Leaving on a Jet Plane

So tomorrow I may or may not be leaving for an international escapade with Fancy.  I haven't decided yet. It is all way too much.   

The great thing about Fancy is that he doesn't pretend things are anything other than what they are.  I don't envision sightseeing is on his mind and the only wining and dining he has planned involves room service.  

I don't get on planes with relative strangers, particularly without a clear itinerary and specified destination.  I don't even know what to pack or how long he plans this little adventure to be.  

On one hand I want to just go with it and see what happens on the other I really like my kidneys in tact and this seems like the beginning of the kind of film where they quickly take their leave.

I am pretty sure decisions need to be made but then again I don't know how this works.  I fly coach and by tickets on Expedia or Southwest.  I am very very out of my league.

Mercury Rising

Last night Michelle and I met for dinner after class.  I was all a fluster.  My hypothesis was that during my performance piece in the park I had somehow allowed bed bugs to hitch a ride in my bag and they were now infiltrating my apartment causing the intolerable itching that was taking over my entire body.  Michelle said that was highly unlikely and suggested that maybe I was having some sort of reaction to soap or detergent or maybe stress was to blame for the raised skin on the tips of my fingers.

Whatever the cause, something was off and had been for days.  I need to get my shit together.  This morning I realized that it was August.  August 5th, mind you, and I had completely forgotten to pay my rent.  I ran to the post office and deposited a envelope covered in twice the required postage and containing a check for the next three months of rent just to make sure my bases were covered.

I am a mess.  Michelle said the cause was in the stars - or the planets rather - something about Mercury rising (I put very little stock in horiscopalogical platitudes but Michelle swears by it so I figure it is due a little credence).  

No I think my complete and total disarray stems from having spent the last month wrapped up in boy business and my brain, which I spent the last few months going on and on about, has turned to much.  I feel discombobulated.  I am not sure if I am coming or going and I need to hit the reset button.

The great thing about my first semester in grad school was that I was so busy trying to get my arms around everything that I didn't have time to freak out about silly things like relationships or the future.

And really, isn't that what all this boy obsessing was really about?  Focusing on them so I didn't have to focus on the fact that the next few months will determine the next six years of my life and I am not even fully convinced I have it in me to stay in one place for six years.  As terrified as I am about the thought if having to leave New York, a city with which I am just now entering into the ooey gooey honey moon phase,  I am just as scared about committing to her for the long haul or the longish hall in my commitment-a-phobic mind.

My relationship with this city is so much like all of my other relationships it is hard to imagine not fucking it up, not getting terrified at the 'realness' of it all and running for the hills of I don't know where (hell, the next zip code might not even have hills).

I am just want an idea of what the future is going to look like, where I am going to be, who I am going to be.  I know that is asking a lot and I know that in truth, the universe doesn't really work that way.  But I am impatient and scared and really, really itchy and Mercury rising or not, something needs to change.

Wedding Doubt

My good friend called me in drunken distress last night, filled with doubt about her impending nuptials.  

"Write about this," she said through muffled sobs.  Out of love for her I won't write what she said but I will say that the worry she expressed seemed to be emblematic of so many of the conversations I have been having with my girl friends as of late.  Frustrations of not being able to understand their partners, confusions over why seemingly great guys were suddenly and mysteriously becoming emotionally unavailable, doubts on whether or not to commit to relationships with major communication barriers.

I have no answers.  I don't get it.  And in all fairness, I at this moment am probably not the right person for these friends to be confiding in.  My view of the world and relationships is a little skewed at the moment.

My mom called me and in typical mom fashion approached my current conundrum with dismissive rationality.  "Listen,"  she said in a tone that I know indicates that she has reached her fill of a given topic and desires to bolt the lid on once and for all, "my friend posted this quote on her Facebook page and I really think you need to take it to heart.  It is from Mark Twain [a Missourian favorite] and it says, 'You should never make someone a priority who allows you to be an option.' I think you need to remember that next time around."  

I wanted to refute the statement by saying that I wasn't sure that was the case for these most recent trials but after a few more seconds of examination I determined she was probably right.

And you know what, that might just be the truth for all of the women in my life.  I went through a mental checklist of all the friends I had and all the struggles they seemed to be facing in their current romantic relationships and I couldn't find one situation where this platitude didn't apply.

Now I am not trying to make a generalization that women make men priorities and men take women for granted. Hell half of my struggling girlfriends are lesbians. Rather,  I think that is just a sign of a relationship in turmoil, when one party places the other front and center while they are relegated to the side lines.  

There has to be give and take in relationships. Sometimes other priorities will win out and that is just the nature of our busy society but that is no excuse not to make the people around you know they are special, considered and loved. 

Fancy

“Maybe too much is what you need.  Did you ever think about that?”

My mother has a tendency of speaking truth at the least palatable of moments.  I was sitting in the park pretending to do work, over-analyzing whether or not I should accept a new gentleman's offer to buy me a ticket to D.C. for the day so we could have brunch in the nation's capitol.  Brunch.  Yeah right.  I am sure brunch is exactly what he had on his mind when he made the invitation.

“You are doing it again.  Stop. Thinking.”  I know this is probably my most serious character flaw but telling me to stop thinking is like telling a quadriplegic to go for a jog - the request is ridiculous and a little bit cruel. If I could stop I would.  If I could be different, I wouldn’t be a 29 year old with chronic insomnia and the beginnings of serious crows feet. I can say I will quit but we all know it is bullshit.  There is a reason I am an artist and a writer and a student...and single.  I have a lot of brain space to put to use.

