gears of the car while it idled, "homo."

"no way," I said, "he can't be..."

"totally gay." rose said.

taylor protested, "but why! he looks like he could be into chicks."

"it would be such a waste." I observed wistfully, noticing the curvature of his perfect behind in tight blue jeans.

"he's too pretty, and he knows it." rose said, and as if on cue, the boy turned his head to meet our lascivious stares. it was true.

"fuck." taylor muttered, as we all awkwardly turned our heads to look ahead to abruptly curtail our collective gawking. I couldn't resist to immediately look back, which he graciously met with a lopsided smile, and I turned beet red right as the light turned green.

"flamer." affirmed rose. and with that, we were off on our adventure seeking. we arrived at le chateau co-op shortly after, which was much more of a shanty motel than a dormitory, and was rumored to house the most elaborate meth lab in the greater bay area in its basement. every corridor was dark and lined with nubbly, cheap nylon carpet that is commonly found in dentists offices or mobile homes and littered with cigarette butts and empty beer cans. each sheetrock wall was covered from floor to ceiling in profane graffiti, obscure poetry, or splatters of paint. there was a vague yet omnipresent tincture of pee, and one of the squatters had brought home a runt pig named bella that ran amok, squealing and snorting amidst the constant melee.

the layout of this artfuck bomb shelter was comprised of 5 floors and resembled what might have been an ideal labyrinth for a mental institution if it hadn't been taken over by hippie stoner college students. the rooftop displayed a twinkling view of san francisco and the east bay, and at any given hour was giving airy respite to a tortured musician, be it a bongo soloist or an indie folk prodigy. the pool in the backyard was oft filled with random, floating pieces of furniture and gorgeous naked people who effortlessly embodied carefree, irreverent youth. everything about the co-ops was weird, gross, surreal, and made me feel drunk on puerility and freedom. it was a representation of what I thought might have happened if the babysitter gave up and left after the parents never returned home. these kids were wild and well versed in the alchemy of chaos and hedonism, but also maintained 4.0s. where had they been all my life? I wondered to myself, as I took another gravity bong hit.


le chateau


velkjo, me, mysterious hand on abe, abe



hanging out at the co-ops was my most "hands on" social experiment. each night there had the potential to end in a gory, savage lord of the flies showdown with some random RA's head on a stick carried by a pack of sociology majors donning togas. I learned how to shotgun beer, dumpster dive for produce, and accurately quote emmanuel kant. I did whipits in a bunk bed with a drug dealer named fliz who wore ski goggles and parachute pants and I meticulously managed a list of people who participated in my "makeout revolution" with a key in the margin to decode what kind of kisser they were and who I did "more" with. I got all of the animal house experience without any of the college, and it was some kind of incredible. on one bizarrely autumnal february night in the beginning of my epic berkeley ballad, I met owen, and his best friend rob.

cloyne was twice the size of chateau, home to over 200 cal students and the odd squatter, which was essentially what I became for a period of about 6 months. it wasn't quite as ghetto as chateau, and had a much more congenially aesthetic layout in addition to an outdoor hot tub that was really quite pleasant once you were drunk or high enough not to care what you might be swimming in. (real talk.) it was a sophisticated sort of squalor that made me feel grown up and edgy, existing in a glamorous indigence that I'd only dreamt of in my childhood bedroom as a sickly teenager.

rose had caught wind of a princess bride party across town at cloyne that promised free two buck chuck and choco tacos while supplies lasted, and her, taylor, myself, and several other usual suspects all piled on top of each other in the tiny car to jettison ourselves between co-ops. immediately upon walking in the front door, I peered into the darkened room where the movie was projected on the wall and the scene where wesley is rolling down the hill in the countryside yelling "aaaasss yoooou wiiiiiiiiiishhhhh" played out, and I saw a familiar face flickering in the light of the movie reel. it was the telegraph heartthrob from hours before... still wearing that abominable hat. I gasped and dug my pink glittery talons into rose's skinny thigh and hissed, "trucker cap. TRUCKER CAP! he can't be gay! do gay guys like the princess bride?" I thought better of it. "don't answer that."

rose observed the miracle that had occurred... we had manifested a face to face meeting with the mysterious street walking indie god of berkeley. we watched the rest of the movie and I bolstered my confidence with a choco taco, a drink, and a line of adderall, and as the credits rolled, the crowd dispersed and re-convened in the common area by the courtyard. someone had recently experienced an epic paper mache disaster, because in the middle of the floor there was a ruptured bag of plaster of paris that shot crusty white streams of powder ten feet in each direction, giving the ambience a coke-party-gone-awry feel. across from rose and I, on a different couch that was a veritable petri dish for scabies and other unsavory, itchy things, sat the boy in the trucker cap, and his friend who resembled a young robert smith with an unfortunate bleach job north of his ears. they were nursing PBRs and engaged in a conversation I desperately wanted to interrupt, but was at a loss for how to go about it. there was a moment where they both stopped talking and looked up at me at the very same time, so I did the only thing I could think of, in my split second of coquettish boldness and terror that I'd end up ridiculed. I looked at the object of my affection in the questionable hat, and stuck up my pointer finger to beckon him over to me. rose and I both stopped breathing, as we waited for a response. this playful mating dance was becoming more stressful than disarming an atom bomb.

the two boys continued to stare at me, now both wearing a bemused smirk, and then they looked at each other. trucker cap looked back first, and pointed to himself mouthing the word, "me?", and I finally exhaled as I nodded affirmatively. he shrugged to his friend, who was getting up to wander elsewhere, and rose took her leave back into the fray of the party.

now as he had come over to my side, I could see that he was blushing, and I felt sanguinely confident.

