sol·ip·sism

Mistress Mom

2008-12-18T11:58:00.002-05:00

That's the name of my new blog. I've yet to jazz it up with graphics and banners and all of that business, but I haven't had this much fun blogging in a really long time. Join me at MistressMom.

The Musing Broads

2008-09-22T10:40:00.005-04:00

I've teamed up with two of my closest friends-cum-writing buddies, Annamarya and Deena, to become The Musing Broads. Every week, we'll be answering your questions about love, life and everything in between, and I'll be writing about the misadventures I've had while trying to earn a buck and figure out "what I wanna be when I grow up."

Check it out!

Funny, how it happens...

2008-03-17T12:48:00.004-04:00

Contrary to my facebook status (and my myspace status, I think?), my cell phone isn't dead and buried. It's in its final death throes, coming to life for a nano second before turning back off, refusing to allow me access to my contact list, and redirecting me to a blank screen when I want to check my texts. What's the use of carrying a phone when you can't pick up calls, make calls, see texts (much less, answer them), and can't silence it when you're at work, etc.? It might as well be dead, since I can't depend on it; I'm leaving it home from now on.

I've considered cancelling service to the phone, so that people realize that it's not working (as opposed to thinking that I'm avoiding them), but it's part of a family plan and I don't have a couple hundred dollars to pay Sprint - at least, not to make people feel better. The sad part is, paranoia recently got the best of me, and I decided a few weeks ago to change my service so that I could only listen to my voicemails from my cell phone... Ah, the comedic undertones of it all...

Much has happened in the past week, and I'm taking it all in stride. However, as my friend Marvina the Martian observed a few days ago, I'm no longer the type to blog. This blog has chronicled a very important time in my life, as well as the many minute changes in personality and writing style that I've undergone in the past few months; but nothing I have to say is applicable to this particular medium. My words get caught in my head - even that word "medium". I don't think it's the word I was going for - and the only time they don't seem to get caught in my head is when I'm working on one of my novels. (I've written two that I need to draft and I'm working on three more.)

So this is it. Blogging Maria is taking leave. Thanks, blogworld, for being so kind.

XO-M

Blah blah blah

2008-03-16T12:40:00.002-04:00

Not much philosophizing or pontificating happening on this end. At least, none of that that's fit for blogging.

As you can see from the last entry, things've been interesting - when are they not?! - but, eh... most of what I go through slides off my back relatively easily. Last week, Latina Princess told me about being in the Latin King fam and implied that she'd rather not be a part of it, but that she's too scared to back away. I've known her since she was eight or nine years old, and I have to say, it broke my heart a little bit to remember the innocent little girl and to see the grown woman standing before me.

I've started working with an afterschool class around my way, doing a lot of what I'm doing at Nuyorican on Saturdays. Last week, one of the girls asked if I'd go with her to Planned Parenthood. It felt surreal. There she was, 14 years old and impressionable, and she was looking to me, her teacher and confidante, for advice and assistance. She hardly knew me but insisted that she felt a kinship.

I still have yet to cash in my check from my Saturday job, and in the meantime I'm hustling to pay my bills, picking up whatever gigs, etc. I can land that'll put cash in my hand right away. It's lucrative, kinda shady (in an illegal kinda way), and makes me feel complete in the sense that I'm working every angle that doesn't poo-poo all over my character.

Last night I bar-hopped in the EV and partied till the last call (4 a.m.), danced with Rob, got hit on repeatedly while Rob was away, drank to my heart's content, forgot about the weight on my shouders, and danced danced flirted grinded grinded hair flipped laughed danced drank flirted my way into a heady place of sublime proportions.

Emails Say It Best

2008-03-16T12:39:00.000-04:00

okay, so my phone's officially on the fritz. I think it got wet last night, when I was walking in the rain. it would probably help if I took out the battery, but it doesn't wanna be removed :(

I've had a rough day. this morning, my brother collapsed for no apparent reason, and was brought to the ER via ambulance. this happened before, when he was 11 (he's 18 now) and the doc said the first time around that he's hyperglycemic (the one where he needs sugar all the time). thing is, according to the blood work, his blood sugar was fine/normal, so we don't know what's up with him. the doc even ran routine drug tests to rule them out, and sure enough they came back clean... so now the question is: wtf is going on with him?

my mom says it's stress. but seriously?! the kid doesn't work and has no bills. he's not going to school, and he gets everything/anything he asks for. what kinda stress does he have?! that's the kind that I wanna have!

it looks like he'll be okay. he had a slight concussion, but that's all. I think I handled the situation well. I was on my way to work when my mom called me, frantic. I rushed home while on my cell phone, fighting the static, etc., and made sure my mom called 911. then I texted my coworker to let her know that I wasn't gonna be at work while making asking my mom to make sure that my brother was breathing okay, etc.

she's a f*cking nurse, and she wasn't sure how to check on him! AHHH!!! I mean, yeah, I get it, he's your son and you freak out when there's something wrong with him (my dad freaked out the first time it happened, big time) - but geez!

so yeah. that was part 1 of today. then my half brothers' mom called me to try to get me on her side for the court case against my dad (apparently, she heard that I'm a feminist and believes that that means I'll side with the woman in any situation).

then I had to meet with my folks' lawyer because I'm getting sued for outstanding medical bills.

CRAZINESS!!!!!

I still have YET to file my taxes (doing it on Monday) and all I wanna do is kick back drinks with some cool people and dance away the night. *sigh* what are you doing tonight? Sherene's celebrating her 25th at The Park tonight. I'm gonna head there kinda late (arond 12ish, I think) cuz I have to make a cameo at Eli's apartment warming party (which you could meet me in front of, if you want. it's by Ave J on the Q line)... anywhos, wanna join us? I love The Park, and it should be some fun times!

XO-M

These Are My Confessions

2008-03-14T21:31:00.006-04:00

So... *teeth sucking*

Let's say- *cough*

Well... *nervous laugh* Yeah.

*beat*

Let's say... you know me.

*beat*

Let's say you even know me... well.

*inhale cigarette smoke*

Let's say... we hang out... all the time.

We talk about... everything.

I'm my usual no-holds-barred self with you... and our repoire... is... awesome.

*inhale cigarette smoke*

Still. *cough*

It stands.

The truth, I mean.

*beat*

You haven't seen all of me until you've seen all of me.

*inhale cigarette smoke*

And you haven't seen all of me until you've seen the worst of me.

*stubs out cigarette*

So here's the worst of me: the parts that any normal person would hide from the people who don't need to see them.

The parts that detract from the up-right, morally-gray-but-ultimately-worthwhile-and-almost-wholesome character that I've presented thus far in our relationship.

The parts that I allude to all the time but you've never been privy to.

The side of me who will not hesitate to break a man's heart while his father figure is dying of cancer and he's trying the best to show me his love.

The side of me who will stand someone up just because... or because I haven't yet gotten over myself and I'm xenophobic from time to time and everyone feels like a stranger to me.

The side of me who will end life-long friendships because I've outgrown the people I used to tell everything to.

Let me tell you that I can't be depended on.

That I balk at the idea of standing on pedestals because I suffer from vertigo.

(Kundera said it best; it's not the fear of heights but the fear of falling that every vertigo-prone person falls prey to - and I am no exception.)

That I have a severe issue with authority or anything that resembles authority, and I find it difficult to do as I'm asked unless I truly love you.

(And sometimes even when I truly love you, I need to rebel against your love just to prove that you don't own me.)

That I have never known without a doubt that I am my own person, and that I fear being molded by the inverse of expected norms.

(It's like being the jell-o outside of the mold; even if I don't look as expected, I'm still shaped by the mold.)

That I don't know if I do anything right - except for writing. It's the only thing that's ever made sense to me and the only thing that I know without a doubt that I know backwards and forwards and inside out.

That I doubt my goodness all the time and allow myself to act like a bratty, whiny child with anyone who'll let me get away with it - and these people earn my love by putting up with my immaturity.

That I feel sometimes like I deserve time to be a brat because I've been acting grown from the time I was a child, and no one's ever told me how to be an adult or shown me how it's done.

That I constantly bite the hands that feed me because I distrust folks who take it upon themselves to do good by me -

even though I love to do good by others, unexpectedly -

and I was taught that no one does good by me unless they want something in return.

(I try to teach people by example that this isn't true, but sometimes I feel like I'm doing an injustice: it is truth and they need to learn this bitter truth or they'll be taken advantage of and hurt time and time again.)

So many people have wanted to mentor me, take me under their wing, teach me, mold me, and nothing's ever taken because I don't feel like I can trust anyone's reality. I feel like I don't belong in anyone's world. I always fit so neatly into every role, every lifestyle, every niche and opportunity granted me. I've always fit and excelled so easily: I must be fake, or the situations presented me must be fake.

So many people have wanted me to mentor them, take them under my wing, teach them, mold them, but I always feel like I fail them. I don't know anything. I wish I did.

So I act out. I drink too much. I love too hard. I sleep around. And I lie through my teeth (poorly but effectively) when someone who wants to grow old with me asks if I love them. I lie through my teeth when I say that I want to see other people; I lie through my teeth when I say that I love them but I don't want to end up with them; I lie through my teeth when I say there's a chance for us; I lie through my teeth when I say that there's no chance for us.

The truth is, everything I say is a lie because I don't know anything. Nothing feels true and nothing feels real and when I want to feel a truth, something - loss, regret, pain, shame - stabs me straight in the spine and it feels real.

I am a masochist because it is the only way I feel alive. I am a teacher by default - because my life choices show a path that so many are interested by. And I don't know if, tomorrow, I'll disappoint you or make you proud. I don't know myself that well.

I just know that I'll do everything in my power to make sure that tomorrow happens.

I just know that my unremarkable life has been punctuated by the palpable power of people who go about living, loving, leaving the best way they know how.

It's pure poetry.

What Goes Up...

2008-03-12T18:58:00.003-04:00

I'm sitting in my home office, trying to send my resume out and write some fiction and poetry. My hotmail account's been messing up and one of my old editors just called to say that a piece I sent her two days ago just got to her. The wind is coming in through the dusty blinds. Portishead is crooning and booming in the background. I'm looking out the window. The sky is so fucking beautiful.

Stong gusts shake the branches of the tall trees that line my neighborhood. A chorus of a hundred birds are serenading the setting sun. It's otherwise quiet outside. Inside the house. In my heart.

There are cars thumping down the street, cruising at 30 mph down a street where ne'er-do-well children are talking ebonics and playing basketball.

My family is downstairs, in the living room, watching television with the volume up so that my parents can catch all the words.

The crackhead down the street is jeering at our autistic neighbor at the top of his lungs.

But it's quiet. In my head. In my heart. In the marrow of my bones. There's a chill. And it's quiet. Really quiet.

*****

I'm getting closer. I feel it. Closer to that feeling that I've been simultaneously dreading and working towards. That feeling of hitting The End. Not death, but that place where there is no place to go but up, out, forward -or down, into an abyss of mediocrity. That destination that makes people surrender to a Good Enough Life because the stakes have gotten too high and God forbid you fuck up the big chance to do something Great with your life. I'm headed there. I can feel it in my bones. The test. It's coming.

I'm mulling over all the choices I can make, all the futures I can have, all the people I can be.

I'm thinking about school: Going back. Succeeding in the conventional world. Being a "respectable adult."

I'm thinking about the work I do with kids: How much I love it. How little I need monetarily when I feel like every day is spent doing a good deed. How it makes me feel level, even - like none of the horrible stuff I've done matters because I go into the classroom and I listen to the kids and we run around the track and write short stories and have grammar lessons and I tell them that they're special and that they'll make it no matter where they come from or what people may say to the contrary. It' like being baptized in the breath of babies every day; I'm cleansed and new again.

I'm thinking about love. Love and dating and sex...

Drummer Boy and I had mind-blowing sex the other night, even though my initial reaction to him was sadness. How could I hang out with him knowing where it would lead, when Caleb warned me that Drummer Boy always went after his conquests?

There was solace in Drummer Boy's familiarity with that part of my life. There was hope in knowing that he was the only living vestige of that version of me, Rocker Maria. I knew that he would see her through all the layers; that he'd pick out that particular inflection in my voice, that particular twinkle in my eyes; that he'd see me and he'd see the same Maria that dated Caleb... and I needed that. I needed to be her.

I forget sometimes what it was like to be those Marias, and when I'm scared, when I'm lost, when I'm facing the eye of a storm, it's good to melt back into the skin of someone I used to be and just... Be that person. For a while...

So many times, I catch myself winging it, and I shudder.

Contrary to popular belief, I really don't know what the hell I'm doing. I just act and react and build my life bit by bit and people see in me what they see, and there's no magic or special quality to me. I'm just another person.

*****

So I'm in my home office, staring at a dark sky, thinking about love, about life, about Caleb. About Travis. About Rob. About Jorge. About Tarenz. About them, the great loves of my life, and all the guys and gals in between the great loves of my life.

I'm thinking about the struggle for a female Filipino-American-New Yorker to find her place in politics, in society, in her culture(s), in her sexuality, in her generation, in her potential. How hard it is to overcome the daily nuisances that life throws at you, the moments of wonder, the ugly and awful memories which haunt our nightmares.

I'm thinking about the opportunities I've had, taken, missed. I'm thinking about the revving up, the readying, the practicing for Real Life to begin. And I know that I'm scared. I'm really scared. I'm typing this, and I know deep down that this is when the excess of all I've ever been will be buried.

I'm feeling my mind ease as fear screams blisteringly inside of me. I'm grasping for my friends, my family, my lovers, to remind me of who I've been, who I've been wanting to become. I'm shouting at myself, pumping up my adrenaline, quickening my pulse. I know what I need to do. I just have to do it.

I'm all too willing to go out on a limb no matter how far down the possible fall.

Forgive me if I fail.

YAY!

2008-03-10T14:17:00.002-04:00

Rob called me this morning to say that my iPod finally came in the mail.

Okay, wait. *thinking* Maybe I shouldn't be posting this until the iPod is actually in my hands...

Oh, fuck it!

I'm excited and elated and... well, I guess to understand why a piece of technology can cause such a reaction (it ain't simply cuz I'm addicted to tunes), I should start from Valentine's Day. Or about 6 months before Valentine's Day.

But that'll come later...

For now, YAY!

Top 10 Things That Should Irk Me But Don't

2008-03-09T19:13:00.004-04:00

NOTE: I need to elaborate on these - especially since a bunch of em are tongue-in-cheek. For now, though, this is who I am, condensed.

The second I put down this list, I started getting bothered by some of the things I put on it. I guess that just goes to show how transitory life and people are.

1) People who don't like me.

2) Not getting my way.

3) Unsavory opinions of me.

4) Being stood up and/or being kept waiting.

5) My parents.

6) My body.

7) Being 23 and without a degree.

8) The "failed relationships" that I've had - both romantic and platonic.

9) Being swamped with bills, bills, and more bills.

10) My selective memory.

Top 10 Things That Irk Me

2008-03-09T18:58:00.012-04:00

NOTE: These are things I'm proud to say I can extrapolate from life. I wanna elaborate on some of these points, but here they are in all their first draft beauty.

1) Beating around the bush. Last night, I went to someone's house and hung around uncomfortably, trying to make good with my social graces. A couple of people kept on making references to things they'd only know by reading this blog, and maybe I'm being paranoid or I completely miss the point of blogging - but all I kept thinking was, "My instincts say that they're alluding to my blog, but I feel no need to cross the boundary between cyber reality and physical reality. If they have something to say/ask, they'll do it, and that's when I'll answer them."

I stand by my decision, but I wish they'd have either kept their thoughts to themselves or they'd have fully aired out their quandaries. I mean, seriously, I'm not the kind of chick who gets all upset if you call her out on shit. Just say the damn thing already and have some common friggin' courtesy! Don't bring voice to something if you don't have enough voice to have your statements heard.

2) Unnecessary(?) Violence. When I decided to redo my blog profile, I almost added one of my favorite quotes. It's something that someone - me? Carrie? Samantha? Charlotte? - came up with during one of our many drinking binges back in the day. It goes something like: "I'm a pacifist till you fuck with me; then I'll kick your ass."

I have friends who would waste no time in calling me a hypocrite, or say that such a statement is unfathomable and offensive in some way. (That's just how I roll: some of my people are politically-correct hippies.) But is it true? Yes. Most certainly.

So how does this work?

I am the sweetest person you'll ever meet - and in many ways, one of the "cutest" as Rob, Drummer Boy and Past Tense can attest. I am very much an advocate of postponing and/or eradicating all sorts of bodily and emotional injury. I will admit that violence, in all of its forms, serves little use outside of throwing around one's weight, and that that sort of politicking ain't for the day-to-day of habit and circumstance.

But get on my shit list and I will see red every time your name is mentioned. I will very likely put on the vaseline, the rings and/or the brass knuckles and beat you within a millimeter of your life if you so much as glance at me the wrong way. I will tell people that your kid is an ugly retard who's better off an orphan than remaining in your stead. I will not hesitate to cut you. I... well, you get the idea.

I'm not an overly sensitive person. In fact, if you tell me straight to my face your less-than stellar opinion of me and cite specific examples of why the earth and its inhabitants are better off without me, I won't be fazed. I have no shame and there are very few ways to coax an honest-to-goodness reaction from me. The fact that you're on my shit list, therefore, means that you've done something utterly disrespectful. Maybe you threatened my life or you insulted someone in my fam. Maybe you tried to play me for an idiot or were so ignorant as to let your bloated ego fall in my way. Either way, I'll very respectfully tell you to get the fuck out of my face. What happens after that? Well, either way, you asked for it.

3) Intentionally Rude and/or Disrespectful People. (Especially anyone under the age of 20.) The first time my brother really liked a girl, he was in high school; the girl he liked was also in high school. Now, I love my baby brother more than life itself, and I've kept him under my wing in the hope that he'd learn from my mistakes. More to the point: I was a high school student once, and more importantly, I was a high school girl. The worst kind of high school girl. I played guys for fools. Used and abused hearts. Toyed with emotions. Wielded my sexual prowess with utter disregard for humanity. Yada yada yada...

Inevitably, this girl that my dear brother fell for -

I bet you thought I was gonna say that she was just as bad as I was.

Unlikely! Not many bitches-in-the-making can reach the level of bitchdom that I'd conquered by the tender age of 14. I'm happy to announce that the girl my brother fell for was your run-of-the-mill, let's-see-what-I-can-get-away-with teenage girl. She stood him up, deliberately hurt his feelings with uncouth words, and relegated him to her circle of platonic male friends while teasing his libido.

Instead of hating on her, though, I related to her. I told my kid brother to chalk this girl's actions to those of a kid being a kid, and I reminded him that there are many lessons that he (and I) still had to learn. As someone who'd been on the flip side of where he found himself, I said that he should take advantage of my hindsight and accept that youth & ignorance are like peanut butter & jelly.

This is my typical standpoint on foolish actions. When people - especially young people - are rude and/or disrespectful toward me, I assume that they're just too young and/or ignorant to know what they're doing.

But being deliberately direspectful and rude is something altogether different. This assumes that a person knows that their actions are wrong. Furthermore, it assumes that these people know the extent of the damage they are about to cause and that they mean to cause this harm. Such people are not to be tolerated. They are the shady-ass tricks and dicks that attempt to get one over on people. They are the degenerates with low self esteem that hope to raise their sorry stations in life by stepping all over you. They are the enemy, and they irk me to no end.

4) Ignorance. n. The condition of being uneducated, unaware, or uninformed.

In my mind, there are two kinds of ignorance: passive and aggressive. Passive ignorance is a state that everyone is in. Examples of passive ignorance include every time that you're in a conversation with someone and they say something about the world that they need to explain to you. It's not your fault that you didn't know that very particular and specific viewpoint or factoid; it's just something that you never came across.

I'm aware of my passive ignorance every time I go to Nuyorican on Saturdays. Joe, Amy and Roland, who are old enough to be my hippie commune parents, will wax on about a topic I very blatantly know nothing about. I assume the role of student, soaking up all the information surrounding me - which woul be fine if not for the fact that I tend to forget my own knowledge when I'm put in this position.

I fit so comfortably into the role of student that while in it, I no longer acknowledge my teaching abilities. Sure, there's a bunch that I've already learned and experienced, but faced with the daunting and impressive body of knowledge accumulated by one of my would-be parents, I feel empty. The four hours spent on the internet the morning before, collecting information about whatever abtuse and/or abstract idea caught my fancy, no longer mean anything. I might as well be mute.

(NOTE: I'm now learning to melt out of my voyeuristic role of student-sponge, so that I can join in the give-and-take and not just observe the goings-on of amazing people. YAY! me)

But passive ignorance isn't what really gets my goat. That distinction is given to aggressive ignorance.

Aggressive ignorance is the kind of thing that scared people actively participate in. Every time someone deliberately passes up an opportunity to learn - that's aggressive ignorance. Every time someone decides they don't want to hear something, know something, experience something, feel something - that's aggressive ignorance. People who are aggressively ignorant are paralyzed by the fear of possibly having to change their way of life. They hide behind excuses like "I'm stuck in my ways" or "_____ can't possibly have anything I can gain from" or "What's the use in knowing that?"

Aggressive ignorance is closely linked to "conservatism." If someone refuses to be emboldened to a situation, odds are that they're too close-minded to consider perspectives that are not their own. Their comfort zone extends only to the space that is within their immediate reach, and they do not want to learn or experience.

Aggressively ignorant people are those who refuse to challenge their way of thinking or actively expand their minds. They are militant, dogmatic and often dangerous. Very often, they are the cause of (unnecessary) violence.

5) Not Knowing. As much as I enjoy the ride that is Life, sometimes I'd like to be able to fast forward a couple of paragraphs, read up on how a chapter ends, and sit back with the comfort of knowing what's going to happen. The not knowing is sometimes too much for me to bare.

This is so because I believe in two contentions:

a) Every moment is saturated with unlimited possibilities.

b) Free will.

No matter how much I experience, I always feel like a blank slate. Nothing is etched on me, nothing has been imprinted on me, nothing has changed me so much that I feel like something else. For a time, I experienced whatever was in my way because I wanted to be changed, I wanted to become something. I assumed that I had been born an amorphous blob of potential and that there was a process I'd have to undergo before becoming defined.

But the more I do, the more I feel like I'm coming back home to a place I left before really knowing it. It's like I was born fully formed but not fully developed. I was a constellation of stars from the beginning; it's up to life to connect the dots and tell me what I am.

But the spaces between the stars, the distances between the dots, are all kinds of blankness in which anything can happen. Like plot points of a story, there are infinite ways to connect these two subjects. There are infinite roads which lead from one thought to the next. And the way in which one decides to connect the dots seems so definite and binding. The choice is mine to do as I wish, to be as I want to be, and yet in making that decision I am making a conscious and specific impact on my life and the world at large. The wave of activity which is created by my actions and my personality will ripple unceasingly and I will have to live with the ramifications of my actions forever.

Thankfully, free will includes the possibility of acting differently, of negating as much as possible previous actions and personalities, of change. One must take into account, however, the fact that "change" is a process and not a step. Changes - especially dramatic ones - take time to happen. This is why I feel the need to look ahead and see what I end up doing with my life.

6) Never-Ending Arguments. I ended #5 on the screen, but in my head it keeps on going. If I looked into the future and saw something I didn't want to see, wouldn't I change it? Couldn't I change it? And for that matter, couldn't I form the future right now? Isn't that what I'm doing? With every key stroke, every phone call I take which interrupts my brain flow and causes me to impress my personality directly on someone else's personality, every purchase I make: aren't I changing the outcome of my life? So what's the use of knowing the future? What's the use of #5?

I can go on and on like this ad nauseum. It's a blessing and a curse, and in a very telling and self-fulfilling way I've been working up to the point where this is possible. But every action and every thought is a declaration of an idea, and the more one acts or thinks in this way, the more creedence they're lending to whatever they're doing. Simple thoughts and actions become viewpoints, opinions, credos; they are enmeshed into what we stand for, and therefore become weighty and important. Of course, the more important an idea is, the more it becomes a "statement," and the bigger the statement, the easier the target. This point - the one at which a statement becomes a target - is when the statement stops being a simple declaration and starts being an argument.

Argument. n. a statement, reason, or fact for or against a point.

Every lifestyle hence becomes an argument for certain things and against other things. The lives we lead become direct indicators of who we are as abstract ideas, influence, and thought processes.

Due to the contending nature of these statements, people - especially confident people - rub other people the wrong way. We go around living, being literal personifications of arguments, and we come into contact with people who are the literal personifications of opposing arguments - some of whom are so haughty and arrogant that we are personally affronted by their existences.

This is normal. We aren't supposed to be all the same; nor are we supposed to come to the same conclusions about this great mystery called Life. The reactions that are caused by the meeting of unlike minds is quite understandable as well; we are animals and as such become confused and aggravated when pressed with something we don't understand.

So now that we've come to the well-learned conclusion that it's fine to be different and to be perplexed by each other, the question must be raised: what's the point of asking all of these "eternal questions," anyway?

I mean, is the existence of an eternal question - "What is the meaning of life?", "What is love?", "Is truth attainable?", et al. - just a validation of skepticism? Or is it an excuse to be aggressively ignorant? Is there a point to asking questions that seem to have no humanly-obtainable answers?

I want answers. I want truth. I want knowledge. You can see how Cartesian circles and their ilke irk me.

7) Fakeness. The other night, I hung out with people that I have little in common with. Put us on paper and you'll see that our day-to-day routines and the bare bones of our personalities barely overlap - but we attended college together, and I felt the need to act social.

Now, I understand that social interaction demands a suspension of blatant hostility and polarizing opinions - at least, between folks who hardly know each other - but there is a level of fakeness that I find intolerable. It's that smile-in-your-face-lie-through-your-teeth fakeness. You know the kind. Layla Liar says something excrutiatingly suspect, and you know in your bones that she's attempting to fit a pre-conceived notion of what she thinks you want to hear. She's mired in insecurity and doesn't want to take the chance of your personalities not meshing. She "knows" very well that she isn't the kind of person you'd like to associate with - most likely because of pre-conceived opposing viewpoints - or maybe she is going through a transitional phase and doesn't know who she is.

I get that you don't know me and you're basing your actions on experiences of yesteryear, but can we not do this cocktail party song and dance? How about you say something completely out of context that reveals something about yourself, and I'll say something comletely out of context that reveals something about myself. We won't criticize each other off the bat, but instead revel in the experience of meeting someone new. Maybe we'll commiserate about the practice of meeting people at parties, or we'll learn about each others' sordid sides. Maybe our conversation will be macabre and we'll talk about devils and dangers and death. Maybe we'll realize we are too different to really like each other.

But at least we won't be bored witlessly. At least we'll have seen life through the eyes of a person we'd probably never get to know. At least we'll have something more than polite talk about the weather.

It's one thing to show off a facet of yourself which fits in better with a crowd; it's something entirely different to act like something you're not. Have some self-respect and be yourself.

8) The need to impress people. It just doesn't make sense to me. I mean, seriously, what is the point?

9) Poverty. No one should go through it.

10) Government. I don't even know where to start. Is it the American government that I have a problem with, or the abstract idea of "government"? Off the top of my head, I'd say both - and it's not just those two entities within the idea of "government" that irk me. It's the ostentatious superiority complex present in any body which assumes to know how I should live.

Hmm... Maybe it's not government that I have a problem with, but authority? Or maybe it's both? I need to marinate more in this topic.

Top 10 Places to Buy Awesome & Affordable Fashions

2008-03-09T14:42:00.012-04:00

I was talking to my homegirl, Poetic Justice, last night, and the conversation quickly turned to matters of fashion and personal finance.

See, we're broke. I mean, DEAD BROKE. Working in the non-profit world helps us sleep at night, but definitely doesn't pay the bills as much as we'd like.

All the same, we're fashionistas. Poetic Justice looks like a model - long, slim torso, legs for miles, waist about the circumference of a sapling - and likes to dress like one. I am just discovering the side of me that likes to talk about Coco Chanel and Anna Sui after successfully sewing on a shirt sleeve or stitching silk into the hem of a skirt.

Admittedly, we both shop the sales. But there are also some other details about our style which set us apart from the average woman: We keep an eye on trends, but only take into our wardrobe what we like. We know what flatters our bodies and what will weigh on our financial consciousness. We are creative in how we see ourselves and how we view fashion.

Most of all, though, we know that the line between fashion victim and fashion maven is like the latest fifteen-year old Brazilian model who has never seen - much less worn - 5-inch stilettos: thin and wobbly. The trends of today are the fads that we balk at tomorrow, and vice verce. I say, wear what you like, work what you've got, and to hell with anyone who doesn't get it.

1) Urban Outfitters (.com) There was a time when I refused to shop at Urban Outfitters. They're too expensive, their styles are the regurgitated fashion choices of high school emo hipsters whose school gates are bombarded with fashion-photogs-cum-style-stealers, and they're obnoxious. (I've never understood why people expect me to pay $100+ on a shirt that looks distressed when I can go over to Salvation Army and by a genuinely distressed shirt for less than $10!)

But one day, after having shopped the post-holiday sales with my mom, I decided to go online and see what I was missing. The website called to me like a siren - especially the link that reads "sales."

Dresses, shirts, shoes, the works - they're designer brands and used to be $80, $90, $100, whatever! Now that they're on the web, they're at bargain bin prices, baby. Shop till your fingers drop!

2) Beacon's Closet My good friend, who I'll call "The Man," is one of the only guys I'll deem worthy as a shopping partner. We'll say "hmmm..." and cock our eyebrows at the same shirts, roll eyes at the same jackets, suck our teeth at sequins on men's suede jackets. And he never holds back from telling me when something looks like a train wreck on me.

Still, we disagree on the fundamental foundation of my fashion world: Second-hand shopping. I haven't brought up the topic since the last time it was brought up (circa 1999), but I trust that his view on wearing duds that used to be owned by other studs is still the same: Negative on that, Cowboy.

Maybe he'd change his mind if I brought him over to Beacon's Closet. I've only ever perused the Park Slope locale, and I've been one of those sorry people whose clothes they deem unworthy for buy-back, but hey: Where else can I get a pair of pristine Christian Louboutins for $40? Can't go wrong there!

3) Buffalo Exchange Let me say now and forever that Buffalo Exchange is the bomb diggity. They're not as pretentious and highfalutin' as Beacon's Closet. Oh, no: they're funkier. It's not all about the designer's names here; instead it's all about style. Your style. Personal style.

If Beacon's Closet is where I go when I wanna purchase a designer dud on the cheap, then Buffalo Exchange is where I go when I wanna make an outfit that no one else will have - something that positively wreaks of ME and no other person.

Recently, I went over to their store in the Burg o' Billy and found the cutest cream-colored cotton jersey dress which will be integrated seamlessly into my wardrobe, later picked apart, and recycled into something else that'll be re-integrated seamlessly into my wardrobe. It was $9. I wore it during my errands yesterday with Mom and there were so many heads turnin, you coulda sworn I was on the set of The Exorcist. That's the kind of yumminess you find at Buffalo Exchange.

4) New Designer's Bazaar Okay, so it's been a while since I've been here. Four or five years, to be exact. But the first few times I was there: WHoo-EE! Lemme take it back, y'all:

It was August 2004 (I believe), and Tall Afro, Militant Lesbian, and I were walking through Little Italy after having participated in the Marcus Garvey Parade in Brooklyn. These were the beginning of my non-profit days, and I had spent the day registering voters along the parade route and singing Bob Marley at the top of my lungs (while kicking it to a yummy student from Queens College - amongst others). Our trio was joined by Monkey Comic, who was weening himself off of the nonprofit scene.

So there we were: walking. Now, I can't tell you where we were walking, except to say that we were somewhere near the Broadway-Lafayette stop of the F. But anyway, yeah: we're walking and getting hungry, and out of the corner or my eye I spy a funky little enclave bursting with clothing and apparel. Much to the chagrin of Monkey Comic and Tall Afro, Militant Lesbian and I went in.

Awwweeesssooommme clothes, y'all. Most of em were either refugees from some high-end niche of a store or newly-designed pieces of art whose makers were on the premises, hawking their wares.

Sneaker-heads would love this place, since it had kicks from waaayyy back in the day, in really good condition. Petite princesses would love this place cuz there was a lingerie designer whose hand-crafted bras and panties were easy on the eyes and the wallet (though, sadly, there weren't any undies for the more curvaceous mujeres, like myself). And clothes: I haven't seen this kind of craftsmanship anywhere but the annual Fashion Expo.

I think I'll walk around next Monday and look for this place. I'll put the address up here if I find it.

5) Target Say it with me: "Tar-jay." Yeah, dude, it's French. And what?

Say what you want about big business, but when you're strapped for cash and time, you can get practically anything at Target. This means, of course, that you can find that really cute little black dress that you've been looking for. But the downside is that Sheila, Latisha, and Diana down the street's probably got it, too.

