intheclouds

i woke up on final decent yesterday. i kind of stretched out and looked out the window. at first i thought the clouds were really low that day. then i realized it was snow. it's easy to forget that it snows in other places.

my uncle picked me up from the airport and we drove out to the backroads to the countryside inbetween rochester and buffalo, ny. woodburning stoves. barns. horses. chickens. ducks. cats the size of cows. frosted windows and jugs of carlo rossi.

i had been gone for such a long time. it's sometimes hard for me to even imagine that this is what i came from. and where i came from. i don't really know if i want to leave.

sometimes serendipity

thanksgiving night i had a dream that my roommate and i lived in a huge, beautiful, open spaced house on the ocean. all the walls were coming in at different angles and different shapes. the windows looked out onto the low tide, the rocks by the shore, and the boats in the distance. we were painting all the walls bright different colors in preparation for a party that we were going to throw. throughout the day friends would stop by to check on our progress and say hello.
one of the people was a boyfriend of mine from austin that i no longer have contact with. he came in and sat down. we talked for a long time and then he stood up, hugged me and left.
in real life i haven't spoken to him in several years, though not by my choice. i think about him often and care about him a lot still.
i told my roommate of my dream and how i was thinking of contacting the boyfriend just to see how he was doing. because the dream was so nice. she asked who it was and when i told her she said "do not email him." and i knew she was right.

several days later i went to austin on a very spur of the moment visit. my flight got in late tuesday night and my girlface picked me up and we went out for a drink and then went to a party around the corner from our house. it was 3am.

i walked out of the bathroom and was surprised to see a close, old friend of mine. he hugged me and then said that the previously mentioned boyfriend was right behind me. he told me i should go to him. talk to him. hug him. i thought it probably wasn't a good idea.
but if there was ever going to be a moment.

i got his attention with "hi dan". he looked up at me and the first thing out of his mouth was "oh, fuck."

i guess now i really know not to email him. message sent.

turkey dinner.

he was returning my phone call. we talked for a long time. it was really good to catch up with him. and as i was thinking that he says to me "i should have knocked you up while i had the chance."
at first i am a little too confused to speak. but i manage to come back.
"ummm. hon, what do you mean 'while you had the chance?' we've never had sex. in fact, we've never even dated. i don't know how you would have planned on doing that."
"dixie cup and a turkey baster, my dear. dixie cup and a turkey baster."

god, miletus. you're really sick sometimes, you know that?

obviously in crisis...

a close girlfriend just asked me if i thought it was ok for her to sleep with her horrible ex-boyfriend again.
now, i am not a supporter of the back-slide. my take has always been only moving forward, no looking back.
but she asks me this and i say to her, in all sincerity, "hon, you can do what ever you want. i am not here to tell you how to live your life, only to support your disillusionment. so you go for it. repeatedly. i fully support you abandoning all reality."
i mean...what kind of friend says that? we are obviously both in crisis...

you would have loved him too

i thought this was really beautiful:
you would have loved him too.

light and sweet

i have to wonder, by the end of my lifetime, how many people will know exactly how i take my coffee...

alcohol and oxygen don't mix.

i am currently in a time of transition. i moved out of the time share in williamsburg and until i get the keys for the compound in bed-stuy i am staying with my boyfriend and his roomate/ex-girlfriend in crown heights. it is not as weird as it sounds.
except last night we all got really drunk in the living room, playing jenga. smoking cigarettes. we killed a couple bottles of wine and a good portion of a bottle of gin.
how the snoot made it to work today is beyond me.
i waddled out of bed around noon today and stood there looking at the wreckage. it was bad. cigarettes every where. empty bottles. toppled jenga tower. dirty glasses. but the part that puzzled me the most was the presence of a camera. a camera?
the last thing i remember is a falling jenga tower and then i was waking up naked in the bedroom.
after a certain amount of party the last thing you want is photographic evidence.
later in the afternoon, after wandering fuzzy headed and aimlessly with ms. roomie through manhattan we settled down at an outdoor cafe for a glass of dog hair.
after a few sips i managed to get out "was someone taking pictures last night?". she told me what she remembered.
i really hope those photos don't come out.

