9.28.2006
Choose Your Own Adventure
I read the end of the book first because the journey, to me, is more enjoyable if I know where it's going to end. That is not to say that I am not spontaneous. I would gladly go to the airport and jump on the first flight I could afford. Charge a pair of shoes without the finances to cover it.
I like to know how the story ends because it's easier to appreciate the details. You can revel in the subtle twists and turns of the road if you know where the sojourn leads you. Even if you know the car drives off a cliff at the end.
Perhaps it is only my heart that I do not choose to gamble with. Life is full of pain. If you know you can find a way to avoid some of the anguish, sidestep unforseen ambush, why not try? Or, if you know what will hurt is unavoidable, you can avoid the shock if not the injury.
I told The Ex today that if I knew, in the end, when I am slow and old and undesirable, that he would be there again, holding my hand. Then, none of this time would hurt as much. I could let it all go. None of this would matter. I would enjoy my singular bacchanalia even more. Ever the practicalist, he would not indulge my delusion.
Besides, I'm not sure my assesment is true. I'm not sure of anything anymore. And now, although I live dangerously, perhaps foolishly at times, it is not because I have the comfort of certitude. I don't take risks with my body and my life because I know the last chapter. But, if I'm going to some unknown destination and if I'm going it alone, I'm going there in flames.
File under: Risky Business, Suspense, Probability.
9.24.2006
Meet Cherry.
I have to hate you, she said. You know too much about me to be trusted.9.15.2006
69% of this is a cliche
It is my understanding that all people in couples eventually find something that they want to change about their partners. I wish he'd do the dishes more often. I wish she would go down on me more often. Some change is more demanding: wishing for their most meaningful mate to look different, smell different, talk different. Be a different person. No matter the degree of reasonableness of the desired change, what becomes more important is how much the something is worth compromising for. How much the love is worth, in the end.I wanted The Ex to change things that I shouldn't have asked for. And I wanted things to change for him in ways that he willingly wanted to change within himself. And he did the same for me. He wanted me to admit I could be in love, to soften my heart. To admit that I could want things that others willingly spend their lives seeking: commitment, partnership, comfort.
Eventually, sadly, we reached a point where we couldn't change our individual selves for the better for as long as we were together.
What's shocking to me is that I still expect him/things to change even after we have parted ways. I want him to be something he cannot/will not be even in the death of our relationship. We wanted to try to be friends post breakup, to prove the world wrong. You can love someone for over half of your life and part ways and still be friends. Maybe you can still even have sex. Occasionally.
But, I'm starting to doubt that can be. Because I still want him to be something that he simply cannot be. I want him to be the friend he cannot be. I want for me to be more open-minded and self-assured than I am.
I want things to change and not hurt so damn much.
I am sad that whatever it is I want or need will probably never be. I am sad because despite my years of outward cynicism, I always wanted to believe and that's what stopped me from being a bitter folk singer in a coffehouse. Or a hermit in a log cabin in the woods.
And I'm sad because I just don't believe anymore.
9.12.2006
Autumn in New York . . .
. . .is often mingled with pain.One day, at the Loaf, I went to the bookstore.
There, I encountered my friend, Adam, in the process of a wonderful project. He wanted to make a harmonica holder out of found objects in the bookstore -- pencils, binder clips, shelf brackets. In that moment, I dubbed my adroit friend, Harmonicaguyver.
Recently, he posted this lovely essay on his site about that sense of loss and emptiness one experiences when a good thing ends. I'm missing a lot of things right now, not the least of which is my mind.
Summer is over. The weather is cooling and everywhere I look people are binding themselves together like molecules. My best friend reminded me the other night that Autumn is my favorite season, a time of year when I thrive. And he is right. In undergrad, every fall I got a 4.0. I am great at fashionable layering. "I'll dispose of my rose-colored chattels and prepare for my share of adventures and battles." Billie sang that for me.
People who love fall are masochists because it's a season that is as much about beginnings as ends. It's a time when change creates great things and hurts like hell. And we revel in it.
File under: Bread Loaf, Autumn, Harmonica.
9.02.2006
.0001% of my future is certain
I read a story about a lesbian woman who went on foreign study and had an intimate relationship with a straight man. Others who read the story expressed confusion about the logistics of such a relationship. "But she's gay!" they insisted. "She can't do that!"A particularly wise woman made a comment that clarified an issue which has caused me some heartache. She said, "It's very possible to have an intense moment of passion with someone while still affirming the opposite emotion."
She meant, naturally, that kissing a boy would not un-gay this lesbian woman. If anything, because she felt relatively unmoved by the act, it only offered further proof that she is, in fact, homosexual.
Recently, I have ventured into the world of casual sex and found it to be anything but. It can actually be quite stressful, or at least the obtaining of it can be. Sex is a fantastic and exciting thing. It's wonderful to get to know a new body. Engaging the senses to consume someone previously unknown. Living a life without passion, one might as well be dead.
And yet, the further the territory I choose to explore, the more I am sure of what I know is my home. I only hope, when we get to the end of this road, that he will still feel the same about me.
Name:Miss Marisol
Location:Manhattan, New York, United States
"As only New Yorkers know, If you can get through the twilight, You'll live through the night." -- Dorothy Parker
(And by "queer," I mean different, though some are, in fact "queer." But not in the pejorative sense.)
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