The First Question Will Be: What Were You Thinking?

Dear [You],

Last week I was walking back from The Y, it was getting colder like it was about to rain and I was listening to depressing music because happy music is so you know, fundamentally dishonest. I was thinking about how it was looking like I’d probably end up spending Christmas alone this year (I did) and how last year I’d planned to spend it alone but Alex made me spend it with her family and I’m glad she did that. I’ve always said ‘I prefer to be alone’ but I realize now I’ve been lying about that. I just don’t mind being alone, but good company could be better than none.

I could be alone forever. Maybe that was a thing we could've done forever, together.

I don’t think you realize how much I miss you. But that’s what happens in arguments like these when everybody’s right/wrong and nobody makes sense and at the end of the day it’s me being me and you being you.

Last year I spent Thanksgiving alone but this year Haviland and her friend Ashley came up from LA -- it’s my fourth Thanksgiving with Haviland. You and me weren’t talking much then. I wondered what you were making and if I’d ruined it.

When Haviland & Ashley arrived the night before Thanksgiving, I was still in the hospital. Not a big deal but when you don’t have health insurance, everything’s an emergency, like having a pager in the 90s. After bcw/m. got off work, she met me there and I drank Dr. Pepper and we did a crossword puzzle and about a billion hours later, I was called back.

I’d been sitting on a bed back there for an hour when Haviland marched in and extracted me. It was very cinematic. I'd been in a screaming match with the senile World War II veteran who’d been yelling about the Chinese & the Jews and calling the nurses the n-word and then said something about my ‘tits.’

It’s sad when a person’s dying / sick / drunk and you learn how they really feel.

You don’t want to know how anyone really feels.

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We left the hospital in Ashley’s Prius and it felt like a spaceship. I felt like everything was gonna be okay. I leaned -- or burrowed, really -- into m.’s shoulder, in that space between collarbone and chest and I felt so safe in there, in that car, with those people. Everything felt easy and peaceful in a way things haven’t felt in a while. Old love, new love, the future.

I’d moved into my apartment two weeks before Thanksgiving, after spending ~6 weeks on Taylor & Kelsey’s couch where every morning Taylor would make coffee or I would and Kelsey always woke up last, look who just got born. Most afternoons I’d be in m.’s living room -- smoking, writing, editing, talking to you on g-chat. I know you say I never talked to you then but I did.

Kids kept killing themselves in October. I feel like I’m working the suicide beat, I said.

Or m. would arrive at TK's looking defeated from the endless interrogation that'd been unleashed upon her after being brave enough to say to her now-ex, This is how I feel, and how I feel is that this is over.

You don’t want to know how anyone really feels. Honesty was never the point, we just need to believe that it is in order to do anything at all.

The key was to avoid eye contact. Maybe then we could avoid seeing eye-to-eye or looking too long but people are animals and animals are magnets w/hearts sometimes.

This was when I was still allowed to go there; to the apartment m. & her ex still shared while she looked for somewhere new/the future. But things happen and you can’t just go everywhere anymore. Things happen and people cry and your boxes are in the street.

People tell each other how they really feel, and then everybody’s crying.

You don’t want to know how anyone really feels.

That’s how life is. It’s fair. A person gets what a person deserves or sometimes gets what someone else deserves by proxy which is also your fault.

If life was all open doors and purple sunsets then it wouldn’t mean as much when the sunset would be so beautiful that you actually stop to kiss on the sidewalk. Even assholes like me can do that, I know that now. I can see the sun rise and set every day in California and usually it would set while we were taking our daily walk like old people needing a stretch. To Safeway, Berkeley, Piedmont, the city. Or just around. Sometimes we’d just walk around.

What if trees and sky were all I needed and I was just afraid to be a thing worthy of light? What then.

By the end of the month most of the walks were to look at apartments. First for me, then later for her.

I feel like everything is about to change for everyone, including you.

The thing that's blown my mind for the past few months is how people will hang on to a thing that's completely stopped working, if it ever did -- that is, the ex-girlfriends of many of my friends; the ex-girlfriends who fought to keep a tired thing or fought just to make sure everyone felt equally attacked. It's savage. It just feels so savage to me and I can't shake it.

Why spend your life sitting in a car on the side of the road, hazards blinking like a wolf crying.

All I really want in life is to never want a thing that doesn't want me back. Maybe that's even worse. I don't know how to fight for a person. I'm learning with you, even though it's not like 'that.'

No. I'm not learning.

But I'm studying.

++

On Thanksgiving m. moved into her new place and Haviland was here and everything felt easy except you, and we'd tried so long to run in opposite directions and still ended up where we ended up so I knew by then there wasn't any way to fix it. And that's the worst part. Someone on formspring asked me why isn't love enough? And I think I said, it is. Gotta give 'em hope, you know.

m. & Ashley made Vegan Thanksgiving ‘cause Hav only eats twigs now. Then m. played guitar and they all sang while I watched. It was super gay/perfect.

I love how I took Emily’s part and you took Amy’s, Haviland said to m., like we didn’t even have to discuss it.

The next night we played frisbee on the quiet street and I was wearing tights but can’t remember why. Later on we got stoned and I was talking about feeling psychic and Ashley asked me if I felt like I might have had wings in another life. Like that I could’ve been an angel or something.

You know better than that, though, don’t you. You know I’m not an angel.

Haviland has a lot of feelings about light now. Maybe I would’ve laughed at them in August but now it’s December and I like them. This is a thing she said to me:

Haviland: “You are choosing light now and I cannot explain the massive difference I see. You can’t control [people], you can only wish for them to make the light choice and keep doing it yourself. And surround yourself with other lightworkers.”

thanksgiving 2010

[I was lying before when I told you I liked the darkness. It was a defense mechanism, for when the other kids would be splashing away the goldenest years of their brilliant athletic youths and I’d be sulking inside with a book.]

[I didn’t know the darkness was a thing I could change.]

[I couldn't. Not in New York. In New York I loved the darkness. But I'm almost 30 so I have to stop that.]

++

Anyhow I was talking about Christmas, how I was walking back from the Y and thinking what if I bought a ticket to where you are. What if I just showed up. What would you do then. I thought about your hands over your face going no-no-no and pushing the door away and I almost cried for a second but didn’t.

I don’t cry much lately but I did the night I sent you that terrible email. It was lots of things: a fruitless day at the health clinic, my family losing interest it seeing me for the holidays and doing so too late for me to make other plans (but that’s unfair, probably, like “will you buy me a plane ticket ‘cause i can’t afford one myself” isn’t necessarily the best barometer of love). But mostly I was crying about you.

I do cry about you, I have cried about you. In the afternoon with pre-sunset whiskey, on my bed in child's pose at night, scrunched up like a baby dinosaur (my spirit animal).

I want you to like me again. I want you to admit that you still love me. I want you to admit that you know we still love you but that would be admitting that we’re not bad people and then you’d have to like me again.

What if me and you were just two people who met somewhere else at some other time. Like we were astronauts who spent too much time eating astronaut ice cream and not enough time shooting valiantly to the stars. What if we were waitresses together, smoking cigarettes and waiting for our rides after a dinner shift, blowing smoke valiantly towards the stars above us.

What if we were those people instead of who we are.

What if we were infinite? What if we were infinite and I showed up on your doorstep and said I know you don’t want to be fixed, but I heard from a friend who heard from a friend that you said you felt broken.

What then.

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You deserve/need a giant girl with a heart bigger than your whole body -- I'm not just talking about you now but also you and you and you. You’d sleep cradled in the scoop of her enormous ribcage, which’d be larger than a significant tropical body of water like the Gulf of Mexico. Lake Huron. Swan Lake. What you need is a heart bigger than a jet plane. Higher and faster and bigger.

Not just you, all of you.

What if my little heart’s more like a motel where you can sleep for a while but someone else might need the room tomorrow and I’ve gotta clean it first. It’s on a little brown raft crawling out to sea/see. What if I kept you there though.

Do you remember last October when everyone was partying in the room after the Equality March and I was sitting in the hotel hallway talking to you on the phone. I’m obsessed with how socks feel on hotel hallway carpet, dashing to see friends in the next room. For ice or something. What’s funny is earlier that day we’d been on the National Mall and m. and julia were both there too but I didn’t know them yet. I could hear Tess talking and Katrina loud-talking and Alex laughing because Alex has the best laugh in the whole world. She was/is/willalwaysbe my little lightworker, and the lightest thing I ever held in New York.

Do you remember that?

I’ve got rooms & rooms and my socks on the carpet and they’re filled with you all of you and I wanna live in every room forever but that would mean believing I'd ever been invited.

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Everyone tells me you just need time but I miss you all the time. How long is time. I don’t think we’re meant to understand these things.

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I can’t explain why it’s true that I love you in this/that way but can’t always be the thing you want. Nobody’s made me want to be everything as much as you have. I tried to do everything from here which is so far away from a place where I could touch your face and I ended up doing the worst thing of all the things.

It's a thing.