The up (or down?) side of Target these days is that so many designers have mass-produced lines in its aisles. Vera Wang, Isaac Mizrahi, even Steve Madden knock-offs... This spurs the debate over what role fashion has in the life of the layman, and how important it is in the long run - but hey. Ain't nothin' but a thang when you rock the look you're wearing. Who cares who else is rocking it, too? No one else rocks it like you. (MUSIC.)

6) Aqueduct Flea Market Maybe I'm extolling the virtues of this place because I live so damn close to it, but there's nothing more I'd rather do on a lazy, unproductive summer Sunday than peruse its loud, hot lanes of merch.

Most of the stuff its got is either really old or really ubiquitous, but that doesn't mean that it ain't good. I've bought purses and clutches here on the cheap, and whatever un-chic things you say about them are tempered by their lack of availability anywhere else. Now and again, too, you get to meet entrepreneurs-in-the-making who sell their stuff on the cheap cuz all they really wanna do is see someone wearing their fashion.

The fondest memory I have of this place happened when I was seven years old. My mom and I were walking home and decided to go through the Flea Market since it was on our way. Unfortunately, it was closing up and all of the vendors were packing their merch. I can still remember the sound of my mom's voice as she was complaining that she spent two dollars' admission just to see everything carted off.

But lo and behold: There! In that empty space! Where the old white couple from Long Island usually sell fashion jewelry! It's littered with the stuff that probably fell off their counter! And next to it, where that Asian guy usually sells hair accessories: there are headbands, clips and accessories strewn on the cement!

It was a wonderland of freebies!

I wonder if that's still the case today...

7) Salvation Army My bosslady, Amy, talks about her hippie days, when the best-dressed people wore their grandparents' gear. We agree that thrift stores and second-hand shops are truly the way to go when it comes to finding diamonds-in-the-rough (to lift a phrase from Aladdin).

But the name "Salvation Army" still hits a couple of nerves. People hear it and they automatically ask: Don't only poor people "shop" there? Aren't the clothes dirty? Used? Ugly?

I'm here to dispel the stigmas.

With the rate of inflation and the oncoming recession looming on the horizon, we're all working or middle class. That isn't to say that the proud amongst us wouldn't/shouldn't shun the practice of buying things second-hand, but that there should be no bravado when it comes to class. The clothes are inspected before being put on the counter, and they're clean. Sure, they're used, but they're not used up. And ugly? Have you seen the clothes some brands try to pass off as fashion? In a lot of ways and for a lot of reasons, you're less likely to find something completely offensive to your palate at Salvation Army.

8) Liberty Ave/Jamaica Ave I don't know if people in other cities/states refer to places simply as "The Ave," but here in New York, all of us say it. In Queens, the phrase refers to either Liberty or Jamaica.

When I say, "Liberty Ave," what I mean is the stretch of road in Little Guyana, Queens, that roughly extends from Woodhaven till about 130th Street. There are some goldmines in there, including a few shoe stores that have adorable heels, sexy pumps, and everything in between - and not at the exorbitant prices of name brand shoes. (I'm talking less than $40 for a pair of killer heels!) Also, there are a few clothing stores that I swear by, like Knockout.

Knockout is located on the NE corner of Liberty Avenue and Lefferts Boulevard and it's the go-to spot for cheap threads that look more expensive. Think Strawberry's, but cheaper. Back in my JHS days, I would spend $100 here and leave the store with an entire new wardrobe. Of course, now $100 gets me only half a new wardrobe, but it's in the neighborhood, easy on the pocket book, and always has a few great deals.

Jamaica Ave is an obnoxiously loud and busy part of Queens. There's always bumper-to-bumper traffic (which used to be alleviated with the ubiquitous Dollar Vans), and hordes of people shopping in every season and at practically any time, day or night. That said, the experience can be intimidating. You don't get to be zen about things. You can't take your time shuffling about, relaxing. But what you do get is a look at the discount side of 'hood fashion.

You know what I'm talking about: Roca Wear, Baby Phat, Sean John, et al. Marketing folks call it "urban fashion," but it boils down to brown skin tones. Way before rappers, producers, and their wives thought it was cool to sell back to the streets what everyone was already wearing, Jamaica Ave was where you could find the hoodie that LL Cool J rocked in his latest music video - and it remains that way today. That curve-hugging cut-out dress in the window for 15 bucks? In a couple of months, a sweatshop in the Philippines is gonna be recreating it with classier fabrics and stamping Jennifer Lopez's logo on the label.

Get it now, while it's not hot.

9) Flatbush Ave Flatbush, my adopted Ave, how I love thee!

In every borough is a goldmine (or three!) of inexpensive fashion. It takes a good eye to weed through the "blah!" and come up with a "yeah!," but when it happens, the clouds part and a ray of light beams straight at you as angels sing and violins play... Or, at least, that's my experience.

The first time I really paid attention to the burgeoning fashion scene on Flatbush was three years ago, when I joined a bunch of people in walking from Brooklyn College to Manhattan. We walked down Flatbush, and every now and again we stopped at a second-hand furniture store with some gorgeous (and affordable!) antiques, or at a clothing store that had vintage shirts. I couldn't stop oohing and aahing at all the great merch that I'd never noticed before. It was like rummaging through my grandmother's attic - that is, if my grandmother had an attic, she had kept fashions from the 30s and 40s, and she was fashion-forward during WWII.

Closer to Brooklyn College, though, is Canal Jeans & Co. Okay, so technically this isn't on Flatbush, and it might even deserve its own number - but it's close enough to that intersection of Nostrand and Flatbush lovingly called "the Junction," and I wanna stick to my claim of "Top 10 Places to Buy Awesome & Affordable Clothes." The title just doesn't work if you replace the number 10 with the number 11.

There isn't enough praise in the world for Canal Jeans & Co.! Not only does it sell gently-worn second-hand ensembles, but it also has a great assortment of cheap furniture and household necessities, like kitchen ware. Also, it's quiet enough that you don't have to deal with lots of people blocking your way in aisles and rudely bumping into you with their carts.

10) ASIAN STEALS: Main Street & Canal Street An Asian woman can get away with wearing ANYTHING. Maybe it's because so many of the fashionista Asians are tall and slender (or short and slender, LOL), but somehow we just make everything work. Rainbow tights, distressed jean skirt, and a wifebeater? Sure! Black knee-high stockings, purple gaucho pans, and a green T-shirt? Why not? Put it on an Asian woman and watch it work!

I've embraced my Asian-ness of late and I fully relish the Fact of Life that is the perfection of the Asian-woman-fashion-maven; I'm making choices in fashion that I never would've had the balls to make before. With that in mind, let me introduce you to Main Street, Flushing (Queens), and its big brother, Canal Street, Manhattan.

Walking down Main Street (near its intersection with Kissena), or anywhere near the Queens Korean-Town, there are a plethora of shops that cater to the stick-skinny who want to look like they've just walked off a Japanese runway. Sometimes, there are even amazing wardrobe finds tucked away in the back of a grocery store!

But what if you've got some meat on your bones? Canal Street's where it's at. Not only are knock-offs of celebrity fashion choices - and all the one-dollar finds imaginable - to be found on this stretch of street that runs through Tribeca, Chinatown and SoHo, but so are regular-sized versions of the gorgeous Asian gear found in Flushing.

And THIS, kids, is when mommy found her way...

2008-03-06T14:21:00.002-05:00

Geez.

This is it.

Solipsism Confidential

2008-03-05T15:25:00.004-05:00

I often feel like I was born at the wrong time, or in the wrong place, or to the wrong family... but, mostly, at the wrong time. I don't know if you've noticed yet, but I have a way of romanticizing myself and my situations. I'm like Barry Obama, but without all of that suspicion of being Muslim (insert tongue in cheek here, dontchaknow). I'm the safer Obama, with all of the lack of experience and moving, emotional articulation/sophistry.

A few years ago, maybe I'd have had the hubris to even match Obama's historic presidential run- wait. *listening* Really? *surprised* You don't say! *laughing* That's absolutely right! I did have the gall to assume and believe that I was fit to be the governing elected official over a body of citizens! [NOTE: I ran the first write-in candidacy for president of the day students of Brooklyn College. So. Many. Stories. Here.] Well, lookie there!

The truth is, though, that since running that campaign, my ideas about government, politics,and individuals have changed a bit. I'm still nowhere as cynical as many of my anarchist political brethren - but I do buy in to a kind of socialism (something I wouldn't have owned up to back then). I'm not entirely certain I buy into the Adam Smith style of capatilism made famous to hordes of my generation by a Russell Crowe flick. I do, however, believe in good ole American dedication and perseverance; strangely enough, though, the more I consider these traits, the more un-American they seem.

Maybe that's why it's easy for me to imagine that I'd fit in better with the Lost Generation, flying off to Paris with Gertrude Stein and lamenting the degeneration of America with Edith Wharton.

Or maybe I should've been in the South during the Civil Rights Era; I'm curious to see if I'd have had the cajones to stand up to The Man.

But tonight, while reading Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential and leafing through copies of Elle magazine to get to the designs I'd like to mimic in my own clothing creations, I realized where I'd best fit in: in New York City, during the 1980s. That heady, drug-fueled, birth-of-brand-name-narcissism time when a hip chick asserted her independence from the patriarchal views of society-at-large, Puritanical expectations of marriage-and-motherhood, and All-Around-Vanilla, and danced down the streets to her own beat as CBGBs swayed her hips and Run-DMC blew the crowds a kiss, and Basquiat hadn't yet put down his brush. That's where I wanna be!

I feel like I've finally seen the light, like I came to this realization about who I am and what I want. I now know the ends at which my desires put me with the Real World. I excel in this society, where diplomas and opinions from Those Already in Charge are what you need to go far. I've long ago mastered the art of seeming non-threatening to The Powers That Be while seemingly and paradoxically being Able to Get Resuls.

But I want so much more.

I want to live life like it's a design of my mind and I'm the first trying out its accessories. I want to ride it out, keep it cool, workable, runnable, and have it give me more of the awesomeness that I didn't expect it to have. I want to sing out loud, wear what makes me feel like me, have no pretentions, never act fake, never need to lie, share my perspectives, give voice to struggle, think richly, create unceasingly, love unflinchingly, talk without worry or fear. And act. Even if I'm on a Broadway stage, I want my actions to be real.

Today, as I was driving home from Brooklyn, I thought about the things I want to do. A laundry list of experiences spilled into my head and I realized that, even though I want a family of my own, the lifestyle that I have/will have in the next twenty years is not conducive to having children (and definitely not conducive to "settling down" with anybody.) But having a family of my own doesn't necessarily mean giving birth to children. [Oh geez, I CANNOT believe a cook's memoir has got me thinking about kids...] And motherhood is something that I don't want for a very, very, very long time. I like the idea of experiencing all life has to offer before becoming a mom; I don't want to be resentful of the little buggers and I'd like to have a thing or twenty to teach em, too.

But this thing that's happening with me: this being instead of wanting to be. The active voice instead of the passive voice. The change in the way I write, the way I process information, the way I act - I actually reread parts of this blog and my last blog and was bowled over by the stark contrast - fills me with wonder and purpose that can only be rivaled by motherhood. And as much as I realize that I might have fit in better in another time, I can't help but wonder if I'm in this time for a reason. Maybe I'm the throwback to a set of mannerisms that went out with LES eccentricity. Maybe my white-collar background is exactly the canvas I need to splash a little life experience around. Maybe I'm just waxing poetic, and this is all an illusion masterminded by some evil demon.

If the last is true, and I'm no Descartes, then blogging at least makes it real.

*thinking*

Another idea for a This Girl's Life article... even though I haven't finished the last one.

I'm Working (It) Out

2008-03-04T22:38:00.008-05:00

There's a blog entry that I started a couple nights ago. It was gonna be titled "Crying and Sit-Ups" and it starts like this:

"It was 5:30 in the evening and I could already smell night climbing into the winter sky. I was due on E16th & Irving in fifteen minutes for the Urban Word Slam Poetry Finals, and there was no way of getting there in time. The strawberry ice cream colored walls of my bedroom pushed and pulled away from me as tears streamed down my face, and my abs felt like a rubber knot being squeezed tighter into itself. The linoleum tiles of my bedroom bore their hard geometrical pattern onto my back as I repeatedly set my back down and hauled myself back up. I was on my fifty-first or fifty-second sit-up and there seemed no way to get out of my system the anger, shame and frustration which had accumulated in my body during the previous 30-someodd hours. Hair wild, hands lifting my head, tears and sweat saturating the neck of my T-shirt, I moaned and groaned and yelled and screamed while crying that my dad is an asshole, a degenerate, a horrible human being. It would take me at least another thirty minutes to feel like myself again.

"Let me first say that I'm well aware of the masochism involved in this type of activity. I realize that I physically punish myself for the resentment that I feel towards my father, and that I feel good about the act and results of said punishment. Whether I do so because I feel I shouldn't resent my father or because I need my physical condition to match my emotional one, I'm not sure, but I am certain of the link between said resentment and extreme physical activity. In some ways, I feel that exercising the pain away is proactive and keeps me emotionally and physically healthy by providing an outlet through which to vent.

"Whenever I feel like the world's crashing in on me, I drop to the floor, do as many push-ups or sit-ups necessary to squeeze the pain out of my mind, or run around a track until I've exercised the pain away."

*****

My dad, who is in many ways an amazing father, has many quirks and faults. For one thing, he's never had much of a social life. For another, he likes to play mind games in order to gain, what is in his mind, supremacy. Points of fact: Instead of teaching me to overcome my insecurities as a child, he fed on them so that he always felt needed. Instead of overcoming his own insecurities, he blames many of his flaws and problems on my mom. He comes from the old school variety of child-raising, which, much to the detriment of everyone involved, includes the inability to accept any ideas that weren't originally the parents'. He is the prototype of the tight-lipped father figure who neither excels at providing emotional support nor accepting constructive criticism.

*****

Being the second-to-last in a tight-knit family of ten children, my dad had a lot of factors against being the dominant personality of his family. His two oldest siblings were forces to be wreckoned with, whirlwinds of personality and life experience who impinged upon their younger siblings' ability to come into their own character. His parents were colorful characters whose life stories culminated in a kind of mythos - magical powers and panacea amulets, religious polemics with Biblical proportions, shootings, betrayals, blackmails, murders, et al. - that would extend to his siblings, cousins, and their children. His own father, who lived with us from the time I was seven until I was nine, faced the Japanese during the second world war, had a quick and righteous shot with a pistol, and would smile in someone's face before beating the shit out of them for some unironic and very deserving reason.

Yet, by the time he married my mom (who was as close to a debutante as he'd find in the old country), my dad had gained the authority to speak his mind and have the rest of his siblings take heed. He'd offer advice, and they'd follow his words like law. He'd make suggestions, and they'd relinquish dominance over a situation. It was in this way that I suspect my dad's ego became bloated.

*****

Fast forward to this past Friday: My dad was talking about his job and I was dyeing his hair. He was complaining about office politics, and telling me that he was reconsidering taking the raise in status and earnings that had been offered to him months beore. He asked my opinion: How should he handle the office politics? Was he right in his actions?

I told him my opinion, said what I would do if I was in his situation, and all the while my brother and I were exchanging knowing glances. You see, my dad has a tendency to make mountains out of molehills when it comes to his job. He'll make issues out of things that needn't be issues. He'll take into account positions that needn't bother him simply because they have nothing to do with him. He has good intentions (I get my lofty ideals from him), but he doesn't know how best to use them - so he spends all his time making straw arguments.

Very lovingly, I said to him, "Dad, with all the love and respect in the world, I'm telling you this: Maybe if you got more of a social life, you wouldn't worry so much about all of this stuff. Maybe you and mom could go out dancing, take walks in the park, take trips together. It'll be good for you-"

"I don't need a social life. Only people with no confidence need social lives. They need the validation. Not me."

Trying to defuse the growing tension, my brother laughed. "Then you're saying that sis has no confidence, because she always goes out."

"Well," said my dad, "most women have that problem."

It wasn't so much his words as his tone that really got to me. He was trying to be malicious and hurtful. He was trying to get to me. He was trying to tear me a new one. And "tear me a new one" he did.

We got into a huge argument right there and then. My main problem was that I was in all honesty being forthcoming and loving with my suggestion, and that my dad had taken it upon himself to tear me down. And for what? Because he was hurt? Because he's used to doing it? Because he's the one with social issues and low self esteem?

So I plopped down on my bedroom floor, started doing sit-ups, and cried and cried and cried until my eyes were puffs. That night I was due out to hang with my girls, Opera Singer and Trini Jew, and there was no way I'd be sobbing myself to sleep. I had to get all of the negative emotion out of my system so I could have a good time.

*****

The next day, though, was a different story. I'd had an awesome night out with the girls + some guys (including Rob), and had made it home at 4:30 in the morning. I was due at Nuyorican at 10, so the latest I could wake up was 8. And despite all this, I made it to Nuyorican, wrote the beginnings of a long-mulled over piece that everyone loved, and felt really, really good... until that night, when my father and I got into Let's Have an Argument, Pt. 2.

So there they were: all the problems my dad has with me. That I'm promiscuous. That I haven't settled on a career. That I plan on being in school till I'm 40. That I'm spending all of my time writing, creating, traveling, teaching, when I could be holed up in an office, cubicle, or other "respectable" line of work where I feel unchallenged and/or unfulfilled. That I have so much untapped potential.

To be short, all of the problems and insecurities that I've ever had with myself were flying out of my father's mouth - and this realization felt surreal. At once, I texted all of the people that I thought I might see that night, and said that I wouldn't be able to make it out because of some family issues. Then I cried and screamed and did sit-ups until my abs felt like they would burst from overexhaustion. Lastly, I continued working my body over. I continued stretching, pulling, pushing, jumping, running, screaming, punching. I continued to evaluate and harshly judge and criticize myself and my situation. I continued to feel bad about myself.

Then I stopped. In that sudden and brief moment of frenetic energy, damning accusations, soul searching, and parental forgiving, I found a clarity that bordered a religious experience. Snippets of scenes from my day-to-day life formed a montage in my mind - jogging around the track, lifting weights, writing on the subway, talking with the power writing students, laughing with Opera Singer and Trini Jew, dancing with Rob, flirting with attractive strangers, having coffee with Past Tense, having three-hour telephone conversations with Best Guy Friend, playing with Justice, looking for work, spending time with my baby brother, reliving JHS with D.A.Y.,...

Indiana Poetess (aka BKD) texted me and said that I really needed to move out of my parents' house, and that my time will come - and all I could do was laugh. My time has come. Whatever the next step is, it's happening right now.

The Making of a Fashionista/Designer

2008-03-04T21:12:00.006-05:00

My mom had an old shag coat from the 70s that I've been meaning to take apart, and yesterday, I finally did something about this desire. I cut the sleeves (which were too skinny for my sinewy arms) and made them into bell-shapes. Then I cut off the limp tie at its collar and created cuffs with this fabric. I restitched the shoulders after taking out the shoulder pads, and I started on the lining of the jacket, which will be silky and red. With the remaining fabric, I made a cap, which I'm thinking about embroidering with a butterfly-shaped sequin pattern that I found in my armoire.

My mom also had a 100% polyester dress that's pink with tiny black dots all over it. It's long, has ruffles in the front, and has a very high neck. So far, I've raised the hem of the waist to accentuate my cleavage, and cut the neckline so that it falls off the shouder, creating a flattering décolletage. I think the dress needs something to make it more modern. I'll probably add a felt sash and a matching felt border - both black - around the neckline. (Maybe cotton? Silk? I want the texture of the sash/lining to up the class factor of the dress.) That way, it'll draw attention away from the distraction of the ruffles in front, while maintaining the integrity in the line of the dress. I'm also thinking about putting a slit in the back of the skirt, down the middle.

There are two other dresses that I'm working on, both of them more modern than the jacket/hat ensemble and the pink and black dress. One of the dresses is a black and white number that I bought off of a discount rack maybe four or five years ago. It's made of some cheap stretchy material and is black with white polka dots. The dress has served me well, being something on which to add layers and look young in. However, with my eclectic sense of style burgeoning and my lack of funds painfully obvious, I've wanted to make something new of it. Gucci, D&G and YSL are making see-through fabrics the go-to affair of their spring lines, and since I'm too broke to afford the real deal and I have the means/talent, I figure I'd do something with this dress that reflects that particular motif. I'm going to keep the polka dots on the hem of the dress and the upper half of the bodice, but I'm going to cover the rest of the dress in a barely-there black and white diagonally striped sheath which will up the class AND sass factors, while being more forgiving and affectionate towards my curves. In fact, if I pick the see-through fabric correctly, the dress'll have the curvy-in-the-right-places look of the black and white number Cameron Diaz wore in The Mask.

[NOTE: I tried to find a pic of said black-and-white number, but all I could find was the following.]

The other dress that I'm working on scares the shit out of me because of the challenging nature of the design. It has a nude-colored bodice, and involves draping different barely-there fabrics on it, layer by layer, to achieve a sexy bohemian look. It'll be short, but tasteful and irreverent while also very spring-time worthy. At least, that's my hope.

I've taken inventory of my jackets, coats, scarves, shawls, etc., and my jewelry collection -believe me when I say it's a COLLECTION! I've got rings and things for daaaayys - and I'm happy knowing I can properly cover up and accessorize whatever craziness I create.

The part that I'm really scared/psyched about, though, is actually wearing something I've created. Because it's one thing to be fashion-forward and BUY good taste. It's something entirely different to make something of your own design and wear it out in the world, exclaiming that you've got the go-to goods and/or grand and gorgeous gear. It's a statement, in every regard. The lack of label doesn't immediately hint at how much (or little) money I've spent on buying the clothes, or how much (or little) time I've spent scouring the city for just the right look.

Clothes of my own design speak entirely of the people I've been, the people who have influenced me, the cultures that I've experienced. It's a complete and unadulterated physical view of Me. NOT Calvin Klein, NOT Tom Ford, NOT Betsey Johnson, NOT Abercrombie & Fitch, NOT Guess?, NOT Anna Sui, NOT EVEN THE PEOPLE AT FOREVER 21! Every stitch, every fabric, every collar, every sleeve is a direct indication of something I thought, something I did, something that I am. And wearing that out in public is more revealing than walking down the street naked.

Realization Time

2008-02-27T10:50:00.002-05:00

I've done some awesome stuff, but the best has yet to come.

A Day in the Life

2008-02-26T14:54:00.004-05:00

I left a few cliff-hangers on here a few days ago. One was about the general fuck-up-edness of things right now - lack of money, being sued for bills I've yet to pay, my folks' drama (cheating, lying, stealing, et al.), my plans to Move Da Eff On, et al. - and the other about things with my BGF (Best Guy Friend).

Thing is, I've come to this place in my life where I feel no need to be stressed about all this. Life is gonna happen whether or not I participate in it, whether or not my contributions to the actions around me are purely speculative and spectator in subject, whether or not I have panic attacks about the general shittyness of things. Sure, my day-to-day is fit for consumer consumption via Reality TV and/or telenovelas - but that shouldn't change the way I regard it.

All this time, I've been urgently willing a 180-turn. I've been plotting get-done schemes for all the drama I'm up against. I've been turning these problems into the defining parts of my personality. But I came to the conclusion that they're all things that I go through; that doesn't mean they have power over my person or personality. I decide what I'm about.

So I'm more proactive about things. I'm tackling the problems that are within my power: lack of satisfaction when it comes to my living arrangement, money issues, health concerns, the need to be more cultured, the desire to be more creative, et al. I'm running at least three miles every day at the track. I'm eating healthier (abstaining from meat and drinking a gallon of water every day). I'm applying to jobs while enjoying the hell out of my current work. I'm cleaning up my house and not feeling crappy if/when there's ANOTHER pile of laundry/dishes/chores to be done. And I'm becoming a little Susie Homemaker. My repertoire in recipes has increased exponentially. I'm sewing and designing clothes. I'm drawing and painting again.

Fuck all of the negativity. I've accepted that my family's problems are NOT my problems. By not allowing each member of my family to claim responsibility for their actions/inability to act, I was showing a lack of respect for their autonomy and decision-making skills; I was hindering their ability to live out their lives the way they deem fit. I was impressing my own notions of justice onto every situation.

But my mom isn't me and my dad isn't me and my brother sure as hell isn't me. They're gonna make their own decisions whether or not I agree with them, and the only thing I can do is offer advice when I can, be a shoulder for them to cry on, and allow them to pick themselves up every time they fall. Like a mother that breastfeeds well into their child's school years, I had to realize that I acted the way I did For Me, and not For Them. I needed to feel needed. I needed my self-worth and life observations validated by voicing them and attempting to have them followed as Law. I needed an excuse to stay a while longer in the comfort of the reality I've known for so long.

None of that is the case now.

I trust my instincts enough to walk into an awkward situation and know that I will arrive at its end unscathed. Nothing surprises me, but everything delights me. And Hope, that ever-elusive visage of tomorrow, has been internalized like a sacred amulet. The best I can do is the best I can do - and that simple realization is how my potential will not be wasted.

Dare I Say It?

2008-02-25T12:49:00.006-05:00

I was hanging out with Past Tense last night and I couldn't find the right words to explain how I feel. Everything that came to mind seemed utterly cliche: an unerring sense of inner strength, the confidence to move mountains and shatter dominant mores, the peace of mind to Act as oppose to React. I've hit my stride and I'm able to do Everything without fear. I am ashamed of nothing. I do not need to analyze the hell out of everything; I do it, but only out of respect for my writing. Everything is within reach. And for the first time I know without a doubt that this isn't transitory; it's permanent. This feeling that I can do no wrong is Permanent.

Wow. It feels so good to put that out there.

This, my friends, is happiness. It's not the shallow and temporary happiness of a girl who clings onto unstable theories and other peoples' attitudes. It's not the contentment of passing through a phase just to get to another phase. It's not the mania caused by getting myself out of a deep depression. It's a feeling of joy that is stirred by the smallest of details: a conversation on the train with a stranger, the pride that wells in my chest when going to work, the realization that I am not perfect but my attempts at perfection are perfect.

We walked through the streets, Past Tense and I, in a comfortable almost-silence that felt as warm, heavy, and cozy as a favorite overstuffed blanket. The words passing our lips were not the inquisitory ones of other nights, but small morsels of our realities which made little allusion to our late-night think-a-thons: men we were dating, friends, bric-a-brac actions that form the outlines of our day-to-day lives.

Not much had changed on the outside since we'd seen each other last. There were still problems with which to contend: bills, friends, family issues, the issue of finding a soulmate, et al. But progress had been made, and both of us were too mired in our progress to be able to speak on the ins and outs of it. Speaking on your progress while it's happening is like putting the live sports reel on pause to interject a voiceover: sure it helps to put everything in perspective, but there's a halting of the live feed. The main object of the scene - the Progress - seems deterred, deferred, distracted all because you want to convey its parts. The overwhelming sentiment seems real: if you were truly cognizant of what was going on, you wouldn't need the play-by-play. Why not just let it be?

Luckily, Past Tense and I are well versed in this Truth, so we let the live feed continue to grow, and we exhalted in the quiet and relatively relaxing here-and-now.

But "happiness"? The ability to say, "I'm happy"? It seems like part of a fairy tale. We go through our lives striving for something that seems out of reach - this "happiness" we speak so much of - and very rarely do we assess our lives to be Happy. Content? Sure. Complascent? Often, yes. But not Happy. Happy is a tall order. Happy is taken to mean the whole kit and caboodle: job, family, friends, extracurricular activities, health, education, culture - you get the idea. It seems unlikely that one would achieve it all.

But what if all that isn't what makes us happy? What if the assumption that we need "it all" to be happy is incorrect? Or, what if we stumble onto a patch of life as slippery as ice which takes us, sliding, onto a pure and perfect path of happiness, and all of a sudden all of the "necessities of happiness" are ours?

That second one - that's where I'm at. It makes me think: What if we really do need the whole kit and caboodle, but the clincher is that we must be ready and willing to lose it all at any moment? Wouldn't that be a mind fuck? If you could only be perfectly happy if you were sure that you'd be perfectly fine unhappy?

The search for happiness brings to mind a philosophical quandry that had been posed a year ago in class: If you haven't experienced something, how do you know if you've found it? I think I'm going to spend the day thinking about this, while sewing/designing clothes, teaching class, applying to jobs, writing contest entries and poetry, and getting ready to go to the 40/40 club...

With any luck, I'll have a TGL article - my first in almost five months - for you to read by tomorrow.

Holy Shite, Batman

2008-02-22T04:20:00.002-05:00

I can't sleep and I can't do anything productive. My mind keeps wandering to the three hour conversation I just had with BGF (Best Guy Friend, Big Greek Friend---whatevs).

Fuuuuuuuck.

Either I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, or only outrageous situations can come of this (and certainly a blog post or twelve). Past Tense, I know you're grinning.

More on this at a later time...

Around The Way

2008-02-19T17:30:00.005-05:00

Randy Rudolf walked past my house as I was sitting on my stoop. It had been a long afternoon and the hazy sun fell across my pale face in sharp angles. I'd fallen asleep at a little past four in the morning, had gotten up two hours later, and kept on falling prey to periods of productivity before succumbing once again to slumber. Each burst of activity punctuated the subsequent power nap like italicized exclamation points: Another doze!

I was getting really tired of the twitch surrounding my right eye. The frustration welling in my chest burned like I ate some bad sushi. And man, if you had seen the pile of bills collecting on my dresser, you'd understand.

On the plus side, though, I was looking good. Hard times brought out my hard eyes, my high cheek bones, my try-your-luck-strut. I'd perfected the hoodrat glare of seasoned sexual experience, and could shoot a salty stare farther than you can spit. Maybe that's why Randy Rudolf smiled at me as he walked home. He knew that look on my face, knew what I was capable of when I glared at guys like I had game for miles, knew that a perverse mania swept my psyche every time my eyes shone like pearls.

"You know you can get a ticket for that," Randy Rudolf said as he motioned to the beer bottle in my hand. He pecked me on the cheek - a greeting and acknowledgment of our shared history.

I took another swig of my Heineken and laughed. "At this point, I couldn't care less," I said with a shrug.

We lowered our stares and directed our attention to the street, where a blue and white was rolling. Cops were patrolling our block a lot, and even though I was no longer involved in the hijinx of the neighborhood low-lifes, I couldn't help but fall back into my old self. No matter how law-abiding I am, I will never trust police.

Randy Rudolf swept his gaze back at me after the blue and white had drifted from sight. He seemed to be thinking over my last words, sizing up my answer; I simultaneously searched it for truth.

It's been a long time since I ran numbers around my way, whistled high to announce the arrival of squadron cars, fucked with the dudes in the corner house. - (To my credit, I hadn't allowed myself to stoop to the level of ho or trick; I'd fuck with the dudes, but I laughed at the idea of fucking them.) - Now, years after I'd snuck out of my parents' house to partake in tasteless talk about taboos, it all feels surreal.

I am not the same girl who wore puffy princess dresses in elementary school. Nor am I the wide-eyed and wild-limbed pre-adolescent who, suffering from insomnia, took it upon herself to wander the streets at night. I am not the girl who, at the age of fifteen, got stabbed in the leg with a steak knife and bandaged the cut by herself. I am not the girl who, at the age of sixteen, moved to Virginia with her brother and attended class with the attorney general's son. I'm sure as hell not the same girl who moved in with a suit at the age of seventeen, and thought I could handle it because he wasn't my first love, my first fuck, my first live-in relationship.

I am not the same person who deemed it excusable to print my close friend's sex life in a blog, under the guise of art. I am not the same person who cut ties with her childhood best friends because she didn't know how to continue being someone's best friend. I am not the same person who smoked up daily, got drunk daily, snuck into bars, fucked voraciously, loved shallowly, befriended anonymously, partied haphazardly, nearly fucked up everything because of Daddy Issues, Mommy Issues, abuse, fear, quarterlife crisis, pressure, hubris, stupidity, just to feel what it's like to hit rock bottom.

I am not that person.

So when Randy Rudolf stared at me with those dark glittering eyes of his, while flipping in his head my words - "At this point, I couldn't care less" - and sizing me up, I didn't know how I was feeling. In the context of the other Marias - the unsure ones, the inexperienced ones, the less intelligent ones, the luckier ones, the rough-and-tumble ones, the scholarly ones, the jaded ones, et al. - I knew how to size up who I was. The contexts had been used before, in classic stories, beloved movies, old time songs. I knew the roles, knew the stereotypes, cast myself in each shadow before learning how to shine.

But at that very moment, with a remnant of my past staring me in the face, I realized that I was something, someone entirely different from anything I'd ever imagined or come across.

Somehow, in between all of the introverted introspectiveness and wild extroverted perversities, I'd come into my own skin. I didn't know yet what that skin was made of, which parts of which Marias had remained, but I knew that I was more or less fully formed, and I really couldn't care less what life had to throw at me. I was gonna be okay.

Randy Rudolf smiled at me, and at once his face was kind, mischievous, and fatherly. "You did good, kid," he said.

Other Marias would've beamed, but I earnesly nodded my head in agreement. "I know," I said as I put down my beer and picked up my journal and a pen. "Man, do I know..."

