A Woman's Plea

Please take me on a date. Like, a real one. Not one that later I will question if it was a pseudo-date, or merely you making sure I actually have two ears and two legs and one nose. One where other people will see us and instantly be able to recognize between your look of sheer terror at the thought of not entertaining me enough, and my full face of make-up that we're both hoping at some point in the near future to wind up horizontal and We Are On A Date because of this. It doesn't really matter where you take me-- I mean, as long as they serve beer, you could take me to a cockfight (not a euphemism), and I would still try to make sparkling conversation and validate your choice of venue. The key to impressing me is to ask me out in the first place, because, let's be honest here, from there, it's all downhill. Even if we were to go on a second date, or a sixth date, or end up together for two years, sooner or later, you will discover how I always leave an inch of drink left in my cups in the fridge, which I never plan on finishing, and I will discover, at some point, your love for either 80's power ballads or anime porn. It will never be as new and exciting as that first real date, ever again.

Please take me on a date. If we go out to eat, please pay for my meal. It's not that I'm a gold-digger; it's just that I've run out of edible combinations for the pickles, peanut butter, and fiber crackers that make up the remains of my kitchen cupboards at home. If I plan the date, or suggest eating while we're out, it's because I'm hungry at that moment, and I promise that I will pay for whatever I get, be it Starbucks, or lo mien. But if you're the genius who came up with the idea of going to that crazy-expense new sushi place because it boasts aphrodisiac sea creatures and the "romantic atmosphere" you hope will get yourself laid, please pay for my meal. I signed on for a date, not a second mortgage.

Please take me on a date. I promise to act like a normal human being. I will not ask you if you can do the M.C Hammer dance, because I really want the groom at my wedding to be able to do it with his groomsmen while wearing Stormtrooper helmets. I promise to stay off hot-button issues like politics, my lack of religion, and your pants. I promise to at least smile at your jokes, if not laugh at them, and only discuss things that I'm passionate about, like living in Italy and the Impressionist art period, so I light up from the inside and come to life, not things I'm passionate about, like sticking it to my ex and how I loved Mark Wahlberg even when he was Marky Mark. Especially in those magical white boxer-briefs. I promise to hold my fork the etiquette-class way, and not like I'm getting ready to spear your hand if you reach across to steal one of my fries. I promise to order more than the salad.

Please take me on a date. Make the first move at the end of the evening. Unless I've been blatantly yawning at you or texting through the entirety of our time together, it's a pretty safe bet that I'm giving you the female air traffic control signs to align your lips with either my cheek, or if you're feeling particularly dangerous, my own. Even if we don't kiss goodbye because I am hacking up a lung and possibly my left kidney, and though you're willing to swap cigarettes with me, you're worried that your immune system will not be able to keep it's shit together if it meets with my saliva, just know that I am wearing nice underwear. Though the chances of you actually seeing them at this juncture are slimmer than the chances of Nixon ever admitting to being the mastermind behind not only Watergate, but the Snuggie, too, just know that were we to somehow trip over a storm drain and a freak gust of hurricane wind were to rip our clothes off on the way down, and I landed on top of you...yes, these are from Victoria's Secret.

XOXO

Datepocalypse Now: A History Of Disaster.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl with big blue eyes and French-braided blonde hair in a church's preschool room. There was also a little boy with a brown bowl-cut and long, long eyelashes. They were In Love. They talked about their wedding; how many kids they wanted. (Him, three boys. Her, none.) He was going to be a mechanic. She was going to be a vet, and was already resigning herself at the tender age of four to being the breadwinner of their two-to-five-person family. (She had always been a little pragmatic about life.) They played together every day, except the weekends, which always went by far slower than they should for someone who has just learned to tie their shoes, and still doesn't know how to swim or ride a bike. Monday would come again, and she would build with blocks and cuddle stuffed animals and he leaned intently over the Fisher-Price orange and yellow car's hood. It was bliss.

Until one day, when talking about their upcoming-upcoming-upcoming nuptials, the little boy uttered the words that froze the very still-warm and un-jaded blood in our little blonde practicing veterinarian's veins: "Well, I'd either marry you, or Sarah."

The cherubic child glanced across the room at the towering red-headed girl with the short and flippy hair, currently engaged in bullying another little girl for the rice table's shovel. "Ick," she said, and with that, slapped the boy right across his long-lashed face, stomped away, and vowed, "Never again! And NO MORE MECHANICS!"

