Douchebag Becomes Him

Last week someone called my current flavor-of-the-month (translation: favorite twerp-of-the-month) a douchebag as a joke, which I thought was funny since you know how fond I am of that word. Less than a week later, I realized I should have taken that as a sign and gone home right then and there. Kaveri always says "Douchery is right around the corner" and last night I gotta tell you, not only was it right around the corner, it was on the corner, around the block, about 6 times.

I just wish guys would stop trying to pass off their douchery as laid-back nonchalence and an easy-going demeanor. Let's call it what it is: YOU DON'T LIKE ME ANYMORE (and this is why you don't call). YOU DON'T GIVE A SHIT (and this is why you can pretend you're just you know, taking life as it comes). I SHOULD NEVER HAVE SLEPT WITH YOU (and this is why I will not be calling you, seeing you, or accepting your lame-ass excuses for being an asshole).

I would just like to say, that I wish I were mean and rude enough to have called you out on the street last night, instead of screaming at the sky in anger and waking up my neighbors. [At least we know there is one guy in the world who is amazing enough to listen to me bitch in the dark at 2 in the morning; better yet he lives upstairs but unfortunately I have already dated him (who knew dating would be suckier at 24 than at 14). Taylor, you and your back balcony with the Manhattan views rock.]

Note to Self [SMACK! STOP BEING A WELL-MEANING, TRUSTING IDIOT, SELF!]: When he says "I really like you. I hope I will never give you any reason to think I'm a creep. Come over anytime" all it really means is "I like you before sex, I will be a creep after sex, and you can come over as many times as it takes until we actually have sex."

Douchebag becomes him. Too bad I'm too smart to ever talk to him again, so he'll never get the pleasure of hearing this first-hand.

ps- "You know where to find me" is also a clever disguise for "Please don't come and find me, unless you want to have meaningless sex."

Whatever. I'm going to the BK tonight for another secret loft party, I've got a whole slew of indie/underground/artistic shit lined up indefinitely, I'm going to be an international traveler again in a week, and I just got off the phone with a potential client in Italy. I am too busy and dammit, too good to waste my time even thinking about things as insignificant as people who don't treat me the way I deserve to be treated.

My life fucking rocks, and for the first time in a long time, I wouldn't change a thing.

The Wrong Side of the Bed

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, but it was my bed, and that is just fine. Although I don't know what I'm going to do when you aren't in it, passed out with your head hanging over a pillow and your nasty mouth guard in, anymore. Despite the fact that after the first week or two I totally wanted my huge fluffy space back, I'm so used to your presence now that, like a child who has lost her security blanket or favorite teddy, I don't know what I'll do when there's nothing next to me again. I thought maybe it would work out that you could be replaced by someone else (someone I might actually be able to, you know, get some from), but my bad dreams and subsequent realization that that is not a distinct possibility have taught me that, like everything else, I'm going to just have to get over it.

Now that I'm typing this, I hope that it doesn't seem creepy that I will miss sharing a room, space, bed. etc. with my sister. Just because no one has shared a bed with a sibling long-term since Laura Ingalls Wilder doesn't mean it's weird- rather, it reminds me of that stupidly sweet ending to The Waltons where they all say goodnight to each other. Everyone needs someone to say goodnight to. Everyone. And if you don't have someone to say goodnight to, then, well, that just makes me want to cry. Go call your mother. She will appreciate your goodnight.

On the other hand:
I have been waking up alone for so long that the infrequent, sporadic times that I actually have a guy I like enough to share the covers with is like crack. There's where the problem lies- forget the sex- it's the sheet sharing that really means something. Even if I suck at sharing. I try. And then I can't get enough... even if my arm falls asleep or my hair is totally fucked in the process.

HOWEVER, screw my personal problems. Like our favorite tattoo artist said, "Everything's not always about you" (I would add a "my dear" on to the end of it, if I had my way- very Rhett Butler-esque- and I figure if you're going to say something mean, you had better be Rhett Butler-esque about it). So:

Everything's not always about you, my dear.
I know. Everything's not always about me.

And today, it really shouldn't be. Because I temporarily forget that even though we're in another state, when Lee left NC for Kentucky it didn't mean he was going on a jaunt, a drive, a trip section. It's for real now. And in that way that no one anticipated four years ago, it is really sad. And scary. And easy to forget when I'm all the way up here.

