Decisions.

Let me tell you what excites me these days. There are cookies in the kitchen at work-- good cookies. I thought we were all out, but I saw the corner of a package sticking out from behind the cheddar goldfish in the bowl on the table in there. They are well hidden. I am saving them for later.

Missing Pillow

I woke up this morning to find that one of my pillows was gone. I stripped the sheets off the beds, moved around some piles of laundry, neatened up the place a bit, but all to no avail. I am short one pillow. It was there when we went to bed last night.

This can't bode well for the rest of the day.

That's this many: 700,000,000,000

Does anyone else see that, if this goes through, the federal debt goes up by 7% *overnight*? That's scary.

So... I'm kind of an asshole

I'm back home in the Boston 'burbs for the labor day weekend, visiting the fambly. I made the mistake of digging up my high school yearbook from the attic last night. There were a lot of track related pictures of me and, since I've been running again, it inspired me to bring the fire back. So this evening, round eight-fifteen I set out on a run towards my high school and did some half mile repeats on the track under the lights. I over did it a little and made my run home a sort of walk/run combo. No big deal. It's the 'burbs though, and it's summertime so you know some asshole kid has to come driving by in his mom's minivan and scream out the window at me "woooooooo!" Now this brings back memories.

Let's get in the way back machine and take a trip to July of 1994. Hair was still fairly big here in MA and IQ was running pretty low. Me? I was pissed off. My high school girlfriend had broken up with me over Christmas break from college and, during my summer home, she'd been jerking me back and forth on a chain. I was pretty easy to jerk back and forth on a chain back then. Hell, I'm still pretty easy, but I digress. I was mad and I decided to throw myself into running. I'd spent the end of spring track injured and I'd finally gotten myself back up to health over the summer. I'd work all day in a spoiling hot warehouse for stupidly low wages, then I'd head home, eat, wait for the evening to cool, and set out.

Now, this is Massachusetts in July so, by "evening to cool", I mean 80 degrees and 90 percent humidity. After the first few miles of my run, the thick cotton track T-shirt I'd unwisely chosen to wear had been removed and wrapped around my fist. I was down to wearing my skimpy shorts and running shoes and my anger at all womankind. With about a mile left to go, I ran by a group of kids. Two guys and two girls. Big hair, baseball caps on at stupid angles... the whole deal. One of the big-hairs got a look at the glory of my 120 pound, 18 year-old frame and whistled.

"Oooo. Sexy!" she mocked.

Fuck you. I thought. Actually, I didn't just think it. I said it, with accompaniment of the appropriate hand gesture. The funny hats were not pleased.

"What did you say?" asked tough guy number one.

I slowed, then turned and ran backwards a few steps. "You heard me." I extended my hand towards them and beckoned with my finger for them to come get me.

"Get him!"

It was on.

I turned and ran, trying to not go too fast that I would lose them. My plan was to run them out a little bit, get them out of breath and then turn and see if they still wanted to fight. I didn't care how many or how big they were, back then, I could have run them into the ground so badly they wouldn't have stood a chance afterwards. I got a little too much adrenaline in my system though, and found myself too far ahead. They were out of sight around the bend behind me when I slowed and turned again. I could hear a car pulling up and car doors opening.

"There's a guy running up ahead!" I heard. "Get him!"

Uh Oh.

So they gave chase in their car. One of them was bright enough to suggest that they pull up ahead of me so I wouldn't be too far gone by the time they got out of the car, but I simply crossed the street and kept going, leaving them no choice but to chase on foot or pop a U-turn. One opted for on foot so we ran about a half mile. At some point, his shoe fell off, so I stopped and waited while he put it back on, then we ran some more. He gave up and I turned and looked at him, but we didn't fight. It had gone out of him. He left and I trotted home, feeling slightly vindicated, but giddy and full of energy, not thinking about my ex for the first time in a while.

Now, faithful readers, back to the present day. Naturally, this little car shouting incident reminded me of that fateful night, so long ago. I'm older now and supposedly wiser, and they were just kids, so I just watched them as they drove to the intersection about two-hundred yards ahead and slowed for the light. It was the Five Corners intersection, infamous for the long waits at red lights. Do I really want to be an asshole? I thought. Yeah. I do.

I ran them down. Two hundred yards at a sprint, keeping my eye on the intersection to make sure they would stay stuck at the red while I caught up. Traffic the other way still had green while I closed in. I had plenty of time, so I slowed my steps and ran out to the side of the passenger window a little so they wouldn't hear me or see me coming in the mirror. The passenger window was rolled up now, but the little shit in the car with his hood pulled over his baseball cap was looking straight ahead. Good. He'd no idea I was coming.

I strode right up beside the car, leaned in towards the passenger window, put on my best killing face and screamed: "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Kid jumped about two feet off his seat. The look in his eyes when he caught sight of me was priceless. I gave him my biggest shit-eating grin and a slow, sarcastic wave. Not so cool after-all, are you kid? Then I turned my back to him and slowly jogged away.

Yeah, he was probably seventeen and I should probably feel ashamed about making a teenage boy shit his pants in his mom's car, but tonight I was a teenager too, and pissed off, and not about to take shit from anybody and, somewhere in my town, there's a high school kid out for a training run who's not going to get whooped at by these assholes ever again. Score one for our side.

I Think The Thing You Said Was True

I remembered last night's dream as I started my shower this morning. I was just soaping up when I heard knocking coming from the other room. This isn't unusual as a particular acoustic property of my apartment makes noise coming through the window from the alley behind echo off the front wall so that it seems to becoming from the front of my place. Normally this wouldn't have bothered me, but then it all came back.

I was in the shower when I heard a thump at the front of the house. Again, this is not uncommon so it didn't bother me. Then, suddenly, it was dark. It was not as though the lights had gone out, but more as though the light had simply been drained from the room. I turned forward towards the shower curtain and I felt the heaviness of a presence just on the other side of it. I had heard nothing enter the room, no footsteps, no breathing. I was scared, but not terribly so. I searched for a weapon, knowing I would fight and that it would be futile. I felt resigned.

