A blah email

I get the oddest spam. Here is an email I received in my spam/bulk box:

---

From: "Robert Wright" [e9cMartin@blogs.com]
Subject: Re: HI

blah
blah
blah

blah2
blah
blah
blah

blah2

---

Sadly, I sometimes get emails from actual people that sound a lot like this. I wonder, what does the "blah2" mean? There must be some existential reason for the blah2 and the line break before it. And who is this Robert Wright and why is he emailing me a blah email? There isn't even an attached virus to attack my hard drive.

Most curious.

The question

He sees her without her make-up on. She is lying next to him on her bed, props herself up with her elbow and rests her head on her hand, facing him. Her damp hair falls across her face. He touches her hair and tucks the tendrils behind her ear. Then he looks at her through his glasses.

"You're beautiful," he says.

She laughs. She tries in her late-twenty-something mind to write it off as corny, cheesy, silly, stupid, and - oh yeah - just plain false but she can't. Like a girl, she laughs. Laughs and looks down.

Can a man really think she's actually beautiful? No make-up, hair a mess, just her, raw and plain and naked. How does one respond to that? "Thank you"? "Oh please, stop"? Or perhaps the self-deprecating "Are you blind? I'm hideous, what the hell are you talking about"?

But she doesn't argue or agree or thank him or even acknowledge the comment. She just laughs and look down. When she looks at him again, she sees he is still looking at her.

"You know, I can't fall for you."

Fall for her? Did she just hear that right? Fall for her? As in ... fall for her?

"What do you mean?" she asks. She wants to hear him say it, but she knows he wouldn't. He couldn't.

"I can't get attached."

She blinks and says, "I know."

He leaves her bed that night and goes home. "Fall for you," what does "fall for you" really mean? she asks herself, thinking maybe there are different meanings for "fall for" but hoping it is the one she is thinking of. Maybe in some circles, "fall for" means "getting attached," as he implied.

Allowing her neurosis to get the best of her -- and just to be extra sure -- she goes to dictionary.com and looks it up.

fall for

1. To feel love for; be in love with.
2. To be deceived or swindled by: fell for the con artist's scheme and lost $200,000.

She knows it couldn't have been definition #2 as she hadn't been involved in any con artist's scheme she was aware of. It had to be #1. It had to be ... hadn't it? Could he be falling for her, in the dictionary.com-definition-#1 sense? Or had he meant something else?

She wonders.

The notable noodle

I ignored the health nut voice inside my head and took the liberty of ordering spicy Thai noodles for lunch. I've had a craving for noodles for the past few days but held off for reasons like, noodles are too heavy for the work day, the noodle shops are too far, and noodles aren't exactly the most healthy meal.

I love noodles, though my favorite type of noodle is the udon noodle. It has the perfect thickness and texture. The Thai noodles I got today were flat and wide but yummy nonetheless. I prefer thicker noodles over thinner noodles, firmer over mushy. I like them in soups, stir fried, or marinated in a sauce. Soooo good.

I think there's some contention over who invented the noodle first, Italians, Arabs or Chinese. However, the finding of a 4,000-year-old bowl of noodles in China may point to the Chinese as the originators.

Whoever invented them, thank you. A life without noodles is a life not lived.

Expiration dating

Had my date last night with the other guy, not the 9.5-on-a-scale-of-1-to-10 from Sunday night, also not the boy in the hypothetical blurb below. (I need to think of new monikers for these guys.)

Anyway, a few disconcerting things: First, he kept hinting throughout the night about having sex. Like he thinks I'm attractive, he likes me, he wants to take me home, or alternatively I could take him home. I admit I do get flirty and risqué in my banter. I have the gifted ability to make anything into a double entendre. So I arguably led him to incessant thoughts of sex. Still though, there's perhaps nothing less sexy than a guy making it patently obvious all he wants is sex with you.

Second, and this may be related to the first point, he is leaving for grad school in two weeks. Said grad school is far, far away. What is the point of starting anything if there's only two weeks left? The only answer I can think of is a two-week fling. And then I wonder, could I be That girl? The fling girl? A flinger? A fling to be flung? (Okay I'll stop.)