You-Hate-Us? Dry-Hump-Us! Hi-At-Us

2008-02-18T20:16:00.005-05:00

I recently got an email from Soul Patch, a friend of mine who lives in Virginia. Soul Patch is one of those people who I love dearly, but to whom I concede that sans 'net, our relationship wouldn't last past my driving past his state's line.

SP wanted to know why I haven't been blogging, why all he's been reading has been my vocabulary upgrade, and why he didn't get an update on Valentine's Day. I just replied unfeelingly that I've been on hiatus, that he should take his library card out for a spin, and that he has three baby's mamas to worry about so he doesn't have to worry about my love life. Such is the bond between folks who've seen each other naked and sweaty: words aren't minced and feelings aren't spared. God forbid one of us should think we have a connection that's more than platonic.

I didn't have the cajones to say flat-out to SP that I've been licking my wounds. Doing so would require humility, and humility is something that I'm short on when dealing with a man who's seen my goodies at every angle - even though said sexcapades were seven years ago.

So here's the dealio, for those who swear they're my BFF but depend on my blog to find out the nitty gritty: My first job's cut back my hours, my second job is a temp gig (which lasts only till the end of the month), and my bills are backed up like a toilet after Thanksgiving dinner. I inked a "limited time engagement" deal with a phone sex management co, and did it for two nights; it pays well, and by "well" I mean that my family doesn't have to go hungry for the next month and a half, and I can pay for gas and metrocards.

I need to find work, and in the meantime I want to enter a few writing contests that I've been eyeing. The crapped out part about that? Both writing contests require me to write about dating and love - and I'm short on inspiration when it comes to both. Valentine's Day was sad, pathetic and disappointing; I've decided to take some time out from dating.

Back on the lack-of-money tip: I found out that I'm getting sued for not having paid off my med bills from a couple years ago, which makes me go, "REALLY?! I got cancer, paid off half of the bills, and obviously don't make enough to pay off the rest of the bills SO YOU SUE ME?! WTF is that supposed to do?! Get your money sooner??? Cuz, OBVIOUSLY, if I had cash, you'd be paid." And maaannnn... If I could, I'd throw myself a pity party.

Unfortunately, I'm too grown to be so pathetic.

More on all of this soon. I've gotta clean my house.

Randomosity

2008-02-18T15:46:00.002-05:00

Were you the one who called me at 2 a.m. from a private line, then left a 4+ minute message of heavy breathing on my voicemail?

If so, I find you sexy. Call me sometime. Let's hook this up. Ya know what I mean. A little heavy breathing. Some light touching. You already have my phone number, you probably have my address, my work email, my social security number. I mean, THIS IS THE AGE OF PERSONAL INVASION, am I right? Where we air our personal shit out in blogs, on internet networking sites, out in the street as we're talking on our cell phones. THAT IS WHY YOU FIGURE IT'S OKAY TO CALL ME AT 2 A.M. AND CREEP ME THE F*CK OUT BY LEAVING A 4+ MINUTE MESSAGE OF HEAVY BREATHING (AND DID I HEAR A MOTHERF*CKING PORN PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND?!). RIGHT?!

Word. That's what I thought.

Dear Slug

2008-02-17T13:12:00.002-05:00

On some real tip, this dude's answers were NiCe! Peep the asterisks.

From http://www.avclub.com/content/home

When The A.V. Club thinks about Valentines' Day, we naturally think about relationships, passion, and Sean "Slug" Daley, MC of hip-hop duo Atmosphere, who has written some of the most pointed love-and-sex rhymes we know of. So we enlisted him to answer some questions in honor of the holiday, figuring that he'd be willing to get deep with our readers. (He is, after all, the guy who told us at length about his theories on alien life.) The call for questions was overwhelming, with multiple marriage proposals tucked within actual cries for help. (Names have been omitted to protect the innocent and guilty.) Slug decided to answer 14 questions in honor of February 14. He also decided that whether or not you have love problems, you should know he's got a new Rhymesayers record, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold, coming out on April 22. His album Strictly Leakage is also available for free download at rhymesayers.com/atmosphere.

Every couple of years, some girl I'm dating will just spontaneously burst into tears after sex. I've talked to guy friends of mine, and they've had it happen, too. What the hell is the deal? Just some female thing I'm not getting? Or do I have an effect on women that reduces them to tears?

Slug: Crying is a common defense mechanism for the women who sleep with you. Don't get neurotic about it, though. They are not defending themselves from you. They are defending themselves from themselves and their overwhelming desire to burst into laughter.

I am 18 years young and pretty shy. There is this male in one of my classes and I can't keep my mind off him… I don't even know his name, so what are some good ways for him to notice me without looking like I'm trying too hard?

Slug: Who are you afraid of looking like you are trying too hard in front of? I'm going to assume that the male in question is a) not your professor, and b) near the same age as you. If these are both true, relax. I usually try not to generalize, but most male prey your age do not analyze the hunter's technique the same way that you might. He will be too busy wrapping his head around the fact that you were proactive to question whether you appear desperate. Go for it. Now.

I made the mistake of taking my boyfriend to go see Juno with me. Ever since, he's been terrified of getting me pregnant, to the point where he damn near refuses to sleep with me. Help a girl out.

Slug: Relax. It will subside. In the meantime, catch up on The Wire.

I am a 28-year-old woman who has had the pleasure of having one partner for the experimental period of my life, and he and I explored all the doors of intimacy. My now-fiancé lacks the forbidden fun that I am craving. I am the one who had the cuffs, the rope, the toys, and the knowledge, and if I bring these things out during our private time, he acts scared and intimidated. I have tried to break him out of his shell and get him to explore with me, but he just likes to do the same thing over and over again. How do I get him to open up to me and be comfortable enough?

Slug: Comfortable enough for what? Maybe it's not your knowledge that he is intimidated by, but rather where you obtained it. Try some things that are new to both of you. My best half has been to Mexico, I have not. So when we plan our next vacation together, I would prefer to go somewhere neither of us have been, rather than experiencing Mexico with her as my tour guide. I'm not wrong for that (maybe a little stubborn), but I prefer the idea of a shared adventure more than I like the idea of trying to track down some restaurant that she remembers from when she was a teenager. Now if she absolutely must go to Mexico, and I'm still not into it, I'm secure with the idea of her going with her homegirls, while I stay at home and rap. Figure out an adventure that fits both of your tastes. If that doesn't work, figure out how much you need the adventure. If you can't live without it, do what is best for you. But never, ever, guilt or manipulate someone into doing something they don't wanna do. After reviewing your question, I think maybe I wanna go to Mexico.

What warnings do you have about marriage besides the fact that there will be arguments, and you'll likely hate one another after living together for a year? I am a 21-year-old single mom who is constantly being proposed to, and I wonder what it would be like if one of these guys could actually wrangle me into commitment. I have had long-term relationships, but I have never lived with a man I had been in a relationship with. What are the ills that could scare me off from marriage for good?

Slug: Constantly being proposed to? By who? Co-workers? Neighbors? The guy at the local food co-op juice bar? Are these long-term friends that you've known for a while? Or just random guys? Forget focusing on the warning signs. Focus more on the bond you share with the person who is proposing. Due to the way your question is worded, I feel like your parents may have left you with a twisted outlook on "happily-ever-after." Join the fucking club, and only marry for love. Anything else won't work. Besides, your child will benefit more from learning what happy looks like alone, rather than what misery looks like embraced.

What is your advice to a couple in which one person is sober, and the other is addicted to crystal meth?

Slug: Personally, I don't believe in the risk. The addict needs to get well. The addict also needs to examine how he/she could ruin the lives of the people he/she loves. The addict won't do either of these things if the addict can take advantage of the love and nurture of his/her lover. My advice is to wean off of each other. Send the addict to treatment. And once the addict learns to establish a love for self, the addict may actually end up mentally and emotionally available enough to love another person correctly. Or not. Either way, throwing away one life trumps throwing away two. I don't believe in the risk.

I need a good pickup line, something that will sweep a girl off her feet and into my bed. Give me some sort of dope line, please!

Slug: Try this one. Next time you're at Daiquiri Joe's tossing a few back with your Billy Bro-ceans, walk right up to that long-legged makeup kit and tell her, "I'm the type of guy that thinks it's hilarious to write into an advice column asking for good pickup lines." Dog, she will think you are the cat's pajamas.

I'm a 27-year-old female and I'd been with this guy for about a month and the sex was okay, but I didn't really feel he had much passion for it. He was a mechanical dick, at best. That is, until I let him cross the velvet rope and enter my virginal back door during one of our encounters, and his inner gay was released. He likes the backdoor action A LOT. Giving, receiving, butt plugs, dildos, tossing, he's all about it. He can't even get off now unless HIS ass is being stimulated or penetrated with something. He even talks dirty in a different and somewhat feminine tone when I'm dominating his ass. I've hinted and teased that if he were any more flaming, he'd spontaneously combust. He laughs it off, but doesn't deny. Would you guess him gay? Would you marry me?

Slug: I'm not entirely sure, but I think you are asking me if your boyfriend is gay. Is that the question here? Maybe you should ask him. I really have no answer for you. I don't think people's metaphysics are defined by who or what they have sex with. But I do think you and him should link up with the couple from question number four. And no, I will not marry you. Buy my new album.

The woman at the root of my grief shouldn't be as tricky as this. It's almost transparent that she no longer has feelings for me, but this doesn't impede her ability to call me (sober, no less) and say that she loves me. Her words never seem to match her actions, and I'm constantly fighting between my urge to stay away and my urge to try and get her back. How do you get past it all?

***Slug: Drama is a helluva drug. We get addicted to it. When we are in a dysfunctional relationship that lasts long enough, we will still crave the dysfunction after the relationship has ended. We will still carry out some of those dysfunctional actions with that ex. It's our way of still feeling important to that person. A string to hold onto. The Vali-Dating Game.
My advice to you (and her, for that matter) is to stop taking the calls. Self-intervention does work. Do not go to the bars she frequents. Do not hang out at mutual friends' homes if you know she may come around. Ignore her away. The more progressive the dramatic advances become, the bigger step back you take, until you are both far enough away from each other that you can stop acting like the people that you know you are not. You are both bigger and deffer than what you've become for each other. Growth time. And then go get the word "codependent" tattooed somewhere on your upper torso in a place that only can be viewed by the next person who sees you naked.***

What, in your opinion, is the biggest difference between men and women?

Slug: The "wo." Sorry. Had to. I'm an idiot, mostly.

I'm a shy small-town girl, and I need some advice. I've been single for the past two years, because it seems like every guy that comes along just wants a piece of my ass. How do I get the fellas to look beyond the exterior? I'm no hoochie, nor am I a skank. I just happen to have a body that appeals to guys. Can you help me out?

Slug: Honestly, change your preferences. You yourself are attracted to a certain body type. Some tattoos, maybe. Dark hair. Tall. Change your preferences. Start noticing a different type of boy, and that different type of boy will start noticing you. Eventually, the type of guy that you are complaining about won't be so obvious in your life, because they will get tired of you not giving back the attention. Go directly to the independent record store (vinyl stock is a must), and start flirting with that employee shaped like Grimace from the McDonald's commercials. He doesn't have an awesome sleeve tattoo. But he isn't embarrassed about his dandruff, he knows way too much about cool music from Alice Cooper to Zhigge, and he has studied enough Internet porn to teach classes at junior college. If your "shy small town" does not have an independent record store, move to the big city.

Why is it that girls can't resist a cocky asshole?

***Slug: I'm going to assume that you are not a cocky asshole. And that you are frustrated with how the cocky asshole always walks away with the girl you desire. Relax. You don't really want her yet. You are best off without her for now. Give it five years. Everyone is amused by bells and whistles at first. Those neon lights distract us, like moths. But eventually, we realize that there is nothing else there. And that's when your worth will translate. The real question is, once everyone realizes how awesomazing you are, will you have your face buried too far up a stripper's butt to notice? Good luck.***

Do you believe that everyone has one specific person or "soulmate" that they are supposed to be with?

Slug: No. But I did murder the tooth fairy once (by accident). It's a long story, and I've told it before. Go Google it.

What's the best way to celebrate Valentine's Day when you're single and you're secretly jealous of people in relationships? Should I get blind-drunk and forget what day it is? Or should I go to the strip club? Or both?

Slug: Hell, why not both? And when you are there, blind-drunk, make sure you preemptively used a Sharpie to write this on your hand: GET USED TO THIS, YOU SCHMUCK. Ha. I've never even said the word schmuck, much less typed it. I'm all about new experiences.
I love you all as if you were my own. —S

Vocab Lesson #1

2008-02-15T13:18:00.003-05:00

1) in·sid·i·ous (ĭn-sĭd'ē-əs)
adj.
- Working or spreading harmfully in a subtle or stealthy manner: insidious rumors; an insidious disease.
- Intended to entrap; treacherous: insidious misinformation.
- Beguiling but harmful; alluring: insidious pleasures.
[From Latin īnsidiōsus, from īnsidiae, ambush, from īnsidēre, to sit upon, lie in wait for : in-, in, on; see in–2 + sedēre, to sit.]
insidiously in·sid'i·ous·ly adv.
insidiousness in·sid'i·ous·ness n.

2) a·nath·e·ma (ə-năth'ə-mə)
n., pl. -mas.
- A formal ecclesiastical ban, curse, or excommunication.
- A vehement denunciation; a curse: “the sound of a witch's anathemas in some unknown tongue” (Nathaniel Hawthorne).
- One that is cursed or damned.
- One that is greatly reviled, loathed, or shunned: “Essentialism—a belief in natural, immutable sex differences—is anathema to postmodernists, for whom sexuality itself, along with gender, is a ‘social construct’” (Wendy Kaminer).
[Late Latin anathema, doomed offering, accursed thing, from Greek, from anatithenai, anathe-, to dedicate : ana-, ana- + tithenai, to put.]

3) pros·e·ly·tize (prŏs'ə-lĭ-tīz')
v., -tized, -tiz·ing, -tiz·es.
v.intr.
- To induce someone to convert to one's own religious faith.
- To induce someone to join one's own political party or to espouse one's doctrine.
v.tr.
- To convert (a person) from one belief, doctrine, cause, or faith to another.
proselytization pros'e·ly·ti·za'tion (-tĭ-zā'shən) n.
proselytizer pros'e·ly·tiz'er n.

4) cur·mudg·eon (kər-mŭj'ən)
n.
- An ill-tempered person full of resentment and stubborn notions.
[Origin unknown.]
curmudgeonly cur·mudg'eon·ly adj.
curmudgeonry cur·mudg'eon·ry n.

5) fri·sée (frĭ-zā')
n.
- See endive (sense 1).
[French, from feminine past participle of friser, to curl. See frizz1.]

6) en·dive (ĕn'dīv', ŏn'dēv')
n.
- An Indian plant (Cichorium endivia) cultivated for its crown of crisp succulent leaves used in salads. Also called frisée.
- Escarole.
- A variety of the common chicory Cichorium intybus cultivated to produce a narrow, pointed, blanched cluster of leaves used in salads. Also called Belgian endive, witloof.
[Middle English, from Old French, from Medieval Latin endivia, from Medieval Greek entubia, pl. diminutive of Greek entubon, perhaps from Egyptian tybi, January (because the plant grows in this month).]

7) in·veigh (ĭn-vā')
intr.v., -veighed, -veigh·ing, -veighs.
- To give vent to angry disapproval; protest vehemently.
[Latin invehī, to attack with words, inveigh against, passive of invehere, to carry in : in-, in; see in–2 + vehere, to carry.]
inveigher in·veigh'er n.

8) Lee Siegel - journalist/writer who was suspended by The New Republic for using a fake online persona in order to trash critics of hisblog and to praise himself.

9) anti-intellectualism - The attitude that "too much learning can be a dangerous thing." (Definition from Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason.”)

10) anti-rationalism - The idea that there is no such thing as evidence or fact, just opinion. (Definition from Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason.”)

11) Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 – September 21, 1860) was a German philosopher best known for his work The World as Will and Representation. Schopenhauer responded to and expanded upon Immanuel Kant's philosophy concerning the way in which we experience the world.

Answer Me

2008-02-11T10:56:00.000-05:00

1) What's the difference between getting work done on your face (botox, nose job, etc.) and putting on makeup every day? Does one have more "integrity" than the other?

2) Since getting back on the singles scene, I've been seriously thinking about internet dating. I've never met in person anyone I've met on the internet, so it would definitely be different for me. Do you think internet dating is weird? Creepy? Dangerous? Same as "regular" dating?
(P.S. I don't have the regular "I wanna meet someone special" motivation for this. Message me for details.)

3) What are your criteria for determining a "best friend"? Is it someone you've known for a long time? Someone who has your back and is down for anything? Someone who "gets" you and who you "get" almost 100% of the time? None of these? All of these?

Perspectives

2008-02-11T10:32:00.000-05:00

In the wee morning hours of Sunday, February 3rd, I got matching tattoos with Dallas, Ariane & Yvonne (DAY). We were all getting variations of a four-star motif.

My thoughts: I feel like I'm constantly chasing shooting stars, hoping that my idealistic values lead me somewhere good.

Ariane's thoughts: The places everyone chose to get their tat is symbolic of their relationship to the group. Dallas got it near her stomach, and she's the maternal one of the group. (READ: The only mom.) Maria got it on her foot because we keep her grounded.

*****

There was a really funny conversation Abie and I had the other day, but I can't remember what it's about at this moment. I'll ask if he remembers then post it.

*****

On my leaving the country in September:

"I obviously haven't taken enough time to fully weigh out my options."

VS.

"My personality = Living by the seat of my pants."

VS.

"I'm falling back on my usual M.O. and haven't learned anything from my mistakes."

*****

On leaving my folks to fend for themselves physically and financially:

"It was a necessary action that should've been done sooner - even if it would've been more painful to all those involved."

"It was a necessary action that happened when I was ready to make it happen, and everyone's better for the relatively painless way in which it happened."

"By leaving my folks to fend for themselves, I'm buying into 'American' standards and values and dismissing my parents' culture. I was just using my Asian-ness as an excuse to play the martyr."

Moving On Up

2008-02-11T01:52:00.000-05:00

At Mom's request, I moved the heavy dining room table. There was an immediate criamp in my upper abdomen: I'd fucked up.

My body's not like it used to be. I can still crank out a hundred sit-ups with no problems, but I really need to start exercising more frequently - and by "exercising" I don't just mean "fucking." Running/jogging, weight lifting, yoga, boxing. I miss all of that. Yves and I are supposed to start taking salsa classes next month, and I'm excited about that since I'd really like to learn some moves. Also, I want to start taking hip hop dance classes again because they put me in an awesome mood - but it all depends on my budget. I've got too many bills to pay and so little income that it might as well be called "outcome"; the second the money comes in, it goes out to pay bills.

Mom and Dad cleaned up the house this past weekend so it's actually clean. I'm reading, writing, taking care of business. I've been hanging out with friends and talking to them more frequently and realizing that I do know like-minded folks who are wonderful and sincere and have similar values to my own. All of this, plus my ascension into the datingsphere, puts me in a great mindset. Life is good.

Someday soon...

2008-02-11T01:29:00.000-05:00

I'll think back on this period of my life, shrug my shoulders, and smile broadly. "That was real living," I'll laugh. "Real life happened right then and there."

Love Me Like I Wanna Be Loved

2008-02-10T16:29:00.000-05:00

- Know me before you decide to lavish me with your attention, admiration or adoration. I appreciate the gesture(s) and I'm flattered, but unless you know me - and I mean REALLY KNOW ME - I will believe that your affections are misplaced and/or invalid. Either you want something from me (sex, money, etc.) or you're an asshole who wants to get close to me in order to make my life a living hell (because misery LOVES company) or something of that negative ilke. Good, smart people don't go around "loving" people randomly.

- Don't make conclusions about me. I don't care if we've been in each others' lives for a day or twenty years. Unless you and I are on some real cool level - I'm talkin, I can be myself around you, you can be yourself around me, there's no pretense in our relationship, and we've talked in the past month and half - then you don't know me mayn! Stop acting like you do. Ya know that cutesy frazzled thing I do when I'm telling a story? That's because I'm excited and/or embarassed and/or scared - not because I'm lying! WTF do I have to lie about, anyway?! Do you really think I'm so retarded that I need to lie to make a point? Do you just think that low of me? If we're supposed to be chill, why don't you call me out on my shit if that's what you think is going on? Get your head on straight before you draw conclusions and color me in a bad light. How you gonna say we're homies if you don't even know that I'm a good, honest person?!

- Okay, so we don't agree on everything. I don't expect that it's common for that to happen anyway. But really: give me a reason to call you my fam. Say somthing really intelligent sometimes - something to make me really give you credit. Don't ooh and aah over every latest thing in the stores. Don't be a drone to commercialism. You had a chance to go to a really prestigious school, study under known academic names, make something of yourself - and you decided that you didn't wanna learn anything. You just bowed down to the almighty dollar, the ease of fakery in order to make money, the crutches of enabling friends. I'm not hating on you, but I don't think we have a shred of anything in common besides the purely animalistic and/or biological. Is it really possible to love something - like, really love something - that you can't understand, and don't even really like?

- I watch you make your choices, steal my eyes away from your horrible decisions, offer you support even though I know that you can't really achieve all that you say you want to achieve with your life. I get it. Life's hard. I bitch and moan about that, too. But really: why are you so quick to stick with the same old stuff? How can you constantly make dreams and not do a damn thing about them? Why do you not make something of yourself? What are you so afraid of?

- It takes more than a while to realize the full weight of a person's character, the real depth of their soul, the real meaning of their actions. When you've spent a lifetime evaluating the people nearest and dearest to you and come to the conclusion that they don't know you at all, they don't know how to make you feel loved, they don't know what you're about - and they're incapable/unwanting of taking on the challenge that is You: what are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to just cut them off and chalk it up to time and circumstance? Do you just "move on" without giving them notice, until one day you all turn around and realize that undoubtedly you are strangers?

- I read a lot and I like to drop info during conversations. Could you maybe read a little bit, so that when I talk to you I don't feel like I'm rehashing the same stuff over and over again? Let's talk about childrearing in France, safaris in Kenya, basketweaving in Brazil. Let's teach each other different cultures, different arguments about the theory of Life, different ways to address our parents. Let's work on ourselves and each other so that we can help each other be the best versions of ourselves imaginable. Couldn't we? Shouldn't we?

- Why do you insist on reading so much into things? Why do you insist on manipulating every situation? Why do you feel the need to cultivate your lying skills? Don't you realize that the need to control every outcome is just a sign that your self-esteem is severely impaired? It's one thing to work hard, express yourself thoroughly, diligently do what you have to do: but to play mind games? Power games? Status games? What's the point of all that? What's the point of You?

- Thank goodness you realized upon meeting me that I'm a work-in-progress. It's impossible to limit my transitions from who I am today to who I am tomorrow, and you respect that and you respect me. For that, I will always be grateful.

- You listen to me. I mean REALLY listen to me. You and I think in the same breaths and catch the hinge of worry on the first awkward stutter of a hard consonant. We read the same feelings between the lines of phrases uttered and shoulders shrugged. The same language flows between our pens and papers and our legs and our eyes. When you speak, I hear the ocean calling me to the place where I belong, to the people that I have been, to the successes I have yet to achieve. Everything good and pure is in your sexy strut, in your confidence, in your humble gestures of relaxation.

- I love that you speak in tongues, riddling me with thoughts that have been dropped on you like smart bombs. Awkward silences seem possible on paper, but in person we make meaningful somethings out of substantial understandings. Musings and "mistakes" are not judged, are not heckled, are not predetermined right or wrong, good or bad, or nonsense. We are running in parallel paths, neither of us sure what awaits at the end, both of us thankful for the company and assured of each others' presence. I respect you immensely.

- You take me for me. You see only what's there and how great I can become. You assist me in being the best version of myself possible. You challenge my mind, engage my soul, and adore my body; and I feel likewise about you. The person that you are heightens and emphasizes the person that I am; the contours of our personalities mesh like silk. It's too bad I haven't known you... yet.

Sometimes, everything I wanna say comes out in emails...

2008-02-10T10:06:00.000-05:00

Message to a friend, sent a few minutes ago:

things are going fabulous on my end, mama. and by "fabulous," I basically mean I'm making a lotta conclusions & decisions & moves that I shoulda made yeeeeaars ago. LOL this has to do with school, with my family, with relationships, with friendships... I'm coming to grips with the reality of things: how they are and how I want them to be aren't sympatico - but that's okay cuz they're in a good enough place to get me where I wanna be. I'm tryna make some "takin over the world" kinda moves, with big money and lots of respect and none of the status (thass just how I do - don't need everyone knowing what kinda big moves I make; I'd rather see how they'd treat me if I were like everyone else). I guess it boils down to the fact that there are people who weigh me down by being themselves, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and I can no longer be the nice person to be like "sure, you hold me back, but I love you and I'll let you continue to bring me down. matter fact, I'll enable you to pull some straight BS on me." I ain't masochistic like that... at least, not anymore.

anywhos, that's me in a nutshell right therr. LOL how are things with school going? you need an extra client any time soon? I'd letcha practice whatever you haven't had a chance to do yet!

XO-M

I'm the lame one.

2008-02-09T08:33:00.001-05:00

*** Actually, no. Correction: Y'all are the lame ones. ***

That's the feeling I get when I'm with my BFFs, and I know it's just a matter of time before it goes away... But I wonder about our conflicting value systems and what it means that they're conflicting. I wonder what it means that our perspectives on things are so dissimilar.

When it comes to day-to-day stuff, we don't have much in common and there are only so many things that I can talk about before I feel like I'm being fake and just going with the conversation. I'm the kind of person who knows the names of all* the celebrities, but not what any of them are up to. I don't follow music or television trends because I'm too busy reading the latest New York Times best seller or one of my philosophy books. When I do follow trends in media, it's under the lens of a reporter or essayist: I'll know what the Soulja Boy is, but only in terms of its effects on pop culture and mainstream culture; I won't know anything about the song or the latest other crap on the Top 40.

A lot of the time, when we're all together, I'm really quiet. I can't find anything to talk about that everyone would be into. I can't let loose and relax because I feel a constant need to stop feeling out of sync with everyone else. When I do feel like part of the group, it's only after drinking a lot. I'm past the days of heavy drinking and my tolerance is low. Pathetic as it is, all I need are an empty stomach and three rounds of gin & juice and I'm good.

But why do I need to drink to relax? Is the nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach paranoia or something else? And what do I have to feel paranoid about?

I relax in a different way than my BFFs. I'll talk in ebonics, but I won't throw around the N word. I won't do outlandish things for the hell of it: I have responsibilities and priorities. I'd rather talk about what's really on my mind - important issues - than random BS. I'd rather stay grounded, have maybe one drink to let loose, and be myself. I don't want to be a loose, loud and overly sexual version of myself just to fit the crowd. But fun to them is drinking a lot and doing loud and obnoxious things. And being Me means NOT being like them.

I wish that wasn't the case.

Gratuity Not Included

2008-02-07T10:36:00.000-05:00

Gratuitous: adj.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Given without an equivalent or recompense; conferred without valuable consideration; granted without pay, or without claim or merit; not required by justice.

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Not called for by the circumstances; without reason, cause, or proof; adopted or asserted without any good ground; as, a gratuitous assumption.

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gra·tu·ity
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural gra·tu·ities
Date: 1540
: something given voluntarily or beyond obligation usually for some service; especially : tip

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We've all heard the term "gratuitous sex." Lately, I feel like it's the only kind I've been having - and to be perfectly honest, that's the way I want it. I know that I've been heeing and hawing about leaving the safe and satisfying realm of "making love," but times they are a' changin. The past several years have been full of back-to-back serious relationships, and I've realized that I'm not about to fall in love with anyone, so I might as well stop wasting my time finding someone to make love to.

For a split second, I seriously considered celibacy. I thought about self-respect and the daunting task of putting myself out in the dating world again. I thought about my self-image and the effort to make a relationship successful. And then I realized I was putting too much thought into it. Dating doesn't have to be a stepping stone to anything serious, and sex can be fun without overcomplicating my life. Why make dating and sex such loaded issues? Why not dive into life and see what I come up with?

So that's what I've been doing the past couple of weeks, and lo and behold, I came up with something unexpected: I enjoy dating women.

To be frank, I've had sex with women before. It was during my teenage phase of discovery, when homosexuality was the hot topic and being gay automatically made you that much closer to cool. All of the girls I slept with during this time were aggressors, and though I found all of them extremely attractive, I was only attracted to a handful of them. I figured sex with a woman was a contemporary New York City girl's rite of passage just like going to Planned Parenthood or having an abortion. (Place tongue in cheek here.) It was taboo and considered sinful, but ultimately not worth much thought. I had youth on my side; fucking up was part of the package, just like olives are part of a Greek salad. If you decide you only wanted feta cheese... Well, you get the idea. Nothing is permanent and all that. The point is, though I've had sex with women before, I've never dated one. Until now. And I'm dating two women. Talk about jumping to the head of the class!

So now it's a week till Valentine's Day, Rob claims to have planned an extravagant date for us, and the two women I'm seeing, Pammy and Sweetie* (she asked that I try not to blog about her), are turning out to be amazing people. In fact, all three of them are turning out to be wonderful in different ways, and each of them have broached the subject of our relationship with impending concern: Are we anywhere close to monogamy?

The truth is, No. I'm nowhere close to being monogamous with ANYONE. I don't enjoy the thrill of the chase as much as I did when I was younger, but I definitely like getting to the "comfortable" but still "tingly" stage of a relationship, when no one has to tiptoe around information and everyone can relax around each other. I'm learning that with women, this stage happens earlier in the relationship, and I'm realizing that this is where I'm most comfortable: when we haven't been together so long that we can anticipate what each other is going to say, but we haven't been together for so short a period that our conversations and actions are awkward. This is bliss.

I realized that I treat Rob, Pammy, and Sweetie all differently when it comes to telling them that exclusivity is out of the question - and they all react differently. I tell Rob (who is three years older than me and hustles to make money) CONSTANTLY that I want to see other people and that I'm only seeing him because, 1) Yes, I love him, and 2) I love what he does to my body (most of the time); he works around the clock to pay as many of my bills as he can. I tell Pammy (who is four years older than me and a CPA for the government) that I enjoy our time together but that I haven't put any thought into whether or not she and/or lesbian relationships are merely a detour in my life; she awkwardly brushes off my straight-forwardness and becomes detached in a way that hints she might really like me. I hint to Sweetie (who is my age and has a mid-salary corporate job) that I'm seeing other people, and she laughs at me, we have a two second conversation about whether I'm playing or not (I always say, "Wish I was, but I'm a rolling stone" - a reference to Bob Dylan) and then we resume whatever we're doing. Each of the people I'm seeing are attractive smart, successful, funny... okay, some more than others, but yeah: they're all good catches. And generous! I hardly have to pick up a tab or make a grand gesture, although I do so all the time out of pride and because I'm not a complete bitch.

But what can they see in me? Why would anyone want to attach themselves to someone who so blatantly and constantly reenforces the fact that we're going nowhere as a couple, while they're looking for something more permanent?

One thing's for certain: Karma's a bitch. When I start looking to settle down, I bet there'll be tumbleweeds blowing in my dating itinerary.

To Go or Not to Go: That Is No Longer the Question

2008-02-07T03:09:00.000-05:00

It's three in the a.m. and I can't sleep. I'm supposed to be going to the Philippines in seven weeks. The plan was to live there for two or three years, teach English while there, and earn a physician's assistant degree. With money issues abounding in the Rubio household, I can't afford to stay on-track with my writing plans (I wanted to leave NYC in order to pursue an MFA and/or PhD in fiction asap). But there's no money to be made by following my dreams, so instead I chose to follow my parental instincts and haul ass to bail my folks' asses from poverty. At this point, I'm used to putting my goals on the backburner to appease my engrained standards of the "greatest good."

The plan was going well - or so I thought. I attempted to do all the research - student visas, school search, financial research - on my own, but my folks insisted that I let them handle everything - and then they lied to me. Said straight to my face that there was a school near our Philippines house where I could get my bachelor's in physician's assistance. Said it would only take me two or three years and that it was accredited in the States. Said it was cheap and easy. Then I come to find out that there is no such school; they've only found nursing programs near our Philippines house. Physician's assistant programs might not even exist in the Philippines.

Now let me say this for you non-Flips. Nursing is cool. You save lives. You learn very useful information about the human body. You earn a good wage. But every other Filipino is a nurse; it's the default occupation for those who still haven't come to grips with what they wanna do with their lives. And even though I respect the career and I understand that some Filipinos actually want to become nurses, I never want to so easily fit into a stereotype. Becoming a Filipino nurse is like being a Korean grocer or a Chinese dry cleaner: although each position fulfills a necessary and viable role in the community, it's played out. My sense of unique individuality will not allow me to slip into starched white scrubs.