"hi, I'm owen." he said, sitting down next to me.

"christina. nice to meet you."

"that was impressive, what you just did right there. you're pretty ballsy, aren't you?" he asked, leaning back a little as if sizing me up.

"eh." I shrugged. "shy people are creepy. I had to meet you after serendipity set us up twice in one night."

"oh, that was you! in the car full of girls..."

"that were eyeballing you as if you were a fine christmas ham, yes. sorry about that." I laughed nervously.

"no, it made my night. until now."

"I'd have thought the princess bride to be a high point."

"but, you can see Rodents of Unusual Size on any given night here at cloyne."

"inconceivable!" I shrieked, and as we leaned back into the cushions, heard something in the frame crack underneath us making the couch sag in the middle, sliding our hips together. I fought the urge to faint.

"hey," he adjusted himself a little so as not to be sitting directly on me, "you remind me of a much more attractive helen hunt."

I stared at him and then furrowed my brow. he was lucky that his eyes were huge and grey blue enough to sail dreamboats.

"like, way more attractive." he continued.

"wrong answer." I pat his knee. he got up, grabbed my hand and helped me out of the busted la-z-boy, and we walked out into the moonlit garden. I was delirious from the endorphin rush, and I could hardly believe what was happening was real. suddenly, across the courtyard there was a great crash of broken glass and an anguished scream, and one of the palm trees shook and dropped cracked branches onto the pavement. owen dropped my hand and muttered, "oh, jesus, rob."

I looked up into the peculiarly animated tree and a hand shot out of the palm fronds clutching a half full bottle of charles shaw, followed by that brassy blonde afro that I recognized from my battle flirting just earlier.

"I'm okay!" he yelled, though no one had asked. "... but, I may have broken my ankle."

a herd of girls in dresses made from black glad bags tittered as they walked by, the last of which was pirouetting and singing "strawberry fields forever".

"that's my best friend." said owen, gesturing to the palm tree.

"well," I sighed, "this doesn't seem like the sort of place where anyone can survive without someone to help them undermine the spectacle."



to be continued...

play it again, sam

when I was 18, I had my first love triangle in berkeley, california at a co-op called the cloyne court hotel. this is a piece of the puzzle from someone else's point of view.



"... and so it was that five years after our first encounter, i was best friends with someone who could be described as being the bay area's most infamous smooth drunk talking indie god. and so it was that I came to sit on a couch on a typical drunken cloyne night with my best friend. had I been anyone else, I wouldn't have been sitting on the couch when you gave the "come-hither finger". had I not lived in cloyne, owen would most likely have been drunk at anywhere-but-cloyne on that night. but, of course we were there. and i have to admit that it is a little more than odd knowing that we both saw you at the same time. with that, if pressed to relate our first introduction to christina, our stories would no doubt sound similar. there we were. talking about music, booze, and women. I don't actually know if that's what we were discussing, but then, knowing us, that's exactly what we were talking about.

when suddenly, this blonde creature from across the room; sitting on her own couch with her own friend in her own through the looking glass version of mine and owen's little world, pleasantly shattered our goings-on by coolly rolling her finger to beckon the attention of two boys that were so lost in their perfectly normal tipsy banter that someone yelling "fire" couldn't have had more of an effect. there was no crazy man yelling "fire", though. that would've been too easy, too expected, and all together too dull to catch them off guard. but a woman. that's an entirely different situation, isn't it? both owen and I were looking up at someone whose motionings were, up until then, wholly unheard of. she was like a fiery draught filled to the brim of its glass with equal parts self-confidence and self-mockery. holding our drinks, we looked on, trying to understand the method behind what must obviously be madness; for we had only seen such cartoonish gestures in the movies or on television. holding our drinks, we both wonder who it is she's looking and motioning at. "is it me, rob?" "is it me, owen?" "is it both of us? or is it some drunk retard behind us with an aerosmith t-shirt on?" it's a brief wondering. so brief that only owen and I will ever know it happened. because owen and I are friends, you understand. and with such a friendship comes a mutual understanding of some kind of perfect equality that exists beyond the outside perceptions of those around us. the moment for confusion quickly evaporates like cigarette smoke on a windy day as the precedence of our past experiences re-colors our questions. of course we both know who she is drawing her gaze upon. of course we boths know it's owen, because tall blonde creatures with legs that never learned how to stop, and who live mostly on opposite sides of the room, are never the kind to single rob seretti out of a crowded environment. it is a dance that me and owen know all too well as I quickly take my leave and disappear to a place I don't remember.

it is a random enough moment. it is an odd way to have been introduced to you and it is an odd thing that our friendship (mine and yours) has lasted as long as it has. like my friendship with owen, this is one of those things that I do not wish to ever question or fully understand. I am sure that there is, between us, an entire bucket of seething worms that is better left alone. heaven forbid that those seething worms get loose of their bucket because no more good or ill than there already is could come of their release. under more common circumstances, I would relish the idea of bringing the unseen, unthought of, and unanalyzed to glorious light, but, this is not a common circumstance. uncommon individuals, such as ourselves, rarely create common situations. and the only real thing staying my foot from tipping over the bucket of worms is that I know that if I did, I wouldn't get very far in doing so because you'd be kicking the opposite side of it at exactly the same time. unlike most of the people I've met, I can't tell you about the unseen and unthought of and unanalyzed. there is not much I can tell you about the curious nature of our friendship that you don't already know and think about.

