I love my car, but I am starting to love the train more. I have fewer distractions than at home so I read faster, think clearer, can get work done, get good ideas. Or just enjoy a beautiful day’s slow end on the other side of the glass–a day so lovely that even New Jersey glows.

I sit here with my iPod playlist and think about being lonely being a good thing sometimes–being alone with my feelings that are both raw and yet strangely protected. I can’t remember the last time I cried.

I’ve been trying to draw it out of myself lately, too. Trying to evoke that feeling of rushing, gulping sobs or even just the catharsis of tears at the end of a great sad movie. Nothing.

So the loneliness I feel is just enough for me to dig into and come up with stories. To use those feelings to create, to inspire, to float.

To think beautiful thoughts tinged with sadness but not really all the way there.

The world is a sick, twisted, scary place, but it’s beautiful and I am oddly grateful right now for everyone I’ve ever loved and everyone who loved or loves me, in whatever way they’ve offered. Whatever beauty and happiness they bring to my life, whether a brief memory, a lingering dream, or a message in text from some piece of cold technology that nevertheless does help us connect.

Posted: September 7th, 2008 under Love, Writing.
Comments: none

I mentioned to a friend (and then re-mentioned to other friends) this week that I would like to have the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind brain-erasure procedure done, except instead of the memories, I’d just like to erase the damage. Erase the absolutely huge trust issues, etc.

The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that my issues run along a standard gender-based line. I do tend to assume that all men are out to fuck me, and I get insulted when I feel like they aren’t–have I internalized the idea that my only use to them is something to fuck?

And though I write extensively about “monster”-izing people and how it’s a bad thing, our tendency to split people into “good” and “bad” and not try and understand the psychological and sociological reasons they do things, the only group of people I seem to have no problem monsterizing are my ex-loves.

I know I have very good reasons for not being able to try and be friends with my last ex. I also know, after two years, that he’s not a bad person. That he cared about me in his own way, and he has a lot of demons to battle that have nothing to do with me (see above about erasing the damage, eh?). But I can’t have him in my life. That’s OK. But that’s not what I mean by monsterizing.

I have a couple of men in my past who I simply refer to as the “Evil Ex” as though they started a relationship with me simply to fuck me over. It certainly felt that way at the time.

But then I tend to extrapolate that hurt to every man I meet. Guys I’m not even dating get the cold shoulder when I suddenly assume they’re just trying to fuck me. I assume that every man is lying to me, and I wonder what it is he is keeping secret from me.

In its own way, it is the same dichotomy that gets burned into us when we’re little girls: Boys only want One Thing, and we women have to use that to get them to like us. We have to play games to keep their interest, and never let them know that we like them or care about them.

The whole adversarial relationship thing, that I like to make fun of so much in Cosmo and other women’s magazines, that try to give you tips to “get him to propose” or whatever, like the whole relationship is a con job? It makes me physically ill. I want to be with someone who is my best friend, who I can lounge around in my jammies with and argue about politics and religion and trade books with and yes, have amazing sex with until we’re so old that our bones creak. I don’t think it’s love if there are games involved.

Except I’m approaching 30, single (and mostly loving it) and at times (like the past couple of weeks) I just assume that all men are going to be the same as the ones I’ve been with in the past. That I’m going to have to play games to keep them, that I can’t let them know that I care, that they’re lying to me and keeping a shady past from me.

Or that I can’t be interested, myself, in just plain ol’ sex. Even though I know that I have been and am.

I assume that my dream best-friend boyfriend doesn’t exist even though I know lots of wonderful guys that are my friends, that care about me and show it in myriad ways and (when I’m not being suspicious of them because they after all are MEN) I appreciate them greatly.

I assume that men hate me. That introducing sex turns any friendship into a minefield. That aside from a couple of exes whom I was around long enough to think of as complicated, difficult people with feelings, I tend to reduce men to that same biological urge that was told when I was younger–men only want One Thing, right?

The way I used to think blowjobs were degrading.

I have to protect myself from being “used” by the type of Wrong Guy that’s out there.