To be fair, my relationship with Fancy started off in a way that warranted worry. And yes, I named him "Fancy". The name wasn't wholly original but it was fitting and the best I could come up with under the circumstances.

I met Fancy at a party a few days after I returned to New York. I should preface this tale by saying that things were just starting with the boy who would eventually dump me on my birthday which made the events of that evening  feel even more complicated, and confusing and terribly, terribly guilt inducing.

The party had been a straight-up former frat boy free for all, filled with friends of my friend's boyfriend. I gravitated to what few women were in attendance but the crowd of testosterone volleyed for attention. Between tales of Hollywood movie deals and summer homes in the Hamptons I would look up and see Fancy, leaning back, taking it all in and waiting for someone to catch his eye.

I didn't need to speak to him to have him a pretty damn good idea of his m.o. He looked like every guy I went to high school with - immaculately groomed, in a perfectly pressed polo and $300 jeans, forever aware of the room around him, waiting to be adored. He was gorgeous and he knew it. That type of guy always did.

I smiled politely as he approached. I always find this moment just before the conversation the most amusing.  There is a split second to guess what the line might be, if this introduction will go well or if it will just be added to the endless list of awkward unmemorable occasions.

This being said, I don't actually remember his opening line - I feel like it had something to do with the bottle opener.  I forget because, in truth, what happened next left such an impression everything else faded away.

He was a resume guy. You know the kind that gives you about enough time to utter your first name before he starts reciting off his accolades. I always wondered why 'that' guy didn't just have miniature copies of his resume laminated and tucked in his wallet for occasions like this, you know, so he wouldn't have to be bothered to speak - he could just wait for the panties to drop to the floor.

And it was easy to understand why he thought they would; high society upbringing, ivy league ed, international start-up companies and a corner office on Wall Street proper, not to mention having penned several books, one of which showcased a foreword by a former president.

Like I said, Fancy.

Despite what I am sure he believed was a stellar performance of Mr. Fancy's hit parade, I could tell he was left confused. He had been expecting me to swoon and when I didn't he looked as though his world may have come unhinged. I don't mean to give myself too much credit. I couldn't have been the first woman in his history to remain unimpressed as he uttered the sweet sweet words, Simon and Schuster, Bill Clinton, condo on the upper west side but I am sure we were few and far between.

And thus what could have been a passing conversation with just another orifice for Fancy became a challenge he couldn't resist.

I was not naive enough to assume that his interest would linger once he received some sort of validation so imagine my surprise when even after the evening turned into a cloudy version of "Eyes Wide Shut" Fancy would persist.

The next morning I sent him a text, "Did you seriously just Facebook me?"

Fancy brought out the bitch in me. 'That' guy always did. Somehow I thought sneaking out of the (and I quote) "black tie optional" pseudo sex club he had tricked me into patronizing and catching a cab to Korea Town with his good friend to stuff our faces before passing out in his suite at the W would have been enough to make Fancy lose interest.  Plus he had gotten the validation he was looking for at the the club, (drunken stupidity makes it possible to look over the most blaring character traits and give in to what my mother would agree were really really bad life choices) but Fancy wanted to prove he wasn't 'that' guy, which was what I called him most of that evening.

"Do these lines really work for you? I am sorry I am not amazed enough for you. God you are so that guy."

The bitchier I was the more intrigued Fancy appeared to be.


For weeks he would send random text messages from whatever city he happened to be vacationing in and ask about my day.  Photos from Aspen over the Forth of July, messages from San Francisco and finally a series of invitations, which ironically began right after my birthday.


"Why don't you come to DC for brunch?  I'd be happy to buy your ticket." Or some butchered text version of that.  Then there was Philly, Austin, Boston and so on.  Every time I explained that a) I am a poor college student not exactly available for flights of fancy and if I was I would need more than 4 hours to prepare.  


He eventually made his way back to the city but invitations were more of the same,  last minute and romanticized. 


Seriously, who invites a girl to meet up for afternoon tea?? Dude wasn't even British.


I would counter his offers with something a little more practical, usually involving 24 hours notice but that never seemed to fly. When my last attempt to meet up at a mutually convenient time (notice the key word mutually) was rebuffed, I finally said enough.  This was the shit that drove women to madness and I just couldn't take anymore. I didn't need one more game player hovering in my universe.


"You know what, I am good," I told him, "How about this, if you are ever really around (instead of some hypothetical rendezvous in a city requiring plane fare) and you legitimately want to hang out - in a way that calls for an actual invitation of one person to another in a form a little more personal than a text message, you let me know.  I would be happy to join you. Otherwise, I think I am good.  Take care and safe travels."




The next day,  I saw Fancy for the first time in a month.  I don't like to think of my text  as an ultimatum but he certainly got the call to action.


He took me to dinner at a bistro on Park Avenue and we talked about art and politics and our families.  I told him my theory about the resume cards.  He found it amusing.  I asked if there was ever anyone who called him on what I could only describe in the moment as cockiness.  He said no.  Then he amended the statement with his sister.  I decided immediatly that I liked her.


After the first round of Pellegrino and before we ordered wine I told him to come clean.  Seriously who asks a girl to Paris or afternoon tea?


"Well, Lyndsey," there is something about the way men use your name in a sentence such as this that can put you in your place with nothing much else at all, "I wanted to see you.  I felt bad we hadn't been able to get together before.  And I thought it would be fun."


Okay.  And afternoon tea?


"I am from India, Lyndsey. I grew up in London.  My parents have afternoon tea every day."


And I am an asshole.


