Afternoon Delight

Today on a mellow sun dappled spring afternoon I discovered the loveliest neighborhood in Queens. Forrest Hill Gardens looks like the kind of enchanted place where a princess would grow up. Row upon row of magestic Tudor style houses look out onto the street through cut glass paned windows. A crystal chandelier gleaming with rainbows catches my eye from someone’s living room. The neighborhood reminds me of Cambridge, England. Its so beautiful and quaint and different from everything I’ve ever known in California that it catches me by surprise and almost makes me want to cry. Here is my fantasy of the East Coast – tall, regal brick buildings, brownstones, old graceful houses surrounded by oaks and maples, their bare branches scratching at the exposed blue sky. Everything looks classy and old.

Who lives here? I imagine cultured, worldly women and men reclining in tastefully decorated, book-lined living rooms. It’s the kind of place that an Anthropology Professor from Columbia might live, or a Literature Professor at NYU. The neighborhood breathes success and old worldly cool, reminiscent of my naïve West Coast fantasies about the blue blooded, Ivy League chic of The East.

I wonder do the people in these beautiful houses ever feel trapped? Ever feel that their life has grown stale, empty? Do they possibly ever feel as lonely and insignificant as me? I’m like a little country mouse, scuttling along in a place where I could never belong.

But the birds are chirping and the first few flowers of spring are struggling to show their delicate heads despite the harsh, battering of the winter. Maybe there is a place where I will feel welcome somewhere in the world.

In a matter of minutes I am back on the teeming streets of New York, a million strangers’ careworn faces greeting me.

Heavy Baggage

I arrived in New York, like many before me, with just two cheap suitcases and a heart full of hope and expectation. I thought I was traveling light.

Well, it turns out I brought a lot more baggage with me than I’d intended. Namely myself. If you are a crazy, confused, lunatic in Oakland, CA are you going to be a crazy, confused lunatic in New York, NY?!!! Not surprisingly, the answer is YES.

Dammit!!!

My mom always told me that that AA people had a term for when someone up and moved when the going got tough – they called it ‘pulling a geographic’. Though the logic of this frustrated me - especially all those times I longed to run away from everything - intellectually it made sense. However, I’d never tested it out myself. I’d stayed mired in the same place, dealing with relatively the same issues for over a decade. I didn’t have the courage to run too far from anything.

Now that I’m here over 3,000 miles away from ‘home’ (whatever, wherever that is anymore - that word seems sort of meaningless to me right now) I’m confronted with the less than thrilling reality that I’m still ME. I’m not some fearless, exotic new creature, suddenly popular, focused and ambitious. Nor is there a slough of lovely and charming men prostrating themselves in my path.

Still its good. I’m forced to take a long, honest look at myself, my thoughts and behavior patterns. Some things I’m seeing aren’t so pretty. Old ways of being that may once have served me well, or at the very least protected me, are no longer of use. It may be high time to change more than just my address...

Smoke and Mirrors

Grit without Glory

I don't know the stations' names
I'll spend my life on this train
Magnetic Fields

Late at night I watch the rats play hide n’seek in the subway tracks. Monday and Sunday nights are the worst, the trains don’t run much and nobody’s around. At 2 or 3am, I’m coming home from work, alone. The stations are deserted, dank, desolate holes in the ground. It feels like I’m the last person on earth. A helpless curtain of fatigue settles over me. I’m hungry, tired, maybe even slightly drunk. I stare at the water marks on the ancient tiled tunnels. I eat some greasy chips bought from a weathered vendor accustomed to this subterranean habitat. How many more nights will pass like this?

Then I pull the hood out of my coat and curl into it. Maybe I can sleep a little while I wait.

When I finally get on the train everyone around me is drooping like dirty, wilted flowers. Seeking reprieve in blessed sleep.

The Electronic Hearth

Seems like everyone's been suckled on the heavy teat of mass-media culture. There's no escaping it.

One Night in NY

Is New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.
-Ezra Pound

Its not all agony and loneliness here. Sometimes I actually have fun!

