the end

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt. (Thomas Merton)

On a Friday afternoon, sticky from heat that fans don't alleviate, my head aching from the crying, I realize that forgiving someone isn't quite the same as pretending the pain never happened. I feel guilty that I'm not prepared to stop remembering, among other things, how alone he left me, how deep my despair grew, how his absence when I needed him left me calculating how much beer and how many Ativan I would need to end everything.

On the one hand, I'm trying to be honest. I need to hear what you have to say, he says. I'm going to feel bad whether you tell me or not. And he's right, but all talking does is make me feel more confused and addled, less self-confident and stable. I'm supposed to be better than that, I tell myself. If I've forgiven him, why does it still hurt so much? And I'm trying to be that better person, but I don't know how to do that without entering into something that feels like an unbearable combination of a panic attack, heartbreak, and being stabbed repeatedly in the stomach. It is the feeling of fear, of holding back from sharing everything because I know he'll get scared and leave again if I do, and if that's not the epitome of irony, what is?

Days like these, I grow smaller, curl into myself, can't remember why I ever tried to do anything different. This is what happens when I hide from my pain and push it deep down, try to pretend it never existed, because that's the only way I could stop figuring out about the Ativan and beer. It was always there, though, a nugget waiting to explode, and now it has, and I am lost, again.

I don't want this but I don't know what I want. I want to tell him everything but am afraid to hear myself speak what seems unspeakable. I want to be cradled and coddled as much as I want to do damage. I want to be the object of passion, not the kind of lovemaking and first kisses, but that which makes people do things even though they're scared and feel stupid at the prospect of failure. I want someone to do something so I don't feel so raw. I want to be loved.

the only living girl in new york

It happens this way: go away from the city -- to a bigger city, even -- and grow contemplative, think about what works and what doesn't, become a different person or a better version of the same, walk the streets, sit on park benches, laugh with many strangers and a few friends, read successive chapters of the same book in a smattering of cafes, see a movie that gets you thinking. After a few days of stewing in the petri dish of distance from life, hop on a train to a plane that flies back to the first city, where all the thoughtfulness of the past five days wells up into tears, with the fears that what's waiting for you isn't exactly what you need and not quite what you want.

***

Realization: New York City for me isn't the land of opportunity or excitement or cafes and bars and diners that stay open until 4am. And it's not celebrities, tourists, the subway, Ground Zero, food from street carts, fresh lemonade in Union Square, the boardwalk on Coney Island, the Central Park lagoon, or the sound of garbage trucks and barking dogs through an open window at 2am. No. It's the way it makes me feel as though I've just been born, before being beaten down and made to feel stupid, going to kindergarten with a black eye, feeling the sting of a belt buckle, lovers leaving bruises, eating out of garbage cans, doing mostly anything to stay alive, pushing everything else deep down to fit in a shell of survival I neither created nor want.

That shell is the one in which I live every second I'm in Chicago, and nearly everyone I've ever loved has a vested interest in keeping me stuck there, a hermit crab grown too large but lacking skill to escape with grace. And it isn't as simple as leaving, making new friends, changing my habits, inhabiting new spaces. Escape isn't really even what I want, though I'm hard pressed to find a lone word that encapsulates my desires: understanding? kismet? fate? frivolity? carelessness? glee? love?

***

Back to the movie that can get a girl thinking: an average film, a sometimes-depressing (but mostly realistic) portrait of a woman in her 30s, seeking love but finding disappointment, often in one-night stands lubricated by pills or wine. It's garnered mixed reviews, mostly from older men who can't understand that sort of desperation, which really isn't desperation but, rather, the intensity that comes with realizing a profound lack of understanding, belonging, mattering to anyone else other than your mother and best friend. And I know the film was supposed to make me feel depressed and guilty for being single and alone with a string of failed relationships behind me, but it didn't. It made me feel responsible for the future.

***

2:06pm (me) I have such a desire to explore this city and soak it up and have fun and enjoy it, and I fear if I brought anyone with me, they would squelch that.

2:07pm (me) It's part of me that I think I don't often show because it feels very vulnerable, and I'm able to express that when I'm here, and I don't want to have anyone ruin that. I don't know.

2:08pm (V) makes sense... the only living girl in New York...

