Eldridge Street, New York City

Have I come to the moment where I can retire this diary? It seems that way sometimes. It's not that I've been so busy.  In fact, I spend quite a bit of my time alone these days. Long stretches of no one.  Sometimes it is so maddening that I am tempted to hurl one of my books against the wall, just to hear myself make a sound. Other days, I cannot bear any noise. The drone of NPR offends me, Beethoven a kind of ringing in my ears. And then I go out and see my friends and have a lovely old time.  But all the while all I want is to be home.

The days and the hours pass.  I am watching the clock.  One year.  I am fine, so far.  I don't know what will happen to me in March. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe everything.

My mother needs me to call her now, to give her some kind of comfort after a big old fight with my sister. But I don't call and I don't write.

I am reading a book about a large family and I see myself in each of the children.

Yesterday, I went to a synagogue in the Lower East Side/Chinatown for a little exhibit called The Last Word where people write on slips of paper things that they wish they'd said.  I got there before Wendy and on a piece of a paper I wrote: "I hope you weren't my last chance." I hesitated a few seconds and then I signed my name -- Zoraya.

I don't know if I meant the lost man or the aborted baby.

When Wendy showed up and started pulling out bits of paper and reading, I wondered if from the hundreds of sheets of paper rolled like cigarettes, would she find me?

Bad Boyfriends and Sam's Mom

Last summer, I lost my mind over someone's sonogram photo of a baby.  I spent last Sunday with the mother of that baby.  The baby's name is Sam and he is a few months old now. His mother is lovely.  Every time I said his name, How is Sam? What's Sam doing? I felt something in me stir -- a pang of love, regret, envy, God knows. 

Ericka is Sam's mother.  She drove to New York from Vermont so that we could help our friend CC move from her boyfriend's condo into a studio apartment a few blocks away.  Three days after a double mastectomy, the boyfriend kicked her out.  I could use my powers of description and turn this into a drama. But that seems gratuitous.

CC now posts the strangest things on Facebook about having hope in the dark and other crap that I've never found comfort in.  I hope all these cliches do something for her because it's pretty obvious that this cancer and boyfriend ordeal may be the worst sorrow of her life.  

Sorrow can only be endured alone, this is what I kept thinking as I packed away CC's things.  I folded her underwear because she can't move her arms--if that were my underwear, I would have run away from embarrassment. Ericka moved furniture that seemed too heavy for her.  Another woman put away kitchen things in a matter of hours.  Four children lifted too many boxes. All of us trying to make a home for someone incapable of doing anything for herself, all of us with good intentions.  But at the end of the weekend when all the boxes were gone and we all went home, CC is still sick and humiliated and helpless. 

"I cannot bear to think of the cruelty at the core of this foul world."

I just read that tonight.  The end of a novel I've been struggling with for weeks.  And it is true, isn't it? I don't want to believe it.  Even as I sit here typing this, I do not quite believe it.  I'm not the negative old bag I make myself out to be -- I am, at heart, hopeful and strong.  

But I worry about CC.  It's frightening to realize that none of us can do anything for her, and this seems like too much all at once.

The Ramble

Frigid weather again. I have so many items of clothes on that I have a hard time moving.  This must be what it feels like to be terribly fat.

I need to stop talking to strangers.  Today a street vendor asked me to remove the scarf I was wearing and wanted to take a photo of  it. Then he asked me to wear it again and took another photo. I suppose he is going to go back to some sweatshop now and copy the design.  He gave me a pair of gloves for my trouble and as I was leaving, I heard him telling someone, “that scarf was expensive!” True, but no one's business but mine. I went from being amused by this man to being terribly offended. No mood swing if I could have just kept to myself.

·

Friday night, a pedestrian was struck and killed by a car on Broadway and 90^th Street.  M and I had just finished having dinner at some Belgian brasserie in the Upper West Side and were on our way to Riverside Park to have a walk when we happened upon the “crime scene”.

M was not prepared for the weather.  I gave him one of my scarves – a swath of magenta cashmere with gold and silver sequins.  I wrapped the length of it around his head and neck and then we forced his had down his head—a ridiculous look for anyone (including me, but I sometimes love ridiculous things). For someone as uptight as M, it was pee-in-my-pants hysterical.  I tried to take a photo but he yelled at me and demanded that I just “enjoy” our time together.  I told him he was cranky pants and he bitched even more but in the end ended up laughing at himself. 

I am not sure what is going on with us now.  I keep thinking this is all in my head but we have our nice times (really, these times are not so grand, but it feels, to me, just right). It seems impossible to me that I would be the only one who feels something.  Then again, stranger things happened.  We come very close to moving toward each other BUT we don’t. 

This is all in my head isn’t it?

He is moving six blocks away from me in a few weeks. I suppose we will continue our strange friendship and nothing will change but there is some part of me that hopes for clarity.  The only problem is that I don’t want to lose him. Wendy suggested I jump his bones.  I don't see this happening -- it's not my style.  But a funny thing to contemplate.

·

Saturday morning I ran into A in the R train on my way to the bookstore.  He was on his way to see a flick at The Film Forum, a Kurosawa.  Probably with his girlfriend and her friends.  Seeing him was not as bad as I have imagined it would be.  After we said goodbye, he called to tell me I looked great (really he is a bottomless pit of compliments, it bugs me) and that we should get together for a drink soon.