Then we actually started to talk - a little less banter and more actual conversation.  The thing I find so incredibly attractive about him (aside from the eyes and the abs and the persistent invitations to Paris) is the fact that he gets it done.  He calls and says lets get together at this time or that and whether or not I can actually make it happen, he has a plan.  He isn't wishy-washy, he isn't insecure, he is grown-up. And that is HOT.


In the middle of dinner we were discussing relationships and the lack of ceremony that has taken over our generation.  "I don't want to revert back to out dated gender roles but there is something to said for courting," I said. "I don't know, I figure at this point I will probably just marry the next guy to bring me flowers.


A few minutes later he excused himself and entered into a hushed conversation with the maitre de who scurried behind the bar and started digging in the cabinets before pulling out a silk rose.  He walked back to the table and gave it to me without ceremony or a big speech. He just smiled like he knew exactly what he was doing.


And suddenly I was weak in the knees.

The Frenchman - Part 2

It is a toss up whether the Frenchman showed up at the absolute best time or the worst.  

On one hand, I wasn't exactly in the right emotional state to take in his international charm. On the other, his heavy handed affections, continental affectations and puppy dog persistence made him a perfect distraction to my bruised heart and wounded ego.

When I met him we were sharing a blanket in Brooklyn Bridge Park, both of us with friends of friends of friends, watching a movie al fresco in the glow of the Manhattan skyline. I was distracted at first, half petrified of running in to the latest boy to make me consider lesbianism, half hoping I would. It wasn't until we were standing on the same subway platform waiting to go home that I really took him in.

The gapping spread of his unbuttoned burgundy dress shirt was the first thing I noticed. As a rule, European men can pull of chest hair. Americans look like cast offs from the Jersey Shore.

His name was Michel and he was in New York on holiday. In fact, he had been traveling for months and wouldn't be returning to France until the growing season in September. His family owned a vineyard in the southwest and he spent his time traveling around the world instructing sommelier and meeting with distributors. He didn't tell me all of this in our first meeting - no we had a few more days for that - but it seems to stick out now that he is gone, no doubt hiking somewhere in Chili, looking for his next great conquest. 

We made mild chit-chat on the subway platform, the A/C an interminable wait. It was early and he was cute  so it was decided we should get a drink. 

I was not prepared. I was not prepared for the French and their sense of beauty and passion and love for art. I don't know that I have ever had such a conversion and not just with a stranger - with anyone. He made my heart hurt with the way he looked at the world and the way he spoke of our 'long moment together in time'. It was too much. I am too American and he was too... too something all together more. 

When he stopped in mid-conversation, chin in palm, unafraid of the silence, taking in the world around him and losing himself exclusively in the thoughts within his own head, it was like something within my own heart snapped. 

I realize the melodrama of this all but I am telling you HE WAS FRENCH; they have their own rules.  I wanted so badly to pause the world for a moment so I could capture the words he was saying, pictures he was painting that I knew would fly from my memory before the sun came up again.  

For the first time in months I wanted to write and not just about my petty indiscretions with the males of my life but about art and what it means to feel an overwhelming sense of joy at just being allowed to walk around and witness other people’s joy.  I wanted write silly flowery poetry and for a couple of hours I felt ridiculously happy, like a scene in a movie that feels too perfect to last for more than just a two minute montage but one you wouldn’t want any other way.

That night I let him kiss me but I didn't let him walk me home. As brilliant as his poetry might have been, I wasn't ready for what that could lead to.

The next day the Frenchman sent me text messages early in the morning asking how soon he could see me.  My foreign film feeling had worn off in the light of day and I couldn’t figure out if the poetics were a full time thing for him or if his English was just really terrible in a really fortunate manner.  

I debated whether to see him again - some perfect things should just be left a perfect mystery - but my funk was starting to roll in again, heavier now because I had a few free hours to contemplate my wounded heart.  So I decided to indulge the Frenchman with a little tragedy and arranged to meet him near the Met before taking a train to the Bronx to see an adaption of Blood Wedding in the park. 

When we got lost and spent thirty minutes wandering around aimlessly, the Frenchman explained to me the the definition of “foireux” - a sort of half-baked plan, something that sounds really great in theory but turns out to be nothing much of all. I worried that this was what our evening might be.  

Play or not, he assured me with a smile that just called for trouble, this night would be nothing of the kind.

On the subway, after what turned out to be an epically terrible show, he laid my palm facing up and slowly outlined the regions of France with his finger.  As we walked around an unfamiliar Brooklyn neighborhood, he serenaded me with songs from his childhood.  And as we sat on the patio of a local bar he did his best to explain to me what he saw as the way to treat a woman, a “real man’s” view of relationships and why I should enjoy each “beautiful long moment” with passion.

Meanwhile, I was directing his attention toward pronouncing my home state like something other that the Kathy Bates film that caused me to question the safety of the writing profession. 

What can I say, I have an ooh la la threshold.  Yes, it was incredibly romantic but it was all too much.  The Frenchman was sexy but I couldn’t exactly envision rolling around in bed with him, laughing at an ill-timed dumb joke or the innate awkwardness of almost all things naked. 

I guess I am a girl who needs just as much La Dolce Vita as Wet Hot American Summer and a guy who falls somewhere in between. 

The Frenchman was obviously someone who would want to spoon or whisper sweet nothings in my ear or wake up early to watch me while I dreamed.  And that just sounded gross. Even his plea to come home with me was stifling. He should have judged his audience when he told me he just wanted to come home so we could talk and he could hold me all night.  I attempted to explain to him the definition of a personal bubble but the language divided seemed to great.  

I walked him to the subway - okay in the general direction of the subway - and gave him a hug goodbye.  I tried to pretend I didn’t see him actually pouting as I walked away.  I am not sure how long he stood there - I never turned around.  

