Thursday, July 31, 2008

it's a shoreline and it's half speed

i'm totally disoriented in the suburbs. i take long showers and fall asleep by the pool and drink vodka and eat like a condemned man and keep trying to figure out what the one big thing is i forgot to do and won't realize until the plane takes off and then that "home alone" moment happens and i scream, "change of address!"

it's getting desperate around here. i've been left to my own devices for too many hours at a time. i suppose today i could start packing. or, i could listen to "i have a dream" from the new "mamma mia" movie on repeat all afternoon. somebody pass the svedka and the headphones, this song is my jam.


not that i've seen "mamma mia" or have any particular affinity for musicals, but much in the way that if "wall-e" had found me on a particularly hormonal day, i would have needed a direct line of xanax and an escort out of the theater, "i have a dream" plays epic symphonies on my heartstrings.

and this happens, i think, this emotional swelling, this desire for melodrama, when life changes so devastatingly much. alas, i've come to realize that i've been reduced to material nothingness. i once again have no job, no home, no boyfriend, and no idea how all of this is going to work out. how terribly bizarre, to be back at that point again, and to realize how all of it is so different to me now. i'm entirely content with the groundlessness of my life. a little intimidated, slightly nervous, somewhat aghast, but completely empowered by the responsibility i now have to build up a life for myself again.

times like these just call for a little abba.


Monday, July 28, 2008

i love this record baby, but i can't see straight anymore

i left new york on the best possible note. i didn't even know i could leave new york on such a good note. if there's a better note, i don't want to be on it.

strange, i had written the last post, about the friends i had made, before pulling it together and still slightly overwhelmed with all the packing i had left, headed downtown to maggie and paul's to start off a "one final hurrah" night. i had been out every night that week, i was drinking way more than usual, and underneath it all was this minor anxiety about just making sure everything was sorted out before i left. but i knew it was important that we all have one final night together.

well. i show up around 10:30, paul answers the door terribly excited to see me, and i think it's just because i can hear the men at work song "down under" playing in the living room, so i assume it's just a little joke and i'm all caught up in that, that i'm totally thrown off when i come into the living room and everyone yells, "surprise!"

"what the fuck!" i cried, because i could hardly believe none of this was a joke, it was in fact a surprise going away party that maggie had been planning for weeks. ashley and joey are there, and a number of maggie's friends i had met only a handful of times but were just as excited as anyone else to send me off with a fond farewell. unfortunately, kristen and jay were both out of town, but just the fact that maggie was plotting this with jay and people from work and trying to arrange a perfect time that everyone could make it--and i, of course, was totally oblivious--was entirely endearing. and despite a few missing faces, it took nothing away, and the timing could not have been better.

so we had a fantastic night. the highlight, of course, being that maggie and paul--taking a cue from this little blog of mine--decided to make, from scratch, wedges with sour cream and sweet chili sauce. i mean, they bought the potatoes and all the spices and followed a recipe from some australian website, scrubbing and slicing and baking and pretty much doing everything but what anyone in australia would do, which is just buy a bag of the frozen wedges and throw them in the oven for twenty minutes.

it's silly how touching something so basic as homemade wedges can be. appropriately enough, i got very drunk and ate almost all of them. they were really good.

i also have to note, throughout friday, between the last day at work and the night out, how many incredibly kind and moving sentiments were made. i think back to that first few weeks that i lived in new york, how awfully lonely they were, how insignificant i felt in this city, and now a little over a year later, the huge 180 my life has done. i count no greater success in new york than being told, "you've truly touched all of us." i don't really think there's a better definition of making it somewhere--of "making it in new york"--than actually being capable of connecting with other people and making a difference in their lives.

friday night was probably my favorite night out in new york of the past year. even if some things didn't go according to plan, as far as i was concerned, it was exactly how it should have gone. i feel like i left everyone remembering them just the way i wanted to, and knowing without a doubt that i have something to come back to.

now i'm in new jersey for a few days, with a small to-do list left of things that need to be done. and then i fly out friday. already, when i look back on new york, i see it as something encased, a period of my life that is over for now, but preserved.

and that leaves me with no option but moving forward. i'm entirely ready.

i can't wait to tell australia about these potato wedges.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

a million hours left to think of you

this will not be conclusive.

and yet everything has become exactly that: the conclusion of a life. and rife with all of the fixings of what goes into spending the last few days trying to tie together a thousand strings and avoid the dreaded "loose ends" that threaten to tap you on the shoulder just as you've turned around and started walking away.

it's been a long, strange, surreal week, with a lot of goodbyes, countless exclamations of how much fun i will have or how excited i am, some strange emotional turns, and of course, plenty of vodka. the one thing that's been entirely consistent in my last year or so in new york, to an absolute fault, is vodka.

i don't know what i want to say, and i'll know tomorrow, when i've left the city, when my job is long left in the dust, when all of my friends have stopped waving and moved on to the next task of the day. as i write this, my goodbyes are not completely over, my bags not completely packed, my time in new york not entirely bid adieu.

but i want to at least say this: i take it back. i take back what i said earlier this month, what i started all of this believing, what i insisted must be true in order to fully justify this turning upside down of my life. i take it back.

new york and i get each other. new york and i make perfect sense. new york and i can have a good life together. the costs are high, the jobs are competitive, the pace is fast, and the peace is scarce, but the people are incredible. the people are fucking brilliant.

this of course is what i knew would happen, what was meant to happen. i tossed out the idea, once i settled on australia, that as the countdown to australia started, i would fall in love. i of course thought it would be with one person, with some dreamboat who would show me what love really meant, and by august, would inadvertently reintroduce me to the heartbreaks involved in life's inevitabilities, the consequences of choices made, but i'm thrilled that that's not the case.