I’m not sure how I feel about seeing him on purpose.  I do know that I’ve been quite fine without him in the last few months.  So maybe a meeting would just set me back. This is not making me run to my calendar to schedule a get-together. 

Could it be true that I might actually be a little bit over him? Could it?

What does he want from me? It’s kind of weird.  I’m rather unpleasant when I don’t know how to act around a person. I imagine I must have been awkward this morning.  Mean, even?

Last week, I ran into that tall guy I briefly dated over the summer (6 foot 7 to my 5 feet). It happened at the bookstore.  I couldn’t stand the thought of talking to him so I actually hid from this perfectly nice man. 

Maybe I need to find somewhere else to spend my Saturday afternoons.

·

CC had a double mastectomy on Wednesday.  She seems to be doing fine.  I am so scared for her.  What happens when the pain medication and whatever dope they have her on wears off and she realizes, with a fully lucid mind, that her breasts are gone?

The other night at dinner, I said to M, “we are sitting here having dinner like nothing has happened, but just a few miles from here, my friend is sitting somewhere a totally different person.”

M is not the kind of person who can have such conversations. I didn’t elaborate on it. But I thought of CC all night.

·

On Thursday night, an unexpected trip to the opera house to see Turandot. The opera makes me wish I were rich and could see performances any time I want.  Oh well.

Tomorrow, I am going to see Carmen. I swear I live my life like an old lady. But that’s quite all right.

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.

Brava

I'm having one of those nights when I don't know what to do with myself.  There is no comfort to be found in sleep or in my books or in other people and so I just give in to this. The reprieve, I know, will come in the morning. Tomorrow, it will be as if tonight never happened.

Sometime last spring, maybe it was in May, I was at CC's boyfriend's office helping him with his dissertation.  It wasn't long after the breakup or the abortion.  I was a live wire.  CC's boyfriend told me that life would be strange for a long time, that at the oddest moments even after the crisis had passed, I would hear a song or see something that would bring everything back.  He was right.

Almost a year ago today, I was sitting with CC at a bar on Madison Avenue, telling her that A suspected I was pregnant and that I thought he was crazy.  Of course, I knew he wasn't crazy but I didn't know what else to say. CC went to Grand Central Station, and I, for reasons unclear to me, walked to a Times Square drugstore to buy a home pregnancy test.

This morning, A sent me and a few other people an email asking for an opinion on a pitch video he'd made for his movie.  I don't know why that email upset me so much. I told him I didn't want to be included.

That is the truth even though I hold on to him in some way I don't understand, even though I refuse to see him or even take a phone call.  Or maybe I do understand that this is what it means to lose someone.

Everything I pick up lately has a story about an abortion.  I'm seeking it out even as I hide from it.  It makes me crazy that what I deny shows up where I expect forgetting.  That's not fair, is it?

All my friends have babies and that does not bother me.  Just tonight, I emailed Secret Friend from Vermont telling her I wanted to meet her daughter. And I meant that sincerely.  Real babies do not upset me, it's the fictitious ones that bring me to my knees. Maybe it is because my baby feels like a fiction in many ways, most of all to myself.

On Tuesday, I ran into CC on Madison Avenue.  She has lost weight since I last saw her less than three weeks ago.   Even her wig seemed dull.  Next Wednesday, she will have a double mastectomy. I bought her a sandwich and for myself a cup of coffee and we talked about her losing her boobs.

After CC and I said goodbye, I ran into my friend AW's old boyfriend.  I'd thought that they'd get back together (but hoped that it wouldn't happen because I don't like this guy).  But from the awkward way he talked to me, I knew no reconciliation had taken place.

Then A called and then M and my friend Ann called but I didn't talk to any of them.

All that in one hour. Nothing out of the ordinary but I was reeling in the subway, my heart was pounding.  Some superstitious part of me was disturbed.

After all that, I made my way to Central Park West to a dinner party.  Nice people, nice townhouse, nice time, my angst slipped from me like molting skin.

Somewhere on Broadway after the party, one of the dinner party mainstays/hosts hugged me goodbye and invited me back.  Definitely you have to come back, he said. And I felt a thrill, not of desire or anything even vaguely sexual, but something that I imagine a performer would feel after having put on a good show.

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.

Caught Blogging

A fit of paranoia. My cousin saw me writing and asked me if I kept a blog. What could I say? He asked for the address and I refused to give it to him but who knows if he might have gone through my computer later.  He is 17-years-old.  Hardly an innocent at this point, but I don't want to share this.

So I have deleted my photo.

It always surprises me how little I disclose to people, especially when I think of what they share with me. The other night, a friend told me she'd been trying for weeks, without success, to have an orgasm. I know someone who has a massage parlor/happy ending habit. My 17 year old cousin got a blow job in the fitting room of a JC Penney in Glendale. My ex's new girlfriend was a virgin (at 30!) when they met (this knowledge I would pay a pretty penny not to have because this makes me think my ex has no standards). I know someone who has to do everything in multiples of four (the optimum number being 16). I am fascinated by the things people do and how they live and I want to know everything. 

I just realized almost everything I listed has to do with sex.

Saw CC yesterday.  She is in the west coast with her family.  When she returns, someone is throwing her a party. I have no idea how one is supposed to celebrate under the circumstances.  She is getting a double mastectomy in a few weeks.  When we were saying goodbye, we both began to cry. I wished I could be the kind of person who could come up with some positive aphorism but that is where I come up short. All I could do was cry and I felt like I had failed CC in some way.