The presence shifted forward and wrapped itself and the curtain around me. I felt its weight on me, preventing me from moving. I was more confused than scared. What was this and where had it come from? Again, resignation washed over me. I awoke face down in my bed just as a long, tired sigh rushed out of me from the back of my throat.

I've been reading too many vampire novels. I turned onto my back and went to sleep again.

Back in the light of the morning, I turned off the shower, listened for a few minutes for the sound to recur, and then cranked the faucet back on and went back to my business.

Interlude

Listen.

Though you're reading this with your eyes, listen. Hear these words with your heart, because it's very difficult and I'm only going to try to say them once and I'll probably get them wrong, but I need you to understand.

You want to think that your life is big and important. Of course you do. Everyone does. You want to think of the big important things, but you shouldn't and it's not. It's small and it's insignificant and I don't mean to belittle it at all, because it's the small and the insignificant that make the difference. It's not your overwhelming love or your tidal waves of passion or your all consuming grief. It's nothing to do with the depth of your soul. It's "I made casserole. Come and sit with us." It's a letter in the mail. It's five 0-clock on a Saturday when you know your friends are waiting for you. It's the small things-- the spaces in between. Remember this.

I'm only going to say it once.

We Only Get So Many Days

I went to the bar at the end of my evening, because I wanted to be around people before I went to bed. I sat with my whiskey and looked up at the movie they were playing and minded my own. I thought about chatting up the pretty girl on the barstool next to me, but the body language was all wrong. She was casting glances at me, but maybe only because I was looking at her first. She kept her back to me and didn't seem approachable. Then again, fuck it, I thought. I turned towards her in an overt way so that she would have to either face me, or diss me completely. I struck up and awkward conversation about the movie they had playing and took it from there.

We stumbled. We hit a few dead spots. I threw out some jokes that were big misses, but I did OK. We did OK. She was a little shy, which makes it harder, but it seemed like she genuinely wanted someone to talk to, so I kept it up. By closing she was leaning towards me when she spoke, her arms brushing mine on the bar. When the lights came on, her friends had left and I walked her to her car, which happened to be parked next to mine.

The moment came, where I was required to make a move-- to ask her for her number or, if I wanted to be bolder, ask her back to my place-- and I did nothing. This is hard for me to do in such a situation-- to do nothing. I felt like I was dissing her and, I suppose I was. I liked her well enough, but we didn't quite click and that's what I'm looking for. There are times when I've chickened out when the moment came, and there's part of me that's nagging me that this is what happened here, but it's not. I could have done it, and it would have been easy, way easier than striking up a conversation was in the first place, but I didn't. I'm through with all that. I want something real, a real connection and that wasn't what was happening here. I could tell that after only just a few minutes. I should be proud of myself for following the rules I've set down, but I'm not. I'm just home alone again.

And now I have one less.

You Wite A Lot About Relationships, Don't You?

This is true, and I think I've pointed it out before. There's really no denying it. This blog and the one preceding it are really nothing more than steaming piles of low-grade emotional goo, and I'm fine with that. I really am. Perhaps it's a problem that I'm only moved to write by the saccharine. I have, after all, plenty of good stories. There's the one about leading a carload of punks on a chase on foot during a night run in my suburban home town and the one where I poke my left eye with a palm frond, get it patched over, and then catch a cold and wind up shuffling around my friend's apartment, glass of wine in one hand, wadded up Kleenex in the other, making pirate sounds and generally crashing into things on my left hand side (Aaaargh! Thump. *sniff*). Then there's the story about almost freezing to death on a mountain in New Mexico (though that one is, admittedly, a little sappy in its own right) and countless others.

I've got scores of stories I could tell you to disprove the notion that I'm little more than a Hallmark Moments cards writer reject, so why don't I put them here? The fact is, Mac, that this isn't why I blog. I spend 99% of my day in the really real world being a total jackass, so there's got to be someplace for the warm, angst-y stuff to ooze out. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to trot that crap out at the pub and, besides, I'm too busy getting blitzed and starting at some girls tits while I try to recount the details of The Time I Melted My Right Middle Finger on My Bicycle Tire to get into all that. Time and place and modes of expression lend themselves to certain topics and the relationship stuff is what comes out here, on my couch at midnight when I come home from the pub alone. Wouldn't you much rather hear the story of Danny McIrish and I watching the sunset in our wheelchairs at the park from me in person anyway? I tell it so well.

Sometimes, you can be very brave

My friend told me this once in a conversation about a woman with whom I'd been smitten for a some time. I had finally met back up with this woman after a few years and much back and forth, to find the attraction was still there, but that she was still committed to a relationship that, by her own admission, was going nowhere. I had told myself not to pursue things further; to wait and see if she called me back. It was the polite thing to do, I argued, the less pushy thing. It was when I mentioned this to my friend that she said it.

"Sometimes you can be very brave." Her point was, be brave now. There was nothing to lose in telling this woman how I felt. There was everything to gain in telling her that, if she felt the same, she should leave this nowhere relationship and be with me. If that was too pushy, so be it. Life gives you few second chances (I'd blown the first one years before) and you take them, or you live to regret it, and that's that.

So I told her what I wanted and it didn't work out that time. Later, I did get a third chance and, as chance would have it, I would have been better off leaving well enough alone. Some fantasies are best left as just that, but that's not the point of this story. The point is, that my friend was right.

There's someone who I've been thinking about for a long, long time; someone who is single and smiles at me in a way I've never seen her smile before and maybe that's nothing and maybe it isn't, but it's high time I took steps to find out. I've been biding my time, waiting for the perfect moment, deciding how to ask her without being too pushy, without making her uncomfortable. I've been, in short, chickening out.

