The World According to Nome

I'm still here, y'all

2007-09-24T16:05:00.001-07:00

Still here, still rocking the proverbial casbah.

I've been occupied, off and on, with the following brushes with greatness:

1) Subbing -- Oh boy oh boy do I love subbing. Coming in to a new class every so often, hanging out for a while, doing some fun teaching, meeting some new studentlings, and then moving on to the next satisfies my cravings for The New, challenges my ability to adapt, and forces me out of my Creature-of-Habit patterns and onto new ground. Plus I don't have to work every day and if I want to spend all day curled up with TG and eating breakfast late at 3:00 in the afternoon and browsing bookstores, I bloody well can.

2) TG -- Oh That Girl is a wonder. I can't say much about her, and not because there isn't much to say, because I could go on for hours, but because I want to keep her private. Just some little tidbits, from my head to you.

...She is becoming so very special to me, because I have not felt this connected to anyone or this blissfully relaxed in years.

...She satisfies so many of my mental - intellectual - physical - emotional cravings that I can scarcely believe she's real.

...She supports me in continuing to live a full and rich life so that I can keep being me in every possible way. She wants me to see my friends, and my family, and be active and busy and social.

...She genuinely likes and wants the Real Me.

...She's become something of a muse, and miraculously I am finally writing again for the first time in months. I even signed up for a writing workshop that starts next month.

...It's nice to feel for the first time in my life that I'm with someone who not only tolerates my interests, but fully supports me in all my endeavors. I don't know if she realizes how grateful I am for that.

3) Pals -- My pal Kasey is finally back from Burning Man, and what I had hoped would happen to her there has actually happened -- she seems to have opened up and realized that other people need her to care about them and support them. She may become a real friend again rather than just a girl I might from time to time want to party with.

4) Famdamily -- My mom and dad are so lovely. They invited TG for Thanksgiving on the island, and best of all, she's coming. I feel so lucky to have them.

5) Class -- Taking my ESL certification on the weekends has turned out to be quite painless and really enjoyable. I like the teacher a lot, and he used to work at my school so we have loads to talk about in the rare times we're not in class. It's an intense, three weekend, Saturday and Sunday, 9-6 class, but some days I really don't even notice the time going by. It's good to be learning new things, and to have the things I'm already doing in my classes confirmed as being smart and not just smrt.

6) MUSIC -- M.I.A.'s newest is SPECTACULAR. Kala is such a brilliant melding of world beats, political lyricism, unique sounds, seamless sampling, and absolute in-your-face joyful worldliness. She's coming to the Vancity in November and TG scored tickets to surprise me before I even knew they had announced her concert dates. I am so so excited about that. I'm also digging:

-Rilo Kiley's Under The Blacklight. Moneymaker's such a spectacularly unexpected little tune.

-The White Stripes Icky Thump. Their weirdest and most brilliant to date. By far.

-Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning. One of TG's faves. Landlocked Blues is sometimes so close to home it just about brings me to tears.

-Amy Winehouse's Back to Black -- Say what you will about the other drug addicts in Hollywood. What makes Miss Amy so different is that she's got talent in spades, and she follows a fine tradition of self-destructive jazz singers to which I think she rightly belongs, both in talent and in tragedy. I'm hopelessly in love with her and genuinely hoping she can save herself. Poor skinny little lost girl. I just want to wrap her up, feed her ice cream, get her a good divorce lawyer, and make her into a clean and sober little lesbian.

I'd better run. But thought I'd give you all a quick update just to tell you I'm feeling fantastic, still kicking, and am oh so ALIVE.

A bientot,

N

p.s. including this photo Jag took of me ringing Jenna's intercom because I find it delightfully spontaneous, and that's the kind of girl I want to be, and the kind of girl I often think I am.

a confession

2007-08-20T13:10:00.000-07:00

Bless me readers, for I have sinned.

It has been a week since my last post.

I've been working, playing, playing some more, getting seriously sleep-deprived, wandering around the House of Oracles in a state of semi-wakefulness, and marveling at the wondrous sensation of walking underneath a giant wooden dragon spine. Beautiful!

Went to the island for a day and a bit to help out with a giant wine party my parents were throwing. It went off without a hitch, mainly because my brother and I worked flat-out preparing and serving food and wine and cleaning up for four hours afterwards so my mom wouldn't have to be on her feet the whole time. I've discovered that doing dishes is much more bearable when dancing your tail off to AC/DC's If You Want Blood.

I came home the next day to go to the Queer Film Fest, which so far has been fascinating, though emotionally difficult.

I made the utterly intellectual decision to go see Love Sick, one of the first-ever Romanian queer films, and while it was an absolutely brilliant piece of filmmaking, it left me with the palpable desire to put a gun to my head. No one should compare homosexuality to incest, ever, and they should especially not spend an entire film doing it. It was hard to take. That said, the subject matter was a little more understandable given the situation for queer people in Eastern Europe. Someone has to talk about the hard stuff, and it may as well be the dust-battered, Communism-recovering Romanians.

I also saw Boy I Am last night, which is a documentary following the lives of several FTM (Female-to-Male) transgendered people. For me it confirmed what I already knew and feel deeply -- that transgendered people deserve to be treated with the same love and respect and given the same opportunities as any other person, and additionally that they deserve to be included in queer culture, be it gay, lesbian, bi, or trans. My aunt, who saw it with me, had a somewhat different perspective, since she comes from an era where women's only spaces were gaining importance and significance for her community. I didn't have the benefit of that outlook, but it was fascinating to hear her experience as she walked me to the bus stop.

Expect a few more super-informal film reviews and a few more photos in the days to come. Dag has finally sent me some more shots from our photo shoot, so I'll post a couple more as she continues to send them.

I hope some of you at least are living in places where August does not consist of rain, chill cold winds, and constantly wrapping oneself in hoodies. Jeez. Don't we get enough of that shit the rest of the year? Ah well, at least it means I can sit through seven more films with the knowledge that I'm not missing out on any amazing sunshine.

Bestest,

N

caring = not caring

2007-08-14T14:26:00.001-07:00

This weekend I went to the island for the annual wine festival and gigantic after party chez mes parents.

I just may have the greatest parents in the world. Not only was coming out to them SO much easier than it was for many of the people I know (no Get Thee to Reform Camp, no Well I'm Okay with Gays as Long as They Aren't My Daughter), but they also want to meet all the girls I like and get to know them and open their home up to them and hug them right from the beginning, right at the introductory stage.

My parents are so relaxed that they got drunker than I did at the wine fest. Drunk and funny. Both of them are happy, lovely, and open when intoxicated, as is pretty much everyone in my family. My mom commented wryly on the bus back up island that it was okay that everyone on the bus was gulping down glass after glass of fine Shiraz, because as the picture on the sign at the front of the bus indicated, drinking was not prohibited, merely drinking with straws.

Later my dad got hysterical over the French on a plate of raw vegetables from Costco that read: plateau de crudites. "PLATEAU DE CRUDITEEEES!" he tore through the kitchen yelling, followed by strings of expletives, in order to prove, I suppose, that he could be extra-crude with a plateau of crudites in his hands.

TG came to the island, met my parents, gave them presents, and made them adore her by doing nothing except being her charming self. We made salad and danced in the kitchen while the house was full of our friends and neighbours, using every possible opportunity to touch each other, flirting, laughing, and generally feeling pretty free.

At one point she asked me "Do you think everyone has got us figured out yet?" I said something to the effect of: "You mean, do they think we're the biggest bloody homos on the planet?" "Yeah," she said. I looked around at all the happy and increasingly drunk and merry people around us and replied: "Honestly, I have no idea. But I really couldn't care less. They all just want me to be happy"

And later I found it funny that feeling like I care so much about someone has the effect of making me care less about what the world thinks. It rarely occurs to me that we're both women, except when I'm focusing on how amazingly hot and lovely and beautiful she is, or when I'm feeling like I'm looking at a Botticelli painting come to life under candlelight, which I suppose is actually all the time.

My point is just that caring about women makes me care less about what the world thinks about the fact that I care about women.

It's just home to me. And home is the safest place I could possibly live.

-N

p.s. I love this photo of me and Jag. It makes me feel serene, and makes me miss her.

in a jungle of grass and green bamboo

2007-08-09T14:29:00.000-07:00

Hold me, wrap me up
UNFOLD me
I am small
and needy
Warm me up
And breathe me...
-Sia - Breathe Me

In the night, after the sweet-clawed tiger has left your bed, you will dream those heavily scented ecstasy dreams, the kind you never knew before you took the pills, but those that now appear most vividly when sleep is the only substance in your body.

The sheets feel like creamy satin against your skin, the air perfumed with the faintest haze of summer rain, and you sleep gentle as a child, but nowhere near as innocent.

In the morning, you will stand in the shower in the hopes that the rivers of warm water will feel something close to the feeling of her fingers on your skin, the soft towel some small approximation of her arms pulling you inside.

You will remember her palms on your collar bone, which she called by its medical name, and the pads of her index fingers in your hair.

And life will smell a little sweeter. The incense by your bed will remind you of Tibetan mountains you have never seen. Coffee freshly ground will smell of Sumatran hillsides, and a cat's fur will remind you of how soft and sweet and powerful a thing can be.

Your heart will beat that steady rhythm in the morning, that faithful, gentle humming on your skin.

And you will allow yourself to feel so alive, for the moment, in this jungle of grass and green bamboo.

~I'm going to the island for a few days to drink wine and lie on the beach. Hope to hear from all 788 of you when I get back.~

-N

p.s. to your right is a little Estrie sunset for you, all the way from Eastern Quebec. Sadly I had no jungle photos to post.

The 778!

2007-08-06T18:21:00.001-07:00

When one has an average of 778 visitors a day, there is NO excuse for not commenting!

Lurkers, come out, come out wherever you are!

It's freeing, really. Just...TRY IT!

lesbians on ecstasy

2007-08-06T17:42:00.000-07:00

Oh what an amazingly wild, wet, wicked weekend it has been.

I'm sad no one took photos of me in my rainbow suspenders. But I did get loads of compliments, and a good deal of suspender-snapping.

A few highlights:

1) Chicas -- Hot House of Hotties - Had never been to this insanely expensive post-Pride-parade party at a huge fancy mansion in the West End, but I'm damn glad I bought a ticket. Oh so many beautiful women in one place! So much music. My fave DJ spinning her heart out. And all so much more intense with half a tab of good old methylenedioxymethamphetamine. I know I don't need drugs to be social and have fun. But it certainly helped in a house full of hundreds of hot girls taking their shirts off. And don't worry, I know about the risks of hyperthermia and hyponatremia and all that medical jargon. Talked to my dear friend Jenna until they closed the place down. I felt like I could have talked to her all night. Everything she said was profound. Other than TG, she is probably the smartest woman I know, and she has enough years behind her to be relied upon for intense clarity and wisdom. I quite adore her.

2) Dyke March - It had never occurred to me to actually march in it. Usually I just watch from the park and soak up the joy. But TG and Shawna convinced me, and so I walked the whole route alongside two recently-married lesbian couples I know, feeling exhilarated and loving life.

3) Dyke March Dance - Also better on ecstasy. You Shook Me All Night Long has NEVER sounded so hot.

4) Pride Parade - Gay boys, dykes on bikes, and free razors for the girls. A bizarro combination, and a tad too corporate, but I still loved it.

5) Hershe Bar - Danced my tail off before I came down off the E. Danced in a cage, danced in the jungly room upstairs, danced to intense pounding deep house music that I normally find terribly boring. Made out with TG until I was tingling all over. Everything felt so so good. It was almost unreal.

6) The looooong walk home -- TG walked me all the way from downtown to my house. It took two and half hours. We had to keep stopping cause we couldn't keep our hands off each other. She's a tiger! Got home at 5:00 am. No further details will be forthcoming, but suffice it to say I'm pretty elated today. Buzzing. Thrilled. Excited.

Oh Pride. It is so great. Please tell me that straight people have fun too, otherwise I'll have to feel terribly sorry for them.

-N

on top

2007-08-02T00:33:00.000-07:00

blessings in disguise

2007-08-01T23:52:00.000-07:00

I'm sad that Jag's gone. But she has left me with some beautiful memories, and a couple of Dutch girl tears on my sleeve.

Sometimes when you're lonely and crawling home from the airport, the strangest things come your way.

I love the summer for its heat and perfect blue-eyed skies. But mainly I love the summer for its surprises. Because sometimes when I think that a fine little flirtation is dead in the water, it resurfaces to remind me of what I love about women. They are absolute tigers, soft and gentle and sweet one moment, and tearing your clothes off the next.

Ah. What a rush.

Such buzzing...

-N

actual conversation between Jag and I

2007-07-29T13:17:00.000-07:00

At approximately 3:00 am, upon returning from the bar, where we had partied it up with Sir Busblog himself and friends:

Jag : Wow, my clothes don't smell like smoke. That is so great.
Nome: Yeah, isn't it? So I guess they haven't quite caught on to the whole non-smoking thing over there in Holland, have they?
Jag: No, but they're going to start passing some laws. Maybe we'll get those smoking rooms that you have in Canada.
Nome: (pulls dress over head, does not hear next line of dialogue due to dress over her head)
Jag: You have some really hot boobs.
Nome: (certain we're still talking about smoking rooms in bars) Yeah, they're actually illegal.

Good fucking times.

Spent last night getting illuminated on so many levels. Smoked some weed called Rhubarb Sugarbush which Kasey had bought us. It was no barrel of Hell's Angels junk, that's for damn sure. It made Kasey crazy, caused a lot of drama, made TG into even more of a clown than usual, and made me feel super introspective and socially paranoid.

Walking alone in an East Vancouver alley in the middle of the night didn't bother me at all, but the prospect of speaking to just about anyone was quite terrifying. I probably didn't utter more than six sentences for the entire rest of the evening. All the words sounded terribly stupid in my head, and I figured since that meant they'd sound even stupider out loud, I ought not to speak them at all. Instead I tried to be a super good listener, lost admirably at poker, and even got a kiss from TG at the end of the night. It felt somewhere in between an "I really wanted to kiss you" kiss and a "hey nice to meet you" kind of kiss. I sent her a text message entirely in French, and she called me at 3:30 when I was already asleep. Plus ca change....

The weed also made me feel like I was vibrating. Not that I was receiving vibrations, but that I was them. A little action last night might have made me explode. But at least I would've died happy.

Jag was beside me dreaming that she'd married me and we'd adopted a bunch of little Asian kids. Niice.

A bientot.

-N

hit me!!!

2007-07-27T16:59:00.000-07:00

I know I'm quoting Jag here, but seriously. This is ridiculous.

Today my hits went from, oh, about 27 a day to an insane 716. I'm squinting at my screen and going "naw, this can't possibly be right," but it is.

Where did you all come from? Is this because I talked about sex toys?

Or is this just another tease, kinda like when I flipped open my phone in the staff room today and was greeted by a series of text messages from Claire, telling me about a sex dream she had in which I sent her a pornographic video that went from a close-up of my face to a zoomed out shot of me touching myself.

Unbelievable. That, and I can't seem to send TG any normal messages anymore. They're all sexually-charged. In fact, I'll be damned if I can even write a text message that doesn't involve whipping or oral fixations or barely-cloaked comments about bruised knees.

Maybe it's because I'm now the proud owner of these playthings. Mine's in purple, of course.

Thank you Jag, and Jab, for being my fab sex mentors. What would I do without their sage guidance??

Well, to all alleged 700 of you, welcome.

And now, please, hit me up with some comments!

-N

Flowers simply die, but dildos are forever.

2007-07-25T14:57:00.000-07:00

Quite recently I came to the conclusion that I never really liked men.

I definitely used to like boys, those non-threatening, small-to-medium-build, clean-shaven, hairless, grinning, beer-swilling, clever, and generally innocuous slacker lads of my youth. They were sweet and funny, even sexy. But I never did like men. Facial hair scares me. Chest hair perhaps even more so. I remember one night when I tried to sleep with a male friend of mine, but was so disturbed by the thought of his chest hair that I clung to the edge of the bed all night, clothed head-to-toe, hoping he would take the hint. He did. I found him at 9:00 am the following morning on the couch, watching cartoons.

When I told this to a friend of mine she replied, "that's because you're a lesbian, honey."

Touche.

So things with TG are dead in the proverbial water, which is sad because it's such beautiful blood-red water full of rapids and tumbling waterfalls, and I have never felt so simultaneously stimulated and frustrated in my life. It's strangely disappointing when you're sitting at a coffee shop shredding a stir stick and putting the broken wooden bits together to form her name, just to be cute, and she blows them away in an instant, without a wisp of an explanation. The most irritating part is that I wasn't naming our children or planning our wedding. All I did was lie awake at night imagining the soft smoothness of her legs on my shoulders and how her perfect rose skin would feel under my fingers. I just wanted to fuck her. C'est tout. And swim in her beautiful mind a little.

Oh well. I suppose we'll be pals, and go housewares shopping, and pretend that we don't actually want each other. That will doubtlessly be easier for her than it will be for me. I am so excellent at torturing myself.

I got that job at the unionized school I interviewed for a few weeks ago. They have a super-complicated corporate ladder, which means I have to start as a substitute and a term worker before I get moved to probational employment, and then 840 work hours later I actually get to be an actual employee. It's going to be a lot of work proving myself at a company where most of the teachers are 20-30 years my senior and have decades of teaching experience. I've only subbed there once so far and I've already been mistaken for a student. Yikes. I'm just going to keep on working whenever they call me in, and see where it takes me.

Most house guests buy their hosts things like flowers, or dinner, before they leave. Not Jag. She wants to buy me a sex toy. Any suggestions? We're going to Womyn's Ware, aka the bestest sex store on earth.

Flowers simply die. But dildos are forever.

I love my life.

Really.

-N

I let it pass

2007-07-21T02:03:00.000-07:00

I feel the knife going in
I'm feeling like it's not enough to kill me
I thought up and fast
But I'm feeling it now and I feel like she's sleeping inches from me
I let it pass...
-Tegan & Sara - Knife Going In

I'm feeling lonely. Restless. Head aching.

Maybe it's the rain.

-N

Rainbow Twizzlers

2007-07-18T01:52:00.000-07:00

Today Kasey got body-checked on the baseball field and ended up in the hospital, where Jag and I brought her gay rainbow Twizzlers. An hour later she had set up a sex date with a girl from her team, and was sauntering off, bruised ribs and all, to meet her.

Some girls have all the luck.

I'm just writing to say I'm off to the island for a few days to watch ridiculously queer movies in the rain and get some reading in. Rain in July = verboten! ARGH!

Be back Friday night.

A bientot.

-N

Actual Text Message

2007-07-17T13:39:00.000-07:00

from Claire, sent a few days ago:

"You were the best in bed I've ever had."

Damn right. But what a shame to see such talent go to waste.

-N

You Know You're an Insensitive Bastard When

2007-07-17T00:49:00.000-07:00

You're watching A Mighty Heart with Angelina Jolie, and during the scene where she's just received the news that her husband has been beheaded, and all you can think is:

Wow, she's a screamer. I wonder if she makes those sounds in bed.

Sometimes I wonder if they cast amazingly sexy women in serious roles just to test my moral fiber (weak like cotton candy). I'm starting to think that seven months without sex is seven months too long for anyone who isn't a monk.

So maybe I'll shave my head and start working towards Nirvana. It sounds like it might be easier than getting laid.

That is all. Carry on.

-N

Nostalgia

2007-07-16T20:24:00.000-07:00

I love it.

Particularly when I come across my classic stupid signage collection. Ah, those were the days.