On my way home from work today, a beautiful girl got on the train at 103rd Street. She belted out an old Donna Summer song called Radio. She sang so well I considered staying on the train just to keep listening even after we arrived at my destination. I gave her five bucks. I don't money to anyone on the subway so that was a first. 

Today is an anniversary. Or close to the day anyway.

NO TEARS.

I even forgot about it. I was tired at work, didn't sleep well so I couldn't concentrate.  But other than than, not much else to report.

No tears!

January

I had one day alone in L.A. because I worked for a few hours at my friend's shop in downtown. If not for the sandwich adventure, there would have been no solitude at all.

After my tour of duty was over, I wandered around in search of this building.  I passed Bunker Hill and the Los Angeles Public Library, walked up the hill of Grand Street and wandered into the MoCA store where I bought a calendar for 2010. Further up was the Disney Music Center.  For years, I've wanted to go there but this was my first time.

 I had dubbed the building Frank's Folly before I ever saw it up close. I think Frank Gehry is silly, the guy people go to if they want something monumental but ultimately end up with something prefabricated. Didn't he already do this in Bilbao? And how are the acoustics? In a way he really is a Los Angeles architect.

That said, this cynical diarist fell a little bit in love. And it was then, standing in front of this building, that I realized that I am a little foolish and a lot romantic.  The kind of person who admits to falling in love with a building, who goes out and buys a calendar with a not-that-great picture of a skinny man whose resolution is to stand up straight, who talks to strangers with hope of hearing about an interesting non-creepy life.

Here is my January man:

and skinny cartoon man's New Year's resolution although I doubt it will be readable in this tiny space:

I was in a sentimental mood, I guess.  I bought a Beethoven CD and some woman named Kristina Train.  If I weren't heartbroken, I would probably find her annoying but now her songs resonate with me, a new way to say what I've been thinking all these months.

M called me on Christmas to say hello and on New Years Day, a few hours after I returned to New York, he came to my 'hood and we ate ice cream in the cold and walked around. Romantic one might say. He showed me the apartment he is buying -- ten blocks south of me.  And the end of the story is this -- still nothing happened.  I guess I would be more surprised if something did happen between us at this point.  We are a done deal, destined to be almost something.

One might ask why *I* don't do something about it. I'm chickenshit hiding behind the excuse of being an old-fashioned kind of girl.  It's pretty simple. And anyway, is he interested at all in me? I was thinking maybe he is a little bit interested -- who the hell calls someone to say Merry Christmas anymore? But then, there is the NOTHING.  So maybe he isn't interested.

Thirty six year old women writes like high school girl.  Jeesh.

So in my nine days in California, I saw my oldest friends, the ones I've dreaded seeing all year.  I saw my relatives.  It was a fucking reunion tour.  And I liked it.  And I loved all those people. And I was so happy to come back to my little apartment.

I didn't freak out at all.  When I saw my friends Daniel and Maya, I was afraid I'd break down. But nothing.  Is that progress or compartmentalizing?  All my friends and their lovely children. And then there was me. I think about it now and I get sad but while I was with my friends, it was fine. I have not lost my ability to be happy for people.

A called while I was in L.A. I didn't answer and I didn't call him back.  Is that progress or is that putting off the inevitable phone call I will make in a few days?  To my credit, I could have called by now and I have not.

I missed him while I was gone.  What a stupid thing to say.  It's not as if I have been not missing him before. What struck me was how I could miss him so much but have no desire to make contact and how whenever he asks me anything, I get angry and share nothing of value. Back to the drawing board, I guess. But I'm a little further along.

Old Love

Los Angeles

12/24 – 12/28

In my mother’s house on a Saturday night, the TV is blaring, two computers whir a slow drone and there at least three conversations going.  It’s hard to discern if anyone is listening to anyone.  We all compete to be heard. I am sitting at the dining table looking for quiet that will only be found if I zone out.

In my house on a Saturday night, it is usually dead silent but my home is 2000 miles away and I won’t miss it all that much until it’s time for sleep.

Two dining chairs away from me, my cousin Danny is watching a movie on his computer.  Danny is here with his daughter and his wife.  Four years ago, he gave up a very lucrative career at Johnson and Johnson in the Philippines for the promise of America. 

Now he rents a room (an illegally converted garage) in a bad neighborhood in Long Beach.  The room fits a double bed and he sleeps alone most nights.  When his wife and daughters are in town, the four of them sleep on that bed.  The room has no insulation and so small that they often go to my mom’s house just to find breathing room.

This must sound dire and pathetic.  But they are grateful for everything they have --   everything being jobs where they work too many hours for too little pay, substandard living conditions, a sort of condescending kindness from my know-everything mother.

Not that I blame my mom.  It is tiresome to hear about exploitation that is recognized but tolerated. If you plan to keep on living with something, then don’t complain.

When I look at my cousin, I wonder if he regrets giving up his life for this.  What pushed him to come here when what was in Manila was not bad at all?

The promise of America will never cease to amaze me. It is a testament to hope and ambition and folly. 

 The little girl cousin just peered into my computer screen and asked me what I was doing.  Nothing, I said.  “Are you writing a story?” she asked. Yes, I said.  Her father gave me an apologetic look as she skipped away yelling, “Whoa, author!”