I've never been great at sharing anything I particularly like, be it cardboard building blocks or a living and breathing man. It's one of my tell-tale only-child hang-ups. It was (hilariously, in hindsight,) awkward for the next 10 years of my life, as Alex, our fickle long-lashed wannabe-mechanic, and I shared the same pediatrician. Every grown woman's worst nightmare is to see an ex when they look like shit-- now imagine being aware of this sentiment at the age of 7, and hacking up a lung, stricken with bronchitis, as your spurned crush, covered in a particularly attractive and blistering rash, glares at you from across the waiting room replete with rocking horses, puzzles, and Highlights magazines. My mother would always point him out, and say, "Look, it's Alex! Why don't you go say hi? You used to play together all the time!" She just didn't get it. And I never forgot Alex, or that feeling that came over me as his statement sunk in and I looked across the room at Sarah, Carrot-Top's Miniature Preschool Bully.

---

Fast-forward 9 years later, and I was in a long-term relationship with what was by all accounts a highly unsuitable man. The problem was, I was 16, and bored, and really couldn't give more of a fuck that the only reason I was staying in the relationship was the fact that I honestly couldn't be bothered to work up the energy to dump him. That was, until New Years' Eve day, when I made the most influential discovery of my teen years until the one two years later in which I found same highly unsuitable man on a gay dating website. (THAT was the pinnacle of maniacal glee of my teen years.) Said boyfriend had been at my house the previous night, and had asked to use our home computer to check his Myspace page. (Ah, yes-- it was in THOSE days.) I had dutifully logged him in so he could Myspace away, remarking aloud that I didn't know he had a Myspace page. "Yeah; it helps keeping in touch with people I went to school with and don't see much anymore." (He was already a college graduate, if this clears up the meaning of the previous word "unsuitable.") I filed that piece of information away, and the next day, typed his name into Myspace's search bar to add him as--wait for it, because I was so excited-- not just my Myspace friend, but as my Myspace boyfriend.

Imagine how quickly that bubbly teenage naivety turned into a sickening feeling of betrayal when I found his public Myspace page, in which he chronicled the process of "soon ending all these girl problems", with helpful comments and a cheer-leading section from the woman of his affections. Who was decidedly not me. In fact, I was the problem. The problem he had been inside of the night before. Which didn't seem like too much of a problem to him at the time.

I got raging drunk at my best friend's New Year's party that night, in preparation to do What I Must the next day, because my very sophisticated 24 year old boyfriend was throwing a very grown-up New Year's Day party in his apartment with the missing slats in the Venetian doors and the posters taped to the walls. A party that his older brother was driving in from Rochester to attend. A party at which I was supposed to pretend to be 18 and going off to NYU in the fall, like I always told his friends I was. (He was the one who actually propagated this rumor in the first place. I played along because I was a theater geek in need of practice, and plus, I already liked the beer that his friends brought over.) A party at which I was supposed to be as sophisticated and sexy as possible. Because doesn't every college grad want to show off his six--...eighteen year old girlfriend?

So I woke up the next morning, shook a hangover off, got dressed up in something that showcased what was already some pretty phenomenal cleavage for someone so young, and picked one of my best friends up who was also invited/was my emotional support. We walked up the back stairs and into the apartment, party already in full-swing, and my boyfriend quickly spotted me (I think I was in something teal?) and waved me over to where he and a guy who sported the same red hair and could only be his brother were standing, holding bottles of Honey Brown. His brother and I shook hands as he said, "Hey, it's so nice to meet you." And then, turning his gaze to my soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, added, "I've heard so much about you."

"So nice to meet you, too," I told him, and as soon as he relinquished my hand, turned to my unsuspecting boyfriend and dropped the A-bomb with all the aplomb of a particularly trigger-happy ARA member-- "Oh, I saw your Myspace page. I know all about her. It's so over."

I swear time briefly stopped as I spun on my heel, grabbed my smirking friend's hand, and flounced out, leaving my stunned now ex-boyfriend to explain to all of his slack-jawed and still guests exactly why his trophy girlfriend had just dumped him. I will say-- it was deliciously empowering to my 16 year old self's confidence after being steam-rolled both metaphorically as well as physically by the same man for the past 6 months. I wish every woman could have a bad relationship they didn't care so much about with a shitty revelation like that, just so that they could have that One Shining Moment of Self-Redemption. He called every day for a month straight, begging to be taken back. I haven't talked to him since that New Year's morning over 5 years ago.

---

I've spent most of the day cooling off so I don't say anything totally off-base. But this is what I do need to say: It's not my fault, and it's not my problem. If you want to blame anyone, take a good and long look in a mirror and ask yourself why. You knew full-well. So man up and live with it. I'm not thrilled, either. Did you ever think of that? Did you ever think of the situation you were putting me in, the same situation I lived in in the reverse? And that's more than a little perverse.

