Awkwardly Social

I spent last night pulling scabs off large portions of my body and squeezing the pus directly into my mouth, metaphorically speaking, of course. It was unpleasant. I cried quite a bit. At one point I was sitting at my desk reading and re-reading the words he wrote and I started doing one of those whole body sobs. I flung myself out of my chair and onto the bed (they’re very close) and buried my face into Lula’s concerned little body and cried for a few long minutes. Melodramatic much?

I think the biggest problem for me at the moment is the ease with which I can peek into his life and catch the filtered glimpse he puts out there and wonder why I seem to be so completely absent, thinking about how separate our lives were and how easily I seem to be written out of his… it’s painful. I have to stop. So I’m going to. I’m also going to try to do some off-line writing in the meantime and get my next draft off my To Do list and into people’s in-boxes.

As for this spot, I’m probably going to be posting some stuff I wrote for my mom a few Christmases ago about growing up a little bit country a little bit classical music. I have something else I want to share and write about here, but there are a few steps I need to take before I can comfortably do that. I don’t mean to be all ‘ooo mystery stuff…’ but I wanted to write it down so I remember that I really have some heavy shit to talk about but can’t just yet.

I’m going to miss writing about my feelings here, but there was a realization last night as I was crying at my desk, that maybe instead of writing about my feelings, I need to feel them. Infections heal much more quickly if you quit digging around in them and squirting the pus in your eyes. Metaphorically speaking. Of course.

I want to tell you guys things in code, but honestly, that never works. I was reading some coded message I wrote several years ago about a boy I had a crush on and I cannot figure out who I meant. I guess it’s not important, mostly because any boy who ever talked to me became an instant crush so I could point to every dude in film school and say, “It was THAT guy!” And I’d never be the wiser.

I will say this, someone asked me about billing today and he wondered if it went to the main show or Sci-Tech. I told him I had no idea what Sci-Tech was, but as soon as the words came out of my mouth I realized what it was. Then I awkwardly blurted out, “Oh the nerd awards!” And he laughed and said, yeah, the nerd awards. Then, belly laughing, I told him he should get the nerd award for figuring out my technical issue that morning. And he was kind of quiet. But I kept laughing and he eventually joined in. I love it when I can belly laugh unwilling participants into submission. It makes the other times worth while.

I’d love to bottle the restorative power of belly laughter and white wine into a cocktail I can inject in my neck when the machine I work on says things like codeincomprehensiblecodecode BAD_MAGIC. It really said that to me today. I would have cried, but I liked the sound of a ‘bad magic’ problem, so I closed my eyes and decided there was nothing a nice glass of Honeymoon Viognier couldn’t fix. And here I am, sipping a chilly glass, and writing a missive to you.

Hump day is officially over. Praise Jesus.

I ordered a couple of things from Urban Outfitters. Both things came today. One in a ratty half open box, the other in a nicely taped 2 sizes too large box with zero packing materials. I’m returning the table because it’s not tall enough, and the jewelry box because it’s jacked up.

There is an upside, the catalogue that came with the purchases provided me with some serious visual inspiration for the script. I can’t wait to get home and thumb tack my clippings to the inspiration board. On a regular day, I’d think it’s too bad this catalogue cost me $30.00, but today I’m just happy for the pictures.

I got home at about midnight last night feeling like I could conquer the world. White wine gives me a god complex. I was pretty sure that if I wanted to, I could get any boy I ever wanted to come over and make sweet sweet love to me, or at the very least pet my hair and call me pretty. I would have drunk dialed each and every one of you, but since some of you are new here and I have never spoken to you sober, I decided against it. Instead I wrote that surprisingly semi-coherent post about how much I love LA and that I want a new tattoo.

When I was a senior in high school I went to Phoenix and got a tattoo to impress a boy. Two boys, actually. I was in love with both of them. One thought it was dumb to get a frog tattoo, the other took me to the place he got his. Guess which boy I ended up spending an entire year obsessing over! Well, actually both of them, but the one who told me a frog tattoo was stupid was the one I really obsessed over. The reasoning behind getting a frog tattoo is a nice bit of insight on my 18 year old drug addled brain. I liked frogs. I saw them as a symbol of the environmental crisis and I thought it was a nice twist on the whole gecko tattoo craze of the mid-90s. I bet all those girls with gecko tattoos really get irritated when they see the Gieko commercials. Anyway, I got the tattoo. And I always meant to get it filled in with color, but never got around to it. So now it’s kind of a prison tattoo, faded and jagged and big. Ah, youth. How I survived thee, I’ll never know.

My current tattoo obsession will probably seem about as stupid as the frog tattoo in 13 years, but I think I deserve to make another permanent mark on my body. When I was 18, I promised myself I wouldn’t ever regret the frog, so I don’t. Or at least I try not to. It’s a fine line of letting young Tamara live in peace in my head and wanting to shake her a little. I do love that in the back of young Tamara’s mind, she knew that it might be an issue later. The Tamara of the present also feels that way, but wants one pretty badly, so we’ll see. I’ll just tell you that Courier font was discussed.

