Rebounding

You know I never showered with Sasha? That's a shame. Showering with a woman can be such a beautiful and intimate experience, sexy and friendly and trusting and clean. I was generally concerned with sleeping it off for 10 more minutes while she got ready for work, before I went home to cook oatmeal, drink coffee and ply my trade as a desparately underemployed internet consultent and sometimes performance artist.

I wonder if now I'm any more attractive to her because of my relative success. We IM sometimes, you know. Keep up on the old email. I remember the first weekend I was here in San Francisco, this when I was bumbling drunk and high and no-place to sleep, yet still somehow meeting women and getting their phone numbers; I wrote her an email with the tagline "Sadly I love you."

Roughly six weeks later, I'm finally starting to turn the corner on that part of my life. It hurts to let that good time go. I cried more than I think I ever have before when it was first pulled away. "It was a good dream," she said, but...

And so here I am, a whole new kind of life for a little while. Yeah, probably someday I'll go back to New York, but it will be a different thing when I do. I won't be going back to the same life, to the same routines. Childhood's end; I'm growing into my man-hands. Maybe I'll have learned to play the slide guitar.

With all this in mind, it's problably lest that I let my heart take a vacation for a while; let it wander in its own world, sit under a tree and read a book and be generally carefree. But I have this big bed in the mean time, with red sheets and a candle next to it, leading inexorably to our next topic.

It's coming on high time that I got laid. I wonder how I might go about finding people to make out with on the quick. Can you really blog about such things; is it really done? Honestly? Is there a blogging Cassanova, some sensitive intellectual who wanders about making moments of beauty with women he meets online? And is he spilling all the beans?

After a techie dinner I wonder if I could do that kind of thing, and if so what it would do to my site traffic. Evil thoughts. I don't need or want groupies -- unless there are any actually reading this, in which case email me directly and let's arrainge a renzdevious -- and I prefer nororiety for my non-carnal accomplishments.

However, the fact remains that I've got to start putting myself out there more. How that might happen is anyones guess at this point. I think maybe it starts with sitting up straight and getting a haircut, then tapping into that mountain man mojo I've got bottled away somewhere deep in here. I can be a pretty sexy cat when I turn it on, the old outlandish charm.

I need another spin on the wheel I think, somethign to put me back in the flesh. I don't think I'll get very far in my personal, professional or artistic life until I re-connect all the dots, so it makes sense to get underway directly.

Love's Labor Lost
She quit me, a fact I'm only now coming around to accept. This is very difficult for me. It hurts, and I feel weak and stupid and like a child. It seemed for a while that my deepest notions about life were being validated, that my dreams were coming true, that the thrill of speed could coexist with the unending warmth of love. But no. Not this time around.

I've blogged a little about breaking up (denial, denial, bargaining, anger, depression) which has been helpful to some extent. I'm no longer a mess, but I'm still pretty fucked up about the whole thing to be honest.

I think mostly I'm still in the anger part, enraged at her and me and the kind of world where this thing happens. "I hate your guts, you ruined my life," goes the recriminating song. Melodramatic fantasies, unlikely to actually come around. Breathe it all out. There's really not a lot to say about all this, cliche's running through me faster than I can tabulate, but I'll try again.

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

I don't like this. I don't like being in pain. It feels like weakness, like fallability. I don't like realizing that I put a lot of clout in someones hands, that I trusted someone with something, and that I turned out to be wrong in giving that trust. There's an intensely physical component to all this; rage in my shoulders, salt tears in my gut, a tense facade across my face, the jaw clenched down on the notion that I am ok.

But I'm not ok. I was in love, and now I'm... something else. She left me to be with another person, someone I was introduced to, who I knew by sight and by name. Betrayl and bitterness and burning hot coals buried behind my eyes. Part of me is throwing an enormous tantrum, and doesn't seem likely to stop any time soon. It's not fair, and I'm oh so tempted to lash out in spite and retribution, curse a blue streak a mile wide and enumerate every fault and failing, just barf up all the caustic, bilesome and evil things that swim in my stomach these days.

But that would probably give her some kind of vicarious purgative satisfaction, so fuck that. She gets nothing from me, nothing of substance. Not for a good while anyway. I'm all for maintaining friendly relations and maybe someday actually being friends, but for now it's self protection and not a whole lot else. I can't always be generous.