you have to understand, it's been top priority on my list since i was old enough to socialize; it's been at times a terrible struggle, marred by shyness and insecurities. it's soared at times and crashed and burned at others. but it's always at the forefront of my priorities: making friends. there were many times in my early new york life that i thought it simply would not happen, that new york was far too large and i had too few connections to fall in with anyone. bring on the random sexual partners, bring on the weekends alone, bring on that tricky vodka.

i know that i don't know what i really want to say yet, but i want to at least say this: i made friends. i made amazing, kind, brilliant, funny, incredible friends. these are the good people of new york. these people are what i fell in love with, and bear with me on this one, but the self-help books would be terribly disappointed if i did not mention also the great love affair i finally discovered with myself.

because it wasn't until i finally did that that i was able to truly connect with these people. no, i didn't have any actual relationships in new york. a few dates here and there, mostly a free dinner and some uninspired flirting. but with friends like these, i hardly noticed. i don't think the point (one of many points) of my living in new york was to have a relationship with anyone. (david and i ended only a week or so after i got here, and i think that was purposeful, we could not last together in this period of our lives.)

i was supposed to get down to the bare bones of the end of june in 2007, staying on sonam's couch, searching for an apartment with the clock ticking and a sense of desperation and exhaustion i hardly believed i could face. one night, after a day of apartment hunting and stumbling around the city, i was walking back to where sonam was staying on the upper east side. she was away for the weekend, and jay was working, and i didn't really know anyone else here. no one in this city was looking for me. i had nowhere to go. i had no home, no job, no boyfriend, and no idea what i was going to do or how this would all work out.

so i just walked, looking up at apartment buildings, jealous of the simple fact that there were people living behind the lighted windows, entirely absorbed by the idea of lives being lived out all around me. i felt entirely untouchable, untouched. disconnected. life brought me down to the minimum of my self.

so it is an absolute pleasure to now, in some time-defying way, reach back and comfort this former self in some way, and tell him that he will find a home, he will find a job, he won't need a boyfriend, and he will eventually soon be surrounded by friends. he will be completely connected. he will leave this city soon to brave a whole new challenge, and he won't believe it, but he'll be leaving behind an incredible life.

that's what i want to say.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

i remember please don't ever leave


i walked to the thai restaurant on 9th avenue after work, yes, the one i always go to. it's not even that amazing, but i have so few attributes that would be considered "habitual" anymore, so i take what i can.

a waitress glanced at me as i walked in, waiting for some sort of explanation. "just one," i said.

"just one?"

ah yes, the great 21st century peril of dining alone.

i nodded. she looked around, smiling, hoping to spot a small, two-person date table along the wall, but a number of couples had beat us both to the punch. she looked down at the empty four-person table a foot away.

"is this okay?"

i nodded and smiled and sat down, as she quickly cleared away three sets of silverware and dashed off, leaving me with a menu. i think any number of months ago, i might have hoped that i just looked early. i might have even taken out my cellphone and read old text messages that had nothing to do with my imaginary scenario. as groups of four came in, i might feel a little embarrassed.

but if new york has taught me anything at its most trying times, it's that you can function alone. so i ate in silence, surrounded by empty chairs and a waitstaff that didn't know what to do with me and all of this dining real estate.

after dinner, i decided to walk for a while, and ended up trekking up 9th and onto broadway as it cut into the upper west side, eventually logging over fifty blocks before deciding to hop on the 1. the whole time, i had a strange sense that i would see someone i knew. i kept thinking david. i sometimes think that's wishful thinking. i guess old ghosts die hard.

i shook it off by the time i was heading down the steps into the 96th street subway station. a 2 train had just let out, and between the suffocating heat and crowds of commuters scattering before the 2 made its way to harlem, i was feeling a little woozy. i sat down on the bench and looked around, feeling the pressure die down as the masses filed up the stairs.

i had a premonition that i would see someone else tonight as well. i forgot about david well into the upper west side, but once i got into the 90s, i thought about someone else i would find myself speechless in front of. i can't say who. i know that may render all of this irrelevant and anticlimactic, but i can't tell you who.

and there he was, holding a briefcase and walking up the platform towards the stairs, towards me sitting on the bench sweating and suddenly not breathing. so i did the only thing i knew how to do with him: i looked the other way. i didn't even have to think about it. fight or flight? i just hid behind some branches in the tree.

it seemed to take forever for him to pass behind me, and i'll never know if he saw me. but he kept walking, and i watched the back of him, and i expected him to turn around, and truth be told, i almost wanted him to. i owed him an apology. i owed him an explanation. something in between.

but he kept walking and disappeared up those stairs, and i imagined that maybe he did in fact see me. maybe he even stopped, or slowed down briefly, but ultimately kept moving. realized it was me--or who he thought was me--and decided there was nothing to say. i think there are some people who are meant to disappear, and there are some people who are not. the ones who disappear have nothing truly left to offer, and the ones who don't haven't said everything that needs to be heard. even if they don't say a word.

but he said everything i needed to hear tonight.

sometimes, you're better off alone.