Third, when he kissed me at the end of the night, our teeth bumped. I hate it when that happens. But maybe a first kiss with someone is like first sex - awkward and weird at first, but after a few more tries you guys get into each other's grooves. So to speak. Only rarely do either go perfectly well the first time.

All that aside, the guy is charming and funny. He's a very likeable guy, and maybe if he wasn't leaving in two weeks, this could have been something. I'm just not sure what to think of him, or how to proceed. The Naysayer states the obvious: the guy just wants unbridled sex for two weeks and then leave.

Perhaps a risk-benefit analysis is in order. Risks: I'll get attached, I'll kick myself for having meaningless sex, I'll get hurt. Benefits: Sex.

Hm, decisions decisions...

A sign

A girl and a boy are having dinner together. The girl accidentally drops a fry into her water, effectively contaminating it. The boy has his water, full to the rim, and continues to drink from it while she's eating a salty, spicy sandwich. They finish their meal, the boy finishing his glass of ice water, the girl finishing her sandwich, parched.

It did not even cross the boy's mind to offer her a sip of his water. Still though, the girl could have just asked, "Can I have a sip of your water please?" at which the point the boy would have probably said sure. Boys aren't mind-readers. Moreover, it was his water and if he didn't want to share it, that's his prerogative.

And little details are just little details...Right?

Thanks Rich

I always wondered why guys loved watching girls make out, bathe each other, have pillow fights and the like.

Richard Posner, a judge sitting on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, a summa cum laude graduate of Yale University and valedictorian of Harvard Law School, former clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice Brennan, and perhaps one of the greatest legal minds of all time, had it figured it out when he stated in one of his opinions:

"Few men are interested in lesbians."

I read this and laughed out loud. Some chick sued Hustler magazine for showing pics of her that wrongfully implied that she was a lesbian, in the case Douglass v. Hustler Magazine, 769 F.2d 1128 (7th Cir. 1985). The article showed her "straddling" other women and apparently "engag[ing] in sexual activity." Posner wrote on behalf of the Court:

We would not ourselves think that Hustler was seriously insinuating -- or that its readership would think -- that [the chick] is a lesbian. Hustler is a magazine for men. Few men are interested in lesbians. The purpose of showing two women in apparent sexual embrace is to display the charms of two women.

So it's not the actual homosexuality of two women that drives men crazy, it's just that the vision of 2 amorous women is better than 1 woman.

Never thought I'd look to a judge to figure out the answer to that mystery.

Smart guys are hot

I think if given the choice between dating a guy more intelligent than I or dating a guy less intelligent than I, I would opt for the more intelligent guy. It's a slight turn off when, during the course of flirtatious banter, the guy doesn't get a joke I make, thinks Islam is a sect of Judaism, or interrupts me to ask me the meaning of the word I just used (in one real case, the word was "superficial"). Don't get me wrong, I don't want a guy who will wax philosophical about philosophy or will only be friends with other pretentious stick-up-his-ass intellectuals. But I think it takes a certain amount of intelligence to be funny, to see things in a quirky amusing way, to make witty allusions to random things. Also, conversations on how cool it is that mentos and Diet Coke react together and how funny it is that some dogs chase their tails, while entertaining, would after a certain point grow tiresome.

Of course this preference runs the risk of my feeling dumb in the presence of an intellectually superior being. But that I don't mind so much. I think it's cool when a guy knows so much about a topic I know little about it. It's an opportunity to learn about something new, be exposed to something different, and at the same time make a guy feel good cuz he knows sooo much about something sooo cool.

Now to find a guy who likes dumber girls...

Kicking the habit

I have a perfectly disgusting habit. It isn't the only bad habit I have, but it's one that, from time to time, revolts me.

I bite my nails.

I know it isn't as bad as heroin or porn, but it's pretty nasty. I don't know what compelled me to start biting my nails that one day in 1985 in elementary school, but I've been biting my nails for about 20 years and it doesn't look like I'll be quitting anytime soon.

I have my mother's hands and I look at the way her slender ivory fingers taper off to her perfectly formed nails. I know, I just know that if I let my nails grow, I would have graceful fingers like hers. Instead, I see slender fingers taper off to ugly, mangled nails.

It's so easy to just yell at someone, "Just stop!" So logical: Just stop biting your nails. But there is this inexplicable, irresistible urge to bite them off once they grow. It makes no sense. It's bad for my teeth, and it even hurts my fingers when I bite my nails.

