waiting for home

In case you didn't know, Bowie at the Beeb is one of the best albums ever, particularly on fall days when you are feeling a tinge of melancholy and are unsure about your life and outside around you there is the sight of physical change in the landscape and there is also the knowledge that you are reminded of with these changing leave colors that your life, or at least mine, is also about to undergo some transformation. Leaves will change colors, fall to the ground, and there will be sadness, a fallow period, and then reemergence, new things sprouting. There was a period in my life, back in Sarasota, when I would listen to this album a lot, my roommate at the time, Jamie, possessing it, playing it, and getting me really into it. Bowie does this particular feeling so well and to find something in music that feels right, feels like the proper soundtrack to the emotions you are experiencing, is great. In fact, perhaps it is not so much that the music provides a nice musical rendering of your feelings, but rather that the soundtrack inspires the scenes, provides a context for your life that you were otherwise lacking, sends you off in the right direction, provides the cues for what expression you should have on your face in that scene, how you should walk away when you are leaving that bar, thoughts of being alone, of an ending, and hopefully a new beginning in your head, as you, drunk, too drunk really, stumble up through the East Village to the L train back to Brooklyn, and where you will wait a good twenty minutes on the platform thinking thoughts, not necessarily good or productive ones, about your life and the changes that you are going through, and you will think these things intermittently, as you drift in and out of sleep, trying to stay awake until the train comes, until the train gets you to the Jefferson stop, and until you lock your door behind you and drop your keys on your desk.

Still, I am unsure about where I will be living and cannot wait to have that figured out, to have moved out, because as of now (and probably for the next month) until I move out, things are incredibly awkward at my house. Niki and I haven't talked in weeks and are never in the same room, both of us pretty much staying in our rooms. It is quite tense and certainly far from an ideal living situation that I cannot wait to escape.

My job is going quite lovely, the one thing in my life that is going really well, and I am really excited about this opportunity I have been handed. It is a joy to go there everyday and my co-workers are all charming and funny, people that I am quite excited about forming friendships with.

I had a crisis at Marie's Crisis the other night, got quite sad while hanging out with Gabriel and listening to the bar sing sad songs while gathered around the piano. Earlier in the evening, I had talked with Diego and told him that I didn't think I would be able to spend time with him, that we weren't going to be good friends, that I didn't see how that could occur, and that I wasn't eager to again confuse boundaries and have a romantic friendship with someone that did not want romance. He was upset by that and I got angry with him, me even calling him stupid at one point in the phone conversation, getting increasingly frustrated with his method of thinking and of his inability to conceive why things needed to change for me. And at one point, I think the point at which I had finally had too much of the sadness, the bar broke into singing "Your Song." I had wanted to meet Gabriel for a drink and talk about our lives, but he had quieted me during one song, during a moment when I was trying to unburden myself by talking about things, expelling them through my mouth, and I bottled it, got sad, got annoyed. I listened to the sad song even though I wanted to talk over it. After a couple of these sad songs, I downed the rest of my beer, said goodbye, frustrated with my friend, with my life, with it all, and headed out into the cold fall night again, the air itself even mean these days, whipping me with its unfeeling, insensitive cold, and I pulled my clothes tighter and higher over my neck, keeping those boundaries between myself and others, the outside world, that I want so much to collapse. The turtle retreating back into its shell.

After some drinks at other places last evening, I made my way to the Boiler Room for the Butt party. I talked to Matt S. in line there and it was as if the world was out to taunt me, that when I would be feeling sad about boys, here would be one of the big ones in my life, one of the major causes of sadness in my life, my first kindof boyfriend, this boy that I was obsessed with and who has been an asshole to me, and me loving him all the more for it. I took his hands to look at them, see what it was about them that I found so beautiful, and I didn't know what it was, still don't. He has such a beautiful face. There is something harsh and awkward about the components of it, but when he frowns or smiles or rolls his eyes, the pieces work so well together, and I see this charming man and lose control of my bearings, become this boy crazy thing, still longing for this person who I should have long ago stopped liking.

So there was that interaction. There were thoughts of Diego. And I will add that Bowie is still playing and still sounding perfect. I ran into this boy, Antonio, who I have seen at Bob's place a couple times and who I have had a bit of a crush on. We talked a lot, it clear that both of us liked each other. At some point, a few drinks later, we started making out in the back corner. It was really lovely and the boy is so attractive. Diego then saw me and said hello. I talked to Diego and it was incredibly awkward and stiff, so unnatural, so not how I am used to talking, both of us being careful, and it made me so incredibly sad, this person that I like a great deal and loved, this person that things used to be so easy with, the two of us having so much trouble making short conversation. I lost it then, the steam I had, the confidence. I went back to talk to Antonio deflated, told him I was going home, and he was surprised that we weren't going home together, asked me what was wrong, could tell that my mood did a 180, and I explained, explained that I needed to go home alone, that I was distracted. And it then that I went out again into that night, the coldness making me more aware of my aloneness, nothing to warm my body against, no one to lean against, brush arms with, and made that trek up to that L train, thought about these things, and waited and waited to get home. I have been waiting for a long time now.