Monday, July 21, 2008

exchanging the common heart for the salt in the sea

an older dominican man sat on the front stoop watching while jay and i said goodbyes fit for a weekend trip to the country. bring me back some country air, i'll tell you what you missed on this saturday night in the city. we'll hash it out over dinner on monday. ok, see ya.

and then jay and his luggage rolled up the street towards broadway for a taxi, and i went back inside, not looking at the dominican man, and only looking back once. the end of an era, my friends. bring on the flood of things we should have done before that. another photo-op adventure, another rehashed old joke or routine, maybe a final lunch at pram forest, with the socially retarded waitress, overpriced diet cokes, and good bread.

alas, alas, as a number of people have said, not knowing someone else has already made the same point and thus are only reinforcing the truth, "it'll all be here when you come back." and not...come back in six months, because i can't handle australia. (aren't i supposed to be moving to boston then anyway?) but, whenever. whenever i come back to new york. it's strange, though, how "if" has turned to "when." but in this last month and a half, it feels like everything has really suddenly fallen into place. i mean, sure, there's still the matter of the crappy apartment in the lame neighborhood, and the unsatisfying job, and the pretensions and competitiveness and crowds and noise and the costs and the fact that it is so incredibly hard to find inner peace in a city without any.

but i can always move. and get a better job. and nowhere is perfect. so maybe i have to put up with pretentious neighbors, bitchy queens, and always someone somewhere honking their horn, but if it's not that, it's something else.

now i'm talking like someone who wants to stay in new york, but to be honest, i don't. i'm just someone who isn't fleeing from new york. i have friends here now. (baffled, for months, on how people actually make friends in new york, and all the while, i was making friends.) i have a routine i don't terribly mind. as i've said before, even if i wasn't moving, i would have quit my job, and who knows what i would have fallen into. but considering the life i was able to live and the money i was able to make with this salary, i'm sure i could afford a nicer place to live and a more comfortable lifestyle.

so it's nice to know that sense of possibility will always exist in new york for me. when i come back. maybe it's for two weeks, maybe it's for two years. maybe it's not for another five or six years that i even consider moving back. maybe i say all this now, and the moment i step foot outside of this city, i decide i'll never come back. maybe i never see any of these people ever again. maybe jay and i start planning trips every six months to our respective locations for extended visits, and maybe that location is anywhere but new york.

the truth, right now, though, is that i have less than a week left in this city. and i'm not planning on cramming much more into it than i would any other week. i'm not planning a huge, weepy farewell. there will be nights out and drinks and hugs and a tear or two, but essentially, i'm aiming for that goodbye fit for a weekend trip to the country.

maybe minus the old dominican man.

Friday, July 18, 2008

old teenage hopes are alive at your door

i am no connoisseur of good music, mind you. i listen to a lot of remixes. and i'm usually ten steps behind what everyone else was right on top of weeks ago. i'm often pushing the door when i should be pulling, and someone usually has to finally sigh and just let me in.

so i'm not saying you've never heard or heard of feist. and i'm hardly introducing you to "1234," because apple took good care of that if you weren't already well-acquainted. but in the spirit of being ten steps behind and listening to a lot of remixes, sink your bicuspids into this:



but the real apple of my queer eye is this gem i discovered through the grapevine. i can not be sad, ever, knowing this video exists.



i believe there is no more joyous a moment than when she croons at 1:14, "1,2,3,4 chickens just back from the shore" and it seems the sheer euphoria of the moment begins to take over, as she throws about her ponytail like a five year old girl completely entranced by the magic of it all.

moments like this, we are reminded that life truly is beautiful. let me count the ways.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

the rain is like an orchestra to me

on this date, two years ago, i had landed in newark airport after a day of flying i hardly remember. how strange, i remember so many minute details about my flight to australia five and a half months earlier, but hardly recall the return flight to america.

i do remember how silly my parents looked, standing by the baggage carousels as i came down the escalator. my mom had that tight smile on her face, her eyes seemingly all puddly pupils and lashes, which is the look she has when she's trying to not lose her shit in public. my stepdad kept it together as usual, but wouldn't let go when we finally hugged. my mother's relief that i was back in her midst was physically palpable. i can't remember for the life of me how i felt. tired, i suppose. happy to see them, but completely blindsided by the huge sense of vague familiarity of it all, and how very far away australia seemed.

as a surprise, my parents brought food from an italian restaurant i grew up going to, and craved on many an occasion in melbourne. best pizza i've ever had. it's so typical of my stepdad, and his affinity for elaborate surprises. sometimes they go over like the hindenburg, but this time, he nailed it. i sat in the backseat and gorged and talked about my flight, talked about how weird i felt, but couldn't seem to figure out what to say about australia. it was almost like temporary amnesia. what are we doing at the airport? who came home? from where? that doesn't sound familiar.

it took days to shake the jet lag, and just as long to know what to do with myself. i went back to work very quickly, and it was the definition of humbling. i was working in a kitchen with people who could hardly comprehend what i had just come back from. it was very "a little princess." though i fucking love that movie.

but life picks up and starts to happen again. i finally saw jay again and we went to penn state to see meagan and all of her friends and drink and drink and drink, and there was that sense of falling into something new and fun that i would not totally embrace before australia....maybe only a week or so after i got back from oz, i started talking to, and quickly fell head over heels for, nate. in the spirit of the agreement david and i made in sydney, i went with it, and our courtship became the very definition of putting the cart before the horse, but it was entirely enthralling and i thought, "my life is taking its next exciting turn..."

suffice it to say, this was the beginning of what i endearingly described to jay last night as, "the worst two years of my life." i know, how terribly judy blume of me. are you there, god? it's your old friend peggy again.

and i don't want to get lost in the trenchant doom-and-gloom of that. as jay pointed out, "there were good times, too. remember your birthday, when erin melnick dressed up in one of our chair covers?" yes, those were good times. and really, honestly, calling them "the worst two years of my life" is not fair. and anyway, i mean, essentially, they're over, as far as i'm concerned. as that self-help guru louise hay says, "i intend to make this the best year of my life." that woman is a fucking peach. and it's much easier now, when i'm feeling pretty bloody fantastic and on the cusp of exciting new things, to look back and say, "well, that was all very important."