So many things can be true at the same time. Different feelings at the same time.

+

I never expected more than one (now dead) person could ever love me. I thought you were all lying. Now I don’t know what to do with all the people who probably really do love me but who I know, i KNOW, would not really like me if they met me, even if they’ve already met me. Every time someone tells me they love me, it feels like a surprise party.

I’m sorry I didn’t believe any of you who said you loved me. I’m sorry I just don’t know why you would, it just doesn’t make sense like why anyone would love Love Actually or beef jerky.

I realize I'm comparing myself to a bad romantic comedy and a piece of meat but maybe that's actually the most perfect metaphor I've ever pulled on you.

I was lying when I said I hate everyone. I love everyone. Everyone I've ever loved; I love forever. It's a long list.

I was lying when I said I hate everyone. I love everyone.

That’s the problem, Sid.

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Sometime in October, my little heart slipped out on its own. I wasn’t unhappy. I think I was just outside. You weren’t the only one who complained and still even now I don’t know what happened because I don’t remember changing. Everything seemed perfectly natural and I loved you and everyone just the same.

It’d been so long since the world promised up oxygen I was semi-interested in breathing. I wasn’t writing things down because when you write a thing down it starts to exist. Sometimes i need to keep my stories in my head, close to me where nobody else can see them.

What if I tell you a thing and then I lose track of the meat of it, like a pen or my sanity.

What if I showed up on your doorstep.

My little heart was dashing around in slow motion or slipping into patches of darkness with m. where nobody could see us and we could forget about the rest of it -- an overhanging tree, some ambitious cross-fence foliage -- on Oakland’s night-time sidewalks. Corners. The damp, lukewarm California night. Fingertips. Her palms. My bones were on fire.

One night all four of us got kicked out of the hot tub, when only moments earlier there we were being sparkly wet and unemployed and fucked up in California at night in a tub of hot water with our shirts off? Stumbling home later, like sparkly wet animals? It was a Saturday night, it was a good night.

The feeling of being young. Not in the sense that I’m younger in years, but that feeling children have of life being totally infinite and incomprehensible.

++

Signing for my apartment in my apartment when it was still somebody else’s apartment

So now my life is pretty simple. I wake up and do Autostraddle and sometimes go to The Y, or take a walk alone, and at some point later, m. gets off work and at some point she comes here or I go there. Then I burrow like a thing. Like I'm a thing who laughs and smiles and everything.

I didn’t consider the possibility of this.

I don’t consider possibilities, good or bad, that I don’t have control over. My problem is expectations, my boyfriend said to me in high school on the dock of Green Lake, I just need to stop expecting anything, and then I won’t be disappointed.
I thought good point.

So I don’t. But now it’s become everything: I literally cannot see tomorrow. Tomorrow does not exist. I can’t even write to-do lists anymore. I can't warn you of anything. Maybe her and I have the same problem, that way.

Expectations are too much for a writer/psychic -- give me a possibility and I’ve got the next five chapters and they’re so gorgeous I can hardly believe the pages are mine to turn. I used to want things. Ages ago. I remember being on the bunkbed in my Dad’s apartment, underneath my brother, where I learned how to cry hysterically silently so he wouldn’t hear me.

That’s what growing up is, or was. You learn how to cry silently. How to throw up silently. How to walk silently. How to feel silently. How to break silently.

Things happened that we didn’t want/expect/predict.

I mean since I’ve gotten to California.

Things like the purest most unexpected happiness ever.

I'm sorry I couldn't warn you.

I did not consider this possibility.

Because it’s not what I do, and because there were so many reasons not to.

++

The point of this is that I love you. The point of this is that I’m sorry. The point of this is that I don’t have a giant heart after all. I’m just me on this fucking raft.

I want to be a lighthouse but I’m only a flashlight. You know what I mean?

I love you though. I'm not what you asked for, but I'm still what you have. I can't touch you but you're a thing I am keeping and nothing can change that.

Not even silence.

I will fight for you forever even if you never let me win.

++

While unpacking I found a letter Carl had sent me a year or two after I moved to NYC. Not a letter really. A note.

A piece of paper he’d cut in a heart shape and colored red with a marker. And a note with it that said, be careful. It’s the only one I have.

We haven’t talked in ages, me and Carl. I put it on the wall on my bulletin board to remind myself of that -- that sometimes being careful with a heart isn’t the thing you thought it might be.

On Thanksgiving I gave thanks for my friends but I called them “my family.”

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I'm glad Haviland was here, I told m. when they left. I'm glad she was in this space after I moved into it. Like someone from before.

Like she blessed it?

Yeah, yeah. Like she gave it her blessing.

A thing to be thankful for.

++

Did I ever tell you that I picked Berkeley for you and what I knew you’d need. It doesn’t matter anymore.

Things tend to matter more when you can’t say them.

I guess that’s the thing about us.

I could just tell you everything and anything and you’d get it and you’d tell me something and we could go like that forever.

I just wish I could still tell you everything and anything.

I wish my life hadn’t become a blog post you don’t want to read.

When for so long; you were the first one I told.

What a Whirlwind! Live-Blogging the Last Day of 2008

1:04 am: I totally edited this post last night at 1 am to say happy new year all you weirdos, but then um, apparently it didn't go through, which I think means I was drunk, 'cause I don't remember what else I said. So I'm just posting this thing right now when it's actually 1:04 pm just because I am. HAPPY NEW YEAR WEIRDOS!

9:43 pm: Plans to play Rock Band have been interrupted by a lack of a "sensor" and I don't know what that is or anything.

8:53 pm: I am ready for lots of alcohol. Let's get high!

7:14 pm: Natalie thinks it's freezing and has purchased a Happy New Year banner. I have to keep reminding her that when only like three people are coming over, it's not a party, it's a "get-together." Last year I spent New Year's with one person in my room and it was beautiful, the year before that I was in Vermont at Ro & Kelly's cabin with two couples and it was also actually quite lovely and the year before that I feel like I was um ... I remember very little. I recall seeing Natalie, Lo ... a bar ... someone's apartment? The drink? Bolivian Marching Powder?

7:10 pm: Re: Lozo's comment about the girl who plays "thirteen" in HOUSE stealing Haviland's career -- that's Olivia Wilde! She always plays bisexuals. I've never seen HOUSE but I saw her in The O.C. like 40 years ago and as I've said you know I like to read about teevee but not watch it. They're totes different, no worries.

6:47 pm: Natalie just saw a man who'd "thrown up and defecated all over himself" and was lying on the subway train and she got out and ran to the conductor and stopped the train and told him someone was sick and possibly dead in one of the cars. Natalie is a Good Samaritan.

6:05 pm: "Are you gonna live-blog that I'm being a weirdo and making you talk to me on the phone 'cause I just wanna hear your voice?" (Haviland)

6:02 pm: Haviland is making me talk to her on the phone.

5:38 pm: Cannot make graphic, do not have image editing software because my computer is at the apple store. So instead I will just write:

HAPPY NEW YEAR WEIRDOS!
Riese & Haviland walk into 2009

That's a pretty big font. Okay, be back in a few hours.

5:33 P.M.: JK. It's too bad to post. Back to the graphics idea. I think I put on too much eye makeup. Is it time to start drinking? This day feels oddly like every other day.

5:06 P.M.: Ah HA! I've decided what to do. I'm going to post this short story I wrote five years and another lifetime ago. Because it starts & ends on New Year's Eve. The only problem is I'm a much better writer now, but that will be proof of our ability to evolve. Like as people. Then I will go to the liqour store.

4:06 P.M.: Maybe I'll do the year in pictures, since my New Year's Post is only half-written and probs would look hotter in 2009. Also it's been a long day, I should've gotten an unlimited metrocard just for the day, I think I took like four subways and two buses. When Natalie comes home I feel she's going to want me to like do something. I am open to going to the liquor store.

3:42 P.M.: I'm going to write an actual post here, you know, in pieces or whatevs. I might even make a graphic! For now all I want to tell you is that this year, I resolve to acquire the following superpowers: omni-linguism, mediumship, flying, shapeshifting, technopathy, time traveling and teleportation. What are you gonna do? Stop drinking, start exercising, stay on a budget or something? That's cool. We're all in this together guys, don't forget that!!

Obvs I Cannot Leave the Apartment Again Until December at the earliest

So many things happening! Firstly, Carly's interview with Tinkerbell's favorite band Uh Huh Her is on Logo's NewNowNextMusic, watch it! Secondly, anyone who read Autowin back in the day may remember Rambo, my go-to het before [I stopped working at the lit agency and became an underperforming client of the agency instead and] Lozo came into my life. Rambo -- "Stephen" if you're nasty -- does Publishers Weekly's Soapbox this week and he mentions the Query Letter Drinking Game that Cameron and I wrote, and that makes me happy. Read it!

Thirdly, BIG weekend for me w/r/t leaving the apartment.