So I don't know where this will lead me. Probably off to be on my own for quite a while if history is any kind of teacher. I'm starting to look ahead, if not exactly forward, to my future. It's not with a heart full of hope, but all of this will someday be fuel. This too shall pass, and the most important thing is still to stop struggling.

Shelther From The Storm
In the swirling vortex of conflict and potential loss, we discover beauty in the sharply revealed essance of being. You don't know what you got till it's gone and necessity is still the mother of invention. I've been carrying on with a woman, Sashsa Alcott, for almost 6 weeks now, and things are getting a little serious. She's a chemestry teacher and a musician and almost 30 and from Maine and in posession of a beautiful spirit and crooked teeth and everything everything everything everything. I love her.

We met at a bar, we danced, she took me home -- as was wont to happen for a while there -- and then we realized that we really really had a connection. I stole some old xmas decorations and wrote her a note the next night, leaving both on her doorstep. Things just sort of took off from.

It has been in the wooly and uncertain moments that I realize how much I like her. A few bare days after we met she had a bad day and canceled on getting together with me. It was quite revealing how worried I was. Shortly thereafter I got real drunk one night and fooled around with a different girl, discovering that it was no fun and made me feel guilty. Finally, a couple weeks ago we had a big dischordant discussion about the future of humanity and all sorts of big things, and in the midst of all the disagreement I realized finally that I loved her. "I'm struggling," I said. "The most important thing is to stop stuggling. I love you." And that was about that.

Now we're kind of dealing with the differences in our personalities, where we are in life, etc etc etc. Sometimes it's work and sometimes it's overwhelming, but all of it seems to turn me on in various ways. I'm pretty shit-eating happy, to tell you the truth, even if I do toss my head and snort at the prospect of settling in a little. It's worth it though. At the end of my little manslut ramble I remarked about my hope for lightning to strike. I think it may have, but I'm still tentative sometimes, wary of putting too much pressure on.

A Slick Hot Run
I've been having a lot of sex lately. More in the past three weeks than in all of 2002, which isn't saying I'm a super-stud 'cuz 2002 was a rather isolated year, but still. My attitude has come around; I'm an attractive man.

I'm easy right now, floating on the magnetics of attraction. Prospects swirling around me in every direction, and yet I still fret about calling the hot ones, sweating bullets when they decide not to call me back. I'm enjoying what's going on. It's been largely the Truth. And yet, on a certain level, it's not the Whole Truth and Nothing But The Truth.

I'm slightly worried that all this free-swinging action will have some deadly payback. I'm safe as all hell, so I'm not worried about biological reprecussions. But I worry about my spirit. I wrote the other day in my journal that it would be a stupid thing to become existentially deprecated over something as standard as sex. It's a concern.

I had an experience last fall that was the begining of it all, something that woke me up to the healing possiblities of Good Vibrations. Since then the steam has been building, and since I came back things have been going about as quickly as I can stand. Details and permutations may or may not get lost in the shuffle, but I've been deeply in love with velocity since childhood, and I'm not about to give it up. The problem is how to convince people that I'm serious in the mindst of my wild meteoric run.

Honesty and desire are a king hell twin dynamo combination, like some binary star action, two sweaty ball bearings twisting around eachother, grinding in the night, efficent, stumbling down the long dark hall into ecstasy. I want to build something and I want to see the world and I want to cuddle and converse and be a bravehearted flag-waving romantic, and I sincerely believe that all that starts with me just breathing in and doing that Allen Ginsburg shuffle.

Swinging around wildly as of late. The soulmate urge is still strong and steady, but the lonliness is creeping in, coaxing me to consider compromise. Also, seems like most of my good friends are much more successful at being girlfriended than I am. A little of the old Irish Meloncholy mingling with Harvest-Time Hope.

I had a few ugly moments that I'd rather not revisit that were the result of just letting the j-bone do as it will. The j-bone and the j-man are usually in pretty good harmony, but sometimes the j-bone will make compromises the j-man has a difficult time reconciling.

It bugs me when I need to feel guilty about something that's gone down sexually. It bugs me when I feel like I'm making a woman uncomfortable by sending her vibe. These things are avoidable (as long as one can avoid the intersection of drink and non-pride I like to call "the apex of shame"). However, what bugs me the most is when I catch the ugly/desperate "I've been beat-up emotionally and/or abused sexually and now I'm fucking you to feel close to someone so why don't you save me" vibe off a girl in the midst of something that's supposed to be beautiful. I don't blame her, but generally that's not what I signed on for. I can't help but empathize, but it's not completely consensual on my part. I want to feel for people. That's what I'm here for. But I want to be at least partly on my terms I suppose.

