Life Worth Living

Guess who I saw two nights ago completely unexpectedly, completely out of the blue, completely by accident? No. 1. I was in his house. I was standing on his floor. I was drinking coffee that he made me. I’d heard on the grapevine that he was in Dubai.

He saw me first. I don’t know if I would’ve even known he was there if he hadn’t yelled my name and pulled down his fake beard upon my request. I was surprised that he recognized me, the girl who was nothing more than someone who was once in one—no, two—of his classes, who liked him and tried too hard to talk to him. And then I thought—why is it a surprise at all? We had been friends. I’ve told myself this and I recognize that it’s so sad that when I look back on that year I remember him as the guy I liked and only recall after several minutes of nostalgic pining that he was my friend first. And maybe that’s why we’re not in contact anymore: I didn’t make the effort because I didn’t feel like his friend, I felt like one girl out of so many who liked him, and thus not entitled.

He said something to me in German that got lost in the din, and we tried to catch up while costumed partygoers squeezed past us in the narrow hallway. He leaned close so that I could hear him over the music and the confusion, and I looked into his eyes, and they were just as blue as I had remembered. He said, “I really want coffee—do you want coffee?”I replied, “YES. Youaremykindoman!” That last in my head.

And then he went to grind beans and start up the stove (because that’s how hipsters make coffee, apparently) and I was left standing there, my mind abuzz. For the record, I wasn’t sober, although he might have been. Perhaps I made a bad second-first impression. I determinedly tried to remember Leone, how much I care for him, how much more perfect he is than No. 1. How Leone can give No. 1 a serious run for his money in the looks department, even with those dash-your-heart-upon-them baby blues. No. 1′s arms were probably no thicker than mine, and his caveman costume was uncomfortably short in some places, and yet I stood there and wasn’t sure if I still wanted him.

I don’t think I did. I think that maybe I would want him in a schoolgirl way, just to want him, but ultimately I don’t think I like him anymore. Nor am I certain anymore that we would fit together perfectly. It’s hard not to want to throw yourself at him (I saw several girls batting their eyelashes at him throughout the night), but if anything the party was a confirmation that those loose ends are finally tied. I felt immediately guilty for even thinking that I could still like No. 1 somewhere inside me that’s been dormant for three years, and later in bed with Leone I tried to pretend that he was No. 1 to see if there was anything there and my own mind slapped me back like a shot.

But still, I miss him as a friend, and I think finally I’ve let go of my like for him enough that I can just be his friend, nothing else. I think. I think? I’m no longer entirely sure. Maybe I’ll never be free of him, but it doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t interfere with what I have with Leone, and I’m not going to let it.

This place is nice. Not large, but softly carpeted and not a billion years old and cozy in a way that Rosemary’s and my place never really was. We were always a little scared to sit on the ground there. Or walk around barefoot. It’s further from campus, which is a deterrent from going to class (you have to leave 20 minutes in advance to make it to the closest building and you always arrive a little sweaty, no matter how cold it is outside), but so is being a senior. It is close to the BART station and a bunch of restaurants and the bus stop and a STARBUCKS, though, so I’m not complaining (too loudly).

Read the rest of this entry »

So: Las Vegas.

First thing: hot as all hell, and I mean so, so hot. Not humid, which was a huge mercy, but frying-in-the-blazing-sun hot. Triple-digit hot. So hot that it hurt to be outside and was uncomfortable even at night. I didn’t envy at all the men standing on the sidewalk handing out short stacks of hooker cards. Sorry—escort cards.

Read the rest of this entry »

So—I was wrong. I shouldn’t have worried about JT because it turns out he has his own back, and he’s been preparing to have it even before he broke up with Jack Dawson. He’s—and this dropped my jaw—created a profile on an online dating site (a well known one, but one whose name I won’t disclose because who knows what searches it may cause me to turn up in), and he’s been using it since a week before the breakup.