I assume that I will see you much earlier than I expected to, yet much later that I had hoped to.

love,

robert"

truly madly deeply

following is a short story I started writing tonight during a fit of insomnia... partially inspired from autobiographical tidbits, partially wishful thinking, and mostly because I bonded with ian earlier over pasta through a mutual love of "premo" music. title taken from the magnificent band, Savage Garden. hope this doesn't suuu-uuuuck!

TMD on youtube


lucy watched the fat, cartoonish snowflakes flittering past the window with a detached fascination as they made their descent to continuously coat all of brooklyn in a blanket of freezing white. it'd been weeks since she'd not worn long underwear, and if pressed for a guess, a month since she'd eked out a smile that wasn't vaguely pained. real winter has a way of complicating things beyond the reaches of what born and bred californians can grasp, especially those who are prone to chemical imbalances. 3500 miles away, in the middle of february, her mother was opening the windows of her home to combat the greenhouse effect, and dolores park was no doubt bustling with countless joyous champagne picnics underneath the unapologetically majestic palm trees. felix, on the other hand, was raised just a short LIRR ride away in ronkonkoma, a town that was delightfully kitschy in that fashions were a decade behind, the television sets were all ludicrously huge, and the accents were thick enough to make fran drescher sound like a recent alum from charm school. this was not his first hypothermic new york rodeo. he seemed genuinely unaffected and completely free of seasonal affective disorder's relentless and brutal clutches, which lucy couldn't bear to admit to anyone, much less herself, that she found heartening but equally irritating. felix bustled in the kitchen as he unwrapped a rump roast from emily's pork store and flung open the cabinet that contained the spice rack and snatched a vial with zeal that would better befit a mad scientist as he twisted off the cap and began sprinkling the meat. then he brought his hand down to spank it, and then gleefully started singing "I am cumin and I need to be ruuu-uubbed..." to the tune of the smiths as he caressed it on the counter.

lucy cocked an eyebrow and walked over to his side with her hand on her hip and pressed her nose to his neck as if on autopilot for a nuzzle. he smelled comforting and manly, sort of like waffles with syrup made from old spice aftershave.

"you know, the most charming part of watching you cook, is knowing that you'd be lampooning morrissey to a rump roast even if no one were around."

he went on, "just like everybody else dooooes...", and reached to turn on the broiler as he went for the whistle solo.

"I'm going to grab a coffee at cho's and some kibble for chewbacca. you want anything?" she asked. chewbacca meowed expectantly while flicking his tail by the empty bowl, though his fat roll extended well past his hindquarters when sitting in such a manner.

"no, thank you, darlin'. dinner's on in forty-five. don't be late!" he said, puckering his lips out sideways to steal a smooch. lucy obliged. then she suited up in her parka and marveled to herself how perfect he was, and how much she was undoubtedly going to sabotage it somehow.

domesticity was not something she thought she would soon attempt again after the both ill-conceived and ill-fated first venture into cohabitation on the opposite coast. at 22, she'd broken a cardinal rule that must be adhered to if one desires a functional and fulfilling life, and started dating one of her roommates that lived upstairs at a beautiful and drafty pepto bismol pink victorian on fell street in san francisco. as per usual, the beginning was enchanting and fit for a sitcom, as hormones came to a head one week when the other roommates were out of town for the holidays, and they were the only ones home because he was a jew, and she was a grinch. the start of it was full of heady, warm, fuzzy feelings, slumber parties, cooking eggs in robes, and hand holding in crosswalks. it progressed to birth control, peeing with the door open, sharing a cell phone plan, and renting zipcars to go to costco where he would buy her a bag of 500 low fat string cheeses because he knew exactly what she liked and needed. then, on valentine's day, she brought home an expensive bottle of sake from work at the sushi restaurant and found him watching dirty jobs on the discovery channel in his boxer briefs, which he defiantly refused to turn off. then after she'd drunk the bottle of sake to herself while watching a program graphically depict artificial bovine insemination, his ex-girlfriend showed up at midnight, drunk off of her skinny hindquarters, screaming into the mail slot of their front door that he had gotten her pregnant. that romantic holiday was the beginning of the end, and the end was mostly comprised of screaming matches, slaughtered trust, and panic attacks, and the relationship's death rattle lasted for a year. she felt personally attacked every time she came across bulk dairy products of all kinds or any woody allen movies.

this new union was unexpected and entirely uncomplicated, which likely would have made lucy nervous if she hadn't been gripped by the deliriously thrilling throes of new york's indian summer. she met felix at the coffee shop one utopian afternoon in late august, on a perfectly warm day with light humidity that made her short flaxen hair settle into soft ringlets that framed her heart shaped face. she wore a threadbare vintage jackson 5 baseball shirt she'd permanently borrowed from her brother with a cheetah print bra underneath, and was covered in bruises from kickball matches in mccarren and the general revelry that endless sunshine inspires. when she arrived at the coffee shop, amanda was playing her favorite neutral milk hotel album, kyle handed her a pink daisy on his way out while tipping his fedora winsomely, and catherine was opening a bag of salt and vinegar kettle chips by the espresso machine. lucy looked towards the front door to check for a publisher's clearing house crew with a camera to come crashing through, but instead, she saw an unfamiliar and intriguing young gentleman. he was deeply engrossed in a doodling session with a blue needle point marker on a cocktail napkin, and as though on cue when she noticed him, reached up to nudge his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his middle finger and then immediately nibbled the end of his thumb as he leaned back and inspected his handiwork as if entertaining a few last finishing touches. amanda noticed lucy's fixed gaze and leaned over the counter to mutter, "get it, girl." and she was halfway across the room while she replied, "watch me."

she sidled up to his table and put her hand on the empty chair across from him, gesturing to with the other to point to the drawing.

