Glass Houses

Finished reading The Glass Room in the early afternoon. I was sitting outside a cafe, damp cold and raining.  When I got to the end, I started to cry.  "I am Ottilie" reduced me to tears. Just as I was wiping my eyes, my friend stepped off the bus and we set off on our usual Sunday expedition. We laughed at me.  Am I soft today or was that amazing writing?  I will have to reread the last part to ascertain that.

I want to know what house Mawer was describing in his book. It exists apparently but it is never identified outright.  Somewhere in the outskirts of Prague this glass house still stands.

Today was supposed to be a trip uptown to the Cloisters but the rain made us lazy. Wendy and I stayed in the Upper West Side. We watched a movie about Queen Victoria and ate terrible Chinese food and complained about the cold.

I have never been to The Cloisters. There is always an excuse not to go. In a way I was glad because I would like to see it alone.  I have a strange love for buildings, there are structures I prefer to see alone. Mostly because I never know how I will react to certain places. The Maparium makes me catch my breath and I can never explain to anyone why that is. The Temple of Dendaur, not the temple itself but the room it is housed in, makes me sad and happy in the same moment.

This morning I found out that my friend Sara does know the violinist I was raving about in December.  Her cousin went to high school with him in Livorno and her husband knows him from the chamber music world of New York. "Do you want to meet him again?" she asked me.  "We could arrange it." My fanhood is not quite so devoted so I declined.

My twin friends are trying to fix up with a friend of theirs. He is kind and trust-funded, they tell me.  He could buy you season tickets to the opera. I met this friend on Tuesday (not part of a set up), been to his big townhouse. I don't know about dating him because he is so shy it sort of hurts me, and I am happy to continue self-financing my expensive habits.

Last night I wrote many pages to add to the novel.  I hesitate to use the N word.  It scares me. The bursts of ideas amaze me, how for months on end I am backed into a corner not knowing how to go from one chapter to another and then suddenly, with two clicks of the mouse, everything falls into place.  My haphazard prose has been there all along, it just needed to be organized.  Here's hoping for more of last night.

Get lost in a book

I sometimes think that the lives led by obsessive people can never be clean.  There will be collateral damage, harsh words, unsaid farewells, heartbreak, shameful acts. But then I backtrack. Clearly I am thinking of myself in comparison to people I have deigned to label unobsessed. On bad days I think of these people with some derision mixed with more than a healthy dose of jealousy.  But who is anyone to judge another person’s life and actions? No one is allowed but we all do it anyway, don’t we?

The reason for this rant?  A book by a beloved author.  I was reading the Times an hour ago and came across a review of a book by Amy Bloom.  I went a little crazy, called the bookstores in neighborhood (there are two) and found out that the title isn’t due to be released until tomorrow. I begged the manager to unpack it and let me buy it.  I went to the store and it turns out I know the manager.  Eight years ago, when he was a grad student and we were next door neighbors, we dated. Or more honestly, we slept together for a few months. Small world.

We fell into a strange kind of conversation that lasted all of three minutes because I wanted to get back home to (a) write about how crazy books make me, (b) how I used to sleep with the manager of the bookstore and (c) obsessive behavior.

Amy Bloom does not generally get me all riled up but this collection of stories has a story about Lionel and Julia.  Every year or so, I reread the stories she has written about them. I don’t know why – it’s twisted and doomed and unclassifiable. At least to me. My plan is to read the old Lionel and Julia stories and then to crack the new book.

The bookstore manager is from Kashmir. We met when I first moved to New York and we had sex on 9/11. I don’t own a TV and went to his apartment to watch the coverage.  Together Amit and I watched that guy jump out of tower on CNN at least 20 times. Post apocalyptic sex that lasted longer than I thought possible.  Anyway, we parted amicably and I haven’t thought of him in years. I forgot that his eyes are that strange shade of green and that I used to have a hard time looking at him because those eyes of his were a little too intense for me (he wasn’t creepy, I was simply uneasy about everything when we were “together”).