but truly, i think anyone can agree with this quote from the astounding play "august: osage county" which i can't seem to ever shut the hell up about: "thank god we can't tell the future, or we'd never get out of bed." to that i say: true story. but thank god we can't erase the past, either. i wouldn't give up these last two years for anything.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

there's not a lot for you to feel if you're not feeling it

honestly, i've had breakups go better than this.

i'm talking of course about my final two weeks at work. i gave three weeks notice, thinking i was doing something particularly gracious and reasonable. here, conde nast, an extra week to find someone else to take over the dubious honor of my position. let me know how i can help. i want to make this transition easy for everyone.

essentially, it's not you, it's me. except, in some ways, it is you. in a lot of ways. okay, it's fucking you.

well, let me say, lesson learned, my friends. when they say to give two weeks notice, just give two. because once you say you're leaving--and mind you, not for another job, not to go to a competitor who is willing to pay you more without some bullshit move of leveraging a bad paycheck with a good name--just to leave, like, maternity leave--you're suddenly a traitor. and that's not creative writing folks. last week, i said good morning to the head of our sales team, and her response:

"traitor."

i think if i only had to get through this week, i wouldn't really care. it would be a slow death, but merciful. two more weeks of this? seriously. i think i now know how terry schiavo must have felt.

that being said, i certainly can't wallow. yes, my sales rep won't talk to me unless she has to. yes, i'm merely being cc'd on emails that used to be sent directly to me. someone else is taking over for me. i'm supposed to take this time to train him. the extent of our training: "i hope you like screaming into your keyboard." i don't know what else i could offer. an apology? a hug?

but really, i'm safe. even if they fired me, they'd have to give me two weeks. maybe that means no letter of recommendation for future employers, but honestly, people. i can do without it. there's a terrific quote someone told me last night: "may the bridges i burn light the way."

not the ideal, of course. and not like i want to leave this job in a blaze of glory. or a blaze at all. it's going to absolutely gut me to leave some of these people. it's rare to find people who let you be as weird as you want, and then find a way to match it. "the girls at work," as they're collectively known, are a strange pack, but unassuming in their weirdness, and entirely charming in the deception. my first impression of all of them: totally wrong. i did not think i could get away with calling them "snakes" or pretending to be a cripple balanced on a pair of ski poles on a weekly basis (fridays, usually) or talking quite so unabashedly about all the bad sex i've had.

but then, unprompted, they started addressing me as "snakes," and i thought: well, son of a bitch.

jay actually said this weekend, "you leave this residue of your weirdness wherever you go." he was more so speaking to how my parents have learned to respond to their nicknames, or address my old car as "manjula" or whatever else i've indoctrinated into their lives, but i suppose it goes for work as well.

and if i can leave these people with anything, if not an exit fit for a queen, if not a fiery inferno of all possible future business connections, then let them every once in a while ask, "what's shakin', bacon?" or sign an email, "xoxo, carl winslow." may at least one occasion be described as "a pleasure for the tips" in my absence.

then i'll know i have done my job.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

i let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, i feel free now

yes, the titles to all my posts are semi-applicable song lyrics. and sometimes, just lyrics to songs i'm listening to coincidentally while writing that post. i think in the grand scheme of life, it's probably the song i'm supposed to hear at the time.

on that note (no pun intended?), allow me some trumpet-sounding of the obvious: i've added a song to my blog. this is big. i'm very "text only." but i found this song trolling around imeem and i just felt like it was the sound this journey is making right now. ironically enough, it has no lyrics. but it's got a lot of heart and a deep well of optimism and plenty of wide-eyed wonder to it. i want to not groan while saying this, but i feel like, well, maybe so do i, and maybe i'm a little speechless about the journey myself. i can talk around it, i can tangent off of it, but i can't actually describe it. i think this song really describes it.

this weekend
, jay and i went to jersey to see my folks, and on the train home tonight, i was thinking about the number of songs that have been, and will always be, the soundtrack to a period of my life.

for example:

bloc party in general always makes me think of junior year of college, before i went away to australia. i remember those few months as being kind of fantastic, though i think i've forgotten much of the anxiety of that period of time, which, i should mention, had nothing to do with leaving for oz the following february. but every time "this modern love" comes up in the shuffle on my ipod, i have this flashbulb of walking home to my little on-campus apartment i shared with jay, probably to have leftover pad thai for lunch and watch "starting over."

both deidre and the duet album of lisa gerrard and pieter bourke, "duality" (i know, terribly obscure, that's what the imeem link is for) remind me of two separate trips to canada with david. we listened to "duality" on repeat simply because we forgot to change it when we went to toronto for new year's of '06. i think we forgot to change it because we were having an entirely perfect time together. and the deirdre album was during our trip to montreal and quebec city about five or six months later. that trip was not as entirely perfect, and it's only recently i haven't skipped all of her songs as soon as they came up on shuffle.

there's this sort of crazy-beautiful version of "que sera sera" by pink martini that reminds me of riding the train into manhattan from astoria in july, when i first moved to new york. i used to stare out the window (as the train was elevated with a view of developing long island city) and imagined it as the score to some strange little movie about a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. who do you think played the woman? this girl!

eisley reminds me of my first boyfriend, and the camping trip we took, replete with his first attempt to fully take my virginity. he failed, but a week later, he finally snatched it away. the frou frou album "details" was playing on his stereo. alas, alas, imogen heap's voice will always be what heralded in my loss of innocence. eisley was fitting for the pre-loss of innocence period, though.

in melbourne, i bought a cd off a guy on the street who played the dulcimer, and the first track always brings me back into the kitchen of the flat of someone i dated there, and probably not long after had a terribly dramatic falling-out with. sometimes i skip that track too.