vanity fair...again...

it was at the art fair that she saw the gigantic orb displaying one very magnified eye. as they walked by it she tried to explain to him the brief phenomenom of the lover's eye. where miniature portraits were painted of a single eye to be given to a lover. where only a lover would know someone so intimately to identify them from just a portrait of their eye.
she finished her explanation as he turned to her.
taking both of her hands he swayed, only slightly...she knew he was wasted.
he swayed. tried to steady himself and looked in her eyes. took both of her hands and said "you are totally my lover."
maybe that meant that he had seen her eyes. she could have thought about it more. but she looked up. beyond him. to the backdrop of his profession of love and saw only the life size paintings of maniac clowns decapitating people with chain saws.
was it a sign?
she leaned forward and kissed him.

the serenity prayer

i think it would be really amazing if more people in my life used it as a basic guideline in their day to day existence. i feel like it would decrease the number of doomsday phone calls i get on a weekly basis.

spice of life

most people who know me are acutely aware of the fact that i cry a lot. almost everything has the potential to bring me to tears. but my life has been relatively cry free for the past few months. this has been an astounding and refreshing change in my life.

yesterday my new found love interest and i went for our weekly picnic in the park. we hit up mamoun's falafel imporium. two falafel's with hot sauce.

my ethnic back ground being what it is, i have spent my entire life eating spicy food. it is nothing new to me, and my tolerance is high. yesterday, as i sat across from my blond haired, blue eyed date, i was baffled by the fact that he seemed relatively unphased by the spice of the falafel. i had started sweating.

it was when my nose started running that he finally said "it's really hot." thank god i wasn't the only one who thought so.
after i started crying i decided that it was really imperative for me to remove the top part of my sandwich. my mouth was on fire. my stomach was scared. i'm sure that my taste buds had been permanently damaged. i felt like a total wimp. sitting at the picnic table, tears running down my face, i tried to explain. it was too much. in an act of chivalry he reached across the table, took my sandwich and said "i'll eat that part for you."

he took a bite. his eyes widened. his nostrils flared. he looked at me and said "they put way more hot sauce on yours."

as he started crying i realized that we had just shared something that would bring us together. that would make us stronger. as we both sat there, tears running down our face, snot running from our noses, looking into each other's eyes i thought "this must be where we fall in love."

goal oriented.

after thinking it over for a minute i said to him "i want to try to be less selfish."
he said "i don't think you're selfish."
"...maybe not so much. but i am definitely self absorbed."
"that's ok. somebody's gotta pay attention to you."

ohmygod. thank you.

and eat it too.

as they walked away from dinner she decided to ask him.

"were you disappointed to find out i was such an emotional trainwreck?"

he responded without hesitation.

"disappointed? no. no i wasn't disappointed. it was more like..it is more like i'm out to dinner. it's my birthday. all of my friends are with me and i've had a really great meal. and afterwards they bring out a huge birthday cake. and it's beautiful and i am really thankful and then i get ready to cut it and i ask who else wants a piece. and they all just say, 'oh no. it's ALL for you!' and i am looking at that big cake, and it's all for me...and i'm already really full. that's what it's like."

and she knew that couldn't be good.

drunk dialing is no longer part of my life.

apparently what has replaced it is getting on the employee intranet system and putting in transfer requests for myself.
while trying to bid for my april schedule i learned that i had been transfered to the international base out of newark.
per my request.

a couple of days ago a co-worker said 'could have been a lot worse. at least you can still live in the same city."

later that day i ran into a friend that informed me that i am not the only one that likes to drunk transfer themselves.
apparently another friend of ours likes to get drunk and transfer himself too. but in his case it didn't work out as well.

his transfer request to cleveland was granted. effective as of april 2. 2008.

last night

i spent a good 15 minutes trying to figure out how to set the alarm on the clock that came with my hotel room. it was touch screen. then another 5 minutes trying to figure out how to make it wake up to the radio. another 3 trying to find a station i wanted to wake up to.

this morning, dark and early, i woke up to a buzzer. i started a cat fight with the clock pressing every button i could trying to turn the damn thing off. i don't know how long i sat there fighting with it before i realized that it wasn't the clock. it was my phone.

my life as of late...