My obsessive behavior amuses me most of the time. (I was never obsessed with Amit, we were a diversion to one another.) It makes me wonder if I am hurting myself in some way.  I come form a long line of crazies after all.  The book thing is what gives me the most satisfaction. I do not like to borrow books (I won’t want to return it). I don’t like the books with a cracked spine unless it’s from a used bookstore. I don’t like to lend books. My favorite book about being a book freak is Longing and Literacy in L.A.  It’s chicklit really but it hits home with me.

My friend Wendy is the only one who can judge if I will like a book and gives me books knowing she will never see it again.  I trust her judgement.

I’m hopped up on cough medicine right now.  Forgive me for sounding a little manic.

I'm thinking of my friend Alice. She is one of the unobsessed. I have always been jealous of her even though I don't want any part of her life. Sometimes we talk and I wonder how we remain friends.  We're past the two decade mark at this point and no matter what happens, she and I always love each other even though we might not understand the other much anymore.

Alice doesn't hurt people or say mean things. She's never had her heart broken. She's never been through a break up. She has the quietest, most stable life. What is that like?  She is the person I understand the least -- what I cannot imagine. Sometimes I think I love her because she is like a fairytale to me -- I don't want to live her life, but I like being able to see it once in a while because it does seem to have its charms.

Ordinary Days

To set the scene: I am in my apartment in New York City and it is almost 9 pm.  Music I do not recognize is playing on the radio – a violin. Schubert maybe? My apartment smells like cigarette smoke, my dining table is clear of paper and pens and could actually function as a dining table rather than a desk.

I’m brooding.

This afternoon, I went to Brooklyn to meet a friend to see Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage. I wish I’d seen it alone—there was hardly anyone in the theater and it was the kind of movie where other’s people’s opinions are best unheard.  Devastating is not too harsh of a word.  And I mean that in every sense of good and bad.

Supposedly the original miniseries that was shown in Sweden includes an abortion.  If that had been included in the cut I saw today, I don’t know if I would have been able to stand it.

“I love you in my own imperfect and selfish way…and I know you love me in your own pestering way.” –Johan to Marianne

Tomorrow I am going to see Figaro – I’ve realized that I do like company at the opera. And so I’m going with a friend. A comedy will be good after today’s entertainment.

A few minutes ago, I came across this blog: http://limagequotidienne.blogspot.com/

One portrait of one person every day for one year. Pretty awesome.

I need to some lightheartedness in my life.  But the thing is, I don’t enjoy light as much as I enjoy the kind of shit that keeps me awake at night. Call it masochism. I’ve always been drawn to a kind of sadness.  Not the poverty-stricken, hopeless, drug-addicted, hungry kind of sadness (I think that is unbearable); it is the emotional struggle of people that sucks me in.  The trouble we get ourselves into knowingly, as if we do not have a choice.  And really, do we?

I remember a conversation I had with CC about A.  I was aware of the flaws of character, his as well my own, but I said to CC, “what am I not going to do it?”  And I think I said the same thing to her about some other event in her life. 

Do you turn down newness out of fear?  Does that make you a smarter person when a year or two later, you are unscathed? Or does that make you a coward who has shut herself/himself into your world, which needed a little shake up anyway?

Four years ago, I was well on my way to being a permanent supporting actor in my own life.  It seemed to me that everything was happening to everyone except me.  I was the listener and the supporter, the one to provide the snarky one-liners—the Rosie O’Donnell/Carrie Fisher to the Meg Ryans of the world.

I hope I am not on my way there again – it might seem like a strange thing to say because when I think of my life, I realize it’s someone’s idea of interesting. I have a friend who would even go so far as to say it’s a sophisticated life, vaguely intellectual, something to be desired. I could go out every night of the week if I wanted and I would have the appropriate clothes to wear for each occasion. I even have a stalker.  (Well, HAD.  I sent the email asking him to go away.  More on that later.) And I feel myself getting smarter and better.  Is that a crazy thing to say about oneself?

But I’m locked inside myself, I have chosen to be quite visible but no one is really allowed to see me. I don’t talk on the phone, I don’t talk to A. I’m on retreat even as I move forward.  My life feels a bit like a game of pretend – I enjoy it, but I realize its limitations, its artificiality and I know that it can’t go on forever.

Am I going to have to make a conscious decision to end this way that I’m living at the moment or will I find my way out without my even knowing?