It's hard sometimes to know when you are being patient and not too eager vs. too scared to ask for what you want, but after failing to ask her out today, because that perfect moment didn't arrive, I found myself driving home alone and very disappointed. And then my friend's words came into my head.

"Sometimes, you can be very brave."

She had said them over an instant message chat, but I heard them in my head in her own voice: clear and straightforward, but with warmth. She had meant it in the best possible way, but the corollary, while unspoken, was plain: Sometimes, I am not.

And that is what I was tonight: not brave. I can keep waiting for the right opportunity-- when not too many people are around, when she doesn't seem busy, when I have her attention and I can gauge her interest level as we speak-- but perfect moments are rare and I could be waiting for a long, long time, while someone else is brave enough to act. Instead, I can walk right up to her the next moment I see her and ask her out. She can say no, may even be more likely to say no than if I'd caught her at the right time, and I'll have to wonder if it could have worked out if I'd been more patient, but at least I'll have tried.

I can be very brave.

Outfield

Love Is Not A Victory March

I haven't been writing enough lately and, by "enough" I mean, "at all".

I'm tired and cranky and spent right now after a full travel day for work that followed an early morning swim/run race. It went OK all things considered. I'm horribly slow, but proud of myself for doing it, which is a weird place to be back in after so long.

I'm fantastically happy, though you wouldn't know it through the thick haze of exhaustion and headache today, but I am and there it is.

I'm thinking of asking my yoga instructor out. I've only had a crush on her for three years. What's to lose?

It's Not My Fault. It Can't Be My Fault

There was a wardrobe explosion in my apartment this week. I mean that quite literally. I opened my wardrobe and all three drawers came cascading down, causing my clothing to explode forth onto the floor. Now, I'm a pretty neat guy. I'm no clean freak, but I keep things pretty tidy around here, and I try to do a decent cleaning once a week. It's a small place, so it needs this to keep things from getting out of hand. Unfortunately, because of the size, there's very little space for my stuff-- even what little stuff I own-- so when you take one piece of storage out of the equation, it all falls apart. It's like Jenga. The clean clothes go on the floor, taking up the spot where my wetsuit goes, so that hangs in the bathroom shower. The dresser comes apart for repair, meaning the stuff on top goes on the bed, and the hanging clothes go on the couch, leaving nowhere to sleep. My bike needs to come down from it's hook on the wall to make room to take the dresser down, so that's in the living room. The night-table has the remainder of the dresser items, leaving nowhere to put books and papers and odds and ends except for the kitchen table and the end-table in the living room, which are now overflowing.

With all this going on, I finally gave up the battle, didn't do the dishes for a day (and I had made spaghetti), stopped sorting mail, kicked my athletic shoes on the floor. All and all it got pretty ugly. I was starting to have nightmares-- the anxiety kind where you get overwhelmed by your daily life stuff. In last night's I was moving and my place was in typical moving disarray. I'd met a beautiful woman and taken her home, but then lost her in my terrible apartment, which was even more like a flop-house than the real-life one.

So today, after a nice cove swim and two pool parties, I came home to my shitbox explosion of an apartment and started to clean. Repairs proceeded on the wardrobe as it was still not fitting back together correctly. Dishes were washed and sinks were scrubbed. Floors were swept and vacuumed and papers were sorted and stacked and thrown away when appropriate. I even did some extra-curricular work, noticing an out of wack drawer in the living room cabinet. It's payload of 15+ years worth or photography had overstuffed it and it was falling off it's runners. So I pulled it out and emptied it and therein found, naturally, some detritus of love lives past. I found framed photographs and gifts from a girlfriend I never loved, but who was too sweet to me for me to ever bring myself to throw them out. I settled for removing them from the frames and relocating the pictures to anonymous corners of photo albums. The cards, I felt, were sufficiently passé enough for me to recycle. Then I stumbled on a picture and a letter from a woman from about a year and a half ago. One I may have written about here. The picture-- a somewhat vain Christmas gift from a time when we were just trying to start things out after years of bad timing and missed chances-- was also removed from the frame and scurried away. The letter-- her final words to me-- I took out and read. They no longer stung at all, but they reminded me of what it felt like to be stung, and of what it felt like to have hope for someone such that you give them that power over you. I put it back in it's envelope and laid it aside rather than throwing it out (some things you need to keep as reminders) and then decided it was time to walk away from this casual dating crap and find someone who's someone, or find myself alone. And so commences housecleaning of a different sort.

Pouring My Own Sake

Tonight was supposed to be a quiet night at home. I pursued no plans with friends and thought I would watch a movie then go to bed early. When I got back from my swim though, I was hungry and tired and so I went out by myself to eat.

My favorite local spots were packed, their bars completely full even at nine o'clock at night. I decided to walk a little down the road to the sushi place, even though I really wanted something hot. I thought maybe the sake would warm me.

Sushi is not really the type of meal you want to be having on your own. There's something too intimate about it for one. It should be shared with someone special. On a slow night, it feels OK to sit at the bar and get a good rapport going with the chef, but this was not such a night. I had to wait a few minutes for a spot and when I got one, I was wedged between couples. I ordered my miso and my sake and I asked the chef what was best that day and got that. Then I sat and I drank and ate, saying nothing. When my sake arrived and I had to pour my own cup I was overcome with a, thankfully, fleeting feeling of self pity.

I finished and walked home where I made a fort out of blankets on my living room floor, using the afghan that I did so with as a child. I set up my pillow and sleeping bag inside and brought my computer in, reading by it's blue light as I would have once with a flashlight, occasionally peering through the walls of my hideout into the darkened living room until sleep overtook me and I faded away.

Newsflash

US Children can't possibly get any fatter.

Custom Bike

Yay!
http://www.vanillabicycles.com


Booooo
"As of December 1st, 2007 the wait for a custom Vanilla is over five years."