If, Then

There is this wonderful thing that happens when I write things down. All the anxiety I build up over analyzing a situation, any situation, gets spent looking for the perfect way to describe it. All my fear and worry and insecurity gets chewed up and spit out as fodder. 

In the 10 days since my disastrous 29 birthday, I have spent far too many hours replaying the details of that evening - and the evenings that followed - wondering just when exactly my life got so strange. The truth is it has never been what could be described as normal. But whose is?


I needed my necklace. But more so I needed some sort of closure to the confusion.  Emotional rectification had come swiftly but that confusion of just not fully understanding a string of events left a weight in the air.


By the time we finally met up, I had gnawed on that confusion until any taste of bitterness or anger or sadness was gone. I thought it would be harder to see him. I thought I would feel some need to act in a melodramatic fashion with the goal of making him feel bad, but I didn't.

I just wanted any unpleasantness to be over. It just felt silly and when he said he hoped we could get to a point where we were 'cool' with one another, the step seemed completely unnecessary.
 
It felt fine to be around him, easy even. Just because the dating thing had spiraled into disaster at record-breaking speeds, didn't mean we needed to go through the motions of pretending to get over something. At least I didn't. I had 10 days. I was good.

Who knows how friendship will work out. Perhaps I will never learn to understand his Greek and he will never get my Martian. But hell it seems worth a try. After all what's the worst that can happen.

A Birthday to Remember

Life is too short not to mend quickly.

This is the lesson taught to me by my latest up and down. The difference I am guessing, between now and the way things used to be is that now I know myself. It is a lot harder to have your self-esteem demolished by a birthday dumping when life all around is pretty undeniably kick-ass.

And my self-esteem had been the issue of concern as he gave me the big heave ho.

“I hope you won't let my issues affect the way you feel about yourself.”

It was everything in my being not to say, “Go fuck yourself” but that would have been serious overkill and undeserved and frankly, beneath me. That didn't mean, however, I didn't think about it for a second.

The whole thing was baffling. How we went from zero to this in a few short weeks, how I ended up all a-twitter in the first place, and most puzzling in the moment of dumping itself - just what exactly was going on.

I am not a moron. I was aware I was getting the boot but as it was my birthday and I had single-handedly taken down a pony-keg, the words coming out of his mouth - hell, the words coming out of my mouth -weren't really registering. It was just sooooo serious and the whole time I felt as if I was having an out of body experience, watching myself engage in some ridiculous soap opera with someone who was clearly just not that into me and for why?  I wanted to yell at the girl sitting on the stoop with her underwear in her hand bag, “Run, bitch run. Do not engage. This will not end well.”

And it didn't .

The reasons why are debatable and I gave it much consideration over the next 6 days.

One option was that I had dated more than enough guys who had been far too comfortable hovering for months or years at a time in the space between exclusivity and the big bad ‘boyfriend/girlfriend’ title.  Perhaps the idea of one more go round with Mr. ‘Let’s Just Hang Out‘ was enough to make me run screaming into the night. 

[It can be postulated that if there is to be naked time and statements have been made about this said naked time not occurring with anyone else, that it is not too far of a leap to want to move things in the direction of a relationship.

This concept seemed to land on him like greek on an alien from outer space.]

There was also the distinct possibility that as Justin Long put it, he was just not that into me.  I had offered this up two days prior - on a day distinctly not my birthday - and even gave him the whole, “You can take your out free and clear,” option.  Somehow comments about his aversion to people of my artistic background and comments about my previous relationship style (an immature banter bordering on playground name calling and hair pulling) hadn’t left me with a strong feeling of confidence in his interest in me and who knows, having these issues addressed might have placed a spotlight on his shakiness as well.


Finally there quite probable scenario in which I had done what I often do when man-related situations start to feel weird or difficult.  I got scared and went plowing head first into some sort of definition - anything to make it feel less terrifying to be so vulnerable, anything that meant that someone else wasn’t scared so I could be.  The only sick twisted comfort in this was that in a way I had orchestrated my own demise and wouldn’t have to spend months or years waiting for the other shoe to drop on something that wasn’t quite right.


At the end of the day, it really didn't matter why it didn't work. Obsessing over the cause and effect wasn’t going to change what happened and more importantly it wouldn't change either of the parties involved. 

Still, a few days after my birthday I was feeling terribly low and dejected so my girlfriend sent me one of those self-help articles written for single women who date like morons. I often find this type of writing as condescending as the men who have just dumped me but this one was different. Short, sweet and spot-on - three things I try to be in my relationship tête-à-têtes and fail at almost without exception.

The article talked about knowing how to say no when you just aren't that into him, knowing when to gracefully bow out when he is just not that into you and adopting one key mantra to live by in order to find a guy that fits just right.

"You can't say the wrong thing to the right person."

This was an important message I was starting to forget in all this ho-hum birthday dumping sadness.  I could have bit my tongue, pretended to be okay with something that didn’t quite sit right.  Some might say I should have.  But that is just not me.

I am a little crazy and completely over-analytical and bordering on OCD. And yes, this tendency to feel the world fully and gnaw at conflict until it becomes raw might suck for my relationships, but it also let's me see the world like no one else and accomplish what often seems impossible.

We all have baggage. We WILL fuck up. No one is perfect but we can't spend our lives worrying we might say or do (or obsess over) the wrong thing. Eventually the right person will come along; one who likes us, warts and all, and one who is ready and open to what we have to offer. 

When that guy shows up there is no saying he will completely understand our crazy or speak our alien dialect but hopefully he will be excited to try and when all else fails, he’ll know where to pick up a copy of our dictionary.

