How to Boil Water

D and I never had a mountain of things in common. The bulk of it centered on entertainment. We both liked dancing our asses off at Luca's, a lounge/club in downtown Oakland. We both liked eating new types of food. We both liked to shop, and we both liked The Office. For some reason that crazy little hour long NBC show brought us together every week, even in the midst of trouble.

When we broke up the first time and I moved to Brooklyn, we both stopped watching. Maybe he stopped because the introduction music reminded him of my "Office Dance". Maybe I stopped watching because I missed his overly-boisterous laugh that tromboned out causing us to miss major plot points. Things fall apart.

So we ended up being about a season and a half behind, and mutually decided this month to rectify that with a running Office marathon (via Netflix). Season 4, disc one came yesterday.

D picked me up after I'd had time to come home from work and change. For a while everything felt normal. Everything felt untouched and aside from his new car, nothing seemed different at all.

"You hungry?" he said.

"I could eat."

"Thai Cottage?"

"Hell yea."

Without words we both already knew what the other wanted to order (tofu chili basil for me, spicy wings of paradise for him). We started towards Pearland and as I saw the traffic speckled horizon my stomach began to drop. Oh yea I thought, we're going to our house...his house...The House.

The house where truth was rudely shown down on every single existing flaw in our relationship like over head lighting on a room full of trannies. The house I left incomplete and half empty while our nosey neighbors watched...surely whispering to one another.

"I should tell you right now," he mumbled, "The grass looks like shit."

I laughed.

I can only say that walking back into that house after 2 months felt like walking through an old neighborhood. I felt the same way when my mother and I went back to 68th avenue in East Oakland to the house both of us grew up in and realized someone else now lived there. I looked around and saw the small touches he had added, the gross addition of bottles of alcohol at the bar in the dining room, his collection of vintage 70's TV show and movie posters he'd hung in the game room and of course he had inched the red leather sofa we'd picked out together closer to his plasma TV. I hated when he'd done that before. "This room doesn't have to center around the dummy box, ya know." I'd say. He'd nod.

We watched a few episodes of the Office, although I didn't do my Office Dance. He still laughed boisterously and I still forced him to rewind it and "shhhh, so we can hear." Some things were very much the same.

Still, I can't help but feel nostalgic and a little left out, as I'm sure he does every time he notices small changes in my life take place without him. It very much felt like a pot of water I'd walked away from and revisited to finally find a few tiny bubbles making their way to the top.

Kanye West: Multi-Tasker...

He apparently found a way to draw attention to himself, and simultaneously suck Jay Z's dick...

Forgive me, I don't have TV (by choice) , so I'm a few days behind with this whole scene at the 2009 VMA's. Not to mention I've been boycotting MTV and BET for years now.

Kanye, as talented as he may be, is a disgusting person for his little act (which I saw via You Tube) and fame can't save your soul. I heard about it and laughed, thinking it may be more innocent then it sounds. Then I got curious and You Tube satisfied my itch for details. As I watched Kanye's short ass rip the microphone from the overwhelmed and humble Taylor Swift; I was reminded of a 2 year old snatching his sippy cup from his mother.

MTV is just as bad. God forbid anyone should go up there and start spouting out the f-word or speaking against Viacom directly....they would have cut to commercial in a hot flash. But when their biggest money maker, their black ken doll...Kanye West comes up and ruins the first time award winning moment of a young singer...they couldn't seem to find the easy button. This is why I don't listen to pop music and why I have never had any interest in indulging myself in watching those silly award shows. My advice to those who do: read a book.

Mama Bear, Sissy Bear

"Oh, I'm just gonna squeeze you and kiss you all over!!" My mother squealed on the other end of my office phone. I rolled my eyes, then tried to hold back giggles. In reality I wanted to tell her that not only was I super excited to be seeing her, but that all my love would probably come pouring out and I would cry and grab her and hug her and throw her through the wall.

This is how we love in my family. So big, that it hurts.

My sister is also coming this weekend. "Sister" always seems like such a plain choice of words for her. She's more like my esophagus....or my spine. She's like the nuclei to every cell in my body. My sister is me...only older and probably much wiser. But only slightly cuter.

When they visited me in New York I could hardly muster up the energy to show them all the wonderful amazing things the city had to offer. Here in Houston, aside from the ridiculously shamefully wide range of eateries and the "who shot John" cockroaches....we're kind of left with the main components; hot weather and miles of sky and time to talk.

The best part of seeing them, under any circumstance is that it's a refresher course in who I am. Seeing my mother's wide shy smile and hearing my sisters mountainous laugh. These are the things that are more a part of me than anything else I've become recently. Underneath it all, even when I'm far away and even though I'm not all that high (yet)... they keep me grounded.

