My GBF asked me a very serious question tonight.

He was completely shitfaced, and we were grinding about as intensely as a gay man and a woman can grind, per usual when he is quite drunk, and all of a sudden he backed up and asked permission to ask me a serious question: does my dancing with him limit my potential with other guys? 

*crickets*

I hadn't really ever considered this before. I mean, it's not like I was beating guys off with a stick even before I met him. On the one hand, dancing with someone I'm comfortable with like I'm comfortable with him highlights my dancing abilities much more than dancing by myself in a Circle of Death in which I always feel a bit awkward. I can't see why it would really automatically engender any detrimental effects: one person once asked me to clarify what exactly what was going on between us, as our obvious incompatibility is sort of overshadowed by our odd couple sort of chemistry; but that was just one person. 

So I guess the answer is, "I hope not. ...And it's not really going to stop me if it does." 

One of the unfortunate consequences of this drunken grinding and groping is that I always end up back in my room horny and ALONE. Lulz at my life.

Unintended chivalry

Things I knew already: I have awesome friends. Tonight, one of my awesome friends asked me into the middle of a circle of people to dance, and then unexpectedly picked me up and told me to wrap my legs around his waist. I obliged, and he twirled us around while I laughed louder than I've laughed in weeks and held on for dear life. I thought he knew that I was trying very hard to not be uncomfortable about something that has no business bothering me, and was trying (incredibly successfully) to distract me, but it turns out he was just being his wonderful self. And that's even better. And he put me in such a good mood that the other thing didn't even matter, and I don't think it will in the future either.

I know I didn't leave for that substantial a period of time, but everyone else did, and so...it feels good to be back. 

I Don't Understand: Friends who only miss you when you're gone

I have been close friends with one of my close friends from home since the 7th grade. He was actually my best friend from 8th grade until about my sophomore year of high school, which isn't the longest time, but was a critical juncture of my young adult life, if you will. Despite being one of the latest "childhood" friendships I formed, he has always been incredibly important to my life--even when we're fighting, even when we can't remember why we still try so hard to bridge the ever-widening gap between our lives--that's my boy, you know? 

And all summer while I was in New Brunswick, he kept telling me how much he missed me and literally begging me to come home. I got some of the saddest Facebook wall posts of my life, and blasts from the past with songs we loved in the 8th grade, and every time I told him when I was coming back, he said it was too far away. I felt so bad that at times I legitimately wondered if I should take a day or two off of work and hitch a ride home with T when she went down to visit her family for two days each week. But I didn't, and so when I texted him to complain about packing and say how many hours it would be til I was home, I got a giant "Yayyyyyyyyyy!" 

We went out with two of his friends that night, and I had the most delicious blueberry martini and fried cheesecake (which wasn't as good as he had claimed, but was still enjoyable). He came back to my house and hung out for a while, talking to my mom and my sister and feeling like he was part of my family again. Then he went home and...that was it. It's been two weeks since I've seen him, and I'm going back to school in less than a week. And I'm just a little confused as to what's going on.

Actually, that's a lie. I think I know what's going on. I don't think he actually misses ME very much. I think he misses the friendship we had between 8th grade and sophomore year, when we were two peas in a pod. I think he misses when things were simple and our lives weren't on such widely diverging paths. He's moving, and kept finding things from our early years together while he was packing, and I understand how he felt a little, because I kind of miss that friendship and simplicity too...but I would never want to go back to being the person I was then. 


It's so hard to maintain friendships when personality differences that were bridgeable in adolescence become lifestyles that seem lightyears apart in adulthood. It's hard knowing that someone misses the idea of you and him, but is evidently dissatisfied by the reality of being together.

A small bit of nostalgia:

I watched Larry Crowne on Sunday night, and I really liked it. I'd figured it was the kind of movie I would enjoy from the moment I saw the first preview. It reminded me a lot of the kind of movies my dad and I used to watch together--dramas, peeks into people's lives, stories that were only extraordinary in the fact that they were on the silver screen. This is his favorite genre, and by default of the fact that he's a huge movie buff and I was an impressionable child, it became mine as well. The entire time I was watching this movie, part of me wanted to be watching it with him. We used to see everything Julia Roberts made (Denzel too). This, in  turn, reminded me of the years in high school where every single movie I saw in theaters, I saw with S. This, in turn, made me wonder if I will ever have a period of my life like this again, where my movie-partner is so comfortably predictable.   