1) The Sex Blogger Calendar Release Party ! [photo of A;ex and I at the party, left, from calendar photographer Stacie Joy ]

I hear a lot of fun things happened at this party. Photographs suggest strippers, snacks, signings, and general revelry. I remember having a conversation with the good ppl from njoy.com -- they sponsored our calendar and sell a variety of delightful sexual toys on their superhot website -- and that they very gamely entertained my attempts at self-deprecation when I told them that although I hadn't yet plugged them and their fabulousness yet, I totally would, but that they shouldn't stress 'cause all my readers are poor and don't like sex. See, I thought that was funny at the time.

As I've mentioned about 500 times, I'm not exactly "outgoing," so when you combine my personality with "very very drunk" and "my BFF from Los Angeles just flew in yesterday and is here!" and even a guest appearance by LOZO and one of the random Jewish boys he carts around with him -- I apparently managed to ensconse myself into my own little world so thoroughly that the only person who asked me to sign their calendar is also in the calendar.

Maybe I was not recognized sans wig. Maybe I radiate hostility. You never know! When she asked me, I think I said something retarded about myself, like "that's not me," or 'I'm a virgin," or ... really it's all a big blur in my head 'til the part when we were at a diner w/Haviland, A;ex and A;ex's friend Colleen eating grilled cheese and french fries, a meal I probs should've consumed about five hours earlier.

I also recall chatting with my friends Morgan and Diane, seeing Caitlin Mae in a stewardess outfit, calling my Mom (deathiversary day), listening to a voice mail from my Grandma that made me cry and I had to step outside (thank G-d for Haviland obvs), and some woman telling us we couldn't sit at the Raffle table and the eternally kick-ass Jayme Waxman being like "whatevs, I am Wonder Woman, they can sit wherevs they want."

ANYHOW! The party was awesome, ladies got nekkid, the calendar is hot, Buy one! 100% of the proceeds go to Sex Work Awareness.

2) No on Prop 8 Rally!

Over 10,000 people came to this giant gathering of homosexual love at City Hall on november 15th, 2008, to protest the passing of Prop 8, and obvs A;ex, Haviland and I were among them. There's lots of reasons that a person might wish they were a bird. One of those is when you wanna know how big a protest is or where those voices are coming from. We discovered the latter when we chose to leave the masses to get a latte and find Carly, which's also when we realized how HUGE it was. An amazing inspirational mass of people who've come together for this cause and believe in it. We believe in it enough to come together all over the country for California.

This is serious, y'all, the times they are a'changin'. The intolerant people are gonna have to move to deserted islands, apparently there are lots of deserted islands all over the world, according to A;ex, this came up in a conversation about how I think I know everything but I don't. Allegedly.

Although I would've preferred the Dazzle Dancers performing for us as well as some Mormons to yell at directly, I tried to summon all the revolutionary spirit of my ancestors and yell at the choir just the same. Kim Stolz actually rocked the mike and I'm not just saying that 'cause I fancy her, and the signs obvs were amazing as I'm sure you've read. We didn't have a sign because we overslept (see: Sex Bloggers Party) and arrived fully prepared for a rainshower.

I just hope that we can make something happen, obvs, I heart the cause.

I mean everyone should marry who they want to, and anyone who disagrees with me --- well, I hate you. If you voted Yes on Prop 8, I'm sorry, I just hate you!

Sunday Top 10: What We Do When We Should be Doing Other Things

As I see it, there's approximately ten reasons that my life's achievements have not progressed as speedily as I imagined they would when I was a young girl growing up in the throbbing heart of this fine country, gazing at the stars and thinking about becoming the next Shirley Temple and/or Nolan Ryan and/or Beverly Cleary.

10. Small cleaning projects, large daunting cleaning/organizing projects I will never complete but enjoy contemplating, general housekeeping, room/apartment set-up projects.

9. The possibility that someone has tagged a photo of me on facebook or that I appear in the background of a photo taken of Harlem Election '08. My interest in the latter is due to my obsession with figuring out exactly how large the crowd was and therefore where exactly we were positioned relative to the masses. Why do I care about this? I have no idea.
9a. Perhaps there are new photos from Carly's Halloween Tabloid Trainwreck Party, or from the No on 8 Rally or the Sex-Blogger party?

8. Twitter, the most distracting and brain-damaging and delicious application ever invented in the history of the universe, right after Twix Peanut Butter Bars and alcohol. I actually feel twitter is useful in that it's just enough distraction to satiate, but not so much that I get sucked in forevs.

This philosophy is behind my new week-long initiative to post a lot but with brevity. I'll try to pull off at least one traditional long-form piece this week, but I'm mostly testing if bits and pieces is more efficient/entertaining/enriching.

7. "If I read a few more pages of this book, I bet the book I'm actually writing would get a lot better."

6. Perfecting my i-tunes playlist. I've even saved tracking down a few of my reader-garnered suggestions for the next time I'd like to be distracted in a way that feels, ever so slightly, productive.

5. My dream job is probably on mediabistro right now.
5a. But look at this new article on gawker/jezebel/the ny times about how there are no more dream jobs and we should all surrender to the lure of the U.S. Sanitation department or day-care operation.

4. I owe emails to (a lot of people). This is cyclical, 'cause after I write back, they write me back. This is obvs the point, as these are people I enjoy hearing from, but nevertheless this becomes a daunting task 'cause it does not end, like filling a lake with an eyedropper.

3. Haviland blackberry messages me every time she has a feeling or thinks she has a feeling, and she has a lot of feelings. If I'm looking for a distraction, I can just pick up my phone and there's a 60% chance there will be a Haviland message awaiting my input.

2. Is it time to eat again yet? Probs time to eat again. I'm not hungry but I should probs eat more food, because that will give me the energy I need to succeed. Or a drink. I'm so funny when I'm drunk! SOOOO funny!

1. "I should write a blog post."

[Now that I do this, I realize there are so many more than ten. I haven't even gotten into tweezers, facial analysis, re-watching old vlogs, re-organizing files and folders and reading about reading!]

Multi-Media (VIDEO and WORDS): Sacred & On Fire With the Same Force That Made The Stars (Live Through This)

[A few days before the day I moved out of Planet Harlem, Stef and Alex and I went to the roof to BBQ paper because when there's nothing left to burn, you have to set all your bank statements on fire. I made a video of it, and it's at the end of this post but it's not on YouTube 'cause it's This-Post-specific. We burn some crap screenplays I penned in 9th grade but we read them first. We're wearing clothes found in the netherlands of my closet and I was way too immersed in The Sads to bother with makeup or the hair-iron. This raw beauty is what garnered "When There's Nothing Left to Burn, You Have to Set Yourself on Fire" the Best in Show award at this years Festival of Excellent Films. Basically, it's like when we won the Uh Huh Her contest, but sans-prize-pack.]

One thing I've been noticing lately is all the people. I've always known this city was teeming with people -- people who live here, people who work here, and so on. But, for all I've spoken of Emily Dickinson and agoraphobia I didn't realize the precisely how self-centered & insane my Planet Harlem Apartment world had become until just now. 'Cause just now I've been thrust right back into people-world again, all at once and all over, like Dorothy landing in Oz except dirtier and with less choreography.

See, due to circumstances beyond my control (or so I tell myself to make myself feel better) that left me sans-home as of September 1st, I'm currently living in Long Island with Alex and her parents and commuting daily to and from the city for um ... Alex's job. Also, for about six weeks now I've been off the juice. JK ... kinda. More on this later.

Anyhow. In Long Island I wake up at 7, we get on the train at 8:26 so Alex can be at work at 9. By 7 P.M, I'm feeling boring and sleepy. The body beats out of habit, my heart isn't even warm. See, I used to be a superhero and no one could touch me, not even myself.

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About six weeks ago my doctor switched up some of my meds. Though I'd been taking the same RX for about five years, I'd found a way last year to use those capsule-sized lifelines into a fresh & bad habit and it was killing me. I'd been disciplined and healthy with it for years until May 2007 and yet when faced with emptiness at that time I chose to fight chaos (unemployment, new home, strange schedule, changing social life, internet-world) with chaos. I was foolish enough to think I could establish self-discipline with undisciplined strokes.

I felt real good, but what good is it to be a genius superhero if you're going faster than the speed of light towards obliteration.

In the emo cave I was always chasing something, like I was in a race that was also a tape stuck in a loop. The nature of race was clear when I started it; I was racing to keep up with my ex's mania in hopes we'd eventually share a moment or two eye-to-eye.

Time went on, and though my problems changed, my behavior didn't. I wouldn't even notice how much crazy I was talking until someone came over, or a roommate dared utter a word to me. Any word, of course, sounded like "firecracker" or "boo!"

++

And that's why lately life has felt like some kind of shock therapy -- like I'm all cutting and no edge. All these people everywhere ... it gives me perspective. I'm one of millions, not one in a million, and now I'm forced to face how fucked up my whole existence has been for the last sixteen months until six weeks ago, maybe even longer than I want to say, 'cause there's so much I might never let go of -- and maybe I don't have to.

Also, I'm really tired now.