Sharks Patrol These Waters

At 7:20 AM Friday morning a man swimming with his local triathalon club out of Fletcher's cove, eight miles north of my swimming spot, was attacked by a Great White. His companions brought him ashore but he died from his wounds there on the beach. They said the wounds indicated a 22 inch bite radius. That's radius, not diameter. I double checked that. Experts say that means a 12 to 17 foot shark. His fellow swimmers said it lifted him clear out of the water when it attacked.

What really freaked me out were the reports that seals and sea-lions in the area were deliberately beaching themselves en-masse just to get out of the water. Nevertheless, at 6:00 PM I stood at the La Jolla cove, new wetsuit in hand, speaking to the lifeguard. I'd told myself I'd go for my planned swim if there were enough people in the water. A Friday evening this time of year usually means fifty to one hundred people in the water. The man who died was part of the San Diego Tri-club so I could expect that they'd call off formal practice, but I thought plenty of die-hards would still be there. Six swimmers were coming out of the water when I got there, and I didn't see any others. The lifeguard said it had been busy earlier, and a woman sitting next to him said that her husband was out there with a friend, but that was it.

I walked back up the stairs to the grassy area where people change to see if anyone was milling about. I decided I wasn't going to go, but then one of the six swimmers who had just gotten out told me that the water was clear and beautiful and that I should go, so I changed my mind. Another onlooker came over and asked me if I was going to swim and I said yes. He said he was thinking of it too, but didn't want to go alone and asked if I'd wait for him to get his wetsuit. Relieved, I told him sure. Last thing I wanted to do was get in the water alone-- not that it would make a difference, but it's a psychological thing.

So we suited up, waded in and with a "you ready?" we went for it. He was much faster than me (and probably less panicked), but he waited patiently for me at the turning point and gave me a closed-fisted high-five when I got there. I apologized for being slow, but he just said "Hey, we're living life out here." I think he was glad he'd found someone to swim with too.

Same deal on the way back. He waited for me on the sand and thanked me, saying he wouldn't have done it alone.

"That's what it's all about, right?" He asked. "Sometimes, you've got to conquer your fears."

I don't know if I conquered anything. I was scared shitless out there and even slower than normal because of it, but I did it. It was fine. It was safe. The fear was all psychological. Like the lifeguard said: "It's not any more or less safe today than it was yesterday." So there you have it. My friend told me all day to be careful, which I found funny.

"Careful doesn't enter into it," I told them. "I get in the water or don't. The rest really isn't up to me."

I got in the water and, for me, that was enough.

Maybe O'Brian

"It's early evening-- before dinner time, around five o'clock-- on a Friday in mid October. The sun's down and it's nearly dark, but I'm just noticing. It had seemed light enough just moments ago. I'm eleven or twelve and I'm sitting on the front porch of... what the heck was his name? John or Patrick something? Tip of my tongue but I can't shake it loose. It doesn't matter."

"I'm sitting there on the porch with my friends from the neighborhood all around, riding bikes, chatting, whatever. It's getting chilly out. Maybe I'm sniffling a little, but my body's warm from running around with my friends and I'm comfortable in that way when you can feel the cold creeping around the edges of your skin, but it just can't make it's way in."

"The crispness of the New England air, the quality of the nearly-gone light, the leaves starting to turn, everything's just about perfect and I'm noticing it, actually appreciating it while it's happening. In retrospect it's one of those rare moments of youth where you're actually aware how lucky you are to be young and healthy and free, but let's not ruin this with retrospect. Point is, I'm feeling pretty fine."

"I'll have to go home soon for dinner, and that will be fine too. I'll be hungry soon enough anyway and the kitchen will be warm just as I'm starting to actually feel cold, and my mom and my sister will be there and we'll talk a bit about school and after dinner we'll watch some TV maybe before I go to bed. I can feel that off in my future, so achingly close to taking me away from the now, but still not for a few minutes yet and then after, a whole weekend to myself. At that age my consciousness didn't dare to extend too far beyond the next couple of days. A whole weekend might have been eternity."

"So I'm sitting there, almost excruciatingly happy with this simple thing I have-- these friends, this life-- and as near as I can tell the possibilities of it extend on till forever."

"Yeah? So?"

"So that's what I want being in love to feel like. Find me that and I'm in."

Hush My Darling, Be Still My Darling...

...The Lion's on the phone.

I was discussing my problem with a friend late this evening, while walking her to her car.

"Are you taking anything new?" she asked.

"I don't take anything."

"Oh. How long has this been going on?" She asked. "When did you notice it?"

"Well, I noticed it last week, but I think it's been going on for a couple months, but it's not just sex... I've no desire for anything. I don't want to go out. I know I joke about it a lot, but I don't really even want a girlfriend."

"Are you becoming a homebody?"

"Maybe."

"Do you think your testosterone is low, like in that story?"

"That's the weird thing. I'm lifting so much lately that, if anything, my hormone levels should be higher."

"Well, the season just changed, so it's not seasonal affective disorder."

"No, I'm not depressed." (I'm not. I feel fine, just a little perplexed.)

And that's when she hit it:

"I know, I'm just trying to figure out what's changed."

It took me a few minutes of thinking about that back in my car before I realized what's changed. I just paid off a large, crushing in fact, debt. For nearly seven years it's hung over my head, for the past four of them I've tried hard to get ahead of it, finally budgeting myself two-and-a-half years ago to pay it down. All that time I let it guide my decisions-- or rather, I let it be my only decision. All I had to do was keep my job and keep paying it. There was no money left over to decide on other things. There was no other life plan except pay it off. I committed myself to my job, my city, my apartment and my budget and promised myself I'd make some decisions when it was done. Well, here it is, two weeks behind me and I still haven't started thinking about what's next. Frankly, I'm scared.