I’m sure I’ll keep you posted.

I know someone who worked on L.A. Ink. I’m considering a new tattoo.

I spent the evening drinking a delicious Beaujolais Blanc at the bar attached to Cobras and Matadors.

I love my friends. I love white wine. And I love LA.

When I got my California driver’s license, I paused for a moment at the weight column. I think every girl does. No one knows what actual weight anyone is, because everyone lies. Further, it seems like a weird question to still have on the license anyway. No one stays the same weight and 100+ pounds looks different on every frame. Nonetheless it is a question that you are required to answer, but there is no punishment if you lie. You can put 85 pounds down if you want. I don’t think the women who input your data would even blink if you had 100lbs. in your box (heh, dirty). I didn’t see them verifying my eye color or even asking me if I really wanted to put blond down, when really my hair is closer to mousy brown now.

I spent some time with my friend, Davah, today. She asked me if I was eating. I have to say it is flattering to have someone question your anorexia status. And I realize that is a fucked up thing to say, but I’ve lived in LA long enough to know that if people are worried about your eating habits, it means you look like you’ve lost weight. And I have. It isn’t a lot of weight, but on my frame, which tends to be pear shaped, if I lose a little weight my ribs start showing in my collar bone area and my arms start to look a little stick like. Rest assured, I’m eating. I had a steak dinner last night. (In what is now being referred to as a possible sneaky set-up, but I’m pretty sure was just an accidental invite Tamara over for dinner because she’ll probably say no, and oops there’s an available boy coming over too situation rather than a planned set-up.) Anyway, I ate weird Filipino fast food today with Davah and had a taco from my local roach coach, resulting in my first episode of heart burn. It made me think I was dying, but then I realized I’m just getting old. And after I spent the rest of the afternoon running up and down stairs making my final trip to Goodwill and lugging my 50 pound saddle into my new apartment (I had hoped to sell it), I went for a run. And it felt amazing.

I stepped on the scale this evening to make sure I hadn’t accidentally wasted away to nothing. I was sort of surprised to see my driver’s license weight staring back at me. When I filled out the box those months ago, I didn’t put my goal weight in a weird fit of thinking it would jinx me to being my then current weight forever. I put my marathon training weight, because I knew it was something I could achieve, and a weight I knew I was comfortable at. And here I am, living up to my low expectations of myself. It’s a nice feeling.

I’m planning on maintaining my exercise schedule and keeping the steak dinners (random sneaky set-ups aside) to a minimum. And maybe I’ll surprise myself and get to that goal weight. I promise I’ll eat, just not as much.

When I got home from Seattle in December, I trudged upstairs with my heavy bags and Lula skittering behind me, jumping at every noise. I plunked down on the comfy couch and opened my laptop. It had been 6 hours since I last checked my e-mail, and I was hoping there would be some message from him. Some indication that he had made a mistake and that he was coming back to me.

iTunes was open so I hit library shuffle while I opened my painfully slow three too many clicks Yahoo account and I started crying. All the windows in the apartment had blown open, it was cold as fuck and I was irritated that all of my carefully organized piles of important papers had blown across the apartment making it look like I had been robbed, the Xanax had worn off. Then the opening chords to The Killers’ “Everything Will be Alright” came on.

I believe in you and me
I’m coming to find you
If it takes me all night
Wrong until you make it right
And I won’t forget you
At least I’ll try
And run, and run tonight
Everything will be alright
Everything will be alright
Everything will be alright
Everything will be alright

To say the least, it was a little creepy. I don’t like it when I get coded messages from my electronic devices. Like the time my vibrator broke the day I fell in love with an emotionally unavailable boy. I still don’t know what that stupid thing was trying to tell me.

My e-mail inbox was empty. I was all alone.

Yesterday was tough. I had been feeling pretty good, but the weight of the old apartment is on my shoulders at the moment. It is almost empty, in need of a good cleaning, but nothing too tragic to deal with. It’s just that nothing of us remains there. I’ve been emptying boxes at the new place and I occasionally come across something that brings it all back. That horrible morning. The fact that he left me.

Last night instead of doing anything productive, I crawled into bed and watched two saved episodes of Friday Night Lights. I started crying about half-way through the first one. We watched the first season together, but Louie didn’t buy the second season. I watched it all alone at the old place. Louie would sit in the office, far more interested in talking to people in the computer than sitting next to his girlfriend on the couch. The thing is, he could have done both. But he just didn’t. We grew apart.

I keep thinking about the things I should have done. Then I remember that I’m not supposed to care anymore. That it’s over and I secretly wanted it to be over, too. That I didn’t have the guts to do what he did. And I’m alone.

I’m supposed to feel like everything is going to be alright. But right now I don’t.