Last night was a good night. I started out meeting a guy for happy hour at a bar in the East Village. As soon I walked in two drunk Irish guys started chatting with me. One was like ‘You look like an old-fashioned model from the 50’s, you’re so pretty.’ That made me smile.

I was meeting C at the bar for the first time. We’d been chatting online for a couple weeks but hadn’t met in person. We were cloistered in a dark corner talking. In our corner we met a crazy Taiwanese girl who grew up in the South, with a weird mixed Taiwanese/Southern accent, who worked in fashion. She was drunk and hilarious and was practically sitting on my lap, telling me all about breaking up with her ex boyfriend, how bored she was in NY, asking what should she do with her life?! Then a bunch of Thai guys who grew up in NYC met her and started smoking pot in front of the bar. They were the friendliest guys ever. Everyone agreed that people are nicer in NY than San Francisco. One of the guys said, ‘In New York you can go out to a bar and meet anybody. Anyone will talk to you.’ It was true; the Irish guys kept coming by and high fiving the guy I was on a date with because he had a vintage Liverpool soccer jersey on (he lived in England for a year). One guy was trying to buy it off his back. C was opening up to me about old girlfriends, living in Spain, traveling, growing up in NYC, his Brazilian mom. He seemed like a sweet guy and he was a good kisser. Later he walked me back to the subway. I fell down laughing into a snow bank. People were out everywhere in the snow, it was Friday night and everyone seemed to be smiling, guarding a secret inner joy. C said, ‘This is the best first date ever!’.

Even though I left C, I wasn’t ready to go home yet. The other night I’d met a very handsome chef, Lou, at a non profit fundraising event I was working at. He’s from the Bronx with a sexy New York accent and a hilarious sense of humor. I was immediately into him. I was dying for him to call. He had called me earlier in the night saying he wanted to hang out when he got off work if I was still out.

At 11:30 Lou called again saying he was off work and he could come meet me. I was eating pizza by myself in Union Square after leaving C. I gave him a huge hug when he showed up. I don’t know what it was about this guy but I was really into him! We ended up in some dive bar full of drunk NYU students dancing to 80’s music. I kept sucking down vodka sodas. Not such a good idea but I was so excited to be out and hanging out with this guy. There was just one BIG problem though. Turns out he has a girlfriend. I asked him point blank after he told me he had a big two bedroom uptown. A sane person would have probably gone home at that point. Unfortunately, I’m not sane.

Lou said he liked me immediately when he met me and since I told him I was new in town he thought we could hang out as friends. I was like ‘Yeah, that’s a nice idea but I kind of LIKE you.’ Then he said, ‘I’m not gonna lie, I think you are very beautiful.’ Great. In theory it would be nice to have him as a friend but I don’t quite understand how that will work if we are both attracted to each other. Shit! I started telling him how I was a good woman and how I deserved to meet a nice single guy who was really into me, blah, blah blah, I was really drunk at that point. I should have just shut up and gone home. He told me he fought in the Serbian war (he was born in Albania) and I asked him, ‘So did you kill anybody?’ He was like, ‘Violeta you aren’t supposed to ask questions like that. What do you think?’ Somehow that made him even hotter. God, he was really, really sexy.

Anyway, he ended up driving me home. We got lost in Queens in a snarl of dead end roads full of snow and abandoned factories. I was smoking with the window down, babbling about the history of exploitation of workers in New York City and demanding that he treat his kitchen staff nicely. What a mess. But the Queensborough Bridge was all lit up in a brilliant blue haze and Manhattan was gleaming across the river and the cold air felt good on my face. I was finally feeling like I had arrived here in New York City. Even if my life was just one big giant, confusing, lonely morass - at least I was somewhere different.

I gave L a hug, his body felt really good; big, strong and comforting. I miss being in man’s arms so bad. But he’s not mine so I sent him home.