I’m reading Lark and Termite. But tonight I don’t know if I’ll get anywhere with it.

This has been quite an ordinary day and while I’m not in crisis mode or anything quite so dramatic, I am restless.

Book Love

One of the first books I ever stole was The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin.  I still own that book (my old flame AL called it my trophy, this before I told him that I used to be a book thief which I think amused and then put him off). I still haven't read it. But just now I finished Toibin's newest novel Brooklyn and was fairly wowed.  I wonder if I will pick up the other book(s) now? I mean to buy since I don't steal anything anymore.

Towards the end of Brooklyn, there is a passage that is simply gorgeous.  I say this fully admitting that I am somewhat biased because it was a scene that could have been lifted from MY life, circa 2009 versus 1950s Brooklyn/Ireland.

The mother in Ireland avoids talking about the daughters life in Brooklyn.  The daughter wonders why her mother doesn't seem to have any interest in her new life.

The reading A.D.D. has passed I think.  Now I am on to compulsive book-buying and book-reading.  Purchases in the last month:

• The Museum of Innocence
• Lark and Termite
• Brooklyn*
• Love Begins in Winter*
• Generosity
• Gourmet Rhaphsody
• Prelude
• The opera reference book
  

*read so far

I'm missing a few more but this is what I can think off the top of my head.  This happens to me in the fall -- all the good books come out and I go a little nuts.

When I was insane, jobless, newly single and newly un-mothered, I started volunteering at a bookstore downtown to keep myself occupied. It was a bit of a pain in the ass, customer service is not my forte.  But now I realize that I love the time I spend at the store. I've found my niche -- I don't have to talk to anyone, the people who work there seem amused that I say very little but work faster than any volunteer needs to. I listen to old opera records in the sub-basement while I clean the old books. Sometimes some of the clients are there and we listen to the old music together. We don't talk to each other. The four hours go by quicker than I'd like and I'm always sorry I have to leave.

Beginning of this year when I was pregnant and A was in Upstate New York shooting a movie, I holed up in his apartment surrounded by his books.  I imagined myself reading to my baby or a child at a later age reading next to me. Then I would freak out and smoke to banish the image.

Then after the abortion, I would sit around and cry and stare at my books, wishing I could find any one of them compelling enough to read and lose myself in.  But those first few months were rough.  I did everything half asleep.  I read a lot of books and remember none of them.

It occurs to me that I expect my books to give me comfort.  Or maybe it's not books so much as words.  When I was 14, I wrote endless letters and I read shitty romance novels borrowed from the Los Angeles Public Library.  All those words made me less miserable. And when I was happy, the words keep me from being too happy.

Good deal for a few bucks.

From the Looks of Things

One of these nights I will sleep well again. Until then, I will write to you.

If someone stumbles upon this blog looking for more abortion posts, they will be disappointed since the last few entries make little mention of that. I think I will be writing more about aborted fetuses though. I can feel it coming and I am hoping this time it won't be so bad.

It is a possibility that I will be spending Thanksgiving alone after all.  I should be working on wangling another invitation or taking up one of the ones that came my way. But if this first plan doesn't work out, I have decided to brave it.  So maybe Thursday will be weepy, feel-sorry-for-myself day. Or maybe not.

The Book and My Inferiority Complex About Writing

Mai and Ricardo -- these two don't always make themselves available to my blogging or novelistic wiles. I don't know how to structure the novel. How do you go about writing 30 years of a person's life? Beginnings are nice though. Easy enough.

My novel is a fucking great idea for a book. But how do I do it?  Who cares if it's a good idea if it doesn't get written?

I was thinking this morning that the Ricardo character is turning into my alter ego. Not the woman, the man. Will this be true a few months from now?

I also wonder what will happen to the my blogging when and if the more maudlin events that have preoccupied me all year fade a bit more. Will even care to read about the crap that goes on in my mind?

Work and My Beautiful Shoes

At work I am making friends with a huge man named Doug. He makes fun of my smallness because he is 6'5. I make fun of how he is always cold and wrapped in down. I can tell he is half surprised by everything I say. A few of the women seem to like me well enough but they all just want to talk about shoes. They notice what I am wearing and want to know where things came from -- I do not like to discuss where I shop.