The Frenchman - Part 1

I am not exactly sure how or when life turned into a Woody Allen film but somehow here we are.

I am all hurt and rejected and disillusioned with men as a whole and who stumbles into my evening’s narrative but a gorgeous Frenchman with ridiculous brown eyes and a far off gaze too painful to identify.

“No!  You are not coming home with me.”

“But this is so beautiful, I do not want it to end.” Even with the smoldering and the broken english, there is no part of me that is non-American enough to resist an eye roll at this.  And he is just so damn earnest.  And handsome.  And tempting.  

But no.

“Sorry buddy.”  I say with the cocky half-smirk I default to when an interaction with a man becomes far too real and I waver between feeling incredibly hot and just plain ridiculous.  “This week has been a bit much and as grand of an idea as it seems, I would feel guilty in the morning.”

“What do you have to feel guilty about?”  He had a point.  I did get dumped on my birthday.  I would be within my rights to engage in some serious revenge sex but that just didn’t feel right.  

Around this time, I deflected with a joke, which is what I do when I am nervous or uncomfortable.  It was something accusatory about him harboring a dozen bastard children scattered throughout his various wine-selling ports of call. 

“Listen, you are adorable and French and Adorable and LEAVING - my four favorite characteristics in a man -  but this just isn’t going to happen.”  I tried to get him to focus on my directions toward the subway with little avail.   He instead focused on my neck. 

His scruff was still prickly, having yet to grow out into the quarter inch shag that consistently weakens my knees and sends my spiraling into nostalgic recollections of being young and stupid and ridiculously in love with a former band geek who hadn’t yet figured out that he was now hot.  I like them best when they are still clueless - but I digress.

This was an accidental evening, tucked in shadows, strolling through alleyways, beckoned into dark doorways to listen to ridiculously romantic soliloquies made ever more nauseating by the accent.

My best-friend and I often talk about being women with whom romance is utterly wasted.  We have no idea what to do with these types of affections and as such have a tendency to run head first into the arms of assholes without a romantic bone in their bodies or for that matter an ounce of empathy,  sensitivity or emotional availability.  We know how to pick them.

And as debonair as this frenchman seemed, I knew too much to fall for simple overtures.  He was the makings of good writing or terrible life choices.  But with 48 hours left in the country, I had yet to settle on one or the other. 

Getting Here

Something about us was never easy.  I think that is why Mr. Sweet Thang and I both kept on.  It was a challenge and generally speaking, in the days before I left Kansas City for the excitement of New York, we were both bored.  With work, with friends, with life.  But with each other there was a fight to win, a battle with which to engage.  We made brilliant sparring partners and somehow, I mistook that for love.

There are only two reasons to drop the L-bomb.  One, to let someone know you really care or two, to ask for some sort of validation for yourself.  One would hope that the vast majority of exchanges have motivations that fall with the former but I think that it would be foolish not to consider the ulterior, more self-involved reasons behind what are often grand, yet ill-timed declarations .

During my brief visit back to the mid-west, I made sure to call him.  I missed him.  I missed our friendship and the thought of seeing him made me so sublimely happy, I was blind to any red flags that might have warned me to remember that we are never simple.  I burst through the bar to see him, wrapped my arms around him and choice-fully ignored the icy welcome.  His moods were never exactly  predictable and it had been I while.  I was sure he would warm up as we sat drinking beer at a bar that had offered us several memorable conversations.  Instead, he became more morose and I tried my best to keep it light.  I told him about the new boy I had just began seeing - the one that at the time seemed so different, so drama-free, so healthy and so gameless.  I wanted to ask him about the girl I knew he was still seeing but like most things with us, for now denial seemed like a wiser choice.

We went to play pool and combined it with truth or dare - truth or pool, I called it.  Not the cleverest of titles but I was on my second vodka tonic.  

When he asked me if I had wanted him to ask me to stay,  I told him that the thought never crossed my mind. I still can't envision a world in which he ever would. 

And then he told me that he had loved me.

He went on to elucidate the ways in which it had hurt him to watch me go, never once mentioning that he had had someone waiting in the wings, someone who today holds a role front and present.  When we spoke about her later he told me that she is easy, uncomplicated - yes, a little boring, but with her it is never hard.  Things with us were, difficult that is.  

He asked me again things I had told him many times before, things I had said with tears in my eyes and I couldn’t help but think that this inquiry was not because he genuinly wanted to understand what I felt at the time but because he needed to hear that he was loved, that I had loved him and that it had caused me pain to leave him.  He needed the validation.  And I had been down this road before.

He asked me these questions and I became more and more upset.  I had taken the feelings I felt for him at the time and I had placed them in a cardboard box in the back of my closet to slowly disintegrate and drift away.  He had mattered, I had told him before I left. I had offered the opportunity to contribute something, anything, but during all those painful conversations he had said nothing.  

So there sitting on a barstool pool cue in hand, I said the one thing that felt fitting, the one thing I could to redeem my pride and wrench, me back into reality, where someone 1000 miles away was sparking something in me not worth dismissing so easily at the beaconing of the past.  

I said,  “Well.  You missed the boat.” Not the most original or eloquent I will admit but it was what I had to work with at the time.  

He missed the fucking boat.  And I can’t pretend I am not glad that he did.  Things worked out as the should, as the always do, but for a moment, as brief as it was that fucker sucked me back into the ugliness that made us interesting.  At this point in my life I can forgo that type of interesting.  I do not need to be in pain to feel alive.  I need happiness and sanity and maturity and no freaking b.s.  It might not be glamourous but it nice.  And nice is a word that is highly underrated in an age of complication.

