My First Time

Ahh...got you dirty bastards with my title, didn't I?

Sorry to disappoint. This is the first time I've been tagged in a Meme, so I will be completing mine today!

I was tagged by Alice over at Alice in Averageland. She just started a second blog about healthy eating and losing weight in addition to her awesome primary shenanigans. Go show the girl some love.

Alright, here goes:
Six Random Facts About Myself

1. Link to the person that tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Share six things/habits/quirks about yourself
4. Tag random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs

1. I fantasize all the time about being a guy

...and sometimes wonder if I'd be better at it than being a woman. Sure, my gender comes with perks (and boobs - very excellent), but I'm so horrible at forming friendships with women that I've basically given up on them and surrounded myself with male friends. My mother keeps telling me when they get married I'll have nobody, but I'm too intimidated by women and/or too worn out by the constant cattiness and inevitable guilt tripping that I'm just pathetically inept at even trying.

2. I'm afraid of the dark.

Not in a rational, "fear of the unknown" way, but in a "Lex must turn on every light in the apartment before I'll walk through the front door" kind of way. I always close my closets at night, I never leave my shower curtain drawn, and even when I'm sleeping next to Marco I lock the door. Guess I just don't like people sneaking up behind me.

3. My two biggest fears in life are:

- That my shower water will turn into hydrochloric acid while I'm standing under it. This comes from a Mickey Mouse comic that I read when I was nine where someone replaced Mickey's water with red paint, leading Minnie to believe he was covered in blood. I guess somewhere between that and reading about acid attacks aimed at "immodest" women in Pakistan, I got it in my head that this is a terrifying possibility.

- That my husband will murder me. This has to do with trust. I'm a very distrusting person and have had the rug pulled out from under me way too many times, so I always assume the same will happen in every relationship. Thus, my big fear is trusting someone implicitly, building and affirming that trust over 10 or so years, and then being murdered in my own bed by my husband.

4. I attract psychos, needy guys, or emotionally abusive guys.

I have never deviated from this pattern until I met Marco. Now I don't know what to do with myself. I've had to re-train my brain to convince myself that I deserve things like:
- A say in my sex life if I'm bored
- Flirting innocently
- Being proud of my accomplishments
- Making more money than my partner without wrecking my relationship
- Not giving up my close male friends
- Being who I am, weird quirks and wikipedia-esque brain and all
- Not cooking every night of the week or cleaning up after someone else

5. I do the New York Times Crossword religiously.

I am so competitive that I take pleasure in beating 12 year-old kids in the online game. Or 95 year-old Jewish grandmothers in Brooklyn. Whoever dares challenge me, really. This obsession means that I also read Rex Parker's NYT blog with a passion. I think I may have a crossword crush on him.

6. I have an unfortunate talent

...for getting under people's skin and finding the exact phrase or word that hurts them almost irreparably. I've used it once and then never again because I think it's a disgusting trait about myself, but somehow my brain stores information about people that I can use against them in the future. Most people have the feeling of not having been able to come up with the perfect comeback when being bullied - I always struggle not to spit out the perfect comeback. I've learned it's much better to de-escalate than to revel in Pyrrhic victories. Still, I often wonder if this skill makes me a bad person.


I'm going to tag:
Sparsely Kate
Cheap Thrills
So@24 (because he hates these)
Des
Lyla Lou (I know Alice already tagged you, but we miss you!!!)

Guest Blogging

I'm guest blogging over at Alice in Averageland today. Check it out.

Ohio

I can't believe I'm going to say this, but...

I wish I lived in Ohio!

Romantic or Creepy?

Lex says romantic.

I say creepy.

http://www.subwaycrush.com/

Discuss.


P.S. My blog idol, SO@24, left a comment on my blog today. I feel loved. (And slightly damp.)

POW! BAM!

This week's intellectual crush goes to Colin Powell for his spectacular speech on MSNBC.


(Tom Brokaw, your restraint was remarkable and puts you in close second place. You're just not my type.)