"so unsexy" by alanis morissette will always be a sort of staple song for me, and will always bring me back to my dorm room in sophomore year, and the lyric that finally broke me, and how i stood there, half dressed after a shower, doubled over crying, finally.

always, as soon as i reach the chorus of "breaking up" by rilo kiley, i'm back on that liberating walk up 8th avenue one strange night i'm not going to tell you about.


it seems the most salient songs are the ones that bring me back to dramatic moments, not necessarily sad ones, but not exuberantly happy. i think it's one thing to call out the songs that made you happy, the ones that filled you with joy or reaffirmed something beautiful about the world, but what's so much more affecting are the songs that, to take another lyric from today's title's song, recognize the pain in you. it's not, "oh, wow, someone gets it." it's just...y'know, i found the soundtrack to my journey. to this journey. to this far-reaching, world-crossing, soul-stirring journey. it was a genuine pleasure to find this song. but this is obviously one of many journeys, and one that stands out far more than so many of the others, because it outshines them. it is a beacon in the horizon, a lighthouse on a welcomed shore.

but when you're all out at sea, and you don't know what direction you're going in, and everything's either pitch black or shrouded in fog, despite the fact that you can't see where you should go or what you should do you can at least hear someone saying, "you're lost." that in and of itself is reassurance enough sometimes. that's just enough light, maybe not to point you in the right direction, but at least a hint that the right direction will eventually start to shine through, and you'll be sailing towards home in no time.

Friday, July 11, 2008

how many acres, how much light


i got a man to stick it out
and make a home from a rented house
and we'll collect the moments one by one

i guess that's how the future's done

i'm so "mushaboom" today. which i think is a good thing. i think i was sort of a mess two days ago (as per the post, which was basically "well, so fucking what that I'm going to australia--no one cares, and no one should!" good god, angela chase) and i think that's entirely normal when your whole life is changing. you kind of pull a meryl streep and just run the gamut of emotions until they give you an oscar. i'm not going to judge too harshly, though. i think we're all allowed to just go through it. and anyway, my horoscope said my emotions were going to be kooky, and i should just allow them to be. and you know my feelings on my horoscope.

***

so i've been having these moments of enlightenment lately that, in intensity, land somewhere between finding the last missing puzzle piece and a visit from that angel with 8 vaginas in "angels in america." it happened last week on the c train. it happened again last night during spinning. yeah, i know. you usually check your enlightenment at the door at new york sports club, but i guess mine found a dark corner of my gym bag and made its way in.

i don't mean to necessarily turn this into a whole self-help thing, because y'know, i could. i'm actually quite embarrassed by my efforts to clean up my life. i mean, i'm happy to talk about the really awful therapist i saw in new york for a couple months (who, during our final session, pulled out every trick she had, including telling me she felt i have a habit of sadomasochistic relationships; yes, just call me mistress susan) but i would only rarely mention the therapist i had in college who was basically the best thing to happen to me since i cracked the parental controls on america online when i was 14.

essentially, though:

always an impassioned topic of discussion: "best crying jag you ever had."

only when i'm really drunk, and only that
special sentimental drunk that usually comes with gin: "the importance of falling in love."

never: "have you ever read anything by louise hay?"

there's a total stigma about self-help. i think it's the cheesy book covers, the overwrought titles, the general idea that there's something terminally wrong with you, something you should be able to shake off, drink off, fuck away, sleep on, whatever. and granted, i'm really picky about how i help myself. i mean, i totally drank the kool-aid with eckhart tolle, "the power of now" and "a new earth" and all. but that shit has oprah's stamp of approval. and it's pretty brilliant. it's all basically based in buddhist beliefs anyway, and second to kabbalah, buddhism is like the coolest faith you can claim.

(as bjork says, though, "i'm no fucking buddhist, but this is enlightenment.")

other than that brilliant little troll eckhart, though, it's only a smattering of this and that. i just want to see what people have to say about life and relationships and who we are and what the hell we're doing here. i feel like it's what i was supposed to do before leaving for australia, get myself into this headspace or this place where i'm open for exploring and changing and seeing life in a new way. well, that and read "eat, pray, love."

don't get me started on "eat, pray, love." really, don't. i fucking loved "eat, pray, love." okay, okay, fine, towards the end i was not as keen on it, once it got a little plotty, but i will forgive the love story with the brazilian guy and that business with the healing woman in bali, if only because she spent so much of the beginning of the book talking about having snotty cries on the bathroom floor. (see, there i go again.) and i think the portion of the book that takes place in india (the titular "pray") is really fantastic stuff, and a terrific portrait of a person truly coming to peace with their life, and not perfectly. she still cries on the floor a few times, she's largely awful at meditating for a while, and it takes a wildly spiritual experience to finally exorcise her ex-husband from her heart.

most of all, i love it because--how terribly self-absorbed, which, coincidentally, is a large criticism many have with this book--when jay handed it to me, ordering me to just ignore its popularity and read it, he insisted, "this woman is you." and not just, "ha ha, she's also really bad at being in intimate relationships with men." which she is. except when she talked about how crazy she would get the closer she got to a guy, i just sort of nodded and said, "yeah, right, that totally does happen!" but truly, i identified with elizabeth gilbert and her quest for soul-deep salvation 100%. i mean, i think it says a lot that by the third part of the book, she's courting a man in his 50's. even if i kind of wanted her to just be single and happy, i also thought, "wow, he sounds kind of hot." and i thought i was ashamed of self-help.

strangely enough, my mother called me one night, while i was actually eating dinner and reading the book, and i started telling her, "so, i'm reading this book, i think you'd really like it. jay said, and i quote, 'this woman is you.'"

