you'll just do it all again.

I'm at home, with nothing much to do but read and write.

And far be it for me to depart from my agreement to not be emo for the rest of the year, or to deviate too far from my blog's title - but I have to little to talk about regarding whiskey. So, really, what else?

So, since it's nearly the end of the year, here is an overview of the men of 2007. I didn't sleep with all of them; I'm not that much of a slut.

---

1. The Friend In Quotation Marks.
He technically belongs in the category of 2006 men, but for a very brief overlap into 2007. Also, I didn't do this in 2006.

The Friend in Quotation Marks actually started out as as A Friend Without Quotation Marks, which makes it the first such transition in my life. Generally speaking, I don't bed my friends, but he was cute and charming at a time when I was weak willed and lonely and rebound-ey. I am fortunate to have known him, not only for the good sex and enjoyable company, but because he is truly a smart, wonderful, and talented person who is surprisingly - still my friend.

Our relationship-of-sorts drifted away without any discussion into sporadic emails and text messages after we both got busier and caught up in our separate lives, but I am constantly grateful for the company we still share during our occasional talks over a beer or four.

2. The Boy I Liked.
I dated the Boy I Liked for about 8 months(and "sorta dated" for a bit longer). I remember asking him if he wanted to actually date me on March 14th. I only remember this because it was Pi day. Get it? 3/14? Anyway, he was one of those men that would have appreciated that, even if I'm certain he didn't remember.

I almost wish we hadn't dated, because I think we could have been wonderful friends. We played off each other incredibly well, and we definitely had some amazing adventures together.

He was probably the perfect balance of social and nerdy; I loved his friends and I wish I had met him at a later point in my life. Perhaps a version of me that was a bit older, a bit more prepared to settle down, and a bit less flighty and fickle.

Also, large cock. Seriously. Ow. Maybe too much so. Really, I'm not a very big girl.

At the end, though, the truth was that as much as I liked him and thought the world of him, I still didn't love him. There was just some sort of emotion missing from this relationship, and I truly felt that continuing it would have been selfish and unfair.

I do miss his company, though.

3. The One with the Perfect Penis.
I wish that I could be more truthful and give this one a far more appropriate name(not that the current moniker is inappropriate at all), but what I can find to actually say is minimal and completely trivial compared to what I still can't seem to find the right words for.

So, instead, I'll be crass and say that the sex, and general physical compatibility, was ridiculously incredible and I am afraid that if enough time passes, I will think that I would have just imagined it.

This boy was probably my greatest departure from "type." Objectively speaking, and based only on my past attractions to boys with rough hands and charming awkwardness, I would have ignored him. I'm still uncertain why I'd started flirting with him in the first place(or flirted back, I can't remember), but sometimes I am just compelled to do things I can't explain.

Perhaps that's why I still think about this one. I can't figure out why I liked him when I met him, except that I did. I found lots of reasons to quantify why I would have liked him later, as he is in fact, intelligent and funny and just awesome, but I am still perturbed wondering how I was drawn to him in the first place.

Some days, I am tempted to reassure myself by making myself think that the initial compulsion was formed on a visceral attraction to some basic physical feature, like his pretty amazing eyes - but I know that can't be true because I don't remember whether they were blue or green or both.

4. The One That Should Have Stayed The Fuck Away.
If I can think of one person that could have broken my trust in men, or people, it was him. I don't hate him, because I'm still convinced that it was all a mistake on his part. I actually often pity him.

But he also doesn't deserve another sentence worth talking about.

5. The We-Don't-Remember-It-So-Let's-Not-Mention-It-Again Boy.
Yeeeah. So, about that? Yeah, let's just not talk about that ever again. Yes, we definitely did not have sex - that much I very certainly remember. But I do have a couple bruises I can't explain, jerk.

Okay, memory being erased . Right. Now.

6. The Boy That Reminded me of an Awkward Puppy.
Perhaps it was because there was a large yellow Labrador sitting outside the bar where we were supposed to meet that made me think that he reminded me of a puppy, or perhaps it was the fact that his hair fell over his eyes as he stood up to hug me, or perhaps it was his awkward, and yet completely comfortable charm, but I felt utterly compelled to scratch his head.

The moment I met him, I wanted to protect him. Not in a creepy maternal way, but in the sense that he was a person that I never wanted to see hurt. Ever. It was a strange feeling, because I'd only felt that way about someone else once, and that feeling was far too fresh in my mind to be reminded of it again.

"You are a heartbreaker" - it has been an accusation levied by many of my friends, both in jest and with a degree of solemnity. They have been polite enough to attribute it to a sort of bumbling social gracelessness on my part, rather than any sort of malicious intent. I wouldn't be that sort of person, really. I am fairly ordinary: pretty enough, and smart enough and interesting enough, but at the end of the day, I'm just another girl, and not the stereotypical sort that breaks hearts. But - still. It happens.