Falling asleep has been easier, but waking up is harder.

After waking up there's breakfast and then rush hour on the train. Once in the city, I've got no apartment to go to so I'm automatically surrounded by people and at their mercy so I'm modeling through the devil's baby in my uterus or vicious allergies. People, people and then more people in theaters, delis, restaurants, jostling for a seat at Starbucks, parking my body & heavy bag on the floor at Penn Station or Barnes & Noble or on Central Park's big wireless lawns where people are running & biking & beaming with beaming bright buoyant bountiful babies in expensive strollers, at the gym at rush hour with the people soaring towards absolutely nowhere like gazelles on thumping slick black exercise machines, and I'm navigating the rocky roads between hunger and longing-withdrawal and the library, the 1 train, the A, the C, the D, the E, the N-R, the 2-3, the 4-5-6. I'll go to Natalie's or see my therapist or when I go to this one job I go to I'll see those people.

The every train, The going and going more, next stop, last stop, stop stop stop.

And when I want to have a fit about something, like how expensive it is in the world, or how many people's cell phone conversations I've been forced to overhear, or how many private acts I've accepted that I must now do in public ... I just can't. I cannot have a fit in my car or my room. I cannot have a fit at all.

In me-me-me world when I needed a fit I'd go lie on my bed & cry & moan and stare at the ceiling hoping to break through and throw or stare or scream sharply at my phone with despair, refreshrefresh refresh inbox (1) fucking a it's the goddamn hrc again. I'd think about breaking walls like I've said before but I never did break any walls 'cause I couldn't afford that kind of security deposit.

It's not that I never left when I lived in P-Harlem because I did. But ... when I did, usually Caitlin would pick me up in a car so I'd avoid all the people, and I always felt safe with Caitlin, wherever we went. And anyhow usually we went places to see other familiar faces.

Those faces were anchors grounding me safely distant from the kind of social anxiety that builds up when you've not spoken to a stranger in days, when you've not only been inside your own head for too long but crawling around in it, building a new library in there and scaling the walls and jumping from its roof. Anyplace unfamiliar gave me paralyzing fear but now that evens out over the day 'cause I'm forced into society so much that each little encounter is no longer The Only Social Interaction With a Stranger of my day. So there's less consciousness and pressure, it's no longer this minute but just the way things are.

At the end of the day I'll see Alex and at Penn Station late at night there's so many people, like the girls who are still wearing the things that girls like that wore in the mid-nineties which makes me feel like nothing changes except the brand of expectation clinging to their longings.

++

When I read posts from last summer and autumn I can spot the times that I was beetle-buzzing through my own brain like a run-on hornet. Details, linkage, obsessive proof-reading and revisions. Words and more words.

And so I was reading Sam Anderson's obit of David Foster Wallace, and he says this:

"For Wallace, a thought could never actually, in good conscience, realistically, be finished — there was always one more reversal, one more qualifying clause, and an honest writer had to follow them out. Hence the famously never-ending sentences that spun off, even more famously, into never-ending footnotes. The black hole of his self-consciousness drew everything into it, even and especially self-consciousness itself. But that compulsion to be exhaustive was, apparently, exhausting."

I can't -- and don't intend to -- compare myself to Wallace. He's a genius, I'm a weirdo. He's published & famous & legendary, I'm a weirdo.

But I relate to one thing -- I relate to the words upon words. 'Cause when I wrote like that I was certain to not only address my point, but all examples, counterpoints, not only my thesis but yours and all the thoughts I'd ever had about it, and I'd play devil's advocate and people's advocate and lozo's advocate and feminism's advocate and sometimes my own advocate too. I wanted to speak to everyone and I wanted to shoot myself down before you could.

I wonder if DFW felt like his head might explode, if he was tired like I am.

I think it was good to be in my head so completely, like I needed that phase. I needed to live a life that didn't make any sense -- I mean you think you know but you have no idea -- but to me, to my reality (which contained only me & my people) -- it was a cool life. 'Cause you know what? We had a time.

And I'm sure I'll have phases like that again throughout my life, those rushing manic surges that sometimes enrapture an artist to do whatever she can to chase the dragon into dawnlight, towards wherever it is that stars become people and people become poets.

I miss the night-fires, I miss the abandon and the rampant self-destruction. I miss knowing everything wasn't right but not caring because I was so alive, because it was so fun or so vivid or so full or because I hit the streets with all I had. I miss absolving myself of responsibility for myself. I miss the future we used to talk about with such generosity. I miss the stories we believed in and I want to write the ones we never told. I want so many things.

++

Pardon Me, But Wasn't that your VLOG? That I Felt On the Bed In Between the Sheets?

The thing is; I have an air conditioner in my room. But what happens when I leave my room? How long can I survive on only crackers? It's totally "Do the Right Thing" around here, and "around here" extends to both my kitchen and my neighborhood. Anyhow, some of you live in other countries and aren't experiencing what we're experiencing. Want an experience we can all experience together, like a family? Well, I've got one. It's called "a vlog," and if you've got broadband internet access, we can share this moment together, 'cause caring is sharing.

Haviland's coming to visit super-soon, I can't wait! But in the meantime in between time, Carlytron has valiantly stepped up and vlogged her little ass off with her roommate Matthew and her lesbian dog Saffron. Topics include: flying lesbians. Also, Cesar was there but he wouldn't participate and therefore he was punished.

A;ex just told me it's hard to hear in some parts and that she'd probs have to listen to it 7-8 times. Which's fine, that ups the views. I-movie won't let me make the music quieter than 7%, which is actually apparently a lot. What you're going to have to do is listen up. Like in gym class, when the teacher was like: "listen up."

I got nostalgic for Final Cut (which I didn't use, 'cause I film vlogs on imovie, so that seemed counterproductive) while editing this today. I feel like that's a good sign. It's a sign that one day, I'll learn how to use Final Cut. As Adele would say: "cut, print ..."

Under Feet Like Ours, Under Vlogs Like Ours, Uh Huh ... Her.

On Monday night we went to see a music show featuring the band Tegan & Sara, it was quite delightful. I adore Tegan & Sara all over: music, witty banter, stage presence. Natalie remarked, "This is the best rock 'n roll concert I've ever been to!" I'm not gonna divulge how many concerts she claimed to have attended (en total) in her entire life, I'm hoping she may've been exaggerating for dramatic effect on that, like I often do. We've been besties since college, therefore we share some key personality traits, e.g., a tendency to spark up a story with a little glimmer of fiction. On a scale of 1 to 10, this particular post is written at a USA Today reading level. There will be a powerpoint presentation and short video after class, in the meeting room, with danishes. xoxo gossip girl.

I've got a lot of shallow vapidity to cover today, so on with it, yes.

Okay so; Tinkerbell didn't go to T&S, which was valuable foresight, 'cause we all accidentally wore brightly colored hoodies from the same store -- therefore, we already looked like the M&M's Street Team (or the Tellitubbies) and would've looked ridic w/the added element of comedy/childhood/dymensia implied by the tote-age of a stuffed de-strapped dog sporting American Airlines wings.

Luckily, Tink makes plenty of appearances in our latest vlog, which covers the following topics: durrrrr.

Honestly; I think I used all our best footage on the first one, recklessly, w/o any consideration for the future. Perhaps 'cause at that time I had bleak overall feelings about the future. Then, yesterday, I decided instead of hating everyone per always, I'd just love everyone! Really, I mean, it's just as fair/unfair.

Then, only hours after making that new life choice, I was forced to reconsider: some people enjoy, it seems, screaming along to Tegan & Sara's already quite harmonic melodies, therefore reminding me both why I hate everyone and of sing-a-longs in Kindergarten and on Sesame Street. I get the desire -- I do it sometimes too. But you don't need to SCREAM sing along, this isn't System of a Down or heavy metal rockers, they're quite lovely w/o your harmonies. I've seen the Indigo Girls live a bazillion times, so I know from sing-a-longs.

I think it's possible we're getting too old for this -- my companions agreed. Therefore, we'll have to pack the next couple years as full to the brim with this kind of activity as possible.

But really: the concert was awesome, there was loads of witty banter, and I enjoyed spending quality time with Cait, Alex, Stef, Natalie, Chase & Ang and Ms. Jackson. I'd talk about the concert, but how do you talk about concerts, I think that's like dancing about architecture, right? I think I said that last time, but then tried to write about it anyhow, and I imagine whatever I said last time goes for this time too -- I love them, they played this and that song, omg, are you jealous do you wish you'd been there omg. They told lots of cute stories, unfortunately Carly was not there and therefore I had no one to tackle when they played "Living Room," so we all left relatively unscathed. There was heaps of witty banter, like a story for every song, like Raffi! Super-cute.

Maybe Stef will do a cartoon recap?

Afterwards, someone tried to pass off a flier about some other place we could party at (unfortunately, I'd surpassed my daily allotment of "other people time" about four hours prior, also: sleepy sloos time) and Alex whooped and gave them a high-five. We inquired re: whooping, she looked dejectedly at the flier and said: "I thought it said MADONNA, not MONDAY."