But that’s just as damaging as anything else. People aren’t born bad or good. They all have complicated feelings and emotions and issues, and it is entirely possible for someone to love you and still hurt the hell out of you. Finding the right person doesn’t protect you from hurt, and assuming that all members of the opposite sex are evil doesn’t help anything.

So I need to work on my damage, I suppose. That much I knew, after getting out of the last relationship, that it would take me time to be able to deal with people as people again. But I am also realizing that I need to work on my own internalized sexism, that I need to stop assuming things about people simply because they’re men, and most importantly, to not make people into monsters. Not even my ex.

Posted: September 3rd, 2008 under Feminism, Love.
Comments: none

I am a bit burned out right now, brooding over some things, gearing up for classes (and work) starting up again–it’s been four months, just about.

Today I met the new crop of grad students at orientation. It’s hard to believe that a year ago it was me sitting nervously in a chair, unsure if I was ready to be back in school. It feels like so long ago, and yet it feels like yesterday. Life is weird like that.

This is what I looked like today. It’s kind of what I felt like today, too.

Posted: August 27th, 2008 under Schoolin'.
Comments: none

So today is house-cleaning day. I’m doing a gazillion loads of laundry, have swept, cleaned my room, cleaned my bathroom, and am about to go to Target and buy a new vacuum and a bookshelf so I can unpack the last few boxes on my bedroom floor. I don’t have a ton of money to spare, but a bookshelf will cost $30 and help me be organized, so it’s well worth it.

I bloody well hate cleaning. I never do it until I can barely deal with the mess and dog hair and then I binge and clean for three hours straight (like I did this morning). If I had money, I’d have a cleaning person. And I’d have some bourgeois guilt, but I’d make sure to pay hir a living wage.

My mother was a cleaning lady for a while. When I was little, we had lots of money. My dad owned restaurants. Then in the late 80s, well, the restaurants weren’t doing so well. They were closing one by one. One of the earliest things my mother gave up was her cleaning guys (yes, they were men, there were two of them, and they made fun of my guinea pigs. That’s all I remember. I was little!).

My mother went to a two-year program post high school that I think trained her to be a secretary, but she wasn’t the secretary type. Instead, she managed a Mr. Donut shop and did it well. Her bosses continually told her that she couldn’t be a manager because she couldn’t lift heavy boxes, but she’d lift them and laugh at her bosses–and they’d promote her. Eventually she traveled across the country opening Mr. Donuts. By herself. A single woman.

When she gave that up, she got a job as a restaurant manager. (Her father ran a brickyard in New Hampshire. I come from blue-collar stock for sure on that side. It’s my dad’s side that’s the bourgeois Ivy League Jews.) And again, they tried to tell her at first that she couldn’t be the manager because she’d have to be alone at night. Eff that, she said, and she was the manager. Then one day they sold the restaurant, and she gave her notice to the new owner. “That’s OK,” he said, “I’d rather date you anyway.”

My dad was suave, back in the day, eh?

Anyway, he went from that restaurant to a new chain that he founded and ran, until they started to lose money. And my mother had a gap in her resume a while long now, since she hadn’t worked while she had her kids, and she needed a job that would be flexible and let her be home for us when we needed her.

So she and my old nanny (yep, had one of those too) started a cleaning business. Don’t know how much they charged, but they worked on their own schedule, made grocery money, and kept me fed. I went from private school to public, they left the country club, traded in the fancy car for a Taurus, and sold the big house in Massachusetts, the last two restaurants (at a huge loss) and moved to South Carolina on credit cards.

Eventually, my dad bought a little bike shop and built the business up to where I lost a good chunk of my student aid when we went up a tax bracket (that’s another story). And so when I was broke and couldn’t pay my bills with my two waitressing jobs, I had an option to go back to. Oh, and I cleaned my landlady’s house a few times in Denver to pay my rent, since she was a wonderful person and understood that I was poor.

This isn’t a sympathy story. I don’t care if you think I’m a whining twit for writing about it. But Natalia hipped me to this story and it made me think of the type of people who will talk shit about other people’s financial status or downward mobility. The type of people like this one woman I know who thought she knew enough about me to make fun of me for working for my parents.