When you travel, always take care to protect your values. Especially honesty and the importance of family. Lest they be stoled.

I took Jag to the Granville Island Market today. My mom asked the salad guy what kind of dressing they had. He listed the options with a heavy Chinese accent.

Me: "He says there's honey-lemon, dill, and oil and vinegar."
Mom: "Thanks for the translation."
Me: "No problem. My Engrish is excellent."

AND my cat speaks Dutch. Good times were had by all.

-N

JAGERIFFIC

2007-07-15T09:40:00.000-07:00

Hello all.

So Jag is here, as of last night. It's super neato to see her, and have her meet my kitty and see my apartment. She was impressed by the fact that my bathroom has a sink. Wow. She will not be impressed by BC weed -- this I know without even testing the theory. She does want to test our local Dutch pancake house, which should be interesting. Then from now on I can go there and give the server a withering look when I announce that the waxy substance from Kraft is not, and I repeat, NOT, real Dutch peanut butter.

TP, aka Tony Pierce, is coming. My intelligent comment was, "Oh, his initials are TP. Like toilet paper." No offense to dear Tony, Blog Celeb Extraordinaire. When Dag was dating a Romanian with a nickname similar to a 19th century disease, you'd better believe I started calling him 'Diphtheria.'

As for me, I'm hoping to get some action from the redhead in the near future. Less talk, more action. Women and their talk. Argh. It's simply off the charts. Some days I long for the creatures so easy to please with beer and sex. But then I remember girls' charms and am totally lost.

A dialogue with one of my students this week:

Student: "I can write with both hands. I'm ambiguous!"
Me: "Um, Johnny, I believe you mean ambidextrous. But good try!"

I love those two 13-year-old boys, in all their infuriating obnoxious adorableness.

More cell phone poetry for the masses:

The inside of a cherry,
Bleeding such a perfect brilliant red.
It must have been born in a lab,
A sad thought,
As though nature is not enough.

A bientot.

-N

TG! and an interview

2007-07-04T23:16:00.000-07:00

I'm finding it SUPER difficult not to think about The Girl.
She's out of town and out of cell phone range for five whole days, and these days have been LOOONG ones. I think about funny things she said, or I smile to myself on the bus about how she was so nervous when she met me that her hands were shaking. And then I have dreams where I am flying over trees and I wake up buzzing and wishing I was naked and she was kissing me again.

I've been keeping myself entertained by going to my friend Kasey's softball games and getting excited about a bunch of really dykey girls running around the bases for several hours. It works! Plus there is sun and pretty green Vancouver grass and the feeling that I am being athletic by proxy.

My old friend Lauren introduced me to TG (who will get a name when I know her better!), and so I went to her house yesterday to gush about our date. Lauren was already drunk when I got there, on a first-day-of-managing-a-daycamp bender, and her first words to me were: "You went to a softball game dressed like that? What kind of lesbian are you?" "The bad kind," I answered. I was wearing my teachery little black dress with a belt. And sparkly black ballet flats. Maybe a TAD girly for softball, but it's not like I was playing.

Tonight Kasey skipped out on her game after they benched her for not high-fiving the other girls after every inning (oh the ball drama), and we went for Indian food on the Drive. It was mediocre, and there's nothing worse than mediocre Indian food. Except maybe bad poetry, delivered earnestly, in a context where you can't make fun [NB: please make fun of mine when it is bad].

TG and the girl Kasey is seeing are really good friends. Go figure. The girl world is a small one. Kasey's girl, who we'll call Shawna, is very awkward and endearing. For some reason I expected her to be more of a vixen. But maybe that's just cause I like the vixens.

I like Kasey too. I've discovered I can distract her from whatever she's doing with the words "whips and vinyl." Today we had a conversation about what we would do to each other in bed. That's pretty typical for us. We've decided we're tremendously compatible, but also good friends. Plus she's Jon's ex and thus somewhat forbidden. But, never say never.

Exciting news: I got an interview with the unionized school that I really want to work at. It's on Tuesday and I'm hoping it goes well. I'm hoping even more that if I do get hired I can psych myself up to work there cause I am SO not in work mode at the moment. All I want to do is hang out with beautiful girls who will go to the beach with me and who I can potentially sleep with.

Also, check out Dag's rad photographic abilities. She took these! I know that Shaun was jealous because when I showed these shots to him he said: "these are like the photos I took of you, only with less clothes." Ya right pal. Props do not a photographer make. And besides, I only take my clothes off for girls.

I must to bed. I'm teaching TOEFL to 12-year-olds again tomorrow morning. It's actually much more fun than it sounded at first. Every time I don't teach for a while I convince myself it's a drag, but when I step back into the classroom again and see their little smiling faces I always remember: "oh right, I love this."

I've been writing cell phone poetry, so called because I compose said poems in the constricted space of a 150 character cell phone notepad entry.

A sample:

Luxury is a broken bottle
With glass that shines maroon like the windows in a church
Holiness is too delicate not to shatter
With my blessed sins.

And one more for the road:

An honest word is like a piece of fuzzy grass
Beside the highway.
Impossibly perfect in my city wasteland,
my town of broken hearts
and butterflies.

A bientot,

N

uh huh

2007-07-01T21:53:00.000-07:00

Today I went out for coffee with a stunning girl with red hair who makes me laugh and finishes my sentences and loves poetry and listens to good music.

And she kissed me.

Seemed like a nice start. But I'll not jinx it by saying more. I'll just say I'm excited. :)

Oh, and I'm back in town! It's good to be home. Maya missed me, and so did my bed. Last night I got naked just to feel the sheets against my skin. Ah. Beautiful.

Happy Canada Day! I love this country just a tiny bit more now that I know it has been home to my family for eight generations. And I love it more now that I have real Quebecois maple butter to spread on my toast.

I miss my far-away friends though. There is a little voice in my head whispering: remember, remember. Remember good friends and hot days. Remember pretty blue eyes and perfect curls, kind words and white curtains, glasses perched above temples, warm hands, a low sweet voice. Remember songbirds and sling babies. Remember to keep wishing for happy endings to the only true love stories that mean something to me.

Remember to live in the present and savour it.

I wish my memory was much more photographic, because I'm beginning to think that this life is made up of points in time like in that photo of the Gorge above, a series of moments perfectly, however strangely captured. It is a collection of small poignant things best held onto, the good with the bad, the dark and the bright, the lightning and sunshine, the cold and the warmth.

And so I struggle to remember them, for whatever it's worth.

Till next time.

-N

de Montreal

2007-06-28T08:14:00.000-07:00

Greetings, friends and countrywomen.

I write to you from my dear friend's laptop (password: fuckoff) in her lovely little apartment in a peaceful corner of Montreal. Outside it is hotter than Hades, more humid than a sauna, and the streets are dry as a bone despite a spectacular thunderstorm last night. Dag`s computer would rather produce Spanish accents than apostrophes, so you`ll just have to bear with me since I am incapable of writing without the humble yet oh-so-vital Apostrophe.

I love thunderstorms. A girl my good friend is trying to set me up with sent me a text message last night asking me what I loved about lightning. Was it, she asked, "glimpses into a past, future, yourself...time frozen in an instant, the eyes see, but does the mind?" (Oh I'm terribly clever to have just figured out how to change the keyboard's language). Poetic, eh? She's like that. She sends me quotations on a fairly regular basis, from sources as diverse as Kafka, Dr. Seuss, and Langston Hughes. AND she has red hair.

I wrote back: "they remind me of those great chills you get when something exciting happens. A series of brief consecutive tremors, followed by amazing sound, then the fury tapering off. It's sexy. The amoral violence of nature is also always kind of fascinating. Nature is neither good nor evil, it simply is."

Regardless of the fact that I have no foundational belief in a God or god-like figure, I still search for that sense of the sublime, that feeling so aptly described by George Eliot and the Brontes, and all those painters whose work hangs in the Louvre, those amazing dark blue canvasses with a tiny figure perched on the edge of an abyss, or a cavernous forest, or an endless sprawling moor at dawn. I long for and am learning to love that feeling of being very small in a wide and complex world. I actually rather enjoy knowing that I am terribly insignificant in the scheme of things. There is no great plan for me except for the plans I make for myself.

I am a rare atheist who loves churches. Not those garish modern megachurches with video screens blasting Christian rock videos karaoke-style, but the ancient, dusty relics of a bygone era. A really spectacular church can take me to a strange place beyond religious or sexual ecstasy. It is a relatively rare but wondrous moment when I find myself overcome by their scale and detail, and by the sheer commitment of the artists to grandeur and beauty. The last time I felt this was in a chapel at Oxford, gazing up at an endless row of stone statues that stretched up to the cathedral ceiling, and the sublime nature of the moment made me want to fall to my knees. And I am not a fall on my knees kind of girl.

But anyway. Back to earth.

I've been in Montreal for a week and a bit. I left the Vancity with my mom on the 15th and flew to Toronto, where I took a bus to Stratford for my cousin's wedding. It was a great ceremony, mainly because it was short and blessedly unpreachy. This is the cousin I always nudge under the table and share inappropriate jokes with at our family's usual ultra-religious, five-hour snorefest weddings. And so his wedding was low on the speeches, brief in its ceremony (under 20 minutes), low on the references to God (2, and I was counting) and heavy on the dancing. My kind of party. It was a great time, despite the fact that I had to dance with two teenage boys from the bride's side of the family for whom I suppose I was the only eligible female in a short skirt anywhere near their age bracket.

After Stratford my mom and I settled in Montreal, then went to Eastern Quebec (Frenchily known as Estrie) to do some geneological research. Two days in the library, hours of translating old French documents and the archivists' information to my mom, and much searching through cemeteries later, we had discovered that my grandfather's side of the family has lived in Quebec for eight generations, before which they came to the New World from France and surprisingly, Spain. There is still much left to discover, but I think my mom was pleased with what we found. And I was pleased to have helped. Translating excites me. No, really.

Montreal is an impressively diverse city, and I've tried to explore it a bit despite the oppressive weather. On Tuesday my friends from the states, Curlz and MB, came up to visit, and the four of us had a delightful time. Last night we went for Thai food at Chu Chai, a restaurant that does strange and magical things with soy and seitan that makes vegetable matter look and taste almost disturbingly like meat. We talked and laughed for hours, and Dag and I tried our hardest to get them to stay in town for the weekend, but to no avail. I can't help but find it somewhat unfair that the most wonderful people I know always seem to live across the country, or in some little town in the Eastern US.

I wish I could travel all the time and never work, yet somehow still manage to maintain my apartment and pay my bills and feed my cat. Oh, and I'd like a beautiful girl who reads the Brontes and loves Maya and likes to do the dishes and doesn't smoke.

Fortunately, I don't believe there's any great plan for me. There is only what I make for myself, the world as I create it, the kindness I give out and the love that I try to share.

Existentialism isn't really so lonely after all.

A bientot.

-N

argh

2007-06-05T22:39:00.000-07:00

Cherry Blossom Girl is now dating some chick with a ring through the middle of her nose like a cow.

Oh why me.

This is one opportunity that seems to have skillfully passed me by.

Sometimes I wish I could be as risky in my personal life as I am at work. I wish I could just march right up to a girl and say: "hey. I like you. Let's go out for sushi and watch documentaries together. I promise to be exciting and understanding and fun, and I promise we'll make each other into better people, and I promise to never lie to you or cheat on you. I promise to stay the night, be nice to your family, walk you to your door, hold you closer when it's cold out, comfort you when you're sad, rejoice in your successes, and support you in your darkest moments. But for now, let's just try it. Just one date."

I like to think I don't need to kill a horse to make someone an offer they can't refuse.

It is cold and windy and raining out, and I have to go to the dentist tomorrow. How sad.

Thank you for listening to my infantile complaints.

-N

FREEDOM!

2007-06-04T12:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I did it.

On Friday at 9:00 am I marched into work, collected my paycheck, gathered my sad collection of office supplies and cds from my desk, wrote a note to the teachers on the white board, gave a hug to my newly-married coworker, and marched upstairs to talk to The Boss.

He was not surprised when I told him I was quitting. He was not shocked, not disappointed, not regretful, and definitely did not act as though he was losing a good employee and that was a shame. He did manage to accuse me of being power-hungry (hafuckingha). He also accused me of being ungrateful after he bought the school a new photocopier. This remark actually made me laugh out loud. What a fucking tool. Speaking to him was like speaking to a brick wall. He refused to acknowledge any of the serious problems to do with communication, honesty, and employee morale. He seemed to believe I was only concerned with money, which is ludicrous since none of my reasons for quitting had anything to do with the pay scale. His parting words to me were "well, I've done my job."

What a deluded, small-minded, unfortunate little man he is.

I felt slightly sick afterwards, as though I had just gotten far too close to a spitting cobra and had barely escaped with my life.

Then, I went shopping. Many hours and a great deal of clothes later, I met up with my friend Rosie and we went out for pizza and hung out at the gayest beach in town, watching kids throw each other in the water and slathering on the SPF 60. It was peaceful, pastoral almost. And most of all, it made me feel free.

I got a call from my coworker that afternoon informing me that the first thing my boss had done after I left was to walk to my first class and bad-mouth me to my students, telling them that I was a bad teacher and irresponsible and that I had abandoned them. My coworker tried later to repair the damage he had done, but she said none of the students believed him anyway. They all said I was a good teacher and they missed me, and several of them cried.

My only regret is losing my wonderful students. I'm hoping we can keep in touch.

On Saturday I made a picnic for my friend Leslie, who was just coming finishing a week-long cleansing diet which I discouraged her at length from doing. Sigh. And then I reward her with a picnic. Hopeless. I made couscous salad with mint, potato salad a la Mom's recipe, and chocolate Blancmange pudding. I had never made any of these things before and was shocked that they turned out nicely. It's probably a cooking faux pas to try out new dishes on unsuspecting friends, but then I am full of faux pas.

Last night I met up with my ancient high school friend Lauren for frisbee, macaroni salad, and lengthy political discussions of gender and queer theory. It was most interesting, and unlike when we were younger, our discussions didn't dissolve into arguments but rather remained safely in the realm of academic and philosophical curiosity. It was nice to see that we've both grown up a lot, and perhaps now we can be real friends rather than intellectual rivals. It probably helps that I've come out and so now we have something more intimate in common.

On Sunday morning I had brunch at a restaurant that is famous for serving staff that abuses the customers. I went with my great aunt and my mom, and the waiters were super-nice to us. They're all almost too gay to function, and called us "darlings" and happily checked on us every three minutes. Attitude, my ass. Maybe it helps to go there with an 85-year-old in tow, but those boys were all sweethearts to the extreme. I refilled my own coffee with pleasure.

Perhaps you're all wondering why everyone's favourite worrier isn't worrying about being essentially unemployed with bills to pay and rent on a West Side Vancouver apartment to reckon with. And the answer is....I have a plan. Once I get back from my little vacation back East I can work full-time at my other school for the summer. In September I'm going to get my ESL certification, and hopefully get a job with a unionized school where I have a connection to the owner. Guess networking is good for something after all.

Today I'm thinking of going to buy some jeans, although the weather's a tad depressing. After two weeks of brilliant sunshine, my first week off consists of chilly drizzle. Go fucking figure.

Anyway, this is too long.

You wanted more posts, and now you've got them.

So be happy!

Oh, and more news. On Saturday night I met a girl. She's clever and funny and disarmingly down-to-earth, and quite adorable too. Tall with brown hair and huge gray eyes. I liked her a lot. We walked around downtown for a couple of hours before she had to go home. The only downside -- she lives in the same middle-of-nowhere boonies town that Claire hailed from. Dammit! Rosie will never stop making fun of me for falling for the suburban ones. But I just can't help it. They're so damn provincial, and their wide eyes when taking in the mess of Granville Street are just too bloody beautiful for words. They make me feel street-smart and worldly, even though I'd be eaten alive in Detroit. Anyway, I'll keep you posted.

Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to quit my job -- I'm starting to think it's the smartest thing I've done in ages.

Love,

N

work can suck my....

2007-06-01T00:14:00.000-07:00

So tomorrow is my big FUCK YOU day at work.
It's that mythical day where I get to oh-so-politely tell the boss that he can take my job and shove it neatly up his rear end.

I'm excited.

...but actually I'm terrified. Shhh! Don't tell the boys. They'll make fun of me for sure.

Wish me luck!
I wanna get free ride into the sun...

-N

An Accidental Series of Events

2007-05-29T23:23:00.000-07:00

A few minutes into my beautiful early evening spent rollerblading home from work, the old Kitsilano train tracks viciously reached out and pulled my wheels out from under me.

I went flying, and a split second later I was lying broken on the pavement in the middle of the street. My first thought: "Oh no, not my $300 headphones!" Fortunately, they were fine.

I wish I could say the same for my knees, which were pretty smashed up. The left one looked like it had been neatly skinned with the sharp side of a paring knife (think of peeling one of those pretty pink lady apples that are everywhere this time of year), and the right one was, well, messed up.

I called my parents, who took me to a walk-in clinic, where a worried-looking doctor with the unfortunate name of J. Doe told me to go get x-rays tomorrow, and to stay off my knee for two weeks, which made me laugh hysterically, just so that I wouldn't burst into tears in her office.

The good news is that this incident really restored whatever damaged faith I had in the kindness of strangers. No fewer than six people stopped to help me on the street. Two kindly gentlemen actually scraped me off the pavement, as I tried to look brave and not hopelessly girly. A muscular red-haired fellow with an Eastern European accent offered me his first aid kit and stayed until I was cleaned up. He was the sort of guy I might dodge if I saw him in a bar, but on the street he was much more merciful than mafia. Several people offered to let me use their cell phones, and one woman asked if she could call me an ambulance. A cute lad with a previously broken nose and soccer shorts came out of the gym next door and offered to test my ligaments for me. I obliged him. He was a cutie.

I'm not going to work tomorrow. I'm probably going to quit my job anyway, since they fired our manager and I won't work there without him. He was the only thing that held the place together and stood up for the teachers, and now that he's gone my faith in the place and its management is at an abysmal low. My plan is to get all four ESL teachers to quit in protest. So far, I have two out of four signed on, and two maybes.

I accidently got outed at work today. It was pretty funny, in fact.

So last week my students asked me if I would go with them to the restaurant that Cocky Bastard (for you, dearest Purple Owl, I refrain from the initials CB) works at on Friday nights to help them navigate the menu, and so they wouldn't have to go alone. I agreed, of course, and went to talk to Cocky Bastard about it. Our conversation went something like this:

"Uh, hey Cocky Bastard, I was wondering if you're working next Friday."
"Listen, Nome, I know what you're thinking, but I have a girlfriend."
"OH PLEASE. Spare me. How tedious."
"Ah, okay, okay. I'm sure you're getting plenty of dick already."
"Oh PLEASE! If you only knew...."

Then somehow we segued into our actual conversation, while I squirmed at his chauvinism and general cluelessness.

Today our conversation (if you can call it that) drifted to a discussion of Naomi Watts, and how hot she was, but how she also appeared to have a brain. Then Cocky Bastard tried to slip a question in under my radar.

"So...." he began.
"Do you prefer George Clooney, or Naomi Watts?" the brazen lad queried with a little smirk. His meaningful tone made it abundantly clear what he was asking.
Not to be caught looking like a coward when posed a direct question, I replied, matching his tone:
"Definitely Naomi Watts."

And thus "Naomi Watts" became my code word with the only coworker I don't particularly like or trust for something I never discuss at work. How strange.

I guess it doesn't much matter if I'm leaving anyway.

But actually, it feels good to have told someone.