So anyhow, we made this vlog. Believe it or not -- 'cause we do enjoy talking about the same things over and over again, and you might think I'm recycling old footage -- this vlog contains 100% all-new never-before-seen footage. Topics include: global warming, the health care system, Encyclopedia Brittanica, Fellini films, your Mom, truth in memoir, flying lesbians, how to get a date with Haviland, dancing lessons from Alex, the United Nations, world peace, and the proper position of second-wave feminist discourse within the modern fourth wave pro-sex feminist movement. JK, it's about nothing at all whatsoever.


Speaking of videos! Leisha & Cam have debuted their video for us (part of the Uh Huh Her SXSW Video Contest Winning Prize Package), and you can watch it here ! Obviously, they were held up in post-production -- special effects, animation, etc. Anyhow, clearly we'll be collaborating in the near future, 'cause I am really good at following people around and talking to strangers. No but honestly, wouldn't that be awesome! I'd be like "Alice, what the frickin' frack?" JK, totally professional, obvs.

The Night Starts Here

I just took the best shower of my life 'cause I've been waiting for it all afternoon ("Take a sponge bath," advised the helpless handyman, staring at our dumb dry shower, "Like in the old days," and then he laughed, a laugh that reminded me he'd been alive approximately 80 years more than I have and was still doing things like this, playing with faucets, he'd probs lost his hair and/or parents in the 60's, it's possible I have almost nothing to complain about, he probs lived through a few World Wars, and on my igoogle home page, underneath my email and its various feelings, the NY Times headlines remind me that 22,500 are dead now in Myanmar. A sponge bath -- a "cat bath" my Mom used to call it, probs the only context in which she spoke favorably of cats, which we're both allergic to, or did she, I can't remember, I think I invent a lot of memories) and I'm eating ramen from the pot. These are the engaging details of my smokin' hot life.

Another memory, possibly also invented, of Chris Farley on Saturday Night Live asking Paul McCartney; So, remember when you said, and in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make? Is that true?

And what was he hiding, anyway? Something that killed him. Self-loathing. Cocaine. Prostitutes. Alcohol, whatever, fat, the real secret, and in my final moment, may I hear you whisper, "when you made my people smile, you made me smile."

America loves an overdose, loves the bloody mess and everything you're allowed to say only after -- I read a good one today about Brad Renfro.

My friend confessed (at the time), "The first thing I thought when Chris Farley died was, good, now they won't make any more of those stupid movies." The first thing I thought was, "Good, now he can hang out with my Dad in wherevs," 'cause my Dad really liked Chris Farley. I liked Chris Farley too 'cause he wasn't self-conscious, 'cause he threw himself into it: sweaty & reckless. I hated Tommy Boy, though. And by that I mean, I watched about ten minutes of it, got bored, turned it off, thought it was dumb.

It's got something to do with entitlement, I think. What we're given, what we expect, what we think we deserve. How hard we feel we've worked, what we see when we look in the mirror and subsequently who oughtta mirror us, what we have to offer. The meritocracy of karma ... but I'm an easy target. It's not like "You say jump, I say how high," it's like "you tell me how high I probs oughtta be jumping, I'll run after you all night waiting to fly over buildings," because that's possible, right?

The thing is; we all feel we've gotten away with something. We're spies, ghosts, savage detectives, secret agents, between angels, followers, prostitutes, boxcar children, storytellers, lunatics, teachers, orphans, suicides, cutters, dirty, sharp, clean. If you get too close, you'll see that we're all still thirteen, or whenever it was that we felt the worst we'd ever felt. Yesterday? Tomorrow? Never?

"Prepare / yourself though to keep something back; / there's a center in you / you are simply a comedian / without."
(Stephen Dunn, "How to Be Happy: Another Memo to Myself)

It's got something to do with shame, I think.

My brother and I used to do Abs of Steel together on beach-towels in the living room. I tried doing Eric Nies's MTV Workout video, alone, later, but I couldn't dance, so that was that, I sold it on ebay for five bucks about a decade ago, along with The Real World: Behind the Scenes (book and VHS).

Our masks are flimsy and transparent and mostly made of excuses & saran wrap, which, p.s., never works, like ever.

We owe you something, we just don't know what it is yet.

What's the catch, he'd always ask me. You seem like the perfect girl. What's the catch.

I'd shrug, smile. Do my best Clark Kent: I'm just a little crazy, that's all.

It's the same tone I'd use to reassure the people I served that it's not that spicy, that they won't taste the anchovies. Flippant & easy 'cause before long they'd leave the chair, and then the room, and they didn't mean it when they said they'd call me at 2 A.M. if the coffee turned out to be caffinated after all (It was, you bitch, it was! I hope you wake your husband up and offer strange favors in exchange for a backrub, I hope you watch Richard Simmons hawk renewal 'til your eyes bleed, I hope Pop-Up Video is on all fucking night!) and they were still awake 'cause by then I'd be gone, gone, gone, anyhow. They didn't even know my number and if they did, the phone could just ring and ring and ring ...

So when I took his love it felt like theft, like cheating. I didn't deserve his love, or hers, 'cause I can't take care of myself let alone you. Maybe it's safer if we're both holding something back, maybe that's sexier than being naked for real. Who wouldn't rather do it in the dark?

I didn't ask about his catch. I didn't have to. He said he didn't have one, that's code for "I am all catch," and I also speak code.

I had another boyfriend who liked to talk about what a catch he was. "I'm in law school," he'd brag. "I'm pretty good looking."

I'd sit there dumbly, thinking, "But that's not even your real nose."

Did he know that -- stepping from the shower into steamy bathroom air, I knew just how to stand when I seize the bath-towel ... like shoplifting. I've practiced, like an insecurity performance artist, how to escape the room w/o glancing at my actual body. I slip past mirrored walls and wash my hands with my head focused squarely on the faucet. I don't want to know, all that really matters is what I think I know.

What's the catch?

At midnight, I turn into a pumpkin.
At midnight, I leave you. At midnight, I stop listening while maintaining eye contact.
At midnight, I turn into your mother and I'll remind you, all morning long, of your mother.
I can see through walls, I can fly, I can see your heart through your skin.
I'm killing myself, it doesn't hurt.
I don't even like you, I just want to like you.
Yes, I got into a fight with a porcupine.

I'm not actually all that interesting, I just sweat a lot.

I'm melodramatic, it's hopeless.

I'm actually Angela Chase, after she got canceled 'cause no one gave a shit except me and my friends.

I want to believe in a world so beautiful as the one you've described to me, and so I do. Is the secret that I'm using you? That I've tried, in my own way, to give something back, too, or to be sure I didn't ask for too much. My humility ensured your participation. You've become characters as soon as you walked out the door, but who am I kidding, I beat you to it.

I relapse all the time, into everything, sometimes two or three vices a night.

In many ways, I'm still just trying to figure out what my Dad wanted me to do, and when I go to sleep (finally) I hope he'll speak to me in dreams and tell me, and when he doesn't, I try to find someone else to tell me what to do and who to be, and when they confuse or hurt or judge me harshly, or turn out to be someone else, I hate them with the firey passion of a thousand suns.

Because when they leave, they make it look so easy. This isn't complicated: I can't see what anyone does when I'm not around.

"Your father worshiped you," my mother said.

And when that rare person comes along to make me realize all they want is for me to be happy and true to myself, I realize I don't know what to do with that ... besides find someone else to tell me what to do, how to be happy, what my truth is.

When you're told all your life that you're too independent, too resistant to feeling/needing things from other people, you tend to see co-dependence as an achievement rather than a problem: "Look, I've let myself rely! Look at me, opening up! Like a flower! Look at all the people I need, and who need me!"

But "need" is such a dumb word. There is want and there is death and there is love.

There are 50 ways to leave your lover, 50 more ways to say "fuck you," 50 trees falling in your silent forest-mind (sorry, tree). 50 rings in a wet empty room. You're still up, I'm still up, we're all up.

Oh, honesty. That tricky & fickle concept, the bullseye of my mindseye. Who cares?

--

In 11th grade, for Christmas, my BFF Ryan gave me a white tank top from Victoria's Secret and on the inside, where the tag would be, it read: "Soft, sexy, necessary."

He added: "Like you! Soft, sexy, necessary!"

I gave him a white Calvin Klein wifebeater. I'd replaced the burly man-meat on the label with my own note, reading: "If you're going to beat me, you might as well do it in style."

--

I've created a character, and a cast. Personal branding -- an idea fostered by media "personalities," thrived upon by actors & musicians & performers. Is that me? I'm not sure. Where do we draw the line? Between who we are and the stories we tell about ourselves? Part of wanting to stop blogging for a bit was that I wanted to figure out not only the difference between Marie and Riese and Autowin, but between the friends I've made via autowin and the characters they've become on here.