***

I have returned, now, to the city which cradles and protects the shell I've outgrown, haunted by stilted love affairs and misplaced hopes and forgotten dreams. I fight the desire to delete contacts from my cell phone and email, burn my address book, erase phone numbers from my memory. If weeks ago, I experienced metanoia spurred on by love and forgiveness, it has happened again in the name of self-preservation, reclaiming innocence, repenting for mistakes and tragedies and bad judgment, leaving one essential thing: me, exposed and vulnerable, naked, alone.

***

When I go to the house to see the boys for the first time since my return, I think about A. and how he's another one of those good-on-paper people, a seven-year experiment in which the sparks never quite caught. What's wrong with me? I wonder.

Somewhere in the conversation he asks when I'm planning to move to New York. Is it five years or ten? I can't tell if he wants me to be happy or simply go away or if he's posturing. I remember the moments when I tried to be free with him, and something bad always happened: playing superhero, I broke a casserole dish; making snow angels, I cut myself on a hidden rock; lighting up at a favorite song on the radio, he mocked me. He was the one who always said I had a hidden inner child, but he was always -- and still is -- the first person to make me feel self-conscious and slightly ashamed for letting her show herself.

Back into the shell I go, then, calling V. to meet her for a drink, hoping to relieve some of the responsibility of making myself happy in a place that no longer feels like home. On the way to the Red Line Tap, I talk to D., who tells me I'm welcome at his place later. On my first (and only) beer, P. calls to see what I'm doing. On the drive home, K. calls to remind (convince?) me I don't need anyone. I stop for bubble bath and razor blades, take a bath and shave, dry myself off, keep writing, realizing that perhaps leaving my shell means, also, being alone.

***

But that can't be the case. I don't want my life to be a tragedy, a sad sequence of missteps and half-mistakes mixed with unremarkable relationships that end badly, always. I won't allow it.

***

What I know I will do, because this cannot be a tragedy which means I have to do something optimistic: Call D. to see him. Call P. to hang out. Call K. to make excuses for calling D. and P. I won't know if these things help or hurt, but they are all I have right now. This is what this city does to me: it limits my options, restricts my range of motion, darkens my vision to the point where the same old things are the only things that seem possible. The hope I had upon my arrival here 17 years ago has been sucked out of me. I am bone dry.

***

What does New York have to do with any of this? What it comes down to: it's a city in which that hope stirs again. I remember I wrote something relevant years ago, and it strikes me how apropos it is, again:

Lately there have tears without sadness. The emptiness is there, to be sure – losing a lover, choosing to move on, knowing I will doubt what I have known to be true: I must go. I was never meant to be here. I feel loss without pain, liberation without freedom. I am the girl wearing no panties under her dress, in fear and hope someone will glimpse what isn’t meant to be shared.

Tears come from hope, an almost kinesthetic awareness of beauty and optimism. I grow scared by my own power as powerlessness slips back into and onto the person I was before but am no longer. I am frightful of brightness and beauty and the hugeness of that hope. I become myself first seeing a naked erect man, terrified, relieved the world was as should be, glorious and full and unabashed, waiting for me to suck it in, until there was nothing left, and I slept.

This is how it is all these years after the first sex, the first time I grew wet in wanting to be more an afterthought, the small and bruised girl who lived in a place of ugliness. This is how it is as I walk among tall buildings and cry until I am spent, and I know I am headed toward something I can lick and suck and taste and swallow, and I feel the heady salty rush of knowing that I am good, I am here, there is no smallness left, the evil things they told me were a lie.

new york city, day three

There's something about being in this city that isn't as simple as making a list of the things I've done on any given day. It's a feeling, an experience, a sense that this is a place where I could belong, a realization that I've come terribly far from a small Texas town with no train station to a city from which trains can take me anywhere. It's the peace of sitting in an open-air cafe eating a veggie burger and reading a book while watching cars pass by on Houston street, the electricity of sitting in an art theater watching a movie that won't come to Chicago for another two weeks, the satisfaction of figuring out the subway system, the pride that comes when I'm asked for directions and I can give them with neither hesitation nor doubt, the feeling that I can blend in as neither tourist nor spectator.

