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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

The Opposite of IT

This morning I was frantically trying to find the right necklace to wear with my black dress. I gave up, grabbed the thing that was closest to me.  It turned out to be the perfect thing.  

Why am I writing about this?

So A is back. He managed to keep out for a week. First a random email late in the afternoon about some lecture he thought I would want to listen to.  Then an email an hour later. Then a phone call soon after that.  I admit that I am amused.  And unsurprised. I understand this all very clearly in some ways and then I don't understand it at all.  I don't feel like talking at all.

It makes me wonder what he's thinking. I don't think he's thinking. And I am tired.

My evening with M went well and then not well.  He and I are like a bad romantic comedy -- the same peccadilloes, the same likes, the same brittleness, the same awkwardness, the same it's-never-going-to-happen-between-usness.  And that may not be a bad thing.  There is something that repels us from one another.  What is it?  It is the opposite of IT.

Aida was wonderful. More and more I love the opera.  In the midst of my misery last spring, I found the energy to get myself to Lincoln Center. I would be happy just to be able to watch the chandelier cables retracting.  I would be happy to listen to that Aida song over and over again.  

In my rush to leave this morning, I left my book at home.  All day, I had to fight the urge to go to a bookstore and find something.  I missed the weight of a book in my hand.  

Going to see my shrink in a few days.  It's a been a long time.  I keep thinking I can quit her now. But really, that is just hubris. She is my insurance policy. One of these days, I will be fighting tears in the subway again.  I need to have someone on retainer when those days come because really, I realize that I am incapable of full disclosure with anyone.  Even with my shrink I do not say everything.  But it's close enough.

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