Sadness and The City

I went into one of my two crappy jobs today. Apparently there was a miscommunication between the manager and my coworker. She thought he was asking for the day off and asked me to come in to cover his shift. When I got there, he was there. So I spent nearly an hour getting to work only to be told they didn't need me. And I needed the money. So I wasn't in the greatest mood when I got sent home. Truth be told, I wanted to drink.
L came downtown to meet me and we went out for drinks. Later we met her friend at some hideous gay bar full of old men who glared at us. We were the only two women there. The only saving grace was the cheap drinks. Flash forward two hours and I'm being awakened awkwardly by some employee in a frozen yogurt shop. Apparently, my drunken mind thought it would be a good idea to get frozen yogurt. Problem was I pretty much feel asleep at the table with my yogurt! When he woke me up it was all melted and there were white smears of dried yogurt all over my black down coat. How humiliating! I've never passed out in a public place. I got up and left in daze. Later on the train some bitchy girl yelled at me on the train for being in her space. Hmmmmm. This is a crowded subway in New York, how am I supposed to NOT be in her space?! WTF??!?! I was so tired and sad and out of it and angry at that point that I'm surprised I was able to catch both my trains and make the trek home.

Maybe my brother is right. Its just more of the same. This urbanity is killing me. The annonimity, the hustle and bustle, the crappy jobs, the loneliness, the crunch of it all, is exhausting. I'm over it. Nothing exciting or miraculous or even fun is happening here. I'm so sad inside. So weary to the core of feeling lost and not connecting. This hideous nightmare of loneliness never seems to end. I wouldn't wish this on anyone. It makes me sick. I feel heartbroken that this is my life.
Maybe I need to get out of the city. Go to the country. Do some physical work. Breath fresh air. Read. Write. Feel like human being again.

Dreams and Memories

Listening to this tonight and remembering long, long, ago being in love with my first boyfriend. He played bass. We used to stay up all night talking and listening to music. Completely in our own world and just getting each other. I miss that.
It feels like I'll never have that kind of connection again.

Strange Times

The President played the saxophone
sounded so alone
it was on the news
And from Ursa Minor
in what looked like an
all-night diner
came lonely luminous creatures
whose only human feature
was singing the blues
- Magnetic Fields

I went to meet Baboon Heart Boy at the Neptune Diner the other night at nearly 1 am. Everything seemed slightly surreal. He asked me why I hadn’t written another blog posting about him. “Well you haven’t given me much to go on.” was what I told him. Which was true enough, I hadn’t seen him since the Cracker Jack incident and that had already been documented for posterity. Really all that had transpired between us since then was a lot of late night text messages from him asking me what I was doing, a few vague replies from me about me being out or being busy. Then there was one bizarre phone conversation in which he abruptly asked me if I was in love with him, to which I laughed and said, “NO. I hardly even know you.” That was about it.

So anyway, we’re sitting at this Queens dinner in the early hours of the morning. I’ve been feeling kinda bummed lately – far away from home, jobless and purposeless in a strange city. I thought seeing him and going to the weird diner might cheer me up. I never learn…

I sit down next to him in a booth. He launches into a volley of probing questions about my sex and dating life; when I don’t provide him with immediate answers he starts guessing. I turn the questions back on him. He refuses to answer. The whole time he is observing me scrupulously, taking in every detail, at one point he brings out a little notebook and starts scribbling in it. I assumed he was drawing since he’s an artist but later I realize that he was writing something. God only knows what it might have been. He then starts with his amateur analysis of my character telling me I’m crazy, that everything I think about others is my own projection, wondering why I would want to share things with the world on my blog, etc. He asks my opinion then declares that I’m contradicting myself.

Once I realize a ‘normal’ conversation is not possible with this guy I lose interest in talking and decide instead to observe the inhabitants and environment of the diner: middle aged guy with a belly at the counter hunched over his eggs, bored looking Latino servers in polyester vests standing around surreptitiously watching us, a couple sharing a milkshake, rows of carefully placed miniature boxes of breakfast cereal (how I loved those things as a kid!), porthole inspired mirrors (to go with the whole Neptune theme) and endless dusty brown wood paneling stretching from wall to wall.

Later he walks with me toward my house. I stop him several houses away and thank him for walking me home. I leave him alone on the corner, slightly surprised.

Really, you gotta give a little if you expect to get a little.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

The last guy that I hung out with was a good looking, talented and successful artist. He ate Crackerjacks in his bed and told me he had a baboon heart.

I told him I was from another planet. Might as well be.