It is always entertaining to be here.  I get a good dose of regular life and realize that I live in a kind of bubble in New York.  I keep singling out the city where I live, but really, it is a bubble all single people live in regardless of geography.

San Francisco

December 31

I went to Union and Laguna in San Francisco.  Modest and almost pretty was not the way I remembered this part of town but things have changed in nine years.

Now this city is like an old love – fondly remembered but not quite the thing that you want anymore.

It has been a wonderful sojourn to California.  I don’t think I’ve ever said that in all the years I’ve been coming and going.  Most visits are fraught with negotiation. This time is no different but somehow it is okay.

I am ending the year with family. My oldest friends will be coming around in a few hours to say hello and to have a few laughs.  It is a fitting way to end my very bad year and I will say, in spite of everything, that today I am not unhappy. I feel quite fortunate and loved. 

When I reread this post later, I will be dissatisfied with what I’ve written. But I wanted to get one last word in before we all bid this year a collective adieu.

The downside of all these reunions is that I also have zero privacy.  Last night when I was trying to write, my 16-year-old cousin sat next to me, peered at my screen and said, “do you mind if I sit next to you?” Then she slept next to me on the floor. If I go outside to smoke a cigarette, someone will follow me to “keep company” and now, other relatives have arrived and they are asking when I’m leaving.

How can it be that all this minding is so nice and so awful at the same time? Right now, my youngest brother and I are both in search of quiet but there are five people sitting with us at the dining table.

One more cousin and her boyfriend arrived.  My friends – one group of six and a solo will arrive later.  There will be about 26 people here. The youngest cousin just asked me (as she did in L.A.), “are you writing a story?”

That is my cue to post and be done with this—it isn’t getting any quieter in the house of family.

I will try to post a picture of everyone and write a little better. But that is for later. 

Here's to a happier next year.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/12/31/opinion/20091231_opart.html

This is how I count the days

A suggested that we have coffee before I leave for California. We have not seen each other in almost three months. If I see him now, I would have to start another tally.  And counting days, much like counting sheep, is not the most fun a person could have.  So I said no.

One day, I will stop keeping track of how long it has been between meetings, and that is the day I get to tick off “not pathetic anymore” in my mental list of things to strive for.

My ex secret friend and I spent the evening in my little apartment.  We drank beers and had mediocre Mexican food.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say that is seemed as if no time had passed but it was a relief to know that our present lives fit into our conversations so that we didn’t spend our time together with nothing but nostalgia to keep things moving.

We used to call each other secret friends because we met though CC and her ex husband.  We used to sneak around, uncomfortable to let the people who introduced know that we’d formed our own sort of team.

I am hoping to pay a visit to Vermont one of these days. I would like to see how she lives now with a daughter and a husband in a town that seems so quiet. I can’t even imagine that sort of life simply because I’ve only ever lived in cities.

Secret friend told me that she wanted my life.  I laughed and she retracted her statement – part of my life, she corrected herself.  That made better sense and I told her that I wanted part of hers.  The good parts of both our lives meshed together would make for the ideal existence.  Drunken talk of course.

But it did make me realize that everyone is always looking left and right, that we spend our lives figuratively crossing the street. Forward, even though to the right and to the left might be where we’d prefer to go. Or where we like to dream of being.

I think I just fucked up the road less traveled cliché and I don’t even know what the point of that was.

Today I worked toward the front of the bookstore. I saw everyone who walked in, I saw the snowfall starting in the afternoon.  First it was nothing at all, as if someone had upended a boxful of packing popcorn.  I don’t think I’ll ever get used to snow.  It always delights me. 

Delight is not a word I would use easily but that is the only way to describe how it feels when I feel ice touch the tip of my nose. No matter where I go, always an FOB.

After the bookstore gig, I tried to go Christmas shopping but I walked out of every store empty-handed.  It’s pretty simple -- I don’t want to give anyone anything.  I mean that in every way that it can be interpreted even though just the other day, I baked cookies that I gave away and last night I shared my apartment with someone who was almost a stranger (isn’t that true when you don’t see or talk to someone for many years?) and now I will spend a good part of this snowy evening in a bar talking to a friend about everything with much affection. But I don’t want to give anyone anything or take anything. 

I want only to tend to myself.

‘Tis the season.

One Perfect Day

5:00 a.m.

My stomach hurts from hunger.  It is five a.m. on a Sunday. I slept for three hours tonight but woke up at four a.m.

For my birthday, I received a DVD of Saraband and a bar of lettuce scented soap (I wonder what lettuce would smell like as a fragrance since I still can't smell anything) and went to tea at The Peninsula. The best scones in New York City, no arguments. I spent the morning in SoHo in the nice bookstore wrapping gifts for charity. An interesting day -- begin with a "good deed" (I don't like to think of volunteering that way, it seems too self congratulatory) and then end with genteel overindulgence at one of the most expensive hotels in the city.

We were served Earl Grey tea first and then Dragon Jasmine.  I found the jasmine too bitter but loved the way each leaf, before steeping, curled in over itself like tiny fiddlehead ferns.  When the water was poured in, the leaves unfurled and darkened like sage and the heady scent of jasmine rose so strong I  wanted to turn my head away.