See the video here.

Chicago

A very appropriate song for today's trip to the Windy City:



Yes Raf, you got me good this time. But it won't last forever. Eventually I will be free of you.

For now, I'll be on the 7 o'clock to Chicago.

Fuck you.

Signs

Spotted today as I was driving home from the gym:

A Bordeaux car with a South African flag bumper sticker and a license plate which read:

FOR-GVE

Coincidence?

(I wish I were making this shit up.)

And Then There Were Three

I received an email from Jake this week that said:

Yo San,

Haven't forgotten you...actually I'm thinking about writing a letter, which we all know will take me several months and almost be worth waiting for. Hope things are good and you haven't had too much snow!

Jake


That letter will almost certainly never be completed, but it's a nice thought. Unfortunately, Jake belongs to the variety of men who are terrible at correspondence, completing to-do lists, or....er...wait, maybe that's all men? Anyway, best not to get my hopes up.

My weekend out in California went well, except for the fact that Lex got himself mixed up in some freaky (and by the look on his face on the plane ride back, entirely regrettable) threesome in San Francisco while I was in Sacramento. Go figure. The man is a sexual deviant. I've promised to let him guest blog about it if there's enough demand.

By the way - HOLY SHIT HOW BEAUTIFUL IS SAN FRANCISCO? I feel a bit silly admitting that I had never been until this past weekend, but it was absolutely breathtaking. I can see why it makes lifers out of so many Americans.


As I've noted before, Jake's historical allure had worn off a bit since our phone call back in July. Where I had once felt a compelling urge to go seek him out in order to find some peace in my head, I now felt disappointment in knowing that even he looked at me askance when relaying my Raf story. Then again, I hadn't told him the whole deal. I hadn't told him about the kiss.


Flashback

The year 2000. I'm standing at the train station, tugging at my red, long-sleeved shirt. I shouldn't have worn it today - it always makes me sweat. I would have been late had my mom not finally put the kibosh on my agonizing between cornflower blue and bordeaux. "You're beautiful - stop with the micromanaging!" she had said. She was right. Still, I'm regretting my choice of outfit. Will he think I'm pretty? Thin enough? Perfect enough? Did I look like I was trying too hard, standing there in the cool autumn breeze in my long black peacoat, a scarf carelessly flung around my neck only because my mother had said "It's too cold to be wearing THAT!"?

Damn it. The train is late. I hated tardiness. It drove me crazy and went against all of my Type-A instincts. Didn't they know what today was? Didn't they understand that of all the trains in America, only this one would determine the rest of my emotional life? Raf is on that train.

Suddenly it's here - the thundering hoofbeat of a thousand mechanical horses. It hisses and squeals to a stop, passing me with a whoosh of diesel and metal sparks. I have to run to catch up to the last car. There are too many people - I can't see! What if he's not there? What if he decided he didn't want to come? What if.....

He's a hundred feet away. A hundred lousy feet. His eyes meet mine and he gives a half-wave. Suddenly I'm self conscious. How do I look? Should I walk over or stand on the platform waiting? Holy shit - a hundred feet. From an ocean to a hundred feet - is this even real? Seems like I've been waiting so long to see him that it can't be. All those letters he wrote me, and now... a hundred feet.

I start to walk toward him awkwardly. Stay cool. Stay cool. Stay....FUCK THIS! I start running, hair flying in the wind. He's running now, too, his giant backpack almost pulling him off-balance with every stride. We crash into each other, laughing, hug awkwardly, and don't let go. I can't believe he's here. A wave of relief comes over me as I pull away and look into his familiar face. Still the same. Comfortable. Warm. Right.

We pass our first day both like old friends and like new lovers: comfortable but weirdly shy around each other. As the sky goes dark we head to our respective rooms on the second floor of my parents' house. I dawdle around the hall, hoping to find a private moment to say goodnight, but soon I run out of excuses to still be awake (you can only brush your teeth so many times, after all.) I lie in bed, tossing and turning. I can't get my mind off Raf. I want to know what it was like, seeing me again. Is he happy to be here? Is it everything he imagined it would be?