Even if it was just him.

My tensor bandage and I are off to bed. Wish me luck with my radiation tomorrow.

Bestest,

N

Cherry Blossom Girl, and Sasquatch

2007-05-28T23:53:00.000-07:00

Oh dear.

I'm totally into Cherry Blossom girl all over again. This is dangerous. I think she needs a name. I'll think of something.

My weekend was sweet, but strange. Our five hour drive to the Gorge involved stops at Wal-Mart (terrifying) for cheap wine and Tim's Cascade Jalapeno chips (only the best potato chips ever made). We spent the night at a freeway rest stop, which involved some classy wine-drinking straight from the bottle and about a half hour of Bound, before the dvd player died. I love that I totally forgot how cheesy and ridiculous and full of corny stereotypes that movie is. Yikes. But it's also sexy and sexily violent, so I can't help but enjoy it.

So the whole time she was driving I was thinking, "wow, what excellent comfortable silences we have," and then she said exactly that. This happened all weekend. At one point at the festival we watched a guy who was holding his girlfriend's hand totally abandon her when they had to get across a big rock in the dark. The girlfriend stumbled, and we looked at each other and I said "wow, he just completely abandoned her there." And she said "Yeah, I was just thinking the exact same thing." Later I said, "hey, there are no recycling bins here," and she said she'd been thinking the same. When I was tired and wanted to go home, so did she. When I couldn't make a decision about buying a t-shirt, neither could she. When I thought music sucked, she agreed. When I thought something was brilliant, she was on board. It was eerie. She's so stunning and compassionate and aware and well, funny. She laughs at my jokes. She tells her own jokes. I think she's neat. There she is above.

Maybe I should tell her that I want to go out with her. Good idea? Bad idea? What do you think?

Sasquatch was okay, although MIA's absence was painful, and the weather was poor. It was either scorching hot or freezing cold with gale force winds. We actually left before the Beastie Boys, Interpol, and Michael Franti went on because we were too cold and tired from waiting in the wind and cold for an hour and a half waiting for the show to start again. The amphitheatre's right on the edge of a precipitous cliff, with the Gorge behind it, and it's beautiful but totally unprotected from the elements. At one point they actually had to stop the show because the lights and speakers were swaying back and forth perilously in the wind. You can see in the photo that the stage doesn't even have a backdrop. It looks like it's floating in that endless sky.

The highlights were definitely adorable little Khaela Maricich of The Blow, who performs this totally unpretentious solo indie pop that's really believable in its down-to-earth dorkiness. Then there was Mirah, who was the only one to express outrage about MIA's visa being denied. Hearing her perform Cold Cold Water live was like, well, cold water in the desert -- absolutely sublime. Bjork was brilliant, and brilliantly weird as always, and her performance of Army of Me, complete with green lasers and video game sound effects, was actually one of the most dramatic things I've ever witnessed. Sadly, she didn't wear the swan dress.

I was in the front row to see Smoosh, the adorable girl-band from Seattle, and let a few little fans in front with me so they could see better. It was amazing, aside from the very bad behaviour of a few very drunk guys who thought it would be funny to make icky remarks about sleeping with little girls and yell inappropriate bullshit in my ear for an hour. One of them tried to mosh to the last song and hit one of the little girls standing next to me in the eye. That was most uncool. But Smoosh was incredible, especially the drummer, Chloe, who grinned the whole time she was playing. It was neato. That's Chloe on the right.

We slept in the back of the truck, warm in sleeping bags, and cooked salmon burgers on a little charcoal grill. It was rustic, and quite pleasant. She drove all night and I got home around 4:00, my clothes smelling of coal smoke and Maya looking sleepy but very glad to see me.

In other news, I've decided to stop complaining about my unfinished novel and start writing the damn thing again.

Oh, and I might have to quit my job. Again. Good times. I'll keep you posted.

Hope you all had a great weekend.

Love,

N

Sasquatch woes

2007-05-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

Mew!

MIA cancelled her appearance at Sasquatch and I nearly cried. Oh I so wanted to see her, to be inches or even 200 meters away from my favourite foul-mouthed London-to-Colombo Princess. Sigh. But due apparently to some stupid error processing her visa, it is not to be. I'll bet she's actually smoking grass on a beach somewhere in Thailand. I can't say I blame her.

I'm still going to the festival, with that girl I kinda sorta liked a while back. She's driving her ancient gas-guzzling truck the five hours each way to Washington State. I had hoped by this point that sleeping in her car would lead to more than, well, sleeping in her car. But, like seeing MIA live, this too seems to be dead in the water.

I'm obsessed with finding jeans that don't do the horrible things that jeans always do to my body, and so I went here. It's bloody genius. Who knew one could take a single, short, only-slightly-embarrassing quiz and actually find jeans that might for once in my life actually fit! The people who make jeans simply don't believe my proportions exist in real life. Thanks, fashion industry, for making me feel invisible. I'll add you to the list.

The list that definitely includes my new coworker, who fills our office with cringe-worthy tales of beer, pizza, and hookers, regularly slaps female students on the ass, and tells oh-so-charming pedophile jokes. Please don't tell me you want to hear one. I started calling him Cocky Bastard, or CB, only in my head. But I fear one of these days the nickname may escape my lips uncensored.

I miss my last coworker, a sensitive chap who listened to Beck, burned incense and spoke in an affable Irish-sounding Nova Scotian lilt.

CB almost redeemed himself today by fetching me some orange syrup infused steamed milk concoction from Starbucks, just because. His explanation: "I couldn't carry one for everyone, and well, you're the only girl in the office."

Go feminism.

By the way, he claims to be both a feminist AND a Marxist. And I'm a gay-bashing right-wing Republican Christian.

Last night I went to a bookclub with the author of The End of East, an amazing and amazingly depressing book set in Vancouver's Chinatown. Jen gave us the headline of her favourite-hated review: Miserable Characters Allowed No Joy in Depressing Tale. It's funny cause it's true. It's a brilliant book, but so sad and so dark.

My old friend Cris who runs the bookclubs told me she would edit my manuscript with her teen club when it's finished. Ha! I'm still not past Chapter 1. But it's nice to know that she believes I can do it.

I have way too much to do tonight, but look, I posted!!

Hope to be back soon with tales of Sasquatch.

Love,

N

Don't get twisted Don't get clever

2007-05-21T22:55:00.000-07:00

This is the most craziest shit ever.

Or so said a certain G. Stefani. I kinda sorta want tickets to her concert, but can't possibly justify the expense for such a silly little guilty pleasure.

Yep, I know I've been bad about posting. Partly it's because I couldn't sign into Blogger for the longest time because I was confused about the switch to Google. My brain just wasn't big enough to take it all in. But mainly I've just been constantly working, like a little lemming scrambling for the hills.

Last night I had the strangest dream.

I was in a cloudy room somewhere with the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was a strange combination of Claire, plus this girl I met recently, plus just about every classy pin-up fantasy I can remember having, plus a few fantasies my brain seems to have come up with all on its own, right at that moment.

She had the most amazing red hair and beautiful skin. Her back was covered in the strangest golden tattoos, like an old map of the bottom of the ocean. Some of the images were bubbles floating to the surface, others looked like delicate crystal chandeliers, all in this impossibly shiny, almost translucent golden colour. I ran my fingers over them and she let me, turning her head around to look at me, and I felt the smallest tremor of surprise when I kissed her. Everything with her was like opening a present, which was why I thought she couldn't possibly be Claire because none of this would have been new for her.

Sex with this girl was heart-pounding, but also kind of beautiful, measured, and surprising. I kept waiting for her reactions, and she continued to respond with the strangest little shivers of pleasure. Her laughter was like a bird just released from its cage. I was infinitely more concerned with her pleasure than mine.

There were drugs, some kind of hallucinogens, which would explain the strange texture of it all. But in the dream I didn't take any. I was having a pretty spectacular time without them.

And then, apparently, we went grocery shopping. What a lesbian chiche. But this was a strange supermarket in which spies were everywhere. Like I said, there were drugs.

I woke up craving French toast, and desperate to find this girl. I know she only exists in my mind, and yet....I was sure I saw her, on the bus coming home, in my memories of Claire, somewhere, but just slightly out of reach.

Sigh.

So, I met an actual girl last weekend. I've been talking to her for a while, but I have to say we have just about nothing in common. She didn't really impress me in person either, although I sort of found I felt a lingering affection for her as the day wore on. She's a little faux-punk rebel type, an Avril Lavigne reincarnation, a girly tomboy. She's into hockey, and shoots a pellet gun that apparently is an exact replica of a real handgun. I didn't much care, but I played along. There wasn't much of an emotional, intellectual, or even a physical connection between us. She talked about herself a lot. I had basically agreed to meet her hoping for some fun, but it turns out she actually likes me. Oops.

For the time being I am quite happy just being me, in my little apartment, rollerblading to work when the weather's nice, sleeping alone, going out with friends, planning trips, pushing a few boundaries here and there.

But if a little bird were to waltz into my life, well, I wouldn't say no.

-N

muchtoolong update

2007-04-01T12:47:00.000-07:00

I completely forgot to write in here last week. I was having such a hard time holding it all together that blogging kind of fell by the wasteside.

Week 1 of illness was very sad. I detest lying at home, wasting time, feeling horrible and knowing that every day I spend out of work is another day of lost income and lost favour at a new job.

My anxiety got so bad that my mother actually came over to give me sedatives. I eventually got over the fact that they dissolve unpleasantly under your tongue, tasting like old-fashioned blackboard chalk, and the fact that I got the Ramones "I Wanna Be Sedated" in my head every time I took one ("Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go. I wanna be sedated."). But they made me feel horribly groggy and stoned on the bus the next morning, so I stopped taking them. So much for my glamorous lifestyle as a presription-pill-popping debutante. I don't have the blue blood for that lifestyle anyway.

Week 2 of illness felt somewhat more proactive, as I was back at work and actually making money, but my voice would give out in my first class and I would spend the rest of the day speaking like swimming in sand. Most painful, and unpleasant. Thursday, my ten-hour teaching day, was particularly unfun. At least my students were sweet and my employer was understanding.

Friday was strange, since in my third class one of my students asked the inevitable "do you have a boyfriend?" I said no, and this was followed by "but why? You are so beautiful!" Apparently one can dodge a lot of questioning by shrugging and smiling. Friday was a day rife with gay jokes at work. What a quagmire. There must be a way to object without sounding overly PC or well, gay.

I'm still pretty weak heading into Week 3, and even my kitten has more energy than I do. I can sleep for 12 hours and feel like I've scarcely shut my eyes. But enough complaining.

I did take a photo of cherry blossoms for the girl I kinda sorta like, though I had to wait an entire week for the sun to come out enough to facilitate photography. I enlarged it, framed it, wrapped it, wrote her a card, wrapped some fresh cherry blossoms in ribbon on top, and then had to wait until 9:00 the night of her birthday for her to come by and pick it up. She sent me a mysterious email two days later that read: "I know that you must have put a lot of thought and effort into the picture, frame, finding the card, writing the card, and the branch. None of it has been unnoticed."

Whatever that means. Then she invited me to a concert, which I had to decline cause I had plans to go down to the Drive with Em for what she called "chick watching." The girl is hard to read. I'm definitely not hopeful.

Taking one's time has it downsides, though. I met a neat girl at a party in Whistler a few months ago, but waffled about her, thinking she probably wasn't my type. I saw her another couple of times, always at a club, and started to think she was actually really neat. She's an honest-to-god airplane pilot, and spends her days jetting between various cities. She's a neat girl, but I spent too long undecided and now she's seeing someone else. Dang. And here I was thinking the early worm gets eaten by the bird.

My satisfaction with being single is still there for the most part, though now I've started having these strange moments of longing.

I decided the other day that I wanted to make blueberry pancakes for breakfast on the weekend. So I did, and they turned out well. But how sad is eating blueberry pancakes alone? Tres sad. And pancakes are too distinctly breakfast to be made for anyone who hasn't already stayed the night.

So...Jag, when you're in town you're eating my pancakes! I still remember with fondness the ones you made for me in Holland. Lovely.

And then there are these horrid dreams I keep having. The other night I had dreams I was hitting on the most odious and horrible older men, something I like to think I would never do in real life. But in the dream it was inescapably, uncontrollably necessary. Ugh. What the hell is wrong with me?

I sometimes even allow myself to feel sad about the people who have crumpled me up and thrown me away. Hayley is hard to forget because everything in this damn city seems to be named after her. Even the park by my house bears her name. And Claire, well, now I miss something that no longer exists and probably never did. Her dog is fine, by the way. I decided to do the nice thing and send her a text message asking how the little creature was doing. She wrote back two words: "She's good." That was all. No questions about how I was, no elaboration, nothing. It sometimes saddens me that the people I was closest to now don't value me at all.

The other day Maya got bright orange pollen from a tiger lily on top of my fridge all over her forehead. It still hasn't come off, despite scrubbing with a washcloth, which she did not enjoy. Silly yellow-headed feline.

Now she's going to lie in a sunbeam. Cute.

Oh, yes, and at the moment I'm obsessed with the following music:

Louis XIV - Lovely, crazy, indie rock about girls taking their clothes off. Rife with innuendo. My kind of tunes.

Brazilian Girls - Their new album is called Talk to La Bomb, and it's to die for. I particularly like Jique - several languages in one song, but somehow its feeling of hopeless crushing comes across loud and clear.

The Knife - Silent Shout is the weirdest Scandinavian electropop, and I love it.

The Blow - Oh their new album is such a joy. It's more of the same "we just got together and made sounds in our garage because we felt like it" sound, but it's more polished and prettier. Parentheses is the closest this strange "band" gets to a sweet little love song. You can watch the weird video here.

Feist - Her new album is called The Reminder, and of course I hunted down and downloaded an advance copy so I can listen to it before her concert in May. I also hunted down her first solo album which no one (myself included) seems to have heard of. It's called Monarch and it's lovely, though obviously not as catchy as Let It Die. Thank God for Wikipedia.

Buck 65 - He released a puzzling little mixtape online called Strongarm. It's very Buckesque in its insistence on having two twenty-something minute sides like a real tape. It's wacky and weird and sublime and sweet -- very, very Buck.

Interpol - Their newest album is called Antics, and I quite love it.

Mirah - C'mon Miracle is her newest, and it's her usual mellow indie girl rock. Jerusalem is a brilliant and surprising little track that's critical of Israel and brilliant in its copious Biblical references - guess she's not a Zionist after all.

I'm also getting back into Rilo Kiley in a big way. They're such lovely, sad romantics.

Most of this music I've been listening to because some of the bands will be at Sasquatch in Washington State in May. Me and the girl I kinda-sorta-like have tickets. We're camping in her truck. Stay tuned.

Oh, and I'm reading Ivan Coyote's Loose End. I love her stories, especially the ones about East Van. They're strangely related to things I've experienced and places I've been. Her little odes to queerdom are reassuringly close to home.

This is much too long.

But there ya go. A post!

Laters,

N

I'M BLOGGING AGAIN!

2007-03-21T23:50:00.000-07:00

Haha. I wonder why it only feels like people read my blog when I'm not writing in it?

Tres bizarre.

I'm still alive.

That is all.

-N

speechless!

2007-03-20T23:26:00.000-07:00

Kinda like everyone reading this blog today.

Miserable. Three episodes of the L-Word were barely enough to keep me going. And I love those girls.

Hate. Sickness. Horrible. Also. Hate. Doctors.

Particularly hate working for a company that does not offer paid sick days. Staying home is actually costing me a lot of money. God damn. I need a government job. I need a union. Workers of the world unite!

Have to go to the doctor tomorrow so they can tell me exactly what I already know in a note for me to give to my employer.

I hate being a grown-up.

-N

p.s. Maya is most pleased to have my undivided attention all day long. She would like it if I could be sick more often. She's also grateful that I don't feed her poisoned pet food. Claire's dog was not so lucky. Poor creature.

fucking hell, or calling in sick on your second day of work

2007-03-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

Yep, I knew I was getting sick on the weekend, and at my peril I pretty much ignored it.

My first day at my new job was actually fine, except that as the day wore on my voice got thinner and harder to hear, until by the end of the day it was finally gone completely. Now I can't even make a phone call. I'm pretty sure my vocal chords have been pulverized. I called in sick shortly after I left work, but I haven't heard back from the boss. Fuck.

I like my new school. The photocopier is older than I am, the curriculum materials are a bit spotty, and the building is a red brick heritage beauty that threatens to dissolve into fine rust-coloured dust in an earthquake, but...it's got character. My coworkers are funny. None of them are pompous 40-50 something year old men who take over the owner's office and start calling themselves "Dean." One of them is a dapper old gent from London, England, who chatted with me about architecture over sandwiches at lunch. Another is an exuberant young woman who spilled the details of her personal life to me with absolute heterosexual ease after I'd known her scarcely five minutes. And another is an endearing fellow with permanently attached headphones who sets off my gaydar like a five alarm fire. Lovely.

The students are all funny and polite, and the school atmosphere is stunningly relaxed. Our listening class this afternoon consisted of watching Mr. & Mrs. Smith and discussing high-class English idioms like "piss off," "I got lucky," and "hiya, stranger."

The first thing one of my students asked me in class was "Are you single?" Haha. I told him that was the great mystery, and then I did a little dance. No, really.

I'm still waffling about the cherry blossom photograph. I want to do it, but I don't know. Maybe it's overkill romantic for someone I don't even know is interested. Then again, what do I have to lose?

I must to bed.

Make a wish that I'd be able to voice some consonants in the morning,

N

p.s. That photo is entitled "Ass Cat."

cherry blossoms

2007-03-18T22:03:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I request a few minutes of your time. Turn off your televisions, unplug your phones, and switch on that seldom-used little organ -- the imagination.

Pretend you are a 20-something year old girl, very smart, very beautiful, and a tad reserved. You live in your own sandswept little seashell, and few things help you emerge from it. One of your favourite things is nature, and among your favourite things in nature are trees. One day, you and this girl you know who kinda-sorta-likes-you but you probably don't know it yet are shopping in some hellish little mall in the US of A when you spot a beautiful little framed photograph of a single tree on a hillside. But, out of peer pressure from your hard-shopping friends, you decide not to buy it.

Fast forward two months. It is your birthday. Your best friend and sometime lover has just left for her homeland halfway across the Pacific Ocean. You're sad. The girl who kinda-sorta-likes-you not only remembers your special day, but remembers that you like trees. She also remembers that you liked that photo of a tree on a hillside. She also remembers that cherry blossoms are among your favourite things. A cherry blossom is the sort of image you're willing to permanently engrave on your skin. It reminds you of your ancestors, perhaps. It reminds you of serenity.

This girl who kinda-sorta-likes-you spends some time taking photos of the prettiest cherry blossom tree she can find, in full bloom, in the rainiest, most Noah's Arkesque Vancouver springtime. She develops said photo the old-fashioned way, onto paper. She has said photo framed, simply, on a white background. She hopes it will match the Japan-like Zen of your little garden suite.

And she gives it to you on your birthday.

Now tell me friends, would this impress you?

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programming.

-N

This 600th post is way overdue

2007-03-17T17:10:00.000-07:00

Oh yes it is.

Sorry guys and gals for being so negligent about blogging. You see, things happened, and news was made, and then updating became too intimidating, and then I got busy and lazy, et cetera. How tiresome. I'll try to be better in the future.

In doing fairly well these days. For the first time in my life, I'm enjoying being a free agent. I like having my own place, I like spending my own money, and, shockingly, I even rather like being single.

