Far Far Away

Walking the unfamiliar streets of Brooklyn today, I feel like I could cry with happiness. Everything seems delicate and lovely. Old Italian men shuffling into church for evening mass, laughing children run in the streets with balloons, tiny dogs quivering on their leashes, the furtive glances of handsome men. The autumn air is impossibly soft, even the incessant thrum of cars is somehow comforting. To be free from everything I have known, to be so far away from home – across the continent – fills me with a radiating secret joy. Sometimes I just can’t help but smile at strangers on the street.

The Banker and The Torta

It was a Monday night in the West Village in NYC. I was out with some coworkers at the infamous Stonewall Inn. The place is all painted a shiny lacquer black inside with red neon lights. One of my sleazier coworkers was buying me vodka sodas and moving in closer and closer. After he confessed, “You know I’ve always been attracted to you” and grabbed my hand and put it on his crotch, I knew I had to go.

I lurched drunkenly through the historic hole and out onto the street. There I found a lovely and inviting sight – a Taco Truck! I was standing on the sidewalk savoring the deliciousness of my chicken torta when a dapper young black man walked over and started talking to me. He invited me out for coffee or drinks at a nearby out door café. I declined. And yet somehow (here’s where my memory is a bit hazy) I end up in a cab with him speeding up to midtown Manhattan. All the while he’s flattering me and carrying on in a proper British accent (he was raised in London, although his parents are African). He told me he was a banker. To which I started babbling drunkenly about Wall Street’s role in the subprime mortgage crash, the failing economy, etc, etc… Meanwhile he’s going on about how he just bought a condo with an amazing view, its so nice, blah blah blah... Next thing I know we are in his teeny, immaculately modern and sterile condo with gleaming windows looking out on the downtown lights. The banker is gesturing to a painting on the wall and asking if I like it. Then I start crying and telling him how I was about to go home and now he has taken me further away from Brooklyn and I can’t afford a cab. I tell him that I think he should pay for my cab ride home. He tells me he has no cash.
“What?! You have no cash?!! But you’re a banker!!!” I shout, incredulous.
When he realizes I am totally pissed we go back down to the street and to the nearest ATM where he gets out cash to give to me for the ride home. He is hugging me and trying to kiss me, saying “When can I see you again?” Asking for my number. I was like, “I am drunk and you are trying to hit on me. Can’t you see that I just want to go home?! You shouldn’t hit on drunk girls anyway.”
I catch the nearest cab and head home. All I want is to be alone with the rest of my chicken torta.

Julia Roberts will NOT be staring in the movie version...

In my new book EAT FUCK DIE, Notes on an Ongoing Existential Crisis, I will be tackling complex and controversial subjects such as:

- Why trying to be thin is a big FAT waste of your time
- How to get off your Crackberry and actually relate to other human beings
- Tips for seducing young semi-innocent men
- How to avoid commitment at all costs even though you think you want it
- Why 'fucking' is preferable to 'making love'

Sometimes

Habibi can be sweet. Last night he called me to wish me a belated happy birthday and to see how I was. He told me I was 'a good person with a good heart.' I met him at a video store in my 'hood and he gave me a ride home. Its Ramadan so he's been fasting all day, not drinking any water and staying up late at night. He looked slightly crazy (as usual) and a little skinny but still sexy. On the ride home he suddenly reached over and pinched my lips. I asked him why he was doing that he told me "I wanted to kiss you but I can't". I guess kissing women who aren't your wife is NOT OK during holy month.
Anyway, when I told him that my brother was in the hospital in France he was like, "Oh my god. Is it a tumor?!" I assured him it was not a tumor. Then he told me if there was anything he could do to let him know, he has family and friends in France. He said he could tell by looking at me that something was not right. He gave me a big hug and rubbed my back. A small moment of comfort and affection. Sometimes I feel like a lost dog, hoping someone nice will take me home and pet me. Sad. But can you blame me?!

C'est La Vie

I've never met a man or a job that I couldn't quit...
WITHOUT regret!