It won't be so easy to forget when it's Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and Easter... or when, god forbid the day comes, Mom is mailing off brown box packages to our very own brother in a foreign country, and not someone else's brother. I don't know what to think or say, really. Thinking about what could happen always makes me want to cry (or actually start to). And then, like some manic Thoreau on a stream-of-consciousness kick, I'm off- I'm thinking about what it all means, and then I look at the kids, the kids that aren't mine, and I want to protect them, and I want them to never have to think about anyone ever dying or even leaving them, even though it happens to everyone, and then I think for a split second about how I am always being left, but then how lucky I am that my family and friends are so amazing, and how lucky I am to have whatever amount of time I get with them, and then I'm thinking again about what could happen and what might happen and what will happen and then I'm so wrapped up and confused by all these stupid thoughts that I don't even know where they began, and why I'm upset, and what the real reasons behind any of it is.

And now I just sound like a complete lunatic. No wonder I always fall for the weird ones. But now, please, self: "Everything's not always about you, my dear."

It shouldn't be. But I'm so freaked out by the thought of losing the most important people and the least important people, all at the same time, and it seems like the spinning madness of it all will never slow down. Life's an endless cycle of gaining and losing, and happiness depends on nothing more complex than the balance of those scales.

FOR the past few years, I have been praying (when I am a good girl, and remember where I came from) for me to just be okay with whatever comes my way. I feel like a kid rubbing a magic genie lamp if I pray for a man, a job, a specific happiness- but if I just ask for contentment, for calm- to me this is like asking for world peace, starting with myself. If I am at peace with whatever happens to me, I can never be unhappy, at least not for too long. And if I have calm, if I am simply OKAY- then everything else will be too.

This is what I want for myself, for you, for Lee, for Mom & Dad, for Lisa, for my friends, for my kids, for anyone who has the tenderness and awareness to be susceptible to real pain.

Maybe I really am a hippie, except it never is about the drugs and the dreads, not even about the music- it really is all about PEACE.

xoxoxoBon

Departure

I can't believe our brother is going. Going. Gone.

I knew this was coming for four years and always thought I was okay with it, but now that it's happened -- sans fanfare, or even farewell -- I feel a little strange. Can I be empty? We hadn't spent more than a week or two together since high school, and yet now I know there will be no more Christmas vacations or Easter breaks -- that from now on, it's whatever the army, and not the school year, dictates.

This is far more troubling than your move to New York, way weirder than Dad's retirement or Lisa's senior year. Our family is definitively split now: will we ever all be "home" again?

xxxAnnie

Grand Plans

It doesn't seem real to me that I've been here for six weeks. And that in only four, I'm going home again. And that in about eight, I'll be knee-deep in la belle France.

My lack of employment for the first few weeks of this venture is what's kept me from realizing the time which has passed. If I'd been working since the beginning of June, I think I'd feel more ready for the summer to end. But here it is at the halfway point and I've barely begun. I'll leave and have just a couple weeks to get my shit together for France, and then I'll be thrown into it, wide-eyed and still mumbling bits of English when my vocabulary fails me.

And then what? What experience will that be? Away from everything familiar, including my own language, food and radio choices, for months. Thrust into socialized healthcare and subsidized rents, cheese and cheap (but delicious) wine, bad imitations of American Idol and fleets of mopeds. At least, that's how I envision it. Experience usually dictates something rather different.

I suppose the point of all this is that living in New York should be equipping me to live in France, at least to some extent. No parents to rely on for money, laundry or supply of the Harry Potter book. No college dorm or dining hall, no free cable. Rent. Groceries. Public transportation.

Unfortunately (and don't take this the wrong way), I have you. You're giving me all my New York guidance, recommending cheap restaurants and dictating dinners. You're enthusiastic about my banana pudding forays and bringing home baba ghanouj. I love living with you, and it's going to be a big, nasty shock when you're not in France with me. I'm going to have to figure it out on my own. Which bar has cheap cocktails? Who do I call for a wax? Where is the dollar store?*

All this is my reasoning for you coming to live on my couch. Then you can come to Granada and Morocco with me and Claire. And you can experience cheese with me. And we can drink fabulous wine every night for the cost of one wash at the Laundromat.

You can think about it for a bit, but let me know soon so I can put in for a roommate who's never around.

xxxAnnie

*Or euro store, fine. It's still a dollar store to me.

I Love Jesus- and You

I think a minister is stalking me.

I have gotten two anonymous phone calls today, one who didn't leave a message and the other hung up on me when I answered. Like the super sleuth I am, I called back the second number. And got (drumroll please) duh duh duh duhhhhh:

Judson Memorial Church.

Very strange. Could have been a wrong number, except my digits are out of state and I was just over there last week for the work party. But, who did I give my number to? NO ONE. Except the sound guy, who doesn't actually work there and whose number I have- so it is obviously not him. However, my phone number is easily accessible as I'm sure my coworkers would have no qualms about giving it out to a man of the cloth. Which leaves only, a man of the cloth as a possible suspect.

I am reading waaay too much into this. But why would anyone from that church be calling me and hanging up? Very strange indeed.

oy I need a better hobby.

xoxoxoBon