I saw Claire for the first time (not including our strange run-in at the club) since our break-up a few weeks ago. I thought I wanted to see her so we could be friends, get closure, whatever, but when I realised she was actually going to drive out to the city to see me, I panicked. I haven't cried that much in months. I thought about cancelling our meeting, backing out, or making up a story, and I waffled about it for a week. In the end, I went through with it. I was afraid that seeing her would bring everything back and make moving on that much harder. Fortunately, I was wrong.

She arrived almost an hour early, unannounced, with her muddy little dog and a bag of my stuff. Maya did not love the dog, obviously, and I realised for the first time I found the little creature really rather irritating, and certainly much less cute (and less clean!) than my kitten. Strangely enough, I kinda felt similarly about Claire. We had very little to say to each other, and she chastized me for not having enough "city gossip" to tell her. Ugh. She wouldn't leave the apartment to get coffee or dinner, despite the fact that I, like Maya, felt rather eager to have her and the dog out of my territory. Maya's uneasy curiosity about the dog soon turned into an attempt to smack the fluffy little canine enough times to make her leave. I didn't check to see if she had her claws out, but if she had I can't say I would have minded.

Claire struck me as rather shallow and boring, and suffice it to say the magic was gone. Zero chemistry, zero interest, zero good vibes. I kinda wanted her to leave. She finally did leave around 8:00, and had to talk me into getting a ride with her downtown. I actually had no desire to sit in her car or spend another minute with her and the lapdog.

"What on earth happened?" I wondered to myself briefly afterwards. But then I came to my senses and realised it's a wonderful thing that I'm over her, and not a big loss that we probably won't be friends. That'll teach me to turn chemistry into something meaningful.

In other news, I quit my job. They'd jerked me around in that poorly-run place long enough, and on International Women's Day I finally decided I'd had enough of being underestimated and taken advantage of due to the young and female factor. I was offered a new job at another school, which is bigger and has generally more opportunities, and I accepted it.

I thought my boss was going to cry when I told him, but he got over it. When I told my students I was leaving, their reactions surprised me. I thought they'd be a tad disappointed, but it was like all the air went out of the room. Several of them gasped. All of them asked me why, told me they'd miss me, and a few thanked me and said that I'd taught them a lot. It was touching, and I felt a bit guilty. But I also felt like Uma Thurman in a yellow catsuit wielding a samurai sword. It's good to be moving on.

My new job starts Monday, and I'm a tad nervous. New place, new people, new classes, new photocopier. I have my own desk, which is exciting. I get to plan an LPI curriculum (that is Language Proficiency Index, another university admission test), which is neat. I'm making less money but have more hours and I'm keeping my evening job, and after two months I'll be earning more AND have more hours.

Um um um....and I got fantastic emails and letters from both the former Ferncanyonman and Curlz. They were such wonderful words that I put them up on my fridge. I haven't had a chance to respond yet, but if either of you are reading this please know that I appreciated your messages very much!

And oh yes, The Girl. I still rather like that lovely creature I met at Whistler. She's serene and smart and absolutely beautiful. She makes me come unhinged. She's lovely to talk to, brilliant, sensitive, even a tad intimidating. And yet, I hesitate. I'm in no rush. I just want to know her better. And beyond that, well, I enjoy living in a world that is full of possibilities.

Time to cuddle up with Maya and watch Fast Food Nation.

The deluge outside makes me think it's time to board the ark. I shall gather two of every animal, and keep you posted.

A bientot,

N

This is real. This is glam.

2007-02-12T20:51:00.000-08:00

Dance, Dance
This is real, this is glam
This is the real glam electro
When you start to feel
Love is coming around again
-Brazilian Girls - Dance Till the Morning Sun

Brazilian Girls are one of my favourite bands du jour. Most of their songs are these absolutely Europhilic ballads about some combination of love, travel, girls, and marijuana. They sing in four different languages -- French, German, Spanish, and English. Therefore, I love them.

The photos in this post are the result of a Friday night photo shoot with my friend Shaun, a photography/business student and straight guy extraordinaire. If a woman who loves gay men is called a fag hag, what do you call a man who loves lesbians? Either you call him really frustrated, or you call him Shaun. We've been hanging out for a little while now. He takes me out for expensive sushi, the good kind, and we sit at the bar and eat wasabi with our fingers until my head feels like it's going to explode. I get to impress him with my willingness to eat whole little crabs straight out of the deep fryer, prickly little prawns (shells on), sea urchins, squid-and-shiso rolls, hamachi (yellow tail), and sticky soba noodles. Apparently his other pals only eat California rolls. Argh.

I agreed to help the lad with his "glam" photo project, which he told me was a shoot intended to look like the cover of Vogue or Cosmopolitan magazine. I doth protested too much, and he took me on as a challenge. These photos were taken in my bedroom, with zero studio lighting, makeup, stylists, hair fixers, costume people, or anything at all that might help me look high fashion. I didn't lose 30 pounds either. 385 photos later, he told me I was a) not sexy enough, b) not femme enough, c) terrible at pouting, and d) dreadful at posing (all in a rather affectionate way, of course). So...what do you think?

My weekend was a bit of a wild ride. My new pal Lena and I decided to go up to Whistler for Winter Pride, an all-out gayfest of epic proportions, in the middle of February, no less. We drove up on Saturday afternoon and partied with a crew of 14 girls, all sharing the same tiny one-bedroom condo. Needless to say, not a lot of sleep was had. In the middle of the night, two just-about-naked girls, soaking wet from the hot tub, jumped on me and Lena while we were making foolish attempts to sleep on the pull-out couch. They were exuberant like little puppies, and total exhibitionists. One of them had the most ridiculously unnatural tan, the product of her employment at a tanning salon. The colour reminded me almost exactly of a stripper Claire hired to dance for me on my birthday. It was not, in fact, an attractive memory. The whole scene was really more laughable than erotic. Call me a fool but I remain terribly attached to subtlety.

Speaking of which, I kinda sorta met a girl on the weekend. I'm not making anything of it, but she did ask for my phone number and she did send me several very friendly little text messages today. She's a real beauty, this one. Dark and quiet, with stellar taste in music and tattoos all over her back. Hot. I don't know that she likes me, but if nothing else she'll be a new concert buddy, which I desperately need.

Things are holding steady at work, though my morning class is over-enrolled and I won't have enough seats if everyone shows up tomorrow morning. I was at work until 6:00 pm marking all the essays from today. Bla. I have a new evening job, too, at the Vancouver branch of the school I used to work at in Richmond. It's more work, but it's also more money and it's a much more satisfying job than the one downtown. Kids are so much more rewarding. Plus, someone's gotta support my lavish lifestyle. Haha.

I better go cause I still have tons to do tonight.

Hope everyone had a nice weekend.

Cheers,

N

wind it up

2007-02-05T18:09:00.000-08:00

Ah, so sorry it has been such a long time since my last post. So lame.

I've been better, then worse, then slightly better, then slightly crazy, then better, and now I'm somewhere in between.

I still miss the girl. That hasn't gotten any better. I can't seem to shake that feeling that I have every single morning when I wake up and life is good until I realise for the millionth time that she's gone. It continues to rip my heart out, no matter how many friends I see, or new people I meet, or things I do "just for me." I still miss her as much as I did the day she left.

I ran into her last weekend at the club. I managed to suppress my desire to run away or cling to the wall and actually went to talk to her. I played it cool. She was incredibly nice to me in a non-condescending sort of way, and we actually drank tequila and laughed and danced and she got the DJ to play the Ying Yang Twins and I even managed to stomach her theme song sans nausea. When she sat close enough to touch me it was as if no time had passed, no hearts had been broken, no love had been lost. Except afterwards she went home with her friends and I went home with mine, and while she ran half a block back to give me a long hug, it felt positively tragic to see her go.

This week she started sending me strange messages about how I ought to believe her when she says she misses me, and how she wishes I was there with her, and how the whole city reminds her of me. I find this all rather baffling.

Work has been trying lately. My boss tried to fire one of the other teachers and hand his huge workload over to me. I objected, he retreated, and now he's trying to rehire the fired teacher to be our new manager. I find this to be a rather screwed up way to run a business.

Maya continues to be a sweetheart. She retrieves her mice when I throw them down the stairs like a little puppy dog (only she smells better and is more independent than a puppy). Her favourite colour is orange, her favourite food is exceptionally overpriced fresh halibut, and her favourite toy is the Saturday edition of The Vancouver Sun. Her favourite words are "I love you, little one."

As for me, I'm trying to regain the magic in my life. I've started job-hunting again. I see my friends, I watch the L-Word. I dash to my new favourite Japanese izakaya joint on Robson street for pork-prawn-chive gyozas and kimchi rice. I go out for flaming hot Korean food and white-girl-annihilating rice liquor (soju!) with my students. I cuddle my kitten. I go out for pho with my brother and have conversations about whether or not history is progressive in the middle of the night. I drink my almond lattes and admire the orange-pink glow on the office buildings downtown at sunset. I go to Tori's house (remember that cute little gal I met at Pride last year? She and I are neighbours now) for chats by her fireplace with a bunch of girls who all have hair much shorter than mine.

I try to keep it real. I'm still trying to disprove the maxim that nice girls finish last.

But sometimes I think that maybe it couldn't hurt to vixen it up a little. What do I have to lose, after all? And maybe, just maybe, that puzzling little redhead will remember what she's missing out on.

Love to my loyal readers, as always.

-N

wax and wane

2007-01-18T18:48:00.000-08:00

Hello all.

Sorry I haven't been writing this week. My internet connection has been unreliable, and I've been trying to stay busy so I don't drive myself insane.

Maya is still loveable and wonderful, and my apartment is so much more a home with her around. That's her on the right. Isn't she just way too cute for words? She's also super-friendly and loves everyone. Kinda like me.

That said, I still wax and wane. I go from feeling kinda happy to pretty crappy and back again, all the time, and it doesn't thrill me. I'm still not over Claire in the slightest, and I don't feel ready to be her friend, either. The idea of seeing her fills me with something close to stomach-dropping dread.

That and, I'm started to feel like I just don't know who to rely on anymore. I heard through the grapevine that Hayley was cheating on me just about the whole time we were together. I'm absolutely done with her and have been for months, but the knowledge that she would use me and lie to me and deceive me like that still hurts. It makes me want to call her all sorts of unfeminist names and spread around the rumour that she was never any good in bed. But that would be vindictive and horrible, and I'm just not like that.

Then there's the totally bizarre breakup with Claire, which causes me to question whether I can ever believe anything someone who supposedly likes me says or does. I just don't understand how one goes from hot to cold like that. I'm still mystified, and hurt, and plagued by the most ridiculously painful memories of events that at the time were so incredibly wonderful.

And as a result, I wonder. I wonder about the people in my life I shouldn't have to wonder about. I worried when Jon and his girlfriend were late getting to my place the other night when I was making dinner for them. And I especially worried when within five minutes of each other, both the Boy and Cait called to cancel our plans tonight. They both had reasons, of course. But then everyone already does. Tryouts, early ferry, "not ready for a relationship," everything just starts to blend together in my mind until it's all just one and the same.

And then I hear the Boy's guilty voice on the phone saying "I'm sorry, Nome," and my past rushes back to meet me. All those years I wanted him to apologize for so many minor to major infractions, and now I get apologies for no reason at all, the kind that mean nothing, because I'm just the ex. I mean nothing to him. And everyone is moving on.

So...who can I count on?

I know I shouldn't take these things personally. They have nothing to do with me, I'm sure. But maybe that's the problem. Nothing ever has anything to do with me. I feel like no one is ever really truly 100% solid when it comes to being in my life, except my family and a small black-and-white cat.

I just don't know. But it's preventing me from feeling happy again.

At the end of the day, I have so much left to give.

And no one to give it to.

-N

sorry, naysayers

2007-01-11T10:09:00.000-08:00

I did get a kitten.

The little silver guy was gone when I went back to the store, so I went to the SPCA instead.

I like the idea of rescuing a cat, though I'm not keen on the baggage factor. I prefer a relatively clean slate when it comes to people, and to animals. Or at the very least, issues I can "work with." I figure it's better that I admit that fact that get involved in something I can't handle. I don't do people with kids, either. WAY too much responsibility.

But lo and behold, in a little cage in the back corner of the shelter was a very energetic little black and white beauty. She's four months old, still a kitten, and thus relatively undamaged by her short stint as a stray up North, shelter life, and the constant poking of fingers and chattering of strangers around her cage.

The next day I took her home, and naysaying aside, she has really been a joy so far. Taking care of her doesn't feel like a burden so much as a small token of my appreciation for how very lovely she is. She's crazily active and always wants to play and jump and launch herself from the bookshelf to the floor in the hopes that I'll catch her. She loves her fuzzy little mice and the rainbow mouse-on-a-string that my mom bought for her. Yes, I asked if the rainbow was intentional. My mom went "um...naw, I just thought it was pretty." Ha.

I look forward to going home at the end of the day just so I can play with her and have her curl up on my lap with her little kitten face in my arms. She's crazy, but she's an excellent cuddler and a really friendly little thing. She sleeps right by my face, and will stay sleeping until 6:00 am when she inevitably decides it's time to get up and play. I named her Maya, after the character from Sideways.

I know it sounds terribly corny, but I finally feel I have something to devote my energy and love to that doesn't make me really vulnerable to having my heart smashed to pieces. And don't worry, she's an indoor cat. No busy streets for her.

I never thought that Claire would be right, but this little kitty really has brightened up my life. Her advice in my darkest moments is starting to remind me of the Boy's reactions whenever I was feeling sad or hopeless. I came across a list a few months ago that I had tucked away in a drawer at my parents' place. It was written in the Boy's famous childlike scrawl, and it read: "Reasons Nome's Life Does Not Suck," and listed all the things he felt I should be grateful for and appreciate about my life. It included things such as "trip to Mexico," "university education totally paid for," and "gets paid to go to English class." He always proposed solutions, when I often wanted to continue wallowing. And what I perceived as insensitivity at the time I now realise was a genuine desire to help. With the perspective I have now, I realise that sometimes practical advice is better than sympathy, and on some level I should probably be grateful for it.

It helps too that Claire knows me well enough to realise, even when I didn't, that having a cute little animal in my life would make me happier. I think I was just too crushed to imagine that on some level she still cares about me and wants me to be happy. Otherwise, why bother responding to my messages at all? Why not just ignore me?

Anyway, it doesn't matter, because I'm getting on with it.

I stopped listening to The Organ, my favourite post-breakup music of all time, the day that the band broke up. How ironic. I took it as a sign to stop listening to music that, while wonderful in its own way, did make me want to kill myself. I will miss them, though. Who but Steven Smith could nurse me through such heartbreak? Those girls were so beautifully dark. Grr. Guess I'll have to be content with the likes of Sleater-Kinney and Beck's Sea Change.

I'm blogging from work. What a bloody cliche.

Work has actually been better since I started getting my shit together and feeling semi-motivated again. I have a new batch of students who are sharp and for the most part keen to learn, and I've had to scramble to find new materials to keep up the pace. I miss my younger students at my old job, though. I quit because of the commute, but I must say that I wish I could have kept it up. They were really great kids, and it was a really excellent school.

Should get back to the grind.

I'll post some photos of said kitten when Blogger's not being a big jerk.

Hope everyone's having a nice week.

-N

I have found a kitten

2007-01-06T16:55:00.000-08:00

He is little and fuzzy and the most amazing silver colour with black underneath. I'd never seen a silver cat before. It was pretty stunning. I picked him up and he mewed a lot and cuddled and touched my nose with his little wet cat-nose. He's an entirely loveable little creature. He comes with a bag of food, a vet visit, a bunch of shots, and a free neutering (ew).

The question is.....should I get him?

I can't decide. I don't fear people commitments, but I don't know if I'm responsible enough to sustain a helpless little life.

What do you think?

-N

"I wish you wouldn't take things so personally."

2007-01-05T23:59:00.000-08:00

That was the last thing Claire texted me.

This was followed by "try not to be so bitter," and "don't worry yourself into a tizzy."

WTF??

This makes me too angry to speak. Of course I take the fact that I've been erased from your life PERSONALLY! I am a person! I'm not some bloody abstract concept! God DAMMIT! And I am NOT bitter. I'm hurt, and I wish I could hate you but I can't because I still want you and it's tearing me up inside. Worry? How can I worry when it's all over? There's nothing there to worry about, for fuck's sake. It's done! Finished! Fini! Bloody hell!

Fuck. Sorry. I needed to get that off my chest at some point. Rest assured I did not actually text that to her.

Perhaps I should tell you all what happened, sparing the personal details. Claire's last relationship was messed up. It ended badly, and she was crushed, heartbroken, angry, bitter, and really beaten down. And this is a girl who's apparently never been depressed in her life. Two months later, she met me. She knew on some level that she wasn't ready but somehow got swept away in the whole thing, until three months later when she started to freak out about being in a relationship again and sent me the whole break-up speech in text messages while I was on my way to work. It was cowardly, to say the least, and she refused to speak to me to actually clarify what the hell she meant for a full week. I take issue with that, obviously, but her reasons are legitimate. I just wish she would have had the sense of responsibility to not get involved when she knew deep-down that she wasn't ready. I had no idea she was so good at repressing her feelings, but I guess I really didn't know her that well, and that's what's so frustrating.

This feeling of waste, of loss, of missing her, is so palpable I can taste it. I feel it at the bottom of my stomach and it makes me shaky. It runs through me every time I see a girl with red hair, or look at her painting, or have another flashback of a moment with her that was so beautiful that it now makes me feel like I've been poisoned.

Anyway. I just spoke to her on the phone, for the first time in almost a month. Oddly enough I feel slightly better. I feel I told her what I needed to tell her, finally. I didn't sound as angry as I do above. She used the word 'intense,' to describe it, but then that's just me.

I ought to listen to the sage advice of The Postal Service. Am I the only one who thinks their lyrics are brilliant?

Don't you feed me lines about some idealistic future
Your heart won't heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures...
(from Nothing Better)

I also love this bit from Recycled Air:

I watch the patchwork farms' slow fade into the ocean's arms
Calm down, release your cares
The stale taste of recycled air...

Amen to that.

I went out tonight to see my old friend Morgan perform all her bitter Elvis-influenced songs of lost love and good riddance in a little denim skirt and actual black cowboy boots. It also made me feel strangely better.

And on a totally superficial note, the fact that Kaki King (guitar genius extraordinaire) is actually a lesbian in addition to being insanely hot pretty much made my week. So terribly shallow. But I wish this girl-next-door lived right across the street. Oh so cute! Why couldn't I have fallen in love with her in high school?? Grr.

I know I need to just spend more time with friends, get involved, and allow myself to feel free. I am free, and young, and healthy, and goddamn it, my skinny jeans fit perfectly.

Broken heart be damned.

-N

dreams

2007-01-04T19:10:00.000-08:00

Now here you go again
You say you want your freedom
Well who am I to keep you down
Its only right that you should
Play the way you feel it
But listen carefully to the sound
Of your loneliness
Like a heartbeat.. drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering what you had
And what you lost...
And what you had...
And what you lost

Thunder only happens when its raining
Players only love you when they're playing
Say... women... they will come and they will go
When the rain washes you clean...you'll know
-Fleetwood Mac - Dreams

Fleetwood Mac makes me feel ever so slightly better.

[Quick post from parental residence (no longer my home)]

Yesterday someone jumped off the bridge by my parents' apartment building, landing in the rhododendron bushes of our garden. The police car and ambulance parade looked like CSI, only sadder, and without Catherine in her cleavage-exposing work clothes. The unfortunate soul was covered in a white sheet. Several hours later I noticed that someone had left him a pot of red geraniums and several flickering white tea lights. They were all knocked over and extinguished when I went back there today. Casualties of a cold and windy January, like the jumper.