It means more than savings plan. It means buying versus renting, moving or staying, traveling, finding a job that's closer to my life's work, going to school. It means freedom, finally freedom, and I've just started to put roots down. I've met some people. I've lived within one set of walls for the longest period of time since I left my parent's house. I've started volunteering. I took up ocean swimming (there aren't too many cities where you can do that). Even if I don't travel, or move or quit my job, the decision to stay will be just that-- a decision. I'll have to take responsibility for it. I'll have no excuses. This frightens me.

Better to want nothing? Better not to think?

Fuck that. Time to decide.

What I Am About To Tell You

Is a secret.

And it is this: desire has left me. I can't remember the last time I ached for anyone or anything. I've wanted, sure enough, even lusted when the time was right, but there's been not a moment of the last three years where I've burned, where I'd have done anything to have... just what, exactly, I can't seem to imagine anymore and that is precisely the point. There hasn't been a single thing I've wanted that I haven't been content to just not have, if the having's proved too tough, or if things just weren't going my way. Sometimes I'll get an idea that something sounds real fine-- a beer, a woman, a slice of pizza, a change of pace, but I'm just as quick to let go that thought and let it pass if it don't seem it's gonna be.

What's wrong with me? Have I turned a corner in this great big game, or do the bastards simply have me where they want me?

Sweet And Definitive

I would like to think that, if called upon to prove it, I could defend myself and my loved ones in a fight. All men would like to think that, but the truth is, I haven't fought anyone in years and years and I wasn't particularly good at it back then. Chances are I haven't gotten any better. I'm too full of self doubt and second guessing and too afraid to come off seeming like an asshole to really ever get myself in a fighting situation anyway. I'd like to think of that as some sort of non-violent ethic, but that's not really what it is. I'm just scared of what other people would think.

This isn't to say that I want to get in a fight, I don't really, through most men, I imagine, dream of socking someone a good one in the jaw from time to time; a mighty and justified blow. It's just kind of how we think. This is not to say either that I'm a coward exactly. I'm not particularly brave, but I would try, and get the shit kicked out of me if I knew that it was the right thing to do.

For all of my worry about what others think, about trying to please, I don't think I'm particularly good at it. Sometimes, I've learned, people would rather have a straight and confident request than have it explained to them that you understand that you might be putting them out a bit, but that you really have to ask for blah blah blah. Waitresses, maids, co-workers, employees-- sometimes cushioning, apologizing, trying to make someone feel like you're understanding of the unenviable position they're in just reminds them of the unenviable position they are in, or makes it seem like you don't count them as equal to you. Better to acknowledge what's what and deal with the situation as it is. I've realized this and yet I can't quite seem to be able to do it. I wonder why that is.

This Is Not How It Happened

She walks into his apartment behind him, eyes adjusting from the dark of the front stoop as he flips on the light.

"This is it." He says. "Pretty small. Normally, I'd make some excuse about how it's not usually this messy, but this is pretty much how I keep the place..." he let's that last comment trail off and hang there, maybe a little nervous, but she doesn't notice. She's a little nervous herself, not entirely certain why she was there. He was nice enough, but not really what she was looking for. Not that she was looking for anything really. At any rate, it hadn't seemed to be one of those kinds of invites.

"Get you a drink?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Beer, wine, something stronger? Something weaker?"

"Just water's fine." In a strange man's apartment she began to second guess her decision to follow him home. She hoped he didn't turn out to be some kind of creep. She looked around trying to force herself feel comfortable in his place, trying to get a feel for him at the same time. She took in the couch, the dining table, the brightly lit kitchen he was now walking towards but she couldn't zero in on much of anything. It was neither like the pigsty of the last guy she'd mistakenly gone home with nor like the yuppie nightmare of leather and Crate&Barrel that young single men with extra money and little style of their own tended to go for. No, this was pretty much just a place. Nothing quite matched, but it all fit together OK. Nothing felt staged, but it wasn't in total disarray. Not much on the walls except some photos of friends or family and a couple pieces of pop-art she didn't recognize. There was nothing there for her to make sense of him, except maybe the small piles of books she began to notice, scattered throughout-- a couple stacks on the coffee table, one on the TV, some on the kitchen table, more on top of a shelf. Novels, short stories, non-fiction of a seemingly semi-political, leftist bent, a couple coffee table curio books, gifts maybe, a few history books, one on religion- mostly authors she didn't recognize, despite her voracious reading habit. She looked from stack to stack idly, thinking perhaps it was time to make some excuse and leave.

"You sure? I can make some tea if you're tired."

She looked up, a little surprised, at first she had expected him to argue with her over not having a drink. That was, after all, what he had invited her back here to do. Ostensibly at any rate. If she wouldn't do that, what else wouldn't she do? Men, always with their little schemes, always getting so bent out of shape when things don't go their way.

"Sure, tea would be nice." She could use the caffeine after all. It was getting close to last call back at the bar, and she'd been in bed by 9:30 most nights for the past three months. Not much of a social life anymore. God I feel old, she thought.

She put her bag down and sat on his couch that was, for some reason, smack in the middle of the living room at an odd angle to the walls. She considered asking him about his layout choice, it divided up the place strangely and made her feel a little dislocated at first, but once she sat down, she felt the dimensions of the room settle in around her. It was set up for comfort, not looks she supposed. Besides, it wasn't a conversation she was interested in having. She flipped through the first pile of books and paused at a compilation of comics from the New Yorker was in the middle of the stack-- a pretty good choice actually, and normally she'd have settled back and started read, but she didn't feel like getting comfortable yet. Instead she turned to the second stack, on top was a strange little book called Oaxaca Journal.

"What's this one about?" She asked.

"Ferns." Came his reply from the kitchen where she could hear him, just out of sight, filling a metal pan or kettle from the sink, then lighting up the gas range to set it to boil.