I hate when friends tell you to "get over it".

As if it's that simple, just a conscious decision you can make. As if you're not trying. As if all this pain and fear and worry and drama are things you're keeping around because they make you happy. As if your feelings are trivial and insignificant, when in reality you feel like the David to your feelings' Goliath the Hercules to your feelings' that-monster-where-when-he-cuts-off-one-head-three-more-grow-to-replace-it.

See, friend, even if you think I'm being ridiculous, you are still supposed to be there for me. You are still supposed to listen. You are still supposed put some effort into trying to understand how I'm feeling, instead of just discounting it. I am supposed to be able to feel like I matter when I start talking to you about a problem I'm having. My other friend, once she listened, thought I had "reason to be concerned". That little bit of validation and feeling like I'm not going crazy is all I was looking for. I've never done this before, remember? I'm not going to apologize for being scared of being constantly reminded of the hurt I've spent so much time trying to put behind me. I think it is a legitimate fear. I'm not going to apologize for not being Beyonce, who as far as I can tell from her songs about her breakups, has never actually cared about a single man in her life and just keeps them around until they "show their asses" and then tells them to go "to the left, to the left" and then sits around later laughing at their misfortune. I'm not going to apologize for not being jaded just yet. I'm not going to apologize for trying to prepare myself for this--pretending it's going to be rainbows and butterflies is just going to make it worse when it feels like a punch to the stomach. I just...I don't appreciate not being taken seriously.

An addition to the list of things I really can't stand...

The malicious invasion of privacy at the hands of someone you considered a friend. Not necessarily even a particularly close friend; even just someone you thought you were cool with.
Princeton can be so difficult when you're a minority in every way. When your entire adjustment process consists of how to stop feeling so conspicuously different whenever you walk into a room. Not everyone--in fact, I would argue that perhaps not even the majority--of such people ever learn how to blaze an appropriate path between self-segregation and self-denying-integration, how to navigate Princeton's cultural landscape in ways that leave them feeling truly happy and fulfilled. I have always considered my friend R to be one of the few that has done this successfully. I have always looked up to him as an example of what I want my experience here to be like: breaking down the posts of the fence separating social spheres, being an example of what it means to embrace diversity without neglecting to take time for solidarity and brotherhood. 
I suppose "They" were right when they said the grass is always greener on the other side, though. Maybe he never actually broke any posts down to make a doorway; maybe he's been trapped on this fence for years, never really getting a foot on the ground on either side. Maybe I am too?
What are you supposed to do when you dedicate your life and heart and soul to an institution and your efforts go systematically unrecognized? What do you do when you construct your life around creating a family out of people you've met only recently, embrace a new identity regardless of its problematic history (and semi-isolate yourself from your brothers in so doing), only to get all the love you've poured into this thing thrown back in your face by a few members of the family you've worked so hard to be an integral part of? This isn't what he was working for. This is not what WE are working for. Regardless of sobriety levels, disrespect is disrespect. Banter is not cute when it is no longer immediately recognizable as playful. Time, love, dedication, sacrifice...these things are too precious to have thrown back at us. 
We are still waiting for the day when the world--when even our friends in the world--recognize that one can be intellectually interested in something without identifying with it; or even that a truly open and spiritually connected human being should be able to identify with the emotions and difficulties of any other human being, by virtue of nothing more than their shared human experience. We are still waiting for tolerance. We are still waiting for respect. We fight for this institution every day, in every possible way...when will it stop fighting us? How can I reconcile my love for this institution with the raw...hurt, anger, and downright betrayal I feel on his behalf? How do I show that I stand with him without marginalizing myself within this family I love so much? Should I even try to keep him from disowning us? Is there any reason to?

[You're a] Good Man

I don't want this to be the India song I associate with your name, because it's far too beautifully tragic, and you're The Truth and a Complicated Melody already, but last night you said something that made me realize that you're a good man. Not only suave, witty, ambitious, handsome, brilliant--but genuinely good. One of the best I know. You commented on a father-son relationship in Love Actually and told me that you want your son to love you like that. You would have given me one of your dramatic looks if I'd told you this then, but I think that's beautiful. It's like, I already know you're going to be a great father someday. I can already tell that I'll be jealous of your relationships with your kids, not because I want kids of my own but because as much as I hate to admit this, I always wanted parents like that. The kind who love openly. I know your mother is proud of you, even if you aren't always proud of yourself. Hell, I'm proud of you, more and more so every single day. This is just another way I look up to you. I'd have kids if I could be like you. But though I can cherish all of my friends and love you all with open arms, I'm still learning how to love one other person with an entirely open heart.