Spent way too long reading Lauren Greenfield's Thin at the bookstore today. I adored Girl Culture, and Thin is equally brilliant, but oh so sad. Maybe reading books about anorexia is an unlikely cure for depression, but it did give me a bit of perspective. At least I have no desire to starve myself.

Please don't think that Claire is mean and cruel. She's not. She just has virtually no experience being depressed, or even temporarily sad. And I can't expect her to empathize with me anymore than I can understand why someone would jump off the bridge into my parents' garden. It's happily beyond her realm of experience, and I envy that.

Apparently she misses me. Or so she texts.

Things will get better. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

A bientot.

-N

a kitten is the solution to all my problems

2007-01-02T20:07:00.000-08:00

Last night I did something embarrassing.

Remember that scene in Sideways where Miles gets drunk with Jack and Stephanie and Maya and ends up calling his ex from a phone booth at a restaurant, sounding all depressed because she's gotten remarried and he's still knocking back anti-depressants and stealing money from his mother? And then when he comes back to the table Jack asks him "Did you drink and dial?"

Well, even if that's not just about your favourite movie ever like it is for me, perhaps you're still familiar with the concept.

I wasn't drunk. I wasn't high. I was sleepless in Vancouver, depressed and totally awake from a lukewarm half-cup of Chinese tea. And there was no dialing involved.

Instead I texted Claire, sadly, and gave her a small fraction of my misery to sleep to. Her response? "Go to the spa. Go on vacation. Get a kitten." At some point I said "I realise this really isn't your problem..." and then I realised-- of course it's her fucking problem. She's the one who broke my heart into a zillion pieces and never looked back, except to tell me to seek companionship in a helpless allergenic little creature. "How can you be so bloody unaffected??" I wanted to yell, but didn't. "How can you tell me you care when losing me is nothing to you??" "How can you be so cold?" I wanted to ask her.

Oh, but I didn't. Don't worry. I saved a little dignity and hung it out to dry.

I still remember the first words she ever said to me: "So...why is your attraction to redheads a fatal one?"

She was my answer. Her and her beautiful, fatal little body, her paintings, her laughter, every sparkling, gorgeous moment now filled with such exquisite poison. Yeah, I know I'm being dramatic. But these memories hurt like nothing else.

I finally drifted off around 4:00 am for three hours of fitful sleep before work. Oh what a night.

On a happier note, CPI sent me an email. I never expected a response to my brief little note praising her mix's ability to get me through a fair bit o' misery without resorting to heroin or cheap merlot. She wrote: "I'm happy the mix was useful for you. I always love it when a mix can serve a purpose in someone's life. Life always needs a good soundtrack...Your profile is wonderful. I'm glad to know there are people like you in the world." People like me. Aw. Now if only I could get it together to be me again and not this sad-zombie-subsitute.

New Year's Eve was nice. I managed to finally put myself in a partying mood, downed several cocktails, a healthy amount of Soho lichee liqueur, and even a bit of champagne. Had a nice conversation with my ancient friend J, which was great despite my feeling very buzzed. It was lovely to be with Cait and her (my?) friends on the island. It's nice to be surrounded by people, even when I'm a million miles away and struggling to hang on, be polite, for god's sake try to make a joke, be funny, and surely you have SOMETHING to say about climate change, don't you? Do you see now why I relate to Miles? Cait's pals are disarming in their intelligence and activism. I sometimes feel like something of a troglodyte in comparison. I know so little, and irregular verbs seem pretty unimportant next to the fate of the world.

I've lost 7 pounds in three weeks. Everyone keeps asking me how I did it. I call it the Misery Diet. Despair + soda crackers + cereal for breakfast = instant skinny. Ugh.

Going to cut this short before I get anymore morose.

Grr.

Hey you. Come sleep on my couch. Keep me company.

I do need a cat.

-N

Once upon a time I used to post every day...

2006-12-30T14:55:00.000-08:00

perhaps there are a few old habits worth getting back into.

I told my friend Mary yesterday that I felt like escaping from my life, taking off to LA for a couple of weeks, or to Montreal, or England, or Holland, or New York. Anyplace but here, anyplace where I have real friends who will be there for me when I need them. A change of scenery, if you will.

Her response?

"Well, there's always drugs."

I stared at her, open-mouthed. "This is your sage advice??" I asked. "No," she answered, "but wanting to escape is a reason people take drugs."

"Sure," I said, "but I have no plans to start shooting heroin anytime soon."

That doesn't mean I don't occasionally have these sorts of crazy ideas when I'm feeling particularly low. Go figure. Everyone else thinks of self-help books, meditation, cooking classes, and exercise. I think of heroin, briefly. Then I remember the dead baby crawling across the ceiling in Trainspotting, and the dirty expanse of the hallways of the Dominion Hotel (yes, I've stayed there. It's a long story you probably don't want to hear), and I reconsider. Chemicals were never really my style. Even pot is something I rarely do alone. But boy would it be nice to escape somewhere, anywhere, for a while. Of course now that I have all the trappings of an adult life -- an apartment, a job, even a bloody hydro bill, I am really and truly tied down. I'd rather be tied down by a person. But I suppose that's why they call them trappings -- they trap you.

Anyway, on to lighter topics.

My new musical obsessions:

The Sounds -- Awesome, underrated Swedish New Wave band. They make me feel better when just about nothing else can.

CPI - A most excellent, somewhat alternative DJ called Caitlyn from Ottawa. Her mixes are to die for. I love Rock Out With Your Cock Out (haha) and the Venus Envy Mixtape. Yeah, the punning is there for a reason, but it doesn't really matter because her mixes are sublime. You can find them all at Theta States.

K-Os -- His new album is Atlantis: Hymns for Disco, and I love it. It's his usual hip-hop, rock, dance, critics-be-damned fusion, plus he does a duet with Buck 65. Lovely.

Gwen Stefani -- Her new album, The Sweet Escape, is even crazier and more gratuitous than the last, and so of course I love it.

There's more of course, as usual, but I'd better get going.

Happy New Year, everyone.

-N

serenity of sorts

2006-12-29T17:39:00.000-08:00

Take my love.
Take my land.
Take me where I cannot stand.
I don't care,
I'm still free.
You can't take the sky from me.
-Sonny Rhodes -- Firefly

I suppose I like the stubbornness in those lyrics from the theme music of everyone's favourite dead-in-the-water sci-fi series, Firefly.

This morning was the first morning in almost three weeks where I woke up feeling less than absolutely shitty.

I still thought of Claire in the dark of my bathroom, the early morning sun streaming through the window. Somehow staring at those black and white tiles, endlessly repeating, always seems to make me even more sad. But then, everything makes me more sad. A single glass of wine, even the nice pinot noir my brother got for his birthday, is enough to send me into a tailspin of epic proportions. An episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm with Larry David being an asshole at his father's nursing home somehow reminds me of Claire and her fondness for pink Bingo dabbers and cafeteria nanaimo bars between games. Fucking BINGO! Stupid? Yes. Suburban? Oh yeah. Small-town kitsch to the extreme? Somehow still loveable? Curse my broken heart, yes.

I woke up early this morning despite not having to go to work and took a bus for an hour and a half out to a beautiful windswept park by the ocean, to go for a walk with a friend from bookclub and her dog. Let's call her Mary (my friend, not the dog). She's 28 years my senior, drives a truck for the post office, never went to university, and describes herself as an introvert. And yet somehow we seem to have loads in common. She gets me, and this is a rare and valuable thing.

It was a lovely walk. It was sunny at first, but only around the horizon, which continued to glow pink and orange all morning. Huge flocks of cormorants dotted the bay, and the little feathered creatures seemed to move in flawless unison. Mary's dog chased her ball all over the park, and we hiked and talked and stopped for coffee at the upscale coffee shop nearby. It was the first time in ages I felt something close to serene.

The last few weeks have been extraordinarily rough for me. I didn't really expect to be so physically affected by the distress of losing Claire, but for the first week my stomach was in knots all day and I could scarcely bear to put anything into my system but tea and crackers. The second week was better only in that my stomach was slightly better, but everything still tasted like dust and my days were punctuated by brief periods of distraction followed by overwhelming despair. This week I got quiet, which I know is a sign I'm depressed. Nothing I wanted to say seemed worth the energy of saying. I was tired all the time, and strep throat hit me like a ton of bricks. There's nothing quite like the misery of sadness and sickness combined.

Part of the reason this has torn me to pieces is probably the simple fact that while I never would have said anything after three months of knowing her, I could see a future with Claire, in a way that I've never seen a future with anyone before. Hayley was fun for a while, but I knew she wasn't forever. The Boy was lovely and a big part of my world, but I knew at the heart of it that we were too fundamentally different to last.

But Claire...

Well, she had potential. She was smart and sweet and funny and beautiful. She lit up my world and made me feel like I could be satisfied with the simplest things in life. She was special to me. And now that she's gone it has been a struggle to continue getting up and going on.

But I'm doing it, slowly but surely.

More later.

Thanks to anyone who's still reading.

-N

sorry

2006-12-22T11:44:00.000-08:00

So sorry I haven't written in ages.

It has been a rough couple of weeks for me, and I've found it difficult to write anything down, either on paper or on this blog.

At the moment I have:

1) strep throat, courtesy of my brother, who never sleeps and fails to keep his germs to himself.

2) a new apartment, which is both fantastic and fantastically devoid of other human beings. It's white, clean, cozy, pretty, and at the moment it's lonely as all hell, even if I can eat crackers over the sink and buy chocolate milk if I damn well please.

3) a spectacularly failed relationship with Claire, who I absolutely adored. It wasn't my fault, no one cheated, neither of us hate each other, and yes, it's a long story. It is definitely over, and I am absolutely shattered.

4) a job I am desperately trying to hold onto, for the sake of myself and my students, but which sucks away all my energy now that I am both deeply sad and deeply bored by my life. How did this happen? It's a question I am constantly asking myself.

5) the kind of exhaustion I didn't think was possible on 6-8 hours of sleep a night. Getting through the days is a spectacular challenge, and if it weren't for winter vacation I don't know how I would manage it.

6) really, really bad dreams. Example: Claire and I are in someone else's house, having sex in the morning with the sun streaming in through the windows. I'm aware that it's over between us, but for some reason this hasn't stopped me, and the experience is strange but also kind of nice. Afterwards she says "wow, that was great. I haven't done that in two days." Seeing as I haven't seen her in two weeks, I reply "uh...who were you fucking two days ago?" She replies "oh, there was this guy." "What?" I answer, stunned. This is not a girl who does casual sex, or boys for that matter. She walks away, totally unaffected, not answering my question, and someone else in the house proposes we go get some Frappuccinos. It is suddenly summer, and I wonder where on earth the winter has gone. Claire continues to ignore me while I slip on underwear, feeling somehow strangely violated. Then I wake up.

7) The spectacular determination to make Christmas a happy event this year, even though I feel decidedly unjoyful.

I'm sorry this is a depressing post. I've avoided writing in here because I didn't want this blog to become Lonesometown, where the streets are filled with regret, even if it is a fantastic song from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. Having my heart broken twice in less than six months has made me want to spare everyone else my pain. I wouldn't wish this on anyone, and least of all upon you, my lovely and loyal readers.

So, I'm sorry.

Thanks for listening.

-N

Le 23ieme

2006-11-06T22:45:00.000-08:00

Hello all.

First and foremost -- how do you like my new look?

Kudos should be directed at my lovely pal Charlie, who did my layout in his spare time out of the goodness of his heart, and because I won a trifling little trivia contest on his site.

The day before I was to turn 23, I went to the liquor store to buy a bottle of cheap wine (Naked Grape!) and got IDed. Since my wallet was in the car, this necessitated a dodgy sprint through the boonies parking lot, including a colourful run-in with a dude who closely resembled the skin-sewing serial killer from Silence of the Lambs, and his cracked-out girlfriend who reeked of whiskey and looked like she hadn't been in out of the rain in at least a week. Go figure. Almost mid-twenties but don't look a day over 15. Hafuckingha.

That said, I had a lovely birthday yesterday. I woke up with Claire, who laced her fingers through mine and whispered happy birthday ever-so-sweetly in my ear before the puppy dog in all her strawberry blonde glory jumped on my head with her version of a birthday greeting. Claire made me French toast, which she couldn't possibly have known is one of my favourite things, and gave me my present -- see above. It's a Claire Original -- an acrylic painting based on a photo she took of me last weekend. You can even see the city skyline in the background. So what do you think? Can you see the resemblance?

It made me feel incredibly lucky to know she had created a piece of art especially for me. I was pretty thrilled. I think it's a rather accomplished little effort, but I'm biased.

I took the bus home, which was a pleasant ride for once -- two hours spent winding through the misty West Coast fall during the quiet, gray eye of our current three-day November monsoon. It's an ancient tradition dating back to my birth that it rain every November 5th. It has every year (as far as I can remember) since I arrived on Earth. I'm pretty much done complaining.

I spent a few hours apartment hunting with the Bro (I'm hoping to move out in December, and I needed him as my chauffer and economic consultant -- had to milk the b-day for all it was worth!). I found a sweet place in a great neighbourhood for a decent price, but there was lots of competition and I'm pretty sure I didn't make the cut. Back to the drawing board on that one.

I had a quiet dinner with just the family, since my mom's still recovering from surgery and couldn't handle a big party, but it was lovely and it made me feel very lucky to have such wonderful people in my life. I had to work on my lesson plans until 2:00 am, but them's the breaks, I suppose.

Now I'm swamped with all this work that Job #2 Employer failed to mention, namely report cards and administrating level exams. I had no idea I would have to do this stuff, and she gave me absolutely no notice. Thanks a million. Definitely quitting that job come December.

On the plus side, my job downtown continues to be wonderful. My students today chirped "Thank you _______! (Korean mispronounciation of my name)" and grinned at me after class today, and I was positively thrilled. They're all such sweethearts.

I've been rocking out to the new Beck cd, The Information, which is a sublime middle ground between the sad, sweet stylings of Sea Change and the hip beats of Guero. I'm pretty much addicted. I also got PJ Harvey's new recording, The Peel Sessions, which is mostly live offerings, but in typical PJ fashion they're all of exquisite quality and range. And I'm just getting into Emily Haine's new solo album, which doesn't rock like Metric but does expose a sort of lonely jazzy sound that I suspected the lovely Emily always possessed but I never got to hear because Metric was always so loud. I'm certainly looking forward to going to her concert and watching her slink around on stage, since she does it so beautifully.

I'd better get to bed....

Hope all's well with everyone. Thank you all for your sweet birthday wishes.

Tell me what you think of my new look -- and my new work of art!

-N

To be to be, almost 23

2006-11-02T23:11:00.000-08:00

It has been another whirlwind week for me.

Spent a lovely weekend with Miss Claire, who lay curled around me like a comma in my bed through Sunday night and into Monday morning, which dawned so cold and bright that I felt just a single breath away from utterly unable to get out of bed. Blame it on that perfect body of hers, but she was impossibly warm and sweet and it was oh-so-hard to crawl out of bed and away from her. Claire's on vacation this week, I'm not. She drove me to work, kissed me and sent shivers down my spine, then went back to the boonies for the evening.

In a delightful turn-of-events, she came back to town on Tuesday for Halloween. She picked me up from Job Numero Dos out in suburbia (which was a very sweet thing for her to do since the girl has no sense of direction and it was a crazily busy night chock-full of traffic, trick-or-treating kids, and fireworks exploding all along the highway back to town). We actually got a hotel room downtown for the night, so we could party and get crazy until the wee hours of the morning without disturbing anyone. And we did just that.

Claire dressed up as a cop (see above). She was the sexiest police officer I'd ever seen, in tiny little shorts and a shirt mostly unbuttoned, with actual handcuffs, a little gun, a badge, and fake bullets. She was hot beyond belief, and in the two blocks it took us to walk to the club no less than four guys put their hands out oh-so-obediently so she could handcuff them. She did not oblige. The cop action was reserved for yours truly.

I went as Cleopatra, in clothes I borrowed from my mom's best friend, who is an artiste and total fashionista. Somehow that little yellow Betsy Johnson dress worked wonders, despite its not having been designed in any period even remotely close to Ancient Egypt. I was going for fashion over historical accuracy for once in my life. I did have a golden asp, snake earrings, and crazy eye makeup courtesy of Claire.

We couldn't get into the club since the lineup was more than two and a half hours long and after an hour standing in it Claire was shivering like a little bunny rabbit, so we went to the pub next door and got drunk with a gay guy wearing only a Starbucks apron and a tiny pair of briefs (he was adorable and he reminded me ever so slightly of the Queer Chef), a girl dressed as a cable guy, and a dude dressed as a caribou (only in Canada!). When the place closed we headed for the local strip club Claire loves. There were no strippers actually stripping, just a bad electronic rock band and lots of hilarious guys who got a real kick out of two drunk girls acting crazy and playing very unskilled billiards. Considering it was a strip club, the creep factor was surprisingly low. I've been there before, and most guys keep to themselves. Frankly, I've seen creepier guys on the Skytrain. Many of them are polite to a T and undress you with their eyes only.

We went back to the hotel around 1:00, and I didn't go to sleep until sometime past 3:00. I had to get up for work at 8:00, but somehow felt pretty bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and not in the slightest hungover the next morning. It must be the Clairemagic.

Claire had breakfast with me at the cafe around the corner from my school. Several of my students passed by and said hi to me, and more than one of them teased me about her later on. "Hey, is that your sister?" a couple of them asked. I just laughed, answered "Uh, no. Does she look like my sister??" One of them went further than that. The guy's a real smoothie, and always tells me I look good in the mornings. I think he's a sweetheart, actually. He said "ooohhh _________! (cute Korean mispronounciation of my first name). Who is dat beeeoootiful guhl in da cah?" I said that her name was Claire. He couldn't pronounce it, since such a name doesn't exist in Korean, so I spelled it out on the board: C-L-A-I-R-E. "Claire," I said. "that's Claire."

And that was it. I cannot tell a lie, but I wasn't thrilled by the idea of outing myself to my students either. I sometimes envy the other teachers and their ease of disclosure. One of them told me a few weeks ago that she had gotten engaged to her squeaky-clean Christian boyfriend over the weekend, and I gave her my appropriate and genuine congratulations, but secretly I felt just a teensy tiny little bit irritated. She didn't have to think about telling me. She just said it, as casually as "pass the dictionary," or "see you tomorrow." Grr. I can't tell my students that Claire's my girlfriend without making the whole thing into a big flaming political deal, and that's the last thing I want. So I keep my personal life private and my answers short and coy.

Must get to bed. Work tomorrow, then Claire for le weekend, then my birthday on Sunday.

Oh dear, I am to be 23 years old on November 5th. Can you believe it? I doubt I'll be getting away with this jail bait illusion for much longer. Haha.

Oh, and for those of you asked, yes, I did update my wish list on the sidebar. Amazon.ca is for shit, but there it is.

Hope everyone's having a lovely week,

N

Le Stressss...

2006-10-28T11:58:00.000-07:00

It has been a pretty stressful couple of weeks for me.

Last Thursday night my oh-so-clever little brother decided it would be a good idea to go biking on a city street at 3:00 in the morning with no helmet, no bike light, and no reflective clothing. Having worked like a dog (an inedible one) all week, I failed to pick up my cell phone when he called me at 3:30 to inform me that he had been hit by a car.