It's nice to feel necessary, even just as something to read while you're bored at work. This blog isn't that popular, isn't that big of a deal, but having so many friends I'd met through here possibly made it feel like a bigger deal then it is.

Chuck Klosterman's column in Esquire Magazine remarks that Hannah Montana (a show I've never seen), which explores the divide between the famous Hannah and the real-life Miley, is popular 'cause kids these days can relate: "They all struggle to reconcile who they are with the quasi-real persona they constructively construct. Hannah Montana is the internet."

My ex-bf emailed a few weeks ago; he'd been watching a documentary about high schoolers, thought of us at that age -- the pressure we put on ourselves, consequently how possibly we'd wanted to be like the characters on TV (oddly enough, the only show John & I watched, ever, was Dawson's Creek) w/their neat labels: the sexpot, the virgin, the intellectual, the bad seed. He said: "You look at a character whose entire moral or personal dilemma can be solved by staring at a pond and listening to Paula Cole, and it seems so much more efficient than actually having to confront one's self."

Of course, I said, we did, which's why I prefer literature with its complex characters, its demand of our extended & in-depth attention. He agreed. Literature matters to me so much more than anything else ever has, or ever could, to me. Print. Which lately has seemed irrelevant, compared to this instant gratification.

While writing Living it Out, Carly and I got a lot of feedback about "defining our characters." Narrow their complexity. What's the type? Make them specific, identifiable. How will we recognize them, sans label? How will we know, even, who's talking? Can you add, for example, an accent, or a figure of speech. A unique/overwhelming hobby/habit.

What if that character is a person, what if this character does not know who she is? Can she make the story true by telling it?

--

While reading Tipping the Velvet, the following concepts struck me;
-Nan's analysis of her relationship w/Kitty as existing on two levels, informing and defining one another; the relationship itself, and their performance of it. The song and dance.
-While living with Diana, Nan spends four hours a day in the bathtub.

--

The only thing I'm sure of that I want is to write the best book I can write. It's that silent way your gut talks to you when you know something/someone is right.

The first time I heard the Beatles song "Yesterday," I used my two-deck cassette player/recorder to make a tape of it playing over and over again. I knew I wanted to hear it again and again. Sometimes, a body in your arms feels certain, correct, sometimes, a poet makes life feel possible. I'm certain I want this book, even if no-one else reads it.

I'm not certain that I'm actually going to write it though, it might just be another story I tell.

It's easy for me to feel one way, and the opposite. It's not desire that defines us so much as it is fear.

I am well aware that this is melodramatic and trite. But isn't that why we're all here, anyhow? Yes. Many of you came here via Gawker (which is hopelessly self-centered, too) or via The L Word (which is hopelessly melodramatic, passionately trite, but oh, so sexy! so necessary!) or via my friendship (which is melodramatic, self-centered, trite, and gawky).

--

Also, in addition to the wifebeater, I wrote Ryan a poem. It was 1998, he was my best friend, and at that time; an actor.

Some of it: "So tonight, I hated seeing you on stage because you were so far away and I had to share you with the audience and you weren't only mine for that minute. And so I can't let you perform 'cause I adore your reality, the way you cried in church this morning while everyone else sat still and you held my hand afterward and your ring hurt my finger but I didn't move ... and so I can't write your peer evaluation for Dartmouth 'cause I can't write you down and I don't want you to go to Dartmouth, anyways ... and so I hate your dishonesty, but I love the way you are honest with me, even if it's only me your honest with, and I hate your double standards for people but I love being your standard ... and so you would never write about me. And so if you knew I wrote about you, and I read this to you, you might laugh at me ..."

I read it, he cried. The last time I heard from him, he said he felt far away. From me, and most of all, from G-d.

These true sentences.

--

"And so we turn him into an anecdote, with no teeth, and a punchline you'll tell for years to come:
"Oh, that reminds me of the time the impostor came into our house." "Oh! Tell the one about that boy."
And we become these human jukeboxes spitting out these anecdotes to dine out on like we're doing right now.
Well I will not turn him into an anecdote.
It was an experience.
How do we hold on to the experience?"
(John Guare, Six Degrees of Separation)

*

Tinkerbell got her wings on the way back from California, 'cause we set her up on a pillow with a little napkin-blanket in between our seats. The flight attendants probs thought we were totally insane, which is actually super-duper-true, let's not be crazy, but at the end this woman came and gave Tinkerbell her wings, see them?

A number of days ago (3-4? 4-5?), my fortune said: "Everyone around you is rooting for you. Don't give up."

Last week, I said: "Alex, this cookie contains my fate, I promise, this is a big deal, this is everything, this fortune we're about to open and I really hope it says READY LET'S GO LOW FAT WHOLE WHEAT GREEN TEA but instead it told me, "Now is the time to start something new."

I know I've said this before and not followed through, but in Malibu; top down, mountains on one side, ocean on the other, I felt like it was possible to fly/flee in either direction -- circle one: climb. swim.

1. The sky or 2. That feeling we describe as feeling underwater but when we're actually underwater, it doesn't actually feel anything like all those other feelings we'd compared it to. It's just like, swimming.

Everyone keeps telling me to be selfish and do what's best for me, but I can't seem to let go of the idea that what's best for me is to do what's best for other people.

This week marks my fourth consecutive year of New York City residence; my fourth year of throwing myself into one all-consuming world and then another, some honest, some delusions, some honest delusions, some good, some bad, and then the consistent faces on the horizon. And then this blog, this thing here.

I feel like moving to California would be admitting to myself that somewhere, deep down inside, I actually might want to be happy. I've wanted many things in my life; happiness has never been one of them.

It is admitting I have love to give, it is admitting that I do, after all, know where to put it.

*
I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written .....
[Ernest Hemmingway]
*

Joey: People change, Dawson.
Dawson: They don't have to.
Joey: Yes, they do. People die, and they move away...and they grow up, Dawson. Everything changes eventually.
(Dawson's Creek)
*

I've Been Doing Circles I'm Taken I Am Yours I am Doing VLOGS I Collapse

Last week, I wrote an opus-y piece regarding my super-important feelings on blogging, identity crises, true sentences, feeling unhinged, instant gratification vs. real literature, returning to the deep yearnings of my soul (books, print, tangible words, small silent private lives), feeling slightly insane w/o my anti-anxiety meds, wanting to call a team meeting with my head, and other very world-shatteringly important milestones of the twentysomething apspirant's Search for Self. I read this and this and this and this. Then, instead of finishing this navel-gazing epic [or anything] I pulled a MeMeMeMe and, per Haviland's request -- busted this pop stand for sunnier skies. I was lucky enough to be able to escape: clean blue sky, those lappy waves, long roads through mountains and along ocean, sandy feet, and an internet-free home. I hacked at my ars poetica while in the air on my way .. then I realized; why I am I spending so much time writing about how I need to spend more time writing/reading, when clearly I should just be writing/reading? So that's what I did.

I still don't know the answers to most of the questions I've been asking myself, and every day there seem to be more questions. I don't know.

One thing is pressing, then something else presses harder. Our brains only have room for one thing at a time. Also I'm still chillin' in this self-consciousness fog, trying to shake irrational insults/judgments that wound deeper than they oughta, but this is me, this is me, this is me, calm down, I'm calling you to say I'm capsized erring on the edge of safe, calm down I'm calling back to say I'm home now and coming around .. since returning, I see that maybe life is simply limbo, from now on, let's only speak in invisible ink. You go first.

In times like this, only one person and one thing can make you post again during a self-imposed hiatus ... and that's my dearest BFF Haviland Stilwell and her love of and natural talent for The Vlog. So ladies and gentleman, I present to you the longest vlog ever, starring Haviland Herself.

This blog features Haviland P. Stillwell herself, along with Cait's laughter in the backgorund, and some clips from a vlog that Alex and I tried to do but then gave up after about two minutes. There's also a few flashbacks. It's an epic, like Gone with the Wind. Topics discussed include drama, comedy, tragedy, the meaning of life, very important arguments of modern literary theory, and gymnastics. Oh right and flying lesbians. And; briefly .. the riese & haviland true hollywood story, Cait & I's phone call from Leisha Hailey, Los Angeles, etc.




Soundtrack:
0. Intro: Tupac /California Love
1. "Haviland & Riese: The True Hollywood Story" : Melissa Ferrick / The Breakup Song
2 "Oh Fans oh Fans" : Once on this Island / Waiting for Life
3. "Mini-Feed Me" : The Cure / Pictures of You
4. "Fiction vs. Reality" : Uh Huh Her / Explode
5. "I Do Not Know Who I Am" : The Who/ Who Are You

Broken Down and Hungry for your VLOG

Today there's three L Words -- 1. Lozo Vlog, 2. Episode 512 (Finale!) Recap: Loyal & True -- [in which I'm less funny than I've ever been -- but at last, finally, at last, at last: done.] Speaking of "last": 3. Seven Last Sayings of Jesus on the Cross. I'd never heard of them before, but it came up today 'cause today was a big Jesus day for all you Christians (I'm a Jew, p.s.), and today was also a day with many implied associations to rebirth all over the place, though I spent most of it in my room writing the recap. I think some of the seven are appropriate for the top feelings I have after finishing-an-L Word recap: "I thirst," "forgive them for they know not what they do," "it is finished." Apparently mid-recap feelings include actually taking a break for a few hours on Saturday night to color with Chase, Semicolon and Angelica. I love Bunnies, there's chocolates in the living room on the table.