Yet it is this wonder, this excitement, this adoration of a city that is not my own which make me naive, too optimistic, rosy-cheeked with Midwestern giddiness. Whereas in Chicago I am too loud, honest, proud, and blunt, here I am too quiet, circumspect, modest, and subdued. I must make a choice about who I am and who I will become. Is this a journey inward or outward? A step forward or back? Must I grow more contemplative or less self-conscious?

If things were different, I would not be coming home. I would stay here, arrange for someone to take my cat and sublet my apartment in Chicago, sell all my things that wouldn't matter here. I'd sleep in youth hostels while looking for a roommate and work at an open-air cafe and grow tan and limber and take lovers and smoke French cigarettes. Even now the temptation is there, even though things aren't different, to throw everything away and disappear into this throng of millions. What stops me aren't the excuses I make -- the jobs, and the children, and the friends, and the comforts of home. The hitch in my fantastic plans is the fear of paring my life down to the point where jobs and children and friends are no longer smokescreens for big questions, the answers to which are found not in hostels or cafes or even in the arms of lovers but, instead, in small spaces and dark rooms where I sit, alone, without distraction.

oh my knish

I don't know they have fallen under my radar so far, but I have fallen in love with the knish. I had two on Coney Island yesterday - with spicy mustard! - and have been stalking Yonah Schimmel's Knishery on Houston and 2nd Ave waiting for fresh sweet potato knishes to be ready. Brooklyn Boy can't believe I've never heard of them, and I am frantically scanning the mental database of Jewish people I know in Chicago to tell me where I can find them back home. Why is this the first I've heard of them?

***

Visiting Brooklyn was a bad idea. Here I have been under the impression that NYC is no place to raise children, but then enters Brooklyn, a place that quite nearly reminds me of Chicago. Now more than ever I fantasize about moving here...

***

Had brunch today at Teany and it was yummy. Now heading back to the apartment to get a bit of work done, then going to the Landmark to see either Broken English or Sunshine. I think a concert in Central Park is too much, given yesterday's music marathon. Speaking of yesterday: we didn't go on the Cyclone but did go on Deno's Wonder Wheel...and we played all kinds of carnival games (Brooklyn Boy won a Homer Simpson stuffed animal and what looked like an albino Smurf, plus I won a Coney Island t-shirt) and skee-ball and (this was fun) disco bumper cars.

***

I think this is my best visit yet to NYC, which also means it will be the hardest to come home from.

on 11th and avenue b

I am beginning to realize that while I am rather bitter and sarcastic by Midwestern standards, I am positively beaming with optimism in New York.

Case in point: upon leaving the Lakeside Lounge and attempting to hail a cab, a guy with a bunch of guys in a Toyota rolls down the window and says, "Nice hair!" My response? "Thanks!" At which point Brooklyn Boy says, "I can't believe you just said 'Thanks!' to that guy."

"And why wouldn't I?" I asked.

"No reason," he said, with a smirk.

nyc, night one

Overheard on 1st Avenue, in front of Karma, waiting for a friend:

It's better if girls don't poo. It really is.

And then the friend and I went walking around the LES, in search of a bar that wasn't too crowded, and we found Cakeshop, with a DJ in the basement who soon made way for an impromptu psychic magic show, where the following sentiment was heard:

The Beatles never blamed their audience. If they went to an empty bar, they rocked until the walls were throwing panties at them.

And then the friend and I went upstairs -- to the actual cake shop -- where a cute boy behind the counter recommended the Death By Chocolate vegan cake, which I ate heartily.

After the chocolate, my friend made her way to the 2nd Ave subway station, and I walked back to 3rd Street, and this lovely apartment I am renting, and soon I shall go to bed. The noise from the street will lull me to sleep, as I ponder how much this strange city feels like home, and I relish my time in the small spaces I manage to carve out for myself in this big place where I somehow feel not so small.

oh no!

My routine at the spa is simple: shower, whirlpool, steam bath, sauna, read in the relaxation room; repeat once or twice; weigh myself; leave. During my time reading, I generally choose magazines I wouldn't normally buy myself. Yesterday, this meant thumbing through Chicago magazine, a publication (I think) intended for folks whose incomes are several times my own and who either presently or aspire to live in Lake Forest. This, then, is where I heard the pronouncement that has been troubling me ever since: Lincoln Square, it seems, is the new Bucktown.