And because the date with The Puppy, in fact, went very, very well and we got along like old friends, and were definitely compatible, and yet different enough, on an intellectual, creative and physical level - and he has already admitted to being somewhat smitten(although I take that with a grain of salt) - I know that the only way to protect him is to simply walk away.

---

2007 has been an incredible year for me. It has been a year of changes, like moving to LA, and taking my first desk job, and just the simple fact that I have met so many new and interesting people in one year that I want to keep in my life.

I'm ending this year a little lonelier than the last one, but I don't regret the adventures that got me here. I'll probably spend New Year's with my old roommates in their small, cramped, but comforting apartment watching romantic chick flicks. If these plans work out, for the first time in years, I will kiss no one at midnight.

For the first time in years, I am totally okay with that.

This is how it works
You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath

No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart
Pumping someone else's blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don't get harmed
But even if it does
You'll just do it all again

(regina spektor, from "on the radio")

omg. no more emo.

I swear, I just read this whole damn blog and I promise that there will be no emo posts for the rest of 2007.

I'll be the one to hold the gun.

I met someone a couple days ago, and had a pretty good time. He was just enough awkward to not turn me off completely with the typical smoothness I've come to notice in LA men and have developed a distinct distaste for. This sort of thing, as usual, tends to lead to "Hey, I'm a terrible person" conversations with my volunteer therapist and friend Matthew, the general gist of his criticism being summed up as: "Okay, so you went out with someone who is intelligent, well educated, ambitious, cute, funny and just enough nerdy and esoteric, and - you really don't think you're going to go on a second date?"

Nooo. I don't know. Yes. No. Maybe I will, I don't know.

I can feel my fight or flee mechanism kicking in, and in cases such as these, it tends to default to "flee". See, my wonderful practical logic is that if I never actually like anyone, I won't get hurt. So, the walls go up, and I don't have to worry about getting emotionally attached. Clearly, this is an absolutely faulty strategy, and I know it, but fixing it isn't really on my priority list for now.

I don't think that trust is something I really have these days when it comes to attempting any sort of emotional connection with other people. I don't trust other people, and I don't trust myself, and certainly not any part of me that would generally be credited with creating delusions of compatibility.

I think what I'm actually trying to say is that on an objective level, I am inherently compatible with an awful lot of people, and that "finding someone I have a lot in common with" has never been difficult for me. But I wish that I were more prone to emotional subjectivity, and even maybe a bit of ridiculous, impractical, illogical girly-ness. I do get that way sometimes - but I always think about it later and logic wins out when the prediction is eventual heartbreak.

There's this song by the Dresden Dolls that I've been listening to on repeat, that has a general theme irrelevant to this post. But there's this one line that goes "you'd rather be a bitch than be an ordinary broken heart." And it still gets me every single fucking time.

Well anyway - I still create New Year's resolutions, because I still believe that I'll try.

For 2008, I think I'll try my best not to run away.

i took out the trash today, and i'm on fire

When other girls in grade school were dreaming of weddings and husbands and houses, I envisioned a life in a charming flat(grade school was had with british nuns- we called them flats, not apartments), with some interesting job, and either a small, friendly cat or a big, stupid dog to come home to. I imagined walks to the grocery store, and constant use of mass transit, and a neighbourhood coffee shop and excursions to used bookstores and esoteric restaurants.

Yes, even at 8, I was planning the life of a pseudo intellectual, slightly introverted single woman.

Today, I walked to the grocery store and then wandered around looking for dinner, ending up at a place I affectionately call the "dive sushi place". It is actually far better than its moniker. I sat and watched a subtitled reality TV show while making my way through a pile of bulgogi, and some yellowtail sushi. At some point, I realized that the rest of the place was filled with couples or groups of people, and that the two men next to me had left and I was sitting at the bar alone. If it were an earlier point in my life, I would have felt oddly self conscious, but I just grinned and sent a couple friends a "Dude, I am such a bachelor!" text message.

As I headed out of the restaurant, it had started raining, and I walked four blocks in the rain before ducking into a Starbucks for some hot caramel apple cider, and walked another four blocks home. I admit, when I was eight, the weather never necessitated an umbrella. There is still something oddly romantic about the idea of walking into your apartment with jeans wet up to the knees from puddle jumping, and raindrops dripping off the tip of your nose, even if the reality is that it really just feels wet and drippy.

Still, despite the fact that I still do not take mass transit(but would, if it were more convenient), need to account for slightly inclement weather, and don't have any pets, my life is actually shaping up much like I had thought it would 16 years ago. Discounting the fact that I didn't have a sex drive when I was eight, and didn't account for the issues associated with that minor detail, I think that all is well.

always one foot on the ground.

I'm pretty certain that my most recent ex-boyfriend is ignoring me.

This is distressing in a number of ways, mainly because I think I've gotten old enough that I appreciate people for who they are, and not necessarily for a specific role that they fulfill for me. That said, while the places belonging to "boyfriend" and "lover" may seem somewhat disposable in my life - I truly miss "friend."