my mom: "stop. i know exactly what book you're talking about. 'eat,pray,love'? oh my god, this woman is totally you."

we were at similar points in the book when we talked, and equally enthralled with the story. and it was kind of like one of those moments in your early adulthood, once the childishness of your teens and college years wears off, when you realize how you kind of would maybe hang out with your mom if she wasn't your mom. (that would be one of those "missing puzzle piece" enlightenments of the last month or two.)

that being said, my going to australia is not like my own personal version of "eat, pray, love." i'm afraid of getting fat, i don't like meditating, and...well, as for the love part, who knows. i've been willingly celibate for almost three months now, in a vow of chastity to accompany my overall self-purification and preparation for australia. (which i'm making sound more like preparation for a colonoscopy, yes, i know.) i'm not saying i'm going to land in melbourne and fuck the first baggage handler i can find (and how terribly, terribly ironic and symbolic that would be). i think it's really maybe a bit more like...well, "eat, pray, love." by the time she meets the brazilian and considers accepting his totally romantic and endearing attempts to woo her, it's not out of pent-up sexual frustration that she jumps into bed with him (she admits to masturbating her way through her great journey of self-discovery; pun totally welcomed) but because maybe it's time. she's learned how to love herself, maybe it's time to learn how to love someone else.

that's what the self-help books teach you.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

i laughed when you were leaving so you'd remember me that way

i think when you suggest a sort of outlandish idea to people--y'know, like, "maybe i'll move to australia for no discernible reason"--it's a bit like an improbable party trick. everyone's a little drunk, and laughs along with the idea, the "wow, what if" of it all, but no one actually expects you to do it. you'll chicken out or flub it up somehow, and with a "nice try" and a pat on the back, you're sent back to the kitchen for another drink.

i don't want to belabor the point. i get it, you get it. it's not the most daring or death-defying thing anyone's ever done. i'm certainly not moving to south africa to set up a community center for the poor, uneducated, and hiv-positive, like someone else i know. that's pretty fucking amazing. i'm moving to "america with a couple drinks in her." i'm moving to the "quirky friend" of western civilization's clique of nations. i don't actually know what i'm doing there, sure, and who knows--in a few months, i could be reporting from my very own burgeoning community center in the outback, toughening up my hands and my heart--but i say this with as much compassion as possible: i seriously doubt it.

i mean, yeah, maybe i'll train for a marathon that raises money for aids research, but dear postsecret: i'm doing it to get in better shape.

i wouldn't be jerking off in the mirror like this ("wow, look at this incredible thing i'm doing!") if it wasn't for the questions. not mine, of course, but the big questions that have come in response to this decision i've made. i thought i'd have more questions myself. i thought i'd have doubts. and for brief flashes, during quiet, unexpected moments of the day (pulling on my socks, tying up the garbage, that time at the water fountain), i do sometimes wonder how the hell i'm going to pull this off. but for the most part, and this is my stock answer to everyone, i'm just going to figure it out as i go.

i don't take other people's doubts or skepticism personally. i know it's not a reflection of me. i think it's generally understood--and duly noted--that it takes balls just to decide to do this. you don't lose those balls over the pacific somewhere. i know i can do this, you know i can do this. well. i know i can do this.

jay and i had dinner last weekend, and i was almost caught off-guard when he said, "i feel like you're going to stay like six months, and then leave and come back. move to, like, boston, or something."

"what makes you say that?" i said, having to make the solid resolution not to get defensive. but jay knows how i work, as he pointedly mentioned, "i know, now you'll stay forever, because you hate being told what to do," so unabashedly, buttons were pushed.

"well," he said, "i just feel like it's going to be kind of...i don't know, it's a hard situation to make a life out of." he expressed the same concern everyone has and is being reasonable to consider: how are you really going to support yourself down there? y'know, essentially asking me to give something more than my stock answer.

what did i say?

"i don't know, i'm just going to figure it out as i go."

i was talking about it with laura today, because she lives in boston and because i know she and jay talked about this before he talked about it with me. she of course asked, "well, do you like boston?" and told me she'd be happy to have me come visit.

i essentially thanked her but expressed total bafflement as to why i'd actually leave australia, and at that, move to boston in the dead of winter.

"oh no, don't move here in the winter," she said. "that'd be ridiculous."

we volleyed back and forth about it for a bit, as i resisted crying out (as much as one can on g-chat), "the point is i'm not going to quit on australia!" she finally called it, though, when she asked me, "you're feeling a bit unsupported right now, huh?"

which is sort of an immature emotional response for me, i think. but she made another good point in saying, "you're doing what so many people want to do so bad, or joke about doing but never do."

it's kind of humbling. and i tossed the idea around later, walking home from the subway. i guess i was thinking about people in my neighborhood--the woman who works at the laundromat, the quartet always playing checkers at the fold-out table on the sidewalk, all the young moms--and if they were given the opportunity to up and leave their lives, would they do it. granted, the great american story is that so many of these people did up and leave their lives, and are here now living a better life. new york may be a total snake pit to me, but to plenty of people, it's pretty much the best thing since sliced fucking whole wheat.

and i guess the larger point is that i'm not responsible for their stories. i'm not responsible for the coworker who told me, "i've always wanted to do that, but with a husband and three kids, i'm pretty much tied down here." or for the old acquaintance from high school who said, "i'm not brave enough to do that."
or for every person who's said, "i've always wanted to see australia" but never will.

and the grass is always greener. to be in a relationship with a man that actually loves you, like my coworker. to work seven days a week to save up for one of the most prestigious business schools in the country, like the high school friend. to insist on making a life in new york, despite the odds, despite the costs, despite the challenges, and to actually be doing a damn good job of it, like so many people here i know. to face your present life, every day, good, bad, or cruelly indifferent, and not have a rabbit hole to jump down and disappear into, off to another land, another life, a fresh clean start where everyone thinks you're something special for hauling your shit ten thousand miles away from home just for fuck's sake.

that's pretty incredible to me.

what am i doing? i don't know what i'm doing. so when everyone asks the questions--those unanswerable questions that i keep revisiting, that i keep questioning, that i keep walking around and peering into and poking at but never actually fulfilling with a response--i have to say, "i'm just going to figure it out as i go." what other choice do i have?