"You a plant lover? Why would you read a book on ferns?" It came out sounding a little more critical than she had expected, and she felt like a bitch for a moment, expecting him to hit back with something defensive, but when he popped his head around the corner he was smiling. He looked straight at her for a few seconds, like he was formulating a question, then stepped from the doorway of the kitchen back into the living room, without breaking eye contact. His expression shifted, turned inward and became distant as he searched for an answer."

"It's a good book." Was all he came back with, still smiling a little.

"A good book," she quipped, that note of criticism back in her voice, but feeling less guilt this time. What kind of answer was that? Was he being coy? She didn't want coy right now. Fuck coy, they all thought that crap was cute, but she was over it. Or maybe he was just that soda cracker boring that he didn't have a better answer in his head. He hadn't seemed that bad back at the bar...

He sat down next to her, a little closer than she would have liked, cutting off her line of thought.

"Yeah. A good book. I know it sounds really boring, but it's well written and it's full of interesting little facts about plants, people, history of the region. I guess I've got a bit of a head for that sort of stuff. It's written by an author I like a lot, he wrote The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat and that book Awakenings that they made into a movie-- did you see that movie?"

She shook her head.

"Anyway, he's a good author, kind of a fascinating guy, a neurologist. Most of his other books are about patients, people with disability, injuries, deafness, amnesia-- all quite fascinating. This is something completely different, but it's good. I know I keep saying that. Pretty generic, but it's hard to describe. I think he might be mildly autistic, certainly hugely nerdy and socially awkward... I used to be like that a little."

He smiled sheepishly. He was still a little like that.

"I just like seeing the world through his eyes. I like the way he can take the smallest thing and make it sad or a little sweet-- his friend's love of birdwatching, the conversations he has on airplanes. He makes me slow down a little, he makes me think about what I'm doing, makes me appreciate it better. I like those little moments in between, you know?" She nodded a little. "It's odd, sometimes people ask me what I do for fun-- you know when I'm not working-- and I don't have a very good answer for them, I mean I read a lot. I watch movies. I go to the gym. Obviously I go out for a drink or two every now and again." He started talking a little faster, his sentences blending into each other and he leaned in just a little but closer and smiled again as though laughing at himself. "And that doesn't sound interesting, does it? But the thing is, it is interesting. I mean, it is to me, in my head. While I do all those things, while any of us do the things we do-- the ordinary and little things-- we're filled with thought. We daydream. We compare. Memories are sparked. We Philosophize and so does he, and he does a wonderful job writing about it. I guess I just like the way he thinks." He was looking right at her when he finished and she wondered if this was some kind of pick-up line, some sort of literary I-want-to-fuck-you talk that was supposed to get her all riled up at his "depth" and right into bed, but he didn't have the sort of fake-intense look in his eyes, that sort of cultivated smoldering look she had seen on other men just before shutting down on them entirely. Besides, she was already affectively picked up, at his place on his couch waiting for tea.

"Does that make sense?" He asked, leaning back a little, giving her a little more space, "Am I sounding too corny?" This last said without a trace of false self-deprecation as though he was every-bit aware of her thought process, his eyes still on hers though, not embarrassed about what he'd said, just wanting to make sure she was OK with it.

She smiled a little, looked back at him and then-- and how much of this was real and how much was her own projections onto him it's still not clear-- she saw that he was maybe a little bit lonely too. Not desperate or sad, but maybe a little bored and fed up like her, maybe not so much with the expectations, just honestly wanting to have a little company and talk a bit over some tea.

The kettle whistled in the kitchen. He stood up to get it. Maybe he hates waking up alone too, she thought.

"I'll stay the night," she said, "but we won't have sex. Do you have anything for me to sleep in?"

Sometimes You Want To Go...

There are two places where they know my name in LA: The Le Parc Suites Hotel in West Hollywood and Trax Bar at the Amtrak station. This does not speak well of my coolness factor.

I'm tired of coming up to LA. I'm tired of cranky and immature co-workers up here. I'm tired of doing a job that I don't really care that much about, even if they do treat me well.

I'm lonely, and you've heard this tune before, but I am and there it is. I'm sick of myself getting all psyched up at the prospect of meeting women and then not. I can deal with this. I'm not unhappy, but I don't know... something's off. At one moment tonight it came over me like a crushing weight, and then it was gone. God I'm tired of my own wining.

I am dreaming of a city...

...and it is a city that does not exist. It is not the city where I live, though sometimes it is where I live in my dreams. It is not New York. It is not San Diego. It's more like San Francisco, but it is not there either. It is not any city in the real world, but when I woke up today I realized this truth about it: it is the same city every time.

I've never been to the same place twice in this city, this city of my dreams, but I am sure it's the same city nonetheless. I know because each time I dream of it, of being in it, I can feel the shape of it in my mind. Each time I've been lost in a different part of the city, a new part, but I've always known where I was relative to the parts I'd been lost in before. This road leads to the stadium. I walked back and forth on it one afternoon for several hours looking for my friends. Down that way is a hill dotted with large houses and secret, winding, wooded paths leading down to the river where I once became lost while chasing (or was it running from) someone else. This entrance leads to a complicated section of on and off ramps, where I've driven in circles trying to find the right highway.

The City is vast. It is peaceful, passive, yet it in passivity is held a certain fear-- that I could loose myself forever in this sleeping city, never to return from my dreams, and the city would slumber on unaware. This is the city of my dreams.

Mission Control!

(Open Mike Night)

I don't know why, but watching this makes me inordinately happy and I've been playing it over and over all day.

Steam Heat

I lay there in her bed with the sheet half over me, sweltering, yet oddly comfortable. My head ached a little from the drinking and my stomach lurched now and then, but not alarmingly so. My left arm stretched over my head, lightly brushing hers. From time to time she stirred-- a shallow sleeper. I forgot what it was like, those old, Upper West Side apartments in the winter. It's either on or off, the heat. No thermostat, and when it's on, it's on.