But nail polish, vinegar, disgusting tasting potions, scotch tape, chewing gum and the like all have failed in getting me to kick my habit. Whenever I meet former nail biters, I ask how they did it. Their so-called solutions: "Oh now I bite the inside of my cheek" or "Now I eat the outside of my fingers" or worse, "Oh now I smoke." So I'm guessing this is an oral fixation. I need to satisfy my oral fixation with something other than my nails, without having to gnaw on the inside of my cheek or lips, eat the skin off my fingers or smoke. Chewing gum does not help. Okay, right now, I'm just going to stop. This article on kicking bad habits and another one on nail-biting might help.

Better late than never.

Thinking = Good

I think of myself as being somewhat fearless. I'm not afraid to take the subway at night. I'm not afraid to walk home by myself. However, as I learned the almost-hard way, there's a difference between being fearless and being senseless.

Saturday night, the girls and I stayed out until about 4 in the morning. We were leaving this club fatigued and still buzzing. Four of the girls were headed in one direction, while I lived only several blocks in the opposite direction. They hailed a cab and as they piled in, I yelled out to them, "Have a good night! I'm walking this direction." They bid me good night, one of them instructed me to call her when I got home, and they drove off.

So I began walking away from the club when I heard a guy behind me yell out "Hey--" and ask me some unintelligible question. I didn't turn around nor did I stop. I kept on walking.

It was a bit chilly, I was wearing a sleeveless dress, and so I put on my jacket as I walked down the lonely street. Then I got the feeling that the guy was walking behind me. Whatever, I thought to myself, he's probably just walking to an ATM or happens to live in the same direction.

Still just to be sure, I began walking faster, pounding my black high heels on the pavement.

I could still discern the sound of him behind me. He was keeping up with my pace. I started feeling a little anxious. It was four in the morning, I was in a large city, I was alone, and the normally busy street was dead.

Chill, I thought to myself. You're being paranoid. Just cross the street and see what happens. He probably isn't even following you.

I began to cross the street. As I crossed it, I looked both ways -- to the left, to the right. When I looked to my right, i.e., behind me, I saw that the guy began to cross the street as well, silent, looking in my direction all the while. He was following me.

OKAY, I thought to myself. I thought about calling a friend on my cell -- but I remembered that being on the phone distracts the caller and makes her more prone to attack. I thought about dialing 9-1-1, but I figured the cops wouldn't come in time. I had no cash on me for a cab but I knew a few accepted credit cards. I saw a couple cabs drive by. I walked in the middle of the street and hailed a cab. It turned around from the other side of the street and stopped in front of me. I opened the door and jumped right in and told the cabbie where to drop me off.

The guy who had been following me stopped outside the cab. The cab driver motioned him to walk by, but he just stood there, looking in. The cabbie then drove off. I took a deep breath. "I think that man was following me, so thanks for picking me up." The cabbie said, "Oh really? Wow. Yeah I thought it was weird that he didn't move out of the way and just stood there."

"Yeah, that was scary."

I wonder what the heck that guy was thinking, following me. Wasn't my complete silence in response to his calling out to me indicative of the fact that I was not interested in him? What would he have done had he caught up to me? Persuade me even more? The eerie way he stayed silent while following me, the way he crossed the street when I crossed the street, the way he stood outside the cab when I got in -- it makes me think he was not in the mood to persuade. Even if I had in my purse a bottle of mace, a stun gun, a .45 revolver, a bazooka, it still scares the shit out of me that some guy could have actually contemplated...doing something to me.

So gals, be aware, be smart - and take a cab after leaving a club at 4 AM.

Long story long

Had a fun weekend. A lot of things happened. One included meeting a guy.

Four gals and I entered a bar to meet up with one of the gals' male friend, who was with his buddies. The bar was packed. I scanned the room and happened to glimpse a certain guy. He was very attractive, and I would've probably been wary of him as a playa if he wasn't wearing glasses. Something about his unassuming glasses just made him all the more cuter. We made eye contact every so often; I even smiled at him when he looked at me, but he never approached me.

