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.

Love, Happiness and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves...

Ironically, the things we all love to much, run to and look forward to are often fleeting and scattered. Maybe it's the hunt that makes them so appealing or maybe too much of it would just be....too much?

I often wonder when the heroine addition to happiness began. When the carrot fell in front of our faces and we decided that our mission in life would be to chase it at all costs. Was it the first kiss from our mothers? The first toy we played with? Something that introduced the affects of love, comfort and happiness. That feeling in your gut that makes gravity feel stronger and the air feel lighter. Suddenly we're hooked.

If you look back on your life, it's very easy to see what you want to see. The one who got away, the major you should have taken, the job you should have quit, so on. It's easier because it's clearer...but never that clear.

All I could see when I thought about being here with D was his smile, his laugh, his arms and every little thing he does that makes me feel at home. It was harder to think of the things, the big things that make us fundamentally different. Having a million inside jokes won't make up for everything. And YES it is ok to walk away from a good man and from a good thing.

This is when I'm supposed to say, "Its with great regret...." but I'm done with that. Regret has been an emotion I've run from since I was a little girl. I'll be 25 this month. And I can say is that I hope this year I end up somewhere good.

*On to the Next*

The Rihanna and Chris Beat Down...

TMZ posted the above flick of Rihanna's face post beat down, which aside from distasteful (I know that's hypocritical) it's also VERY shocking. I mean DAYUM...Chris put a hurting on little Miss RiRi.

I thought this was a pretty hot couple, but every couple has their little demons. I think it's pretty fucked up that Chris Brown, someone who has so much success and fortune and obviously a woman on his arm who loves him decides to act so cruelly.

I hope she finds strength enough to press charges to the very fullest, and that he gets locked up and surrounded by a bunch of real men who beat his ass so he knows what it feels like to have his ass beat by someone bigger than him.

I never was a Chris Brown fan or anything, but this should put a pretty big damper on his career, which I think he so fully deserves.

How To Survive Women

Being that I'm headed toward eternal partnership, and the fact that I am mildly compulsive in most capacities; I've been doing my reading on domestication. Everything from how to keep pet hair from becoming a problem to how to keep the spice in your relationship. However, it wasn't until today while clicking through Yahoo's latest relationship advice article and the realities of marriage, when I noticed something. Why are ALL the relationship advice geared toward how WOMEN can learn to deal or take care of their MEN??

I mean, yes, we are usually the ones who constantly check for and tug off the proverbial lint balls of our relationship. Tending and maintaining is in our very genetics. But lost we are not. Women have had the knowledge pounded into their heads for centuries that "you can't change a man" and to "stand by your man" and "if you don't give it to him, someone else will..." But where is that manual that teaches men how to get from day 1 to day 7 of their woman's cycle without suffering a severe eye injury? And how to REMEMBER those tedious things that they always seem to forget that mean so much to us (like anniversaries and special songs). Or how to let go of their fear of floral patterns and muted tones and let their woman decorate as she sees fit? These too are aspects of the male/female relationship that can either maintain the serenity of the household peace or drudge up an argument that usually lands the man in the guestroom/couch/doghouse.

I think there are a million and one things women have to get used to when living with a man; like toilet splatter, and 7 pairs of Nike Dunks left in the hallway. But there are also like a bizillion more things a man has to get used to when dealing with a woman, and the number only climbs from the point of child baring.

So my very plea...someone...someone with a really awesome publisher and book deal already lined up...please write a book (or several) addressed to men about how to keep US happy. Because in case no one has noticed...our guys could use the assistance.