Kicking and screaming the whole way through, I decided that for the good of the family, I'd knock out the two years in nursing school. I got accepted into a program, my parents were thrilled at the low cost of tuition, and I shouldered on. In two years, I'd be making at least $80,000, I told myself. Not only that, but I'd do it by being useful. I'd be saving lives. I'd be fulfilling a necessary, respected and important role in the community. I thought of my large extended network of family in the Philippines and became even more set on the idea of leaving: I've never known what it's like to be a part of a close-knit clan, and seeing Rob's functional and large family made me long for that experience. The few times that I've visited the Philippines since hitting puberty, I'd bonded with my family and made unbelievable memories; I couldn't wait to do more of the same.

Then there was the issue of teaching English. One of my uncles had won a councilmanship and had mentioned an orphanage within his district. The locl government was in charge of finding caretakers and teachers for the children, and he asked if I'd be interested. The role would allow me to mold young minds, show off my passion and skill with the English language, and build up my resume. I jumped at the chance. I'm always seeking ways to fulfill my maternal instincts, and this felt right.

There were other "bonuses" to leaving the States. For one thing, I could start fresh. An overwhelming feeling was flooding the core of my bones: I wanted to erase all of my emotional and financial plights. I wanted to physically distance myself as much as possible from my parents, whose drama constantly weigh me down. I wanted to experience new cultures, to travel, to lose myself in the differences of the East. Japan, Malaysia, Singapore: these are all countries that are a stone's throw away from the Philippines, and I told myself that I'd take advantage of the low price of airfare and visit these places. I wanted to "find myself," and I felt that the only way of doing so would be to go where no one really knew me.

Of course, none of that's quite true. Starting fresh has very little to do with physical distance and a lot to do with emotional preparation. I can physically and emotionally distance myself from my folks while staying in New York City. I can experience new cultures when I'm in a better financial situation to do so (I'm incredibly broke right now). And lastly, and most importantly: I found myself these past few weeks. The old addage is right: you find what you most need when you're not looking for it.

So now I've landed an amazing job teaching with a non-profit organization. My bills are getting paid through promotions gigs. I've started writing, drawing, sewing, exercising, eating healthier - I feel like I'm fulfilling every New Year's resolution anyone could possibly have. And I feel so close to being complete. I feel so incredibly good.

I decided this past week that I'm definitely going to stick around for at least another year. There's a feeling in the pit of my stomach that says I have to see through the stuff I'm doing now: I have to continue teaching these amazing, bright, wonderful students. I have topay off all of my bills, save up cash and feel capable of taking care of myself. Most of all, I have to feel like I'm entitled to the amazing things that are out there in the world, and the only way to feel that way is to "repent" for all the mistakes I've made along the way. I have to leave my folks' house better than ever and let them know I'm here for them when they need me, but that I've stopped catering to their needs. I have to fulfill as much of my promise to be a writer as possible. I have to be satisfied with my academic education in the States before I travel elsewhere - if only so that I can truly compare and contrast the experiences. I must do all this If I don't, I'll always feel like a fraction of a person.

It's taken me a long time to realize that my parents are never going to learn to take care of themselves if I always bail them out of tough jams. I've always figured that because I know better than them, it's my duty to take matters into my own hands when they haven't the ability to do so for themselves. I've felt guilty about making them fend for themselves. I've sabotaged my own success and happiness so that I wouldn't have the opportunity to leave them.

But there came a point when I realized that the only way to safely ween myself from my family is to become filthy rich; in this ironic and paradoxical manner, their dependence and my enabling character do not lead to immediate stress. My guilt would cease because of the knowledge that I'm providing them with everything they could possibly want. Their vices - retail therapy gone very bad, gambling, narcissism, pride - would be fed by my money. Everything would be handled without disappearng.

And that's exactly the problem. I've been trying so hard to accomodate my mom and dad that I didn't want to listen to anyone who told me I had to take care of myself. My identity was wrapped up in their care, and my contemporary/feminist/rebellious personality would not let me admit this fact. All of the problems that had shaped my personality up until that point had been caused directly or indirectly by issues inflicted on me by my parents, and I was afraid of making a new personality for myself. Sure, my problems drove me crazy, but they were mine. They were understandable excuses for my many neuroses. They were comfortable and worn-in like a favorite T-shirt. They were easy.

This afternoon, between applying to jobs, emailing professors, cleaning up my room, "window shopping" online, and running errands, I thought of the amazing things I wanted to do in the Philippines: all of the traveling, the bonding, the teaching, the learning. I realized that it was no use in leaving the country as the person I am. I've got too many unresolved issues to take care of and I wouldn't be able to fully lose myself in every wonderful experience. There would always be a part of me that is ashamed for leaving so abruptly, for not making good on all of the opportunities I've had, for allowing someone other than Me to decide my fate.

I love my family and I always will, with every fiber of my being and every iota of my soul. I will do everything I can to make them happy, but there's a mirrored line which draws the distinction between what I will do for them and what I won't. I love my family and I always will, with every fiber of my being and every iota of my soul - that's why I can't let their needs overshadow my own anymore. I don't ever want to resent them.

Things I Haven't Quite Gotten Around to Acquiring

2008-02-05T10:40:00.000-05:00

NOTE: I keep on crossing stuff off this list.

1) iPod - I've had two: the first one got its wiring all fucked up after my dog decided to pee on it while it was charging; the second one was lost. I seriously have NO CLUE where it went. Last I remember, it was in my car. Next thing I know, it's gone.

Rob's promised to buy me one. First, it was supposed to be my birthday present, then my bon voyage present, then our anniversary present, then my Christmas present. Now it's my Valentine's Day present. I guess I'll cross it off the list when I get it...

2) My Own Place - Lately, I've been having crazy issues with my folks. It's gotten to the point that they just sound plain asinine (LOL, inside joke) about their drama. And don't get me wrong: I'm usually the first person to enable their bad habits. I'll console them and awkwardly remain silent after they've blatantly dismissed my advice. I'll chalk up their actions to ignorance, and therefore find the strength to fix their problems. I'll give them the money to pay their bills, miss class to wipe their tears, put my life on hold to chauffeur them around.

But no more.

Recently I found out that the mortgage on our house hasn't been paid in three months - even though I've been giving money for it. Somewhere between handing my folks the cash and/or check, and needing to actually pay the mortgage, said money disappeared. Repeatedly. The reasons I've been given are cryptic at best and straight-up lies at worst.

That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the drama in my house, and seriously, I've had it. What's the use of sticking around to help out when no one wants to listen to my advice? I need to find a job and bounce.

3) ~~Contemporary Ghetto/Slang Vernaculary~~ - I swear I used to have this. I swear. You can ask my friends from back in the day. Ask my brother. My ghetto twang was straight hood. My vocabulary reflected my genuine immersion in minority culture.

And then somewhere along the line, I stopped hanging out on the regular with people who parroted the slang back to me, and I lost the familiar street cadence and contemporary vocabulary. My quick wit at street words were lost due to a lack of use. I stopped using the N word - a bomb I used to drop all the time, and that I wish to never drop again.

Recently, I've started hanging out with Dallas, Ariane & Yvonne (DAY) all the time and I've realized how much I miss that fast-talking, crazy ebonics side of me. I think I'll look for her. She's fun.

4) ~~Full and Utter Appreciation for My BFFs~~ - Those of you who have kept up with my blog know that I don't usually have stellar words to use for my close friends. Maybe it's a defense mechanism or simply because I'm a bitch, but I find fault in DAY ALL THE TIME.

If I went through all the reasons behind this, this entry would be the size of War & Peace, so I'll just say this: I am sooooooo very fortunate to have such amazing and wonderful women as best friends. They fuck with me even after I've repeatedly shown my stupid, ignorant, hard-to-please sides, and for that I love them eternally.

5) The Love of High Heels & Other Uncomfortable Fashion Choices - You know those patent leather and/or leather five or six inch stilletto boots - usually black - that street walkers are often seen in? Yeah, that's right: "hooker boots."

Well, I'm certain that I helped usher them into the fashion lexicon. I swear. I was twelve years old and rocking them ALL THE TIME. Don't ask me why no one laughed at me or told me they were inappropriate. I was a shoe whore who rocked whatever showed off my gams best.

When it came to clothes, I was always a diva-in-training, looking fly in whatever I found on sale - even if the pants cut off my circulation or the shirt made it hard for me to breathe.

Those days are over. I'm just way too comfortable in my self to purposely make myself uncomfortable. What's the use? I know I'm fly.

6) Sufficient Academic Education - I want to learn everything. I want to be able to talk about physics, nature, writing, political systems in Iceland, drug epidemics within the nomads of the Sahara, the latest archaeological finds in Peru. Everything. This is probably why I read so much.

But there's something to be said for being in a formal setting, conversing with peers, establishing active communication with people who are the leaders in their field, practicing real-world applications of theories. Those are things that are guided and nurtured by the academic world, and I crave them. I want them. I don't think I'll ever get enough of them.

In the meantime, my rigorous exercises of internet perusal will suffice.

7) A Mature Sense of Duty* - I put an asterisk on this because I feel like I might actually have acquired this in the past couple of weeks. I don't think it's one of those things that someone automatically knows they have. I think you kind of ease into discipline and realize that you have set for yourself a code by which to live.

That's how I am.

I know now without a doubt that I have integrity and real character. I know that I'm a good person with real plans and responsibilities. I know that I want to fulfill something with my life, and that it is my duty to do so...

Hmm... Maybe I should just straight-up cross this one out?

8) The Ability to "Be With Someone Else" - Sunday morning, on the train with Dallas, Ariane and Danielle. Dallas and Danielle are sleeping. Ariane and I are talking about relationships. This is a very common thing for people to speak on, sure. But I see things in very black and white when it comes to being with a person for the long haul, and this always makes me the minority within our foursome. My way of figuring out if someone's "It" for me is as follows: Do I know that I wanna make a life with you? No? MmKBye. Done.

It sounds childish putting it this way, but I honestly believe that there is someone out there who either encompasses what I'm looking for in a mate, or who is so close to it that I can't help but fall for them. I've been with guys who are really close to my ideal, and that just furthers my idea that my romantic notions are worthwhile and accurate.

Ariane and I were talking about her inability to want to settle down with her fiance, and when the conversation turned to me I said simply, "It's no use for me to find The One right now. I'm just not ready." And that's the truth: I still have a lot of work to do on myself, and I know I can't Be With Someone if I don't know how to Be Myself first. There's no rush on this. I'm actually having a lot of fun making/acquiring my sense of self.

9) Realist-Mentality Pessimism - This is another thing that I'm grateful I haven't acquired. I'm the hopeful romantic who will ride the train for two hours to "teach" young minds without getting paid. I'm the chick who will wait for the right person before making plans to settle down. I'm the perceptive idealist who will stand in a train station at two a.m., listening to the guitar player break down song after song after song with a smile on his face then give him my last two dollars because Fuck it, he's got talent and a dream and I appreciate that.

10) ~~A Right/Quick Brain/Tongue~~ - This kind of goes with #4. I noticed lately that I had become so much of a voyeur that I wasn't able to formulate any verbal response in a timely fashion. Sure, words would get articulated into ink when I got home, but at the moment things were happening, I was so immersed in watching it all go down that I didn't get to add to it.

I used to be really quick with statements, and realized that I hurt a lot of feelings by being brash and bold. I took it upon myself to slow down my thinking process in order to disable my mean streak, and now that I have more control over myself and my actions I want to recapture the ability to speak on things in an accurate, observant, and smart way at the moment it occurs.

11) Steady Writing Gigs That Make Me Proud - I used to have them, but most of them were of the sexual variety of writing. Don't get me wrong. That's awesome and I appreciate being given sex toy after sex toy in order to write articles on them. But geez. Talk about lack of diversity?! I want to show off my multi-faceted personality and expertise through steady writing gigs.

12) A Passport Full of Stamps - As proof that I'm a well-seasoned traveler.

13) Intermediate Knowledge of Computers, Electronics, Plumbing & Cars, AKA The Traditional-Contemporary Male Skill Set - I have this burning desire to be self-sufficient. My folks instilled it in me. (Ironic since they're anything but self-sufficient, but whatever.) I want to be able to be a real Jane-of-all-trades, and that includes having expertise in areas that are traditionally designated for men and boys.

When my folks conceive of being self-sufficient, it's in a very introverted, anti-social and selfish kind of way. They would rather not have to communicate with others. They would rather be cut off from the world than have to deal with conflicting opinions.

I'm of another variety of self-sufficient: I want to be able to do everything on my own, but not by myself. I recognize the inherent value of people and cultures and differences. I want to be able to apply my knowledge, assert my intelligence and worth as a human being, and learn all I can from people while doing so.

14) ~~A Sense of Purpose~~ - Last night, on the subway platform, a rush of euphoria came over me. The past four days have been intense. I know what I'm about and what I want to achieve. I just have to make it there. This makes life good even when it's bad.

15) External Hard Drive and ~~Memory Card~~ - Because, damnit, I wanna join the rest of my generation in keeping hard copy evidence of the world that I live in via cultural landmarks of the media and photographic variety.

I'm a Living Revision

2008-02-01T20:16:00.000-05:00

That last entry was birthed from a prompt that Joe thought up in yesterday's class: "What are your dreams?" I flowed my piece out and the kids were thoroughly impressed by it. I say "kids" even though some of em are in their late teens and early twenties; they're attendees of University Heights High School in the Bronx,an alternative school where everyone - staff, teachers, students, the principal - is known by their first names. Bea (aka BKD) introduced me to this motley crew of awesome young people who spit poetry into the eyes of every adversary - a failing educational system, low economic class, physical and emotional abuse, etc. - that dares stare them down. Fo real, it's straight up The Great Debaters meets Dangerous Minds. These kids have such amazing stories and they tell them well. They're bright. They're driven. They're such good kids. Lots of them are depressed and most of them are ignorant of information that should've been taught through the public education system or their parents - but that's okay because I'm in that same boat, sometimes sad beyond recognition and failed by the systems that were supposed to set me free.

I'm supposed to get paid a hundred bucks her "session," and because the sessions are all less than five hours, it breaks down to more than twenty bucks an hour, which helps to make the two-hour commutes worthwhile. But seriously: I'd go even if I wasn't getting paid.

The sessions are classes in "power writing." We (the staff) impart words of wisdom, treat the students as equals, and generally guide their writing and their presentation of their pieces. We counsel them on life's issues, explain through anectdotes, academics and experience facts and history, and generally have a good time.

I feel like I shouldn't get paid because I'm learning just as much (if not more) than I'm teaching. Still, I'm writing Amy (the cool-as-hell-boss-lady) an email asking if/when I can start getting paid for my services. There's an after-school-special/public-service-announcement/Hallmark-card-made-for-TV-movie feel about working with this non-profit organization. Despite the shoddy reputation of the issues we (un)cover, there is an overwhelming feeling of wholesomeness which pervades the sessions. We all have good energy, and we respect one another and want to challenge each other and ourselves. We seek to better ourselves.

This is in stark contrast to the feeling I get when I hang out with lots of my peers. Their lives are steeped in "adult worries" like making money and fulfilling the status quo - so that they're not trying to better themselves. Their idea of a good time is getting fucked up, partying, and getting laid - which is cool, but gets old. What kind of life is spent without asking questions? Without striving to make your own conclusions? Without actively attempting to learn?

For the first time ever, I'm seriously considering going into teaching. All this despite the desire to make a six-figure income and my decision to move to the Philippines. But I'll speak more on all that later.

Why Dream?

2008-02-01T16:03:00.000-05:00

Unedited First Draft

My words get caught. They
stutter, sputter, like
empty faucets, my mind
slowed to a drip, drip,
Dream. Scheming to send
improv sensations down
my spine, I think of what I want -
but my mind.

My mind...

My mind does not allow me to hear my heart.

It's caught
controlled
condemned
by Fear and
I'd rather adhere
to the safety of the now
the steady symptoms of systems that have failed me,
The mediocre mundane monstronsity
that is the Maria in the mirror
in front of me: so much doubt
and insecurity - and

Shakespeare said it best:
"To sleep, perchance to dream" -
but it seems insomnia's got me and
Experience has shot me full of
stigmas and skepticism. Negativity
Screams, "Why dream?"

Why reach for the moon - or
even the stars? Why want?
Why desire? Why burn with
hot intent when Time will be
Spent - maybe Wasted? - on
this thing I don't know, I
may never know, I may not even
catch a glimpse of? Why dream?

Why think of opportunities - my
family, finally happy; financial
security; education's availability -
Why dream? Why admit that I'm lacking,
that I am not whole, that I fear being
a hole you squirt your seed into and
that any decision I make might make me
Fade? Why dream?

It seems everything bad is inevitable and
You really need a heart of gold to
Find the worth of chances taken, realities
shaken, emotions stirred - man, why dream?

Why dream?

Why dream?

What I fear is not the dream.
I dream of immortal sanity
brought about by a happy family,
the unlimited potential to
take in and embrace all that I see,
To Be, y'all. To Be. Free.
Free from drama, free from
hostility, free from doubt, free
from insecurity. For real:

My ultimate dream is for my mind to be at ease.

What I fear is admitting that the simple,
happy life is too complicated to achieve.

So why dream, when I risk not reaching my goals?
Why dream? Cuz more than anything else, I fear
not being bold.

New Beginnings

2008-01-31T17:40:00.000-05:00

We are all repetitive in nature, but there comes a time when we must question our patterns in order to maximize our potential. After all, how much better can we become if we're always doing the same things?

I'm swallowing words whole. I'm doing a hundred sit-ups a day. I'm cleaning like a maniac. I'm learning more than I've learned in a long time - even though I'm not taking any classes. And I feel so good about things. That's my day-by-day.

Still, I know that inevitably my confidence will lax and I will be full of self-skepticism - if only because I am humble by nature. When that time comes, however, it isn't my self-worth that I'll be doubting - my looks, my intellect, my wardrobe, etc. - but whether or not I'm achieving my goals in the best way possible. I've reached a point where I don't compare myself to others, I truly couldn't care less what people think of me, and my self-perception is pretty steady. Now my main focus is soaking up knowledge and experience, dwelling on ways to improve my station in life, satisfying my urge to be all that I can be. The only fear I have is leaving behind people who can't keep up.

A Conversation Between Me & Trina

2008-01-31T15:18:00.000-05:00

Trina: Yo, that stuff you posted on your blog the other day about dumpster diving got me straight thinkin about going to the dump this weekend fo real. You down?

Me: Word. I'm free after three o'clock on Saturday. Just lemme know.

Trina: (nodding) How come you ain't posted stuff about what's going on with your family, with your trip?

Me: (Sipping Starbucks) I texted a few heads the other night, just saying that mad shit's going down so expect me to be kinda m.i.a.

Trina: I dunno, ma. If I ain't run into you here, I wouldn't know a damn thing about what's really going on with you - and I thought I knew cuz I've been reading your blog and seeing you at the spot lately. I thought the whole point of keeping a blog was for full disclosure, to get shit off your chest.

(Beat.)

I guess I got it twisted.

Today's Word is "Confidence"

2008-01-28T22:28:00.000-05:00

I keep meaning to write something substantial up here, but I'm stopped by the sensation that some living is meant for the memorialization of fictionalization - and not memoir.

Instead of diving deep into the drama (which I often do), I'm gonna keep it short and sweet: a synopsis of all that I've been up to. And, along the way, I'll start naming people, since I'm kinda getting tired of using initials.

1) Getting my swerve on whenever I get the chance. It's scary how naturally this comes to me. One second, I'll be dancing on a table, the next I'll be fucking a guy in a public restroom - and none of it fazes me anymore. I find these sexcapades so passe that I don't even bother mentioning them in person. I mean, yeah, sex is great, but it's only sex. If it's really that interesting to you, you're probably not doing it enough and/or don't have much of a life.

This is probably why I shrug off all sexual advances - and I've been getting a lot of them lately. Aside from the daily barrages of boys, girls, men, and women who bask in my beauty and ask to get a taste, there's been an onslaught of dudes that happen to have remembered me in the past six months. Maybe it's cuz they caught wind about my leaving the country, or maybe Asian women are in season - but accountants, rappers, drug dealers, models, actors, DJs, MCs, doctors, financial analysts, stock brokers, students, wanna-be film makers, etc. are flooding my cell phone. And I really couldn't care less.

2) Realizing that some friends truly are family - but that doesn't mean they know me and/or we vibe 24/7. There are moments when I'll be hanging out with someone and we are undoubtedly tuned in to the same frequency of life and understanding. We can expound on each others' thoughts and assist each other in broadening our mutual horizons. We realize that we have similar passions, interests and priorities, and feel less alone in the world. We develop respect for each others' thoughts and ideas. More and more, the people with whom I have these attachments and relationships are people that I haven't known all that long. They're people that I happen upon by circumstance and intuition, and they are on similar paths as myself. I look to these people for guidance, instruction, and assistance in the difficulties of my adulthood. For these reasons, these people should rightfully be called my "best friends" - but they're not.

I call Dallas, Yvonne, and Ariane my best friends. Not because we have common interests or because they understand me the best (truth be told, there are times when I feel like we don't know each other at all), but because we have a history together and I know that when push comes to shove, they'll help bury a body at a moment's notice and the only question they'll ask is, "What story do I have to tell the authorities?"

I mentioned this to Tori today as she was helping me sort out my finances, and she said, "Seriously? That's your criteria for calling someone your best friend?"

"Sure," I said. "We love each other unconditinally, and we're there for each other no matter what."

After laughing at how redundant I sounded, Tori sucked on her teeth. "I'm willing to fork over a couple thousand dollars to help you pay your mortgage," she reminded me, "no questions asked. Your writer friends help engage your imagination and your passion - and don't have ill will towards your success, which is very hard. Your activist friends heighten your awareness and your hope - all while entertaining your monthly bouts of depression and cynicism. I can name off the top of my head people who would take a bullet for you, if it came down to that - and all you have is 'they're willing to dump a body and corroborate a story to the cops'? If that's the case, you have a lot more best friends than you realize."

Later on in the conversation, as I was crying on the phone and talking about my family's financial crisis, Tori made an observation that frightens and validates me and my feelings. "You say that you couldn't leave your family because when push comes to shove, they're there for you - and you think you need that, even if sometimes you question their worth. Maybe that's what your best friends are: your family."

3) No matter how far I stray from the path I feel I should be on, sooner or later, I always find my way. For the past few months, I haven't felt like myself. I was taking in all of my acquired life experience and academic knowledge. I was steeping in feelings and options. I was growing up and growing out of the person I used to be, and in that process, I was afraid that people wouldn't understand me or like me. I was afraid that I'd be labeled by some people as "corny" or "lame." I was embarassed and frightened that I'd no longer be the crazy, loud, show-stopping diva that people had become accustomed to.

And then, one day, I was Me.

I really couldn't care less what you think of Me.

4) I really like the structure brought to my life by working all the time, etc. I'm getting back in the grind, writing, performing, teaching, looking for another source of steady income, etc. I'm more invested now in my life than ever before. I have a sense of self that's unparalleled. I'm crazy comfortable in my skin and able to take responsibility for my life and everything it entails. Things are so clear to me now: who I am, what I want, what I need. This faith in myself is absolutely intoxicating. I wake up and feel like I have purpose. I deal with situations with ease and understanding. I write and learn and read and teach and feel a part of everything.

Even after being diagnosed for cervical cancer and coming through that alive, I didn't feel such an overwhelming sense of resolve and hope. These days, I'm filled with confidence and appreciation for everything that I have and encounter. More than that...

5) I'm done with fear. They say there's nothing to fear but fear itself. I feel like I've been afraid of everything: Rocking the boat. Not rocking the boat. Not living up to my parents' expectations. Only living up to my parents' expectations. Making too much money. Not making enough money.

I've always been extremely aware of myself and my place in the greater scheme of things. I'm not one to overdo or underdo. I've strived to strike the right balance in everything, and make a positive impact on as much as possible.

But there's a downside in keeping such a keen eye on yourself: you forget to just Be. So that's what I'm doing now: just being, and knowing that I'm inclined to fulfill wonderful and extraordinary feats. In the face of the impending storm of family drama, financial drama, etc., I feel good. Really, really good.

An Excuse to Visit Honduras

2008-01-28T22:13:00.000-05:00

Back in elementary school, there were a few girls that I called my best friends. One of them was a cute brunette by the name of Berenice. She and I clicked off the bat in sixth grade, and we were inseperable. We hung out all the time, I played match maker between Berenice and my friend Kepler (who I "dated" much later - but I'll get to that story some other time), and she was consummately there for me. I'm talking about would-kick-someone's-ass-if-they-looked-at-me-wrong there for me.

After elementary school graduation, we kind of lost touch. I started hanging out with my present-day best friends, Dallas, Yvonne, and Ariane (and Pamela and Denise back then, too), and Berenice stopped calling me.

Well, fast forward to 2008. Twelve years have past since Berenice and I have seen each other. I still talk to Dallas, Yvonne and Ariane all the time. Kepler is married for the second time and a dad to a beautiful little girl. And social networking websites are the vice du jour.

So maybe that's why, a week or so ago, bored and unable to sleep, I decided to search for Berenice on Facebook - and I found her!

She's married and teaches English in her native Honduras - and I'm gonna visit her the first chance I get. Not just because I realized how much I missed her and because she offered to put me up for however long I stay, but because- Well, I mean, look:

Even if finding her wasn't an absolute breath of fresh air which reminded me of friendship back at its most simplest state, I'd be a fool for not taking her up on her offer. Right?

I'm turning into a bona fide hippie!

2008-01-28T21:48:00.000-05:00

Change. It comes in many different variations. For some, it's putting on new underwear and brushing off last night's plaque. For others, it's shaving off hair, retiring panties, and adopting an exotic accent, a la Britney Spears.

For me, change consists of trying out different perspectives on life and how best to go about living it. I submit to you three options that I've been considering:

1) Freeganism. According to its website, the definition of a freegan is as follows :"Freegans are people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed. "

What does this really mean? Freegans are philanthropic freeloaders. They spend as little money as possible, recycle the hell out of everything, and are generally very creative in how to have a good time. (See: Dumpster Diving for an example of all three.)

Even Oprah's getting in on this, and with the country's economy the way it is, it's no wonder! I was gonna partake in a meeting at Columbia University tonight, but instead I'm dealing with phone calls from lawyers in Asia. Go figure.

2) Pescatarianism. I've officially been a Pescatarian for... um... I think, four days - and already I feel so much better. Friends have asked if it's a stepping stone to vegetarianism or veganism - and no, it's most definitely not.

About a week ago, my dad went to Burger King. I asked for a chicken sandwich, and when dear old dad came home he realized he'd forgotten to buy mom a sandwich (or, most likely, he thought he didn't have to spend money on her because she was sleeping). Any which way, I ended up giving my chicken sandwich to my mom, and dad and I split a triple whopper. I ate maybe two bites and felt completely disgusted with myself - which is strange, cuz I'm Filipino and we pretty much eat any kind of meat, even when it's deep fried in lard.

The next day, I went over to Rob's house and his cousin, Mat was watching Fast Food Nation. I watched a snippet of the part where they kill the cow - and I decided right there that I was changing my diet.

Four days later, I have crazy amounts of energy all day and night, my skin looks better, and I'm forced to recall my past culinary prowess.

YUM!

3) Couch Surfing. This is what it says on the website: "CouchSurfing seeks to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance, and facilitate cultural understanding.

"As a community we strive to do our individual and collective parts to make the world a better place, and we believe that the surfing of couches is a means to accomplish this goal. CouchSurfing isn't about the furniture- it's not just about finding free accommodations around the world- it's about participating in creating a better world. We strive to make a better world by opening our homes, our hearts, and our lives. We open our minds and welcome the knowledge that cultural exchange makes available. We create deep and meaningful connections that cross oceans, continents and cultures. CouchSurfing wants to change not only the way we travel, but how we relate to the world!"

The basic idea is it's a collective of people who hang out with strangers and get to know each other in person. Think Facebook or MySpace, only there's a good chance these strangers will give you a tour of their town/city and take you to the "real" side of the place.

I've been meaning to join this community for a while, but only now have I gotten the courage to do so. I think maybe the idea of living in southeast asia has made me realize how valuable traveling really is.

Okay, so... THAT WASN'T IT

2008-01-26T03:26:00.000-05:00

I can't really sit and type since I'm due at Nuyorican in six and a half hours and still haven't gotten any shut-eye. But after tonight, it's been confirmed: the blog isn't over yet.

So much to cover this weekend...

I'm gonna start with dating and sex.

So here's the deal, short, sweet and to the point: I still have sex with Rob, but lately he hasn't been dependable on providing orgasms and I realized that we've NEVER had an actual conversation. (Yeah, two years together and the only thing we ever talk about is our relationship. How's that for unhealthy?) Those two things combine to give me ample reason to limit our time together. So I have. And the singles scene ain't what I remember, to say the least.

I remember, three or four years ago, fucking my way uptown on a Friday night just to fuck my way back downtown by Sunday evening - all to sleep off the heady high of sexual euphoria in time for Monday's work and classes. I've come to the realization that something must've happened between then and now: I've become sexually desensitized, my memory's lying to me, or I'm shit out of luck cuz lemme tell ya, the "great fuck" has taken on the mythic proportions of the Yeti of Loch Ness Monster and I am H-O-R-N-Y.

I'm dating a few people - a woman included - and remembering that pretty faces and kicking good games don't mean that people have the skills to get me off. The woman I'm seeing, PW, is hot - but more than that, she and I can vibe with each other on so many levels. With the men, it's all about looks and personality - but not intellect. I feel like now's the time that karma's biting me in the ass. It seems to be saying, "You had a good run with so many men who loved you, nurtured your spirit and intellect, and fucked you silly - and you denied each and every one of them any real opportunity at a serious, long-term relationship. Now you get to see what the other side's like."

And sex?! I dunno. Maybe I'm out of practice with telling someone new what I like, but five years ago, screaming out, "Yeah. Right there. Don't stop doing that," was appropriate and got the job done. Does that not work anymore? Or am I fucking men who don't know how to listen/don't care to listen once they've been invited to the show? (I haven't slept with PW yet.)

Speaking of "the show," what the fuck is up with dudes that expect you to diddle your clit to get yourself off?! Honestly, I've always held the position that you should NEVER have to masturbate while fucking someone. During foreplay? Sure! But during the act itself? Nah, man. Fuck that. If I need to do all the real work, then you're just there for the privilege of watching it happen - and I don't need to risk pregnancy, STDs and wasted time in order to put on a show. Just pay me money and I'll hook up a webcam. Fo real.

This might be it

2008-01-24T11:13:00.001-05:00

I'm thinking I'm gonna take a break from blogging. Or maybe, the next time you log on, there will be half a dozen entries. No. Definitely the former. I feel like it'll be a while till I blog again. Too much going on...

I'll leave you with a snippet from last night: IF and I in Fort Greene, walking past a girl with whom I once shared a birthday celebration. I've mentioned to IF how said girl can irk the hell out of me with her idiotic statements - "There are no gay people in India," being my favorite one - and then charm me with her quick wit. Six months ago, I would've ran to her, professed my undying adoration, overwhelmed her with compliments. Last night, I gave her a head nod, and unflinchingly continued my talk about real estate and the gentrification of Brooklyn.

IF laughed at me and made a face. "What's that about?"

Without skipping a beat, I licked my lips, raised my eyebrows and shrugged. "I stay away from people who don't treat me the way I want to be treated," I said matter-of-factly.

IF laughed, no doubt remembering the book of influential phone numbers that I used to carry with me at all times. "What about networking? Power? The hustle?"

"Fuck networking. Fuck power. Fuck the hustle. It's all so fucking fake and shallow and ridiculous. I don't wanna be involved in any business, any social circle, any circumstance that obligates me to smile, wine and dine, get wined and dined, go through all that bullshit ass-kissing and unsubstantial communication."

"So no more networking, huh?"

I hesitated, flailing my arms while I scrunched my face. "Well... Maybe a little networking." I thought for a little bit while IF laughed, then motioned to cross the street, "Speaking of networking, one of my guys tells me there's a property a couple blocks away, and the owner's willing to slice off a chunk of her asking price if the bidder promises not to paint over any of the murals. I said to hell with that, who would want to keep crappy paintings on their walls..."

I had a dream last night...

2008-01-23T11:27:00.000-05:00

...where I won an award for "Most Wasted Potential."

It was a wake-up call to finish all the work I keep putting off. To take advantage of all the second chances I've been given. To rise.

Second Chances

2008-01-19T21:17:00.000-05:00

When I was in junior high, I dispensed advice like I got paid to do it. Filled with the confidence of a teenager who feels like she's lived, I totally used my brave and experienced persona to create the person that I ultimately became. This lack of permanence justified my transcient personality; I rationalized that I wasn't being fake, so much as being what I knew how to be. Like an actor that becomes fully immersed in her role, I embodied a thing that I never really knew, and the more I lived in the skin of that person, the more my transformation into her became complete and real.