Finally, I hop out of bed and creep into the hall. I have to be near him. When I get to his door, I pause. This is stupid. And childish. He's probably asleep. I sneak back across the hall - each floorboard squeaking too loudly for my self-conscious taste. As I turn the knob to shut my door I hear another squeak. It can't....no.....can it? My heart beating audibly now, I stand breathlessly in the darkness as I hear tentative footsteps draw closer.

The knob turns and it feels like an eternity. Raf hesitates before he pushes open the bedroom door. I'm frozen in the middle of my room. What do I do? He walks toward me, feeling his way in the moonless night. "I...I wanted to talk to you.....I......" I stammer. "I know. I don't know what to say...." he replies. I can hear him breathing now, smell his skin in the inky air. He stands millimeters away without touching me. "I....I've missed.....you...." I manage to say, now almost breathless with anticipation. His breath grazes my face. I shudder. "I...."

My sentence goes unsaid. His mouth touches mine and my thoughts go blank. It is perfect. It is how I imagined it would be. It is.....it just IS.

-------------------------

I'm lucky. When Jake picks me up from San Francisco, his wife is on a client call (she's a psychologist). Don't get me wrong - she's lovely - but it's a lot easier discussing this with him in private seeing as I barely know her. On the car ride to Sacramento I debate holding back parts of the story but eventually decide against it. Full disclosure is the way to go, I figure.

As I'm winding down my epic and Jake starts asking me questions mostly in the vein of "how do you feel about that?", I can't help but feel a bit betrayed. Here I was, baring my soul to someone I hadn't seen in a decade, and yet he was giving me some sort of psychoanalytical bullshit! This sucked. As the weekend wore on, however, Jake started to realize that this was really eating away at me and changed his approach. I felt grateful and nostalgic: these were the kinds of conversations we used to have all the time, and I was glad we had re-discovered them.

We drove out to Lake Tahoe on Saturday to watch the salmon spawning.


After taking in our share of the mating action (very Discovery Channel, by the way) we headed down to the Oktoberfest going on in the town next to the lake. As we watched children hula-hoop and browsed some of the arts and crafts stalls, Jake's wife suddenly said: "ooh, I want to look at the pictures over there!" Landscapes. Dozens upon dozens of them. As I stood looking at one riverbed shot in particular, my memories got the better of me and my eyes welled up. I swallowed hard. Why did Raf's memory have to follow me everywhere? Why did it have to be a part of everything I did? Why is it that to this day, every brilliant blue sky reminds me of him?

"What kind of landscapes does Raf do?" Jake asked, suddenly flanking me. "All kinds", I hoarsely replied, quickly blinking away the evidence of my nostalgic weakness. "Mostly Namibia and South Africa." I added. Jake nodded, clearly regretting the question as he eyed my reaction. "I'm....going to look at something else." I quickly added, then bolted toward the wrought-iron mug display.

Flying home, Lex asked me if I was happy that I had talked to Jake. I nodded, resting my head on his shoulder. In spite of my initial trepidations, I felt relieved to have had someone who knew Raf to talk to. My visit, all in all, had been a success.

After I got Jake's email, I went on Facebook to reply to his message. As I started typing my response, I froze. Raf had left a message on his wall:

Hello hello! Sounds like you are having a fine time! I'd love to live in California... Ingrid and i were there last year for a couple of weeks, she shares the sentiment! Hopefully one day we'll also be able to visit camp. We became parents three weeks ago, so currently future planning doesn't go much further than the next nappy change... Good to hear from you!

Of course.

538

Are you a hopeless political addict like me? Don't understand a word they say but still want to talk statistical smack? Then this website is for you.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

Let me know what you think!

Adrift at Sea No More!

I have a job in Europe! (This is why I've been slacking so much - been interviewing like crazy)

Details to come.

Also, I went to visit Jake this weekend. Details also to come.

Hooray!!!