Today, for my birthday again, I am going to the Frick to look at paintings and the garden in this gray winter light. After the museum closes there will be a concert (violin). Then dinner in Chinatown which I could skip but will attend and most likely enjoy. I would prefer to go a few blocks uptown and have dinner at Cafe Sabarsky but I am going to dinner with my friend who is unemployed. I know she will insist on buying dinner because of my birthday thing and because I paid for the concert tickets. Normally, I wouldn't care who pays but I watch out for this friend.  She seems on the verge of breaking (financially and emotionally) and doesn't seem to realize it herself.

She thinks dancing is going to fix everything. Oy vey.

Noon

It's raining now--lazy annoying rain. Can weather be described as perfunctory?  Why not rain all the way?

I move slowly.  My little apartment requires a lot of maintenance, picking up clothes, washing cups, gathering tissue (I am sick!) that litter my floor like puffs of cotton.  This apartment is so small that any mess shrinks the place and makes it look unkempt than it actually is.

When I think of the amount of space I live my days in, I actually find myself contemplating moving. And sometimes in the subway, when I feel someone's elbow dig into the middle of my back at rush hour, I consider it again.

If I ever do leave this city, the decision will be made in an instant like all the other decision on flight.  I am somewhat surprised I'm still here after all the crap this year.  My younger self would have fled and gone for reinvention in a new zip code. But this woman I have become insists on staying put.

11 p.m.


If I were seriously considering leaving this city, I would have changed my mind after going to the concert at the Frick Museum earlier in the evening. The violinist was young and German and had scars all over his face and neck.  He played Beethoven and Prokofiev.  The best part came at the end, three encores and two standing ovations -- he played bits of Carmen and for a minute I had to laugh because after the intermission, I kept thinking "this boy would play Carmen beautifully" even though Bizet was not in the program.  But old Georges made an appearance after all. The last piece I didn't recognize at all but the nicest surprise of the evening -- Liebesleid.

The scars on the violinist's face reminded me of Louis Kahn the architect.  I saw his face clearly after the performance when I went backstage to say hello.  So tonight I was a kind of groupie. It is always a wonder when I find myself so moved and makes me think of some woman who long ago told me that art heals --maybe she was not such a crackpot.

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.

Sleeping with Mahler

I lie awake late into the night and fall asleep only after I find Mahler on my iPod.  Sleep is getting closer, I know, when suddenly I notice that the music is too loud. So I turn the volume down gradually, lower and lower still until finally, the iPod is powered off. This is  not a bad way to be an insomniac.

There is nothing to report about Thanksgiving.  It was not a joyous occasion or a disaster--I had feared both.

I am reading Brooklyn by Colm Toibin, trying to read slowly because I hate for these things to end. It's actually quite a lovely book.

Christmas promises to be a big soiree this year.  My mother tells me that my Aunt Lydia's youngest daughter and her family will be there.  So will Aunt Lydia's son but he and my mom have always had a freakishly close relationship (and I do not mean of the incestuous sort).

So these cousins are actually also aunts and uncle.  I have been thinking about that a lot since I had that conversation with my sister.

I sent Professor Dick the go away email today and he responded quite graciously. I hope this means he will not contact me anymore.

JV called this afternoon to discuss her love life.  She slept with her ex and her current in the same day. Two women and she loves them both, she said.  I don't know what she's talking about -- I think loving one person is hard enough. 

JV and I did not communicate with each other for at least 8 years and now it is as if no time at all has passed. She has always been my one Filipino friend even though I think there were times when we've hated each other for reasons neither of us will remember now.  

Her brother killed himself in January.   Last week, I thought about that again and again and I could not sleep.  If JV were to read this, she might be angry with me but it should be clear that no one knows this address.   I wanted to say that maybe this desire for sex has something to do with death.  

That happened to me after the abortion.  I wanted to have sex even though I couldn't feel much of anything. Will yourself back to life, little girl is what I seemed to be begging of myself. Life will keep on going. Maybe that is what JV is doing. 

This weekend, I'm going to Brooklyn to see Scenes from a Marriage.  Hopefully this Bergman flick does not cause my mental health to deteriorate. Tonight, I hope to sleep long and to sleep well.  I think I'm a little sad.

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.

Digging around the family tree

Feels like a mighty long time since I last wrote anything.  But two days is not long.

Again, I feel my interest in blogging wane. This means I am doing fine mental health-wise.

My body, on the other hand, not so great.  I am sick sick sick.  Well, actually I am not that sick.  But I am not a good patient.  I get cranky, self-pitying and gluttonous.

For the last seven years or so, my friend W and I have had a standing date on Sundays.  We take walks, we sit in the park, we eat dinner, we do whatever.  But we always see each other on Sunday. There was a period of two years where we met at five in the afternoon and ate at the same restaurant and each ordered the same dish. We joke that we are two old women trapped in our youngish bodies.

Yesterday we went to a crappy Chinese restaurant in the Upper West Side and laughed so hard I felt like my eyes were going to fall out of my head. If I were to retell what made us both lose it, it wouldn't be funny so I won't even try. I just wanted to say that I laughed so hard that it felt like my eyeballs were going to fall out.

My big week:  my funny friend Larry and his friend, the guy Larry described as the one with a radioactive pellet up his ass (prostate cancer). Another A man, only this one is young and gay who sometimes surprises me with his mature insight and then flattens me with his youthful arrogance. I think that's all that's happening.