I had a little run with the older ladies (late 20s) around my 23rd birthday, discovered that it's no fun being used, even consentually. I hooked up over Monkey Summer 2002, making out on acid at Oregon Country Fair, but that was a Pirate Utopian fling. I cought vibe from A-stock's hot younger sister when she was visiting, but didn't feel like wading into that pool of complecations. I managed to develop a mini-crush on a co-worker of Jeremy's but she's headed back to jolly old England before too long, so that's not really looking probable.

Who knows. I've been feeling like a hopeless romantic again, which is nice because I know that's a good place to be. I've been noticing song lyrics that I never did before, feeling moved by love scenes in films, getting excited reading about wild bohemain love. I get the sense that my head is finally getting into a place where I'm ready to let someone in, do a lot of nice things for her. Like I said, hopeless romantic, feels noble. You score a lot less though, unless you get good and drunk and self-deluded...

I made the conscious choice when I went back to Oregon in December '01 that I would take a vacation from chasing women. This was a good thing, as it freed me up and offered me perspective. However, the result is that now that I'm ready to go back to chasing girls, I find that I'm less inclined to do so.

I am coming to realize that I'm longing for and maybe even ready to get involved in a quote-un-quote "relationship" with someone. But I don't have any idea how this thing really happens. I've gotten fairly good over the years at ferretting my way into women's pants, and if I applied myself I know I could be getting laid in short order. Anyone could, relaly. But that's not what I'm after. I'm after the other thing: the harder thing: the thing where you find someone you like and you make something between the two of you over time. And I don't know how to get that happening other than wait and see.

The trouble is "wait and see" is a very boring and unsatisfying strategy. It leaves one feeling rather powerless and at the mercy of the cosmos. I keep waiting to catch a fire, but it just doesn't seem to be happening at the moment. And that frustrates me. I feel as though there aught to be some technique, some guidebook to falling in love. This sense is only compounded by my expanding awareness of my self and how my self operates... I know that for me, finding someone I really dig is about 50% meeting the right person and 50% having an opinion of them that allows you to care about them.

I'm unwilling to believe (from an objective scientific standpoint) that there's no-one who's compatible with me in the New York area. This simply cannot be true. However, I seem to be unable to effect the critical change in my attitude, wordview or whatever it is to allow me to have the experience I want to be having. It's a very tricky situation, gives me fits and starts of hope and glory, but leaves me cold and alone more often than not.

The year 2001 was largely about learning about dating. It's an interesting exercise. On the one hand it injects excitement and adventure into your life. On the other hand, it can kind of suck your will to live.

I realized that I'm something of a unique entity that doesn't fit into one of the pre-molded social architypes. It's difficult, because I'm not quite the Prince Charming role I always thought I'd play. But then, Prince Charming is really a patriarchal fantasy that infantalizes women, isn't he?

What I really want to have free love... love that can live fully and blossom in the moment, and not entail all kinds of strings and attachments.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I want to love 'em and leave 'em. It's that I want to be able to love 'em without having them get upset if I don't love 'em again on their timeframe. Likewise myself. It seems like it should be so easy; if we'd all grow up and realize we're beautiful, capable, amazing individuals, and we don't need to let our petty insecurity and posessivness drag us down.

• Fell in love for real: the kind of girl god gives you early on, so that you'll know loss for the rest of your life
• Became sexually active
• Made some hubristic/stupid decisions
• Got jaded, spent 14 months alone
• Realized that sometimes girls like you more than you like them (a total reversal of all my prior experience)
• Had an "open" relationship
• Had some casual relationships, a bonafide one night stand
• Graduated... without a real clue what I was doing

• Freshman year I was kind of lost in the sea of flesh... I mean some of those girls were 18 and they had real boobs! A year spend wandering.
• Sophomore year I developed my first full-blown adolescent crushes. Of course, I was too much the wallflower to make any advances. This would be the theme for the rest of high school. I had also grown long hair and some antisocial tendancies. The height of the fire and the blackness.
• Junior year I began to realize that I could flirt. It still didn't take me anywhere, but I started loosening up.
• Senior year: the pathos, the triumph, the escape. I kind of came out of my shell this year, started being a more social creature. Eventually cut my hair and tried to take a girl to the prom. Some things worked out better than others. Still no real significant action, but I made it into NYU, so I'm counting on New York to take it to the next level.