"i assume this is a really personal 'journey' of sorts," laura said today. "not many other people will get it."

i don't blame them. i don't really get it either. and truth be told: i'm scared. i'm scared of staying and i'm scared of going. it's a bit like doing a high dive. i'm intimidated by how far i am from the water, but i'm just as scared being this far up above the ground. i can either stay here in paralyzing fear, or i can let go, take the leap, and dive head first into life.


Tuesday, July 8, 2008

i'm in love with illusions, so saw me in half

last month, jay picked up "the queer issue" of the village voice, a publication i remember fondly from my pubescence for its pages of male escort ads and gay chat lines at the back. i still feel something illicit when perusing the voice, that feeling of slipping behind a beaded curtain as you get to the end of an issue, peeking over your shoulder in case anyone should be looking.

porn is nothing in comparison to the village voice classifieds, and i've seen plenty of both to compare. the classifieds are beyond wanking material. i'm far too intimidated to even check and see if i'm feeling anything between my legs. i'm fascinated, as if i were twelve again, not quite understanding how this whole world exists, and at my naive little fingertips.

i only gave a cursory glance at the ads in "the queer issue." i was caught up in the features, like, "where's all the public sex in new york nowadays?" and "straight guys who like it up the ass." you try and turn the page.

and it's only natural, with my affinity for psychic readings, self-help books, and st. john's wort, that i would also be ravenous for horoscopes. all i'm gonna say is there have been times in my life when horoscopes.astrology.com was spot-fucking-on.

but the village voice, you old queen, you really called it.

here's aquarius:

now that we're at the halfway mark, aquarius, let's take stock: by now, you should have banished at least half the ghosts that were pestering you. by august, you should have neutralized, dissolved, or rendered irrelevant a load of weird karma, and said goodbye to parts of your past that were bogging you down. by january 1, 2009, i hope you'll have laid to rest a broken dream, escaped a dead end, and ended your relationship with a lost cause. if you've spent the last six months earnestly engaged in this tough, messy work, it won't be anywhere near as tough and messy during the next six months.

suffice it to say, i just about lost my shit reading that. banished ghosts, the grand karmic turning point of august, the relationship with a lost cause--all that tough, messy work! i suspect only jay might really be nodding at this point, maybe raising a hand in a gospel-like amen, but trust me on this one. chances are, i'll get sidetracked along the way in australia or a story will necessitate a flashback--the day after i finally bought my plane ticket to australia, and i cried so hard i thought i was going to pass out; the hiv test from hell; my father, ah, the strange, uninhabitable island of my father--but at this point, consider me a reliable narrator, as best you can, when i say that this horoscope is the shit.

Monday, July 7, 2008

i'm not unfaithful, but i'll stray...

i've quite clearly inherited the neurotic belief from my mother that my inner turmoil is directly reflected by the state of my external surroundings. in short: if i feel like my life is a mess, i should clean the house. that somehow will tend to things. mind you, in my recent campaign to make sense of myself and my life, i've discovered there is some direct truth in this. whatever you're feeling or going through will somehow be "responded to" or well-accompanied by the world at large. every day is beautiful when you're in love. everyone's an asshole when you've had a bad day at work. so forth and so on.

so it should go together like wine and cheese that i'm feeling like ophelia on acid today, and my apartment is an absolute nightmare. i mean, i've more or less tolerated this place for the last eleven months or so, but i swear to god, today, i hate every little thing about it. i want a nasty divorce from this apartment, replete with thrown dishes, screamed expletives, and doors slammed off the hinge.

one time, during the tumultuous marriage of my parents, my father came home with flowers, i assume as a sort of peace offering for something so much more awful than flowers can heal. my mother was in the kitchen chopping vegetables for dinner. my father, with some words of warmth, offered her the bouquet, and my mother, without missing a beat, took the flowers, threw them down on the cutting board, and chopped the blooms from the stems in one fell swoop, then reached for another carrot.

i want that with my apartment.

so what am i going to do today? clean, of course. i hadn't been food shopping in weeks, and officially had nothing left to eat except maybe some frozen corn, so i just got back from whole foods. and so--once again, much like my mother; honestly, oedipus--that will spark cleaning out the refrigerator, which will lead to cleaning out the entire kitchen, and of course, tending to the pile of dishes in the sink that, for once, are not mine but now have flies wandering in and standing water fermenting. really, it's like a completely unappetizing version of "if you give a mouse a cookie." he's gonna want to have a nervous breakdown.

i suppose it doesn't help that the furniture is slowly disappearing, and with it, any sense of domesticity about the place. jay gave away our living room furniture about a month or so ago, and just sold off his entire bedroom yesterday. besides a mattress and box spring on the floor, and a multi-purpose ironing board, my room is and has always been a little tragic looking. i don't know, i never wanted furniture for my room, despite having the space for it. maybe it was a subconscious realization that i shouldn't have too many material ties to this place. i never truly committed to a relationship with this apartment. it was essentially a rebound home that lasted a lot longer than it should have. but where could we go? we stayed out of necessity, and because time, like everything else, moves so much faster in new york. our lease would be up in no time, and, we once thought, we would move to a nicer neighborhood, maybe further down the island a bit...