Clothing and shoes are my secret vice. Very few people know how much money has been spent on my shoes or the scarves. I will drop $500 on a pair of boots without a second thought. This embarrasses me because it turns me into a stereotype of your basic New York single woman. Or the Imelda Marcos Filipino thing (everyone mentions this as if they thought it up themselves). I choose my clothes for their plainness so it always surprises me when people notice.

Kindness

People are generally nice to me. I've mentioned this before. But lately it is quite obvious and it is to the point where I am a little freaked out. People are nicer to me than they are to other people.  I bring something out in people.

What is it?

At work, there is an Asian lady who slips me packets of green tea and leaves me mints and chocolates on my desk. She wants to know about my family and where I've been.

There is Professor Dick who I am about to ask to leave me alone.  HOW do I do this? I feel so ungrateful but I want him to leave me alone.

I think about kindness and this IT thing often because people often suffocate me.  But probably the bigger issue is that I am afraid that whatever this thing is that makes people nice to me will desert me one day and I will be lost. It's much like the beauty of some people.  What happens when the lines come in, when breasts begin to sag, when the woman loses that sexy thing?

What do *I* have to fear losing? Will I someday act or say the inappropriate things that I say now, fully expecting to get away with it only to realize that I have lost that thing that made my borderline behavior acceptable?

Is it because I refuse most things people offer me?

My Parents

It just occurred to me that I could be describing both of my parents.  They haven't lost their charm yet.  My father is as charismatic as ever. When we lived in Kuwait, my mother used to hate walking with my dad because all the Filipinos knew him.  It was like being with a celebrity.

And my father, I think, has always been proud of being the one to have married my beautiful mother.

In case you doubt me, reader, here is photographic evidence:

That's it for tonight.  This blogger has a date to keep with Colm Toibin.

First Star of the Night

On West 23rd Street in Chelsea, there is a strange little house/performance space called The Cell Theater.  I went there early this evening to listen to my friend W read.  Simon Van Booy and another writer whose name escapes me at the moment were also there to read.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that I thought Van Booy's book, Love Begins in Winter, was too sentimental.  It is.  But it is good.  What is it about certain stories and certain words that make me, the rather jaded and overcritical reader, eat my words? And he is an excellent reader.  He was sitting on an old loveseat, legs crossed.  His voice was mesmerizing, his Irish accent not bad.  He signed my book: "To Z----, the first star of the night." He'd asked me what my name meant and so I told him.

After the reading, W and I, along with a few other people, ogled the arrival of movie stars for the premiere of the movie Brothers.  A man in a black suit approached us and handed us tickets to the screening.  So off we went.

The movie was good though not one I would choose if I had to pay.  

On Friday night (and this afternoon), I saw the Maelstrom sculpture and the Vermeers at the Met.  Then M called and he picked me up on the bike. We rode in the cold down to the Lower East Side.  M and I are friends again, I guess.  I am probably too nice by tolerating his weirdness. But he is what he is and sometimes what he is is stupid.  

Here is Maelstrom in the late afternoon:

I expected to spend the whole weekend alone, save for the Sunday dinner with W.  But it turned out that the last couple of days have been all about finding people. I may never see any of them again, but there is something good in knowing that there is still a whole world out there and that I am not incapable of seeing it and taking from it and hopefully, in my way, giving to it. 

Anhedonia is not one of my problems. Whatever weeping I do and wherever I may choose to give in to it, I am still present.

My friend JV is back in my life.  I don't know how long she will stay. But no matter.  More on her later. Professor Dick is back.  Maybe he never left. One of these days, I hope he will just leave me or not write me notes about missing me. Whatever his intentions, he creeps me out.

Cleave

All these months and only now do I realize that whenever I go crazy, I am never thinking about the abortion.  There are no images or fantasies—all that comes later when I recall my bout with that kind of madness. In the moment, there is only the feeling of absence and it never changes – always overwhelming, interminable and the thought of being alone with it is unbearable.

Right now it feels as if I am imagining this for a story, not that I am writing about myself.

The last time A and I talked, he told me that it hurts him less.  I felt like I’d been slapped. But why shouldn’t he feel better?  Why shouldn’t I?