Read the rest of this entry »

I woke up this morning missing sunny San Diego, and feeling slightly strange about it because of how unfeelingly I’d bid goodbye to it the previous afternoon. It wasn’t that I hadn’t had fun; just for some reason, leaving it made me feel no regret. Until this morning, when I opened my eyes and realised I was alone and bored again.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last weekend JT texted to tell me he had broken up with Jack Dawson, his boyfriend of just over a year. I was walking home with Leone at the time, so I didn’t look at the message until about an hour later, but when I saw what he had written I immediately called him, and I stayed on the phone with him for an hour. The breakup surprised me a little bit, not because it hadn’t been a long time coming, and certainly not because I thought he should’ve stayed with Jack. It surprised me because JT hadn’t mentioned wanting to do it, although that itself shouldn’t have been unexpected, because the fact that he couldn’t tell me is a huge part of the reason he ended it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since further back this year than I can remember, since probably the waning months of last year, I have been dreaming of summer, specifically, of summer nights. I have been longing for them so much that it hurts. The dusky light, the crispness of the light breeze, the soft scent of trees and grass and flowers, the long shadows, the pavement still radiating the heat of the day, the clear skies with stars beginning to peek out. Sprinklers hissing in the night, crickets chirping a cheerful chorus, melting popsicles on the grass, driving down dark roads with my best friends and the weather not too cold to roll down the windows and let the wind play through our hair. Lying back on a blanket in the backyard and staring up at the pale moon. Frolicking in the park or hiking up the hills to see the twinkling city lights like a canvas below us. Feeling free, unbound, limitless. Feeling warm and happy and content.

There’s a playlist in my iTunes called “Summer Nights” filled with songs that evoke memories of swerving down twisted hillside roads at night with my three best friends in the world. The last of those nights were three summers ago, and still just thinking about them or just listening to one of the songs from that playlist makes my eyes unfocus, staring into the past. Sometimes I get a lump in my throat; sometimes I almost want to cry.

The weather is finally swinging back into summer, and feeling the sun on my skin it’s all I can think of: those summers past and this one coming. I want so badly to return to three years ago. Almost, almost as much as I look forward to sharing this approaching summer with Leone.

Tonight I got up on stage and in front of 500 40 people sang, danced, recited, and shouted, all in German. It was exhilarating, at least if you don’t count the parts where we awkwardly scrambled around on stage trying to find our places and whispered frantically to each other: “What comes next? What comes next?” It was throw-all-dignity-and-caution-into-the-wind and damn-I-wish-we’d-had-another-week-to-practice. But I mean, it was an experience, and if we weren’t as polished as we could’ve been (far from it), at least we didn’t fail disastrously. And people laughed. And there’s always tomorrow.

In case anyone’s wondering, only one person that I invited showed up. Rosemary said she would come tomorrow, and she’s writing a paper, so that’s fine. Leone was at practice, and that’s fine too. Jasmine and Rose plumb couldn’t make it, and Buttercup had a headache and didn’t want to sit by herself. One face in the audience that I knew, and it was that of The Runner, whom I’ve only talked to sporadically this semester, and whom I only invited out of desperation two hours before the show, fully expecting him to decline politely. It meant an awful lot to me that he came.

Honestly, it took a little bit of the hurt away, the disappointment that was brought on by having all of my friends absent while I made a fool of myself on stage, performing what is for better or worse the culmination of an entire semester’s work. Rosemary’s and Leone’s reasons, I get, and besides they promised to show tomorrow. But Jasmine is one of my two best friends here, and I don’t think I’d be wrong in guessing that she declined without even really considering it. (I had to rehearse last night so I had Buttercup bring along the flyer to Classics Friends Dinner). And Buttercup? Her reason amounted to “I won’t have anyone to sit with,” which—well, it just hurt, and hurt more in the face of how many times she’s guilted me into doing things I’d rather not do, things that took more effort, plan-changing, and traveling than would hauling her butt to the most accessible building on campus for one hour to see a free show.

But, well, that’s just how some things go, A lot of the air is taken out of my elation from having no one to run to after the show, which just makes me so much more grateful to The Runner. He understands no German, came expecting to have no one to sit with, and fiddled with his phone the entire time, but he came. And might also come to tomorrow’s show.

I was looking forward to spending the night at Leone’s today, but right now I’m just a little disheartened and don’t much find appealing the prospect of fooling around with him in bed. It’s no fault of his; I’m just in a mood where I’d really rather just curl under my own covers and get some much-needed sleep. It’s a quiet mood, not sad so much as disappointed. I’m not going to cancel on him, because I know just seeing him in an hour will make me change my mind, but for now I’m just going to languish in this feeling.

