Lessons not yet learned

Ill-begotten pleasures inevitably lead to bitter endings.

The Road Less Traveled

I need to write more. Sometimes it feels as if my existence is like that metaphorical tree falling alone in the woods, with no witnesses. When you live untethered from society's institutions you must find daily justification for your own existence. And its not easy. But didn't I come here - to this teeming, throbbing city, to the heart of all that is good and evil about this Empire to do just that - to justify my own existence, to burnish the soft blob of my life into something more pointed, more fine, more beautiful? I must maintain this goal; if only I can continue to soldier on through the lonely, ungratifying days - tripped up along the path by people who don't understand me - CAN'T understand me and who want something from me none-the-less. Hungry men who want to use me to justify their own existence because they are lazy; they don't want to feel alone so they want a warm body beside them (never mind that they are not even capable of a meaningful conversation), men who want to use my body to give themselves pleasure and whose next impulse is to then slip away into the night - men who are so terrified of the responsibility to another human being that they'd rather spend their evenings basking in the glow of their television set rather than having to commune with another human being. NO, I do not exist to serve these men and I cannot deny the perverse pleasure it gives me to disdain them, even trick them!

But I must not allow myself to lapse into pettiness. I know what I seek - beyond a reason for my life, beyond an accumulation of disparate and chaotic experiences, I want to find a way in which I can somehow be of service - not for the cheap chores that I'm solicited for daily, but for something more complex, deeper, relevant in a broader way. And I'd like a companion, a fellow traveler - someone who is capable of plumbing the depths, someone curious and intense, someone who desires to know himself, to know me, to know others and who has an interesting vision for the world. Someone who is not afraid, or even if he is - who plunges forward with courage.

The Games We Play

But he objectified me as surely as if I were a pretty little doll plucked from a fancy store window. He’d caught a glimpse of me fairly skipping down my street and he held it in his mind for months slowly turning it over like a piece of candy that one’s tongue probes repeatedly, savoring its sweetness. Of course he’d embellished things too – I wasn't really skipping, I was walking and my black belted coat became a dress in his mind, my hips swaying with assurance. I knew all this because he would recount it numerous times; describing my walk, my look, my attire and never accurately - the picture was always airbrushed for effect. It was as if I was more vivid in his fantasy than in reality. And he was never so amorous and desiring as when I was at distance from him, I’d wake up to ardent text messages describing his impulse to kiss every inch of my body, to lay his lips in my thighs, to taste my skin.

As for my part, I relished the fantastical element of it all. For we were alike in some ways. Two overgrown children heading toward middle age – indulgent and lazy, desiring a life of little responsibility; worshiping the fleeting high of momentary pleasure and likewise deploring the stodginess of propriety. How little we both cared for rules, and the delight we took in our frivolous role playing. We lost ourselves in each other sexually - indulging in each other’s bodies hungrily, hedonistically. We were greedy the way addicts are greedy – we could never get enough, we lived in constant anxiety of the last drop of our ill-earned pleasure drying up and escaping us. I don’t know about him but I can say I hated the prosaic reality of the day – to – day and I scorned any conversation or behavior which hinted at convention rather than what I believed to be a pure expression of intellect or passion. For his part, like most men, he lived in perpetual dread of ‘labeling’ our relationship and of my probing questions when I attempted to discern his feelings for me. Certainly, we were both arrogant and intent upon indulging ourselves. Yet there was true tenderness there, I could feel it in the way he held me and touched me, it emanated out of me accidentally - in the looks I gave him, in the way I kissed him.

Islands in the Stream

Oh how self-indulgent I’ve been, picking at the shabby threads of my life. Unraveling everything I’ve tried to build. Godless, arrogant, angry - I’ve been intent on destroying myself. I cannot live for myself but I refuse to live for another. The world appears random, chaotic and cruel. How others suffer. And all my little luxuries and beauty seem insignificant and pointless. Small futile gestures thrown into a dark encircling gulf. The crushing mechanisms of power and blind certainty inevitably breaking relentlessly over the defenseless of the world. Defenseless through no fault of their own but merely because of the accident of their birth, the bodies and skin they inhabit. I feel powerless to stop the injustice of it, mired in my own myopic desperation and uncertainty. If only I could open my heart to love, to not be afraid, to trust. If there is any meaning it must be in kindness, it must be in abandoning the stale orbit of ourselves - glowing like isolated little suns in a black universe, ignorant of everyone else and the space we share.