I did finally wake up around 7:30, shortly before the lad wandered through our front door on the way home from emergency, with his elbow in a sling and blood all over his head from a gash that required four stitches to seal in his limited brain matter. Ugh.

I had to go to work, of course, and had no time to process my feelings on the matter. I cried in the shower, for my little brother we had come so close to losing. The ER doctor told him that had he landed at a slightly different angle on his unprotected head we would have spent Friday morning in the morgue. Thanks, pal, for that oh-so-compassionate little bit-o-bedside-manner.

All day I struggled to hold it together. I kept imagining the first time I met my brother. I was a tiny, curious four-year-old with long dark hair and some rather outspoken opinions (already!). The hospital room was cozy and warm and my brother was so small I could scarcely believe it. There is a photo of me reaching out to touch his little nose, and that moment played itself over and over in my mind all day.

He'll be fine, but he sure as hell scared me.

This week my mom had to go in for surgery, which we knew was coming -- it had been scheduled in advance. But still, when she went to the hospital on Thursday morning I worried myself sick. I couldn't stand the thought of anything happening to her. I don't know that I will ever be ready to lose her, but I'm certainly not ready now. I called her from the bus stop and wished her well, but my voice was shaking. I was absolutely terrified, sad enough to start sobbing in the bathroom at work, and ridiculously scared and worried.

My coworkers and students seemed to sense my mood, although I hadn't told them anything about my mom and I didn't do anything in front of them to indicate that I was upset. One of the other teachers told me jokes all day, and my Boss started dancing in the hallwalls for my entertainment. Try to imagine a very sensible little Korean fellow doing a jig in the hallway simply to make me laugh. It worked. It was hysterically funny.

My mom came out of surgery fine and I went to visit her for several hours yesterday. She still hasn't lost her sense of humour. I ran into her in the hall on the way back from the gift shop and was stunned that she was already walking around. She pointed to her IV stand and said "I decided to take Pope John Pole here for a walk." Haha. I am STILL laughing about that!

I read her celebrity gossip and then some of the juicier and gorier bits from the Bible. I don't read the Bible, EVER, and I am much more chagrined to be carrying it around than some racy Savage
Love column about anal sex, but there was a copy lying in the waiting room and frankly, the Book of Job is to die for. What an excellent story. I'll have to finish it this afternoon. It's like a giant pissing contest between Satan and God, and I hadn't even known that those two were on speaking terms.

My ignorance of the Bible is pretty much unrivalled, but really, what am I to do? I work with a bunch of Korean Christians who are so religious that they spend several minutes praying over their Tupperware before devouring the contents every day at lunch, and the number of times I get the urge to shock them with strap-on stories is really pretty remarkable. I say nothing, of course, because tolerance only works one way, and I don't expect them to understand anything at all about my life.

I'm still very much enjoying my time with Claire. Last weekend we went on a little roadtrip up north to see her parents' new house in the country, then got wickedly stoned and drunk and went to a bar and made out on the pool table. I would have done a helleva lot more on that pool table if it weren't for the whole public place factor. She kinda makes me look at boys in a whole new way. Their appeal is definitely fading since I realised just how much fun we have together all on our own.

She's coming to town tonight and we have several parties and shows to go to this weekend. I'm hoping to finally relax after a stressful two weeks of working five days a week from 9:30 am to 8:00 pm and driving myself crazy with worrying.

She always seems to make me feel better, that girl. She makes me laugh and makes me feel incredible, and I couldn't ask for anything more.

Sorry that my presence around here has been so sporadic. I barely have time to eat and sleep, and sadly blogging has had to be moved way down in my imaginary list of priorities.

I miss you all!

-N

Love, and Eating Dogs

2006-10-17T23:19:00.000-07:00

Hello all.

Well, my life continues to be as crazily busy as ever, but I'm still pretty much loving it. My biggest problem at the moment is that I'm not getting enough sleep. 4-5 hours of sleep has become a typical night for me, and it's starting to wear me down like those stubby little erasers on my students' pencils.

Fortunately every weekend I get recharged by this beautiful little whirlwind of a human being. Claire continues to impress me in just about every possible way. She's sweet and caring when I'm stressed out, understanding when I'm tired, hilarious when I need something to laugh about, and brilliant in the most unimpeded, sensible, and downright adorable way. Her little aphorisms are really quite beautiful. We were having a discussion about homophobia the other day, and she said to me: "what people don't understand is that gay is just love. That's all." What a delightfully simple and profound way to put it. She teaches me that sometimes the simplest answers really are the best ones.

Last week I had to work on Saturday, which was my sixth day straight of working from morning till night, so Claire drove all the way from Hickland to pick me up. She had to work on Sunday but she called in sick so we could hole up in her apartment, make breakfast, leaf through her artwork, smoke a joint, laugh a lot, play with her dog, make out on the carpet, and simply enjoy each other's company. She never skips work, so the fact that she did it for me without my even so much as hinting that I wanted her to made me feel very special indeed.

I told her that my brother was obsessed with the Elton John song Benny and the Jets and she told me she had done a print based on it which was lying somewhere in the giant room full of her art. We spent nearly an hour sifting through her drawings, paintings, and charcoal sketches to find the print, which she gave to me so I could pass it along to the bro. It was most sweet of her. There's a picture of it to your right, surrounded by my brother's French homework.

I was teaching my students the word "taboo" in class today, and I asked them for examples of taboos in both Canadian and Korean culture. The first Korean example one of my students came up was "same-sex marriage," followed closely by "same-sex relationships," which he described as "impossible." It was hard to stifle my feelings on the subject, but I succeeded admirably in issuing a non-commital "interesting. Well, in Canada same-sex marriage is the law, but it's still a controversial subject." (gotta love my growing ability to fake neutrality).

This was followed by the Canadian example of "eating dog."
"Hmmm," I replied. "That's an excellent example. Eating dog is definitely taboo in Canada." Then I paused.
"Wait, you mean....you really do eat dogs in Korea?"
I had figured this kind of thing was the stuff of rumour and stereotype, or at the very least the sort of food they might feed only to the very poor. But maybe not.
"Yes," my student answered. "Dog is my favourite food."

Wow. Remind me never to move to Korea. I couldn't help but cringe at the idea of Claire's sweet little strawberry blond mutt lying on a plate next to kimchee and rice in some little village outside Seoul. Ugh.

Time for bed.

Hope all's well with you all. Sorry I have been so absent in Blogland lately. I'll make a reappearance as soon as I get the chance.

Goodnight!

-N

25 Peeps

2006-10-13T00:46:00.000-07:00

Sweet! I'm on 25 Peeps today. Go click my link here and help me win this silly popularity contest. Cause the silly ones are always the most fun.

Things are still going well in my end of the woods, except that I've been working for two days straight with almost no breaks. I even mark papers on the bus, and it's starting to wear me down. I can't wait to see Claire on the weekend and just relax. I have a lot of exhaling to do.

One of my students came up behind me today while I was sending Claire a rather naughty text message in the hallway at school. He asked "Your boyfriend?" I just laughed. "Uh, not exactly," I told him, and smirked long and hard about it.

Love that photo to your right. 36-24-to-tha-36, avec pink bra and no undies. Whew. For some reason this makes me feel damn lucky indeed.

Time for bed,

N

Shake it Like a Salt Shaker

2006-10-10T21:17:00.000-07:00

Shawty crunk, on the floe wide open
Skeet so much they call her Billy Ocean
Roll, like a eighteen wheela
That ho fine, but this ho a killa
She leakin, she soakin wet
She leakin, soakin wet
Shake it like a salt shaker!!
-The Ying Yang Twins - Salt Shaker

Hey y'all [insert oh-so-classy cowgirl accent here].

Tres tres tres sorry I haven't been writing lately. I will try to do better. I'm trying to plan my life so that I have a little bit of time for everything, but I'd challenge any of you to plan your life neatly around my two crazy jobs and the red haired, sexy little tornado who just waltzed into my life. The above lyrics are from her favourite song, by the way.

So....I am an English teacher. An English as a Second Language teacher, in fact. I spend my days teaching teenagers and adults how to spell and define words like 'voracious,' 'variability,' 'discernible,' and 'vociferous.' But I can't get through a Ying Yang Twins album without the help of both Claire and Urbandictionary.com. That thing has practically become my Bible. Haha. If you want a translation of those lyrics, well, at this point I'm your girl. But it took me an age. This just goes to show that booksmarts aren't everything, and that's a lesson I could stand to learn a gazillion times over.

It's insane how fun and in some ways really complex all this gangsta rap stuff is. It's full of sophisticated and at times hilarious lingo, sometimes some puzzling metaphors, and often very incendiary political content. Those who say it's all just misogynistic, macho, male-centered, moronic posturing have obviously never met the likes of Claire. This tiny sweet little lesbian is so into this crazy, sexed-up, bass-thumping music that she's installed a giant sub-woofer in her car and every single room of her condo. Every surface vibrates when it's on, and it's always on loud. I've been to plenty of rock concerts in my time, but the sound makes even my eardrums vibrate with dangerous intensity. And you'd better believe she dances to the stuff in her little Honda Civic -- there's a line in a Ying Yang Twins' song called Slow Motion about a girl having measurements "36, 24 to the 36." I finally got it and asked "hey....are those your measurements?" She blushed and said "well yeah, but I yo-yo." Haha. Oh that girl has a body to die for.

Feminism, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

So....updates:

1) Things are going beautifully with Claire, in case you hadn't picked up on that already. There's never a dull moment with her. But more to the point, the more time I spend with her the more she makes me feel truly happy and lucky as all hell. She's sweet and funny and yes, she's a minx in bed. But shhhh....I can't possibly kiss and tell!

2) Work is going wonderfully as well. My Boss at the school downtown discovered I was doing ridiculous amounts of work at home and so he decided to give me a bonus -- in my first week of work. Score! More importantly, my students are a joy to teach. The adults I teach downtown are funny and sweet and dedicated people. I love hanging out with them in the lunch room just for the pure fun of it. They're always willing to chat, they tell me about their lives, and I find out more interesting things about them every day we work together.

3) My new class in Richmond is with four 14-17 year old boys, who are some of the kindest, brightest, and most motivated teenaged boys I have ever met in my life. We're reading Elie Wiesel's Night for our novel study, which is a Holocaust memoir and not a light read by any means, but they're all reading through it dilligently and studying the vocab like eager little bunny rabbits. I adore that class.

4) My other 13-year-old student, who I teach on Saturdays, apparently (according to my boss, anyway) went home after his first class and told his mom (who does not speak English) that he really liked me and wanted me to keep being his teacher. In fact, his mother has insisted that her son NOT be taught by anyone else. Aw. So now my boss is juggling the schedules around so that I don't have to teach on Saturdays anymore, since this boy's mother is enthusiastic enough about my teaching to bring him to the school twice during the week instead of on the weekends so it suits me better. I've been put in charge of selecting ALL the school's novel sets this week (gotta make sure they pay me for this!), so doubtlessly I will be down at the bookstore sifting through teen fiction galore for at least one evening. Somehow getting to buy books at the store but not have to work there EVER AGAIN feels like the best of both worlds to me.

5) My Thanksgiving (yes, my American compadres, CANADIAN Thanksgiving) was lovely, though busy. I spent two glorious days with Claire at my aunt's place where I was housesitting, then at my place, then at her place in the boonies. I successfully missed the ferry on Sunday morning (neither she nor I is very good at navigating on the highway) but I still made it to the island after a long and circuitous ferry ride through Victoria. I had a nice dinner with the family and then a short visit before heading back to the city for work. It was probably the first weekend in my life that I didn't dread the thought of going back to work. I truly enjoy my job, and that to me is a beautiful thing.

Claire took the photo above. It represents the first time in my life I have ever liked my cheeks in a photo. Haha. I KNEW there had to be an advantage to having ridiculously overcute baby cheeks at some point in my life, and now I've found it. It lies in the heart of a spunky little redhead who tells me I'm beautiful. It is sadly rare that people I really care about actually direct those words at me, so this is refreshing.

Oh, and there's Claire's little dog on her ultra-gay rainbow leash. She says her brother takes the dog for walks and is completely oblivious to the significance of the gay pride rainbow. Haha. Go figure. The other photo is of me cooking in Claire's kitchen, a rare and therefore photographable event. I think I look rather stunned, mainly by the idea of being photographed while cooking, a totally unremarkable event in my household.

I have so sooooo many lesson plans to do, so I must get going.

I'm grooving to The Beastie Boys' Ill Communication right now, which is one of my favourite albums of ALL time. It reminds me of chilling out in the forests of rural Quebec, aged 11, while hopelessly crushing on my brother's teacher, being eaten alive by black flies who took little chunks out of my still-babyish skin, and feeling hard-core singing along to lyrics involving the word 'fuck' in all its permutations.

So While You Sit Back and Wonder Why
I Got This Fucking Thorn In My Side
Oh My, It's A Mirage
I'm Tellin' Y'all It's Sabotage!!!
-from Sabotage

We used to scream "I'm telling y'all it's SABOTAGE!!" to the trees at the top of our little 11-year-old lungs, with dirt in our hair and guilty little smiles on our rebel rebel faces.

Those were the days.

But then again, THESE are the days too. Things are going well for me, and I am quite simply grateful for all of it.

I hope everything is well with you all. Thanks if you're still stopping by - keep it up because I will be updating more. Scout's honour!!

Love,

N

sooooooo busy!!

2006-10-04T23:16:00.000-07:00

So sorry that I haven't been writing!

I've been insanely busy with my two new jobs which keep me working from 9:30 am until 11:00 pm and sometimes even later.

Planning lessons + teaching + marking + commuting to Richmond = very tired and overworked Nome.

The good news is that I absolutely love teaching and my students are all a complete joy to work with, so I'm enjoying it. It is by far the most rewarding and interesting job I've ever had, and I really do get warm and fuzzy feelings from helping people learn. It just leaves me with very little time to do anything else at the moment, other than sneak in a quick 24 hours to see Claire, which has to happen before we both go insane from loads of naughty text messages and no real-life action.

Sadly I have to leave you with that lightning-quick update and another funny photo from the Bible Belt.

I'll write again as soon as I can.

Hope you're all having a nice week,

-N

Happiness is an Empty Glass...

2006-10-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

Greetings everyone.

Well, it has been a somewhat stressful but altogether very exciting weekend.

My first couple of days on the island were relaxing, although when my mom and I went on a long walk to the beach I did manage to pull something of a Steve Irwinesque maneuver, which fortunately I'm still around to write about. I was trying to take a picture of a gigantic star-shaped maroon and transluscent jellyfish that had washed up on the shore, when I tripped over a slippery log and BAM! I hit the sand so hard that it left an impressive scrape and a gory bruise on my leg and screwed up my arm in a three-advil-a-day kind of way for the rest of the weekend. What a klutz. Give me an award.

The actual benefit party went off without a hitch after two rather panicked days spent cooking immaculate little hors d'oevres and concocting signature drinks for my bar. I ended up with two cocktails, both based on animals Glavin describes in Waiting for the Macaws. The first, a crantini-like elixir made from cranberry juice, vodka, triple sec, and a splash of lime, and garnished with two fresh cranberries and a sugar rim, I called The Scarlet Macaw. The other, a modified version of some poncy-as-hell cocktail I found in a magazine, I called The Black Dragon, and it was a mixture of our own grape juice made from the garden's prodigious grape harvest this year, infused with classic Absolut, and topped with champagne, with a crazy infused sugar rim made from toasted orange peels, cinnamon, and real vanilla beans. I didn't actually even try the thing until my ancient childhood friend (adorable redhead with a brand-new pixie cut - I've known her since we were 8) gave me a sip of hers. It tasted like Christmas with a significant hit of piles and piles of crisp autumn leaves. The grape was an interesting flavour too. If any of you are ever in the same city as me, I'll make you one on the proverbial house.

It was sweet seeing my old friend again. She has been in Australia, of all places, and I've missed her terribly. For the purposes of this blog let's call her Jess.

It was neat to hear Glavin speak as well, and even neater to have him drive me back up the island so we could discuss the magical creatures of the earth for a half hour in the car. He and my parents spent the whole night reminiscing about their shared youth, while I tucked myself into bed with some naughty text messages from Claire.

The girl sent me alternately sweet and sexy messages all weekend, even though my poor cell phone signal out up there in the forest prevented me from writing her back. She didn't seem to mind there being no reciprocation, although I did call her a few times and at one point got so frustrated by not being able to respond to her messages that I sat down and wrote her an actual, honest-to-god, love letter (or perhaps at this point, a "like letter"). Then this morning, since I'm such a goddamned romantic, I cut the last roses of the season for her and slipped them into the envelope.

I still can't believe how much Claire seems to be able to read my mind. We talk to each other about everything, but somehow she still seems particularly good at guessing what I like and what I want before I have to say or do anything at all. She always seems to know my craziest little fantasies before I even tell her anything about them. And on a much more basic level, she always does the sweetest and wildest things to me without my ever having to suggest them to her. Honestly the biggest problem with her is that she lives far away. Other than that she is exquisitely fantastic, and I am so very into her.

She sent me a message this weekend telling me she wanted to take photos of me with her ancient old film camera and make paintings out of them. I was thrilled. She seems to have a really solid romantic core, and that really, really appeals to me. I know that I can be both intimate and wild in her presence and neither will scare her or turn her off.

And somehow, with 33 hours of work per week spread out in the most ridiculous way so I don't even have a weekend anymore, I hope to manage to see her enough so that neither of us drives ourselves crazy from deprivation.

So far so good, but this week will be hard as nails. I have classes every single day, and for the next three days I work from 9:30 am to 8:00 pm, with only scant breaks in between. So I'm terribly sorry in advance that I haven't been reading anyone's blogs. I miss you all terribly.

And on that note, I must get to my lesson plans.

I love that photo of my kitty, by the way. I think he looks like he's praying.

I hope you all had a great weekend.

Laters,

N

Another Eight Things

2006-09-28T16:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a little story from the time that's illusive
I knew a girl by the name of roxanne,
met her in eighty-six
At the local band stand
New tracks, suit, fat laces white sneakers
Moving to the sound coming out of the speaker
Last week around queen and john, i saw her
at the corner with a business suit on
I said 'what's up girl? you still check the vibe?
Remember de la soul? diamond d? and the tribe?'
She said 'no, no, i just don't listen
That stuff on the radio is not to transmission
Same beat, same lyrics, same song
I listen to my old school tapes to get it on'
I said 'word up girl? i know what you mean
It seems we're all trapped in the glitz and the gleam
The truth's just hidden for now, so don't sweat it
So here's a cassette' and then i jetted...
-K-OS - Neutroniks

Oh how I love K-OS. And now to make things even trickier, I have to decide whether to go to his concert in November. Grr...so many concerts, so little time and money.

Actually, that's not true. The Boss from my school downtown called today to say he was upping my hours to 25, so that plus 8 hours at the other school means I am working only 33 hours a week, still technically part-time, and I'm making more than twice what I was making at the bookstore, AFTER taxes! Sweetness.

It does complicate when I can go see Claire, but I have faith that we'll manage it if we both put in the effort.

There's another of her portraits, by the way. It's Prince Tupac himself, one of her biggest heroes. There's a dirty black rapper and street poet inside that sweet little white girl, and he comes out in the most hilarious ways.

I have to leave for the island in an hour since I'm bartending that fundraiser this weekend, but I thought I'd attempt quickly to write up The Sac Man's little eight things meme. Same rules as last time -- eight things about yourself -- but as always I will try to make them things you don't know about me, and I'd love for the people I tag to do the same thing.