That said, I am also just annoyed at getting ignored. I get criticized, I get blamed, I get scolded and I get over analyzed. But I don't ever get ignored.

Yeah, that was a bit of petulance right there. I'd be intolerable if I were an only child.

Fuck it, I'm a good person. Or at least mostly good, and self aware enough to realize when I am not.

I'm putting together my next mix in my head. It is tentatively titled "I am falling in like and lust with you and you and you," to which my friend Allison commented "Oh, so it's your slut CD?"

Uh, sure.

Ironically, for the quasi-reputation that my uncensored mouth and my flirting and writing has earned me, I still haven't actually had sex with more people than the smallest number that cannot be represented as a sum of less than four non-zero squares. Still, I think I've had plenty of time to figure out what good sex is and what bad sex is, and that I find no sex to be absolutely preferable to mediocre sex. Perhaps it is a bit self absorbed and conceited to think this - but unless I'm picky, it's just not gonna be a particularly fair trade. And I like equality. Or rather, I like orgasms. Specifically, mine. And I like getting what I like, but really - if it's too much trouble, I can figure it out by myself.

I'd prefer a warm body pressing up against my back, and a tangle of elbows and legs and arms and hipbones and fingers and sleepy smiles in the morning. I'd prefer hands perfectly shaped to my tits, and I'd prefer my hair getting pulled until I scream obscenities at no one in particular, and perhaps at a God I'll willingly suspend my disbelief for(for a couple minutes). I'd prefer the smell of clean skin and soft hair and the feel of cold hands on my back, and neck, and waist, and thighs.

But - based on an objective analysis of the options actually currently and readily available to me, I'd still prefer to take matters into my own hands(so to speak).

Perhaps after a couple weeks, I'll be frustrated enough to change my mind.

But for now, I'm doing just fine.

a mix CD for December: 14 tracks

I have packed up my life in boxes on an average of once every two years. I've moved blocks, cities, counties, states and countries.

This somewhat nomadic existence makes little sense to me, but I can't detach myself from it. I envy the people who have best friends they've known since elementary school, because I've known my closest friends for no more than five years or so. I wonder what the concept of a hometown means, because I don't have one. The home that my parents live in is strange to me and holds no nostalgia whatsoever, except that which my mother has attempted to infuse into it. I hold a passport for a country that I don't recognize, and cannot vote in the country that I live in.

But this actually is about a mix cd, and not about my desire for a home. Well, it is about both.

After a couple years of flirting with various parts of Los Angeles, I decided to just buck up and move away from the comfortable, rent-affordable, bohemian artsy charm of Long Beach into a brick walled, hardwood floored, parking devoid studio in West Hollywood.

When you move a lot, even if it's just 30 miles or so, you realize a lot of people in your life are necessarily temporal. The argument is always made that your true friends stick with you, regardless of distance, but I already know that. It's the passerbys, the friend-of-friends, the brief acquaintances, the temporary lovers - those disappear and fade away. They go from being quirky paragraphs in an autobiography, to sentences, to sentence fragments, until they are faceless fillers in group scenes, and you struggle to remember their names.

That's what's different about Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles, people do not fade. No one is worth forgetting, and maybe the nature of it is that they simply can't be forgotten. There's a strange, mystical quality about this town, where no one is truly old.

Perhaps here, you just want to believe the facade.

Here, people pass you by and you shrug and dismiss them as bit players and background actors and stand ready to file them away somewhere in the back of your file cabinet brain. But you can't. You find yourself standing in the frozen food section of a grocery store, or walking to a bar, or building paper clip chains, or making noodle soup for a cold day, and you are acutely aware that these ordinary, everyday experiences would be better with some passerby, or friend-of-friend, or brief acquaintance or temporary lover around.

In Los Angeles, people are really fucking awesome.

This city is a place for invention, and reinvention, and that is fascinating. It is gentle and painfully cruel to everyone. It is filled with mediocrity, and completely unfamiliar brilliance. It is shallow and vapid and meaningless, but it is colourful and I am fond of colours.

I am terrified of this city. I feel like I'm looking into the face of something that is telling me, "I will fuck you up" and holding my head up high and replying stubbornly with "So be it." It's a ride, and I know that the higher a roller coaster goes, the worse it falls.

But still.

So, this is a hesitant, scared, love song for a city. And I don't know if it loves me, and I don't know if it is capable of loving anyone, really. But to feel so hopelessly awkward and graceless and small in a big, crazy, indomitably ridiculous city - and still feel like I belong - well, that's new.

---

---

1. california, rufus wainwright
2. why you'd want to live here, death cab for cutie
3. home, imogen heap
4. uncomfortably numb, butch walker
5. shores of california, dresden dolls
6. one night stand, the pipettes
7. ladykillers, lush
8. thank god i'm pretty, emilie autumn
9. a sorta fairytale, tori amos
10. angeles, elliot smith
11. i feel it all, feist
12. los angeles i'm yours, the decemberists
13. call and answer, barenaked ladies
14. summer in the city, regina spektor