In What I Loved, the couple whose child dies end up separating. She moves to Berkeley, he remains in New York.  They never divorce, never have too much rancor toward the other, never came back together and never really parted.

This makes me think of the word CLEAVE. It means to come together and to come apart.  It is the opposite of itself.

But that’s just a word and the couple in the novel are not real. It’s too soon to know what kind of relationship, if any, A and I will have in the future.

I have nothing to do for Thanksgiving. I worry being alone that day will make me sink. And I worry that not being alone will have the same effect, only with other people watching. For someone who claims not to care, I have too many hang-ups about this holiday.

AL had a funny post on Facebook last night that made me miss him. Why I am “friends” with someone I will never see again is a little silly, isn’t it? Without reproach, I will say that AL doesn’t care enough to delete me.  And I keep him on because he reminds me of something I want. Which isn’t him per se.

It is the idea of someone new, someone good who would love me. That AL and I spent so little time together and did not love each other is not the point. AL isn’t even relevant is he? He could have been anyone.  I could have been anyone.  Maybe we were feeling the same thing.

I once knew a man named Cleave. We both live in New York but met in West Virginia at The Greenbrier.  He is a musician we hired to entertain our rich guests. He liked me as soon as he saw me. I was momentarily infatuated – something about a musician.  But after talking for a few minutes, I realized he was an idiot. He kept on mentioning God and being blessed. When he found out I like to drink scotch, he informed me that the best scotch came from Scotland.

 When we got back to New York, he called me and I made myself disappear.  We never went out but saw each other at work functions in other states. He’d always start our conversation by asking me if I’d gotten married.  

I’ve run into him twice in New York. Neither of us acknowledges the other.

Sometimes life seems like one long game of chance.

Ahead

Where's He Gone?

Have I finally gotten rid of Professor Dick? He hasn't responded to my email from a few days ago when I told him I wouldn't be spending Thanksgiving with him and his family. I feel bad for all my little lies in avoiding him, but I don't know what else to do.

I wish there was someone I could ask (and who would tell me honestly) if I have turned in turned into such a wreck that the most random people want to take me under their wing and fix me.  The flipside of this of course is that if no one paid any attention to me, I'd be just as disturbed.

Silent Choices

My friend Faith invited me to a screening of her documentary about abortion and black women.  The screening is next week, right around the 8th month anniversary of MY abortion.  Faith doesn't know about that at all. Is saying that these two events happening around the same time is ironic the right way to use the word ironic?  Or does it just suck?  Sometimes I confuse suckage and irony even though they are not synonymous all the time.

Aida and Carmen and Figaro

I've gone a little opera crazy.  On Monday, I'm going to Aida with M and at the end of November it will be Figaro. In February, Carmen.  I'm excited about Monday and seeing M and putting on a new dress. We haven't seen each other since we had that weird conversation.  So it'll be a little awkward probably.  But it's an awkwardness I kind of like.  The awkwardness of possibility rather than the kind that comes from knowing there is nothing left.

What I Loved

I am reading What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt. The book came out a few years ago but I have resisted all this time for reasons I can't recall.  I had a feeling a child would end up dying in the novel.  And I was right. But there is also art and love and friendship. It's about people who occupy a rarified kind of world, the kind of novel that I like but irritates me at the same time. I like these sorts of books even though I never feel as if I ever get inside the characters--they are the kind of people never seem to have to do dishes, where being poor is a mere stepping stone toward intellectual and fiscal prosperity.  I want to say this is the kind of book that only the well to do or the educated would appreciate, but I obviously contradict that statement.  Very gauche thing to say, isn't it?

Therapizing Myself

Sometimes I am ashamed of the thoughts in my head.  My progressive, insanely liberal friends would disown me  if they knew that I believe there are things -- stereotype-y, classist, racist, anachronistic things -- that hold a certain truth.

My New Job

I actually like it. This makes me a true nerd, I think.  I sit there for hours writing about the dullest matters. I like how the document grows, how I start off with bullshit and then come to understand what needs to be said.

CC

CC's tumor has shrunk to the point of being "undetectable."  I wonder if this means that she doesn't need the mastectomy anymore. I hope so.


A.