Relationships Are Like French Fries

I watched a film today called Pull Out, a doc film about a woman's journey into her past. In it she interviewed the objects of her most important 5 relationships over the past 15 years. She spoke with 4 of them, one refused to be interviewed, the other who was so obviously David Eigenberg of Sex and the City (Steve, Miranda's husband) chose to remain anonymous and another who asked for the crew to stop filming as soon as she asked the most important questions. I couldn't help but feel a of little of two things. Sorry. For her, this 35 year old woman who couldn't see that she was far too needy to hold onto any man. And familiarity. I've been guilty of the same crime. Going back, that is. There isn't a single ex in my entire life that I haven't gone back and talked to later.

The thing about going back is that after a break up, almost immediately there is a staleness that takes over. Suddenly such a familiar person is a stranger. I've had ex's tell me I was and still am the most amazing woman they ever dated (blush), and I've had an ex tell me I should kill myself. That is the range of emotions I evoke in the men I've given my love to. Leaving the past in the past has never been my strong suit, and now I wonder if that will hinder me down the line.

Rarely single, always available, never quite comfortable enough to strike out completely unshielded. These are things I feel describe me. And yet, I'm unmistakably aware of the truest fact in Relationship 101. That is that relationships are like french fries. Quite addictive, but never re-heatable.

The image is clear in my head. I am standing before a dirt pile, a shovel firmly in my grip. I stand over a 6 foot deep hole, housing the live bodies of all of them. There at the top is D, smothered in confusion and unanswered questions. I scoop up a mound of moist earth and toss it in. I am in a killer black dress and heels. I have not brought a date to this funeral. I bury them all alive and call a cab. I am now free to find the next man. Or to not find him. (But probably to find him).

To watch Pull Out click here

The Day After Tomorrow...

It's Thursday and my mood is GREEN.

It is the day after (WARNING: TMI coming) my period and I am extremely horny.

There.

I said it.


Now no one come near me, or I shall hump thee.

Money Can't Buy You Time...

When people ask that age-old question, "What would you do if you won the lottery?"...my thought tends to drift to something Barbara Streisand said in one of my Mom's favorite movies (The Mirror Has Two Faces).

"...Whats the point, I still look like me. Only in color."

I know when people think about winning the lotto, two main components come to mind. One; that they would be swimming in more money then they could ever imagine. Two; that all they had to do to get it was go to the store and buy a ticket. In that one swoop of events, their lives are changed and the ability to buy whatever their hearts desire is finally within their grasp.

When I think about winning the lotto, or any large sum of money without much effort, my thoughts fall on God. God didn't invent money. He probably never meant for us to scramble around chasing after green pieces of paper that fly around all day. Saying things like, "Thank goodness it's Friday!" and "Sorry, I was in a meeting." Buying work pants and bringing frozen lunches in old grocery bags. Sitting in a cubicle, staring at a screen, slowly going blind in more ways than one. Some of us work because we have a fire in our belly to be what we've worked so hard to be. But even then, the majority of us do it because at the end of the day...we HAVE to. We need money to live. Money is everywhere and in everything. From the keyboard I'm touching at this very moment to the carpet I'm planting my feet on. Money is in our televisions, our cars, our children, our stomachs and our beds. Nothing is ever an even exchange, because the entire idea of money is profit. The world has created the idea that some things are worth the amount on their price tags, but all money accounts for is time. All it really adds up to is time spent chasing something that has absolutely no actual worth. Maybe it's easy for someone who has never invested in anything besides a mash-up of moderately priced clothes, to say that money means nothing.

And I won't even pretend to be that ignorant.

It comes down to this. If I had millions of dollars and everything the capitalist world had to offer was a click away.... I would finally feel like I had an actual life. Ironically that' s the freedom of not loving money. I wouldn't need to go buy some huge house, or fill my closet with thousands of dollars worth of designer clothes. Because once you take that road, how do you ever really leave it? I'd rather go live in the city I love (New York) and rent a loft apartment in Williamsburg, fill floor to ceiling shelves with $1 deal books from Strand. Invite friends over for weekend-long parties. Take my mother to Spain. Back-pack through Europe with Tia and Anthony. Sleep in on Mondays and have the privilege of sending my children to whatever school their hearts desire. I would still wear my old black sweater with the ripped pocket in the winter. I would still take the subway. I would still look for the cheapest plane ticket for trips back to California. The only thing that would change in my life, besides the scenery, would be the long sigh of relief as I wake up and remember that I can live the hours of my days as I choose to. And that I don't have to wait until Saturday to feel human again.