now jay leaves in two weeks, and i leave in three. a week later, i'll be in the air, flying towards australia, and completely enthralled with the idea that my entire life is packed up in a handful of bags. i may never live on the upper west side, and i'll certainly never have that quintessential gay new york life in chelsea or the west village or wherever the gays end up congregating next. (lately, it's been looking a bit like washington heights, even.) there was a time i really wanted all of that. it was this sense that being gay (and rich and successful and in good shape and possibly in a relationship or at least having boatloads of great sex...) in new york was bit like being in the vip club. perhaps that, to me, was what it meant to "make it" in new york.

but lately, it's been a lot like a versace t-shirt. it costs a hundred bucks and doesn't look or fit any better than what you could get for a fraction of the cost at h&m. so why waste all your money?

the label, of course.

i'll never be that, and maybe that's part of the reason i'm also leaving new york. y'know, that list of questions that i don't really have an answer to? this is a partial answer. i'm not new york. i was "seeing" someone months ago, in that way that i "saw" a lot of guys in new york: with the horse blinders on. he asked me once, "where are you from?" i told him new jersey, originally.

"yeah," he said. "i figured you weren't a native new yorker. you're too nice."

i never called him again after that, so go figure.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

but now i'm gold...

i've been to australia before, y'know.

sure, i've done the "down under" thing already. saw kangaroos, experienced vegemite's salty awful wonder, drank like it was a sport, watched sports the way some people drink (excessively), realized the brilliant combination of potato wedges, sour cream, and sweet chili sauce, and never quite duplicated it in the states despite having all necessary ingredients. i understand now the allure of "big brother," the royalty of kylie, and an alternate meaning for the word "root" that has nothing to do with trees or hair, unless you're into that sort of thing. i adore "kath and kim" as if they were reflecting my own piss-elegant upbringing, as if it didn't take multiple viewings and a number of kindly translators to tell me the punchline. i know what a holden is. i know not to ask about the aborigines. (i know, they apologized. good on ya.) i know how to respond to the question, "how ya going?" (and the answer isn't, "i don't know, i'll probably take the bus.") i know foster's is toilet water, even if i do drink passion pop with little shame. i'm all about the word "pram." total fixation.

in a little less than six months, i managed to drink too much, work too little, travel not enough, and generally regret only occasionally. i made a lot of really fantastic friends, crossed paths with an interesting carnival of men, and maybe even fell in love. but i had a return flight in the middle of july, right in the slow-beating heart of a melbourne winter, and i had a life back in america that needed to be lived out. so i told the friends, the boys, the sights, the sounds, the tastes and smells, that i would be back one day. let's just keep in touch.

it'll be exactly two years in about a week and a half. about this time, i was maybe still in sydney, for an extended visit with someone who i thought would be my most salient souvenir from a country and period of time that completely changed my life. about this time, we were probably having a conversation in his car and deciding that we would just let life play out however it did, and if this thing was meant to cross oceans, it would sprout wings and do just that.

two years later, maybe i'm saying the same thing, having the exact same conversation. but it's a whole different scenario now. i'm alone now, quite blissfully, and this "thing" with wings is so much more than that ever turned out to be. this "thing" with wings, how treacly poetic, is me. that's all. that's a lot, but that's all. my baggage has been checked, my past has been forgiven, and my future is just a wide-open sky. in about four weeks time, i'll be cleared for take-off.

i've made the decision--or perhaps discovered it, already made and ready for me to take--that i will be returning to australia. the decision has been greeted with mostly wowed excitement, followed by a series of fair questions: why australia? what are you going to do there? are you going to work? how long will you be there? do you realize what you're giving up by leaving new york?

(ah, that last one, a perhaps not-so-generous paraphrase of my last therapist's own skepticism. suffice it to say, she and i are no longer acquainted.)

i guess i don't really know the answer to any of those questions. and to be entirely honest, it feels so fucking good. the last thing I want to know right now is the answer to anything. i have a sense of the answer, even to the last question. do i know what i'm giving up by leaving new york, the great xanadu on the hudson, the metropolis of promise, the bastion of all hopes large and small? well, besides a handful of really very wonderful friends, a job that seems to mostly offer promise for next year but general malaise for this year, and pizza at any hour of the day or night, i think i'm giving up nothing. i'm letting go of a lot. that's for sure. but the sacrifice i'm offering up hardly honors the cause.

* * *

in light of leaving, i can't help but think of new york's proud little slogan, or rather, what people outside of new york say about it: if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. facetiously, i wonder what that means if you can't make it here, if you are in fact doomed down the evolutionary ladder until you find some tiny midwestern hamlet where you do, indeed, finally make it. and what does it mean to "make it" or not? it seems the real theme of living in new york is that you're never quite there. you're always climbing, reaching, striving.

with my exit right around the corner, i have to resist wondering if perhaps i have not made it in new york. but that, of course, is ridiculous. i totally made it in new york. i could continue to make it. as i knew would happen, in the eleventh hour of my new york life, i've started to see a softening around the edges of this life i've been cobbling together for over a year now. i'm making and keeping and developing terrific friendships. i'm excelling at my job even if i do largely hate it and probably would have quit if australia did not give me a good enough reason to recently give a three-week notice. i'm single and off the scene for a while, and it has been incredibly restorative. i think my perceptions of sex and relationships have matured and developed, and it's a genuine relief to not be fucking the pain away anymore.

in short, lately i've been really getting my shit together, and if i had to make new york work for a few more years, i have total confidence that i would be able to. but i don't want to. my heart does not want to. and i guess maybe life's just too short to pass up the opportunity to truly listen to your heart and see where it takes you.

it just so happens my heart is taking me to australia.