At first, the two Marias were inextricably linked, even though they weren't anything alike. Then the line between them blurred and I accepted the version of myself that people knew as the person that I was. This happened many times, so that I could comfortably squeeze into whatever stereotype or character that my chameleon self wanted to personify.

Up until recently, my life has been a succession of events that reinforced the person that people already knew as Me. For all of my philosophy classes, deep thinking, and insight, I've never gotten over my fear of figuring out exactly who I am. I've always been afraid that I might not fit any of the worlds I so comfortably slip into. I worry that in discovering myself, I'll abandon the people who love me, and will thus become a bad person.

*****

The past three months have been a lesson in humility for me: thanks to the understanding of professors, I've been able to bring up my GPA; I've realized universal truths, like the fact that my folks don't know much and (due to this fact?) that I don't know as much as I let on; and I've come to the conclusion that my "tried and true" modes of living haven't exactly proven themselves worthwhile. It's been humbling to fully grasp and believe that everything I've accomplished is only the tip of the iceberg, that there's so much out there for me to explore and identify, that my journey isn't nearly as completed as I'd previously believed.

At the same time, however, it's scary to come to the conclusion that much of what I know to be best for me is actually detrimental to the great person that I can become.

*****

But something happened this weekend, and now I'm less afraid of coming to conclusions: I hung out for the first time with BKD, a twenty-one year old woman from Indiana who knows within the fiber of her being who she is and what morals and ethics are.

Excuses?

2008-01-19T07:57:00.000-05:00

People don't get it when I say that my family is the most amazing and frustrating part of my life. No one else supports and loves me the way that they do - unconditionally, constantly, patiently, and completely. As a collective, they truly do "get me."

But they're needy. That's where the frustration comes in.

Case in point: Plans. I can never keep them.

I've been conditioned to walk away from people and situations with the quickness and ease of a misguided misanthrope. My father, who taught me that it's preferable to walk away from uncomfortable-yet-promising situations, laid the foundation of this unfortuate mindset. My mother, whose lack of common sense, intelligence and physical coordination keep her way behind the curve, further fueled the unfavorable thoughts. Together, they form a tag-team of total distraction: I make plans, set goals, start working toward them, then Mom mentions that she has only four dollars left in her bank account, wants to work a double shift, and needs me to pick her up from work; Dad guilts me with talk of his own unfulfilled ambitions. This happens in different variations ad nauseum, and knowing that my parents have good intentions, I find myself relegating my ambitions to the realm of coulda-shoulda-wouldas in favor of being a "good daughter." My father, who is more liberal than his counterparts, ultimately rejoices in the idea of his daughter being safely banal; he enthuses over the events.

There have been so many plans, goals, dreams that have been deferred for my family's sake. Not just social events, but ambitions of grandeur: a desire to start a nonprofit organization, designs to fling myself fully into fiction writing, hopes of making my mark on poetry, journalism, and politics (to name a few). Though I've been lucky to start many of these ventures and end them in my own terms, I haven't had more use for them than experience for experience's sake. Goals haven't been reached, my idea of success has never been accomplished - and every time this happens I wonder what keeps me from them.

I'm hoping that in leaving my folks in New York to fend for themselves, I'll slough off the remaining proof of their negative influence, as well as the pattern of co-dependency that they reenforced. I also want to distance myself physically and emotionally from other people who unintentionally weigh me down. Only then will I know for sure if I have been the reason behind my shortcomings, or if circumstances are truly to blame.

As I step into a world that feels blindingly bright, beautiful and new, I approach each situation by asking a single question: Are you gonna hold me back, too?

Questions After a Post-Mortem

2008-01-16T13:34:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm officially and undoubtedly single, I find myself in a precarious and uncomfortable position. The past four and a half years have been consumed by relationships of the "serious" variety, and I've forgotten what it's like to not be in a serious relationship.

There are many out there who would scoff at my statement - "How about that guy you made out with at my party?" "Remember that fling you had over Spring break?" "Are you saying that sex doesn't count if it only lasted four minutes?" - but it's true. Sure, there were one-night stands, casual dates, non-sexual-but-ultimately-illuminating encounters in between the "serious relationships" - but those haven't rendered me seemingly inexperienced at being single. At this moment, I feel alien to the world of dating.

I submit to you a list of questions/situations that I find myself wondering when I'm idle. Send help immediately!

1) Men keep telling me that they haven't gotten some in a while. Is this a casual way of slipping in the fact that they want sex? Do they think it will endear me to their "cause"? Are they simply obnoxious and/or lying in an attempt get some?

2) I've gotten some strange requests for sex in the past couple of weeks: "I want you to be the last person I sleep with before I become celibate." "My girlfriend says I can have sex with one person one time with no repercussions, and I want that person to be you." "I can't stop thinking about that one time at that concert when we were going at it, and I wanna do it again." "I've been in a relationship with my girlfriend for four years and I can't emotionally commit to her - I think I have to get you out of my system before I can do it." "I've always thought you were out of my league, but I know you'll be so far ahead of me by the time you get back to New York that I need to make my move now, before you don't know who I am." "I want to lose my virginity to you." etc. Did I miss something? Is this a new trend? Are people (men in particular?) resorting to story-telling to get laid? Or is this just another strange thing that's happening to me?

3)I'm 23 years old, and if I keep with my typical age projections, I should be dating people that are within the 27 - 32 age range. If I stay away from the obviously age-retarded, does that mean that I can look forward to finding more people with emotional/financial stability?

Why Do I Torture Myself?

2008-01-15T20:41:00.001-05:00

I just spent the last twenty minutes stalking a guy online. I'll call him DD. No. That sounds like a reference to my cup size. And in case you're wondering: yes, I'm a 38DD. You can wear my bra as a hoodie. But I digress... Oh, whatever. DD it is.

So DD and I fucked a while ago. The sex wasn't that great. Scratch that. It was pretty bad. His dick was small, he came too fast, and he isn't all that to look at.

Okay. Wait. The first two are definitely right. That I remember. How could I forget?! He was just so puny and so... Remind me again what the point of promiscuity is?

Anyway, when I first met DD, a year or two before we actually had sex, he was pretty good-looking. He was the kind of good-looking that sits somewhere near the intersection of Hoodlumm Hottie and Artistic Sexy, a juncture well known to women who are rough around the edges and need a guy who thinks outside the box. His eyes were the kind of green that seem to be the doorways to an underwater cavern, full of mystery and intrigue. His hair, when braided, hinted at his street roots; when loose it fell haphazardly around him, a distinct indication that he couldn't care less about your opinion. All of that is well and good, but what got me is his attitute. He was brazen. Bold. He'd start feeling me up in public in a way that suggested he was the man - and somehow it didn't come off as needy or swarmy. His words had meaning and thought. There was a sense of purpose and duty to his air.

So yeah. I fucked him. The act itself was pretty bad/forgettable. But I'll tell you what I do remember:

That first night, in between repeatedly fucking DD - what can I say? I'm quick to give out second chances - we had meaningful conversations. Not the kind of gushy sentimental bullshit that guys feed you when they want to get laid. Not the nonsense verbal spillage of couples who talk just for the sake of talking. But actual conversations: the kind that made me think and communicate insights. The kind that opened me up to new thoughts and ideas. The kind that are so rare they don't even happen often between best friends.

After the sex was had and the weed was smoked, I said I'd drive back to my place, but he insisted that I stay. That we actually sleep together. That I maybe stick around in the morning to talk some more. And now that I think back on it, I'm surprised that I agreed; back then, I was quick to hightail it out of a scene after I'd gotten some tail.

So we slept together, and in the morning, I took a shower and he heated me an empanada for breakfast. He played hiphop on his Mac, sat on his balcony, writing, and left me lying on the bed to do the same. Deep in thought, I scribbled away and studied his walls, which were littered with remnants of his childhood, reminders of his goals, retainers of his memories. Now and again, a line from a track on his playlist would pop out and one of us would break our mutual silence to exclaim how great it was, or to start a conversation about artistry, or to get the others' attention and just smile.

Even though the details of that first night we fucked are getting hazy, I remember a lot about the feelings of the next morning. They're painted in that perennial shimmer of bliss which taints your heart every time you think of something pure. I know that we "talked" for a bit after that, and that when drama started coming up in my life (as is often the case) he didn't want to/didn't know how to deal with it. I know that I let myself become needy for a day, then decided that I was better off on my own. And I know that I'd rather I have that great memory than have started something with DD that more resembled an actual relationship; I sure as hell wasn't ready for one back then.

More than all that, I know that DD knew how to kiss, and that our lips seemed to compliment each other like interlocking pieces of the same puzzle.

******

So maybe that's why I made out with DD a few months ago, while Rob and I were on one of our ubiquitous breaks. I dunno... What I do know is this: I'm not the same person I was when I slept with DD, and he's definitely not the same person that he was. He seems less confident, more needy, definitely less physically attractive. And no, his kisses don't do for me what they used to.

Now and again, though, I still like to think back on him, relish in the sheer feel-good feeling of a particular encounter, and wonder if somewhere on his bedroom wall is hanging a short poem that I wrote while lying on his bed.

My big, fat mouth will be my undoing...

2008-01-14T21:19:00.000-05:00

...and the undoing of great sites that stream free movies.

Rob put me on a few months ago to moviesister.com, which has a bunch of free movies, shows and such for your illegal enjoyment. Now that I'm sans job and classes, I'm totally whoring it out for all its worth.

Here's the list of the movies I've watched in the last four days:

1) Atonement
2) Juno
3) National Treasure: Book of Secrets
4) My Blueberry Nights
5) The Nanny Diaries
6) Suburban Girl
7) The Bucket List
8) Charlie Wilson's War
9) A really, really bad film starring and directed by Helen Hunt... You remember Helen Hunt, right? She's that chick that was in "Mad About You" and "What Women Want." I always thought that she should do a film with LeeLee Sobieski, where they play mother and daughter, or where : Sobieski plays the younger version of Hunt, cuz maybe it's me, but they look alike.

<--Leelee Sobieski

Helen Hunt-->

Okay. Maybe the eyes are slightly off. Slightly.

But anywho, you get the idea.

Anyway, I lied. Not about thinking that Helen Hunt and Leelee Sobieski look like older/younger versions of the same person, but about watching all of those movies in a span of four days. It was more like seven or eight days. And I dunno if I watched them, so much as I focally inhaled them. Or had them playing in the background as I read books, cleaned my house, and scoured the web for job openings.

Incidentally, I recognized the "office set" of "Suburban Girl" to be the Penguin office, where I did a brief stint as a promotions/marketing intern last semester. Watching that movie made me remember how great/horrible an industry publishing is. It also made me uber critical of my grammar.

Then...

2008-01-11T17:16:00.000-05:00

Somewhere along the line, I was fully-formed, an abstract of everything and nothing all rolled into one. His role was defined as "part of the whole." Between us, we were complete and empty, and I decided I wanted more.

*****

When I was in junior high, my friends and I were taken with the concept of "The Craft." We felt like that could be us: four misfit teenage girls with exceptional magical powers. Of course, our powers were over the realm of sexuality, popularity and academics - but we imagined that our moods and words dictated the currents of air and consciousness. We could make things happen.

These days, global warming is in full effect, my friends and I are scattered petals in the wind, and I am feeling lost. I know what plagues me and I know what people say I should do to fix my problems - but I'm stuck. I don't want to take the advice of others. I don't want it to be that easy. My decision (no matter how hard it is) will be my own. I don't want to be able to blame anyone for the outcome of my life.

*****

For the longest time, I was stuck in a vacuum of adolescence. I didn't bother to learn how to take pride in my work, and I sure as hell didn't learn how to commit to anything. I was a flake and a fraud, always too afraid to define myself as something.

But what's done is done, and that past isn't far enough in the past to fully digest and expound upon. All I know is, when I look back on it all, I blame (along with myself) my parents. There was so much that they taught me unwittingly, to my detriment. There was so much that they didn't teach me, to my detriment. There were so many gaps in the road that I wish they'd have paved over before I came along. And there was always a reason that I had to "come to their rescue."

But no one is perfect and parenting doesn't come with an instruction manual. My family is a burden and a gift, and loving them is something I do out of obligation and responsibility.

Now I'm older and have taken full responsibility for the crappiness and loveliness of all that I am and all that I have - but I feel like I can't fully become the person I'm supposed to be - and again, I blame my parents.

I wish I could just go, balls out to the wind, writing to my heart's content, finding a living as a teacher or at a desk job. I'd find a place that's comfortable, make enough money to get by, and keep my nose to the grind. Instead, Right now, I can't write or speak eloquently. My usual insightful banter is lost and my tongue is dry. I am too afraid to get it all back. I'm afraid because the person that I am is not conducive to being the person that I have to be. The person that I am is hard and brash, sharp along the edges, creative and undisciplined. The person that I have to be is disciplined and orderly, a type-A personality that memorizes long passages of scientific lecture.

Nelly Furtado Speaks To Me...

2008-01-06T04:14:00.001-05:00

... and so do Jim Morrison and Incubus. Talk about eclectic!

"All Good Things (Come To An End)"
By: Nelly Furtado

Honestly what will become of me
don't like reality
It's way too clear to me
But really life is dandy
We are what we don't see
Missed everything daydreaming

Flames to dust
Lovers to friends
Why do all good things come to an end
Flames to dust
Lovers to friends
Why do all good things come to an end
come to an end come to an
Why do all good things come to end?
come to an end come to an
Why do all good things come to an end?

Traveling I only stop at exits
Wondering if I'll stay
Young and restless
Living this way I stress less
I want to pull away when the dream dies
The pain sets it and I don't cry
I only feel gravity and I wonder why

Flames to dust
Lovers to friends
Why do all good things come to an end
Flames to dust
Lovers to friends
Why do all good things come to an end
come to an end come to an
Why do all good things come to end?
come to an end come to an
Why do all good things come to an end?

Well the dogs were whistling a new tune
Barking at the new moon
Hoping it would come soon so that they could
Dogs were whistling a new tune
Barking at the new moon
Hoping it would come soon so that they could
Die die die die die

Flames to dust
Lovers to friends
Why do all good things come to an end
Flames to dust
Lovers to friends
Why do all good things come to an end
come to an end come to an
Why do all good things come to end?
come to an end come to an
Why do all good things come to an end?

Well the dogs were barking at a new moon
Whistling a new tune
Hoping it would come soon
And the sun was wondering if it should stay away for a day 'til the feeling went away
And the sky was falling on the clouds were dropping and
the rain forgot how to bring salvation
the dogs were barking at the new moon
Whistling a new tune
Hoping it would come soon so that they could die.

"You Give Me Something"
By: Jim Morrison

You want to stay with me in the morning
You only hold me when I sleep,
I was meant to tread the water
But Now I've gotten in too deep,
For every piece of me that wants you
Another piece backs away.

'Cause you give me something
That makes me scared, alright,
This could be nothing
But I'm willing to give it a try,
Please give me something
'Cause someday I might know my heart.

You already waited up for hours
Just to spend a little time alone with me,
And I can say I've never bought you flowers
I can't work out what they mean,
I never thought that I'd love someone,
That was someone else's dream.

'Cause you give me something
That makes me scared, alright,
This could be nothing
But I'm willing to give it a try,
Please give me something,
'Cause someday I might call you from my heart,
But it might be a second too late,
And the words I could never say
Gonna come out anyway.

'Cause you give me something
That makes me scared, alright,
This could be nothing
But I'm willing to give it a try,
Please give me something,
'Cause you give me something
That makes me scared, alright,
This could be nothing
But I'm willing to give it a try,
Please give me something
'Cause someday I might know my heart.
Know my heart, know my heart, know my heart

"Love Hurts"
By: Incubus

Tonight we drink to youth
And holding fast the truth
Don't want to lose what I had as a boy
My heart still has a beat
But love is now a feat
As common as a cold day in L.A.

Sometimes when I'm alone I wonder
Is there a spell that I am under
Keeping me from seeing the real thing

Love hurts
But sometimes it's a good hurt
And it feels like I'm alive
Love sings
When it transcends the bad things
Have a heart and try me
'cause without love I won't survive

I'm fettered and abused
Stand naked and accused
Should I surface, this one-man submarine?
I only want the truth!
So tonight we drink to youth!
I'll never lose what I had as a boy

Sometimes when I'm alone I wonder
Is there a spell that I am under
Keeping me from seeing the real thing?

Love hurts
But sometimes it's a good hurt
And it feels like I'm alive
Love sings
When it transcends the bad things
Have a heart and try me
'cause without love I won't survive
Without love I won't survive

Love hurts
But sometimes it's a good hurt
And it feels like I'm alive
Love sings
When it transcends the bad things
Have a heart and try me
'cause without love I won't survive

Love hurts, ohhh-oh ohh
Love hurts
Without love I won't survive
Love hurts la-la-la-la-la-la oh
Love hurts
Without love I won't survive

Writer's Realization #2

2008-01-06T03:10:00.000-05:00

Don't be afraid of writing just as inspiration hits you. You might look like an eccentric fool because you stopped dead in your tracks to scribble down a meaningful phrase or idea, but your actions are fulfilling a vital purpose. You need to get the gist of your inspiration down on paper before the idea loses its poignancy. Once that burst of illumination is gone, it can never be reclaimed.

Phone Sex, Good Porn, and the Joys (and Pains) of Masturbating

2008-01-05T18:19:00.000-05:00

It's 6:20 on a Saturday night, and I'm horny. No. Scratch that. I'm not horny, but I feel like I should be horny. It's Saturday night, for Chrissakes, I'm twenty-three years old, and there's an ample supply of cock and pussy for me to loot and plunder out in the cold streets of New York City - not to mention a boyfriend who takes pleasure in servicing me sexually. Why the fuck aren't I horny?!

*Ten minutes later...*

Okay, so now it's 6:30. I'm lying in bed, thinking of something to do, and coming up on empty, and- oh my God, this is just so fucking sad. The cats outside my window are getting their jollies, and I can't even service myself satisfyingly. I've gotta admit, my attempt at masturbation was sad and pathetic, I'm too broke to party it up, and I don't feel right about flirting with attractive and available strangers in dark and sexy places. Two years ago - hell, six months ago! - I might have done it just to make sure that I've still got it, but I know I've still got it and the thrill of the chase just ain't that thrilling to me anymore. People in bars who'll probably sleep with me are just not exciting... And, oh yeah, I've jumped on the monogamy train. Le sigh.

I remember, when I was a full-time phone sex operator (nice topic-change, huh?), how I initially loved the job. I'd become disillusioned with my regular nine-to-five, and needed something new. Don't believe the hype: all of us ladies of the line aren't exactly nymphs who need to stroke our clits to the sound of a horny man's moan - although some of my former co-workers sadly needed the job as a means of self-affirmation.

The office was full of porn, the people were cool, and the job was easy. I'd probably still be servicing auditory sexual needs - if it weren't for the fact that it started to seem like a job. Just like the sex I simulated, after catering to the callers' every whim night after night, the script needed to be flipped. I couldn't just be the cheating milf/barely legal teen/tranny dominatrix/sister/daughter/mother/wrestler/cum receptacle/etc. any more without it seeming like a chore. Even after I tried expanding my imagination - lesbian underwater gangbangs, crossdressing cops who fuck callers up the ass, fetishizing ear lobes, etc. - it stopped being fun (mostly because those calls weren't as lucrative). I'd challenge myself to be a better operator, keep men on the phone for longer periods of time, tease my intellect by keeping a steady stream of high-brow callers. But it just got old.

I'll say this for the job: Working the line was an easy way to make good cash. Plus, I felt in control of every situation - even the calls that wanted submissive girls. (What lowly secretary can say the same?) If a caller got abusive with me and I didn't feel like taking it, I'd say something I knew they didn't want to hear, make them hang up with me in the first minute of the call so it wouldn't fuck with my call-length average. Sometimes, I'd spice things up and say that I had a roommate, just so that I'd have to switch between voices. In one night, I'd be dozens of girls/women - young, old, black, white, asian, hispanic, virginal, slutty, you name it. Like Girl 6, I put my acting talents to good use. Despite all this, and to the credit of the regular nine-to-five, working the line lost its new car smell just as quickly as any job/internship I've ever had. Even though it was fun to describe myself as these women,

(which I'm sure most of the callers wouldn't have minded) I have to admit, I was definitely not beyond stroking my ego by way of calls - and that was done by talking about my actual looks and my actual life. Granted, I was talking about the sexier parts of my life - the party days/nights, one-night stands, sexcapades, et al. - but still. It was downright empowering to know that I could make legions of men weak at the knees just by talking about myself. Talking about myself was the most advantageous and addictive form of narcissism I can imagine, money-earning and mood-altering all at the same time, but I wasn't dependent on it, so it was easily dismissed. Even that got boring after a short period of time.

So now, here I am, after quitting my gig as a phone sex operator. From time to time, I still take to the lines just to make some extra moolah, but for the most part I find my hustle in other areas (mental note: sex, check; onto drugs and rock n roll). Looking back, I guess I the reason I was so good at the job was because I understand what it means to want someone in a certain way - any way.

Domination is sexy because sometimes you want to be wanted/want someone in an all-encompassing, controlling kind of way. Fetishes are sexy because only in that one thing can you and your partner admire a telling attribute of each others' body/soul. Kink requires that everyone involved have a certain lack of inhibitions and free spirit, as well as trust in the partner(s) involved. And sometimes, all you want is someone who listens to you, who doesn't judge, who gets whatever it is that you get so well about the shapeliness of a calve or the curves around arched feet. Sometimes you just want to get your mind off of your cheating spouse, or your wife's death, or your impending divorce from your high school sweetheart. Sometimes, you just want to be someone else for a while.

I get it. Completely. Sex can be freeing, and it can provide escape and pleasure.

***

Unfortunately, getting it doesn't mean getting off. I'm still in bed, still wishing I was horny. If only I had some kind of unlived fantasy or impassioned secret that I needed to fulfill sexually - but that just ain't the case. All of my sexual fantasies have been carried out, ad nauseum.

Lucky me, eh?

There was once a time when I would get off on watching free porn. Maybe it was because it was forbidden, or because I could vicariously live out fantasies through the characters at a moment's notice, or maybe I just needed auditory and/or visual stimuli to help get me to cum - but whatever the reason I liked watching people have sex. It was a way to familiarize myself with bodies and at the same time compare my own body with those of other women. Above all, it was safe. I didn't have to worry about STD's, pregnancy, or lack of orgasm. (There ain't nothing worse than fucking someone when you're desperate to cum, and leaving, unsatisfied.) My favorite porns were ones where the women really seemed to be enjoying themselves. It's like these porn stars were so caught up in fucking that there was nothing else in the world they'd rather be doing.

Q: Porn star, would you like an all-expense trip to Brazil?
A: (moaning) Noooo-ooooo! (Annoyed that her partner's stopped eating her out.) No, don't stop! Don't stop! Keep on going! Yeeessssss... Just like that.

Q: Porn star, how about I pay all of your current and subsequent bills? All you have to do is stop fucking this guy.
A: (Looks incredulously.) Stop fucking him? God, no! He's-Oh my God! Yes! Yes! Right there!

Q: Porn star, I'll buy you a-
A: Shut the fuck up and put your dick in my mouth already.

You get the idea.

The idea that the act of sex itself could turn someone on turned me on. Watching it happen was like being privy to someone's deepest, darkest secret. After all, sexual intercourse is put in such a negative light most of the time, that it was reassuring and liberating to see people really enjoying it - and not just the "dirtiness" of it, either. In the porns I watched, there was no derogatory talk about being "cum receptacles" or "dirty little sluts" or "filthy man-whores." It was, in lots of ways, "good, clean fun." People were enjoying each others' bodies for what they were, imperfections and all. Pleasure was given and expounded upon. Pride was taken in having the ability to get another person off. In my idealistic mind, fucking on tape closely resembled most peoples' idea of making love. Minus the actual love.

Unfortunately, there's none of that available on freeporn.com, and I don't know where else to find free porn online. Even if I did, I have the feeling that it wouldn't get me off right now.

***

There's a vibrator that I got during my stint as a sex toy reviewer, that I love love love. (I'll write up a review asap and post it!) Her name's Iris and she looks like this:

Laugh all you want about the roses, but lemme tell ya: Iris is worth it. Truly.

Up until a few days ago, Iris was helping me scratch my itch whenever Rob wasn't home - then something happened. At first, I enjoyed her for forty-five minutes, then I tried one and a half hour sessions of lovin' with Iris, and each time I increased the amount of time I spent with her, I found that I came A LOT MORE. The only side effect was that my hands were left shaking like I was a crackhead fiending for my next fix - but I could deal with that. The kind of orgasms I was having with this machine were ah-aH-AH-mazing. The tension would build and build and build until I couldn't take it anymore, and then after I came it would happen all over again until I came again, and every orgasm was more earth-shattering than the last.

But then, about three days ago, Rob went home to Brooklyn, I took out Iris, and I got an orgasm so intense that it gave me cramps. I'm talking about, tied-up-in-knots, can't-breathe-because-it-hurts-so-bad, curled up in a ball, I fucking hate being a woman C-R-A-M-P-S. My eyes were literally tearing up as I screamed in agony.

And ever since then I haven't been able to feel sexy... Maybe that's why I conveniently forgot about this episode whilst searching for my lost libido. Just the idea of an orgasm makes my stomach start to twitch and ache like I ate some bad sushi then got punched in the gut. Le double sigh.

What Dreams May Come

2008-01-04T16:51:00.000-05:00

I woke up from an uncharact- eristically long-ass sleep remembering a dream that's so telling of who I am, what I'm thinking, and what I want from life...

In the beginning of the dream, I'm Suzanne Somers, a la "Step by Step." (Don't ask.) In case you didn't know, "Step by Step" was a show back in the 90s that was basically a modern remake of "The Brady Bunch." Two people who've been married before get married to each other, and each of them have three kids. Suzanne Somers' character's name is Carol in the show, and her husband's name is Frank.

So in the dream I'm Carol, and I'm in this park with my mom (not really my mom, Carol's mom - which is strange since I don't remember the character of Carol's mom ever making an appearance on the show, but whatever). Only it's not a park that we're in. There are acres of grass and trees and all of that all around us - but it's not public property. It's the property that Frank and I own (again strange because Carol and Frank were working-class in the show and didn't own any land).

Anyway, there's a rope that looks a lot like clothesline, and it's shaped in an upside-down V. My mom and I are walking around my property while she's telling me that I'll regain my confidence to be a trapeze artist? tight-rope walker? I dunno - something that deals with heights (although, strangely, on the show Carol didn't have any occupation that dealt with heights), when I see this rope. My mom's lost in her uplifting schpiel about never giving up, and I notice that the rope, which somehow makes its way hundreds of feet in the air on an angle before coming back down on an angle, has a small plank of wood attached to it. The small plank of wood is hovering over the ground, parallel to the grass. I step on the wood, and much to my surprise, I'm lifted ten feet off the ground, and I'm hanging onto the rope for assistance with my balance. A step above the plank is another wooden plank, and I step onto it. That plank moves up ten feet. My mom, who's been jabbering on about how she has faith in my ability to regain my confidence, realizes that I'm in the air, on this strange contraption that Frank's made for me (he wanted to help me get over my newly-found phobia of heights), and she begrudgingly gets on a plank herself, so that she's two lengths behind me. I keep on going up until I can see all of our property, which looks something like this:

Then I get too afraid to move. I'm petrified and teetering on the wooden plank. My mom is sitting on her plank, calmly telling me to relax. She tells me to step back onto the previous plank, since I'm obviously uncomfortable where I am. "I can't!" I say, stubbornly. "I want to see where this rope will take me! I want to get to the end of this rope!"

"You'll get there when you're ready to get there," she says to me, soothingly. "Just step back onto the plank that you're comfortable on."

"But if I take a step back, that means that I'm admitting I'm not as close to my goal as I want to be."

"So what? Better you take a step back and get comfortable enough to keep going, than you fall and hurt yourself."

So I take a step back, and the plank lowers to a more decent elevation. I keep on going until I feel comfortable, and I end up on the same plank as my mom - which upsets me. I don't want to end up like her.

"Don't worry," she says when she sees how upset I am. "You want to get to the other end of this rope, and one day you'll get there. I'm never going anywhere. This is the end of my rope."

The episode ends, and the camera zooms out, and I'm no longer Carol. I'm someone watching Step By Step on TV and thinking, Oh. So that's how great-grandma did it... I never get a glimpse of what I look like, but I know that I'm attractive, female and Asian. Also, I know that I'm either in my late teens or early twenties. Lastly, I know instinctively (as is the case in most dreams) that the great-grandma my dream-character is referring to is Me. Not just that, but my spirit is watching over this girl because the livelihood of our entire extended clan is in her hands.

Let me explain first what I mean by "clan." Filipinos breed so much that Wutang should shame themselves into changing their name to "Fam." Both sets of my grandparents had more than eight children, and most of my aunts and uncles who have remained in the Philippines have had at least four kids apiece. Many of my first cousins have had three, four, sometimes five or six kids.

And that's not all, folks. Unlike the prototypical "American" household, family to the typical Filipino isn't something that's merely tolerated during holidays and birthdays. At least, that's not the way the Rubios roll. Like the members of the Mafia, we're up in each others' business for better or for worse. Sure, there's drama and internal strife now and again, but through it all we've got each others' backs. Fuck with one of us, and a truck full of our kinfolk will show up on your doorstep with gats. No joke.

So, in my dream, I'm my granddaughter. Let's call me M.

M's on the first floor of a mansion, in a room, watching reruns on TV with her cousins, siblings, and other family members. She has at least six siblings, and a couple of them are adopted. They all have the look of youths who have the world at their fingertips and are humble enough to not abuse their power. They are carefree and do not take their easy lifestyle light-heartedly. They are street smart but ultimately have enough intelligence to think for themselves and seek higher education. They are well-provided for financially and emotionally, and are compassionate towards others. They are (for the most part) idealistic liberals, but are not susceptible to middle-class guilt. They know better.

The Rubio clan is having a get-together at our mansion, and hundreds of people are coming in through the doors. The people are from all walks of life: they look of different races, different classes, etc. - but they have two things in common. 1) They all look very satisfied with their lives. 2) They are all related to M somehow. (We really do breed like rabbits!)

There's a reporter from a major TV network who wants to speak to someone in the clan, and M does an interview. She's telling the reporter about me, about my idealistic notion to make the world a better place through my family. She says that I went to the Philippines in my early twenties with a void in my life. There had always been something I was looking for, a key to my aspirations. I found that key in my family in the Philippines. They were the people that I could trust with anything, and I decided that for my betterment and the advancing of my entire clan - cousins twice-removed, great-grand-nieces, everyone - I would use my knowledge, wisdom, experience and connections to make things happen. While I started churning out books and other forms of media, I encouraged my family to find their interests and niches, M says to the reporter. It was in this way that businesses were started, ideas patented and sold, an empire begun. And that's how we started to build capital.

Little by little, different sectors were taken over by members of the Rubio clan, as well as other minorities. Fashion, medicine, law, publicity, oil, politics, art, computers, engineering, automobiles, publishing, movies, television - the diverse interests of family members were encouraged and supported so that everyone really did well. But unlike the paradigm of WASP-y wealthy families in America, we were able to expand our hold exponentially due to our sheer numbers and the close-knit culture from which we sprang. Along the way, we assisted like-minded individuals (most of them disadvantaged because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc.) around the world.

M talked about how she and her siblings frequent local shopping areas and malls despite the billions of dollars her family had accumulated. Once a year, everyone donated their ill-fitting clothes to the homeless, despite who the garment's designer might be. Gap and Old Navy clothes mixed with Roberto Cavalli and Gucci; none was more ubiquitous than the other, so that a healthy mix was brought to the less-fortunate (and the elitism attached to the garments was diminished). Millions of dollars were spent on after-school programs for inner-city youth, and job-training and placement centers in the areas in most need.

When the special on M and her family was finally aired, the reporter talked about how a new kind of wealth had been ushered in by my family. We were humanitarian and void of elitism. Some of us attended public school, while some attended private school. Some of us were CEOs while others of us ran blue-collar establishments and others yet had working-class day-jobs. Still, we were all a family, strong, loving, supportive, and loyal. We were showing America what it's like to stand together, make money, and still be caring, decent people. We were a model for the way people should be.

Needless to say, I woke up from my dream with a smile on my face. Disney's right: a dream is a wish your heart makes. But it's also a gamble.

My heart's all in.

This can't be worse than the first.

2008-01-02T00:21:00.000-05:00

According to my laptop clock, it's twenty-three minutes into the second day of 2008; yesterday, at this same time, I was throwing a temper tantrum and crying hysterically on my bedroom floor while my parents were screaming at each other and my boyfriend lay helplessly in bed, eyes wide and mouth agape as I incessantly blamed him for the ruining of my new year's eve. If I'd have had some alcohol, or shrooms or acid, I could say that it wasn't my fault that I was being a monster. The truth is, it's been more than forty days since my last period, I've taken four different pregnancy tests that have all come out negative, and I'm worried, confused and anxious. If I were still in therapy, my therapist might say my anxiety is an extension of my subconscious need to fix shit that I keep putting off. I guess I don't need therapy anymore; I can figure out and respond to my problem all on my own. Yay for me.