...has been intensely strange and beautiful. full of transformation and emotion.
and gin.
quite a lot of gin.

have another drink...

...or masturbate? it doesn't seem like it should be a hard decision, but lately, i swear...

there was a brief period of time stretching a couple of years where i seriously underestimated the size of my ass.
this disillusionment led to me giving jenndaly at least 5 pairs of really really cute dollar store underwear that wouldn't fit over my ankle. several years later, when she was either too hungover to see the size, or feeling over-zealous about the size of her own ass, she purchased a pair of really cute gitch that allowed her to give back to her skivvy fairy. she thought it read xxs. but it really read 2xL. and it fit me great.

these days, with my weight situation being what it was in junior high, i wonder sometimes if i should have kept all that gitch i gave away. and the super hot black pants. and the prom dresses. and all the awful clothes i swore i would never be able to fit into again.

but i know, deep down, that all i really want are the one pair of gitch that girlface altered. frilly and white, with a touch of flower. she sewed pee-wee's face on the front and printed across them "master-bator"...or something to that something...

would she really believe that my ass is that small now?
would she believe i could get my ass back in sassy?

but i can't run away from who i am...

i've had this fantasy for a while where i go to karaoke with my hair down, wearing a head-dress and a halter top and i belt out cher's halfbreed (see about me) on a horse.
monday night it actually happened. without the head-dress or the horse.
or the halter top, for that matter.
but it was pretty incredible, nonetheless.

thank you to everyone that came out and celebrated my birthday with me. y'all were incredible.

beauty tricks

i woke up this morning and not only had my eye make up flawlessy arranged itself raccoon-like...my hair had magically worked itself into a perfect side pony-tail.

of course my boyfriend isn't here to see it. he's never gonna believe me.

i like to drink you with a little salt and lime...

i can't even begin to imagine how much msg i've consumed today. normally on days like this i will sit around and read the labels of all of the food stuffs i have available to me. i've noticed that it is an ingredient in almost every processed food that i love.

i used to think that it was olives that made me love the taste of martinis. but these days i've realized that it is really the gin and vermouth that i really love. the olives were just decoration and filler.
i used to work with this woman named miss rebeca at a dungeon jazz club. we spent countless holidays together with a lot of partying, internet porn and foghat. miss rebeca could tell you how your drink ranked on the caloric/buzz scale. for example: colorado bulldogs...hi-cal/low-buzz. the goal was to get the most buzz for the least calories.
the cal/buzz rating on a martini is a pretty good one if you leave off the olives and any other kind of filler thing...like juices for flavor and color, etc.

there is still a hole in the wall here at the condo and it's amazing the smells that start to wander in from other apartments. more often than not it's the smell of cigarette smoke in the morning coming in from some other floor. it's definitely not the most appealing smell to wake up to or come home to. but every once in a while there is something else. like, some kind of glade or scented candle wandering in. it has been a weird experience of identifying the memories i have attached with different smells. yesterday it was some kind of air freshener that reminded me of christmas with my mother and jesus christ superstar. a couple of weeks ago it was revlon's outrageous shampoo and high school in germany. but usually it's just that stale smoke smell and it reminds me of walking into a bar before it opens. with only natural light to show you just how dirty the place really is.

i wish i had the motivation to leave the house. but the more i think about it the later it gets, and if i can put it off a little bit longer i'll totally be ready to forget about doing anything other than sleeping.