Lozo Thong

Not only is it time for a fresh new Lozo vlog, but I'd also like to announce that if you want to comment to Lozo, who no longer takes comments on his own blog, about college basketball, beer, girls, college basketball, movies Lozo hates, that HBO show Lozo hates, and I think also baseball, please share your feelings here. Who will win the big game? Who is going to bat a thousand homers? Say so, he'll get back to you, like Dear Abby.

*

Today we thought about how long it's been since last Easter Weekend. A million years, it'd seem, have shot star-like since then, since last Easter weekend when the photographer from [redacted] magazine spent most of my hours shooting me & my then-girlfriend & my friends for The Little Article That Couldn't. We've still not seen these photos, but Chase has some Lainy took from the afternoon she came over to get shot. The L Word had already ended by then, though, Easter's early this year ... the photographer had an old school camera and set up every shot like a painting. You can see the camera a little bit on the side here:

Riese & Chase, Easter Weekend '07
*
My love
Semiprecious & stoned
In the shoulder season we hold on
Though I am dismal & have no dope
Siphoned off behind pink Easter
I fake an optimism
Just to breathe—Just thinking of him for once &
The Wandering Jew that ate my sunshine
But I know flowers like Zorro was my dad
Those garlands of thin hissing lasers
So with the “sexy isotherms
Of semiotics” we meet again at the Kiev
To check chemistry. They bring the lights
Down on those cherry pies & like cryogenics
It sorta works. This time my love
The salt doll of night egging us on
Straight to the zeppelin mooring
With she-has-a-bit-of-the-neardamned-in-her-
Like-when-a-cloud-dies construed as
Well, all right, I’ve seen worse.
-
from "A Good Year Down" by Jeni Ollin
*

Okay, turn up the sound, kids, 'cause Lozo's not a big enunciator. This is sort of a quickie, in honor of Lozo's favorite way to do it. JK. In honor of Speed Itself. Also watch for special appearances by Semicolon and her jazz hands. We discuss topics like Lozo's bachelorhood, all the ways he's deceived me, and how nice his shoulder is. Also if you haven't read my the interview with me on the dirty girls blog, you better do it now, 'cause it's awesome!

THE VLOG:

UPDATED! Sunday Top Ten: You Tell Me

On Sunday I said this: "I'm accepting suggestions for the Sunday Top 10, as "The L Word" and other catastrophes* are crowding my brainspace. It's my job here at AutoWin to provide the illusion that it is possible for a semi-intelligent human girl to produce an endless flood of ideas, howevs, this is not true. Therefore, I'm fully prepared for the possibility that no one else has any ideas, either. But I thought I'd throw it out there. If I pick your Top Ten topic, you can win an auto-apparel item of your choice pending size availability. Or stickers. Um, or nothing. Soundtrack? Haviland? Just the joy of the game. The spirit of the game? It's not if you win or lose, something something. OMG, I feel like Snoopy or something, it's really gross. Hm. Well, here goes.

*JK!"

Now it's Monday. There are so many beautiful Top Ten ideas, I barely know where to begin! Some of the ideas are kinda similar to stuff I've already done, but I think I might end up doing alot of them as time continues to go on like sand through a hourglass. I've put the list of all the ideas here. And I'm thinking about it. Input is always welcome. I also have to get a passport today and a number of other important tasks, but this is totally like the top top ten list on my list of top things to do for the day of today.

Someone suggested I do a Sunday Top 10 of the Best Top Tens. So, while I ponder the next Top Ten, here's an old school link dump for ya'.

Ten Best Top Tens of 2006:
12.28.06: Top Ten Books of 2006, Some of Which I've Actually Read
12.24.06: Things They Are Better At Out Here in the Heartland
11.26.06: How to Provide Visitors With The Ultimate NYC Experience
11.19.06: Relationships I've Had With Animals
10.29.06: Revivals
10.15.06: Reasons Apartment 1A Is not A Place For Good Clean Living
10.8.06: Things That Are Cuter than Cute Overload
10. 1. 06: Yom Kippur Edition - Things I'd Like to Repent For
8.20.06: Things I Would Like Back, Please
7. 23.06: Appearances by Flannel Shirts in My Videos From Middle School

Ten Best Top Tens of January --> June '07
1.30.07: Why You Don't Want to Date Me
2.27.07: Dreams You Want to Hear About
3.25.07: Apartments I Want To Live In
4.15.07: My Skills
5.8.07: Potential Reactions To The Loss of One's Sunday Top Ten
5.13.07: Summer Scattergories
5.20.07: Requirements for My Unpaid Intern
5.28 & 5.31: Top Ten Clubs To Which I'd Be a Member: Part One & Part Two
6.11.07: I Am Not The Only One Without a Phone
6.19.07: On Camp

Ten Best Top Tens of July '07 --> December '07
7.2.07: Team Awesome's Gay Teevee Show Is Unlike All Other Gay Teevee Shows
7.22.07: Things That We Lost Along the Way/Concepts Abandoned Prior to Execution
8.13.07 & 8.16.07: Things I Want to Do Before I Die Part One and Two
8.30.07&9.2.07: Worst Nightmares One and Two
8.23.07: Live Through This And You Won't Look Back
9.16&9.20: Dream Jobs Part One and Two
10.2.07: Great Mysteries of Life Part One and Two
10.22.07: Things That Were Harder Than I Expected
10.28.07: Things You Might Not Agree With
11.26.07: Cities I Could Totally Never Live In

The New Sunday Top Ten will drop on Tuesday, fo'serious ...

The Year in Review: Hands Down Totes Rockin' Through The Ides

There's a Calvin and Hobbes book called "The Days Are Just Packed." That's how I feel about most of 2007, but especially March/April/May, which I'm presently trying to Year in Review. I'm having trouble constructing sentences right now; I just spent four days dancing/dodging crazily/clumsily around myself and now the only way I'm able to actually communicate is in emails to Haviland in all-caps. I expected the holidays to be tough, but I was unprepared for what a petulant bratty psychotic weirdo I'd become out here in the heartland. My brother asked me if I found it strange that I was acting like such a secretive agoraphobe when I've got this blog where I'm like "Hiya! Memememememe!" But seriously, I dunno, I really don't think they read this or even know about it. Maybe they do, maybe they're reading it right now. Hi dudes! Love you!

Here's the thing:
Me to Someone: How have you been?
Someone: Well I'm still at [job] and I'm dating [person] and [other person] [got married, had a baby.] You?
Me: Welllll ... in April my then-girlfriend went manic and decided to re-create Don Quixote in real life, I got to be Sancho .... etc etc ... in July I wrote this gay sitcom with a girl I met on the internet and then I went on this gay cruise 'cause my BFF was singing "Mama Who Bore Me" and we did a staged reading of our sitcom on the boat and the girl from Annie read the lead but now we've got this web version and a broadcast thing and we're developing ... etc etc ... in October I got fired for doing drugs and vodka bottles with people from the teevee ... etc etc ... then I didn't leave my room for about six weeks, I built a cave out of bookshelves ... wanna see my boyshorts? They're hot. I'm never doing laundry again, I'm just gonna wear my own merch forevs and evs.

You know? Like, I just don't know what to say. I really don't know what to say. Unlike words, there are no stories I'm able to abbreviate just yet, so I end up just sounding like an asshole.

My aunt and uncle have lived in the same house in rural Ohio for as long as I can remember. At 4 A.M on the 24th I was out there on the backporch with my cousin (the view: endless cornfields, cold, windy, acres) smoking cigarettes and he said, essentially out of nowhere, "You know, I won't judge you, Marie. You can say anything to me, whatever, there's nothing you could say that would change my mind about you being tops, Marie." (Imagine that said in a post-20-beers voice, though.) We'd just spent a few hours watching old videos and discussing our family's attribution of the "genius" label to various cousins at different times (my father was a genius, truly was, we remain awed, want someone to carry it on). It was perfect, him saying that. That was everything to me, even if I didn't say what he was probably getting at to begin with.

I can say people won't accept me for who I am, but that's bullshit, they totes will, I go into everything assuming from the get-go that everyone secretly hates me and seeks to affirm that, but actually maybe they really love me and all my weirdo-dom! Really! Even though we're all! So! Different! I just don't know who I am, and "quirky crazy writer artist girl" seems to be the easiest category to sit inside and speak from.

I took this while driving:


So anyhow! I'm in Somewhere, Ohio in a hotel. The woman at the desk had a lot of flair. I'm kinda emo right now, just a warning. I know that comes as a total surprise after reading the first two paragraphs.