It's only taken me 21 years to figure this out, but in the end, it's not, in fact, about what I want; in fact, I want remarkably little from you, if you had taken the time to actually ask me instead of jumping to conclusions. It's about what I need that you can't give me. I need someone who will be there when they say they will be. I need someone who would rather eat bull's balls in public than break a promise when they make one, because "I promise" needs to mean something more than a placation. I need someone who values me without having to look elsewhere to find what I'm missing. I need someone who accepts my flaws, quirks, sneezes, moles and all as much as I accept theirs. I need someone who isn't going to think that the red-headed terror of the sandbox is as much of a catch as I am and can't decide between the two of us. And therein lies the fundamental problem-- since I came back, I've been slowly realizing that you either can't or won't give me what I need yet. A "break" would imply that we were less than already broken, and I'll be honest and say that I've been feeling like it's been shattered beyond some major dedicated repair for awhile. So thank you for finally turning me loose. I hope that you find what you want and what you need, too.

XOXO

Daughters, Students, Friends, Lovers.

All the men in my life are inordinately worried about me being over here. My father keeps telling me to “have fun” like I’m not already eating the best food of my life or working my way through a bottle of wine that I buy completely legally, free and clear, every other night. A favorite professor sent me a very comforting email about how the initial “initiation” phase in Italy can be very tough, but I’ll get through it, fine. Geoff, if he had had the time before I left, wanted to string together all the empty .38 shells from our afternoon at the shooting range and make a necklace for me so no one would fuck with me when I was out and about. Twanthony writes me wordy and hilariously, disturbingly violent weekly emails from home about what’s going on at work, who he wants to lay waste to and why, and to keep up with my adventures in his native land. Robin and the boys upstairs walk with me, even in broad daylight, right up to the front door, as if I could be whisked away somewhere in the 100 feet between the corner and front stoop. And after the first night I almost called you as I did it to have someone to walk me home over the phone from across the Atlantic, I re-thought it and realized I won’t dare tell you that I do the 20 minute walk home from my late-night class in the south end of the city to my apartment in the north end alone, because after the multitude of “be safe”s and “come back soon”s and the rest of the unspoken worry that nested somewhere between your guarded eyes and furrowed eyebrows, I would not put it past you to pitch an unholy fit and start developing the beginnings of an ulcer.

“Be safe” seems to be the rallying cry of all the important men in my life right now.

This is all I can say to you: I am fine. Stop worrying—not all the way, but enough to just know that I am enjoying myself here, and being as safe as I can be, and I will do all that I can to return myself back state-side in one piece, save for some liver damage from all the good vino and home-made liquor and about half a lung less than I started out with—both self-damaged and from the unavoidable second-hand smoke. The women here like me because I am up-front and assured while still being polite. The men, so far, are a little mystified at an American girl who looks them straight in the face and doesn’t play coy or seem to overly want their attention. Eh. They’re pretty, alright, a collectively beautiful people, but too clingy and a little too poetic for my tastes. “We be together tonight?” is not in my registered vocabulary at the moment. This is not to say I mind the occasional familiar heavy lean against me while seated, or hand on my hip or arm around my waist. These things are as reassuring and informally intimate as hearing an old friend’s voice, or a firm handshake. But I don’t have time for broken English or flowery Italian. Give me my American boys and an intelligent and fully comprehendible conversation, and call me a happy girl.

So. I’m being safe. I’m having fun. Short of saying “I would live here,” I hope it gets the point across. And rest assured, I worry just as much about you all being there, and me being here. I can’t wait to see you again.

There. Properly satisfied? Are we clear? Are you a little less nervous? A little more soothed that I am not running off with random Italian counts to their villas in Tuscany? (Though, I have not yet actually met a count. If I do, the game might change.)

XOXO

Jersey Blunt: This Is Just To Say...

...That I am going to miss you a hell of a lot. I thought of you this morning in the shower, and I was going to call you today to chill over this weekend, because it had been way, way too long.

And then I found out this morning that Jersey Blunt passed away at 4 AM today.

After a night of partying, he was heading home when he had a seizure, fell, hit his head, and died in the hospital this morning from complications and trauma. Yes, the seizure was probably drug-related, but, you know what? I don't give a fuck. He was probably happy. That's all that matters.