My new neighborhood is of a different ethnic persuasion than Los Feliz, which skewed ethnically ‘older gay.’ People ask me where my apartment is, and in LA, pretty much everywhere is known by some neighborhood name, if not its own city name - for example, West Hollywood (which, incidentally skews ‘younger/scenester gay’, also incidentally where Louie used to live, ha) is an actual city unto itself, and has a definite identity. So when you say, “I live in West Hollywood,” people know you like nice tight fitting clothes, dancing to Rihanna and an occasional leather party.

My neighborhood has no identity. I tell people where it is, and they’re like, “It’s Koreatown? But it’s not… not really Hollywood… huh.” And then they move on to other topics like are there any good bars close by and can we go to them.

Since the ethnicity seems to skew Central American with a weird Filipino fast food joint screwing up that mix, I call it Little Central America. Or sometimes, Little Guatemala, or Little El Salvador. It just depends which panaderia or pupuseria I’m walking by at the moment. And there are MANY.

The night I got my keys, Allie and I went into the two closest bakeries and the market and were stunned by what looked like super awesome food. And as you have already heard, there is a dirty dog lady who appeared like magic to make me feel welcome in here. The one thing that perplexed us was the abundance of coconut milk. Several brands were offered in the markets and they all contained pulp. One was in a glass bottle, and you could see the chunks suspended in the fluid. It looked kind of foul, but I do love chunky drinks, and I am trying to fit in here, so I asked my (kind of hot) market man if he liked Micoco. He told me he had tried it, and he liked it. Then he said, “I’ve tried almost everything.” Which seemed like he might be flirting with me. I’ll take it. I’ll take just about any male attention at the moment. I might be in heat.

So I bought it and chilled it over night. Sunday morning I cracked it open to go with my breakfast of Sabritones Chili Lime puff thingies and it was… Well, it was interesting. I liked it. But then I looked at the calories and fat. And I know coconut and coconut milk aren’t winning any diet awards, but the taste and the fat content did not match up. If I want to ingest 20 grams of fat, I want it to be ice cream flavored. So I probably won’t be having any more of that. I will however be ‘trying’ other things from my market… (Too far?)

This weekend I’m going in search of some dessert and some pupusas. Of which I will not look at fat or calorie information on, because who needs that kind of guilt?

It’s been so long since I’ve moved that I had forgotten how weird it is to go into your new bathroom and wonder where your shampoo is, or your hair dryer, or most importantly your underwear. As I was getting ready to go out last night I couldn’t find some things, like chocolate chips, the Brita filters, or any suitable clothes to wear to a fancy burger joint.

My friends took me to dinner at 25 Degrees in the Hotel Roosevelt. I ate the table’s combined weight in french fries and medium rare meat. Then we rolled ourselves to Hotel Cafe where we caught Zachariah and the (Los?) Lobos Riders, I spent the better part of my morning trying to find the video for TSA Gansta, because good lord, it was hilarious. I’m not much of a country fan (except for an occasional lapse into a Reba song) so the rest of the set wasn’t quite my thing, but Zach is a friend of a friend, and kind of adorable in that dirty country way so it was nice. People who know me know I don’t really do concerts, because I’m a chicken and never know what to do with my arms. No really, I’ll be standing there, wondering what my arms are doing, do I look like a nerd? Is there any more money in my wallet for another drink? So last night I was standing slightly apart from the group trying to figure out if the lead singer was trying to make me feel uncomfortable by singing to me occasionally and the group looked over to see how I was doing (I guess I’m still being watched for signs of imminent break-down) and I was standing with one hand sort of on my hip and the other jutted out holding my martini. They were worried. I should have warned them about my arms.

After we had our fill of Zachariah we went to Lucky Strike to watch another friend of Andrew’s play beer pong. I have it on good authority that they were not playing Big 10 beer pong (Allie) and that if I went to a Penn State game I would be pleasantly surprised that beer pong is often a contact sport. I definitely need some more contact in my life, so we’re scheduling that in for the fall.

I was tell my friend Tara about the night and she said, quite rightly, “You had and American Pie birthday!” And I responded, “Sponsored by Beta House!” Which, if you must know is pretty much exactly what I needed. (By the way, if you guys want to see my friend’s American Pie movie, check out Beta House. It’s got something for everyone - for the dudes there are plenty of naked boobs, and for the chicks - the boy who plays Dwight Stifler, is terribly easy on the eyes.)

I got home and crawled into the most comfortable bed in the world and was awakened this morning to the sound of helicopters circling the 101 every hour on the hour. Your LA traffic reports are apparently brought to you from right outside my window. It’s like a free snooze alarm. I seriously don’t mind, I love this place so much.

I share a birthday with a lot of friends of friends and siblings of friends, which makes those people awesome, because January 20th is a good day. It’s Inauguration Day every four years, and how can you beat that?

I can’t wait to blow out a candle, or maybe I’ll set my martini on fire tonight and blow that out. You know, whatever is easiest.