"der fuchs." she said.

"excuse me?" he replied, meeting her gaze inquisitively.

"'the fox', in german. he's cute. does he have a name?"

"nope."

"he needs one."

"no way."

"you're rather contradictory, aren't you?"

"get out of town." he jutted his chin out, which was dappled with a blonde 5 o'clock shadow.

lucy sat down. "then I'll help myself to the seat rather than risk an inquiry. hope you don't mind." she melted into the chair while sipping on the dregs of her iced coffee until the straw started to slurp and the sweat from the cup dribbled onto her knuckles. he signed the bottom of the napkin and slid it over to her.

"felix, huh?" lucy leaned forward and batted her lashes. "charmed, I'm sure. where are you from?"

"long island."

"I didn't think they had foxes there." she said, and felix overturned another napkin to reveal another picture of a whale with 17 eyeballs.

"you thought wrong!" he smiled, revealing a row of teeth so gleaming white that they resembled a row of porcelain chiclets, with a tiny chip in one of his two front teeth. "you should see our mutant sea mammals."

later that night when they were falling asleep in her bed for the first time together, he started singing savage garden lyrics into her ear and she playfully elbowed him while telling him to shut up.

he crooned, "... I wanna lay like this forever, until the sky falls down on meee."

"lies!" lucy cried.

"nuh uh." he insisted.

"what if you get hungry?"

"order pizza."

"what if you have to pee?"

"colostomy bag."

"I guess since you've thought of everything, I'll defer to your questionable judgement."

felix squeezed her tighter and sighed, "cuddling with you is like bathing in a jacuzzi tub of warm tapioca pudding.", and all of the sudden it was glaringly clear that she'd finally met someone that she could eat a few pounds of cheese with. it was just an added bonus that he loved her cat.

somebody in new york loves you

(transcribed from cocktail napkins)

it's one am somewhere in the east village on a sunday night and I've been walking aimlessly since my movie let out in the upper west side, despite the screaming protests from my tender bunion addled feet. I've been on them since eight when I woke up for my brunch shift, scrunched in a quasi-fetal position on my midget sized couch that is too large to be a love seat but not quite sufficient to allow a normally sized adult human to convalesce in a comfortable fashion. less relaxing still was the realization that my blanket was actually my winter coat, in a final desperate act to keep from freezing to death in the basement a la the Little Match Girl after using my bedding to improvise a method for soaking up the flood from a freak plumbing disaster the night before.

I reluctantly lumbered to the doorframe of the bathroom and observed what I had earnestly hoped was a dream, which in unreality, would have been much more comical. around 5 hours earlier I had returned to my apartment from a successfully executed girl's night on the town at my favorite local watering hole and though the memory was vaguely shrouded in a jovial whiskey mist, I recall that I was guffawing at some crack that alida had made regarding the possibility of latent lesbianism. I tossed my red tresses back in gleeful abandon, carelessly allowing my butt trajectory to be thrown off course, which caused it to make contact with the lid rather than the seat, which clattered violently into the holding tank, which then proceeded to shatter. it only took me a moment to stop laughing (and peeing) as to my absolute horror, I watched as a tidal wave of water erupted from behind me that shot across the floor in an ominous unbridled overflow. I shrieked at a decibel that made rufus flatten his ears to his head and make a squeak of confusion and alida turned to see me aghast with my pants around my ankles, horrifiedly watching the domestic disaster unfolding before my eyes.

"what did you do?!"

"fuck! FUCK! the toilet... exploded!"

"I see that, but how in the hell did you manage--"

"FUCK!"

consumed by panic, I crouched by the tank as the water continued to rush forth, and I scanned my mental rolodex for any information that might be relevant to rescuing myself from drowning in the basement. lifting a bus off of a baby, sure. frying an egg in an orange rind in the woods, fine. I'd never anticipated the notion that I would ever have the need to employ plumbing expertise. alida was behind me propping up my soggy mattress and throwing bedding in front of the rapidly expanding flood like she was sandbagging in a hurricane, and a few moments later I found the valve behind the bowl that was my redemptory killswitch. I panted and sighed in disbelief as I pulled my jeans back up, and observed rufus sitting on a textbook for html tutorials that was floating in the kitchen, flicking his tail in the puddle disinterestedly.

admittedly, the whole ordeal seemed strangely apropos. I feel like I've been managing various shitsplosions just in the nick of time in more ways than the unlikely accidental smashing of my porcelain throne. sunday night found me in an introspective mood that would lend itself perfectly to a long walk followed by an even longer writing session, so I did just that. I toured the glistening gunmetal streets of the lower east side, lit by hanging christmas garlands on every block, each littered also with skeletons of busted umbrellas that rolled like metal tumbleweeds into garbage heaps, spokes poking obscenely through crumpled canopies like broken bones through skin. for a few minutes, I saw no one at all, and I mused to myself whether or not I'd possibly come across the one block in manhattan that sleeps when I noticed the dimly lit door of a speakeasy looking place in alphabet city. I'd found my spot.

naturally, I generally try and limit my activity in bars to revelry and shenanigans, but tonight was meant to be between a pen and I in a place where no one could ever find me. I picked the far end of the bar in a position where I could see most everything, but almost no one could see me, partially obscured by the jukebox in a shadowy corner of a village dive. when I was so deeply engrossed in my scribbles that I practically had my nose to the paper, a waifish wisp of a blonde girl slid unctuously onto the barstool next to me and asked in a husky, implacable thick accent, "have you ever written on an airplane puke bag?"