Jersey and I met in the fall of last year, under dubious circumstances. He was a 20 year old freshmen, after having to put his college career on hold for a year for parole, and I was his advisor. He was handsome-- Italian, 6 foot, 4 inches tall with black hair and bright blue eyes, a big nose, and a wide mouth that smiled easily. He was charming; cunningly, stunningly intelligent; rib-achingly funny, and had a heart as big as his hands. Being the oldest and most experienced in the dorm house also made him the most popular. Unlike most people, Jersey never turned anyone away from chilling with him-- the awkward, the unpopular, the underdogs-- all were welcome. He was kind. He was polite. I have never, ever seen that kind of respect and caring from an alpha male, and I probably won't see it again for a long time. He had a set of manners on him that would have made his New Jersey Jewish mama proud. He ironed his khakis before going to meet with his parole officer, for chrissake.

Though he had a shady past, he was trying to turn as straight and narrow as a natural-born hustler can. I got involved; maybe a bit too much, but that's a part of my life that made me learn, made me grow, and taught me invaluable lessons. He was possibly the most protective and caring guy I have ever even loosely been with-- he protected those around him fiercely, in quietly assertive ways. He made me promise to buy only from him, so he would know what I was taking, and would know the quality, where it came from, how much, the effects, and the dangers. He was the first there to watch your back. He was the one who would call you right back when he saw a missed message, even for something not important. He was the one I called when I was tripping hard, panicked, and didn't know what to do. He took care of me. Calmly. Soothingly. Totally. When he left for the summer, I quit that lifestyle, and the few times I saw him this fall, it seemed like he was brushing it off, too.

I saw him last week, when I was running to a meeting-- met him coming down the stairs I was going up with another one of the SoHo boys. We chatted for awhile, catching up, making plans to party together again. He asked me to let him know of any jobs I heard of that could be interesting. Dealing had stopped being his main income. He was moving on.

Some things, however, would never change. His jaw looked a little funny. Did he get punched? Was it swollen? A toothache or dental procedure? I peered at it until I couldn't help but wonder any more? "Lookit me for a second," I asked, and when he got squirrely and started blushing and fidgeting, I knew I had him.

"Awww..." he started, but I persisted-- "No, no-- look at me!" He bent down so I could see him better, and we were almost in the same position as that afternoon at the beginning of us last fall when he tucked me up to his chest and under his chin on the sidewalk as people and cars passed and snowflakes drifted down.

"Are you...chewing?" I asked him.

"Naw, I'm not chewing," he said, his eyes darting around, not looking at me, a sure sign he was embarrassed and trying to get out of it. "I'm not like Graf and spitting all over the place, but yeah, I have a lip in."

"Ewww. Why?"

"I dunno. I used to chew. I got drunk last night and bought a tin. Don't want to let it go to waste."

The guy could deliver an Oscar-worthy act to professors, faculty, friends, and members of the judicial system, but he still could never,ever lie to me. Not about drugs, not about girls-- not even about homework.

He still was into personal use of drugs, however.

He explained it to me this way, as we stood on the porch one night, smoking and debating String Theory. (Yes...String Theory. He could have gone Ivy. He made me feel ridiculously slow and dim.) "It's like that-- like String Theory. Everything I do, opens up my mind a little more. It stretches limits and makes me grow."

He was happy. He knew the risks. Knowing him was to know to expect something like this. Loving him was to love all of him, bad habits and all. Since last November, I have always awaited the phone call saying he was either back in jail, or had died. It has always been a possibility with him, but that's ok-- that's how he lived his life, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Not a second was left not lived to the fullest.

He introduced me to Purple. Gave me free beer; gave me the chance to beat him funneling my first time ever; always had sick new music to share with me; was always dependable to open the front door, help out with the other boys, or offer to lend me a few (hundred) bucks when I was struggling. Taught me what "mugobs" were, and that you should be able to depend on a man to get in touch with you, and never failed to tease me in the most delightful ways. I will always regret what I wasted when I did the "professionally right" thing and didn't get with him. Let that be a lesson to me-- take those chances, and live like Jersey did. That is a 6'4" gap in my life that no one will ever fill. I will never hear that "Bonita Applebaum" ringtone again.

He was 21.

Keep it easy, killah-- I will always, ALWAYS remember you.

The biggest XOXO of them all, for the biggest dude.

I Promise.

I am going down to the boardwalk overlooking the river to smoke a cigarette. When I come back, I will go straight to work on a blog post. I promise.

The best part is that it's so humid and muggy here that I honestly cannot be bothered to actually put real clothes on, so I'm going out in boy's soccer shorts, a college t-shirt, flip-flops, and a messy pony-tail. No one would recognize me now except for the people I went to elementary school with when this was my basic uniform. Maybe I'll be mistaken for a local townie and get hit on by the high-school drop-out boys that affix NASCAR emblems to their 1990's trucks. Oh, the pleasure! I am almost embarrassed to be seen with myself.

But really, one bad, nasty little cigarette and then I'm back and to business. I promise!

XOXO