The Man Fast takes Manhattan

A funny little thing about blogs - if you write them, people will come.  If you stop, you get raging hate mail from anonymous men demanding an explanation.  Your friends in far off cities start to wonder if you are alive or if you have perhaps joined the cult of robe-wearing,  kool-aid-drinking, recovering hipsters who dominate the Brooklyn purview.  All in all, that daily outlet that once provided fodder for others and a release for oneself ceases to exist and damn, if it isn't hard to start back up again.

My best-friend Erica has not always understood my life choices but she has always been supportive of my writing.  Her support ranks in the top three most influential opinions of my life (maybe top two, sorry mom). So when she gave me shit about not writing I decided it might be a good idea to pick it up again.

I also really liked my friend Trish's suggestion that I relaunch The Man Fast under the new moniker, "The Man Fast takes Manhattan."  Catchy or what?

I am not exactly sure how quickly I will be able to get caught up because it might be necessary to back-track a little and fill in the gaps from the last year.  I won't bother with the messy details of the move, like the violent stomach flu that took out 35 family members, myself included, right at Christmas time, as my mom and I prepared to drive a 24-foot U-Haul through a snow storm from the safety and comfort of the mid-west to the overwhelming newness of New York or the moment I took out a car just as I turned onto my narrow Brooklyn street.  

I won't divulge the boring details of my early days in Brooklyn, when life was dominated by reading endless art criticism I really didn't understand or hiding in my apartment for weeks at a time because a) I had no money b) I had no friends and c) the city was covered under feet of snow which prevented me from functionally taking part in any sort of life, even if I had one.

There was, eventually, reason to go out.  I made friends with a girl I picked up in the bathroom at a bar on St. Patrick's Day and a second cousin found me on Facebook and challenged me to what felt like a months long drink-off which I lost every time.  I started to find friends in my program, friends who introduced me to their friends, with the death of a drug-dealing potential suitor being the only snag in that situation.  (Apparently, trying to outrun the cops in an RV full of weed while transporting the merchandise from New York to Oregon through a tiny dirt town, ended up with the driver being posthumously charged with the town's most recent grizzly murders.) 

That foray into dating, aside, there have been some other notable flops.  Who new calling a guy "the Asian Justin Beiber" all night was not a good idea when looking for another date?

Eventually, life in New York started to become just that, a life.  Initial reservations about the city being filled with elitist neophytes clamoring to take their place in the hegemonic system that is the New York art scene, proved to be only partially true and my neighbor Lexi's invitation to her birthday party filled with interesting Brooklyn folks (not all clad in skinny jeans and Tom's) signaled the beginning of a series of new connections, new relationships with people who are characters rather than caricatures of the big bad city.

It seemed I was finding my stride and with it came the possibility of new relationships - the kind that offered rug burn and a physical release to the mental stress that was and is grad school.  But like all things in my life, nothing new comes simply and it has been an interesting ride, one that in the last month has brought more ups and downs than the San Franscisco marathon.  Details I will fill in here, details that have motivated me into a new chapter of the Man Fast, one that doesn't forgo dating - that would be silly in a city with so much to do - but to my mother's deep appreciation one that forgos something else, something spelled S.E.X.

The Next Chapter - Part 1

I was skipping down the hallway, my long purple dress sashaying back
and forth, the ends daintily grasped between my thumb and index
finger. I was grinning, not quite ear to ear but close.

"Who is he?" my co-worker asked as I pranced around her, hardly able
to contain my frivolity. I snorted.

"There is no 'he'. If there was I would be smiling so large my face
might hurt." No, the 'he' in this situation was the quickly
approaching open road. Freedom. The chance to get the hell out of
dodge and try something new.

Not that I hadn't been traveling all month. Unfortunately my
escapades of recent days had been limited to family gatherings located
firmly with in the tri-state area. It had been lovely to see my loved
ones but it seemed that everyone of blood relation had only one
interest when it came to my life. My uterus.

"You are gonna have to get artificially inseminated," my grandmother
hissed over red velvet cake at my cousin Jordan's wedding. I had been
taunted by a full table of family to join the over sugared six-year
olds clamoring to catch the bouquet. I refused to be the only woman
over three foot on the dance floor and I sure as hell wasn't going to
plow down the flower girls for some relationship good luck charm. My
family wouldn't take no for an answer. I finally succumbed to the
torturous ribbing but only because the trajectory of the bride's
impending toss was directly in line with the keg. I stood, arms
crossed, waiting for the humiliation to be over and when, as
predicted, a bouncy kindergartner with floppy ringlets nabbed the
prize, I took the opportunity to tell my grandmother that it was
probably a sign.

"You know that little girl is probably going to get married before I do."

"I am starting to think so!" bit my grandmother in a tone that came as
a complete contrast to her rosy, soft and huggable demeanor. This was
the grandma who up until this point had seemed completely ambivalent
to my single status. I think today's nuptials had completely freaked
her out because the first thing anyone said to me as we exited the
church was, "So you are the ONLY one left to marry."

Duh.

"Grandma! I am working on it."

"Well work faster because I am 76 and I don't have much time left."

"Then you had better take you vitamins," I quipped back, "Because it
is going to be a while."

This seemed to settle things for a few minutes, that is until someone
mentioned babies at which point grandma threw out the artificial
insemination comment.

"Well I hear that is what single women do who can't get married."

I feel that it is only fair to mention that I am twenty-flippin-eight.
You would think that my grandmother had already nominated me into the
spinsterhood society.