Why is this happening? Who thinks it is a good idea to take this perfect little neighborhood and turn it into a poster child for conspicuous consumption? Why can't they pick a neighborhood that actually could USE some gentrification for their silly capitalist projects? Albany Park is a good choice, or maybe Edgewater (close to the lake, folks!) or Uptown. Leave my neighborhood alone, people!

nyc on the brain

My head spinning from reading New York City Free & Dirt Cheap, I went to the house yesterday, where I demanded to know why A. had ever wanted to leave Manhattan.

"There just wasn't anything for me there," he said. "And I wanted to do things with my life that I couldn't do there, like study philosophy."

"But anything you could ever want to do, you can do there!" (which, of course, is what I've been telling myself...)

"Well, I was 24 and couldn't have found a good job or anything. It's different for you -- you could go there now and get work in ten seconds and have a good life there."

(This from the man who, when I announced I'd received another job offer in NYC, asked when I was moving...)

I still don't understand why he ever left. If I'd found NYC when I was 24 (or, more accurately, when I was 22, before I had W.), I never would have come home. I'm ready to move there now, but there is no way I'm ready to leave behind my children or, probably more important, my friends. It's taken me a long time to foster the friendships and connections I have in Chicago, and it's only the past year or two that I've finally gotten to a place in my life where I feel loved and supported from a million different directions. But the pull of that city! I've never felt anything quite like it, and the more I go the more I want to go. The next ten years can't pass soon enough -- and I'm beginning to imagine what it will be like to spend my 40s in New York after spending my 30s in Chicago. Quite satisfying, I suppose.

movie hatred

I have seen so many movies in the past six months that a trip to the video store to get something to watch has resulted in bringing home Running With Scissors and Deja Vu -- seemingly the only two fucking movies in Blockbuster I haven't yet seen. But they are both two hours long (what ever happened to 90-minute movies?) and I don't have the energy to stay up that long. Maybe tomorrow.

finding my inner guy

I started out at The Hideout last night (excellent soul dance party, but WAY too hot!), but around 11:30 I got a text from P. telling me I should come to The Globe, where he was hanging out with E. and L. And so I bid a fond adieu to the mamas and headed up to Irving. As usual, L. was an enthusiastic dance partner (though I'm still giving him crap about throwing my back out at Estelle's...) and it was good fun hanging with everyone. We headed to Christina's after The Globe closed, where I let some guy take my picture ("cool hair!") in exchange for guarding the door while I used the men's room and we watched multiple drunken fools butcher lyrics during karaoke. After a friend dropped by to get my keys (she, uh, was "borrowing" my apartment for the night...), the four of us headed back to P.'s house.

We all slept well past noon, woke up for a breakfast of coffee and Fruit Loops, and settled in to watch the British Grand Prix. Around 4pm, L. and I walked up to El Cid to get some flautas and also picked up some mojitos from the liquor store, both of which really hit the spot. And then we hunkered down some more, watching the Argentina-Peru futbol game, Family Guy, and a few episodes of Boondocks. Around 11pm it seemed about time to go home.... I grabbed some fries from White Castle on the way, and now I find myself thinking a bit about the past couple of weeks...

When I was younger, most all of my friends were male, and I found it difficult to form friendships with girls/women. As I've gotten older, especially since I've had children, I've reversed that pattern. I've been able to foster friendships with several women, a select few with whom I've become very close. But as much as I love my mama friends, there always seems to be something missing. And, no, that's not really even the best way to put it. There isn't anything really missing from my friendships with the mamas; rather, I feel as though there is something I'm missing in my life that I can't get from the friendships I have with women. Since I met P. I've had a chance to hang out with groups of guys for the first time in a very long while, and I'm beginning to realize exactly what that is: disconnected sarcastic banter with a sadistic edge.

(Note: what follows are generalizations based on my own experiences. I am not a sociologist or psychologist and I have no idea whether these gender differences exist in an objective, empirical sense. So don't get all offended if you think I'm wrong. Just sayin'.)