Here goes:

1) Since I can be a TMI queen when I want to be, most of you know that I'm something of a Brazilian addict. This week I went to get waxed and just for the pure hell of it I told the girl who does it for me (sweet little Vietnamese lass from a little South East Asian fishing village once upon a time) that I'd seen an episode of Sex and the City in which Samantha gets shaved with a little lightning bolt shape in the middle. I asked her if she could do that, and she got all excited and said "oh yes! It will take time and it will hurt very much, but I love to do it!"

Haha. I said yes, OF COURSE, and so now I have a little heart shape in a very private spot. It didn't hurt that much, and it didn't take that long. The moral of this story is something like "yeah yeah yeah, I'm such a fucking girl."

2) I've been contacted by two people in the past month who wanted to take photographs of me in a professional capacity. One of them is a sweet guy I know a little bit and I'll probably take him up on it (I told Claire and she said "well, if he wants a hot lesbian shoot you should bring me along..." Daym that girl!), and the other guy is something of a pornographer who I could tell was trying to dupe me into taking all my clothes off and letting him photograph me in compromising positions. I said absolutely not, no, not a chance, not in this lifetime, not under any circumstances, thanks for coming out, but of course I would do other stuff for him, but then he got annoyed and stopped messaging me. Good riddance.

3) Perhaps you can tell from the above paragraph that my personal views on nudity (everyone else can do whatever the hell they want and power to them) are what Mr. Zazazazen has described as "conventional," although I have yet to meet anyone who shares my ideas. I still feel that out of the locker room, spa, or gym changing room, nudity for me is something I want to reserve for people who are pretty damn special. I don't rush into it, and I don't share it with everyone.

4) I can count the number of people I've had sex with on one hand.

5) I was contacted by a guy online this week who wanted to hang out and smoke a joint with me "as friends" (his words, not mine). I asked if we could email back and forth for a bit, and he messaged me back to say that he wanted to meet immediately, and oh, by the way, he was into more drugs than just pot. He went on for three paragraphs about how he enjoys opiates, including morphine, as well as Xanax and Valium, and takes them on a very regular recreational basis.

He asked me to tolerate his lifestyle because he has no plans to get off the stuff and I shouldn't think of him as "just some junkie." I wrote back to say that of course I tolerated his lifestyle since he's an adult and can do whatever he wants to his own body, but as someone who has been negatively affected by drug abuse, I would have to decline his invitation to meet me until he was off the stuff completely.

Do you think I did the right thing?

6) As much as I love buying and wearing cute undies, I've discovered I'm seriously turned on by the idea of girls not wearing them.

7) I was thinking about being Lara Croft: Tomb Raider for Halloween, but then I considered the possibility of an entire evening spent with all eyes on my tits, and I started having second thoughts. Haha.

8) I spend a lot of time worrying about whether my employers would take issue with my being queer. I would hate to take a case like that to a human rights tribunal, and as such I'm slightly tempted to keep it on the down-low, as much as I truly hate doing that.

Finito.

Okay, I tag
1) Miss Curlz, cause I always want to know more about her royal loveliness,
2) The Cynical Queer for the same reason, but with male pronouns,
3) Charlie because I love his little lists,
4) K. because she is new and exciting and I know all of ZIP about her,
5) The Purple Owl because I am terribly naive in thinking that perhaps I can jog her into writing again,
and 6) Mr. Zazazazen because he's a fascinating lad.

Have a great weekend everyone, and I'll be back with updates on Sunday night.

A bientot,

N

Buckle Up the Bible Belt

2006-09-28T00:44:00.000-07:00

Girls can wear jeans
And cut their hair short
Wear shirts and boots
'Cause it's okay to be a boy
But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading
'Cause you think that being a girl is degrading
But secretly you'd love to know what it's like
Wouldn't you?
What it feels like for a girl...
-Madonna - What It Feels Like for a Girl

I've had a lovely couple of days.

I took the bus out to Claire's little hideaway in the Bible Belt of B.C. early yesterday morning. I got hardly any sleep the night before because I was absolutely vibrating with excitement. It's a nice little town in some ways, although some of its suburban characteristics like six-lane highways in the middle of downtown and huge malls right across the street from each other made it feel a little alienating. Claire owns her own place, a lovely and roomy condo (so spectacularly clean and girly) that she shares with her little strawberry-blonde dog, who is really as cute as can be and I fell in love with her immediately, even though I'm really not much of a dog person.

Her walls are covered with her paintings, these huge, amazing portraits that I absolutely could not get enough of. She left out all her sketchbooks from high school and college for me to look at while she was at work and I ploughed through all of them, absolutely blown away by these intimate sketches of people she knows, celebrities, and figures of complete imagination. I know it's a terrible cliche, but I want her to paint me.

I'm biased, obviously, and so you can decide for yourself whether she has any talent as an artist. I think she has a real eye for the human form. I just wandered went around her apartment taking photos. The one to your right is a good five feet tall in real life - it's huge - and she's only been working on it for a few weeks. It's as yet still unfinished, and I'm hoping I can gently prod her until she sits down and works on it until it's done, because it is far too beautiful a piece to leave incomplete. Plus, I think watching her paint would be sexy as all hell.

I have the most incredible chemistry with Claire, and while I hesitate to give you details simply because they're private, I will say that we decided to be stunningly mature and hold off on the really crazy stuff until we know each other better. We did spend hours and hours making out like high school kids, and somehow sleeping in her bed felt absolutely natural to me, even though I was sleeping in a strange place for the very first time with a girl I'd known for a mere six days. We shared a pillow, and it felt like the most intimate thing in the world. In short, we connect in a way I wasn't sure was even still possible. Several times in the past few days I've had to sit down and wonder if she's really made me reach my point of no return with girls, because she can do for me in ten seconds what would take a guy an hour, simply because she turns me on so much more.

She loves the cd I made for her, which I find absolutely thrilling. I even got her to like that Mirah song, Cold Cold Water, that no one else seems to get, and Tell Me Does she Love the Bass, by Lesbians on Ecstasy.

She is so breathtakingly beautiful, and she seems to be more so every time I see her. Something about her hair in the sunlight makes my heart do a little dance. We spent last night drinking wine and talking, and I made her dinner before she had to go to work in the evening. She's a real Carrie Bradshaw when it comes to cooking, i.e. she never does it. The girl practically uses her oven for storage. It was almost too easy to impress her with pasta and salad - easiest chef points ever.

Now that I'm home again I miss her. How can this week seem like such a long time to be without her when every week of my life before it has been without her? It's a mystery.

She sent me a text this week about how a married elderly couple she works with were so cute they broke her heart. I wrote back that I didn't want her heart to be broken. She wrote back: "My heart is feeling a lot better since I met you."

Aw.

And now I will go away before I make you all sick to your stomachs.

I just wanted to tell you that I'm happy, and I feel like this is real.

A note on the photos. To your left is an excellent example of a Bible Belt billboard. To the right is an unfinished stripper portrait which I find particularly entertaining. Below right is one of Claire's portraits of Marylin Monroe - that one hangs in her bathroom. And to the left is the girl herself, though that photo doesn't even begin to do her justice.

Time for bed,

-N

How Atheists Say Grace

2006-09-25T18:33:00.000-07:00

I don't really have time to post today, but I thought I'd share with you a true story I just emailed to Curlz.

My ultra-religious cousin and her husband were over with their children (adorable five-year-old boy and sweet 2-year-old girl) for dinner last night, and my mom, who is forever trying to impress them with her Martha Stewartesque cooking skillz and general domesticity (because gee, how strange, that sort of thing impresses them) had cooked an actual stuffed chicken for the occasion. My dad was carving the beast as he usually does when we all sort of realised that my cousins didn't plan to start eating unless someone said grace.

Well, grace is something that we in my immediate family simply do not say, ever, but I have noticed that religious tolerance in my extended family usually works in only one direction (that is, towards the religious people rather than the atheists). So my mom gave in as she often does and we joined hands to say grace. Even my exceedingly non-religious and originally very Jewish (and for that matter, gay) aunt gave in and held my hand so we could say a prayer.

Meanwhile, my dad kept on carving that beast like there was no tomorrow, and I hissed across the table in my best discreet whisper "DAD! Stop it!" I did this about four or five times and he just kept right on carving. Then my brother started in, whispering "Dad, quit carving for just a minute!" He finally seemed to get that my cousin was about to say grace, but rather than putting the carving utensils down like a normal person might have done, he just stopped and let them hover in the air like some sort of chicken force field while my cousin did his usual and rather endearing "dear God, thank you for this family, that we can all be together, bla bla bla, in Jesus' name, amen."

I guess this was my dad's silent and exceedingly cheeky little bit of protest, but it was so fucking funny that whatever maturity I was demonstrating for the occasion kind of went out the window. And this was before I accidentally used the word "biotch" in conversation at the dinner table. Oh man that was a bad slip-up.

I went to the kitchen under the premise of getting a drink, and burst into rather poorly-concealed giggling behind the door to the fridge in the cool fridgey air. My brother came around the corner and saw me and he cracked up too. Imagine two overgrown children giggling between the stove and the fridge in our tiny kitchen and you have some idea of how ridiculously hilarious the situation was.

My mom was mad at me today, but it was worth it. I am a nice girl with a very naughty side. And those family dinners where I have to act straight and not say 'fuck,' fun as they often are, are killing me softly with their song. I had to spend two hours sending dirty text messages to the aforementioned redhead afterwards just to feel like I was, well, HUMAN again.

Haha. God, I'm still laughing.

Going to see Claire out tomorrow and the next day so I probably won't be able to post. Wish me luck, sanity, and a little fucking level-headedness.

She just texted me to say she's going to be so excited to see me that she probably won't sleep tonight. Aw x 100 = the loveliest Claire-flavoured butterflies.

Have a nice couple of days, everyone.

A bientot,

-N

In the light of day...

2006-09-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

In the sunny light of day, I thought I would reassure you all that I do plan to take it easy with the new girl. Claire called me this morning and we made plans for me to go out to her little town far far away to visit her this week. My classes got cancelled, so I am footloose and fancy free.

But rest assured that now that I'm sober and thinking clearly, I remember that this is new and I shouldn't rush in.

I will make an effort to take it slow, but I still really want to see her.

I realise at this point that anything could happen, but I do want good things both for her and for me.

And I have to have hope, because honestly, it's been a while. After all that shit with Hayley, I feel like I deserve this.

I do, don't I?

-N

Hopelessly Smitten

2006-09-24T03:13:00.000-07:00

It is 3:00 am.

I suspect I'm drunk from a single double vodka and ginger ale. I still don't understand how this is possible, but I feel wacky.

I should be sleeping.

But instead I am having a long, drawn-out conversation with self.

Claire came to the club tonight and I was thrilled to see her. A mere half-hour later her drunken friend was discovered passed out on the couch upstairs and she got kicked out, so Claire had to drive her home. Neither of us wanted her to go, and we drew out the goodbye for a good ten minutes. She looked so amazing tonight I could scarcely take my eyes (and hands) off her. I was so sad when she finally left that I had to sit myself down and try to think rationally about it. I have known this girl in real life for all of two days. So why and how is it that I feel so strongly for her?

I considered that this was just a physical spark, likely to burn out quickly and leaving nothing in its wake. But somehow it feels like more than that. I could fall for this girl. I care about her already. I feel oddly connected to her. And in the strangest confluence of events, I suspect that she feels the same way.

She sent me a text message while I was walking home that read: "I wanted to stay and play. I have to admit you looked so good tonight....daym." One of the funniest things about her is that she's a little white girl with the biggest gangsta rap vocabulary I've ever heard. It's funny, and also somehow so damn sexy.

For now I am just going to have to hold back, get to know her better, and find some flaws, lest I let myself get all crazy. I'm absolutely vibrating with butterflies -- I had to walk home tonight (took me a good hour) just to calm myself down. I met up with the Bro on the bridge and scurried across four lanes of traffic to get to him. I couldn't resist standing on the three-foot-tall median in the middle of the road with my arms in the air as the cars blew past me. I guess I was feeling a bit reckless.

Reckless, lovesick, and strangely happy.

It doesn't help that Claire lives an hour away by car and I don't even know when I'll get to see her next.

I am so hopelessly smitten.

Should I be trying not to be?

-N

Best. First. Date. Ever.

2006-09-23T16:55:00.000-07:00

I should be sleeping right now since I'm totally fucking wrecked, but I couldn't resist coming on here to tell you about my date.

Oh boy. I need to give her a name now. Let's call her Claire.

In person, she was even more stunning than in her photos. She's this tiny redhaired wildcat of a girl, with bright eyes the colour of the ocean right after the sun goes down. Grayish-greenish-blueish wow. She has these little adorable freckles, and she's this fascinating combination of girly and rugged. A real firecracker, in short. I couldn't believe how beautiful she was, and I was trying to not let it sway me. Fortunately, she's also incredibly sweet, patient, creative, kind, and smart, as well as hilariously funny and a little bit wild. She definitely had a personality to match.

Claire didn't set off my gaydar at all, and apparently she doesn't set off anyone else's either. She told me that when she was driving to my house this guy on a Harley rode up beside her and started coming on to her. "Who tries to pick someone up on the freeway?" she asked. I just laughed. Then told me she had yelled out the window to the guy "I'm gay!!" but this didn't seem to dissuade him in the slightest. Finally she got exasperated and yelled "I'm driving! Into town! To go on a date! With a girl!!!" He was still as dense as a loaf of sourdough rye, so she gave up and sped away.

I made her three cds, one of K'nann's album, one of a random Be Your Own Pet mix, and another with a mix I spent several painstaking hours cobbling together from what she had told me of her musical tastes as well as some of mine. She listened to Claire's Mix on the hour long drive home, and she texted me to say she loves it.

We went out for dinner and then to see K'nann downtown, and the show was wicked. Afterwards the place reverted back to its usual hip-hop, urban, r&b club scene, and we decided to get a drink and stay for some dancing and prime people-watching.

We were getting closer and closer on the dance floor and when we retreated to a corner for some cool air-conditioned oxygen we got even closer still. I still have no idea who made the first move -- I think it was a group effort -- but at some point we kissed and it was so amazing I didn't want to stop. And so we didn't, that is until I realised there was a big sweaty drunk guy leaning on us and slurring something mildly rhetorical like "hey girls, getting some kiss action there?" while a bunch of other guys cheered in the background. Ugh. We both realised at the same time that gee, maybe this was not such a good idea in a straight club full of hyped-up undersexed and overdressed dudes.

So we left and went to the only girly bar in the city, which was blissfully free of drunken straight guys. I could scarcely keep my hands off her, and neither could she. I had to remind myself at various intervals that, um, yeah, we were still in public.

In short, she was everything I wanted her to be and more. I have never been kissed like that, ever. It was somehow both incredibly tender and incredibly sexy. She's hot beyond belief, and seems to be refreshingly free of the hang-ups and neuroses that Hayley carried around with her. She may be quite brilliant and artistically very gifted, but she's also utterly down-to-earth and very easy to get along with.

I don't know at what point one is permitted to get one's hopes up (probably not yet), but I'm excited about her. I want her to stick around. She was my best first date ever, after all.

I wish I hadn't had to go to work the next day, though that didn't stop me from staying out until 2:00 when I still had to write up my lesson plan. Oops. My class went well nonetheless. I only had one student, but he was a sweet kid and a hard worker. More about that later.

Three-and-a-half hours of sleep and four hours of classes later, I still feel butterflies.

Ah. Life is good.

-N

DO NOT drink and text!

2006-09-22T13:51:00.000-07:00

An actual conversation I had last night via text messages with a young gentlemen I'm slightly acquainted with online:

Him: Hey what's up?
Me: Nothing much, just about to watch some Firefly. You?
Him: Hmmm, semi-drunk, really bored, and my oh look, my bed is empty.
Me: Dude. Story of my life.
Him: Well, you're not that far away.
Me: Are you propositioning me, young man?
Him: That depends - are you into it?
Me: I tend not to have sex with semi-drunken boys I've never met before, but thanks for the offer. I think we should probably meet while sober first.
Him: C'mon, we could just cuddle. It doesn't have to be sexual.
Me: Oddly enough, I don't cuddle with total strangers either. That's just another brand of intimate.
Him: Well, I'm not going to spend all night convincing you. Everything you've said is justified. I just thought it would be fun. It's been a while, and I miss certain things about it.
Me: So do I. But how about we sit down and have coffee first? I mean, how do you even know you'd be attracted to me? Plus, it's been an age since I was with a boy.
Him: True, true. Well, keep in touch. I'm going to go tame the beast now.
Me: Haha. Best masturbation slang ever. We'll chat soon. Have a good one.

Then this morning:

Him: Er, hope I didn't pressure you too much last night.
Me: One can only pressure so much via text messages, though you certainly tried. I forgive you, though. : )

Oh boys boys boys.

I'd like to say they're not predictable, but well....

I saw this one coming.

-N

butterflies

2006-09-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

Ah ah ah.

I'm meeting the redhead tonight, and I am sooooo nervous!

I'm only slightly comforted by the fact that she's nervous too (aw). Jon called me last night to tell me that she had called him freaking out about what to wear. Aw. Such fuzzy butterflies in my stomach I can hardly function. I can't remember the last time I felt this glittery.

She's picking me up at 6:00 and we're going out for dinner and then to see K'nann and Moka Only downtown. Yikes. Soooo nervous! I'm burning a cd for her -- it seems more personal and a lot less corny than say, flowers. Plus I don't want to freak her out by going way over the top.

I want so much to show her the version of me that is: fun, funny, mature, interesting, interested, non-judgemental, sweet, sexy, easy-going, not neurotic, and fun to be with. How hard can this be, right? I desperately want to avoid babbling about myself or about anything else. NO babbling!

I just really, really want her to like me.

God, I feel like a teenager. Someone pass me a vicodin.

I welcome your advice, fair readers.

Wish me luck!

-N

p.s. My poor Ver cat was sick this morning. The big orange guy misses being outside and eating grass and mice and running around being free. So this one's for you, Ver. We all miss the summer, but especially my big orange cat.

A Good First Date - Finally!

2006-09-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday seems like a life ago
Cause the one I love
Today I hardly know
You I held so close in my heart oh dear
Grow further from me
With every fallen tear
It wouldnt have worked out any way
So now its just another lonely day
Further along we just may
But for now its just another lonely day...
-Ben Harper - Another Lonely Day

I don't really feel as melancholy as these lyrics would suggest, but I do love that song.

I actually went on a great first date last night. I had low expectations, because I've been thinking so much about the redhead, but as it turned out I really rather liked this other girl. She's something of a kindred spirit in that she's a bit of a nerd like I am. Actually, she's a huge nerd, and it's hot. She solved my computer problems over poutine and cherry coke at my favourite diner, and we browsed my favourite used bookstore before it closed. She was witty, charming, adorable, and sharp as a whip. I couldn't believe how smart she was, and yet how little she seemed to flaunt it. Her intelligence was just as natural as her brown hair and cute little face.

I was definitely attracted to her, but not in a sparks flying kind of way. I could tell it was the sort of attraction that would build in time like a slow-burning fire on a cold day. I had this with Hayley too. My attraction to her went from shrug-worthy on our first meeting and built up to the moment seven months later when we were standing in her kitchen and she leaned over and bit me, hard, on the neck. Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to send shivers all the way down my spine. She was teasing me, and I knew it. I wish I could say it was the last time, but since it was the first time I just growled under my breath and whispered "god that turns me on." She knew it, too.