Not So Innocent

There comes a time when I must acknowledge my own role in the utter chaos that is my life. I don't always behave in upstanding ways. And since I've moved to New York, I think I've started to become a bit of a player myself. While it seems close to impossible to meet someone I'm truly compatible with - there has been an endless supply of young, attractive men to have fun with. Its become dangerously addictive. Though I was painfully shy and inexperienced with men in high school and my first year or two of college - boy have I made up for it ever since!

I meet guys everywhere now. There's a new one nearly every single week. Usually it goes nowhere - we go out a couple times and I lose interest. Or if I do like them, they start acting like jerks once I reciprocate their interest. On any given day I have several different guys texting me. Most of these men I never sleep with, many of them I never so much as even kiss. Sometimes I can't tell if its them I'm interested in or just their attention. I know this makes me sound like a jerk. Maybe I am - but everyone wants to feel attractive and desirable. And at the end of the day if you don't feel loved; you might be tempted to settle for something at bit more superficial.

Last night I was out with friends dancing and drinking at a bar. I don't even remember how things got started but the next thing I know I'm talking to this guy and he's saying things like "I'm your number one fan!!!" and "I'm really into you." I'm like WTF, you don't even KNOW me! He kept following me around all night. Then I wake up today to text messages from 2 different guys - one from a guy I used to date saying "Good morning beautiful, my angel" and another one from my current 'lover' saying "I want to kiss every inch of your body".

I've become cynical. None of it represents the type of love and connection I'm looking for. But these trifling flirtations, though ultimately unsatisfying, are as deliciously intoxicating as junk food. When I look at things from this perspective, it makes it hard to feel sorry for myself. This merry-go-round makes me dizzy (a sensation I've always loved), and on a good day its ridiculously fun, BUT ultimately I want to get off. The problem is I just don't know how.

Lady Lazarus

"Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air...."

A Terrible Shiny Thing

The dowdy little houses with sandpaper flapping at their shabby seams hardly elicit a flick of emotion in me. I who was once of the country, who knew the shabbiness of rural poverty, the claustrophobia of the dark gathering woods, the small squalid towns with their provincial ways frowning upon any divergence from the most unremarkable mediocrity. The eyes of the locals regarding any newcomer with a dull and unimpassioned hostility. I feel my own transition from this world of fields and streams, of ponds full of silvery fish, ragged marshes and the rustle of leaves in the wind - to an anxious urbanite - a biting, jagged edge barely concealed beneath a bright surface. Impatient, overly hungry with a trace of bitterness revealed in the tight gathers at the corners of my lips. The swell of people in the cities - of every imaginable color, shape, scent and class - each inscrutable face sealing a chamber of alluring secrets. Wild creatures in their natural habitat of concrete and steel, flashing across the edifices of buildings like shining birds fluttering through the trees. The soft dark eyes and damp skin of exotic men beckons on swarming streets and crowded subway cars. Evenings like these - the heavy limpid air, vaguely unclean, presses upon bare shoulders and fawns over my body like a warm, overly close breath. It is here that I make my home now, here that my soul feels itself liberated, that the infinite possibilities of a strange and exciting future unravel in my head. But its here too that my solitary, scant existence among this vociferous bounty weighs upon me, a close companion though out hot, humid summer nights when I toss on my cheap sheets cursing the futility of my existence. There can be no refuge in this world that is not merely a sweet tang of temporary relief amid the trudging onward of our lives.

Figuring it out

This blog is by nature about my relationships - as pathetic, fleeting, heartbreaking, glorious, fun, irresponsible, well-intentioned, sad, sexy, or otherwise, they have been. And sometimes its been a combination of the above! It ain't called LOVE & Mental Illness for nothin'!

I'm not going to write about my career (or lack thereof!), my friends and family (only vaguely and on rare occasions because I want to be respectful), politics, art, my hobbies, or other personal issues. But it IS about dating and sex and love and all those things in between.

Life is not always pretty or practical and I make lots of bad choices, but writing this is like keeping a journal; its cathartic. Writing down my thoughts helps me to clarify them. Why do I do it in a public forum? I'm not sure. Maybe to feel that I'm not alone in all this, maybe because I hope someone else can relate, maybe because I'm delusional and I think for some strange reason a couple people might get a vicarious thrill or derive some amusement from these stories and anecdotes.