I went to New York to see a show last fall

and had to purchase a MetroCard to get around, obviously. This was the card I got:

 I still have this card. It sits in my wallet with my Visa Check card and my photo IDs and my CVS card and my U-Store Membership card and my insurance card and when I find it in the midst of looking for one of those zillion cards, I pause for a split second and I have to smile. It says in tiny letters that it's part of an Arts for Transit project, and mentions the artist's name. I think this card is fantastic. I hope that the small moment of joy it continually brings me is what the artist--and New York City as a governmental figure?--wanted me to feel, and I want to do all in my power to ensure that I have this card until I am old and grey.

My friend K who I talk about, he told me today that optimism is his new plan for the next few months forever. It made me so happy, because I am always so worried about him putting too much pressure on himself and forgetting to have fun and remember that no matter what happens, the big picture is BIGGER than this and in it, he's a wonderful individual. But it also got me thinking...

People constantly tell me that I'm a bright, bubbly, cheerful person. This afternoon a friend told me she can never imagine anyone saying I'm a mean person. Part of me (the you're-your-own-worst-critic part) gives them a look like, Whatchu talkin bout, Willis?! but the bigger part of me recognizes the truth in what they're saying. I think about how I talk to K, or to F or to T, I think about the feelings I try to leave in my wake wherever I go in daily life, the impression I try to impart on my friends and acquaintances, the beauty and growth I try to see in the trials of life, and the care and warmth I try to give to everyone who matters to me in some small degree and realize that I am a bright, bubbly, and cheerful person the vast majority of the time...to most people, but not always to myself.


It's time for that to go. It's not necessary that I don't want to worry about shit, but just that I want to be confident in my abilities and assured in the fact that I can handle my life, and stop stressing over shit that doesn't matter. There's just no damn sense in being your own worst enemy, under any circumstances. Optimism. Live life limitlessly. 

Ice, Ice, Baby

A few days ago, I went ice skating with some friends. I was superexcited about the trip all week, trying to get more and more people to join me. When people asked if I was a great skater, I said I'd only gone once or twice when I was a kid, but I didn't see why that should stop me. I put my makeup on and got all cute and went outside to meet the girls I was going with and we excitedly walked over to the hockey rink. There was food and hot apple cider and people holding hands and skating, and it was so incredibly quaint and cute that I rushed over to the stand to rent my skates and began putting them on. 

...And that's where the trouble began. I could barely STAND in them; how was I ever going to skate? My friend tried to convince me it wouldn't be so bad once I got out there, so I followed her onto the ice...and froze. What had I been thinking??? That I could just go out there on the ice for the first time in ten years and whiz past people like a pro? That ice skating was going to be just like roller skating? That I was just naturally good at everything? Whatever crazy misconception of my own life I'd been suffering from, it disappeared rather quickly as I realized I had no idea what I was doing out there. 

So the wall surrounding the rink became my new best friend. Wallflowers aren't just for high school dances anymore; in my bright red sweater, I was a flower on the wall of Baker Rink. I held onto it for dear life and slowly made my way around the circumference of the rink. On my second time around, there was a girl doing worse than me, blocking my way on the wall and I had to leave the wall and skate unaided around her. My friend M saw this, applauded me for having let go of the wall for 10 seconds, and held out her hand to help me skate around with her without the wall for support. I was nervous, but I went around once with her; I still didn't feel comfortable afterward, though, and retreated to the wall. Then I saw my friend E, who I know used to be a figure skater in high school, and told her about how hard skating was for me. She said my skates were too loose, and once I fixed them, it was a whole new ball game! I began to skate near the wall, rather than holding onto it, and when my friend K held out her hand to skate with me, I wasn't that scared! It was especially poignant because about a month ago I taught her to roller skate in almost the same exact way, and I remember how scared and shaking she was; oh how the tables turn. An event photographer even took a picture of us in our cuteness, and when she went to get some food, I kept skating around by myself! Before the end of the night, I attempted to help teach someone else to skate better, learned the basics of skating backwards, and was DANCING in my skates on the ice. 