The Year in Review: March

3.5.07

3.25.07

... in which my entire life changed.

WTF 2007 EVENT #2:
Being told I'd have to move out of my apartment, which I loved.

WTF 2007 EVENT #3:
Not selling the book. This is 50% the fault of this book
which came out at the exact wrong time.

K-Lily visited, from Reno, the first weekend in March (which burdened her with the responsibility of playing the "What should my Top Ten be?" game with me all weekend. Our final choice: Top Ten Things You Should Know About Your Friends). I think it was because of her and Tara I even became open to the idea of making real friends on the internet. K-Lily and Tara, both legitimate people with plenty of real-life friends and no deep affiliations to the Star Trek franchise, had plenty of cyber-friends who they'd never met but nevertheless felt super-close to and spoke of with an assumption of legitimacy. Thus, I realised these friendships could matter deeply and that that was okay -- it was possible, or just simply valid. This would end up helping me when later in the summer I couldn't share as much with my 3-D friends as I needed to in order to go on.

On March 8th, OurChart asked for guestbian nominations. Because I always leap at the opportunity to write free stuff for the lesbos, I asked everyone to nominate me, and they totally did, it was awesome, I felt like the super-cool winner of the lesbian Olympics. Wait, that actually exists, doesn't it?

I didn't know what to write about so I suggested writing about bisexual stereotypes/issues and Tara countered that'd be like "making a giant bullseye and putting it on your forehead." We joked I could write about the gayest shit ever instead, which became the Gayest Shit Ever Top Ten, which I must've completely forgotten about when Carly and I put together the Top Ten about all the gay shit that'd be missing from our brill GLBT sitcom, because there's a lot of repeated topics: cats, processing feelings, etc.

I was on fire then! I was falling for this girl, you know? And that became, obvs, my OurChart column: "How I Met the Girl"... I wrote about cyber-sparks and I'm actually totally proud of that essay. I must have written it really fast too. I don't know, like when your world gets totally shook up like mine was then, your mind has to go fast to keep up.

... and just like that. Public. It was the first time since I'd started writing that I'd been open about who I was dating and it felt dangerous and possibly unwise but the material was so beautiful and consequently easy to write about and quickly ... quickly ...

At my first "In the Flesh" reading, I'd met an editor at [redacted] magazine and he called on March 13th about the possibility of replacing their long-time sex&dating columnist. I said we could talk about it, 'cause I knew it'd be a fantastic opportunity, but I'd essentially have to lie about everything since I'd just sort of stopped dating like, that week. Not like I'd been dating. But you know what I mean, whatevs. A few days later he called and gave me my first major unsolicited magazine article assignment of all time. 3,000 words. $1/word. Seven days of my "crazy bisexual life," like Chapter 11 of my book which he'd really liked. [Chapter 11, not to be confused with bankruptcy, was about the one week of 2005 that I actually went out a lot]

But I don't have a crazy bisexual life anymore, I wanted to say. Instead of saying that, I figured I'd just lie, but my bad habit of lying and "lying about a fact to get at an emotional truth" was already tricky ground w/r/t my book -- my agent had already expressed concern that I was gonna have to come clean about a lot of serious skeletons if I did a straight memoir, which is what all the editors wanted me to do, we were finding out as they rejected the half non-fiction angle one by one. James Frey, that asshole, fucking it up for us all. So there was that too: if I lied for the magazine, then would I have to tell the same lies in my book? There were already so many I was trying to navigate then ... "'I can't imagine anyone caring enough about my little book to go on CNN and say I [fill in unimaginable acts here], like it's not like I'm going to be on teevee or something." My agent said, No, you are. This is going to be big, if we do it right.

[Now: I believe that is true. Then: unreal.]

And so I thought this would be good practice: with honesty.

The ides of March. I figured I had a book deal more-or-less, I had this big magazine article -- it'd be okay then to quit my job though I had about $500 to my name. [redacted] magazine was covering my expenses. As soon as I finished the article, I'd get a 9-to-5 that fit me better than my old gig. So I quit.

I think March 15th was the official "first night" of the article, the "Seven Days of Dates" (with the same person??) thingie. There was a Shortbus DVD release party, that weekend Tara and her friend had a joint b-day party. I recall a randomized snowstorm and hopping through it, giddy about love and everything.

March 17th, my real journal: "It is amazing how many hours truly occupy a single day. It is remarkable that we bear it at all."

Sunday, March the 18th I wrote on Reasons to Drink During the Daytime -- it was St. Patrick's Day and my girlfriend's birthday. She drank a lot then, eventually she'd drink even more than that, and then even more, and so eventually I'd start flirting with purposeless daytime drinking from time to time, too.

But also I was learning -- through The L Word recaps (obvs I was trashed for 95% of L Word viewings, it is almost completely unbearable to watch sober) and then through this sort of occasional mid-afternoon buzz -- that intoxication does not inhibit my ability to write. I totally did not need to know that about myself. Like when I learned I could take six Vicodin and still drive a car.

So, March the 18th: we had a house meeting, I was told I'd be moving out because my roommate's BFF was moving in from California. I cried like I'd been voted off Tila Tequilla ... fo'reals, I loved that apartment and its location. I loved Maggie and we'd totally been through it together. I didn't want to go. Everything just felt uneasy: in flux. And I'd quit my job on the assumption that I'd be fine as long as no major unexpected expenses occurred out of nowhere ... like moving.

I was totally like "I am not gonna tell Tara, it's her birthday, no bad news today," but I think I told her about twenty minutes into lunch. My eyes were kinda puffy. It was a really beautiful birthday, holla. Later that day, Tara'd meet Haviland and see The L Word for the first time ever ... [the episode in which Henry clipped his toenails henceforth ruining my life forever] ... and this was all (gonna be we thought) immortalized in a magazine article that was making both of us process my feelings and analyze too quickly, and it wasn't until it was over and got killed that we realised how much that had affected everything. But then we still thought all kinds of good things that had started would continue like they'd been, so who cares, you know? Back then, everything just felt on fire, but not like fire that burns things or minds, just the kind of fire that lights the sky.

In the first post that Haviland admitted she didn't read (it was about food, her least favorite topic):

French Fries
NY Mag said: The Farm on Adderley (1108 Cortelyou Rd. Ditmars Park, Brooklyn)

I say: Arby's. (National Chain)
Hands down totes Arby's. I can never even decide: homestyle or curly? They are both delicious, but in totally different ways. You know, like men and women. That being said, I usually chose curly fries. I think they are just more emotionally complex.

AND ...

Tara's comment:

i. Providing gmail sponsored link context for my epigraph:

"Free Trade Purses
Gorgeous Purses made by girls in Cambodia.
You win. They win. $19.99

We all automatically win. Yay child labor!"

"Hands down totes Arby's" is my new battle-cry. Love that sentence construction; it made my night. Totes.

Auto-Lexicon:

Hands Down Totes: An enthusiastic endorsement of something that seems very obvs to you.
I Win. You Win. We All Auto-Win: A [hopefully] adorable way of saying this is good for me and also good for you!

"I don't want to be in flux anymore. I am very tired. I want rest and respite." (my real journal, 3-18)

See, I'm still on March 18th. That's how the days had started to go, by April I felt we'd been together for years.

And March 25th ... finally (finally!) The L Word's season finale. [redacted] magazine sponsored the party. Ironically, when I did get reiumbursed for my article-induced expenses, I didn't apply it to cover the credit card bills I'd racked up for the magazine ... I had to use it to pay rent.

We go through draft after draft. (I talked about this more in August, when I decided just to publish the article on my blog.) Heather, Craig, Sherri and I go to see The View and Havi in her little adrogynous get-up, it was awesome.

I had to start looking for a place. In that post, in which I detail what I want in an apartment based entirely on fictional apartments I'd liked in movies, I say that I did find a place but actually that fell through. Anyhow, I thought my head might explode and sometimes I'd feel like I was running so fast I couldn't breathe, like I was so alive I might just explode. Not exploding was so hard I could barely do anything besides that.

Tara and I fantasized about the end of it all -- the end of the article madness, the apartment thing, my employment flux. We're also both kinda hermits and loners and so all that socialising was like, weird. We wanted to just lie around, gaze into each other's eyes and have feelings like real lesbos.

So hm. By the end of March, I was like, 95% certain that the article'd get published. They were sending a photographer and everything. The book was totes rejected and I was supposed to re-work it as a straight memoir, that's what everyone wanted, lots of interest, and I thought I'd do that super-quick and we'd be onwards into book deal land: still haven't done it. The L Word thing happened, the OurChart thing happened, like everything was marching happily forward!

You know what: seriously, March kinda rocked. I mean, knowing now that the article wouldn't be published, it rocks less, but I was totally like, walking on air then: I was in love and my writing was getting better and consequently, becoming something I could do for a living.

Go March! Best Month Ever! Because that is the month! In which this happened!


That's the greatest thing to happen to the human ass since the invention of Auto-Straddle boyshorts, which actually came later. But whatevs, I love time travel.