Its also about my relationship with New York City, my relationship with myself and my patterns of behavior. I'd like to say that I'm learning a lot and growing wiser and more mature but that's not always true - sometimes I totally fuck up and engage in completely ridiculous behavior. But someday in the distant future I hope I can read over all this and it will make some kind of sense. Until then, the madness ebbs and flows...

Today was a good day

I didn't even have to use my AK...

I haven't been in the greatest mood lately. Truth be told, I've been just a touch angry.
OK...OK...I've been in a bitter, scathing rage. The kind of rage that let's me walk down the street not caring if I live for die; the kind of rage that makes me fantasize about tying certain men's balls in knots, the kind of rage that makes me want to kick random people and yell at babies, the kind of rage that makes me explode to my therapist that there's 'just too many fucking people in this city!!!'
It gives me a sliver of empathy for people who freak out and commit violent acts. I'm not condoning violence, nor am I going to lose my $hit, but I can kinda see where they're coming from.

I won't go into WHY I'm angry, that's too deep and personal to really take the time to articulate here but suffice to say that I haven't been feeling the greatest about things.

Anyway, what I finally realized today is that I have to stop playing these foolish games with men. The men I've met in NYC are trifling, at best. To spent time with them is to waste my time. No one has shown a sincere interest in me in ages. So in the spirit of not beating a dead horse, I need to let it (the search for love and companionship), let THEM go... Truth be told, I'm not gonna miss anyone that much!

I need to come to terms with the fact (and here's where it gets kinda deep, and scary too) that I'm scared I can't take care of myself, let alone anyone else. I really, really want to try but I'm terrified of the responsibility of having a family - or even a pet - and all those other things that most people just seem to be able to do without overanalyzing them to death. It might sound dumb, or heartless or self indulgent. But I'm scared of making mistakes and hurting people.

I guess the reality is we all hurt people and other living creatures, even if we try not to. The best we can do is bring a little awareness to the table and try to minimize the damage we do. I just gotta take the plunge. And maybe sometimes its OK for me to be angry. It might even be OK for me to be a bitch, on occasion. Hey, that sounds fun!

After therapy I ate an ice cream and sat in Central Park. I watched a squirrel drink from a puddle and little birds bathe in it. I watched the pedicabs roll by full of tourists gesticulating to the building tops of Columbus Circle, barely visible over the trees. I looked at the sad horses towing ramshackle old carts, their heads topped with tattered feathers in a fake attempt at jauntiness. I watched the cart drivers cluck to their horses and the pedicab drivers' rhythmically pumping calves. I think most of them were from other countries. I tried to imagine their dreams when they came here to New York, their struggles and goals, the families they left behind.

After a while everything didn't seem so bad.

You Can Make It Alone...

Ahhhh Brooklyn, I think I love you. I know its unrequited, sadly like so many of my affections. And our love isn't perfect, that's for sure. Sometime you annoy the hell out of me, you're big and dirty and full of so goddamn many people. But at the end of the night, I can't wait to rush home to you. The comfort of my own little neck of the woods; the faded but elegant lines of my little studio await me in Crown Heights. I know I'm slightly out of place here and yet being an outsider is what makes me comfortable, its all I know. From my childhood on, I've always known what it was like to be different, to be alone. And now it comforts me.

As I walk down these hot dusky streets, shadows and shade etched by the drooping branches of ancient trees - as street-wizened as the old men that lounge languorously on their stoops smiling and nodding hello to passersby, I'm enveloped by a keen joy that is almost as sweet and piercing as sadness. This is a place where children still dance through hoses, jump double dutch and play ball in the street. Its not Mr. Roger's neighborhood though, its not innocent - there's a vague sense of danger and gathering intensity on hot nights. But the streets feel alive, compassionate, humming with life here - not dead and vacant like yawning suburban streets - empty, wide and engulfing - with only the blue blur of TVs flickering in windows to indicate that any sort of life exists. Or worse yet, the silent hostile lines of tall pines crowding a dark sky bursting with cold stars,the lonely hush of the forest, the feeling of wilderness stretching around you, void of people, dark tangles of branches and wild animals baying at each other in moon saturated meadows. That was MY childhood, the feeling of dark jagged pines closing in, the feeling of being adrift - a small oasis of human life in a giant undulating sea of dark, stern, pressing hills.

So I'm here now. Embraced by the chaos of the urban jungle. Trying to live and love. And making a big mess of it all as usual. Somehow, I think I just might be OK, on my own, after all. Or at least for now...