It isn’t anyone’s business, really. And this is where that safety net I was talking about a few posts back would really come in handy. Because as I’ve pointed out, I came from privilege and my mother came from privilege.

My mother has two shoulders that don’t really work now. She has had multiple surgeries, and my father has a heart condition and a lung condition. Health insurance for the two of them is somewhere around $45,000 a year (I’ve said this before). My father shouldn’t be working six 9-hour days a week in the heat at the bike shop, but he doesn’t have an option until he’s old enough for Medicare to kick in. My mother is basically unable to do any work that she’s qualified to do.

She has a cleaning lady again. A college student from Lithuania who also likes the work because of its flexible hours. She pays her $60 for two hours’ worth of housecleaning.

It’s a hell of a lot better than working at a restaurant.

But I wonder sometimes if all of this plays into my hatred of cleaning, cooking, and anything domestic.

Posted: August 19th, 2008 under Economy.
Comments: none

Back here in good old South Carolina…yeah, well…

It feels like I never left. Feels like the last year or so was a dream (on better days, feels like the two years before that were a dream, too, and I never met that guy). I’m working and laughing at myself at the thought that I could ever get out of there and be having as much fun as I’ve had in the year I’ve spent in Philly and NYC.

It’s fun to pretend that certain things never happened, but then I’m brought up short with the realization that they did. My father has to come into his office (at the house) where I’ve temporarily taken over because it’s home to the high-speed Internet connection, and he has to weigh himself twice a day to make sure he doesn’t have congestive heart failure. So the talking scale tells him that he’s over his target weight and asks if he’s taken his medicine that day. A sharp reminder that this time last year he was on his third week of five in the hospital and we thought he’d have to be on oxygen for the rest of his life. Thank whatever you believe in that he isn’t, but still.

My mother is depressed. She thinks she’s fat and hates to leave the house (she’s gained probably ten pounds. Why on earth should this be debilitating or grounds to stay inside all the time? But you know, I just can’t go there right now). She can’t work because of her shoulders, but she rarely does anything else. She watches soap operas and worries about my dad.

I miss Kacie like crazy right now. I have plans to watch the fights tonight with a bunch of old friends at B.’s house, and one of the last times I was at his house was with my sister and Kacie. And after remembering that, well, this was where she lived and so everything reminds me of her. So I put on more red lip gloss and pretend I’m doing it for her, and touch my tattoo and smile.

When I see other people that knew her, we hug for longer than we used to. It’s a way to hang on.

I come back and I have to go see the One that Got Away. It’s a rule, a compulsion…something. It’s too easy now. He runs a restaurant, my mother goes there all the time, and his parents always ask about me and I tell myself they’d be upset if they knew I was in town and didn’t stop by.

He looks shocked and then stares at me when I’m not looking (according to Megan, who had the seat with the angle that could see him). He will barely even come say hello to me. Like I’m going to bite him, or yell at him for breaking my heart? It was years ago. When I lived here I didn’t think about him as much, but when I come back for brief visits, again, it’s like a time warp and suddenly the wounds feel fresh.

Yet I’ve learned to take pleasure in little victories and little moments, and not ask for the world, and knowing that I’ve still got the ability to knock him for a loop makes me feel good.

He looks tired, thin. Had little to say. And when you love someone, you truly want them to be happy, and so I wonder if he is. Wonder what more he wants.

But there are other people in my life (one in particular) who make me happy now. So phone calls and visits to old lovers don’t have the weight they used to.

I missed you last night too.

Posted: August 9th, 2008 under Dreams, Lipgloss, Love, Writing.
Comments: 1

There is blog drama, but I can’t be arsed. I’m in too good of a mood.

1. Best interview ever.

2. Totally sore and tired but not stressed mentally at all and just generally happy. Love my life and my friends today. (If you’re not sure if you’re included in that, you probably are.)

3. Off to find a sparkly dress for the BUST party.

4. This video sums up everything for you. Watch it.

Posted: August 7th, 2008 under Lipgloss, Love, Rock'n'roll.
Comments: 1

I’m in South Carolina at the moment, visiting the fam and working.