We are on another round of "let's not talk too much."  The frequency of our conversations and the intensity of our arguments was starting to really make me hate us.  Inappropriate intimacy can make a person crazy.  At least this one.

So we'll see what happens now. I showed Lyna an email A sent me and she said, "It's getting tiresome for you, isn't it?"

It is. But that's just this week.  Who knows what happens in November? Sometimes I feel this burst of happy when I am by myself, on my way to somewhere.  It never lasts long but it last long enough for me to believe that I will not always feel broken by this whole fucking year.

So maybe I will end up getting a life.  Soon-ish and for real.  I want that more than I can say.

Next week is going to be a little rough for me.  I expect I'll be back here often.

--Lucy

Everything Reminds Me of Something

“If you like pina coladas and getting’ caught in the rain…”

That line was my first thought when I woke up this morning.

I’ve been singing this song non-stop, sometimes out loud but mostly in my head, for the last five days.  I went out with a man who wrote to me about it, then my ex mentioned it, then my friend Heather mentioned it. This song makes me wistful (in a good way). Wanting to escape and not recognizing that what you want has been there all along. Missed connections.

Reminds me of that New Yorker cover a few years back where a boy and a girl are looking at one another while they sit in different subway cars, reading the same book but separated by a subway platform. I remember trying to figure out which book they were reading and concluding that it was Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night.

And it reminds me of that Bob Dylan song “why wait a little longer for the one you love/when he’s standing in front of you.”

I’m a hopeless romantic idiot.  I often wonder why it is that we miss the most obvious things. Is it an inherent human characteristic to reject what seems too easy? Are we wired to make our lives more difficult than it needs to be?

One of these days, I will write about my own big missed connection.

Some good news about my friend CC – the cancer has been downgraded from Stage 4 to Stage 2 or 3.  I hope this latest bit of news is not inaccurate.  I don’t understand how she can be at Stage 2 when there is metastasis.  Let’s hope I’m being overly cautious and totally wrong.

What has CC been thinking of these last few days?  I cannot even imagine. When she first received the diagnosis, she told me she thought of my pregnancy and eventual abortion.  I guess it’s to do with having to face monumental, unwanted life changes.  And when you get down to it, to being alone with your dilemma. Can you even compare the two? 

When C found out she had cancer, no matter what her boyfriend said or did, what anyone says, it is only C who had cancer, the only who might die or lose her hair.

When I found out I was pregnant, I was the only one who was going to make that big decision and live with what came after.

So maybe the similarity is that both situations woke us up to the realization of how we are trapped in ourselves no matter what kinds of connections we manage to make with one another. And that no matter what happens afterward, you will not be the same person you were before finding out.

Tomorrow, I’m going to the ‘burbs to keep her mother company while she undergoes more tests. What is that going to be like?

Last night, I spent the night with my ex.  We went to the biergarten in Astoria, drank too much, talked, got caught in the rain.  (The song obsession was in place before last night, just to be clear.)

Before we went to sleep, I told him I love him.  It’s easy for me to say that, and without rancor, I accept that we are no longer possible.

Will I contradict myself in a few days?  So far, have I? Somewhere, someone is laughing at me.  Maybe I’m the one who’s laughing?

Lucy Writes

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.          – E.M. Forster

Maybe I’ll start calling myself Lucy in honor of Miss Honeychurch, E.M. Forster’s heroine in A Room With a View.  This could be the Reticent Diarist’s pseudonym.  Reticent is not so catchy, is it?

I’m writing almost every day.  This is unusual for me but maybe not that surprising given the workless days. It occurred to me that I might write about things that happen that have nothing to do with heartache --is that even possible?  I toy with the idea of dividing each entry into sections: FUCKING SAD and NOT SO BAD and GREAT.

FUCKING SAD would have to be a major category because there is a lot of that in my life right now. But I don’t want to be a drip or seem like I sit around collecting sad stories.  I do believe that it is in the misery where our characters are formed. But in the midst of all that there is fun and hope and dirty jokes and weird/stupid stories that make a lot of things worthwhile.

Personally, I’m willing to put myself through an unusual degree of weirdness in the hopes of finding the good. I think this is a good character trait. It also shows that there is a part of me that is a gambler. And all gamblers are stupid. That is not a criticism, exactly.