I was shaken from my trance and I looked at her, as her large caramel eyes peered at me inquisitively. she was disarming as she was tiny, and she focused her doe-like gaze on me as the folds of her long grey cashmere sweater settled around her in a notably elegant manner. her beauty was undeniable but subtle, with an almost elven quality to it that was accented by the tips of her ears poking slightly through her long golden hair.

"no, actually, I haven't." I smiled. "I've written on a lot of other weird shit, though."

"what are you writing?"

"honestly? it's nothing of terrible consequence."

"sure." she said, curling her lip coyly, unconvinced.

"I'm writing about how I broke my toilet."

"what are you really writing?"

"seriously."

she paused, unsatisfied with my answer, and then replied, "you're fucked up, aren't you?" I shrugged, bristling into slight self consciousness, unsure of how to respond to the query without having opened up with even the lightest conventional formalities.

"it's okay, you can tell me. I'm fucked up, too. how'd you break your toilet?"

"I'm a klutz."

"ah. you think you're fat, don't you?"

"no... that's not quite it."

"you can tell me. is it a boy? it's amazing, these things strangers can say to each other in bars. don't you think?" she had the effortless and soothing temperament of a traveling gypsy queen and her wiles were dangerously attuned. "your heart must be broken, I've seen that look in the eyes of others... let me tell you a story," she went on and I anticipated her confession, "once, I mailed a puke bag break up letter."

"oh? to whom?"

"an african man that I was in love with. it was written on the plane back to costa rica, and I hope that it never arrived. when I was twenty-two I'd gotten unexpectedly pregnant by him and we were going to get married, but I had a miscarriage when I was dancing at our wedding, and we just couldn't survive the strain. when I left him I moved to new york. it's funny, you see, the most tragic things in life always end up leading to shaping your life into what it was meant to be, and it's for the better."

"wow. that hardly compares to my toilet story, I don't know if I can follow up with that now."

"you're not fat." she said, putting her small, dainty hand on my thigh. it was childlike and genuine, and suddenly I wanted to hug her.

"thanks."

"listen," she went on, chewing on the straw of her vodka soda, "you can't take yourself too seriously. some people will say you're not sensitive enough. you know what I say to that?"

"what?"

"sometimes your clit's too big, and sometimes it's too small. you just have to have faith that someone out there has the right touch."

the bartender, a surly man in red with a mammoth goatee, had begun to eavesdrop and raised a pint glass to cheers to her whimsical meme.

"here here!" she said. "simpatico!" as she lowered her arm her sweater fell askew and exposed a small scripted tattoo below a rising sun on the top of her wrist.

"what's it mean?"

"funny you should ask about this; perfect example. I thought it would be so cool to get my tattoo in arabic, despite the fact that I don't speak the language and have no tie to the culture. I thought it would be thoughtful to have a saying on my wrist that everybody knows, in writing not many could understand. I thought it said, 'this too shall pass' for a year until a tunisian classmate of mine pointed to it and asked me what 'that too shall pass' meant. figures, no? forever in my skin is a grammatical error, the thanks I get for trying to be too cool."

"you could always get it covered up to say 'this clit shall pass'."

she laughed melodically and slipped me a cocktail napkin with her name and address on it in swirling script. "promise you'll send me a puke bag someday."

"next time I fly."

with that, she gracefully lowered herself off of the stool and left me to my stack of napkins in the shadows, and the scruffy bartender who looked on with piqued interest.

I raised the empty glass of melting ice I'd been absentmindedly clutching and spoke up again, "you know how natalie portman does this thing where her tongue hits the back of her front teeth when she smiles very sincerely?"

"course." he said.

"I fall in love with her a little bit, every time."

autumnal meditations in an emergency

rufus & jack o'lantern

maren badeau once told me I was of a certain disposition that was abnormally excited by "seasonal treats". as it turns out, not much has changed. right now I'd enjoy a nice, seasonal xanax: spice packet gravy flavored, and time released to last until the new year. maybe with a side of benzo candied yams and leftover quaalude pot pie?

I've not been blogging or writing, really. a month has whipped by in a series of stop motion blinks, and I've been alternately hyper-tuned to and then frightfully disconnected from the unpredictable intricacies of mi vida brooklyn. I can't seem to find a sanctuary or an even-keeled routine, and I feel exposed and maddeningly lost. this particular phase I'm in currently is reminiscent of puberty, except that now my boobs are enormous, I don't have homework, and everything is inevitably ruined with or without the help of sex: the ultimate complicator.

october was manic. I had the time of my life on vacation in san francisco, reveling in my freedom from it and marveling at its ability to gloss anything over with impermanence, burritos and sunshine, and I returned to new york unexpectedly jobless and at the onset of seasonal affective disorder (my least favorite treat of all). things haven't all been bleak, and I've spent a ton of time kicking it with my lovely friends from both coasts, who are supportive and kind to me no matter what luck I've been dealt, and that's most heartening of all. I am just tired of my bank account being overdrawn and my fridge being empty and having to ration dimes to ride the subway. I'm tired of being a mooch. I need to manifest a more pleasant destiny to get me through the winter...

and I'll figure it out. I always do.

to be continued...

you're ugly and your mother dresses you funny

september's cool, soporific lullaby colors and forgiving breezes haven't soothed my uppity moods at all so far, and I've almost reached it's end. can't say I'll miss it. the crepuscular glimmer of hope in the distance is enough to keep me going, but the motions are hard to go through with a head full of rust and a bank account full of mothballs. I'm not even pretending to know what I want, but I'm certainly discovering what I don't, which is much less glass-half-empty than it might sound.

