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

on "overlap."

I had a friend over for lunch today and I made spaghetti and we had a picnic on my living room floor. The more interesting part, at least to any reader that doesn't care what I cooked for lunch, is the ensuing conversation we had about the concept of "overlap" and how I pretty desperately try to avoid it.

The basic concept is that I generally seek to avoid drama in my life. And the greater degree of "overlap" you have with your friends, the greater likelihood of drama, unspoken or not.

Here are examples of overlap -

1. You sleep with someone. Your friend makes out with someone. That's overlap.

2. You both sleep with someone. That is definitely overlap.

3. You both make out with the same person. This is overlap, but under certain circumstances, can be arguable overlap.

Any activity at first base or forward is overlap, and the further the base, the more disturbing the overlap.

I've overlapped with someone I know at least three times, and it disturbs me. She probably still doesn't know of any of it(and it'll stay that way!). But it's still aggravating. Oddly enough, with the exception of her and as far as I know(although I might just be being naive), I don't think there is anyone else I have had cause to overlap with. Which is really pretty awesome!

A good way to avoid any sort of overlap, and a rule of thumb I subconsciously follow, is to only date one person within any social circle. Sure, that severely limits dating possibilities...but hey. Besides, I'm really not sure I could conscientiously date within any social circle more than once, anyway. Social circle incest is almost always cause for drama, anyway.

So, I suppose I will have to disagree with the Spice Girls, who once said "If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends."

my mother's daughter.

It is my parents' anniversary tomorrow, and they will have been married for 26 years. My mother planned some romantic getaway, but naturally decided to bring her laptop.

So I'm sitting at work and she's talking at me over AIM, because she's found that I'm more likely to answer that than return phone messages.

Now, my mother is essentially an older version of me, except more inclined towards marriage and children, and better at welding.

She says, as I am mulling over a reasonably pointless report:

"When are you going to bring your boyfriend home?"

I take this opportunity to clean off my desk a little and go get a drink from the vending machine. She fills in the silence.

"If you maybe plan on liking him enough eventually, I'll like to meet him."

Wow, Mom.

In two concise sentences, my mother managed to:

1. imply, again and as per usual, my general emotional detachment.
2. guilt trip me about dating people(there will be more explanation later).
3. guilt trip me about not coming home enough.
4. convey her belief that I am in fact, unlikely to bring anyone home.
5. imply, however unsaid, that my brother has been bringing women home.

See, most mothers try to make you date someone. Anyone, it doesn't matter who they are, as long as they don't have too many piercings or tattoos or missing parts.

My mother does not.

Given, I haven't brought anyone home for about two years now, and there's been no one I've even touched suggestively in that time period without piercings or tattoos or missing parts. Well, I suppose she wouldn't known that that one boy was missing a testicle, but that was a exceedingly brief dalliance anyway. Oh, and that boy that I didn't know had a piercing or a tattoo until ALL the clothing came off. That didn't go anywhere either. Seriously, at least get some other part pierced or tattooed as well so I'm not completely surprised. But, I digress.

My mother discourages me from doing anything that will result in the embodiment of the three constants in my family that we talk about the least - alcoholism, infidelity and depression, all three of which have led various members of aforementioned family to death, and worse, family drama. I am not certain of this yet, but I strongly suspect that she believes that any relationship that I embark on will be a step towards me proving that I am in fact, her daughter and of this slightly fucked up lineage. My reassurances that I have yet to fulfill all three constants within the context of any relationship, and generally only one with each relationship, don't seem to make her feel too much better.

I'm beginning to truly believe that what my mother wants is for me to date a lot, and keep on telling her stories, but never getting to the point where I'd have to think about whether I wanted to bring them home or not, because I wouldn't.

She knows I am her daughter.

She raised me without a religion. She said I could figure it out myself later. Recently, she asked "Have you found which God to follow?" I said, "I don't think there is one."

"That's fine," she said, "I think there is one."

And that was that.

My mother knows that I am completely capable of repeating every mistake she has ever made. She knows I have an adjustable sense of morality. She knows that I stubbornly remain in relationships until I finally crack and dump boys over AIM. But she also knows that I am silly and inconstant, but never stupid. She knows that I will have adventures. She thinks I could use some therapy, but won't suggest it. She thinks my father is responsible for my emotional apathy, because he too is often as responsive as a brick.

And despite all this -

"You are a smart girl," she says.

By that, she really means, "If you fuck up, I know you'll weather it fine, and when you're a old, single, crazy cat lady and your boobs are saggy, I trust that you will have definitely lived and hopefully loved."

walgreens, purveyor of cheap, disposable romanticism

I had a pretty aggravating day today where nothing much happened, which was much of the reason for the aggravation.

As I ended my work day, I decided that a hot, relaxing bath would be exactly what I needed.

However, having left work at 10pm, my choices were to stop at Ralphs or Walgreens after I parked my car. Walgreens was the slightly more scenic, relaxing route.

And with that, I present Exhibit A:

Not originally on my shopping list, but definitely on my receipt:

1. Flowers. Please note that I do regularly purchase flowers for my apartment, and that I am not pathetically buying myself flowers on a lonely Monday night. However, my choices at Walgreens were a reasonably not dead looking bunch of roses and daisies, and a rather wilted bunch of 12 red roses. Clearly, I went for the former.

2. Haagen Dazs' Butter Pecan. One of my standard favourites. Also, not much variety in the frozen food cabinet.

3. Pillar candles(vanilla scented and unscented ones) and a low bowl with rocks. I will now misuse the word "karma" and say that this is definitely karma for my having incessantly made fun of various friends for having low bowls with rocks. They are utterly useless. And yet, I now own a low bowl with rocks.

4. Architectural Digest. For reading while soaking in the tub. I know it's Architectural Digest. The magazine rack at Walgreens leaves a lot to be desired, and this was the only thing I would have picked up in any possible case when the other reasonable (somewhat) choices were Martha Stewart's Living and something extolling the virtues of full figured women.

Not pictured is a bottle of cheap wine, as Walgreens does not carry alcohol, a fact that I learned belatedly and to a great degree of disappointment.

The bath was good and appropriately relaxing, albeit feeling a little bit like the kind of bath you order at a trying-to-be-classy hotel, what with the cheesy flowers and candles but minus a hot room service attendant.

The point of this is that for approximately $20, and the assistance of your friendly neighbourhood drug store, you too can recreate a tacky, faux-romantic evening in the comfort of your own home. It's fun, really.