Met A Girl Friday

She works for google.

Oldest Friend

I love you.

You are not a cheater. I know this, even though you once confided in me that, before you met your husband, I was the last guy you didn't cheat on. We were sixteen when we dated. Now, you have told me, I hold that sole honor again. When I hear this, I do not judge you, in the true sense of that phrase. I don't think ill of you for a moment or rush to characterize you. You are not a cheater, I know this. I've known you since we were eleven. People change, I know that. You've changed, but not in this fundamental way. So why then?

I remember that day, fifteen years ago. You came to school upset. You had broken up with your boyfriend. I was still in love with you then and young enough that your pain over someone else hurt me. By lunch you were gone. My friends came back from the nurse's office. He had left a note for his mother, our biology teacher, and then driven off school grounds in that shitbox car he loved. Pills and alcohol.

He was legally dead by the time they brought him into the hospital, but they managed to revive him. You came into his room and the first thing he told you was, "It's your fault. I did it because of you."

For most of the next two years he held you hostage with that. He cheated on you and you took him back. He treated you like shit. God, he was better to that fucking car. I watched while you tried to get away so many times, but then you'd close your eyes at night and see his lifeless body and next time he came crawling to you, you'd take him back again. What did that do to you, old friend? I can't imagine.

He's gone now and you’ve moved on. Through the years there was a lot of sadness and guilt, but I watched you grow up and watched you fight through it and search for happiness. I am so proud of you, of who you've become, of what you've overcome. You deserve to be happy. If this one is it then hold on and fight for it for all you are worth, but if it is not, then don't stay for a second longer than it takes you to figure that out, even if it breaks your heart. Hearts heal.

I’m sorry for what was done to you. Maybe I wish he hadn’t woken up at all. I know that’s awful, but would that have been somehow easier? Does he even have anything to do with all this anymore, or is it something else?

Be happy. I love you kid. It wasn't your fault.

Till Sleep Takes Me by Force

I woke in my bed at 8:15AM on Tuesday, February 4th. I packed. I did some work. I voted. I went into the office and did all I could and then rushed home to get a few more things before my friend picked me up for dinner and a ride to the airport.

Since boarding the blissfully empty plane at 8:30PM (I had the whole row of three to myself), I have napped 5 hours, met my mom in Boston for breakfast, napped another hour on another plan, gone into the NYC office for work, played a game of squash, taken my first shower in 36 hours and changed my clothes, done some more work, taken my fiend out for drinks and dinner and then sat around talking and reading blogs.

I am tired, but not a bone tired, or a weary tired, just a sleepy tired. There's lots I'd like to tell you, but I'm going to bed.

Nothing Breathes Here in The Cold

nothing moves or even smiles.

I don't know why I feel so cold. Maybe it's the lack of sleep. It's not a physical cold exactly, but nearly so. I was going to say, "it's not a body cold", but that's not true. It is a body cold, it just comes from somewhere deep down that I can't locate.

Maybe it's just that I'm tired, I don't know, but maybe I'm lonely. Maybe it's winter and I'm lonely too; lonely enough to look hopefully at each and every pretty girl when I go out; enough to stay up all night on the couch holding hands with women twelve years younger than me, listening to sad songs like I was in college again. This doesn't upset me so much, I've been lonely before-- I can do lonely. I can forgive myself for being hopeful, even when that hope sends me to all the wrong places. A little hand holding with twenty-year-olds isn't yet so terrible at my age. I can handle all this, I can last through the winter, but like I said, it's not a physical cold exactly. What if the winter passes and it is still there, worming into my veins; nipping at my bones? What if I don't know how to get warm again?

Nothing Is Everything I'd Hoped It Could Be

Ah, the nearly unbearable luxury of crawling back into bed with the curtains drawn at noon on a Saturday. Later I will work out. I may even clean my apartment. It may turn out to be a productive evening after all, but for now I'm going to lie in bed, maybe watch movies on my laptop, maybe read and, most likely, sleep.

Raspberry Cream And Fear

I've spent my whole adult life looking for a partner.

This isn't to say that I've been obsessed with it, or that I've completely neglected myself and what I wanted. I moved when I needed to move and I did and saw what I needed to do and see when I needed to. I've lived my life. It's always been there in the back of my mind though. I may be going to the gym because I like it, but I know part of me wants to look better to increase my changes of attracting someone. Let's face it, one of the main reasons I became interested in trying yoga was that I knew there'd be women there. Sometimes it seems that it permeates nearly everything I do. Even now, while I'm writing this, I'm thinking about what woman might read it and reach out across the ethers to find me, and this, I think is part of the problem.

When I was in high school, I was so obsessed with working hard to get into a good college that I never took the time to think about what's next. When I found myself attending one, it took several semesters to get my bearings and figure out what to work towards next... A job? Meeting people? Running track? Truth be told, over 14 years later and I still haven't figured it out.

I think it's the same with women. At first, I was a serial monogamist. I thought I'd be so happy to get a gilrfriend that I'd dedicate my very being to making sure I didn't lose her. Well I was and I did and I lost her anyway and thank god for that. Seems with all that hoping and wishing I'd forgotten to realize that it's important that your girlfriend be nice to you. Lesson one. Then came the lesson that it was actually possible that *two* women could both be interested in being my girlfriend at the same time, but there was only room for one. Moral consequences and romantic possibilities danced in my head furiously until it near exploded. Took me a few tries to get that one behind me.

Sooner or later, I figured out that women, much like me, much like the rest of us, are looking to be with someone too. They aren't mysterious creatures who may deign to give you their affections if you're lucky and abide by their every whim. They are actually people with their own sets of wants and needs and, if you've guts enough to go out and talk to them, if you don't hide yourself at home at all times, if you can be reasonably well mannered and nice, stumbling upon one who might actually like you isn't impossible, but only very difficult. So I started to make the effort to get out there and see what I could find.