It’s kind of nice to be doing real physical work again for a bit. Mostly I’ve been building bikes, getting grease all over myself, and being cheered that my skills haven’t disappeared in the 9 months since I’ve done this. There’s something to be said for sweating over things.

That said, I’ve got articles to work on, and I’ve got the vaguest twinges of a story floating around in my head today. I’ve got a little bit of it down tonight. It’s true, so far, but that will change soon. And when I get home from work I’m exhausted. About to stumble off to bed right now, actually, having not accomplished as much as I’d like to, today. And tomorrow I have a date with some friends.

A few random bits for you then, before I sleep:

-the difference between an all-female and a 90%-male workplace are not as different as you’d think, aside from a few of the inappropriate topics being different. Less sex toys and alternative menstrual products and more discussion of hot movie stars and video games at the bike shop.

-the other bonus? Boys with shirts off.

-after being in NYC, the homogeneity of the population down here really grabs me. So many girls with long blonde hair and shorts and tank tops…it makes me want more tattoos. Now.

-some friends come and go, but the forever ones are worth it.

-every time I come back to this place, I miss someone so fucking much that it’s like he’s breaking my heart all over again.

-my parents’ business is just unsustainable without someone willing to devote themselves to it as much as I did for the past three years. There are several things that simply have not been done at all since I left.

-I beat myself up for not having accomplished more with my life, but running this business for those years was absolutely invaluable both in keeping my parents healthy and in teaching me how to do everything from money management to self-promotion. I haven’t written a novel or anything yet, but I have managed every aspect of a business from the ground up, and I did it better than anyone else has.

-Weirdly, my Spanish is coming back to me without much practice.

-I will always be OK on my own.

Posted: August 6th, 2008 under Love, Shameless self-promotion.
Comments: 4

And I am back from the most beautiful wedding I’ve ever been to.

Not because of the surroundings, though you could hardly do better than the Maine coast in summer, or the expense they went to, because it was simple. Because the bride was a really close friend of mine, and because I had seen their relationship evolve from a friendship to that kind of love that makes even cynical me believe in something.

When asked, I usually say I don’t want to get married or even that I don’t believe in marriage, but really it’s a bit more complicated.

I am selfish and jealous of my time. I overthink and overanalyze and take care not to give the other person more than I think they are giving me. I am beginning to think that my baggage is overwhelming right now and that I have nothing to offer another person except long-winded rants about the state of the world.

I can’t just let go and let things happen without building walls, and I think I am most comfortable in my own head.

Yet when I see my friends happy like this, I know that somewhere down in the slim undamaged core there’s a piece of me that I still have to give.

Posted: July 28th, 2008 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 3

Busy, really, is what it’s like lately. Just had a house guest for three days and that meant more than usual time spent out, drinking, talking, wandering new areas of NYC and Brooklyn, and general good times. It also means that as usual, I’m behind on actual work, and have neglected the blogosphere horribly.

I’m at fail on this whole political buzz thing lately. I’ve got a few ideas in my head for today’s column, but right now I’m just generally burned out and ticked off that Obama couldn’t hold to his earlier promise to fight telecom immunity. I linked below to Wendy Kaminer’s comments on it, and she did say it best–”Civil libertarianism is an outsider’s game.”

It does feel a bit odd to have my candidate be THE candidate–and to have with that the depressing job of watching that person have to doubletalk and compromise. It is the nature of politics, and that nature is indeed nasty and brutish, if not necessarily short-lived. I’ve accepted a long time ago that I’m never going to vote for a candidate who perfectly represents me, because I’m just way too far out in left field. But I genuinely believe that the majority of America is further left than either political party thinks it is, and that a candidate honestly running left would win in a landslide, particularly this year.

But a lot of my political sensibility is tied up in being critical of the system, and so when the person who was critical of the system becomes the system–Hegel, I’m talkin’ ’bout you–the synthesis never feels right to me. I remain outside, critical. It’s my job as a political writer, I suppose, and so a good thing. But someday I’d like to win and feel good about it for a month or so before the winner makes me feel shitty about myself. It’s the same feeling as finding out the guy I was dating was seeing other people the whole time–wow, I gave all my effort to something that the other person was only doing halfway.