So I was introduced to one of my gal friend's friend's friend. We were chatting happily away and I did my girly-flirty thing of ooh-ing and ah-ing over his college days as a track star and his ability to run a 4-minute mile. Then one of my gals tapped me on the arm and said "Go get a drink on my tab. I need to hit a $20 minimum before I can close it." I looked at her swaying body and the glass of beer in her right hand. Clearly, she could not polish off that beer and another without dire consequences. So I went up to the bar to order a screwdriver. They served it and then asked to see my gal pal to close the tab. Just as I was speaking to my gal pal, the very attractive guy came up to me and said "Can I buy you a drink?"

I was stunned for a second. Then I composed myself and smiled. "Sure."

We sat at the bar and just chatted away. He was a graduate student at a nearby university who liked to take photographs and dance to hip hop. I was enamored. We talked and talked when I feel a tap on my arm.

It's Track Star guy whom I had been speaking with earlier, and his friend (who's my gal pal's friend). "Oh hi," I said smiling painfully.

"Hi," he said, "look, I just wanted to let you know I'm heading out now. I would've liked to see you more some time--" at which point he leaned in closer "--but I can't compete with a guy who wears cargo pants," he added mockingly.

I looked at the very attractive guy's pants. Yes, they were cargo pants. Maybe I am not that fashion-conscious, but it didn't bother me that the guy wore cargo pants.

My gal pal's friend chimed in, "Yeah, the guy wears cargo pants."

I nodded and smiled. They shrugged at me. I shrugged back. What did they expect me to do? Dis a perfectly attractive, interesting, smart guy over cargo pants? (Now if they were spandex or leopard skin pants, that'd be another thing.)

"Bye," I said and waved. And that was the end of that. The very attractive guy and I exchanged numbers, and just last night, we had our first date (he was very very busy for the next couple weeks so that was the only time he was free).

We had dinner and drinks and talked about everything from politics to the environment. It was a good date. After dinner, he walked me home.

When we got to my apartment building, I stopped in front of the entrance, smiled and said the typical "I had a really good time tonight"-closing, with which he agreed. He looked at me and then leaned in--at this point I had no idea and no expectation that we'd ever kiss, it never crossed my mind--and he kissed me. It was one of those slow gentle kisses that slowly grew into something more ... involved. He was holding my face when all of a sudden we heard these hoots, whistles and cheers from some random people walking on the sidewalk. We looked at each other and laughed. Then he kissed me again, my lips, my face, my neck. (Can you tell I've been replaying this in my mind all day?) Then he said good night, and that he'd call me.

The very attractive guy was a very excellent kisser. On a scale of 1 to 10, easily a 9.5. I hope he calls.

On a separate note, the guy with whom I went on the excellent date with last Wednesday called me today. We're going out on Thursday.

They say when it rains, it pours. My question, why can't it just rain consistently? Why can't I just not have any dry spells or droughts, and just have an even precipitation of cute smart guys throughout the entire year? Is that so much to ask for? I don't think so.

Worst Album Covers Ever

The worst album covers EVER.

It's so bad, it's good.

Mother may I

As my friend was driving me home last night after dinner and a drink, I gazed at all the sights of my immediate neighborhood. I live in a predominantly gay area of the city, where men openly hold hands with each other and rainbow flags hang in the windows of every other store. The Gay Pride parade marches right next to my apartment building. Nearby stores openly sell sex toys, leather, fishnet stockings and wigs for "down there." There are also trendy little shops and outdoor cafes. So the vibe is a bit yuppie, very liberal and a tad risque.

I really like my neighborhood.

Then I remembered, my mom mentioned visiting me some time. My mom, my Bible-thumping, evangelical mother, would be visiting my neighborhood. How do I pull that off? My apartment building is next to a hair salon called "Good Head" and a palm reader. The vision of men holding hands and stores with mannequins sporting black leather pasties would probably not bode well with a Christian Asian immigrant. I think her head would literally explode. I contemplated putting blinders on her. Maybe give her a brochure to distract her while we walk from the train to my apartment? No idea.

But at least she'll think the rainbow flags are pretty.

Wednesday night

Last night I went on a date with this guy I met through a friend from school. Another younger guy. This time though he's 26. Very smart, cute, laid back and funny. The first time I met him, he tried very hard to get me to go home with him ("I literally live just around the corner"), which I declined. I did give him my number and decided to give him a chance when he called me the next day. (3-day-rule? What 3-day-rule?)