Much like college, however, I haven't given much thought to what to do next. Marriage? Family? Kids? Sure, but how do I get there? How do I go from first date, to third, to five weeks to three months to ten years? Am I failing because I'm training to be always wanting, waiting, looking? Am I not trying hard enough or trying too hard with the wrong people? I hear my friends wonder about themselves in the same way-- male and female alike-- so I know I'm not the only one, but I feel like with me it's different, that I'm somehow more intrinsically to blame for my problems then they are for theirs.

More Specifically

Some nights you really want to sleep. Some nights, you just don't. It's not always so much to do with what your day was like, it's just the way it is. Maybe you're just not tired, but then maybe you are and you just don't want to give in. Could be that you've got too much to do, or that you don't feel like doing anything and sleep is simply one more thing you don't want to do. Maybe there's a reason for this-- premonitions of haunting dreams you'll not remember forcing you to rail against the onslaught of heavy lids-- damned if you know. You don't want to sleep.

And you don't have to.

You've got responsibilities in the morning, that's for sure. The clock creeps forward, or leaps in fits and starts, or races faster and faster as the hour grows later. You're just not done being awake, and it doesn't matter. Fill that time however you must until you're satisfied or too tired to care any longer. That's how it goes-- tomorrow be damned, I'm not done with tonight.

The State of My Union

I've got a rhinovirus. So I've got that going on.

Friday I took off from work. Saturday I did the volunteer thing. I felt better, so I did my workout after and had pizza and that beer I've been craving all weekend.

Sunday I woke up feeling like hammered shit.

I went to brunch anyway, and an impromptu bike ride to the farmer's market on a borrowed $2000 bike that was like riding on air (no, I didn't steal it). The sun obligingly came out just long enough for me to do that, but then gave way to rain for my afternoon with my friend at Seaworld. "Look Ma! A Dolphin show!". It's no New England Aquarium, I'll tell you that much.

The spaces in between were spent home alone, puttering around, with no one to whom I could unveil my stimulus package, thinking up stories of love and madness I could not bring myself to write down.

And Then Tonight

I walked home from dinner, feeling strained and congested from yet another cold, and looked up above my apartment to the near-full moon hovering amidst a set of clouds, surrounded by an aura of pale, yellow light. The sky was deep blue rather than the pale, grey of darker nights and the clouds stood white against it in the moonlight. They stocked the air so evenly and well that they seemed to hang still, and made the moon appear to be the object streaming by.

Or So I Thought

I was going to write that last post last night and then my friend called and I changed my mind. I thought I'd back fill it in for perspective.

She called and told me that her ex, who won't stop calling and messaging her, who wouldn't give her enough when she was with him and now won't leave her alone when she's been brave enough to be not, came to her house, from the city one hundred miles away where he lives, and tried his key in the door.

Luckily she had changed the locks.

The door rattled a few times when she was on the phone, but when she checked the peephole, no one was there. Later, it rattled a few times more.

She called me, understandably upset, and I remembered what that was like. I remembered feeling small and scared and vulnerable and, above all, stupid for feeling that way, not knowing why I needed to hide exactly, but knowing simply that I did.

Sometimes you see, you want that asteroid to hit. Sometimes, young though you may be, you're tired to your bones and you just want everything to stop.

Perspective is only useful for those who have the luxury of standing on the other side.

No Nervous Wrecks

... going down.

At any given time, I have been informed, an asteroid with a diameter of roughly 100 meters could enter the Earth's atmosphere, superheating the air in front of it, instantaneously vaporizing everything within 120 miles of it's crash zone. Upon impact the asteroid itself would vaporize, but the impact force would create a 50 mile wide and 20 mile deep crate-- one to make the Grand Canyon look like a joke-- and blow a wall of earth, rocks and metal hundreds of yards into the air that would then ripple outward like the waves caused by a pebble in a pond, destroying everything in it's path for hundreds of miles in every direction. When this was over, the cloud of gas and ash and hot iron ore that would blanked the hemisphere would blot out the sun for months, if not years, making life for survivors very difficult indeed.

Do you know how much warning we would get if such an asteroid were to come our way? One second. We would see it when it hit our atmosphere and that would be that.

So why argue? Why be stressed out? Why waste time with bad feelings ever? Tomorrow, the net day, the next second you could be gone.

That's what I say.

This Is England

Or, perhaps, Venice.

I'm staying at Anthony's again. He's buying a new place and will soon be moving out of the house in Venice Beach, an idea that I somehow feel fills me with more sadness than it does him. That's probably bullshit, but I've always been the more likely one to wax sentimental.

Some People Want Like A Candle Flame...

...I want like a forest fire.

All told, life has been pretty good. I've got an office at work, which may sound petty, and not what you're used to hearing from someone more wont to write from his pathos than from his ambition, but there it is. Two-and-a-half years of a light-less cubicle and now I've an office with a window. Productivity is up. I'm happy to go into work, and since I spend so much god damned time there, this is good.

Maybe I 'haint got no lady no more, and maybe that's a bit of a downer, but what of it? I had a weekend so full of fun and happiness that I could hardly believe it was over. I woke Monday morning and thought maybe it's still Sunday. Maybe I get to sleep in. That may not sound so great, but it's a sign of a good weekend, I'll tell you what.

So what if I still seem to be looking for someone? So what if I want the answers? Why is that so important to me, those answers? What, if not who am I looking for? Why do I stay in the car and recline the seat after I've arrived home and play the same song over and over, wondering if it's OK to just crawl into the back and sleep there? Why do I walk to my car in the middle of a dinner with friends to listen to that one, slow, sad song just one more time? And is *that* normal? I think not.

'fuck's wrong with me? I'll tell you what: precisely nothing much and, perhaps, that has me just a bit on edge.