A link about abortion: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/11/23/091123taco_talk_toobin

There is a lot of talk about abortion lately.  I sometimes want to join in, just among my acquaintances. But I stop myself. I steer the conversations toward other things. Not that my view has changed on the matter but now I understand the ramifications.  I see it as something more than a political issue and lately I have become a firm believer that emotions should be left out of these debates. Tears somehow lighten the gravity of a situation.  Is that the wrong thing to say?

Turn on Oprah, Barbara Walters (is she even on the air anymore?), watch chicks cry. No one takes that seriously.  I don't take it all that seriously because it seems exploitive and calculated. Even though when I'm doing the crying, I take myself pretty fucking seriously.

A and I paid for my abortion. I don't know why I felt the need to say that. But we did.  We split it down the middle. Maybe the one time in our relationship we went dutch.

Ironic, no?

I believe that is the right way to use the word.  But if anyone is reading this and recognizes that I made an error, speak up and correct me.

My sister and I talked over the weekend.  She told me more family stories, some new and some just confirmed:

• our mother's father is the husband of Aunt Lydia (this means granny had an affair with her son-in-law)
• the big old house my mother grew up in was lost to a gambling debt -- an uncle used the house as collateral
• someone molested my mom, that is why she seems to think it's okay when it happens to anyone else
• Aunt Lydia's companion Ellie told my sister that their relationship was platonic -- this makes me doubt everything Ellie has said, but maybe she doesn't want anyone to think Lydia was a lesbo
• gay people should have spousal rights everywhere -- poor Ellie deserves some acknowledgement as a widow
• Granny arranged the marriage between son-in-law and Aunt Lydia while already having an affair with him (my mother had already been born)
• there is one living relative named Milagros who knows most of these stories and I will never meet her

I used to think my family was so dysfunctional that those of us of child-bearing age should all be sterilized. But who am I to judge?  Seriously though, what is wrong with us? Was my grandmother evil? How did she meet the Muslim (my father's father, who she eventually "married")? 

How can so much fucked up-ness exist in one family, generation after generation?  I still want to have a baby someday. Someday. But I don't want to do it alone, I don't want to do it with someone who doesn't really want to be there.

This family history is one of the reasons I couldn't have the baby with A -- he didn't want it. The way I saw it, my forcing a baby on him would increase the chances that we would be raising a child in strife, be it emotional or financial.  A's reluctance to be a father also increased the chances that our relationship would not last when the baby arrived. And while there are no guarantees in life, I want/wanted to bring a life into the world with as much in the right place as possible, where everything is not so fraught with compromise and angst.

Well, that's all I have energy for now. 

I will say, even though my love life is not exactly filled with promise of romance at the moment, I am pretty certain that if I were to have a child, I would be a good mother. 

Foreign Films and Dead Composers

Last Saturday I was at Film Forum for a screening of La Danse and while waiting to get into the theater, L and I were talking. Well, I was talking about my old roommate, the gay German lawyer with Poland Syndrome who also happens to be one of the funniest, smartest, most maddening, most self destructive people I know. And for whom I also happen to have a deep strange love. He has a way of getting what he wants, fucking it up, and then starting over.

T and I met in 2004, I think.  Love at first sight in a fringe neighborhood Brooklyn brownstone. He drove me insane when we lived together.

Anyway, the short of this story is that I was describing this crazy man in detail and a woman behind us was listening to me the entire time. At first she was embarrassed and tried to conceal her amusement. And then she abandoned all pretense and laughed gaily at my stories.  And I performed for her.

As we were getting seated, this woman told me that I should write a book. I think people meet me and expect me to be funny all the time when the truth is that I'm not very funny when I write.

Nice compliment anyway.  I'm not knocking it.

And also got me thinking about being a fame whore.  There is something of the performer in me.

So far -- no A and no M. I miss them both but not nearly as much as I would thought.  I'm mostly talking about A.  I don't miss him that much.

I have to admit that earlier today, I wrote something about how when one insists to vehemently on something, it means they are lying.  So maybe I'm lying.  But right now it doesn't feel that way.

Last night I got a bought a book about the opera. Just a reference guide to the more popular ones.  I'm pretty obsessed with music lately -- I wake up in the middle of the night and fall asleep listening to Mahler.

This morning, my last memory was of listening to a piece called Blue by Michael Galasso from In the Mood for Love (by Wong Kar Wai). I hate his movies -- there is something flat about them, too stylized, interminable. But they are always the most beautiful things to look at and listen to.

My favorite WKW movie is Comrades. I liked everything about it. God, that was a long time ago.  What a strange memory.

The writing is going well lately.  I write for work, I write for this, I write for the novel. If I were to do a word count, the number might be pretty impressive. But I'm writing for three discrete areas so it doesn't add up to much.  Still I'm rather proud of myself.

I worry about money a lot lately. When I was not working, I hardly thought of money at all. But now,  I do mental calculations (poorly) all the time.

On Writing (or not writing)

I reread bits of the novel that I work on sporadically.  It is not bad. Not the novel itself -- that remains to be seen and I have to write a lot more in order for me or anyone to make an assessment.  Just the writing.  I am liking the way I write lately.

So why don't I do more of it?

Halloween and I am home.  I was out all day, first at the bookstore where I volunteer and then at an Indian restaurant and then at another restaurant.

I've been meeting quite a few black women lately.  And I am always curious at the way they react to me.  First the reaction is guarded. And then I seem to find the right thing to say and I am somehow allowed into a club I am happy to visit but have no intention of ever staying in.