Last night, we had dinner and drinks. Much to my surprise, I had an awesome time. I'm still surprised at how well it went. He apologized for trying so hard to get me to go home with him, and was a total gentleman throughout the night. Did not try to sleep with me. Did not even try to kiss me! I have to say, that earned him a few points. We had great conversation and a lot of chemistry. At the end of the night, we hopped into a cab so he could drop me off. He refused to let me pay for my cab fare. I got out, and then he cabbed back to his place. Afterwards, he called me and we chatted for a few minutes. I think we said to each other at least ten times throughout the night how much fun we were having.

Then this morning he emailed me. I can't deny that I squealed just a little when I read his email. Perfectly flirty.

I just met this guy. And I think I might like him.

Adventures in researching

I went to the library this afternoon. It was cool and damp and quiet, the way a library should be. A woman in a suit walked by my table where I had my laptop and a few reference books sprawled about. The woman sat down at her table, several tables in front of me, and began reviewing one of the various binders and books that were piled on her table.

I was typing away when I heard this hissing sound. I figured it was a pipe or something. The hissing became louder, like an angry whispering, and suddenly morphed into this screeching voice. I looked up and saw it was the woman in front of me. She was alone at her table, her back toward me, and shaking violently. She held her hands were in the air, as if begging some imaginary monster to please leave her alone. Maybe she's practicing her opening statement, I thought. Then she began whimpering and shaking her head, shielding herself with her bony hands. Suddenly her voice changed into this guttural voice and I could hear her cursing and whispering and shrieking insults and obscenities like "Idiot!" and "Fucking asshole!"

Needless to say, I was scared shitless.

I tried to concentrate on my reading, but my heart was thumping so loudly in my ears, I couldn't hear myself think. Maybe she had Tourette Syndrome. Tourette Syndrome was better than just plain crazy. Maybe she was possessed. Or maybe she had multiple personalities -- that would explain the different voices. At any rate, I had to wrap up my research to go back to the office, and slowly reshelved my books so as to not disturb the Scary Woman. I was actually afraid she was going to attack me, teeth baring, fingernails outstretched.

But she didn't.

I seriously think I'm traumatized.

The tangent

He was supposed to be a tangent. A marginal recreation. A thing on the side. A good lay.

Her friends, her job, her family--this was her reality. This was the thing around which the tangent flitted meaninglessly. He was supposed to be meaningless.

But somehow, he crept into the corner of her mind, slowly and carefully, crossing that boundry line between tangent and real. And somehow, this most flagrant violation of her rules of geometry became a welcomed wrong. Her reality inverted and he became the thing that seemed most real to her. It was the white pressed shirt that fit over his shoulders. The way his forearms pressed against her back when he held her. The way she felt when he kissed her. And everything else became marginal, her real life became a formless mass that surrounded him.

Friends asked her to dinner, and she wondered if he would be free then. Mother would call on the phone and she would click over the moment he called. She stayed late at work just to make up for the time she spent daydreaming about him. And as she watched her life revolve around him, she remembered to herself, He was supposed to be meaningless. He was supposed to be a tangent to my real life. But her real life had become a tangent to him.

Just another face

I think I'm pretty good at recognizing faces. Remembering people's names, however, is another thing. I can be introduced to someone and one minute later, completely forget her name.

At any rate, I took this test that tests your ability to recognize both familiar and unfamiliar faces. For famous faces, I got 97% correct. For unfamiliar faces, I got 92% correct overall.

Still though, what's the point in remembering faces if you can't remember their names?

Just say no

I've been carded for alcohol. I've been carded for gambling. I've even been carded for rated R movies.

But I've never been carded for cough syrup.

The other day, I was at the neighborhood Walgreens buying the generic brand of Robitussin DM for my cough when the cashier demanded to know my birth date. As I was uttering it, she asked me for my ID, which I produced. She studied my ID, gave it back and then rang up my cough syrup. "Do you need to be 18 to buy cough syrup?" I asked. She looked at me like I was a moron. "Yes."

I studied the ingredients of my Robitussin DM ("Wal-Tussin DM," actually). No codeine. No alcohol. No cocaine. So what the heck would a teenager do with cough syrup? I know you can make meth from Sudafed.