my mom's maiden voyage to brooklyn is imminent, and the prospect of showing her everything that made me renounce california for the far coast that's wrought with rougher edges is exciting but slightly nerve wracking, too. she's only been to new york once during a weekend in 1983 when she was on her honeymoon with my father, and I'm in no part uncertain that she spent it being chauffeured around in a towncar from art gallery to designer boutique somewhere in or around the upper east side. it's going to be a culture shock, to be sure, and I'm charging up my little pink point and shoot to capture guaranteed precious moments, such as Mom's First Subway Rat. I really do think that she'll understand how my neighborhood has become my home, and perhaps let go of her outrageous notions of how brooklyn must be... wrought with rapists, gang bangers, vagrants and thieves, rather than grumpy poles, hasidic jews, and hipsters in nut hugger stretch pants. I think she finds it impossible to wrap her head around finding community within such a juggernaut of a city, and I'm about to set out to show her otherwise. she doesn't have to leave the comfort of sonoma, but perhaps will have a better understanding of why I can never go back unless it's christmas and there's a check for me under a tree. my cousin summed it up pretty well at my bon voyage gathering when he put a pragmatic, vaguely paternal hand on my shoulder and simply said, "well kid, you were never a country mouse."

@chuckklosterman

today while I was walking down graham avenue, stoned on too much theraflu and snorgling my reluctant way to variety coffee to work on this freelance writing project on young adult's progressive values in modern society, I saw a toddler and his mom in front of the curious gravestone store that also sells fresh baked bread. though out of earshot, their body language indicated that she was instructing him to do something and he was barely obliging, the slight grudge in his consequent action evident by the way he pursed his lips in frustration and put his pudgy hands on his osh kosh b'gosh clad hips. the mother smiled at him warmly, reached into a sandwich bag and handed him a single, electric blue frosted froot loop, and the boy burst out into an wild fit of unbridled jubilation. he squealed and shoved it in his mouth ecstatically and started gumming it as he danced in a circles like a baby dervish. for a brief, sincerely triumphant moment, he was the happiest kid in brooklyn.

it made me long for the days when a froot loop was enough.

BLARF

over it. this day is so... eeyore.

did I shave my legs for this?

my first “boyfriend” (I use quotations because we were never in fact “official”) was during the period immediately following my remission when I was 18, rocking a bleached buzz cut, and REALLY stoked to be alive. his name was jeff, he was a musician, which I predictably swooned over, pontificating and romanticizing the potential of being an artist's muse, when really he was just getting stoned, taking acid, and hitting random buttons on a pc laptop and fancying himself the next thom yorke. jeff and I first made out on his best friend’s floor after I spent an entire summer lusting after his mysteriously tortured and permanently high hiney, listening to tenacious D and the mildly disturbing sounds of ashley losing her virginity in the next room. I was done for. the romance was unequivocal. 6 months after that, I ended up giving him my cherry on his grandmother’s bed after we had made it roughly 18 minutes into Lost in Translation and he turned to me and said, “so, uh, are we gonna do it or what?"

so, we did it. It was brief, and I remember being vaguely distracted by two things: my grandmother on her death bed having told me she was going to be watching from the ceiling with a bag of popcorn when I lost my V card, and also my little pink socks awkwardly bobbing in the air above us because I thought that you were supposed to stick your legs straight up during a missionary deed. [It didn’t seem to be working, but, give me a break. I didn’t watch a lot of porn.]

after it was over he had me check to make sure I hadn’t soiled his meemaw's linens, and he fell asleep. I laid half awake all night, naked on top of the covers and sometime around 4 am there was a knock on the sliding glass door that led out to the backyard, and and when I looked over, jeff was peering into the room with his hands cupped around his eyes to see. I was totally bewildered. I turned back to the other side of the bed to see that jeff was, in fact, still there and still very much in the buff and unconscious. this could mean one of two things: I had somehow absorbed some of the hallucinogenic drugs by sexual osmosis, or jeff’s twin sam was just perving out on us. I shrieked and tried to cover myself up, sam yelled “oh, shit.” and vaulted over the fence and ran back to the party down the street where he proceeded to share jeff and I’s intimate moment with a big group of dudes who practically owned the rumor mill.

shortly after, I put my clothes back on (I’d worn matching panties, just in case we were to participate in any of the “doing it”) and woke jeff up to tell him I was going home, but I didn’t, I just drove around watching the sunrise in the hilly vineyards in sonoma valley in my mercury sable luxury sedan listening to magnetic fields mixtapes and wondering if I should be feeling anything. all I was really feeling was sort of bummed out that I’d just given it up to a dude who, for all intensive purposes, really didn’t give two hoots about me, and also like I could go for a couple of advil liquigels.

the next day I called my mom into the room when I was doing my makeup out of my purple glitter caboodle case before going out to the shop, my small town’s only answer to a youth center, out in a warehouse in the boonies that was half of dowling magnet factory.

“mom, I’ve gotta talk to you about something.” I stated matter of factly, as I swiped on a second layer of blue wet 'n wild mascara.

“sure.”

“don’t freak out.”

“okay.” she put her hand on her hip.

“seriously, no freaking out.”

“honey, I hate it when you pull this shit.”

“you’re already freaking out…”

“just tell me!”

“I did it with jeff. we used a condom… it kind of sucked. don’t worry. everything’s fine. I just remembered that you’d ask me to tell you when I became “active”.” I punctuated my distaste for such an official term for this as of yet silly act by making a stink face. my mother took a deep breath and absorbed the info, and then spoke.