Grandpa joined in that my problem was obviously a) I needed to find a
country boy and b) I needed to be 'not so mean to men'. (He has
mentioned this before, and I am beginning to wonder if he thinks I am
some kind of dominatrix, whipping and scolding the guys I date, which
just to be clear is not true…. completely.) So I came back with the
first smart-ass remark I could think up.

"Grandpa, the men pickin's are so slim, I might have to start dating women!"

This did not go over well. Grandpa got stoic. The table got quiet and
grandma shot me an uncomfortable glance.

"Well," he finally growled, "I guess that means I would be losing
another grandchild."

Ouch. I would like to think that should I ever choose to embrace same
sex tendencies that grandpa would eventually come around. I gather
now that he wanted it firmly known that that is not the case. I
thought about telling him that if he would prefer, I could bring home
a large black man, but I thought I might have pushed my luck for one
evening. He stewed for a solid ten minutes before I grabbed his arm
across the table, told him to lighten up, that I was just kidding and
that he knew he loved me so he just needed to cut it out.

"Aww honey, you know I am from the old school." He finally sighed. I
decided to consider this an apology even though I don't think it did
anything to change his outlook on the world.

Thank god I didn't mention Obama.

The long pause

There have been a handful of relationships in my life that just ended. Well, most of them ended, in one way or another but some, some just stopped with no explanation, no teary-eyed farewell. They were just done – like Thanksgiving turkey. Being adverse to confrontation the way I am I just let they let them lye with no attempt at resuscitation.

In hindsight, the steps to relationship disintegration were clear, reasons why in an abruptly seaming fashion, someone I once viewed part of me as an extra appendage would simply cease to answer my calls or why I could not bring myself to answer the phone when some ex-something or other would call trying to regurgitate the past.

In the moment, however, it just felt done, and I did not have the means, the desire, hell the physical ability to drag it on any longer.

I haven't written a word in over two months. Not a journal entry, a poem or even a drunken stream of consciousness incorporating my need to purchase cat food for my newly acquired obese kitty. The reasons why were made up of the perfect storm of completion, limbo, insecurity and the deep resounding need to get some lovin'.

I got some angry emails. "How could you abandon your blog?!" 'Cause I was tired.

Everyday I thought about writing. Everyday it got harder to explain. Did I really need to write a mea culpa to my readers? Probably. Would anyone care or be interested when I finally found the words. Probably not.

The universal truth I have discovered in walking away from more than my fair share of somethings, is that something is most often not there when you come back.

So will I realize it is probably a little late now, I have suddenly found the urge that hasn't been with me in 70 days.

And so I am gonna break it down like this:

When looking back on the insignificant nothings that combined together to make the thought of writing about my slightly pathetic yet frequently amusing love life a vomit enduing experience, a few key moments come to mind.

First, my boss insisted on calling me the Man Faster, every time he saw me. This minor annoyance was exacerbated by returning from 28 days in paradise to find that my world and more specifically, my office seemed smaller and more suffocating than it ever had before. Nothing felt right and I wasn't exactly in the happiest of spaces.

Then there was an incident in mid-March, a few days after my last post where he brought up my assault in a highly inappropriate way. I don't think he was intending to drudge up old memories but saying my life experiences were part of some greater calling just made me want to say fuck off to men, and well, the world, for a while and so I did.

We will call this the hermit phase. Lots of crying. Lots of anti-depressants. An impromptu trip to Chicago to see some of the people I love the most in the world and then all was right again…. Kind of.

See then there were the jabs. You know those sort of back-handed, well that's not fair, we'll go with sideways, yeah, sideways complements which leave you feeling like maybe your months of work had all been missing the mark? Well I kept getting lampooned with them. "Isn't your writing great! I can't wait until you write something of substance!"

Well shit.

If I hadn't been feeling a little weak in the gumption department, I probably would have said 'fuck it' to that too and come up with some quippy post about the guys I met at Skies with my girlfriend Marcella, who went on and on about what huge Creed and Nickleback fans they were. Seriously? Seriously? I always wondered if such a creature existed. But I didn't write quippy posts.

I sulked and drank too much and slept for 22 hours in a row and contemplated running away to Alaska. 'Cause I was feeling like shit and to top it all off, I wanted a freaking date!

After writing a whole book about how much I loved my solo life, I felt so very over the topic and was ready to meet a nice feller, as gramps would say, and settle in for some good, drama free lovin'. That felt a little hard to do when writing about the drama had become my bread and butter.

Plus, taking yourself out of the game means reentry is extra difficult and reentry was making me it's bitch all around.

I just felt crappy. So I didn't write. I felt chubby so I didn't try to date. And not doing either just seemed to make feel pathetic and i.e. unloveable.

Then I started to doubt my ability to tolerate Midwestern boys. There is a long story that accompanies this comment but let me skip to the punch-line where a douche bag (that I have to be nice to lest get a new source of income) refers to me and my friends as, "Hey, they aren't my friends. They are my entourage." Lovely.

See, paragraphs of pleasantness. Did anyone really want to hear all this? I haven't been full of much banter these days, except to say that I spent the better part of April joking that if I didn't get some lovin' soon I was going to get a cat – and I hate cats.

Guess what? I got a cat.

Bently, is a beast. I mean his freaking huge. He is rather apathetic to my existence. I am wearing him down though. He is gonna love me damn it, whether he likes it or not.

I can't believe that I have become one of those cat women – and trust me I have. I joke that I am going to get one of those baby slings and carry him around the City Market – I mean how creepy would that be! (No that is not actually me - but that is Bently's head.)

I got Bently on Saturday (at the Pet Expo of all places), signed up for online dating on Sunday and found out that I got into Grad School on Monday.

Enter limbo.