It's now one o'clock in the afternoon, and I'm starving. My refrigerator's stocked with name brand holiday leftovers: Pepperidge Farm stuffing, Country Crock buttery mashed potatoes, etc. Even the stuff that's been prepared from scratch has the mouthfeel of food that's void of soul. My brother, the cook, is in the living room, having just woken up. His brattiness has tempered since he's gotten home, and he offers me a look of sympathy as I walk in through the front door. "You're home from work already?" he says, sweetly and sincerely. I nod, blinking to convey that I'm holding back tears. Behind my mask of MAC foundation and heavy eye make-up, I'm too numb to cry, but I don't seem to have a voice. I tip-toe to my bedroom, careful to avoid my mom, who is washing dishes in the kitchen, and I lay in bed. Letting my mom see me would mean having to answer her questions - why I'm home early, if everything is okay, if I'm hungry - and I'd have to lie to keep her happy. Goodness trumps honesty in this house, and happiness is a thin veil that we all wear: artificial sweetener meant to keep one another out of our doldrum ho-hum collective reality. We are all great albatrosses, the weight of our family-love wringing one another's necks.

Our satellite service got cut off a week ago. For days, my father - who sleeps on the expensive-looking black leather sofa in our living room - would tell us about a mythical pop-up that appeared in the middle of the sixty-inch flat screen of our TV and ask him during the wee morning hours to pay the satellite bill. Dad humorously told us that he first hoped he was imagining it, delusional from back-to-back 24-hour work days at the hospital. Then the pop-ups happened more frequently, till finally our satellite service was cut off and we started shuffling through our dvds and padding towards the computers for sitcom and dramedy distractions. My folks were planning on cutting off the entertainment once Abie and I were done; now they have one less task to take up their sleeping time.

I got another bill from LabCorp today. I owe them thousands of dollars, and every time I get one of these bills I shudder and hope they'll stop existing if I throw them away. I don't have enough money to pay even a minimum payment on them, and every time I'm faced with that knowledge, I think back on two years ago, when I was flush with cash and able to buy my folks a retirement house. Two years later, I can't even afford to buy furniture for the place, and I'm depending on the kindness of my friends to get through my financial and emotional hang-ups. I'm laying in bed, propped up on a Calvin Klein pillow, surrounded by clothes that no longer fit me, bills I can't afford to pay, and an ominous feeling that there are unfinished issues that I must conclude as soon as possible. I feel like I have a good sense of "what is what" when it comes to life, and more specifically, my life, and I want to get started with the living, doing, fulfilling aspects of existing. I want to make money, advance income brackets, fulfill my personal potential and feel like that's what I'm doing. I know instinctively that going through the motions is a necessary and vital part of making things happen, but I know through experience that it's the most boring and slow part of the process. It's the part that I wish were over right now.

But first, I need to get another job, since this morning I was fired.

Now, more than twelve hours after I left off on this post, I'm finding it hard to remember exactly how I got fired. I remember feeling out of place in the office, thinking that I don't belong in a real estate office in Richmond Hill, deciding that I'd better grin and bear it. I was yapping about how happy I was about my impending health benefits, and was confused to see my health care paperwork gathering dust on my boss's desk. I'd handed her the paperwork on my first day of work two weeks ago, and she promised to get it done so I could get proper medical care as soon as possible. Those were her words - "as soon as possible." She'd said them to seem concerned, and even at the moment they hit the air, they'd sounded strange to me, but I'd shrugged off my feelings as paranoia.

I asked sweetly about my health paperwork, and my boss gave me a look of disdain. Maybe, I thought, she was still hung over from New Year's, and she didn't feel like dealing with my sunny office disposition. So I said very plainly, "I was hoping that my health benefits would be processed by now. Or at least already handed off to whoever's supposed to process them. But I noticed that they're still on your desk. Is there any reason for that?"

She blinked unapologetically, as if she were resigned to believe that whatever monstrosity leapt next from her lips was my own doing. "You're doing a great job here, but I don't think you'll be with us long enough to use your health benefits."

I thought she was kidding. I'd never been fired before, and I couldn't fathom the thought - especially from a place that was quite obviously below me. I furrowed my brow. "Excuse me?"

"You said at your interview that you're leaving the country in April."

"Yeah, that's right. And I was assured that I would still get all of the benefits from being a full-time employee - and that it was okay with everyone if the position was only temporary."

"I'll be honest with you," she said, her features stern and solid. "We've found someone who can stay past April, but we're going to let you keep the position till the beginning of February."

"That's very kind of you," I said, embarrassment creeping into my face. I walked away from her, aware that I wasn't going to get health benefits, that the job paid too little and was good only because it was easy and close to home. I thought of the job opportunities that awaited beyond this one, the fact that I've never been without a job for more than three weeks, my impressive four-page resume.

And this is what I was reduced to? Settling for a meagerly paying wage at a mediocre real estate firm whose employees couldn't even manage their quarterly reports without my expertise?

Rage consumed me. Anger engulfed me. Pride - possibly arrogance and hubris, too - blinded me. I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I must have done something wrong. Why else would they renig on their promise to keep me till my departure? Only ten minutes had passed since my boss had told me the news, and I couldn't stand it any longer. Maybe the Me that I was six months ago would've been too afraid to hear a negative reaction: that I'm really a slothful and disobedient worker, that I'm wasteful and inefficient, that I'm a slow learner - but I now have more faith in my abilities, and I can now stand false criticism.

I let the rage swell within me and continued to stare at my computer screen. There was no way that I would let my boss be proved right: I had to show that I'm worth keeping.

But then a thought formed in my head, as I stared at the quarterly reports that very few people in the office know how to do: I'm better than this. I can get elsewhere what this job gives me. Why do I have to show my worth to these people who are obviously beneath me?

So I walked to my boss's cubicle, knocked on the door, and looked my boss dead in the eye. "I'll be honest with you," I said, smiling sweetly, "ever since you told me that I'll be fired, I've found it hard to concentrate. I just want to know why you're letting me go, when you initially told me that you're fine with me leaving in April."

She nodded gravely, as if she were about to impart the secret of life to me. This was privileged information that she was imparting, and I had to be aware of that. I nodded. She mentioned the owner of the company, talked about him at great length in praising words, and then veered into a segment about his sixteen-year old niece, who's looking for a job. I nodded my head understandingly, all the while a million blood-soaked scenarios playing out in my head. Violence runs quick in my veins when I feel I've been wronged, and as much as I want to be a pacifist hippie, the truth of the matter is, it feels right to me to inflict bodily harm on people who do me wrong.

The rest is a blur. My boss and I talked for an hour about how she got into real estate. I talked about my resume, my work experience, my present educational situation. She told me about her daughter, who's my age and doesn't know what she wants out of life. I told her that it's common for people in my generation to have lofty aspirations and no real direction; she seemed comforted. She thanked me for all of the hard work that I'd exhibited in my two weeks, said that I'd taught the trainees and administrative assistants more than she'd bargained in my short time in the office, and said that she was sure great things are in my future. I thanked her for her kind words and went back to my desk. Crappy pay is still pay and my family needs help getting by - but I couldn't sit at that desk, working like a drone to make barely enough to pay our monthly utilities. I went out for my lunch break and didn't come back.

I've lined up promotions gigs for the next couple of weeks, and I'm looking for another desk job. I'm simultaneously reading three books - one by Al Franken, one by James Frey, and one by Neil Gaiman. There is a huge rat living in my house that I'm trying to kill. One of my best friends is going to be deployed to the Middle East in a couple of months. I haven't talked to another one of my best friends in more than a year because of my emotional hang-ups. My grades at Brooklyn College have to be settled once and for all, so that I feel like I'm leaving on good terms with myself. I think I might have carpal tunnel syndrome. And on New Year's Eve, as the minutes of 2007 ticked off and the new year rapidly approached, Rob's cousin was proposing to his girlfriend of thirteen years, Rob was sleeping in my bed in Queens after a night made sleepless by his first ear piercing, my parents were having a gigantic fight, and I was frantically searching for a live stream of Times Square on the internet. Traditions were broken: my mom wasn't her annual jolly, jubilant self, chasing away evil spirits with pom poms, bells, and tambourines; the Times Square ball wasn't on the television screen, counting down the seconds as I made a wish for the new year; I wasn't full of the idealistic and naive hope which annually fills me with good cheer.

For the first time ever, crappiness flowed uninterrupted from one chapter to another, and I was powerless to edit the events as they unravelled. I cried, I bitched, I moaned. And even though I knew that it was pointless, I let myself build up my moment of fury and supreme irritation because, in truth, all emotions are rendered pointless and meaningful with the passing of time and the introspection of artists. In that moment when a tradition was broken, my carefully constructed view of the way things ought to be was broken a little bit more, and my song of childish innocence gave way slightly more to an orchestra of adult experience. Romance and hope became a bit more alien; cynicism and skepticism invaded a larger part of my world. And the joyous version of me who's able to discover magic in the mundane, the part of me that's responsible for imagination and wonder, morphed into something altogether too stuck in "being real." When I cried, when I bitched, when I wanted to make someone (Rob) feel my pain, it was only because I had no audience to understand my suffering, to acknowledge what I was acknowledging, to sense the passing of time and the alteration of my character into something I don't entirely know or understand.

Some people slip through many versions of themselves without ever realizing that they'd been something else. Others only acknowledge their development after twenty, thirty, forty years. I drag myself, kicking and screaming, into a heightened sense of what is capable of becoming a better reality. Aware of the grand standards I've set for myself, I am humbled, excited and mortified at the idea of reaching them. So abruptly, impatiently, unapologetically, vocations turn into stints and destinations turn into reststops. On New Year's Eve, I entered a new beginning and now as I'm typing about it, it seems far away and already I am far-removed.

On Self-Esteem, -Image, -Reflection, -Depracation, -Flagellation

2007-12-27T10:55:00.000-05:00

I've been spending a lot of time with my brother and Rob. It's not that I haven't had the option of hanging out with anyone else, or even that I particularly want to hang out with both of them all of the time. It's that I need to hang out with them. They put me in a context in which I'm eternally comfortable, and at this moment, I don't need the cajoling of new ideas, different perspectives, or catalysts of evolution. I need time to mire and steep in resolutions.

To be continued...

Silver Linings

2007-12-23T16:22:00.001-05:00

Today marks my parents' twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Looking at them at the dinner table, it's hard to believe that the happy couple feeding each other cake has had run-ins with the law, adulterous affairs, bastard children, physical confrontations, emotional hang-ups, etc.

But here they are, twenty-five years later, after promising "till death do us part." There have been so many doubts in between day one and today, but looking at them, it's very clear that this is the life they want. I don't know if it was ever possible that they be better people.

I've put on my rose-colored glasses...

2007-12-23T01:51:00.000-05:00

... but looking at Rob still makes me blue. Is it possible that he was always blue, and I just temporarily saw him in the hue that I expected to see? Or are my glasses broken, and I'm looking at him from behind a crack in the pigment?

On Solid Ice

2007-12-22T20:17:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, IF woke me up at 8 a.m. with a phone call.

"Yeah?" I said, groggy and worried that there was an emergency. "What's up?"

"You sleeping?"

"Uh-yeah," I said, a bit incredulous.

"I thought you were awake."

I blinked a little bit, and squinted at the clock. "Why did you think I was awake?"

"Cuz you posted a blog at five in the morning."

I couldn't help but laugh. "What are you doing reading my blog at five in the morning?!"

"I can't sleep," he said, wistfully. "I got things on my mind."

So we talked for a little bit about the things on IF's mind: his girlfriend's Christmas present, his lack of a job, his need to "grow up." Honestly, at that hour, after having had only two hours of sleep, he did all the talking. I barely stayed awake.

Even though I was due in Chinatown for an 11:15 brunch, and I still hadn't showered, I decided to sleep for a couple of minutes - and woke up at 10:30. DC had called me while I was asleep. So had Rob. I woke up with a jolt, put on whatever was on the floor, brushed my teeth, tied my hair back, and ran out of the house. When I got to the train platform, I called Rob to see if he'd waken up on time for his final; thankfully, he had. I told him to call me when his exam was over. The next time the train was above ground, I called DC and talked about her "chocolate wonder boyfriend."

The brunch was almost depressing. A bunch of the past and present staff writers for the Kingsman had gathered with the paper's two professorial advisors. The former editors talked about their present journalistic ventures, and I just listened and ate my food. Talking with everyone reaffirmed my idea that I had been on track to something real and definite. If I'd have kept on writing for different publications and doing literary internships, I could've definitely landed a job in publishing or journalism; maybe there's still a chance, if I decide to fall back on my experiences - but I'm doubtful that'll come to pass.

Even though I'm pretty certain where my future lies, I like to see what could've been. It's always bittersweet to see the remants of a future that never was: like seeing a former lover, it's useless and natural to imagine what-if scenarios, even if you were the one who decided to walk away.

So LA and AS and SH talked about the ups and downs of journalism and looking for a job in the field, and Profs. M & M offered guidance and support. I ate my beef chow mein and drank my tea earnestly. For most of our 10+ party, there wasn't much to talk about but office gossip, i.e., who'd slept with whom, who had cursed out a professor, etc. It was amusing, but not substantial. I was thankful that the food was cheap.

The main reason I showed up was to see AS. AS is one of these genuinely good, talented, supportive, self-depracating people who doesn't realize just how wonderful and beautiful and amazing they are. She's moved to PA with her boyfriend, so I don't see her as often as I'd like, and every time I say I'll call her (there have only been two times), I end up sexing it up till I'm too tired to move, and don't make it to the phone.

So brunch went well and I caught up with AS. Then I called AJ and wandered the city. I walked from Chinatown to 23rd St and 8th Ave, and on each block at least five guys tried to holla at me. Now, I gotta say, I was dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, my black leather boots, and my black leather jacket. There mighta been a bunch of booty in my jeans, but not a bit of cleavage, and no joke, my make-up was done straight-up haphazardly that morning and the beginning of a pimple was apparent above my upper lip - so I didn't see what the big deal was. At first I thought maybe it was a fluke; all girls have their days when men everywhere can't seem to get enough of them. But even after I made my way out of Chinatown, guys were still ogling me. At that point, just for fun, I started keeping score. I stopped at twenty-six. Twenty-mother-fucking-six. Now, don't get me wrong, cuz I think I'm fly, but ain't nothing special about me that twenty-six grown-ass men gotta holla at me. I hadn't even reached SoHo yet.

AJ and I talked up a storm, Rob still hadn't called me back, and it was damn near 4 in the afternon. I decided to high-tail it back to Queens, take a shower, write papers for a certain Italian-Jew professor, and sleep. So that's what I did.

Rob and I hung out with his fam for a minute this morning. Then we went to Park Slope to grab a quick breakfast, and then we wandered for a bit. He got lost driving me to Prospect Park, and we laughed till he almost got into a car accident. If there was one thing I could change about him, it might be his lack of driving skills. Dude just doesn't pay attention to the road unless he's driving my dad's SUV.

I met up with JJP, JA and LO to go ice skating at Prospect Park. I hadn't gone ice skating in yeeeeaarrss, and even then my version of it included more ice-time for my ass than my feet. I'd met JA a couple times before at school; along with JJP (who's good friends with me) she'd been one of the founding mothers of a feminist club on campus that I used to be involved with, and she's cool peoples. She had brought her boyfriend, LO, with whom she's been a serious item since the moment they started dating. It's a year or two later, and they already have a house together.

From the moment I saw LO, I knew he looked familiar. The five of us (Rob stayed for a bit) went to McDonald's, and when LO and I started talking, immediately I knew why he looked so familiar. Of course he went to Brooklyn Tech. That facebook group is true. You can't escape Tech people.

LO and I used to run in the same social circles. He even dated a homegirl of mine for two years. So of couse we talked about classmates and whatever happened to them. It felt good to have a way of "closing the circle." Sure, JJP and JA could gab and they wouldn't leave me out of things, but I was sort of afraid that I'd feel like a fourth wheel. I'd been in high school when they started the feminist group, and sometimes I just can't wrap my mind around having a good time when I'm trying to include myself in conversations that don't really concern me. Also, truth be told, I've never been fully comfortable being myself around most school people. Most of the time, I project a side of me that I feel they want to see. Most of them (with the exception of, like, three people) have never seen the ebonics-talking, crazily cursing, loud-ass chick that my close friends are privy to. Today, I let that all shine through, and it felt so awesome to be in my own skin again.

Rob went home to help his family out with Christmas decorations, LO pretty much did pirouettes around the rink, and the three of us girls slid alongside the wall of the rink without busting our asses. Even though I didn't know exactly how to do it, I fell preternaturally into the swing of things, and like most things, I have a hunch I'll only get better with time.

Writer's Realization #1

2007-12-22T05:12:00.000-05:00

Ya know that feeling you get sometimes, while you're writing a piece, that it's unbelievably amazing? Well, it's most likely not the unbelievably amazing piece that you think it is. Not yet, anyway. Finish it, take a break from it, then edit the hell out of it. Even if it's unbelievably amazing in its first draft, it's not as unbelievably amazing as it'll be after it's edited and revised.

I'm Sooooooo Boring

2007-12-22T04:20:00.000-05:00

I feel like I'm getting fatter, but yesterday, a friend corrected me by calling me "thick." "There's no way anyone can call you fat," she said, rolling her eyes. "Maybe you've put on a little weight, but you look more like an hourglass than a tub o' lard."

The truth is, I am getting pudgier. My ass has grown so much that none of my jeans fit right, and my breasts have gotten so large that none of my bras (which are 36 DD)fit at all. My waistline's expanded, too. The thing is, my friend's right. I'm by no means "fat." In this obese and image-conscious society, my proportions are "average" to "healthy." I walk down the street, and men talk to me. I smile and I get anything I want. I have the nagging suspicion that I'm not hard on myself because of social standards or lack of attention. I think I'm just bored out of my mind.

A couple of days ago, I started working out again. I biked four and a half miles on the stationary bike (twenty-minute intermediate level workout), and instead of listening to music I just thought about random shit. For twenty minutes, I fantasized about how my house would look after I renovated it: adding to the front and back of the house, tearing down the garage and making a two-car two-story garage in its place, stripping the basement and making it over, putting in new windows, etc. Then, yesterday, when I exercised on the elliptical for half an hour, I imagined the trips I'd go on: backpacking and couchsurfing in Europe, taking a camel safari in the middle east, island hopping in Asia, driving an RV cross-country with my BFFs, etc. That's what gets me through my workouts: thinking about the future. And, really, that's what gets me through the day.

I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing more I can do with my life than what I'm doing at the moment. Anything more that happens is simply an extension of the motivated, responsible, artistic, eccentric person that I am now. And though I look forward to improving my station in life and experiencing more awesome adventures, none of it excites me. Everything's become more of the same.

This feeling isn't cause for concern. It's just my mind's way of making the impossible possible. If I'd have known the full depth of the risks or repercussions or uncertainty in any of my past undertakings, I'm pretty sure I would've been too afraid or too humbled to take on the venture. I have to believe that everything is small potatoes in order to accomplish anything. And while my present is zapped of excitement, I'm fairly certain that when all's said and done, I'll be thrilled to have accomplished "impossible" goals.

Sexy Time

2007-12-20T23:56:00.000-05:00

My current thought, as I lay in a satisfied heap on the bed and gather myself for a night on the town: Say what you want about "making love," but when the act of sex is physically and emotionally fulfilling, fucking is a laughable memory.

The What

2007-12-19T14:01:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been having a hard time blogging. All the words seem void of poetry and all of my insights seem cliche. Even my grammar and syntax are off, and that's not like me. I don't know why this is happening, but at the moment I'm not concerned with "whys"; I'm more concerned with "whats." If I'm the tree, "why" might be the root, but "what" is the trunk. "Why" might be the start of me, but "what" determines what kind of tree I am. I already know that I exist; now I have to worry about my substance.

My throat's killing me today. I couldn't fall asleep till four in the morning. My brother came home last night. I've officially decided to keep on looking for work even though I've already landed a job. Rob and I are doing well as a couple. The fictional and academic writing are going well. The paperwork for my health insurance should be processed in a couple of weeks. Mom and Dad are dealing with everything maturely and responsibly. My friends are awesome, quirky, beautiful, supportive, talented and intelligent people. I'm over the bulk of my "issues." I aced two finals and handed in a bunch of papers; the semester is going to end on a high note. In truth, my life overall has become pretty boring.

The other night, when I was on the phone with one of my closest and most awesome friends, AJ, we gabbed about her marriage engagement, her cold feet, and her issues of trust. It's not simply that she doesn't trust her fiance to be the man she needs him to be; it's self-trust that's more of an issue. She's so introspective that she knows all too well her self-damaging behavior; whenever she makes a do-or-die decision, she can't tell if she's subconsciously hurting herself or if she's already gotten over that tendency and is making a truly good choice.

Usually, my personality fluctuates from one extreme variation of myself to another, but lately I'm a well-rounded amalgamation of all of my personalities. It's unsettling and takes a little getting used to. So AJ was talking about her relationship with her fiance, and I was finding a million parallels to the problems I used to have with Rob - but I couldn't find anything useful to say. Instead, I was remembering part of a conversation that I'd had with a good friend, JS.

Earlier that day, I'd been telling JS about how Rob seems to have morphed into an amazing and really, really good guy, and she'd laughed. "Maybe he's always been a good guy and you've put on your rose-colored glasses, so now you see it," she'd said. Her words made my skin hot because I knew that she understood exactly what I was feeling. It wasn't necessarily that JS had gone through the same situation; it's that we had found copies of the maps of our lives, and we'd learned to read the signals. Verbal communication is the way we describe the terrain, and since our paths are eerily similar, she was able to offer insights about my way.

Talking to AJ was the same: a story similar to my own was unravelling before me. Instead of trading amazing insights and revelations, however, my brain felt too overwhelmed to compute. I mumbled some vague words of undestanding and acknowledgment, but I knew I was expected to give advice. AJ's problem with her fiance was one I'd had with Rob, and although I'd already completed that leg of my journey, I couldn't verbalize my method. This is what I knew: Like me, AJ's a writer and a very passionate person. Unfortunatley, her fiance doesn't seem to have any passion in his life, and she's mulling over whether or not that's a deal-breaker.

When it came time for me to voice an opinion, I found myslf remembering the words of one of our best friends, DC (she'll ALWAYS be DC, even if she gets married and remarried, ad nauseum). A year ago, when I was going through the "lack of passion problem" with Rob, I'd called DC (my only best friend that's a married mother), and in between talking her oldest child out of banging on pots and pans and nursing her youngest, she gave it to me straight and succinctly:

Everyone has a picture in their minds of what they want their partner to be, and more often than not the person you're with doesn't have all of those traits. But maybe it's not important that your partner have all those traits. Maybe what's important is that he have all the traits that can make you happy for the long haul, and that you fulfill the requirements of a "soulmate" through other people.

When I first heard the advice, it immediately rang as true. Rob will never quite understand the feeling I get when I write something and instinctively KNOW that it's awesome and life-changing, but AJ, AP, SR and JS know what I mean. Rob can't really wax philosophical with me for hours on end, but KA, IS, RM, and KB can engage both spheres of my brain that way. Et al. As much as I stress these parts of my personality, I remain an intact and ever-fluctuating person even when they're not present. It's that vague, unnameable thing that's constantly shape-shifting and evolving which needs to be loved, respected, nurtured, and understood by a partner. Its very ambiguous nature makes it difficult for one person to be its match. But somehow, Rob knows how to be everything that that vague, unnameable thing needs in a partner, and that's more than I can say for anyone else.

So maybe DC's right, and the important thing isn't that Rob satisfy all of my qualifications in a "soulmate"; it's that my life fulfills all of my qualifications for a "soulmate." The important things in a relationship are that my partner knows how to love me the way I need to be loved; that he understands me the way that I need to be understood; and that I feel the way about him that he does for me. Whether or not all of those qualifications are enough, or if Rob and I fulfill them are subject to alteration and interpretation with time and accumulated experiences and knowledge, but for the people we are at this moment, we're the perfect couple.

So that's what I ended up telling AJ - not that Rob and I make the perfect couple, but that those are my words of wisdom. They were handed to me from a trusted source of love, experience and respect, and they've served me well. Opening up to the idea that I can have everything without having it all in one person freed me to see everything that Rob does offer, instead of keeping me focused on the things he doesn't. And little by little, that's how I came to grips with the idea that I don't have to be afraid of trusting him, or anyone, or relationships in general. As simple and cliche as it sounds, he is not the be-all and end-all of what I'm looking for. He does not personify everything that I need to be happy. He has the qualifications to be with the person that I know that I am at the moment, but my ever-evolving ways keep our future a mystery. If Rob does have what it takes to make me happy in the long-haul, it's as understandable as the other option, and I can live with that.

AJ seemed satisfied with my answer, then she laughed and asked how I was doing. "Rob and I are doing good," I said. "I told him yesterday that I needed him to come home early so we could clean up the house for Abie's return. He said he'd be home around seven, and he was. But then he said he was tired and asked if we could relax for a little bit, so we got in bed with ice cream and junk food and watched our favorite TV shows on the internet. Then he said that he wanted to take a nap and that I should wake him up later. When I tried to wake him up, he said it didn't count because I'd been watching TV next to him, so he didn't have a deep sleep. He ended up sleeping for fourteen hours straight. I don't mind because he had a final the next morning, and today he ended up cleaning everything himself while I studied for my final."

Then I caught myself laughing at how much I sounded like a '50s woman with "simple problems." "The only real problem I have is money," I added. "But when I think about things, I have it pretty good. Arguing with my loving boyfriend about a problem that he fixes himself is the kind of problem that I want. If I had to choose a problem, that's the one I'd choose all the way."

***

Years ago, I came up with the idea that we all choose our problems - whether or not it's consciously. We stick to patterns that are harmful but comfortable, people who hurt us but are familiar, addictions which are dangerous but also routine. We are molded by the problems that we face, and become the people we have to be in order to face them. And maybe it's because we're women, or because we're human, or because we're us, but we need problems to get by.

We are untrusting of situations that are "too smooth." We feel uneasy when things have been quiet for too long. We have become too accustomed to being "problem solvers" and feel inept and idle when there are no problems to solve. So whenever life seems too simple, we come up with questions we already have the answers to, insecurities to hang over our heads, doubts that we instinctively know are useless. That's how we feel like ourselves. We're like donuts; the holes are useless and might even take away some of our substance, but without them we feel awkward.

Luckily, there are others like us who know what we mean, have gone through what we've gone through, or feel themselves headed down a path we've already been. Our lives overlap and interlock, and at the end of the day we are each extensions of one great story, a story that's undeniably ours.

Perhaps it's because I'm a writer, but this story soothes me simply because I know that it exists, and that it's getting told in different places, at different times, to different people, and that all the good I could ever do is getting done because I'm doing my part to contribute to the story. Maybe I feel this way because I have a sense of self that includes a network of close friends. Or maybe it's beause I have on my rose-colored glasses. But none of that matters. The "why" isn't as important as the "what."

Top 10 Reasons Why I Shouldn't Go Through with "The Plan"

2007-12-19T00:57:00.000-05:00

a.k.a. WHY I SUDDENLY HAVE COLD FEET ABOUT MY PLANS TO MOVE

1) My vajayjay might as well be on vacay. Not for nothin, but I'm susceptible to the opinions of my kin folk, and I don't want them thinkin I'm a slut. Besides, 1) I'm weary of being an American notch on some Flip guy's belt, and 2) It's nearly impossible to be the one makin notches out of men when I'm the foreigner.

2) I'll miss my friends.

3) How do I know that moving to the Philippines isn't just another way of running away from happiness/responsibility? Again?

4) Rob.

5) A part of me really does wanna earn her Creativing Writing and Philosophy dual degree from Brooklyn College asap.

6) Family. And by "family," I mean "close friends."

7) My cousins in TN.

8) I'll miss out on bachelorette parties, weddings, the births of my friends' kids, tumultuous times for my loved ones in the States (that I coulda helped out).

9) Justice. (My pug.)

10) Since I won't be contributing to the family income, I'll have to borrow money from T... Thank God he's seen me naked, or I'd be too embarassed to take the loan.

What Can You Do?

2007-12-17T15:53:00.001-05:00

I'm about to leave the office after my first day of work, and my mom calls me crying. We sent a few thousand dollars to the Philippines to pay a loan, and the money's gone missing. Mom didn't wanna fork over the extra $50 for insurance, so now we're just hoping that the money turns up in the next couple of days... If not, my aunt and uncle (plus their four kids, and pregnant daughter-in-law) will lose their house. This is definitely not a game.

My mom and I spoke to my brother this morning, before I left for work. I'd heard her arguing with him and figured I'd play the good cop. After making her hang up the phone, I'd set a friendly tone.

"What's up?" I'd asked him playfully.

"I want to bring all of my books back home," he'd said, his voice terse from having argued with Mom. "I wanna bring books home then replace them with other books."

"That's a great idea," I'd said, "only you have a lot of books over there, and your Balikbayan boxes can only hold seventy pounds worth of stuff. We can't afford to give you more boxes."

His voice remained rigid and tight. "Then take out other stuff."

Never mind that the "other stuff" are foods and medicines for my parents.

My brother's been pampered his whole life. When I think back on us as children, I can't help but wince. Sure, our folks provided and supported us, but if they'd have had their way, we'd have been spoiled rotten. Thank God I had the clarity of mind at the age of thirteen to start working! My brother never had that. We've never asked him to work, and he's only ever had one job in his whole life. What's worse, though, is that he's pulled stunts that have cost literally thousands of dollars. Like the time he stole Mom's credit card and charged more than three thousand dollars worth of toys and video games and miscalleneous crap on it. Dozens of boxes kept on funneling through our door that day. I'll never forget it.

Most folks would have probably scared his ass straight with a beating and then sent back the merch; my mom cried uncontrollably and my dad consoled her by saying that he would help pay off the bill.

Since then, my brother's never learned how to control his spending - and every time he buys something, my folks foot the bill.

Now I'm leaving for work, and I have to laugh. Money's tighter than it's ever been, my brother (who's worn blinders his whole life) will finally be forced to realize that we're not as well-to-do as he imagines, and the pay at my new job is very-close-to-shitty. Still, I look on the bright side of things: I have health benefits, work's literally five minutes away from home, and the work itself is the usual clerical crap, which equals boring. Usually boring would bother me, but in this case, no one's cared to notice that I finished the day's work before noon, so I skipped out on lunch, spent the whole day blogging, and got to leave early. Sweet.

My First Child

2007-12-17T13:31:00.000-05:00

He's almost six feet tall, weighs well over two hundred pounds, and is built like a linebacker. There are piercings in his ears and dye in his hair. Most of his wardrobe is red or black. When he opens his mouth, there's no way of saying beforehand if he'll talk about Neil Gaiman or the injustice of America. He's eighteen years old, but I don't care if he's thirty - I'll still call him "Baby." He's my little brother.

Abie comes home tomorrow night. Before talking to him, I was excited to see him. I kept on thinking about our partnership in the Philippines, We're gonna run that joint. But then I called him and he gave me an attitude, and I realized that I'm gonna have to play mommy once we make the trek overseas. It won't be the first time, but it sure as hell will be the last time.

Ever since Abie found out about our father's infidelity, he's lost a lot of respect for him. My mom's not exactly the brightest crayon in the box, so Abie doesn't look up to her either. All that's left is me. I try to teach him the best I can. I mold his thoughts and shape his personality to fit that of a successful, respectful, respectable, decent man - but I'm only five years older than him and by the time my train of thought's evolved to the next step, I have to undo everything I just finished teaching him. It's a long, involved process, and somewhere along the way he got stuck in one of my phases and I just kept on going. I guess that was bound to happen.

Now there's a different problem. My mentality is that of a forty-year old, and he's eighteen. We're going to live in the Philippines. He's at that age where he wants to figure shit out on his own and doesn't wanna hear different from anyone; I'm in the position to act like a parent. Obviously, I won't coddle him and keep him from making mistakes. But I want to be able to sleep well at night, too. So where's the right balance? How do I make sure that he's developing into a good person, and also give him the freedom to make the character-defining mistakes that everyone has to make? Is it too late to worry? Should I just have faith that I've taught him well and enabled him to survive?

Taking a step back, I see the obvious answers to the above questions, and innately I know how to handle the situation. Like all tough situations, all it takes is some time and some writing, and I know just what I should do. (Very rarely must I rely on advice from trusted sources, though I'm always happy to hear the suggestions of true friends.) But in taking the responsibility of guiding an eighteen-year old toward full maturity, I know that my parenting skills will be tested to their limit. This realization is only now washing over me: when I'm in the Philippines, I won't just have the mentality of a forty-year old; I'll be acting like one, too! I'll even have the eighteen-year old "son."