But! Life is good, nonetheless. The insane amount of busy I’ve been this summer has been due to actual freelance work that I’m actually getting paid for, which is great. It’s also been due to various and sundry other projects, and a few friends, old and new, who make my life a heck of a lot more livable.

Whether it’s new blog-friends who email when I twitter something negative and pass on real-world love over drinks, or my go-to girl for sports, beer, superhero movies and mimosas, other friends from school who like to talk work and networking, meeting old Internet friends for the first time, or becoming way closer with people I’d met only a few times.

I’m spending time talking politics and books and movies and love over cocktails with people who actually have something to say rather than just listening to me rant. I’m actually getting feedback on things that I write, and I’m getting support both mental and emotional more constant and from more surprising places than I have in a long time, maybe ever. I can flirt and not worry about it, and I’ve met the smartest, coolest, sassiest women who really get it, plus a few guys who unlike certain exes, are not in the least threatened by me in all my foulmouthed feminist glory.

I can’t even picture how I got along without some of these people so recently.

I’ve always been cool being single and really attached to my alone time. Being in a relationship for two years where I was literally with that person every day, and rarely felt that I had my time to myself has made me even more jealously guard my space and my self from others. More than ever lately I feel like maybe I’m not built for that kind of relationship, and maybe the best thing for me is to be open to love coming into my life in whatever form it happens, and not trying to force that relationship ideal that doesn’t really appeal to me anyway.

I do feel loved and supported and stimulated on all levels right now, so who’s to say that’s wrong?

Posted: July 12th, 2008 under Love, Politics.
Comments: none

I’ve got posts in draft and posts in my notebook and they’re all quite intellectual even if most of them are about comics. But a discussion at UnCool made me stop for a minute and toss this up right quick ahead of the good stuff I’m working on. Because technically I’m at work right now and thus don’t have the time to do justice to my other thoughts.

Twitter is my new crack. Love it. You can see it in my sidebar, and you can make me your twitter friend and see my lovely posts about politics, mimosas, and objectifying men in 140 characters or less. And I was thinking about its kind of necessarily-snappy, one-liner-ish quality. Because how much depth can you put into a couple of lines? (Maybe I’ll try short-stories-in-one-sentence via twitter next!) 

Twitter’s kind of another path to internet-stardom, or an addition to the one I’ve already got. Suits my newly BlackBerry’d lifestyle rather well, and is oddly addictive, especially when you’ve got friends that are quite witty with it. But it’s another step away from me and into persona-land. 

As was noted on the thread I linked above, everyone’s blog is a persona. Hell, even though mine has my real name on it, that probably forces me to create even more of a persona than not. If I had a pseud and was well-hidden on here, perhaps I could tell you the truth about how I feel about everything. (as it is, I save it for a few special people. very few.) 

My voice on here is a combination of several ‘voices’ that I cultivate as a writer. One of them is definitely snarky, another is those flashes of pure honesty that come over me at times, and a third is deeply analytical. They’re all pieces of me, and if you slag off any of them you’re still not slagging ME off. Because you don’t know me. 

Even though we make blog-friendships and such, there’s something about face-to-face interaction that I think can’t be replaced. Someone knows me far better if they’ve looked into my eyes while I’m ranting on about Scalia or Neil Gaiman or Lucero, and they find it harder to insult and rip on me. They still do it, I’m sure, but…yeah. 

Internet interaction is weird and fraught with miscommunications, misreadings of tone and inflection, and completely wrong assumptions about the identity and motivations of the others behind the keyboard. But it’s still just as hurtful as anything that happens out in the real, flesh world. 

Too many people I like have been getting slagged off for no real reason lately, and I’m sure my turn is coming. And so I tend to retreat even further into my own fledgling cult of personality (VERY fledgling) even though my compulsive honesty wants to tell everything–everything. 

But go tell Caroline you love her. 

Posted: July 7th, 2008 under Fighting, Writing.
Comments: none