One of the women I met was Caroline. She was lovely in her sequined turquoise shawl. She is a med student at Ann Arbor and originally from Nigeria. She wouldn't look at me at first and whenever I said anything, she seemed to tense up.  Then I shared the story from high school -- how three African American girls threatened to beat me up and how I unwittingly made things worse by acting, well, like myself.  She couldn't stop laughing.  But apparently she went through the same thing when she moved to the States.  She went to the high school close to where I went to school.  By the end of the evening, she was leaning towards me and engaging me in conversation.

Is that the secret to being liked? Find the right anecdote that will resonate with someone and suddenly they deem you worthy of their company?

I'm not complaining.  I completely accept that there are certain things that draw people to each other, rules we must all follow even though we might not understand them.

But what is the thing that wins people over?  It's more than an anecdote.  It is an "IT," like sex appeal. Similar but only to certain point.

That is something my parents used to say.  They called sexiness IT. Someone had strong IT.  It doesn't translate well to English.

I have IT in the friendship department.  I discuss this with my shrink endlessly. People are drawn to me -- men women children. Even if at first they don't like me, something will happen and they will inevitably fall in (friend) love with me. This doesn't apply to romantic relationships. There I need help.

I worry when I discuss this that I sound conceited.  Maybe that is so.  But really, I'm puzzled.  What the fuck is IT? Why do I have it?  Why doesn't my sister?

And in all honesty, it is sometimes suffocating and lonely.  I don't like too many people.  I can tolerate just about anyone, but after an hour, I want to go home.

Well, I've annoyed myself now.  But hopefully you are not annoyed with me, reader (me?).

Ho-Hum

Cigarettes don't taste good anymore.  Did they ever?  I've been a smoker my entire adult life.  I always joke that the Marlboro Man is my longest relationship to date. That's actually not funny at all. I think the truth is that smoking reminds me of my mother.  The smell of smoke and a perfume called Tamango brings to mind an image of my mother sitting in front of her vanity and wearing dressed in a lace full slip. She is putting on her make-up, Christian Dior in those days.  The slip was probably Dior too.

My mother was beautiful when she was young.  Very Blanche DuBois. Now that I think about it, I am now older than she was then. I was eight or so, she must have been 33.  The dressing table memory is not a good one. When she put on make up, it meant I was sitting next to her and begging her not to leave. Then she would disappeared to her sister's house for the rest of the day. This  happened almost every day. I still wonder now if she hated being a mother. These days, it is the highlight of her life. But at 33, I don't know what she was thinking.

Isn't it odd to think of a smell you cannot recreate and then see a visual image? Scent has no image but I've managed to attach a person to that memory.  That doesn't make much sense, does it?

Last night, I accidentally "shared" this site from my personal email account.  I don't think anyone's read this  but still I worry. I told a friend about the accidental sharing today and she wanted to know if she could read this blog.  I felt bad saying no.  No as in never.  And I told A last night in a panicked phone call.  I worry about him reading this too.  I've said some mean things about him.  But when I think about it, I don't think I've said anything here that I haven't said to him.

That doesn't make it better though, does it?

I am not so sad today.  I cleaned my apartment. I hardly thought of AL at all. When I did, it was not with such regret.

This has turned out to be another pointless entry.

Maybe not dating is going to turn me into a prolific diarist.  That is how it was the last time I retreated from men.  The thing is, life is much less interesting without men.  You don't even have to sleep with them, just their presence changes the hum in the air.

Not reading much now.  Makes me wonder how I manage to wile away my evenings. I haven't had much activity this week save for the dinner out on Monday.  Tomorrow I'm going to some strange place in Queens with two girlfriends. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I agreed to go.  I'll probably have fun but the way I see it now, it would be better for me to stay home and listen to my neighbor's music. On Friday, I'm having dinner out again.

It's getting colder out and this is helping my mood somehow.

She's Got Personality

I am writing this entry on a Wednesday afternoon while at work. Makes me feel like I'm 21 again when I used to journal between customers. I worked in the Men's Shoes department at Sak's Fifth Avenue in San Francisco.

A little over a month ago that I had nothing left to say for this blog. I am amazed at my capacity to delude myself.

My friend Kevin is in town and we had dinner at Bar Bossa tonight. Kevin is gay and alone, doesn't know how to climb out of it. I told him what I'd been doing the last few months, and I could tell he couldn't quite understand how a girl like me could get around so much.

I am not a pretty woman.  I don't say that self pityingly.  I do have my charms, I can be sexy.  I am attractive to people who have talked to me a little, not necessarily by people who just look at me. She's got per-son-ality...I'm trying to quote a song. It's probably not working, is it?

Kevin is good looking but he doesn't pay attention. A lot of the time, he is looking at other things.  Maybe that's why I get more action than he does. He thinks my taking a break from men is a mistake.  He told me I'd be sorry I  pass up all these opportunities for "man sausage."

We were eating sausage. It was a wonderfully gross thing to say at the time.

On Tuesday I was on the phone with A for three hours. We talked about AL, his girlfriend, and all the other things we always talk about. We talk about how we aren't together anymore.

On Wednesday, I was on the phone with A for two hours. Soon A will be forced to commit to the girl who is a less attractive version of me.  I keep telling him how ugly she is and he laughs. Maybe she just takes bad pictures.

What would it have been like if I'd been working in the days and weeks that followed the abortion? Would I have managed to keep it together? I'm still a wreck sometimes. But I am a functional wreck. Working again marks a sort of rite of passage for me, I guess. It means I am cutting off the amount of time I can spend moping.