I've had several abortions, and I feel like I've brought up a kid already. I also have the feeling that my maternal desires will be quelled by the onslaught of nieces and nephews brought to my Filipino door. I wonder if all of this will stifle my urge to have children of my own; I feel like that's almost a certainty. And if it does happen, and I enjoy bringing up others' children just as much as I'd enjoy taking care of my own, I'll have satisfied another requisite of this life. I wonder how much more I'll need to do before I feel like I've really done it all.

Star light star bright, first star I see tonight...

2007-12-15T20:46:00.000-05:00

Please please please please snow so hard tonight that a foot and a half of dense white coldness will have blanketed the streets and sidewalks by dawn. I don't want to have to take my finals tomorrow...

On Misplaced Energies

2007-12-14T14:59:00.000-05:00

FORWARD: I'm not sure that this really makes sense, but it's what I was thinking at the time...

"I don't think it was jealousy," MG said to me. "I just felt like that should've been me. I should've been the one graduating from law school and making $125,000 during my first year as a lawyer."

I laughed with MG, aware that her self-depracating tone was as much mockery as it was truth. From the moment I met her in the Fall of 1998, the one thing I knew about MG was that she wanted to be a lawyer. In high school, she had joined the debate team, won trophies for her arguments, and had even earned the role of co-captain for the team. As time went by, her experiences refined her path and identity, and she became more and more involved with politics and altruism. She was convinced of her lawyerly ambitions, and every chance she got, she pulled me into whatever she was working on. Luckily for me, my path constantly merged with MG's; she shaped my political awareness and altruism more than anyone I've known.

When MG decided against the big bucks of corporate law in favor of the work-for-the-little-guy feel of nonprofit law, it was only another hint at her awesome humanitarianism. "I've been poor my whole life," she jokingly said to me. "There's no use in changing that now." And maybe that's why she was the root of my civic-mindedness. It was MG who introduced me to NYPIRG; MG who came up with the idea of OICE; MG who championed all of my endeavors, despite the craziness or abdurdity with which others labeled them. More than that, it was MG whose heartstrings were tugged by the pain of women who had stories of neglect and abuse. She was undeniably human in her sympathies, but also completely humane - a characteristic not attributed to most people. In her was the rationality behind lofty ideals, a dissonant yin and yang that made her more relatable.

Whenever I've felt like my moral compass might slip, it's MG I call to keep me steady. I think of her a lot these days, as I prepare for my life in the Philippines. Although her altruism is undoubtedly intact and she remains a steadfast supporter of women's rights, religious charity, and the next generation of do-gooders (among other worthwhile aims), she has put her legal goals on the backburner. MG's path has gone in an entirely new direction, and she is now in an amazing corporate communications graduate program'; she will no doubt be earning a good wage in the near future.

***

It's four in the morning and I can't sleep. The roads are too slippery for me to drive, and I don't feel like busting my ass on the ice. I'm editing my latest story and realizing that a lot of it is probably crap. The thing is, I'm proud of it. In it I admit jealousy and pettiness and a slew of other emotions that I am only capable of feeling until they are put into words. After they're released on the page, I can get back to being the boring and decent individual that I attempt to be; those are the people that seem normal, and these days, I crave normality.

I spent the last two hours ironing clothes. I felt like it would dull my mind and make me sleep, but the repetitive action only let my mind wander aimlessly. I daydreamed about the next five years of my life: earning a physician's assistance degree while soaking in tropical sun, bonding with my extended family, indulging my maternal side by playing house with all of my cousins' kids, expanding young minds and building their characters, learning my heritage up close and personal, finding the time and relaxation to write, being less westernized and urban, fulfilling my desire to learn my parents' native language; then, coming back to the States, earning a good wage, going back to school in order to earn the long list of degrees that I want, reestablishing myself with the literary connections that I've made, fixing up and adding to my house, setting my folks up for "early retirement" so they can live it up in the Philippines while they're still healthy enough to enjoy it, renting out rooms in my house to my friends/fellow bohemian types, buying more property, living the dream.

It all feels so tangible and within my grasp, and for the first time in my life I'm not intimidated by this fact. I want it and I'm not afraid to admit that I want it. I'm painfully aware that Murphy's Law loves me, but I don't care. I'm gonna make it.

***

When I tell people that I'm going overseas, I cite various reasons. The one fact that sticks out, though, is that I'm the first-born child of immigrants who have never gotten their heads out of the clouds. Perhaps that's why I'm as "innocent" as I am, and still have wonder in my eyes and hope in my soul - but it's also why I have to be the one to handle the family finances. Much to the detriment of our collective economic status, my parents have never understood the meaning of "living within one's means." Perhaps it was guilt, or lack of planning, or just plain ignorance, but both of my parents act as if we were the sole owners of a bottomless pit of cash.

Now that they're facing their second bankruptcy, their assets are in danger of being repossessed, and the house is in constant danger of being foreclosed, I must push my altruistic-idealistic-romantic notions of finding an occupation which speaks to my soul - writing, teaching, nonprofit work, etc. - in order to make a living doing something that earns lots of money. And even though I'm doing it for my family, a part of me wants to give it up. Like KC said a few weeks ago, "There comes a point when you have to stop blaming your family for your craziness, and become your own person."

This resolve to earn a physician's assistance degree and make money is exactly that. I feel like it's my chance to give up the craziness that is my family's neediness; ironically, I must do that by first fully giving in to it.

And maybe that's why I'm thinking so much of MG these days. To the untrained eye it might appear as though she's giving up on her lawyerly goals and her liberal ideals, but that's simply not the case. In order to fulfill her own desires, she must first indulge her pragmatic consciousness, which demands that she be financially supported before she can resume her course. I've only got this one life to learn from, but this much I've realized: people who are true to themselves don't have misplaced energies. Their lives usually follow this pattern: Step 1: let your passion dictate what you want to learn. Step 2: Give yourself the means to live comfortably. Step 3: enjoy the hell out of the experiences you want to make your life about.

Is Passion Overrated?

2007-12-13T20:12:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm being a bit more pragmatic and conservative about things, life's gotten a hell of a lot more manageable. My goals are more clear, my thought processes make more sense, and things seem more cut and dry.

This sounds all well and good (especially since I was headed in a bad direction), but I've noticed that since turning over this new leaf, I haven't felt the clear high of living purely for living's sake. I haven't felt overtly joyous. My heartrate hasn't quickened at the thought of something so lovely that it hurts. For me, conservatism is the equivalent of emotional Lithium: I have put on the backburner the intensity and passion that once drove me to write a novel in a day, debate over ideals, perform on stage. And yet I don't feel the hardness of hitting rock-bottom like I used to. It's like living in constant middleground, aware that nothing and everything matters and simultaneously remains inconsequential. I am running on auto-pilot.

But I am getting a lot of work done in an efficient manner...

Is this "stage" okay only if it's temporary? Should I not care? Why can I only get things done when I am void of passion? Am I really void of passion? Or is this my subconscious way of blocking out distractions from the task at hand?

This Just In

2007-12-12T15:43:00.001-05:00

I'm sitting at work, typing away at my blog when I should be transcribing reports, and a wave of enthusiastic realization just hit me. That fraudulent feeling I had? Just like the fear: it's gone.

An Ongoing Post: Random Quotes & How They Apply to Me

2007-12-12T15:32:00.000-05:00

"Writers can only break the rules afer they've mastered them. I'd be surprised if you didn't break the rules."

- A creative writing professor at NYU. I don't know if this was her intention, but when I'm manic and writing a million words per minute, I remember this moment and feel like God.

***

"[A]nyone who is doing something creative, they're always chasing something. And a lot of the time you're not even sure what it is you're chasing."
- A.C. Newman of The New Pornographers

My newfound calm is derived from the feeling that I no longer have to chase anything as passionately as I once did. Instead of an impending sense of doom, I now feel confident that everything I want will happen.

***

"I hate that I think so highly of you. Sometimes I'll act a certain way and do things for a long stretch of time, then realize it's because of your influence, and I can't tell if I'm me or an extension of you."

"Everyone's an extension of me and I'm an extension of everyone. That's what good artists can do: expess themselves in such a way that practically everyone relates and everyone's actions are tainted by the whim of the artist - whether directly, inversely, or indirectly. The artist's eyes are the lenses with which we see ourselves."

"That's-That's-That's... True. Fuck."

- Sydney Jo and Me, on the subway this morning (Dec. 13, 2007). Quintessential manic conversation, after a sleepless night spent writing my latest novel, planning my left-brained life, philosophizing with Rob over the merits of the TV show Journeyman.

Just Jump

2007-12-12T14:39:00.000-05:00

Until a couple of days ago, I was fully in touch with my artistic, introverted, over-analyzing faculties. I was writing highly cerebral work (see: Exercise of Futility), philosophizing with friends, and completely immersing myself in thought processes. Then it all took a backseat to action.

See, I have stories for days. I can tell you about my trips to the ER, how I got the scar on my leg, my many love affairs and exotic romances, fistfights that I've been in, strange jobs that I've had, run-ins with the law, sex stories that'll make you blush, misadventures to faraway places, etc. - my life runs the gambit on experience (except for drug addiction; I've dodged that bullet).

But none of it is the stuff of "real life." None of it "matters" in the conservative, everyman, survival kind of way. None of it will figure in (in an obvious manner) with the way I want my life to end up. And as much as I love my misadventures, I do eventually want to "end up" somewhere good. That is, I do want to "settle down" - not in a "settling for less" kind of way, but in a "cozy and comfortable, don't want to change anything" kind of way. I want the crazy, off-the-wall antics of wanderlusting vagabonds, but also the executive capitalistic swine's spoils. I want to amass so much knowledge and experience that I can back up any of my goals and actions, but I also want to be able to further my artistic exploits, financially & emotionally provide for a highly extensive network of extended family, and feel centered and complete. In short, I want "it all," and "it all" contains more than most people would desire.

I spent my entire adolescence battling my parents on the subject of money. A true die-hard liberal, I didn't buy in to the consumerism and capitalism of traditional varieties of "success." I adamantly proclaimed on more than one ocassion that I'd happily live in a cardboard box as long as I was constantly writing. Then my financial well-being became instrumental to the well-being of my family, and that all changed. It's one thing when the weight of that large chip on your shoulder prevents you from eating; it's an entirely new subject when that chip on your shoulder inhibits your ability to provide food for your loved ones. So money became my friend.

The fact that my family's well-being figures into my chosen capitalistic path eases my mind. Beyond the cute clothes and manicures, I still equate myself with rebellious, bohemian hippies, and I still want recognition for my artistic endeavors. I realize that most of the logic-minded, practical people who make up the higher-echelon of earners in the United States do not consider the arts vital, and that my insistence on joining their ranks as well as the ranks of best-selling writers is somewhat contradictory. However, I also realize that there are very few people who seriously seek out this kind of success. I am willing to personify a walking contradiction if that means simultaneously fulfilling my definition of "successful."

On my list of "Things to Do" are a smorgasbord of projects, such as creating a non profit organization that assists New York City families, and traveling the world. I want to learn at least four more languages, and I want my writing to find a large and appreciative audience. I want to financially take care of my family, and I want to save lives through medicine. I want to know that despite all the bad I've done, I'll leave an indelible and awesome positive imprint on the world.

And, so far, it's happening. I feel like phase one of my invention is complete. I've come into my own as a writer, and I've acquired many connections in the literary world. Now onto the next level. It's time to settle into my new role as Physicians Assistant, and make good money saving lives.

Hodgepodge of Carpe Diem

2007-12-10T08:04:00.000-05:00

Scene: Maria is wearing a faded green T-shirt that fits snugly over her DD's, and green and blue-striped pajama pants that are loose. The metal shelves to her left are almost empty because she's donated a majority of her clothes. The faded sun is coming into her bedroom through the window at her back, and she sits on the green bedspread of her lumpy twin-sized bed.

V.O.
It's eight o'clock in the morning, Rob's helping my mom with breakfast, and I'm stuck on my piece about our anniversary. If I wrote in the first person, it would sound more like a blog entry. If I wrote in the ominous third person, it would sound pretentious, but it would be more likely to have the feeling I want. Third person it is.

[typing "A Rush of Love"]

A lot's been happening the past week, and I feel brand new. I wonder if it's possible to short circuit the person that you were in order to become the person that you are.

I mean, obviously
I know that
change takes time,
and nothing
happens
out of the blue.
But
what if
I jumped
Out of my window
and landed
on my feet
as somebody new?

Some people are lucky; they know instinctively what they want and work towards that goal. Me? I'm of a different type: I think too much, ask too many questions, and never settle for less than I'm owed. It takes me longer to get to my aim because I first have to settle on an aim. It takes me longer to fulfill a goal because I want so much, and my mind must first wrap around every component that I'm dealing with. And not to sound obnoxious, but if I'd been born a talentless, dumb, homely hunchback giant, maybe I wouldn't be that way; maybe if I had been born with less potential, I'd just make up my mind and try my damnedest to reach a specific goal.

But that would be too easy, and I've never been simple.

This past week, instead of continuing down my usual road of insecure decision-making, I stumbled on a kernel of humility which made me address every mistake I've ever made. And after internalizing the life lessons that I didn't want to face, I was no longer afraid. The usual fears - of myself, of failure, of success, of mediocrity - no longer applied to the person that I somehow became.

So I'm attempting to hold onto this newfound sense of wonder and identity and build on it as best as I can. Along the way, there will undoubtedly be moments of insecurity, but that's human and I accept my humanity.

An Epiphany

2007-12-07T16:16:00.000-05:00

I know why I suddenly feel okay. It's the fear: it's gone.

Fugue

2007-12-07T14:35:00.000-05:00

If I could, I'd be someone else from here on out. I'd take all of my acquired knowledge, my wisdom, my experiences, and I'd spin myself into a person that doesn't have the baggage that I have now, the past, the responsibilities. I'd lay it all down and wash it all with my tears, and I'd be brand new again.

This is what I know.

2007-12-07T12:10:00.000-05:00

Part 1
I know that I'm an opportunist who will milk any situation, and that if I'm truly honest with myself, I have painted my way into a corner.

Part 2
The docs tell me that I have paranoid and sociopathic tendencies, and that I suffer from severe procrastination that stems from dissociation. They suggest that I go to therapy regularly, and probably think that because I am paying my medical bills upfront, by check, I can afford several sessions of cognitive behavior therapy per week.

There goes the money T wired to my account.

Part 3
I've never liked therapy. I was brought up to believe that people with friends and family don't need "professional help." The only reason that I even saw the therapist was---well, I don't know exactly. The thought of being in a hospital and having the doctor call on a psychiatric consult seemed exotic at the time, like I belonged in an episode of ER or House or Grey's Anatomy. A small part of me believed that I would suddenly become Katherine Heigl or Sandra Oh, just because I was staying in the hospital. And besides, I thought it would make another great story to tell my friends, another facet of my life to spin into allegory or fiction.

Part 4
This was me, on Wednesday: in a hospital bed, drowsy, popping pills. I'd slept for most of the previous night and that morning, and I'd talked with a psychiatrist. Scans and x-rays and all sorts of tests were conducted on me, and one thing was clear: I suffered from anxiety.

Part 5
Is there anyone who doesn't suffer from anxiety? Isn't anxiety just a sign that you're truly alive, that you're doing things, that you're scared of things, that you're not braindead? Isn't anxiety as natural as sweat and tears? Breathing and heartbeat? What's the big deal with "suffering from anxiety"?

Part 6
Yesterday, second visit with the psychiatrist: I told him all sorts of things. Like, how sometimes a sense of doom will come over me, and I'll be so scared that I can't move. It'll happen at the oddest times, but mostly in the dark, when I'm alone. I'll imagine a man coming out of the dark to attack me, and all of a sudden I'll be petrified and absolutely terrified. I want to scream, but there's no sound in my throat. I want to move, but my legs are stuck in place. Tears gush out of my eye sockets, uncontrollably.

But I only told him about my hysterical fear after I told him about my severe procrastination. How I can't seem to do anything on time - pay bills, do homework, call people back - because of no particular reason but that I don't want to. I think I have a phobia of success. Success, to me, equals loneliness, and I don't want to be lonely. I already feel so alone all the time, and success - monetary, status, academic - would only create a larger gulf between myself and the people I want to relate to.

The first thing I told the doc, though, was that I'm horny. It came out as a joke, a sort of ice-breaker. But after he laughed, there was a glint in his eyes that let me know what he was really thinking. He was going to write down my inappropriate joke and think about it some more, and maybe suggest to colleagues that something had happened to me when I was younger, that I'd been sexually molested or abused. So I qualified my joke, explained it away as something I always do out of nervous anxiety, and when he asked if all of my friends did the same thing, I looked away and laughed. "Friends?" I'd said, incredulously. "I texted people that I'm in the hospital, and only three people bothered to text me back. One of those people didn't seem concerned at all, but sounded purely snide about the situation."

And that's how I started talking about people and how they can't be trusted, and how I've always had so much on my mind concerning the nature of human beings. I trust blindly, because that is my way of trusting completely. I love blindly, because it's the easiest way to fall in and out of love and know that I'm giving all I have to give.

And yet, despite all of my blind actions, I know instinctively that there is a nugget of my self hidden deep within me, and that nothing negative - failure, betrayal, destitution, hunger, etc - can take it away from me. It is this nugget of self that I keep hidden and do not share, and if by some stroke of fate I found happiness in a particular situation and vowed that I would stay in that situation for as long as I live - with a lover, with a spouse, with friends, with my station in life, with my career, etc. - I would give away that nugget of self. My identity would be in whatever I vowed to encompass, and if that thing ever went away, I wouldn't know who I am.

Part 7
My memory is slipping. The doc found that out during our first session together, and he attributed that to my concussion. I nodded, but what I wanted to say was, "I couldn't tell you anything about any recent day - and that's not because I collapsed in a pharmacy parking lot and hit my head hard on the concrete. It's because I've been distant from my reality. I've been distant with myself. Nothing I do feels like it's really me doing it. Nothing I say feels like my own belief. I feel like I'm always acting, like I am not anything people believe me to be. I feel like a fraud."

Rob tells me that my memory sucks, and I laugh because I know it's true. Days can be boiled down to three or less sentences, and not out of boring circumstances. I can string together a story and write out a tale, but when it comes to my life, I don't know what it's about or what to do with it. There is no arch, no skeleton, no conclusion to be made that isn't purely existential.

Part 8
Today, I woke up, and everything felt brand new. I had sloughed off everything that had once defined me - my grades, my internships, my political activism, my writing, my friendships, etc - and decided to take along for the rest of my life journey only the things that I really need. Everything else can be picked up again in due time, but for now, I'm all right.

I don't know where my sense of resolve came from. Maybe it's the pills prescribed by the doc. Maybe all I really needed was to talk to a professional. Maybe I'm done with feeling bad about myself, about my circumstances, about my actions. Maybe I'm ready to remember every facet of every day and stake claim to everything I do and am as my own.

Part 9
This is what I know: A guy stole my parking spot on Tuesday night, and I got out of my car to curse him out. The next thing I knew, I was in a hospital, and the nurse told me I'd collapsed.

Now I'm in my own bed, after having forgotten about my life for three days, and everything makes sense. I don't know why everything suddenly makes sense. I don't even know if I truly think everything makes sense, or if it's a defense mechanism (a kind of denial) which regulates my emotions and my well-being that's making me believe that everything makes sense.

But I'll tell you what I do know: I'm okay.

It's occurred to me that I probably shouldn't say this...

2007-12-04T16:23:00.000-05:00

But when have I ever adhered to convention or regulations?

I've stayed home all day, smoking weed, drinking wine, and eating pot brownies and spaghetti laced with special mushrooms. All this after fucking most of the morning away and being visited by a good friend who shall remain nameless. Good friends will do that: come to your house after conveniently forgetting you've existed for the past three years, only to inundate you with news about all the men you used to fuck and all the yummy illicit goodies you can buy from their new dealer. But I digress... The fact is, I've been a sloth all day, listening to music, reading articles on nerve.com, and generally wasting away my day whilst feeling artistic - and when I say "artistic," what I mean is "eccentric."

I've written twenty pages for my creative writing class while under the influence, and now that the effects are slowly passing, I want to be productive. There are papers to write, orphans to teach, money to make. I'm thinking about my artistic endeavors and realizing that I could always play the "damaged beyond repair card." You know what that is, right? That's when a creative person - let's say, a writer - is good at their craft, proficient and all that, but the reason that people continue to read their work is because it's like watching a trainwreck unfold before your eyes. You peer into their psyche and feel - what? grateful? hopeful? disgusted? alive? - because you realize that you may or may relate to them, but you are definitely not so screwed up in the head as to share your general screwed-upedness with the masses.

I can feel myself slipping into manic mode. Pretty soon, no one's gonna see me/hear from me except on-stage and on-line. At least, that's the way it used to be, when I needed to digest a little life. Right now, I'm struggling not to revert to outdated ways while hanging on to my sense of self...

Fuck this. My keyboard is sticking and I need to write papers...

End.

Sex Toy Review: Adam & Eve's Tingle Tip Waterproof Vibe

2007-12-02T13:13:00.000-05:00

Perusing the packaging of Adam & Eve’s Tingle Tip Waterproof Vibe left me slightly stumped. Not only were the tapered 9 inches of purple pleasure-provider less than plump, but it purported to stimulate “you special secret spot.” Now, I love the written word almost as much as I love sex, but what’s up with the assonant ambiguity? Couldn’t they have been more clear on their claim of g-spot concentration? And why the poor grammar?

Setting aside my spelling sensitivities, I slipped the vibe into my hand and smelled it. (Strange, I know, but it’s a habit made necessary after having a roommate who liked to “borrow” even my most intimate of intimates.) I’m used to the sweat of silicone on new merch, but what I found was a slick that smelled liked someone had smoked pot and rubbed the roach around the vibe’s entire nubbed surface.

Lucky for me, the odor didn’t gross me out. Instead, it took me back to the seedy basement parties of my teenage-hood, full of fun times, phalluses, and pheromones. My imagination flush with fantastic memories, I took two AA batteries from my nightstand (which weren’t included), toweled off the toy, and went to town.

The flexibility of the vibrator was awesome for reaching a girl’s number one “hard to reach spot”, but I kept getting distracted by the protrusion which held the hang cord an inch from the base. Not only did the edge of this bump feel unexpectedly hard and sharp as it entered my hole, but the annoyance it caused distracted me from finding my g-spot.

G-spot stimulation is, after all, is the name of the game when it comes to this particular vibe. Built to concentrate quakes from its tip to that hard-to-find corner, its shape and limberness definitely assisted in locating my g-spot. Once found, however, traditional use of the vibe didn’t have the goods to finish me off. Too tiny to focus on the full area of my g-spot, the tapered tip made me feverish but was ultimately futile.

Unwilling to accept the device’s futility - and thisclose to cumming - I used the concentrated oomph of the tip on my clit while hugging the rest of the vibe around the curve of my slit. This definitely did the trick.

After having seized in self-indulgence for some time, it then dawned on me that the assonant ambiguity of the vibe’s claim might have been intentional - and that’s when I decided to try anal penetration with the vibe.

The tapering of the vibe made it easy for even an anal novice like myself to purge of her inhibitions - and man, was it worth it! The knob at the vibe’s base made it easy to control the vibe’s intensity - regardless of what angle it was being used in. And the concentration of quakes from its tip felt divine as it was lunged deeper into my backside.

I only have two criticisms for this vibe: that it wasn’t exactly “whisper quiet” (as advertised on the package), and that it has that pesky nub for a hang cord (Who needs a hang cord for their vibe, anyway?). The important thing, however, is how I felt after using it. It was as if I’d just left one of those high school parties that the vibe’s smell reminded me of: I was sexually satiated and happily high.

Lying, Unintentionally

2007-12-02T02:03:00.000-05:00

She asked me
if I got support from my family,
And without hesitation,
I nodded affirmatively.

My well-adjusted demeanor
couldn't help but hide
The feelings of worthlessness
that I kept bottled inside.

The truth is,
I was crying every night.
I was considering
giving up the fight for my life.

Despite all the good I was doing,
it just wasn't enough.
Mom and Dad call me a failure,
and I can't handle that stuff.

Back in the day, they were happy
to see me wishing on stars.
Now there's no time for fantasizing;
Family debt is off the charts.

None of my daydreaming
or imagination does any good.
And though I've risen to every challenge,
Whisper "Give up," and, believe me, I would.

When she asked about support from family,
I couldn't yet handle the truth.
That all along, I've been projecting positivity.
While reeling from trespasses against my youth.

More of the Same

2007-12-02T01:53:00.000-05:00

I'm soooo stressed right now with classes. I feel like I'm a good student who just can't catch a break. I shoulda known better than to take classes with a professor who runs hot and cold on me, but I figured I needed the classes to graduate so I'd do it. I was doing well, coming to class every week, but finances at home are really bad, so I was having a hard time keeping up with the classwork. At one point, I worked 60+ hours a week just to help out at home, and I'm sure if I was still going to my shrink, she'd say I was in need of anxiety/depression meds. I lost 14 lbs. in 2 weeks. I couldn't concentrate. I wasn't sleeping. I figured, I'd keep on going to class, explain my situation to the professor, and hand in my papers asap.

Then, a few weeks ago, he screamed on me. Like, SERIOUSLY, veins-popping-from-his neck, spit on my face, his face deep crimson, military-style, screamed on me. He made an example out of me in front of the class, for what he was capable of if a student wasn't handing in their work on-time. And something broke in me. The frustration of my situation was all I could take, and I couldn't handle the added stress caused by a professor screaming on me. Call me sensitive, but I need to be treated with a certain amount of understanding and respect - especially when my world is fall around my ears and I'm struggling.

The next week, I handed in some of my work, but he seemed dismissive of me. I didn't know what else to do. It took so much energy just to reach out to him and let him know that I'm still doing my work and that I really am trying to keep up, and his reaction was the equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders. No words of encouragement, no attempt at figuring out a Plan B. I stopped attending class.

I stopped going to my Penguin internship in order to free up some time for academics. I've been giving myself a lot more time to relax during the past couple of days. I'm becoming more focused and more driven. All I can think of doing is handing in my papers, coming to class, explaining myself to the professor, and hoping for the best. The truth is, though, in a lot of ways, I need a break from life. The past month has been hell for me. I'm talking about insomnia-and-indigestion-inducing, can't-even-afford-to-buy-a-turkey-for-Thanksgiving, my-parents-calling-me-worthless-cuz-I-can't-earn-enough-for-the-family-despite-the-fact-that-I'm-working-around-the-clock, eyes-swollen-shut-from-crying-so-much HELL.

Which is why I'm leaving. I can never fully extract myself from my family because our relationship is symbiotic, and despite all the crap they put me through, I love them. I need to make cash asap, and I need to be done with school. Only, I know what the job market's like, and I know I won't be able to earn much more than I'm currently earning after I get my English/Philosophy degree. So I've decided to go to the Philippines (where my baby brother's going to school), take up my uncle's offer to teach English in an orphanage in his district (he's a councilman), and earn a BS in physicians assistance (in a US-accredited program). It should take less than 3 years to complete, and during that time, an affluent friend of mine has agreed to loan me cash to help my family. After I earn my degree (which will cost a combined 3-year total of about $1500), I'll have good earning potential, so I can pay him back. And in the process, I get to take a break from the stress of NY living.

So that's my plan. At first, it felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders simply because I figured out a plan. Now another weight (just as heavy) has replaced it; I need to make it happen. I need to pass my classes this semester, transfer my credits to the Philippines, and continue with life. If I don't pass my classes, the whole plan goes down the toilet and I'm not sure what to do next. I just know that I was very close to going crazy. The way I was going, with my frustration at its boiling point and suicidal/homocidal thoughts circling my brain, it was only a matter of time before I did something crazy. For the time being, I've been given some hope. I have a plan and I'm doing what I have to do to get by. I just hope all goes well. I don't know how I would react to more disappointment. I'm gonna get to work. I'll talk to you soon. I hope things are going well with you.

Love,Maria

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: ??? Date: 01 Dec 2007, 08:49

Leaving the country in a few months??? Yes, we DO need to update each other!!

PIECES: Chapter 3

2007-12-01T09:59:00.000-05:00

Acceptance, Philips the orderly knew, was a funny thing. It had nothing to do with truth or falsehood, good or bad, being real or fake. Acceptance, as far as Philips the orderly was concerned, was like any other point of contention: it boiled down to a single question. The question when dealing with matters of acceptance was (like all the other questions) quick, direct and to the point: Could you look yourself in the mirror?

Philips the orderly could accept the fact that he would never grow another inch. He could accept the fact that his mother would always be the most beautiful woman he’d ever know. But gay marriage?

Gay marriage, Philips the orderly had decided as he mopped floors in the psychiatric ward, was something he just couldn’t accept. It was cra-zy. Not just crazy, but the kind of crazy that made Philips’s skin crawl, even after tending to a senile grandmother who repeatedly called him “Niggerboy” and assured him of its political correctness because she was his relation, his “sister”, of the same flesh and blood because the colors of their skin were within two shades of one another on a Maybelline cosmetic counter.

Philips knew well the feeling that grew in the pit of his stomach every time he thought of gay people. It was the same kind of feeling summoned by dark, stormy nights, a Roman Polanski movie called Rosemary’s Baby, and the wail of Philips’s mother’s newborn during certain scenes of that movie. This feeling was further perpetuated by the fact that Philips’s mother’s four-year old had a knack for appearing in blackened doorways during the dead of night, his rather misshapen features all the more skewed by the putrid green light cast by Incredible Hulk night lights that had been purchased in bulk and distributed around the house, his very presence a reminder that life has a way of making unexpected twists and turns.

Everything about the appearance of little Andy in the dark scared the bejesus out of Philips. He reckoned the thing that scared him about Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, Children of the Corn - other than the fact that he was easily scared by any kind of self expression that depicted a less than pleasant reality - was the very idea that Evil (with a capital E, of course) was born, and not made.

Philips the orderly subscribed to the idea that nothing truly evil could be born into the world. He was a well-meaning, churchgoing bachelor who never had the balls to ask a beautiful girl out on a date. He exercised because studies conducted by individuals who were paid to know more than most people know suggested that regular exercise was good for him. Likewise, Philips believed in God because, from the time he was in diapers, his mother, the reformed Lutheran turned Muslim who became a born-again Christian in her late thirties (and consequently joined a congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses only to grow tired of door-to-door soliciting and become a vegetarian Jew), had told him that God was a righteous and good entity, to whom Philips was to dutifully thrust the entirety of his trust.

During their breaks, and in between performing appropriated tasks, orderlies, janitors and (occasionally) LPNs crowded in the men’s locker room and rolled dice. Now and again, responsibilities were put on the line in lieu of money; men would scream out their chores, call out the usual, “yous gots to do it if I win”, and roll the dice enthusiastically. It was in this way that janitors were made to dispose of human waste from bedpans, and orderlies were made to scrub mildewed bathroom floors. Now and again, an LPN would be sentenced a similar fate. And, very often, Philips found himself fulfilling his duties as an orderly while balancing those of a janitor. He did this even though, the good, law-abiding citizen that he was, he never gambled.

“Is that Mama’s Boy?”, a ruddy, dark voice laughed as Philips entered the locker room.

“Sure is,” another answered.

“Hey, Mama’s Boy!”, the ruddy, dark voice called out. “Come over here, I wanna ask you something.” Several others chuckled, the general hardness of their tones mingling so that they formed one large, strange and moist voice as all eyes followed the rolling dice.

“Why you gonna call him over here for?”, a short, stocky man wearing a soiled T-shirt snickered. “Ain’t like he got no money or nothin’.”

Philips appeared at the edge of the lockers, his eyes glued to the floor.

“You got any money on you, Mama’s Boy?”, Stinky, a heavily-set, middle-aged ex-boxer, taunted.

Philips met the man’s gaze, then turned his attention back to the floor. “Nah,” he managed to say in response. “I ain’t got no money.”

“Talk good when you talk to me, boy,” Stinky growled.

The young man swept all signs of sarcasm from his face. “No, sir,” he properly enunciated, his steady voice pure and sweet as fresh honey as he looked the man in the eye. “I don’t have any money.”

The three men behind the ex-boxer chuckled as a half dozen or so other men proceeded to roll the dice again.

“Your paycheck still go straight to your bank account, Mama’s Boy?”, Stinky asked amidst the bustle of hustling going on.

“Yes, sir,” Philips said with a nod. “It does.”

“That’s the way yo’ mama like it, ain’t it?”, Stinky laughed, his gold-capped teeth gleaming at his carefully-chosen words.

Philips, unable to meet the man’s gaze any longer, looked down at the floor again. “Yes,” he mumbled in response. “That’s the way she likes it.”

“I’m sure it is,” Stinky said in a low voice, a twinkle in his eye. “Now go on and git. I hear yo’ mama’s throwin’ a barbecue tonight. I bet she wants you to pick up some cabbage for ’slaw or somethin’, right? Somethin’ like that from the store?”

Philips nodded, then walked away. The man to the left of Stinky, whose skin was the color of butter pecan ice cream, laughed as Philips walked out of the locker room. “How you know what his mama want, Stinky?”