I did some research and one website stated:

Dextromethorphan is very often passed off as Ecstasy at clubs and Raves, it can also be found in many over the counter cold remedies such as Robitussin DM cough syrup. DXM produces hallucinations and a heavy "stoned" feeling in users but none of the desirable Ecstasy effects. DXM pills are wide-spread over the United States how ever it is usually misidentified as MDMA by users and police alike.

I did feel pretty mellow and sluggish today, like in a Keanu-Reeves-"Whoa"-kind of way. But have not been hallucinating. At any rate, I hope this entry doesn't spur people on to buy the DM to get high. It's not all that. Really.

Just a Number

I was sitting on a table in my doctor's office, wearing one of those humiliating light blue paper robes. It had been over a year since my last check-up. The doc sat in front of me on a stool, and asked me a bunch of questions about myself, like medical history, allergies, etc. Then she asked, "How many sexual partners have you had in the last year?" At first, I thought she was asking me how many sexual partners I had in my entire life, which if you think about it, is a very personal question. So I thought about it for a second, gave her an answer, and then later realized I was off by one (I overestimated). She put her folder away and began the physical exam. I resisted the temptation to say "Excuse me doctor, I was off by one, the number is actually X, not X + 1. Could you please go back into your office, retrieve my folder and correct that? Thanks." It seemed like too much effort over a miscalculation of 1. And the number was so small that it didn't seem to matter that much (see past blog entries where I complain about not getting any and how it's been a while).

Then I reflected over my Number. I don't think anyone, not even my vault of my most intimate and scandalous secrets, the Naysayer, knows. I remember how in my holy moly days, I wanted to wait until I got married. If I had, I'd be a 28-year-old virgin today. How different I would be... Well, knowing me, I'd have probably gotten married just so I could get some.

They say age is just a number. Is the Number just a number? Or does it reflect something about ourselves, in the present? A reformed mimbo (male bimbo) could have had 100 sexual partners in his life, but in the present be a monogamist; while another person could have had only two, but that's because she married the guy she lost her virginity to at age 13 and cheated on her husband last week with another guy. And a person with two one-night stands has less sexual experience than a person who has been in a long-term relationship with one person for five years.

So perhaps the Number doesn't truly reflect who you are as a person or your sexual practices in the present (how wonderful it would be if we could delete our "errors in judgment" from our memories and our Numbers?). Indeed people use the Number as a proxy for sluttiness and sexual prowess. Yet it's the sum of one's personal experiences that defines who one is, not a Number.

All that notwithstanding, I still want to correct that number in my doctor's folder.

Buzzkill

How long does it take for a buzz to wear off? An hour or two?

What about the emotional equivalent--the infatuation? A month or two? Or maybe three?

I suspect that my romantic buzz is wearing off. The beer goggles are coming off and things are starting to come into a hazy focus. The once beautiful person starts to revert to its hideously deformed state, and each flaw, plain as the sober eye can see, becomes very real...and repulsive.

Yay!....I think. It did feel good to be in like with someone. And when the like wears off, it's just this feeling of bleh. Still though, there is a sense of relief in knowing you're back to normal. Even if you are stuck with a stinging hangover.

Now

The mirror by the door was not a mirror by the door, it was an altar where he stood for only a moment to put on his cap before going out. The red rocking chair was a rocking of his own hips as he sat in the kitchen. Still, there was nothing of his -- his own -- that she could find. It was as if she were afraid she had hallucinated him and needed proof to the contrary. His absence was everywhere, stinging everything, giving the furnishings primary colors, sharp outlines to the corners of rooms and gold light to the dust collecting on table tops. When he was there he pulled everything toward himself. Not only her eyes and all her senses but also inanimate things seemed to exist because of him, backdrops to his presence. Now that he had gone, these things, so long subdued by his presence, were glamorized in his wake.

An excerpt from "Sula." Toni Morrison is an exquisite writer. It is exactly what I feel right now.

Yellow gal in the country

I spent the weekend with a gal pal and her family in a very very small town in a remote area of a certain Midwestern state. I don't view myself as a prissy little city girl (I drink Jack Daniels on the rocks and I like hole-in-the-wall diners). But I can't deny that I was a little scared when my friend and I stopped at a truck stop in the middle of rural America at 10:30 at night. The fifty-something-year-old waitress sported a well-coifed mullet and smoked a cigarette while she waited for our orders. The place was empty. The jukebox played a mournful country song. And we saw a couple guys by their pickup trucks standing by our car.