So three hours on the phone with A within a few days of breaking up with AL. This is a pretty clear sign that I need a bit more time to sort things out for myself. I actually don't believe that.  There is part of me that thinks that if AL liked me more, I would have less to sort out.  Could that be true?

I cannot count A as part of the equation because he has his own set of people to deal with. I told A that I wished he and I could be safe from one another, that he could look at me and say "nothing is going to happen here because I am with someone else."

But I seem to be the one in charge of saying no. It's easy when there's someone else in my life. Whatever my behavior as a single woman, I cannot be sexually involved with two men. It just isn't something I'm even tempted to do.

The odd thing is that I really like AL. I wish I wish I wish things were different. I want to say that I didn't screw up with AL too much -- he wasn't that into me either. Well, I guess I just said it. Is that my sincere believe or am I saying that to assuage the feeling that I was using him? I did like him. I don't even understand this. I like him.

Is it possible that I get into these ill-fated pseudorelationships as a respite from my grief and guilt and whatever else? A pseudoboyfriend means a few weeks of happy, sexy fun where love is possible and the future is not yet fixed. Then something in me snaps -- fun is not good enough all of a sudden when it was just the thing I wanted the day before. Is it when I realize that love is not possible with everyone?  Or is it when I am ready to face myself?

Whatever the reason, I find myself here, searching for different words to describe the same feelings I've had all year.

Hello again, Lucy.

You Again

My reluctance to sit down and write something for this blog is disturbing.  Is this a harbinger that my days as a mad diarist are over? I think not.  There was a possibility of that but I’ve made a few decisions over the last few days that need to be recorded so that I can revisit myself after some time has passed.

Much has happened in the last month – a new man for a time, a new job due to start tomorrow, my sick friend, my dead cousin, floods in my old country, crying over the wrong things but not realizing that until after I’d made myself sick with too much whiskey.

A New Ex

AL and I became something of a couple.  Together, we went out, we talked, we slept, we watched movies. I found myself doing things I would not normally do because he asked me (playing video games). That’s a kind of couplehood, isn’t it?

On Friday, after an incredibly expensive and fun dinner, we broke up.  My fault – I started to think I liked him too much. He started to think I liked him too much.  But the truth of the matter is that I pushed him out and I don’t like him as much as I wanted to or as much as I led him to believe. This is not to say that I don’t like him.  I miss him right now, in fact. But I am not capable of feeling anything real for anyone new.  I thought I was.  I wanted it more than anything because it makes me less sad.  But I can’t hide behind a man. Not for too long anyway.

It seemed to me that AL and I weren’t getting to know each other better. We were stuck on third dates, if that makes sense. We had a good time.  But in the middle of the week, we had hardly any contact.  Any emails exchanged were more perfunctory than anything else.  I thought I would be content with that.  But I have to admit that I want more.  And that I probably won’t find it now because I’m not ready.

AL told me that I was different from his other girlfriends, that I was outgoing. It seemed that he didn't like that about me.  "Not that you walk down the street making friends or anything," he said. I almost contradicted him, but realized that this is how he knows me -- I am a little desperate these days, more vulnerable than I have ever been in my life maybe. Before this year, I was a bit of a hermit.  But now?  There are weeks when I go out every night with a different person.  And I dislike myself a little for it too.  I kept thinking that I wished AL knew me before this year.  I was a different person a year ago.

Would things have turned out differently for AL and me if we’d met six months from now? I feel like I'd be more myself again.  But maybe I'm not so bad now. 

The end of things with AL has left me very sad. It's just me again.

CC

She is losing her hair.  Tomorrow, she will get it all shaved off.  The hair looks dirty and shiny.  When I saw her yesterday, she had no energy. I guess this is how it is after chemo.

Her boyfriend is an asshole.  One of these days, I will have to see him again.  I don’t know where I’m going to find the energy to fake being nice to him.

New Job

My ex A found me a new job.  I will be working a large hospital in the city doing project management.  Exciting. I start tomorrow.

A

I hope that A helping me find this job is going to absolve him of some of the guilt he feels over our relationship.  I could say that he continues to hover around because he still loves me.  That might be true.  But really it’s guilt.  He thinks I’m going to be damaged goods forever because of how things turned out between us.

Baby All the Time

Last week, when I thought that I was falling in love with that guy AL, I told him about the abortion. This is what AL did – he said nothing, he whispered my name and wrapped his arms around me and I cried.  But it wasn’t enough.  He did exactly what I wanted him to do but it was not enough.

And last night I cried about my baby again. At first I thought I was crying over AL.  But then very quickly it came to me that even when I’m thinking of other people and other things, I’m thinking of my little fetus.  It’s not so bad anymore, but it’s still there and even as I say I’m dealing with it, some part of me still wants to run away.

Dating

I’m quitting that game for now. How long with this hiatus last? 

Fire Island

Next weekend, I’m going there.  I was there at the end of spring when I was half crazy.  There is a picture my friend took of me where I am holding a glass of wine.  I can’t bear to look at it.  Five minutes before that picture was taken, I’d been crying. 

I was there in the middle of the summer – no more tears.  But it was hard. 

And now in the fall when the island will be deserted, I’ll be back again.  How will I feel this time?

I met A in Fire Island in the summer of ’07.