The ex-boxer smiled knowingly. “I know a lot about his mama,” he said.

***

Working the night shift afforded Philips many privileges. He was able to see his mother and her children every day. He was also able to lounge about his mother’s house, wearing only boxers and a T-shirt, and do, basically, nothing. As far as he and his mother were concerned, his only responsibilities were to earn money for their family, to love their family, and to love God. Since Philips did a good job of maintaining these responsibilities, he never felt the need to feel badly about himself.

But others? Of course Philips felt badly about other people!

Other people, to a man like Philips the orderly, were strange creatures. The way Philips understood it, if there was one thing that he had learned throughout all of his years at the psychiatric ward, it was the difference between sanity and insanity, and desiring a mountain of attention was simply uncalled for, unnecessary, abnormal, insane. Likewise, drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes before the legal age, doing any kind of illicit drugs, performing any kind of defunct act like listening to disco - all of that categorized an individual as insane. See, it boiled down to one thing and one thing only when you dealt with Philips the orderly: a question. And, in this case, the question was, “Could it be helped?”

Stinky, the janitor with gold caps and a bad attitude, could not help but be a jackass - and Philips hated him. He hated the way Stinky patronized him, humiliated him, shamed him time and time again. He hated the way Stinky picked on . Most of all, he hated the way Stinky blackmailed him. After all, young man that Philips was, it wasn’t his fault that he had allowed his raging libido to get the most of him on that warm, Spring day two years previously. And it was certainly not his fault that Stinky had happened to walk to the back of the locker room on that same day, only to catch Philips in the act of relieving himself of his raging libido. Most of all, it was definitely not Philips’s fault that the picture from his wallet had provided the necessary visual aide to achieving climax, and that Stinky had taken it upon himself to collect that picture as evidence. . .

Naturally, if it had all been avoided, there would be no reason for blackmail, no way that Philips would have become Stinky’s lackey - but that was all beside the point.

Could any of it have been helped? Certainly not, according to Philips’s rationale. Although many passages of the Bible warned that masturbation was a sin, Philips’s mother (who was the supreme judge of all things religious) had said to the contrary. And the fact that Philips had had to relieve himself right then and there? It was all God’s doing. God - or so Philips believed - had willed it so. And who was he to question the authority of God? Wasn’t Job deprived of his wealth and affluence? His family and his farm? And didn’t he dutifully trust God? Surely, Philips could trust God in the matter of a spied masturbation!

For a moment, as Philips walked down the refrigerated vegetable aisle of the local grocery store, he compared himself to the psychiatric patients that he tended every day. Doing so felt like an intrinsic extension of his thinking, since he was, after all, submitting himself to the whims of a janitor for the purpose of having his masturbating habits kept secret. This was indeed enough reason for anyone to think him worthy of institutionalization.

As soon as these thoughts registered in his mind, they were discarded with a violent physical flourish, so that Philips looked like he was swatting at invisible killer bees. He quickened his pace until a display of freshly cut flowers caught his eye. Then a pair of familiar faces obstructed his view.

“I thought that was you!”, greeted an elderly man whose skin looked like shaved milk chocolate. “Gloria and I were just talking about your mom’s barbecue! We’re already looking forward to her famous coleslaw!”

Philips greeted the elderly couple warmly.

“Are those flowers for your mom?”, the elderly woman asked, her short, gray curls swinging behind her as she spoke. “I know she loves lilacs!”

“Yes,” Philips answered with a smile. “They’re for my mom.” An awkward pause followed, then a quick, deliberate blinking of his eyes. “How are you, Mr. Perkins? I heard your knees’ve been giving you trouble lately?”

“Oh, I’m okay, I’m okay,” the old man chuckled, a warm thought putting a smile on his face. “Our granddaughter - the doctor? She’s in town, so she’s checking up on me every chance she gets.”

“Say,” his wife said, a glimmer of mischief in her old eyes, “why don’t we ask her to come along tonight? You two can meet, maybe exchange telephone numbers. . .”

“That’s a great idea!”, her husband exclaimed. “Josephine would love to meet Malcolm!” He saw the boy cringe at the mentioning of his given name, then added, “Surely you didn’t expect us to call you by your last name, like we were your friends from around the neighborhood!”

“Yes, Malcolm Xavier Philips,” Mrs. Perkins said, mockingly, “we’ve known you since you were in diapers, know practically everything about you and your mom.” She laughed, then added, “We’ve known her since she was in diapers, too.”

Her husband joined in laughing heartily. “I just wish we could see your brothers more often.”

Philips nodded his head earnestly. “They’re getting big,” he said of his mother’s two other children. “Andy’s gonna be in kindergarten next Fall, and Julius is five months old now.”

“Five months old,” Gloria Perkins echoed with a shudder. “I can’t believe five months have passed already!”

“Neither can I,” Philips replied, wearily. Before the couple could make any other inquiries, Philips politely took his leave of them. He could almost hear the gears of Gloria Perkins’s mind turning, the rusty cogs threatening to come to a conclusion about the identity of the boys’ father. After he was out of earshot, the elderly couple’s conversation turned to all things concerning the neighborhood: the soaring real estate values, the strange family that had moved in down the street, gossip about the identity of Anita Philips’s lover. They laughed at the thought that the forty-five year old woman had been able to keep her lover’s identity a secret for so long, and then Gloria Perkins’s face became altogether thoughtful as she considered the young man whom they had seen.

“Malcolm is certainly a good boy,” she said as she inspected an avocado. “We should definitely call Josephine and ask her if she’d like to come along tonight.”

“I don’t know,” her husband said, shaking his ashen, shaved-chocolate face. “He didn’t look too pleased at the idea of meeting anyone.” He stopped abruptly, then implored aloud, “I wonder, maybe he has his own secret lover?”

The elderly woman laughed at the suggestion. “Like mother, like son, you mean?”, she asked, her gaze slanted to convey her disbelief.

“You never know.”

“Maybe,” the wife said, thoughtfully, as she put an avocado in her shopping cart. “But could you just imagine? Our Josephine with Malcolm? What a wonderful couple they would make! He’s such a good young man! Always thinking about his mother, and you know what they say about the way a man treats his mother and the way he treats his wife!”

“Certainly,” said the husband, as he recalled the proverb. “Malcolm is excellent husband material - so sturdy and reliable! And wholesome, too!” He took a moment to study a display of prunes as he stewed in his words, then said, off-handedly, “Did you know, the only picture he keeps in his wallet is one of his mother?”

PIECES: Chapter 2

2007-12-01T09:36:00.000-05:00

The room could have been beautiful. It could have been peaceful. It could have been a haven away from the bustle of day-to-day living, a minimalist’s answer to chaos. There was no reason for it not to be.

But it was a small room with hard walls and one cheap table in its center, and the suffocating silence existing within the room flung itself from one hard white wall onto another. The subtle sheen of the walls was easily ignored by those who didn’t search for it. The calm stillness that could have been interpreted as safe was instead a strange and heavy precursor of doom.

There were cracks in those gorgeously painted walls, and an uneasiness in that fog of silence - microscopic flaws that served to deprive everything of its innate beauty, so that even “innateness” did not exist in and of itself.

Of course, there was another reason that the room lacked an easygoing nature, a more obvious excuse for its uncomfortable air: the room was the culmination of years upon years of hard work on the part of scientific researchers who desired to discern the most beneficial atmosphere in which to conduct the psychiatric evaluations of juvenile offenders.

And, oh yes, a psychiatrist had killed herself the week before in a room down the hall - that was another reason for the uneasy tone. (But the room’s construction? That was the main cause of the room’s disconcerting mood. Its having been constructed at all was a sure sign of this.)

Angela Moreno sat in a white lounge chair, feeling altogether quite comfortable as she smoked a cigarette. She faced the door, which was constructed of wood because the board of elite professionals hired to figure out what material would be best to use in the construction of a door had decided that wood was the most comforting of building materials. Every now and again, as she awaited the voice of the doctor to arise from its dormancy, Angela Moreno uncrossed her arms, dangled whichever hand held the cigarette in whatever direction her limb chose, and tapped ash onto whatever surface would catch it. By the time the doctor had looked up from the handwritten story in his calm hands, there was a powdery, gray ring encircling the teenage girl.

“You’re a very good writer,” the doctor said, the corners of his lips rising slightly as he spoke.

Angela thought she recognized praise in the doctor’s voice but had been too far removed from emotion to be sure. Instead of attempting to decipher the feelings that permeated the doctor’s deep, brisk voice, she languidly stretched a thin, food-depraved arm to her left and used the back of the lounge chair as support for that feeble, elasticized appendage. She then spied an orderly as he stuck his round, dark head into the peephole of the wooden door. And all of a sudden, streams of consciousness filtered through her brain like a short grocery list of connected thoughts. She had seen the dark head in the porthole, then noticed the exceptional whiteness of the room, the giant slab of exit way that existed in the form of a door, the escape that was defined by that portal. . .

Unavoidably, it appeared: the small, solid gray pebble of a question that never hesitated to scream into the vastness of Angela’s brain after all other thoughts had vacated: What did she have to escape to?

The doctor noticed the shadow of emotion that had flitted away from his patient’s dull eyes as soon as it had appeared. He, too, had seen the orderly (a new one, called Philips, he thought) poke his head into the glass porthole of the white, wooden door.

He focused his attention back on Angela, and forced the corners of his lips to raise slightly. The gesture seemed mechanical. It was as if he were commanding the muscles of his face to find the exact tautness that could have been interpreted as amicable. His smile was simply that: a smile. A physical indication of happiness. An attempt at appropriateness. (As most actions are.)

“I liked your story, Angela,” the doctor offered, the corners of his mouth involuntarily rising as he spoke.

Angela nodded listlessly. She was still looking in the direction of the door, but thought she heard the doctor smile. After taking her time to light another cigarette, she nodded her head again.

Somehow, (she thought by watching too much television) Angela had arrived at the conclusion that the next doctor assigned her case would be evil. This doctor, however, was proving her wrong. He was a homely man in his late fifties with gray hair and a receding hairline. His looks and mannerisms were small and imprecise, and his clumsiness could not be mistaken as threatening. He had a habit of peppering pretentiousness into their dialogue, a definite indication that he had decided on his occupation because of some vague (and incorrect) notion that psychiatry would be exciting. Add to all that that, for whatever reason, he reminded Angela of her father. (And neither men, Angela had concluded, were evil.)

There was no reason for Angela to find a connection between the doctor and her father. They shared no similar interests or habits. They did not have the same manner of speech or wear the same cologne. They did not have the same body type or facial structure. Yet Angela could tell that the same qualities were definitely present in both men. And not necessarily the small eccentricities of personality that they shared in common (like leering at the snot they picked out of their noses while stuck in rush-hour traffic). Nor their familiar lack of fashion sense (as displayed by each man's tired wardrobe, circa 1997). Not even the biological make-ups of their average male human bodies (you know: breathing, pissing, farting). What they shared was that indefinable, elusive string that binds all characteristics of a person, making them whole and keeping their personalities and bodies and selves and souls intact so that they are them.

As silence continued to permeate the room, it dawned on Angela that similarities between this particular doctor and her father had been the reason that the former had been assigned her case. But that couldn’t be right. Because if the doctor’s close resemblance to Angela’s father had truly been the reason for their pairing, he would have been the first doctor assigned her case, and this was simply not true. He was the second doctor (another specialist in the field of child psychiatry, no doubt), who would get paid for listening to Angela Moreno speak.

(This, to the patient, was another sign of humanity’s incompetence: it was she who should have been paid for allowing people to listen to her speak.)

“You know,” the doctor began, his white lab coat fading into the white walls, the white chair in which he sat, the short, white carpeting that swallowed the entire floor, “this only works if you cooperate.” He paused in expectation of a response, but the patient only continued to suck on her cigarette and make perfect smoke rings which floated above her head, so he took down some notes.

Angela shifted her weight in the lounge chair. With a deep inhalation of cigarette smoke, she eyed the immaculate mahogany finish of the lounge chair’s backing and dug the short stub hanging perilously from her left hand into that beautiful crisscross pattern of natural wood that the experts had deemed necessary in order to create an atmosphere suitable for the likes of herself. She flung her legs to the left so that she faced the doctor. Her elbows rested on her knees and her back hung like that of a hoodlum. She considered the course of events that could follow from her conversation with the doctor, and decided that it would do no harm to humor him.

“So my last doc killed herself, huh?”, she laughed, her raspy voice scratching the inside of her throat. “That sucks.”

The doctor nodded his head unaffectedly. “Something like that.”

“Did you know her?”, she asked slowly.

He shook his head.

“She was nice.”

“That’s good to know,” the doctor answered, his round, pale face wrinkling as he forced himself to smile. “We like to think of ourselves as accommodating.”

Angela chuckled at the thought of a dozen men in white lab coats, standing in a circle and deciding on the best decorum of the hospital staff. “I’m sure you do.”
The doctor jotted down a few more notes in his notepad, and the patient grew impatient. She tilted her head, and as she did so her chin was raised, as were her eyebrows. The shallow pattern of her breath hinted at the constancy of her smoking, and her eyes opened up as if she were in need of someone to pick an eyelash out of it. All of this, along with her rigid spine and crossed arms, betrayed a frustrated boredom.

She swallowed in the doctor's behavior like it was cod-liver oil: The way his head bent over his notepad as he diligently scribbled, the lack of attention he lavished on the patient, the slackness of his posture even as he hoped to convey a subtle air of authority. A deep inhalation of carcinogenic smoke sunk Angela's moodiness into her practically non-existent gut, so that when she spoke the only emotion conveyed was a shadow of synthetic haughtiness.

"So?"

“So, what?”, the doctor asked as he raised his head.

“Am I getting out of here any time soon?”, Angela asked simply.

The doctor winced. “You’re a smart girl, Angela,” he said sluggishly as he watched the patient roll her eyes. “Your I.Q. is off the charts. I don’t know why you play these cat and mouse games when you know that I know what you’re capable of.”

Angela threw her head back and laughed. “ ‘When you know that I know what you’re capable of,’ ” she repeated. Her small stomach rose slightly and revealed its hardened tone and structure. “Do you realize how funny that is?”, she asked, her catlike eyes twinkling as she casually stretched her limber limbs. “It’s like that episode of Friends when all the characters go around saying, ‘He doesn’t know that I know that he knows.’ ”

The doctor smiled meekly. “Okay.”

“Don’t you watch TV?”, Angela asked, as she tucked a soft tuft of jet black hair behind her ear.

“No,” the doctor replied quietly, “I don’t.”

“A man after my own heart!”

The doctor narrowed his gaze, blinked as if lemon juice had been squirted into his eyes, and cleared his throat. “You do know that Dr.-”

“I know her name.”

“Is there a problem with saying her name out loud?”

“Sure there is,” Angela replied, smiling. “But then, if I explained what the problem with that is, I’d have to explain the problem with everything else.”

“ ‘The problem with everything else?’ ”, he repeated lifelessly.

The psychiatric patient nodded enthusiastically. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” she whispered confidentially, “but there are a lot of crazy people out there.”

The doctor raised an eyebrow at the suggestion. “I see.”

After a moment of deliberation, the doctor said, sternly, “Angela, your case is under review. If I say so, you could be put in jail for an extended period of time.”

“Yes,” Angela replied curtly, “I know.”

“And you also know that I’m talking about jail, right? As in, an actual cell?”

“I know what jail is.”

“Then why aren’t you even attempting to use that intellect of yours to come up with more than some mundane remarks about nothing at all?”

The patient shrugged. “In the end, everything we say is a mundane remark about nothing at all.” She paused to laugh, then, noticing her cigarette to have burnt out, lit another. “Go on and say it,” she dared the doctor, puffing on her cigarette as she did so.

“ ‘Go on and say it’ ?”

“Stop repeating every fucking word I say!”, Angela demanded, pounding her fists onto the overstuffed arm of a chair. “There! I’ve said it! I’ve said ‘fuck’. Now the gloves are off. Now say it!”

“Excuse me?”

“People tiptoe through life when they should be jumping in it,” Angela dully remarked as she stretched out her thin arms. “After I told you that everything we say is a mundane remark about nothing at all, you wanted to say, if only to sound conversational, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’. But you didn’t say a goddamn thing.”

Obviously amused, the doctor furrowed his eyebrows. “And how do you know what I was thinking?”, he chuckled. “Are you a psychic?”

“No,” Angela said confidently, “I’m God.”

She began to laugh, but the certainty in her voice stifled her laughter, so that all that was left was awkward silence.

The doctor, who was very much perturbed with the turn of events, broke the silence with acidic thoughts. “Do you realize that you’ve committed a murder?”, he asked.

All emotion evaporated from Angela’s face.

“Yeah,” she managed to answer through lips that were suddenly chapped, “I’ve realized that.”

“Do you realize that you’ve spent the last year in a government-run psychiatric ward?”

“Yeah,” Angela replied, feeling suddenly naked even though she wore pajamas. “That one’s kind of hard to escape.”

“And the fact that you’ve murdered someone?”, the doctor interjected, grimly. “That isn’t hard to escape?”

For the first time since Angela had been led into the white room, she was uncomfortable. Her assured countenance fell, and she closed her eyes.

“Angela,” the doctor said as soothingly as possible, “you’re a smart girl, I know that you know exactly what to say in order to get out of here.”

“You’re just wondering why I’m not saying any of it?”

The doctor nodded.

“Maybe I know that I’m not rehabilitated?”, she offered, before taking a drag from her cigarette.

The cool air being funneled into the room seemed to roar.

“Is that what you think?”

“Isn’t that what my previous doctor thought?”

The doctor sighed. “Does that matter?”, he asked, resignedly.

“Doesn’t it?”

And then their session was over before it began because Angela was no longer talkative. She had realized early on that this doctor was not like the last, but to what extent this was true, she hadn’t been certain. Now everything was clear, and she didn’t know what to make of it. Her mind was full of information and yet she knew that none of it was useful.

It was as if Angela were being suspended in thin air by a thin cord of sanity. There was nothing for her to do but let gravity do its job.

PIECES: Chapter 1

2007-12-01T09:34:00.000-05:00

It was nearly midnight, and yet the doctor was still in her office. Shadows were draped over every lampshade, every file cabinet, every inch of her cherry wood desk that had not already been covered by a patient’s file or a ceramic picture frame holding a photograph of one of her children. The strange, sterile scent of hospitals - something like petroleum jelly and overly-starched linen - hung in the air. The only sound within the space in which the doctor sat by herself was the steady tick-tick-tock of a grandfather clock, its long, lean white body an elegant silhouette against the gray of night.

The doctor took no notice of the fact that the grandfather clock’s glass face had been shattered by her own fist the previous day. She did not check her reflection in a mirror, even as she could have easily opened a powder compact and taken note of her fine, even complexion and unwrinkled skin. She did not notice the fact that every thought hiding within the rafters of her mind was directed towards keeping busy, not allowing herself any time to think.

Thinking, she knew subconsciously, was dangerous. In a single moment, she could discover something that had been carefully hidden from her attention and her carefully crafted view of the world could be changed.

A loud thud resounded in the middle of the doctor’s spine, and she was forced to stop writing. Her hunched back suddenly straightened, her spidery frame immediately shuddered. There was a problem. A big problem: she had slipped. She had thought.

“FUCK”, she screamed.

Even then! Even there! After midnight! Within her beautiful office with its pale blue walls and plush wall-to-wall carpeting! Problems, she realized with a violent shake of her head, were bound to find her no matter where she went or what time it was!

Fuck, indeed.

The doctor, her lithe frame diminutive in comparison to the grandfather clock that stood in the middle of the wall, put a shaky hand over her heart. Sporadic tugging at her short, limp hair produced oily clumps of unwashed mahogany brown strands within her fists.

Yes, she conceded with a sigh and a nod, problems would always find her. This was indeed inevitable. Problems have a way of finding every one - no matter how many soccer practices they attend (because mothers are expected to take time out of their busy, non soap opera-watching schedules to watch their ungrateful brats kick a ball in the grass); no matter how many donations they give to the church (because that slut their husband left them for donates two-hundred dollars every Sunday and one can’t very well succumb to defeat twice by the same whore); no matter how many hours they spend volunteering at homeless shelters (because they feel like shit and understand that watching others feel even shittier is a useful pastime).

The doctor was no exception to this rule. For even as she sat in her comfortable, reclining ergonomic chair with its leather backing and luxuriously soft cushion, her soon-to-be-ex-husband was on the phone with his lawyer, talking over the assumptions people could make of a man who received alimony from his ex-wife. Right at that very moment, as the doctor studied a patient’s medical charts, her thirteen-year old son was achieving orgasm as he watched lesbian porn and imagined his father’s anorexic-looking mistress stroking his minuscule cock. And right after, at the same time that the doctor’s white lab coat was happily flittering around her ankles and she filed medical charts away, her own growing (stomach and) suspicion of pregnancy was being confirmed by her own doctor, who had decided on working late to avoid his wife.

But none of that matters.

For right at 12:19 a.m., as the doctor sank into the buttery softness that was her black leather recliner, scanned the room wearily, and felt the need to pee, she spied from the corner of her eye a chart she wished she had filed away without noticing.

Yes, amidst the clutter of floor lamps and file cabinets, shards of glass that fit perfectly into a grandfather clock’s face, long white lab coats that energetically flittered along ankles as a sure sign of happiness, there was room for a stray manila file. There was always room for a stray manila file. Or a homeless kitten. Or a wandering toddler in a mini-mart.

“FUCK!”, the doctor screamed in agony, her attention undiverted. “Fuck me hard!”

Of course, no one heard the doctor’s rhetorical request. And even if someone had, it wouldn’t have mattered.

It was too late.

The doctor had already thought, and she continued to do so. Fucking, kids, her fucking kids, that bastard she used to be married to, the late nights spent waitressing to pay for that bastard’s dentistry degree, going to med school because there was nothing better to do with a Mensa I.Q., deciding it would be “interesting” to treat “kiddie psychos” - it all whizzed past her in a whirl of confusion.

As soon as her mind found a particular tiny crease in her brain (one called Angela Moreno), it stopped working. The doctor closed her eyes and diverted her attention long enough to think of the simple things, the things that used to matter - or perhaps, she conceded, the things that had never mattered before, but on which she had foolishly placed a great deal of importance.

This is what she came up with: her pantyhose was torn, her sixteen-year old daughter always answered the telephone with a bad attitude, the interest rate on her mortgage was too high, Nordstrom’s was having a sale in a week, the embryo growing within her womb would only suffer a similar fate: paying taxes, thinking, dying.

At 5:02 in the morning, with her head hurting from having thought too much, the doctor was at ease. She had run through all of her thoughts. Like a faucet whose waterline had been shut off, she inevitably had nothing else to give, nothing more to push through her vessel. Everything had been used up.

For the first time in her life, she had no questions. That damn kid was right… Everything made sense. When she said that… Nothing could bother her. The mind treats its own ailments. And she hated it.

So she hung herself.

I Belong in the Creative End

2007-12-01T09:15:00.000-05:00

Dear Penguin Group,

Thank you so much for hiring me as an intern. I have had the pleasure of working with admirable, dignified, and extremely intelligent and capable people at Penguin. Furthermore, I indeed learned a lot about the publishing industry, and even more about publicity and marketing than I'd previously known. My eight weeks with you were challenging and insightful, and I am thankful for that experience.

I now know that the business of selling books is run just like any other corporation, and that I was naive to aggrandize the nobility and artistry involved in the industry. At the end of the day, a career in publishing still boils down to pushing other peoples' writing instead of working on my own literary endeavors - and that idea is utterly depressing. I do not belong on the business side of literature.

Sincerely,
Maria Rubio

Intern for Putnam & Riverhead
Fall 2007

Things My Parents Neglected to Teach Me

2007-12-01T08:42:00.000-05:00

When I was eleven or twelve years old, going through the stages of shaping my identity, a thought occurred to me that the things I "knew" at that moment would be lost on me with time. No longer would I relate to or acknowledge the subtle nuances of adolescence once it ended. I wanted to start a diary for myself, dedicate it to the future me, and write down everything I was sure I'd forget once I reached adulthood: that 12 year olds are smarter than they seem, that parents don't always know everything, that love is the ultimate good. Revelations and epiphanies were to be concealed in this holy grail of all that is known to a teenager, and I was to keep it safe and sacred, so that by the time I had my own teens, I wouldn't have lost touch with that version of myself.

I didn't start the diary. I was too afraid and embarassed at the prospect that it might be discovered, and that I would be found out to be a sham. All of the things I claimed to know would be revealed to be intricate workings of a mind that was somehow void of thinking, and the ramblings that I'd mistaken as pseudo-intellectual and/or statements of truth would be seen for the garbage that they are. Worse, if by some stroke of luck it was discovered that my mind truly had something to offer, I was well aware that my parents would no longer be able to guide me; their limitations (financial, emotional, physical, etc.) would render them powerless to control my development in any way.

As much as I clamoured to be my own person, I grew up humble and obedient. I was a straight-A student; I knew how to adhere to the rules just enough to be praised by people in positions of power. More than that, I knew that being female and Asian meant that there was already a certain stigma of me; I was seen as quiet and submissive, easily swayed one way or the other. If I figured out what I wanted and made people believe that it was their idea to follow through with my own goals, everyone won: my aim was reached, and the pride of people who made it happen was not spared.

To this day, I realize that I do this very often: I am quiet in a crowd, (not nearly as loud as I used to be back in my adolescent days), and whenever someone in the crowd makes a decision that I benefit from, I know that I've influenced it in some way. This power trip is pivotal to my personality, and yet all those years ago, I have a feeling that I would've put into my diary, "Don't try to exert too much power on people. You'll only waste your time."

Under the Influence: A Love Story from Beyond the Grave

2007-12-01T08:35:00.000-05:00

Chapter 1

"Let me fall in love, that's all I wanna do/Let me fall in love, fall in love with you/Let me break my heart by giving it away/I'll let you tear me apart every single day"

- Lyrics from "Let Me", by Jonesy's Epiphany

"Once I wanted to be the greatest/No wind or waterfall could stop me/And then came the rush of the flood/The stars at night turned you to dust"

- Lyrics from "The Greatest", by Cat Powers

I tell myself that it was okay to have lost the last words on my screen. They were no good anyway, I say. Just trite verifications that I have lost my ability to see into the souls of things - but I'm not altogether sure. Perhaps, I think, there was a chance of resurrecting those words and making them into something grand and meaningful. Or maybe they already were grand and meaningful and I just hadn't realized their value. Maybe they were like me: unable to measure up to their potential, but bursting with enough kinetic energy to transcend lost goals. Or maybe I'm just making a mountain out of a molehill.

"I've never understood that saying," Caleb says to me as he reads my laptop screen. The puffs of smoke that surround us make me sure that he's high. Or that I'm high. At least one of us is high.

"High as a kite," he laughs as I type.

"Hey!", he hollers, "that last line rhymed!"

He playfully sings his last four words again and again, meshing them into a bluesy beat before picking up my guitar. The way Caleb plucks the strings is like the way he used to touch my body: expertly, as if he had known preternaturally what to do. He was always very skilled with his hands.

I take another long toke and relate to him the scene in Children of Men where Michael Caines' character talks about "strawberry cough." In the old days, Caleb would've laughed and offered an amusing anecdote. Now, he only grimaces. "I haven't been to the movies in a long time," he says as he puts down the guitar and I hand him the j. I nod my head understandingly.

It's been a long time since I've seen Caleb. When we were dating, it wasn't unusual for us to go months without seeing each other; he lived in California and I lived in New York. Now we see each other even more seldomly. I guess that's just what happens…

I wake up with an empty stomach and a full computer screen. Caleb is gone. I know he'll be around this week. He's always there when I need him. Man, do I need him now. Before I can think of something to do, he's back in my bedroom, sitting on my bed and playing my guitar. "You paused when you were gonna write man," he says confidently. "You were thinking to write boy instead, weren't you?"

I don't say anything. He smiles smugly and starts strumming my instrument's strings. He knows he's right. It's been two years since we've talked, and still he can read my mind.

Sleep has stolen my high, so I don't speak. I simply desire the seduction of sentences. I want them to lay down before me and let me swallow them whole. I want to will them into beautiful and complex positions and forge hedonistic satisfaction from their company.

Even though Caleb's eyesight has waned since we've last spoken, I know that he instinctively has a grasp of the words on the screen. He plays a ditty we wrote while we were dating, coaxing me to sing the words. His voice still haunts me like it used to. I can feel his soul when he sings, like miniscule droplets of drizzle that drop from the heavens; it is a moist mist that envelopes me.

When we are done with our duet, there is an awkwardness between us, as if we have just cheated on our significant others and need to come to an understanding behind our actions.

"I hear you're moving in with your boyfriend," Caleb offers kindly, putting my guitar back on its stand.

"I've been doing a lot of changing lately."

"I know," he mocks. "Two years ago, there was nothing I could do to make you even consider moving in with me."

"I've been meaning to visit you," I quickly interject, taking the opportunity to change the subject. "It's just that I've been in a funk and-"

"It's okay," he says soothingly.

We smile at each other warmly, both of us unsure of what to do next.

"I read as much of your writing as I can," he says, gesturing to the computer. "I know you've been going through a hard time."

This is the part I dread, the part I know I'm going to repeat over and over again when I see people I know: explaining why my life is so messy, confusing, difficult. Relating the feelings that I can't help but feel, the visits to the shrink, the prescriptions that I never filled, the lies that I had to tell myself in order to feel normal. Coming to terms with the fact that there are 2 emails I'm afraid of reading, both from internships I'm certain that I've lost. Wondering if I should explain that I have no liquid assets, that all of my money is wrapped up in investments and that I need to find another job.

And the fear. Does everyone fear talking? Saying the wrong thing? It's not a fear of peoples' perceptions; it's a fear that your own doubts and insecurities are true. How do I tell people that I felt like a fraud, like I no longer knew the whys and hows? How do I tell Caleb that I've lost that part of me that he used to love - the part that I loved because it made me lovable? And how do I explain that I'm now a differ-

"I know you're a different person," Caleb cuts in. "You're personality is more defined. You now know what you're all about. You're afraid of pushing away the people you care about due to differences in your beliefs." He walks towards the desk and picks up a political science text book. "You've always been very assimilationist in your ways," he says knowingly. "But now you're more combative. You have a distinct feeling that you're right, and you don't want to back down."

Then we talk. We talk about the past, about the future, about the way things are and the way they should be. We talk about politics and love and music. We talk about the people in my life, the hard decisions I'm facing, the depression I was in. We talk about the fact that I've never really been in the driver's seat of my own life, and how that's changing.

"It's funny," he says hours later, as he prepares to leave. "All that time we knew each other, and I never doubted for a second that you knew what you were doing - but then, neither did you."

"This time," I say, "I really know what I'm doing, ya know."

"I know you do," he laughs. He goes down the list of statements I've made during our conversation: that I've decided to stop going to therapy; that I'm going for broke when it comes to love; that there's a possibility I'm in denial over the past; that there's a lot I need to work on in order to feel complete.

Caleb enters my email password and double clicks a subject line that reads "INTERNSHIP." "There are no mistakes in life," he says as he kisses me goodbye, "only consequences to your actions."

Later, I'm procrastinating on reading the email and sitting by myself in my bedroom. I'm thinking about moving in with my boyfriend. I'm listening to Cat Powers. I'm reading the issue of TIME magazine devoted to the human brain.

There are many truths in this world, I realize as I put down my pipe and take up my pen. There are the histories written by the victors, the secrets kept by the defeated, the universals that the entirety of humanity refuses to believe.

And then there are the truths that shed light on personal identity, none of which need be real.

The smell of marijuana clings to my clothes as I walk over to my laptop to check my email. A great weight lifts as I read it and find out that I haven't lost my internships. One task done, a million more to go. Maybe today will be the day I visit Caleb's grave.

Filipino-(American) Air Force Ones

2007-12-01T08:28:00.000-05:00

Even though Clark Air Base is closed, American influence will always endure in this corner of the world.

Exercises in Futility: Explanation

2007-12-01T01:08:00.000-05:00

I often suspect that the most daunting challenge for a writer to face is a blank page. Imagine, if you will, the limitless possibilities uncovered by the very existence of that blank page! There are so many stories, so many styles, so many words that can flow out on that page and rearrange history.

And yet, more often than not, nothing ever comes about of that page. It becomes another tossed out piece of garbage, and no one knows that it exists. Worse, no one cares if it exists.

I'm currenly enrolled in Fiction 1 at Brooklyn College. The course is a cakewalk for me, and I refuse to believe that I'm killing myself with my work schedule just for an easy A. My solution: I challenged myself. I've taken the weekly writing assignments and written a novel, each chapter corresponding to an exercise. The coherence is questionable, but sure enough, all the components of a story are there.

This piece, Exercises in Futility has been the most eye-opening and jaw-dropping writing experience I've encountered yet. I've been unashamedly honest and raw about everything I've written. That bitingly real look at my life makes me flinch, so I suspect it'll do the same for you.