So like most things that I do, I decided to apply for graduate school on a whim. Not exactly a whim, I had been thinking about it for a while. It was just that this particular program, in this particular place wasn't something I event knew about until a few days before I decided to apply. Calling their admissions office had been a whim, their application deadline had passed by almost a month. When they said they would consider my application anyway, it just felt like the something I had to do. I didn't actually think I would get in, let alone with an opportunity for an assistantship that would pay my full ride.

So limbo. Waiting. Lots and lots of waiting. To find out if I got it. To decide if I am going to go. Debating what to do. Feeling unsure of who to tell. Knowing that deciding to go means leaving here, everything I have invested in this place and all the people I have come to care for.

So that's the deal. And all I can really say on the topic.

I didn't really feel like I could pick back up with writing until I knew where I was picking up but since it doesn't look like I am going to know anything for quite some time I just felt like I needed to write something, say something, before the urge passed and I got stuck without words for another month. Not exactly ground breaking stuff, or any real haha hilarity, just real life, and a couple months with a needed lack of extroverted introspection.

If it is any consolation, this weekend is the anniversary of the great big drama that launched the Man Fast, and in celebration, my original Not-so-gay-gay-best-friend is coming down from Chicago to spend the weekend with my family, consuming mass quantities of summer libations and most likely dancing like this:

Just when I thought I was over you

Obviously - I haven't been writing much lately.

I was working to get the second book all pretty, by which I mean spelling error free, and sent out to some folks out east. And when I was finished I started to think I was finished with the blog. I mean really, how long can one person write about her sad pathetic excuse for a dating life.

Answer: As long as the weird shit keeps happening.

So I am driving along today, minding my own business when out of the blue I get a random text message from someone who apparently found my blog through INK and wanted to let me know that HE found it to be amusing - spelling errors and all. He even offered to do some proof reading for me.

Now this random stranger was lucky because he caught me on a good day when I found his shameless lack of digital personal space to be amusing and ballsy instead of creepy and stalkerrific, which I was sure to let him know.

I momentarily considered google stalking him. I have a friend who can find out your shoe size and the last time you had sex just from the last four digits of your phone number. But really I didn't want to know. I'd rather live in denial about my random callers. I pretend they are all nice boys raised by nuns in Sweden instead of a bunch of hairy backed psychopaths with infant skull-sized growths protruding from their necks. Or worse, they might not be men at all.

Random stranger and I shared some interesting cyber repartee safely cloaked in the anonymity of text messages. Non-committal ballsyness. Just like I like it.

And I told him I would be taking him up on his proofing offer. Poor mom had to proof the whole book in two days. He said he retracted the offer.

Puttin' it out there and takin' it away, now if that doesn't sound like a man I don't know what does.

Florida Gone

I knew Florida would be a transformative experience and the women who run the organization that brought me there assured me it might take a while for it to set in. And while the full impact is surely yet to come, the immediate revelations slammed into me Friday quite harder than I expected.

Yeah, the whole fast thing feels over. Big deal. That won't impact the existence of this blog. It might change it some, but like V said,"Just because I would date a 23 year old, doesn't mean a 23 year old will date me." Congress is still out on if my decision will be ratified.

The thing that is getting me, that is really kicking me in the ass, is that for 28 days for 24 hours a day, I got to be an artist. I got to say, "I am a writer and a performer and a myriad of other things," and I didn't have to qualify the statement. And it was validated by people who applauded my work, were enthusiastic to hear more, and seemed grateful to the point of embarrassing me to have us there.

They made us soup, people.

For 28 days, I got to write my own ticket in life. I got to choose the projects that were inspiring me at that moment and only for the sake of teaching a class or doing a radio interview or getting to a massage appointment, did I have to wake up to the sound of an alarm clock. I woke up at the same time I do anyway but for once it was because the sea air was beckoning and I had pages yearning to get out of my head.

It was a beautiful way to live a life. And I know that that can't last forever but coming back and trying to squeeze my artistry in at the end of the day, when I am exhausted and physically drained from nine hours under florescent lights, that is challenging. It is no wonder that the first book sat in a drawer for the better part of the last two years.

There was a momentum gained at sea. There were parties filled with snowbirds who liked to pose naked for calendars - yeah I will let you take a minute to process the visual of that one - there were parties with art lovers and artists alike, there were dinner readings of the work we created, and a group of NICE ladies that took care of us on our stay. Part of me wished I had written mire about the experience, and there are not books strewn here and there around my un-unpacked apartment that tell the tales of some of the experiences but for most of the time I was to busy writing to write. And that was a great new problem to have.

The book is pretty much completed. The essence is there. All the foul expletives are tucked carefully in place. All the nicknames created to protect the innocent and the guilty. I need to clean it up. Obviously someone else will need to fix all my spelling mistakes, although I am not sure who that is going to be since none of my friends or family featured in the book are allowed to read it until if and when it is shared with the general public. I would like them to like me just a little bit longer.

So I am not sure what is next. The trip didn't make me desperate to get the hell out of KC like I thought it might - though it feels so much smaller on my return. I didn't make me want to run, from my life, my friends, my apartment - well maybe the last one - to someplace a little more glamorous. It didn't make me loath my job like I worried it might, but it did make me want to take a sledge hammer to the florescent lights that make me exhausted and blur my sense of reality. No, I came back and realized I like my job. I work with good people who are fun and smart and inspiring. It just made me a little sad to see them again, as some, many even, have found their life's passion and it made me miss the twenty 28 days I got to spend fully enraptured in mine.

For 28 days I got to be an artist. Just an artist. And for 28 days I got to feel like the truest form of me. It was indescribable.