Moral of the story: Recognize that being a wallflower is NOT cute. Recognize that you can do it, even if it's foreign and difficult in the beginning. Recognize that your friends are there to help you, and take their hands when they offer them in assistance. This whole damn world's a slippery, slidey, carved-up-and-full-of-nicks-and-grooves place, but if support and teamwork and patience and love got K, M, and I through the night without ever falling, then chances are pretty good we'll stay on our feet for a good long while. 

(Just don't try to get too fancy. J was the only one who fell all night, after tryna show off, haha.)

I wish I could chalk this up to friggin hormones...

...but I'm not even close to starting my period. So this is just stupid me being, well, stupid. I have absolutely no reason to miss you. I really and truly have absolutely no reason to miss you more than I miss my girls or the boys I'm supposedly *crosses fingers* like this with. There is no reason for my thoughts to keep drifting back to you. I'm worrying about you in that special way I only worry about people who are IMPORTANT. But I need to keep this in check, because I can't lay even the smallest of claims to you. And I shouldn't want to. I shouldn't take note of the fact that you are actually taller than me, or you're way more likely to call when a text would suffice. I shouldn't watch you study long enough to categorize your various thinking poses, or to know you once played piano because I spend that much time staring at your hands. And that night you took my survey and it almost made you cry? I can't yet tell if I shouldn't have wanted to hold you til the hurt went away. Because these are things I do with everyone, because being MY anything (even friend) means you get all of me in return, all of my worry, all of my love, all of my laughter and my adventure and my concern and my help and my hope and my weakness and my strength, attached to you with the tenacity of the loyalest of dogs.

FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE, CAN I PLEASE JUST ACQUIRE A NEW CLOSE MALE FRIEND WITHOUT GOING THROUGH THIS AWKWARD PINING PHASE?! Please and thank you.

Just so you know, I WILL NOT have a crush on you. This won't happen. Don't make me start singing Meg's song from Hercules. My heart needs to learn its fucking lesson.

Grrrrrr...

Being angry at someone for the first time is an interesting experience. I suppose it becomes more and more interesting depending on how long you've been close to the person before having to cross this bridge of anger. One of my closest friends on campus is really flaking out and making my life difficult right now (I'm sure he doesn't mean to be, but regardless), and it's putting me in a really bad mood. It took me a while to realize that this funk I'm in is anger...this is what it feels like to be angry at him.  

...Do you ever have dreams that are just fucking weird? Like, strange trippy sexy dreams? The kind that involve you, say, rubbing Vick's VapoRub all over the warm chiseled chest of a very close friend, and then lead you to practically drool when you run into him the next day? Do you ever wonder what the hell your subconscious is trying to do to your life?

...Yeah, right, me neither. >.<

30 Day Letter Challenge--Day Seventeen: To Someone from your Childhood

Dear ********,

You fbchatted me today just to say hey, and I took that as a sign from the universe that I should write today's letter to you. As my best friend in 2nd and 3rd grade who just mysteriously disappeared off the face of the earth one day, you totally count as someone from my childhood. It's funny, I think about you a lot when I'm at school, because my eating club (don't ask) has a moose as its mascot, and the clearest thing in my memory of you is your love for moose. I think that's what inspired me to see if I could find you on facebook, and seeing as how you were friends with ******, that wasn't very hard to do at all. 
You're another one of the people I was thinking about during my recent reflection on friendships and growing up in general. When we were 7 or 8, me climbing up into that tree and hanging out over Harding Highway to talk to you while you sat in your bedroom windowseat was the most important thing ever. Going across the street to jump on your trampoline was a close second. But then I moved to Pleasantville (shh don't tell Hess School) and one day you weren't at school anymore. Somehow I eventually learned that you'd moved to New York and hadn't told me you were leaving, and that was the last I ever saw or heard of you until my random facebook wanderings.
But now that I've found you it's kind of weird. You're in New Mexico now and I think you're a lesbian and you work some sort of normal job and you don't go to school and as much as I hate to say this, I feel like you're going to go from being a person I haven't talked to to being a person I can't talk to, which is going to be sad. We don't have anything in common anymore, besides fuzzy memories of American Girl dolls and asparagus. Sadface. I do enjoy being updated on your life via facebook, though, so let's stay friends, k? Even if that's the only way we keep in touch.


Best,


Maya