“really?? with jeff?”

“yes. It was just time. I was seriously the ONLY one. I’m about to turn 19. I was starting to feel like a eunuch.”

“and you were safe?”

“of course. sex ed. duh.”

“well..." she struggled a moment with the appropriate response to this unexpected news, "... thank you for telling me.”

“no prob. I’ll be home before two. bagels tomorrow?”

she shook her head at me. jeff worked at the bagel shop.

“love you!” I gave her a kiss on the cheek and bolted for the door.

a week passed with radio silence from jeff’s camp, and then I ran into him at the farmer’s market on the square and pulled him aside, where he unceremoniously dumped me over a corn dog from uncle bill’s. he told me we probably took things too far, seeing as he was moving to australia, indefinitely, after the following two weeks to work on a mango farm. he promised to write a song about me, sitting amongst the lush and vast fields of oz, and next I heard from him was in an email 8 months later saying he’d taken ill mid-harvest and caught something that the locals call “mango fever” that involved too many embarrassingly gross symptoms to share. my imagination ran wild with what delirium and oozing pustules must’ve befallen him. my V card had been avenged by tropical fruit!

these days (and after I might add, we attempted to date once more about 3 years ago that was just as ill-fated and entirely ridiculous) jeff and I are on friendly terms and he lives with his albino russian-israeli girlfriend in the east village. he’s apologized profusely for acting like a twat, and I can truly say that any residual hard feelings are null and void. being a teenager is hard enough as it is, and we had to deal with being teenagers in a tiny wine country town where the dating pool was occupied with a couple of tadpoles and the occasional slimy snake. c’est la vie. dwelling causes cancer. (I would know.)

I got a bug to write about the first time I really tried to “date” someone because I feel as if not much has changed, and I’m frustrated. some experiences have been more extreme than others, but my patterns remain. emotional unavailability (thanks, dad), instability, prevalence for infidelity, reach and withdrawal games, and sexual mediocrity have all been themes (and only one such experience offered them all at once!). the next dude after jeff was a manorexic bro from san diego who said he was “worried about my bod” when the condom broke and then refused to go to planned parenthood with me. I dated a male model from utah who drunkenly pissed in my laundry hamper after trying to surprise me with anal one night who ended up giving me scabies. my rebound after Jorge was impotent, shared a great deal of personality traits with george costanza, and lives with his boyfriend in oakland now. I once went on a dinner date that ended with me watching him get dragged off by several cops to the clink, bawling like a newborn, and getting charged with assault and battery because he lost his temper and kind of, sort of, tried-to-kill-his-roommate-with-a-bat. this most recent guy brought me to meet all of his friends one night, then took me back to his place for the first time after 6 weeks of dating, and in the morning upon inspecting his walls, found them practically wallpapered with photos of his ex like a break up mausoleum. what the fuck? am I doomed? would it be best to dip myself in honey and dive into a pile of lesbians? I came back after black.

are you there, god? it's me, christina.

the season change was anything but smooth this year, and the bizarre, florida-esque hot rains segued quick and clumsily into overcast, breeze swept evenings that merit the first donnings of fall's scarves and sweaters. there's a bittersweetness as of late that seemed to be originally stirred up in unsettled dreams that quietly bled into my waking hours without warning, and I've tried to greet it with as much patience as I can muster. I've been in cruise control, but I have no idea where I'm headed, and every time I think I want stability, reliability, and responsibility, I balk. somehow I can't seem to wrap my head around the idea that a routine would behoove me immensely, even though I know it must be true... it's frustrating to have had the other shoe dangling perilously for so long, not knowing if the drop is an empty threat. how do you go about chasing a goal if you're not sure what it is? is it as simple as attempting to discern the difference between bravery and foolhardiness? and then either way, resolving not to care?

of all of my accomplishments, I am most proud and fiercely protective of my freedom and independence. I don't have to answer to anyone, I certainly don't want to, and I go where I want, when I want, why I want. I make my own deadlines and I break them accordingly. while this lifestyle has suited me in the past, I wonder how it fits into the ways I want to grow, and if it does at all? am I capable of allowing myself to rely on more the occasional kindness of strangers and the ineffable, whimsical wiles of chance? I am not faithless, but I have two dueling split sides to my personality, and that is my dreamer versus my realist; what I hope for, and what I know, my ideals battling my fears. so many major aspects of my life are on a knife's edge and I know that whichever way I fall, I have no guarantee of landing on my feet. in fact, given my track record with grace, it's likely that I'll end up with a deviated septum, a busted heart, a pride hematoma and a broken bank. but, being a pussy didn't get me where I am, and for the most part, I like where that is. today I'm trying to bear in mind that if the chips are down and the dealer always wins... it's probably time for me to learn how to play poker.

from west to east

"What are the consequences of California? I have been thinking about this question because I am still young and rootless enough to feel that I might, in the future, move back there.

Having lived in California and on the East Coast for long stretches of time, it is viable (as well as romantic) to use these places as metaphors. California is ease, beauty, home and a certain surrendering of ambitions. The East is difficulty, stimulation, work and independence. The former seems more immediately appealing than the latter but then, in practice, it’s often not.

The West has better books and food and more space. The natural landscape can be sublime where the East is never sublime (it’s a matter of scale). One actually feels more deeply in California, and thinks less. Thinking is an indoor activity. It’s an East Coast thing.

Generalizations can be helpful and truthful in these matters. The important question appears to be: where do I feel most natural? Most unassailed? In spiritual terms, imaginative terms and digestive terms. And this is something that still seems to switch back and forth."