The thing about women is that they don't generally engage in that buddy-movie kind of dialogue that guys have spent their lives perfecting. Women focus on relationships, talking about things, interacting with people, paying attention to the details, learning about each other's lives. Guys, on the other hand, are perfectly happy sitting in front of a television yelling at the screen, cracking jokes, and bantering with each other. And getting to know someone doesn't happen through sharing stories or talking about feelings; it's done kamikaze fashion, a free-for-all of snippy comments at a pace that would make David Mamet stop in his tracks. If you can't keep up, you're not one of the gang. If you can, you're in for life.

I'm glad I met P. and his friends. Snarky banter is fun, especially the kind I'm figuring out that men do but (most) women don't. I have a feeling Pitchfork is going to be a blast with these guys...

little surprises

I've had a suck-ass day, but then I remember: I've got Chicago Soydairy chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in my freezer. And then N. calls to make plans to see Sicko tonight. So maybe it's nothing a little ice cream, popcorn, and cherry Coke won't solve. After all, tomorrow is another day...a day that will turn into an evening filled with dancing. And we all know how difficult it is to be in a bad mood while dancing...

big apple bound

I finally bought my plane ticket for NYC last night. Since it was a steal to fly into Long Island (only $90 round trip, including all taxes and fees), I chose that route. It was only afterward that I realized I'd probably run into the vacation-in-the-Hamptons crowd on the jitney into Manhattan, but I suppose I can add that to the list of my adventures in New York City. And I'll take Manhattanites on a jitney over tourists from Montana on a shuttle bus any day.

So far my plans for the trip are shaping up nicely. I'll probably spend most of the time with Brooklyn Boy, since we only saw each other for a few hours when I was last in town. I won't get in until late on Friday (my flight gets in at 7:50pm, but it's a 90-minute jitney trip to Manhattan), but that's never stopped us from hanging out on the LES until the wee hours.

On Saturday, we're heading to Coney Island for the Siren Music Festival - two weeks in a row I get to see kick-ass music (a nice follow-up to Pitchfork). I'd like to finally go on the Ellis Island-Statue of Liberty tour on Sunday, but if we have too much fun Saturday I might not be in any shape!

Brooklyn Boy may take Monday off of work, but if not I think I'll take the subway out to Brooklyn and tool around Williamsburg. And on Tuesday, I think I'll explore Central Park a bit, maybe see a lunchtime movie with ESL Boy (the Dominican ESL teacher I befriended last August) before heading out to Islip for my 8pm flight.

Overall, I want to have a relaxing time...nothing fancy, nothing special, just enjoying the city and the people I know who live there.

just stuff

What weird vortex thing occurs on Broadway north of Irving Park and all the way up to Evanston? I have NEVER had a time when I've driven on that street when people didn't suddenly start driving like complete morons, going 20 mph or randomly stopping in the middle of the street for no apparent reason. A trip from Irving Park to Devon, on Western Avenue, would take all of five minutes -- if that. But hop on over to Broadway, and you're looking at a 10-15 minute drive. What's up with that? This is what makes me hate, hate, hate, Edgewater. Well, that, and its dinginess.

***

In happier news, I'm giddy after discovering Whole Foods stocks Voss sparkling water. I've long had a love affair with Pellegrino (and in high school, Perrier is practically all I'd drink), but after staying at the Conrad Chicago Hotel with K. last fall (where we had all the Voss we wanted), I think I've found a new infatuation. And the bottles are much easier to carry around...

sensitivity training

I'm not the world's expert on customer service, but I'm guessing it's not the greatest idea for two 20something guys to say, "SOMEONE's watching a lot of Sex and the City. Must not have a boyfriend, huh?" to a woman (uh, me) renting said DVDs of aforementioned television program at Blockbuster at 11:20pm. [Never mind that I was also returning five DVDs of the same...] Makes me glad I didn't buy any candy or popcorn...

i'm exhausted

The past few days have been filled with alternating non-stop work and play. It's been crazy, and I think I threw my back out dancing at Estelle's last night. I've been invited to go out for a fourth night in a row, and if I get enough work done I just might... I've been having a good time with folks I met recently, and it helps my state of mind to get out of the house and relax. We'll see: P. invited me to Field Trip Day -- an afternoon/evening of wandering around downtown, followed by fireworks -- on Tuesday, so I may want to save my energy.