"This feels like a scene from a movie, doesn't it?" I asked my friend.

She smiled at me. "I'm used to it."

As a non-white person, I get very paranoid. I was warned by others that there are people in parts of the country who have never seen a minority -- EVER. I can't imagine going through my entire life and being exposed to only one race. People can be harmless-ignorant ("Do you know kung fu?") or mean-ignorant ("Go back to China"). So what would they do? Stare at me? Yell at me? Assault me?

My friend didn't help the situation by informing me she wouldn't have brought me along if I were African American. She told me that some of her family members in those parts still use a certain N word to refer to African Americans. My jaw dropped when she told me this and I started freaking out. "Don't worry," she assured me, "you're fine!" As in, "you" as an Asian.

Well, I came, I saw and I went...unscathed. The family was very friendly. No one asked me the "What are you?"/"Where are you from?" questions. I suppose I was treated like I was white, which is always a relief. I was also grateful to see other minorities speckled in the area (granted, there were only two others, but still).

So I admit, I'm more comfortable in a world of bums, lewd construction workers and pickpockets than a world of cornfields, dirt roads and 503 country stations. I guess that makes me a prissy little city girl.

A good thing

I'm not supposed to talk to you or see you anymore.

So I'm not.

I still check my email and cell phone every minute or so, hoping that maybe you'll breach our agreement and email or call me.

But you don't.

When I checked for the thousanth time today, I saw a new message. My heart skipped a beat. I clicked on the message.

It was Someone Else.

Someone Else asked me how I was doing. Someone Else asked how my weekend was. Someone Else asked me to dinner. I wondered why it was Someone Else. I wondered why it wasn't you.

This afternoon Jamba Juice was giving away free smoothies in my building. I thought of you and thought how perfect it could have been if I just called you and asked you if you wanted a smoothie. We could have met on our street corner, sat outside in the sunny eighty-degree weather, and chatted about nothing. You'd make me laugh like you always did. And I'd make you smile.

But we didn't.

And that, as we agreed, is a good thing. I hope.

None the wiser

My blog is exactly 1 year old. As I perused my past entries, I noticed that (a) I complain a lot, and (b) I obsess over boys. I suppose if I were perpetually happy and everything always went my way, there wouldn't be much to blog about. It'd be like, Entry 1: "Today I'm happy." Entry 2: "Today's a great day. Nothing went wrong." etc. Angst and drama are what make life interesting. Perhaps one day, I'll reach that I'm-perfectly-happy phase, when I'm an old granny and have all the answers to life figured out and realize that the ones I don't figure out don't even matter. The blog will be less than tantalizing, if even existent.

Until then, my angst-ridden blog continues.

Fancying the Brits

There's something about British sarcasm that is distinctly biting. Now I know Americans can be pretty sarcastic. But something about the way the Brits deliver their sarcasm is unparalleled. For example, I happen to like the British "The Office" better than the American one. The American one just doesn't have the same edge. I know NBC has to abide by certain FCC rules, while the British version has unbridled profanity and raunchiness. Still, there's just something about their humor that you just can't replicate with an American accent.

Anyway, I happened to stumble upon this UK ebay listing for a minivan. The bloke's responses to bidder inquiries are hilarious.

Story of my life

I was jogging by the water the other day, absentmindedly admiring the view, when I literally got caught in some guy's fishing line. As I pulled the fishing line out of my hair, the guy came over to help detangle me. It would have been a perfect pick-up situation if the guy wasn't a 49-year-old flabby man with a mullet. But he was. And he didn't even apologize.

Getting caught by the wrong guy's fishing line. Seems to be a recurring thing.

I'm with stupid

I think it's funny when you recognize your own relationship pattern, your friends recognize your relationship pattern, you realize you are repeating your relationship pattern, and you willingly repeat it, knowing full well it will end miserably.

I used to be hard on people who engaged in behavior or stayed in relationships they knew were wrong and doomed. Now I know there was obviously something else there, aside from logic and reason, that compelled them to do what they did.

Humans can be so brilliant and at the same time, so devastatingly stupid.