-Molly Young

as a born and raised california girl, I definitely feel as if I wear the scarlet C on my forehead quite prominently as I go traipsing about the city streets of new york. it's not terribly hard to discern my alien presence on the east coast as I indiscriminately smile at people on the subway while turning the page of my 7 x 7 magazine as I absentmindedly readjust my pink flip flops. as much as I enjoy the unique energy and insurmountable culture shock, 6 months apparently does not a new yorker make. just because neglecting to compost here is acceptable (and possibly encouraged) does not mean that there is not a law in my hometown that can get you arrested if you don't keep a pile of rotting food in your kitchen to 'save the environment'.

I have noticed that though I seem to have recaptured an elusive beatitude that went by way of a series of unfortunate events in san francisco, I'm not as of yet satisfied with my productivity here. new york is a entity of millions of hustlers, rat racing and beating deadlines and cut-throat swashbuckling their way to the top of the totem pole. there always seems to be someone better that you have to anticipate monkeywrenching your failsafe plan, or at the least, someone faster or with an extensive rolodex of who-you-knows. my laissez faire california coasting sensibility is regrettably intact and at times detrimental to keeping pace with everything. here, my "super stressed, so I'll get around to it tomorrow" is another man's "I pulled an all nighter and had it done by this morning".

it's a cliche new york-ism to complain of feeling a rock bottom lonely in an endless sea of this bustling metropolitan mecca. that cliche is one that I'm willing to defend as being (at times) indisputably true. from my outsider's view, I see the rough beauty and appreciate the extremity that new york lifestyle lends. if california is temperate sunshine, boundless ephemeral fairy tales, and a universal destination for young people to retire, new york is physically and proverbially as far opposite as you can get. here, you leave your mark, or you don't. it's a confederation of movers and a hegemony of shakers. you put out or you get out.

when I announced my coast swapping plan, my friend jeff confessed his concern about new york making kind, gentle people hard and bitter, and while I took it into account, I didn't necessarily agree. maybe I just haven't been here long enough. right now, it's teaching me independence and responsibility, benevolently providing endless writing material, and consciously molding me into who I want to be.

thanks to molly, for getting me thinking.

San Francisco's fine,
You sure get lots of sun.
San Francisco is fine.
You sure get lots of sun.
But I'm used to four seasons,
California's got but one.

-Bob Dylan

forever 21: friend or foe?

let's get real here: we are in a recession. no bones about it. we're all broke, cranky, anxious, and if you're in new york, on the verge of combustion from the sun's incessant assailing rays. all this taken into account, us ladies, we still all want to look good. no one wants to go job hunting looking like a shabby wabby, but being monetarily stunted can put a damper on donning yves saint laurent's finest, and even the fendi bags on canal st. are suffering the effects of inflation. what's a girl to do?

instead of the clouds parting, harkening to the angel's choir, and rainbows shooting out of my ass as I'm lifted to the retail hosannah in the highest, I climb wearily out of the fetid, swampy subway, bust out my sweat rag for a satisfying wipe, and throw elbows on 14th street like a shadowboxing breakdancer to get to the front doors of the discount fashion mecca:



ah, made it. I always try and give a nod of recognition to the security guard in the doorway because I feel like not many people do, and they've got to just stand there all day bored out of their minds lamenting on how pointless and boring their job is. (it beats being a fluffer, but not by much more than a bee's ass. ) now, it's time to start the dig. you know where you are, and you know what you're facing: mediocrity, lycra and broken teenaged dreams. you're being assailed from every angle by offensive fluorescently colored halter tops and plaid overall shorts that only a mother could love. this isn't just about convenience and value anymore, it's about the thrill of the chase, the huntress on a mission, and how high your tolerance for psychic pain is.

somewhere, deep in the forever 21 jungle that is inhabited by long island chippies and bronx cholas alike, is the triple cherry jackpot of 19.99 sundresses. we all know it's there, and that's why we go. it's the fashion blood on the dancefloor, it's the holy grail of a date dress, it's the perfect hot pants that august has pined for so fruitlessly... and it's so close you can almost taste the chic, swirling floral print of a darling topshop knockoff.

about a half an hour into the search, I've got an armful of hopefuls. a couple of onesies, an article with way too much taffeta but perfectly placed sequins, and maybe a pair of jeans from the bargain bin that are a size too small to practice wishful thinking. now to face the dressing room. the line is 20 strong and seemingly stagnant, and I'm running out of patience and friends to text. at this point I have no choice but to pay attention to the music, and I've deemed forever 21 the only place on earth in which I don't feel guilty listening to lady gaga. the 8th grader in front of me knows the words and the dance from the video and the 35 year old woman behind me is reading twilight and fighting back tears.

once inside the room, I pull the curtain closed behind me and try to keep as covered as possible as I'm changing because of the frequency with which I've been walked in on at this particular establishment. I usually try on what I'm most hopeful about first, so that the rest of the outfits turning out horribly is less irksome in the end. the zipper is pulled up, a few buttons fastened, and voila! there it is. the one dress I was sure was the one... and now I'm staring in the funhouse style mirror that makes my skull look like a pinhead and coming to the realization that cap sleeves make me appear uncomfortably similar to a powderpuff linebacker listening to a song about "riding a disco stick". beacon's closet is starting to look pretty good, again.

I've decided after my 900th bout with trial and error that resulted in self esteem stock plummeting and 2.34 panic attacks, that I'm returning to my all-thrifting, all the time policy until I win the super lotto or find a better job. forever 21 is strictly a supplier of cheap sunglasses and frilly underpants from here on out.

RIP forevs + christina, forevs.