But when I write to you, dear reader (well, when I write to myself), I find I turn away from what is almost happy.  Guilt perhaps?  There’s no perhaps – it is guilt, pure and simple. And fear. 

FUCKING SAD

•  My abortion
  
•  My dear friend has cancer
  
•  Ex/impregnator fell in love with my less cute doppelganger in a matter of weeks post break-up, causing me to question how much/how little he valued our relationship
•  My mother is nuts and regretful about her entire life
•  I am hung up on my ex even though I know it ain’t happening anymore
•  I had sex with a beautiful man who had the smallest penis I have ever met (and I’ve met a few)
  
•  Dating too much with little success
• Loneliness
• Having sex with my ex (the one now in love with the ugly version of me—I realize this is mean, but give me a break.)
  
• Not having money due to unemployment
  
•  DID I MENTION MY DEAD FETUS and my broken heart?  This occupies five bullet points each, just so I’m clear. FUCKING SUCKS.  I miss my A like a missing limb; I’ll miss my baby forever.

 NOT SO BAD

• I had sex with a beautiful man who had the smallest penis I have ever met (sic)
  
• Dating
  
•  Trying to be friends with my ex
  
• My attempts at dating have been met with little success -- but really, am I capable of having an honest relationship at this point?
• Unemployment
  
•  Having sex with my ex – it’s good for my ego
• Drinking
• Loneliness

GREAT

• Writing 
• A man in Boston who I might never meet who tries to help me with every dilemma I throw at him, including finding a person at Memorial Sloan Kettering who would be able to help my friend CC get better treatment
  
•  Interesting men that I’ve met who I'll never see again
•  The man with the small penis also came too fast. He could do it multiple times, each sex session lasting all of three minutes or so -- sorry for not being more accurate as I did not think to set a stopwatch before each encounter. After Round 2, I observed that he was quite sweaty and he replied, “It comes very fast.”  I died laughing, but I was the only one who got the joke.
• Meeting Michael, who I thought might turn out to be the greatest rebound boyfriend of all time. But it turned out all I wanted was to be his best friend and he wasn’t so pleased about that (this last bit makes this bullet point an eligible entry for FUCKING SAD but I have bigger fish to fry).
•  Making new friends in desperate attempt to distract myself from misery
•  Reconnecting with Jon in real life and remembering how much I love him – I have my doubts as to whether or not this would have happened if events in the FUCKING SAD category did not occur  
•  My ex and I stalking each other on OKCupid and sending each other stupid notes
•  Stealing the apartment/sex analogy from my friend DY and taking it to a whole new level of absurd with his sister LY. I will write about this later.
•  Making a kick ass apple pie for my sad sick friend – it is a stupid thing to do, but it was what she wanted and what I could give
•  Re-finding another Michael, my reluctant male friend.  He gives me rides on his motorcycle and drives us over the Brooklyn Bridge
•  Going to the beach with CC
• New York in the summer
• Loneliness
  

So does the categorization work?  Probably not.  Too pretentious.  A too-self conscious attempt to be funny.

But I'm keeping Lucy.

I'm going to gamble.

The Road Home

That is the title of a book I finally finished reading after two or three weeks.  That's a long time for me -- usually, a book will not remain unread longer than a few days once I decide to attack.  

I chatted with my old friend Jon today and he is the reason I finished the book.  It's been years since I've seen Jon.  He is the first person I've shared this blog with.  Will he read it? Maybe I'll never know.  I don't really need to know. 

Jon lives in New Zealand with his wife and son.  He is thinking of coming back to New York.

When we were chatting, my mind kept on going back to The Road Home, how the character is constantly homesick and longing. Then I'd go back to Jon. I think he is homesick and longing. 

The book and Jon don't have much in common beyond this homesickness.  I just thought it was strange that it took a conversation with an old friend to give me the motivation to finish a book that I love but for some reason, could not stay with.

This is kind of a pointless entry. Maybe I just want to be able to say that I came out of the closet to someone I care about -- I told someone I'm blogging about grief.  I told them where to find me.  That's something isn't it? And I finished Rose Tremain's lovely book. I rushed to the ending even though I didn't want it to be over.