News Flash

I'm totally over my roommate. In fact he's annoying me. Tonight he had the nerve to knock on my door at 11:30 pm to ask me if I had an extra wine glass in my room. Don't bug me at that hour over some trifling detail. We aren't sophisticated people here - this place is a dump. Pour that damn cheap 'wine product' you drink into one of my 99cent store water glasses, give it to your girl and call it a day!
The other night he was running off to his room with a pint of ice cream and two spoons. He was like, "I have to go feed my baby." Now, I'm not into him anymore but you'd think he'd have the decency to be a little bit low key about that stuff with me after what happened with us in the recent past. He just seems to be a tad bit too gleeful about it all. This kind of thing makes me want to bring my new latin lover over to have loud sex with on the living room couch. Ahem... not that'd I'd actually ever stoop to that level of immaturity...
Anyway, I get over men prettttty damn quickly. Its a coping mechanism I've had to learn over the years. As I once told my roommate right after his girlfriend moved here from Serbia, "I'm not interested in people who aren't interested in me."
And truth be told, I'm going through men here in New York at an unprecedented rate. I haven't met this many guys since I was in my early 20s. So, I'm not gonna get hung up on any one of them. I'm waiting for that one who is really special and feels the same about me. Until that day, easy come, easy go mi amigos!

Unbelievable!

Hakim called me tonight. He asked me if I was still single. I told him I was. He was like "Oh well you must not want a boyfriend." As if it were that easy...

When I politely inquired as to how things were going with him and his ex wife he said, "Ohhhh good. Well, she is weak like all women but its OK..." I was like, "Oh excuse me, what did you say - women are weak?!" Hakim: "Oh yeah women are weak in the brain, you too habibati." When I asked him WHY women were weak he said, "Well god made them that way." Hmmmmmm. Interesting. So then I asked him, "So how did God make men?" To which he replied, "God made men assholes."
Ha ha ha!!!! He really is too much! I was dying.
I prompted him, "Oh really, so its God's fault men are are assholes?" Then he said, "Well God made some men assholes and women turned some men into assholes."
Huh. So women are not only WEAK but also partially to blame for why MEN ARE ASSHOLES! Got it.

Then he asked me, "How is your shape?"
"My shape?" WTF?! "Well", I reminded him, "you once told me that I should go to the gym instead of spending so much time hanging out with my roommate." (He was insecure about me living with two guys.)
He was like, "Oh well your shape has always been very good. I must have been drunk or stoned if I said that."
WOW.

I'm not even pissed. I'm fascinated. I just can't believe the things that come out of this guy's mouth.
Hilarious!

At the edge of the world

So we had a BBQ on our rooftop. My roommate's clearly in love. I made mojitos and got moody and sad. I want to be happy for others when they are happy. Especially when they are cool people and I know they struggle in life. But I'm too scared that I will be left behind...alone forever. And eternally misunderstood...or neglected. Ugh. Please don't let it be so!

Anyway, here are some pictures:

I don't want to give up and go back home

Fireflies and thunderstorms
The damp hot air like a caress
Thick and soft, smelling of salt
It makes my hair curly, makes me crazy

I can imagine I'm in another country
Don't know anyone here
and frankly don't care

Kids play in the park
A symphony of languages
tangling their tongues
The heat presses down

Ice cream trucks and filthy streets
Midsummer rain doesn't even bother me
No one ever shuts up
and the city doesn't sleep

Stoned in the subway at Times Square
Someone plays the keyboard
And everyone is swaying, wanting to dance
An unexpected magic moment

I'm smiling at my reflection in the train window
Lost as all hell
And lonely as fuck

Still, somehow managing to have a good time
Once in a while

Here Comes the Come Down

So I’m sitting here feeling what? Vindication that I was right, that I accurately predicted the situation, that my worst fears lurking just around the corner will soon be confirmed. I’m the perfect architect of my own misery. Happy in my own familiar hell.

I set Hakim up for failure. I snooped, spied and judged. I reacted to his ambivalence with anger. My ego would not allow me to trust or be patient. I wanted to be right, I didn’t want to be made a fool of. I couldn’t relax and enjoy things. I wanted to be in control. I created a self fulfilling prophecy. And I walked away from it all the way I knew I would even from the start.

With M. Well, that was just unexpected. What cruel magic could allow me (us) to feel that way under the circumstance of her impending arrival? Or was it just simply as I said - we were both lonely, nothing more, nothing less. We filled our time with each other, indulged in dramatic conversations and feelings, submitted ourselves to sensation, threw caution to the wind and immersed ourselves in the moment. ‘Play with fire and you get burned’ keeps running through my head. How come I feel like I’m the only one to ever get burned though? Or is that another illusion of my own egocentricity? Thinking I’m always alone.

I heard someone playing guitar in the apartment above me. Hearing him sing, a sliver of hope stabbed me.
Maybe loneliness is universal.