heard about the letter you wrote me on the radio.

sometime within the first two years i lived in austin i ended up with a roomate named pauly...boom boom for those at casino el camino. boom boom and i met one night when i was in casino, drunk and drinking, ordering a burger. pauly was in the kitchen.
i yelled over the music.

b: "i want a buffalo burger and i want it rare!"

he looks at me. he's a big boy. not some skinny fucker in hip huggers. he is roly poly and tattooed and full of 'tude.
he looks at me. he throws down his pen. he says:

"look. i get a lot of chicks in here sayin' they want a rare burger and then they come back here cryin' to me that it's not cooked enough. are you gonna do that shit to me too?"

i look him in the eye as best i can considering my alcohol intake. i sway. only slightly.

"i want it rare, i want it bloody, i want it to say moo...walk it by the fire."

he looks at me with even more doubt.

"alright, sister, but i don't wanna hear your bitchin about it later."
"you won't."

swear on my mother's soul that this was the best burger i have ever eaten in my life. it melted in my mouth. i walked right back up to that kitchen window and desperately tried to focus on his face while i told him about my burger feelings. "what's your name? i promise i won't forget."

he told me. i forgot it.

months later we ended up living together. he needed a place and i had a dining room. a friendship forged out of booze and burgers and it was a great one. it was like living with a kid. we'd come home late at night and watch e.t.
we'd go out drinking.
we ate wings. we rode bikes. we talked about his increasingly unhealthy relationship with his now ex-wife/baby mama. i reminded him to brush his teeth. to flush.

one day we were sitting in the living room together and i was going through a box of stuff i had moved to texas with. a box full of paper. a box full of pictures and love letters from a man that i had moved there with. someone that was no longer a friend or part of my life in any way. i looked to pauly and asked him...should i keep these?

he looked at me. took a bite of a bologna sandwich and laid it down.

"who is this guy, b? so what? so he wrote nice letters. where is he now? where are you? what contribution is he making to your life right now that makes you feel like you should keep them? do you have a good reason to hold on to them? because if you do, by all means. but why?"

i was shocked.
and i am so grateful.
i burned that shit asap.

when he had a baby i wondered how it was going to be...him having to tell someone else to brush their teeth...
but boom boom laid some hot wisdom on me that day. and more than once over the past 9 years i've had to remind myself that boom boom knew what was up. at least as far as a fucking purge went...i wonder where i'd be now if it hadn't been for boom boom...

body language

from a block away she could tell that they were arguing. she couldn't hear them, but the body language was more than she needed to know that walking past them was going to be uncomfortable.
being in the presence of couples arguing is almost as, if not equally, uncomfortable as being in the presence of a mother yelling at her child in public. she remembered a friend of her's who's mother was an ASL interpreter. growing up her friend learned ASL before he learned english. this apparently proved quite useful in the supermarket when he was getting in trouble. his mother would sign everything to him. never having to make audible a single threat or insult. both parties escaped relatively free of public humiliation.
she thought of how useful this language skill would be for the two she was about to pass. or how convienient it would be if she lost her hearing for a split second. but her ears were open as they walked by...

she said: "well i'm sorry i'm such a fucking loser and a shitty girlfriend."
he said: "oh, come on, hon, you're not a loser."

wow. she really wished she'd been wearing her ipod...

modest flashback

girlface, boyface and the woman sat side by side in the dungeon. barstooled against each other he leaned over girlface and did his best whisper yell to the woman...
"so what's the story with what's-his-face?"
"...well...he's a shit talkin', beer guzzlin', cocaine snortin', womanizing, jaeger shooting, guitar playing asshole...and girlface here is dating him..."
boyface looks at her, the girlface...in all his amazement...he doesn't even have to say it.
she takes a sip of her beer. she orders another shot. she can feel boyface staring her down. she avoids eye contact. it tells him everything he needs to know.
confused and uncomfortable. all three of them.
she's glad she's not alone.