The Dilemma

On Thursday I realised that JT was supposed to visit on Friday since he had postponed last Friday’s visit due to an appointment.  Buttercup, Jasmine, and Daisy were going camping this weekend, and I was supposed to come too, but I wasn’t that excited about going because it wouldn’t be like last time, when it was just the three of us and Jasmine’s mother, the whole beach and starry sky to ourselves. It would be Jasmine’s entire family and a few family friends, and I just didn’t find the dynamic that would add up to as appealing. I felt bad about feeling relieved when camping was called off on Wednesday due to bad weather. Other reasoning aside, there was a chance that my Kabarett class would want to practice this weekend. They didn’t, but I didn’t know that until Thursday after I remembered JT’s and my tentative plans. Tentative, because our plans are always so, but plans nevertheless.

By that time Jasmine had already looked up the forecast again and declared camping back on, but of course I wasn’t sure about going. I hadn’t even technically said I would go at all; just that I probably could, but would know by Thursday. Plus, when I told him I wasn’t going camping after all, Leone had invited me to his racquetball tournament on Saturday and I’d said yes. I fretted about the decision all week: I had more reason to stay, but I knew that if I canceled Jasmine and Buttercup would be angry/sad (it didn’t help that Jasmine had just gotten over of a period of resentfulness aimed mostly toward Buttercup but some toward me as well), and also especially since it would just look like I was abandoning them now that I was dating someone, which was only half true. Camping was also a once-a-semester type deal; so was the tournament, but JT visiting not so much, even though sometimes it feels that way. I could also cancel on Leone, because even though I had said “yes” to him we hadn’t made any official plans, but I didn’t want it to seem like I was being unsupportive of the things he’s involved in or that he was just a backup plan and now that my real plans had been un-canceled I didn’t need him anymore. In addition, I actually did want to see him play. The plans with JT I had made earliest of all, but they were also the least plans-y of all, and I wasn’t even positive they wouldn’t fall through. When I divulged this all to him in a massive 7-page text message bittersweetly reminiscent of the text monstrosities of two semesters ago, he essentially said, “I’ll come if you don’t go camping.” (Not in a manipulative way, but in a “if you end up canceling your plans for me, I won’t make it so that you did it for nothing” kind of way)

I kept flip-flopping. If I went camping I couldn’t do anything else and I’d lose an entire weekend of work. If I stayed I could hang out with JT, go to the tournament, and potentially meet my Kabarett class and finish some reading. The balance was obviously tipped one way, and so I texted Jasmine and Buttercup with the bad news. Jasmine seemed terse and angry, but Buttercup surprisingly didn’t try to convince me to go.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s one of the foremost themes in my life, certainly one that underlies so many of my actions: Be something other. Be something else. Sei etwas anderes.

I know that every girl out there thinks she’s special, that she’s something else, and I believe that every girl (and every man) out there is because as corny as it sounds we are all different, but I also understand that when we are out there in the world milling around trying to make something of ourselves, when most of the human contact we have in a day are twenty-second interactions (order a coffee, ask the nice girl next to you if she did the reading last night, eye the cute guy passing you on the street, hold the door open for the person coming in behind you), we really all are a dime a dozen. We all of us fade into the background, and that tiny brush of connection we have with each of those people become one of a million.

So how do I be one in a million? Because that’s who i want to be. I know that some people dont like the public’s eye, dont want to be noticed, feel safe in the crowd, but I dont want to be that nameless face. My roommate tells me that I like to say things that shock people; the guy I like notes that I always wear bright, eye-grabbing footwear. I do it on purpose, both subconsciously and consciously. I do it because I want to be remembered. I want to be different.

I honestly, honestly believe that I’m one in a million. I’m the quirky, witty, dirty-minded, chipper girl you just can’t bring down. I really do think I’m something other…But sometimes I wonder—how many other girls think that? All of them? Maybe. Most of them? Probably. When you are yourself, when you live in your own person, of course you see things no one else sees (although you also dont see things everyone else sees, I admit), and you dont feel exactly the same as anyone else. Of course you’re going to think you’re that someone other. But the people you have these twenty-second interactions with—they dont see that. And maybe most of the people you come to know in your life dont even see that.

What I want—what I want more than anything—is for that boy to see me as I see myself. Different. Etwas anderes. I want to be, for him if not for everyone or anyone else, that one in a million. I want to be special for him. I know I’m special, but if he’s going to love me, he has to know it too.