Anyway, I sent this girl some text messages last night in what was kind of a risky attempt to let her know that I'd really had a very good time on our date. I agonized about these messages during an entirely too melodramatic night at the club, where Sophie ran into her ex and the mutual friend that she had cheated on her with, oh, about two weeks ago. That situation plus the fact that it was Wednesday night and the place was entirely dead made my evening not so much fun, on the whole.

But...she sent me an email this morning telling me she'd had a great time and found me to be both "charming and humourous."

Sweet.

Gotta go for lunch with my great-aunt.

More later.

And by the way, WHY SO MANY LURKERS?! 60-70+ hits per day and just about no comments! Where is everyone, and why are you all so quiet? I don't bite (unless you really want me to) and I'd love to hear what you think of my site, my posts, my photos, pluots, whatever.

So speak!

-N

Independent Motherfucker

2006-09-20T16:27:00.000-07:00

I'm an independent motherfucker
And I'm here to take your money
I'm wicked, rad, and I'm here
To steal away your virginity...
-Be Your Own Pet - Bunk Trunk Skunk

To think that these words were written and sung by a girl. Haha. For some reason I find this to be startlingly feminist, but maybe that's just blasphemy. I wish Earlbecke read my blog so she could tell me. That girl's got some serious intellectual chops.

Somehow there's something so hot about a girl growling the word 'motherfucker' like that. Am I totally nuts for thinking that's sexy?

I just got tickets to Be Your Own Pet's concert today. It's a real joy to be able to buy concert tickets again. A real joy. I'm also going to see K'nann with Moka Only on Friday (avec le redhead), and I am still debating about whether I should go to Jason Collett and Ridley Bent in October and Xavier Rudd in December. Which should I go to? Ridley? Bicyclemark? Any other music lovers want to put in your two cents as to which shows I ought really to make sure I slowly lose my hearing in attending?

By the way, that priceless little bit of sidewalk graffiti above was the one of the last things I saw in Paris before I left Europe altogether this June. I took it as a sign, a summary of what I ought to take away from my trip. It means: "Please take your happiness with you when you leave."

So...one of the guys I met at the party, let's call him Sylvester, called me on the phone from his hotel the other night. He's a screenwriter, 38, with salt-and-pepper hair, a solid jaw, and a movie star voice -- a kind of Frank Sinatra of Hollywood, let's just say. We had a nice little phone conversation, and when he asked me if I wanted to go to a bar that evening I told him I couldn't because I had a phone date scheduled with the redhead. He was all fascinated by the bisexuality thing (as are just about all straight men aged 18-50 who I meet these days), and asked me tons of questions (which I obliged him by answering), and in the course of our conversation he told me that one of the guys at the party had been trying to set up a threesome with two girls at the bar that night, but to no avail.

I laughed at first, and then I stopped, stunned. Because I knew this guy. I had spoken to him. Let's call him Bobby. He was a tall black guy (maybe half black, half caucasian, because he had the most beautiful light brown skin and freckles I'd ever seen) with a remarkable lean but muscular build, and just before I left the other night I complimented him on his adorable freckles. He flashed me a perfect bright white smile and said "Aw! Thanks. No one's ever complimented me on my freckles before." and then: "I should have talked to you more tonight."

Haha. No kidding, pal. I was probably the only girl at that party who would have taken him up on his offer. I told Sylvester this and he said "wow, you really would have been up for that?" I thought about it for a moment. "Well, yeah, probably. If I felt safe enough." He seemed impressed. Today I texted him to ask for Bobby's number, which he might find weird, but I suppose it's a risk I'm willing to take.

Is it ridiculous to kick yourself for something you couldn't possibly have known about and acted on at the time? Grr. Cause I am sure doing that now.

I sent the first chapter of my book to the redhead, and she loved it. I hesitate to give her a pseudonym, out of some superstitious fear that it will make her become less amazing than I think she is before I've even met her. So I think I'll hold off a bit longer on that front.

I went to pick up my class materials at my Saturday teaching job today, and my new boss gave me two more classes to teach on Monday and Wednesday nights. Score. Now I have twice as many hours. I'm well on my way to being a real independent motherfucker, indeed.

More about my new job later.

For now I'm just excited, nervous, and hoping from the top of my head to the tips of my toes that I won't make a complete ass of myself now that I'm an actual honest-to-goodness teacher for the first time ever.

I had a dream last night that my mother caught me having sex with the Boy on our dark green and most comfortable living room couch. This was both embarrassing and deeply frustrating, and it resulted in her berating me about being a slut while I yelled and cried until I was hysterical. The sex was really strange, too. It was almost violent in its urgency -- I haven't had that kind of sex since I was a teenager, and even then it was pretty rare. I tend to want to take my time and do it right -- even as a kid I didn't find awkward fumbling and split-second thrills very entertaining. Weird. I'm starting to notice a pattern in my dreams, in that they're getting more and more sexual and less and less sad. I guess this is a good thing, but it makes for some pretty strange analysis in my waking hours.

Gotta get going. I'm meeting another girl from online (yeah yeah, I get around, yeah right) for dinner and bookstore browsing. It should be fun and intellectually stimulating, if not stimulating in any other respect.

Hope you're all having a nice day, and that it isn't pissing rain and creating swampland and giant puddles where you are.

Laters,

N

Crushes and Space Cowboys

2006-09-19T18:00:00.000-07:00

Now I suffer for your hungry eye
Oh why must it see more than mine?
It's a light you're after, 'cause light moves faster
But when I ride again into the night
My torch will shoot flames strong and bright
And my absence will remind you of
How tough it is to be in love
And it's not what I think it's what you say,
And it works great for you to have your way,
But the west can be a desperate place
You search all day for just a taste
Of the cold, cold water, cold, cold water
And if you think i've gone too long
Listen the sky will sing this song
As it burns up all the memories
That flow like water out of me
-Mirah - Cold Cold Water

I simply adore this song. It's such a strangely epic little tune, sung by a woman who sounds like a little girl and yet somehow manages to make that sexy.

Okay, I get it. No one wants to indulge my little intellectual hard-on over KT Tunstall, and I accept that. I figured most of you would be bored to tears by that rambling self-indulgent tripe anyway. I have no doubt that most people on this earth find textual analysis about as compelling as watching paint dry, so let's just move on.

Ever since my crazy night at the Hollywood party I can't seem to feed myself adequately. I feel like I'm always eating, but I never feel very full for very long. Just about every time that I tell someone in passing that I'm really hungry all the time they propose that maybe I'm pregnant. Then I mutter something under my breath about immaculate conception, they say "what?" I say "nevermind," and we both get on with it. I think that sort of getting-on-with-it is what's necessary here.

The new redhead I have a huge crush on sent me a bunch of photos this morning, and she's fucking beyond adorable. Bright red hair, amazing clear green eyes, the works. I'm one of the least shallow people I know, but DAMN. She's hot. We had another phone date the other night and it was really quite lively and rewarding to talk to her. She told me about her paintings and her childhood - I could have listened to her talk for hours, but she was always asking me questions so I never felt like either of us was monopolizing the conversation. I had a dream last night that I was kissing her in a grassy field next to a jagged wire fence - it was pretty hot indeed. I woke up to a text message from Jon, our mutual friend who failed to call me back the night before, saying: "Sorry I got distracted reading about a trans porn star. She says she likes you. And wants to meet you." I wrote him that I definitely had a crush on her, and he replied "Ha u two r so cute. When is the wedding?" Haha. Yeah, right.

I went to another job interview today, and at the end of it I left the office with a new grand total of five sources of employment:

1) Writing the aforementioned stalled little novel.
2) Teaching at the ESL school downtown.
3) Teaching Saturday classes to kids at the prep school in Richmond.
4) Bartending part-time, ie. whenever the fuck they feel like calling me.
5) Holding down a spot on the sub list at the college for international students where I was interviewed this afternoon.

Sweet.

I had lunch and coffee avec Le Boy today. He's such a funny and intellectually-stimulating lad, and I've missed him. It occurred to me in the shower today how very sad I would be if we lost touch. Perhaps this is just because of our shared history - he's known me since I was 16-year-old actual jailbait (rather than just looking it as I do now), and he has known me in pretty much every way it's possible to know a person -- emotionally, physically, dare I say Biblically? Haha. I dare.

After lunch he insisted that we huddle around his laptop in the coffee shop around the corner and watch a couple of episodes of Firefly, a show which he was stubbornly confident (as always) that I would love. He was right. Everyone has been asking me to watch it for ages now, and I'm glad I finally did. The dialogue is superb, the acting quite brilliant, the casting impeccable, the premise fun and engaging, and the plot moves at a pace that somehow makes character development not only feasible but absolutely intrinsic to the whole concept. There's something Star Trek meets Star Wars about Firefly, but it's a lot classier than both, and it's also strangely more believable on a human level. The space cowboy shtick is also just way too cool for words. I found myself giggling and exclaiming "oh look, space horses!" at random intervals.

I rarely rave about TV shows except in a very guilty pleasure kind of way, but this is one show I think absolutely everyone should track down and watch. I'm borrowing the rest of the dvds from Jack, but what a crying shame that the thing got cancelled after 13 episodes. I'm sure that Fence with her love for River and Kaylee shares my pain.

Rather than make this too long yet again, I shall sign off.

Laters,

N

The joy and exquisite frustration that is KT Tunstall

2006-09-18T16:02:00.000-07:00

Looks like I got to be hot and cold
I got to be taught and told
Got to be good as gold
But perfectly honestly
I think it would be good for me
Cause it's a hindrance to my health
I'm a stranger to myself
Miniature disasters and minor catastrophoes
Bring me to my knees
Well I must be my own master
Or a miniature disaster will be
It will be the death of me...
-KT Tunstall - Miniature Disasters

As you all well know, I'm capable of reading queer subtext into just about anything. Usually I realise I'm overanalysing as usual and I move on.

But goddammit, I just can't leave the KT Tunstall thing alone. It's gotten to the point where I can barely listen to her album, which I love, without wanting to tear my clothes off and scream in desperate frustration. And doing that sort of thing on public transit, well, it could get a girl strapped into a straight jacket with a needle full of antipsychotic fluid in her arm. And that can't happen now, cause I have to show up to teach the eager ESL kiddies on Saturday.

This is, in my humble opinion, the funniest article regarding the now-infamous "Is She Or Isn't She?" debate. Don't expect that article to be terribly scientific, but it did make me laugh, and it did make me wonder about her even more than I usually do. "Braces," for those of you outside the UK (and possibly Australia), are what we North Americans call "suspenders." Above right is what she looks like in the aforementioned cute little braces. That's adorable no matter what, but I think that such an image is also a pretty clear symbol to most people in the developed and developing worlds at the end of the 21st century. But tell me, do any of you think the rainbow is NOT a fairly obvious symbol of gay / queer / LGTB culture?

Here's another article on the same subject that's a little more, well, journalistic.

KT denies the whole thing, of course, and she says she has a boyfriend (I know better than most people that this says absolutely zero about her possible queerness), and she also claims (I think most pricelessly) that she's proud of her lesbian.....er, "following." She also told Diva Magazine, in a rather hilarious little twist that the backing vocals on a demo of Black Horse and the Cherry Tree (which apparently went something like "pubes in the teeth.") were done as as a joke during some "drunken hijinks." How juvenile. I would never do something so ridiculous, even as a joke, but then I'm not a drunken straight girl. She's also tried to play the unspecified pronoun card, but that one's pretty obvious to me. The VAST majority of her lyrics are not full of unspecified pronouns at all -- they're full of words like SHE and HER. Like, duh.

So...is she a drunken straight girl? Maybe. A closeted bisexual? Quite possibly. A really, really repressed dyke? I'd believe it.

We don't read subtext into Shakespeare these days because, um....he was a romantic lad and a sensitive soul, and well, he did that swishy thing when he walked. Come on. None of us save the vampires were were even alive in the Elizabethan England of yore to set our gaydar on him. We analyse his writing instead, and some of those sonnets, well, they don't seem to have been written for a fair maiden. I don't give a flying fuck if he was married (though he later abandoned his much-older wife and children), because as we all well know, the lives we live for the benefit of a judgemental society are not always the ones we would choose for ourselves.

Since I am, after all, an English major, I've spent a great deal of time in and our of school doing textual analysis, and in fact I don't think you can conclude a lot of things about a writer with certainty until you actually sit down and read their writing with a sharp eye and a red pen.

Now, let's not get into the whole "fiction vs. personal narrative" debate. I realise that because PJ Harvey wrote about throwing her pain away in The River does not mean she's guilty of infanticide. She's said numerous times that she makes up stories, and her lyrics reflect her imagination and her desire to write and perform pieces of fiction. But KT has not claimed anything similar. On the contrary, she seems to see herself as something of a relationship analyst rather than a writer of fiction. She describes her own work as "kitchen table songs, like a conversation between me and the other person." (Go to KTTunstall.com for that interview) Hmm. Then there's this little gem from Black Horse and the Cherry Tree: "Well my heart knows me better than I know myself / So I'm gonna let it do all the talking." So let's assume for the purposes of this debate that she is indeed writing from her heart, even if that's a deeply conflicted and confused place indeed. And in some ways that confusion, heartache, and at times really moving despair is what makes her music so very interesting.

Even if we ignore the really obvious girl-on-girl lines on Eye to the Telescope, especially in Suddenly I See and Heal Over (that fucking song and its innuendo make me CRAZY!), there is still a helleva lot of ambiguity on the album. A lot of it surrounds questions of identity, courage, silence, and honesty, which from a strictly textual point of view says to me that the author of these words is grappling with something very scary and important that she's not quite ready to deal with.

Lines like this one, from Silent Sea, continue to puzzle me:

And when I find the controls
I'll go where I like
I'll know where I want to be
Maybe for now I'll stay right here
On a silent sea...

and this one, from Through the Dark :

How do I show all the love
Inside my heart
Well this is all new
And I'm feeling my way through the dark
And I used to talk
With honest conviction
Of how I predicted my world
I'm gonna leave it to star gazers
Tell me what your telescope says
Oh what is in store for me now?
It's coming apart...

Or this one, from Stopping the Love:

You got me looking up
Even when I'm falling down
You got me crawling out of my skin
You got me wondering why
I am underneath this big old sky
Stopping the loving getting in...

Do we even need to get into that crazy, tripped-out, ambiguous, brilliant piece of music that is Black Horse & the Cherry Tree?

Oh how I love and am eternally frustrated by these lines:

When the big black horse that looked this way,
Said hey there lady, will you marry me?
But I said no, no, no, no-no-no
I said no, no, you're not the one for me
No, no, no, no-no-no
I said no, no, you're not the one for me
And my heart had a problem, in the early hours,
So I stopped it dead for a beat or two.
But I cut some cord, and I shouldn't have done that,
And it won't forgive me after all these years
So I sent her to a place in the middle of nowhere
With a big black horse and a cherry tree....

Oh, and let it be noted that I totally understand if she's keeping her private life out of the public eye for her own reasons. Queer girl musicians tend not to sell a lot of records, either by choice or simply because there isn't a big market for that kind of music. Ani DiFranco, Lesbians on Ecstasy, Yvette Narlock, Kaia, Sleater-Kinney, Team Dresch, The Butchies, Le Tigre, Janis Ian, Chicks on Speed, the list of obscure and semi-obscure queer girl music goes on and on and on. They don't possess, as my friend Max would say, a "highly marketable" image, and most of the time their reaction to such a reality is to throw society a big FUCK YOU TOO, which I suppose most of them have been doing their whole lives anyway. I think it's a shame, though, and not just because a lot of really, really dykey musicians are very talented and musically quite brilliant. But because girls like KT Tunstall are a rare breed. She has an almost unprecedented opportunity to show young girls in their 20s that you can be super-talented, beautiful, girly, and yes, queer. I'd certainly appreciate an icon like that in this big, lonely world I live in.

On the other hand, I understand why she would avoid coming out simply because of the risk of being pigeonholed (just look at the lesbian backlash that arose from Ani DiFranco's marriage to a man and her subsequent pregnancy). Joan Jett has never come out publicly either, partly I think as an entirely different brand of FUCK YOU TOO to a society who would only too happily stereotype and restrict her, and partly because, well, when it comes down to it who she sleeps with is nobody's business.

Or maybe I'm just making Mount Everest out of a tiny ridge in the sidewalk.

I think you get the picture. Analysing this has been making me a bit nutty, and I'm sorry if you were hoping for something entirely less girl-rock-fixated today.

But tell me, my readers, now that you have these lyrics in front of you -- what do you think?

Is it even fair to ponder these questions?
Do you care?
Does it matter?
What's your vote?

Speak, kitty, speak!!

-N

Nome Glams it Up

2006-09-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

I'm so tired, of playing
Playing with this bow and arrow
Gonna give my heart away
Leave it to the other girls to play
For I've been a temptress too long
Just give me a reason to love you
Give me a reason to be a woman
I just wanna be a woman From this time, unchained
We're all looking at a different picture
Through this new frame of mind
A thousand flowers could bloom
Move over, and give us some room
Give me a reason to love you...
-Portishead - Glory Box

Ah, what a wild, fabulous evening I had last night. I didn't do the scene with Rain after all, so sorry but there will be no audio / visual / video evidence of me acting "really camp and a little bit retarded." Thankfully. In the immortal words of Joan Jett: I don't give a damn about my bad reputation -- but even I have limits. I woke up yesterday morning with a feeling like the opposite of a hangover, that is to say the feeling that I was about to do something colossally stupid which I would later come to regret. He replaced me with a mutual friend of ours who is a brilliant comic actress and the former owner of the coffee shop where we used to perform at her infamous open mike nights last year. She did a way better job than I ever would have done, and I got to wear a significantly less slutty getup which was more appropriate for the Hollywood party I'd been invited to later that night.

I wore a pink shirt with black lace trim which I really like but just about never wear because I rarely get invited to events where something so glam and girly is actually apropos. I paired that with black pants and my favourite black suit jacket avec hood, and black shoes. With my collar and hood up and the pink hidden under my jacket, I was pretty sure I looked like a giant black crow, and that ensured that I didn't get harrassed downtown. The club where the party was being held was in Yaletown, home of Vancouver's rich and famous yuppie culture and the locale of many chic bars, restaurants, and clubs.

The guy who invited me was about 5'10", Korean, and a handsome lad with affable features and a lot of shall we say 12 o'clock shadow, which gave him a bit of a rough-around-the-edges cuteness. Let's call him Stan. I called his name from the street, which was littered with probably a hundred people trying to get into the club just to catch a glimpse of said VIP party. He recognized me right away and smiled from the top of the stairs. He whispered a few words to the big guys at the front and ushered me through the red ropes guarded by bouncers the size and shape of tanks, announcing to them that I was his guest. They parted for me like the Red Sea for Moses, and readers, I admit it, I was a bit thrilled.

Stan was a gracious host, and introduced me to everyone, who introduced me to all their friends, and before long I knew dozens of people by name and occupation. I didn't see any of the big names there (David Duchovny, Halle Berry, Benicio Del Toro), but I did see several of the actors from Saturday Night Live, as well as all the producers, directors, writers, assistants, and movie executives from the film. Stan himself is a junior executive for a huge production company which I'm sure everyone can guess the name of if I tell you that their logo is of a boy fishing from a cloud.

Everyone was startlingly nice to me, especially once they discovered that unlike the mainly blonde and skinny, legsformiles 5'10" eye candy girls swishing around the place, I could and was absolutely willing to carry on a conversation with just about anyone. I asked people about their projects, joked, laughed, and complimented people's clothing, hair, writing style, and taste in music where compliments were due.
Everyone also seemed to be flirting with me, but especially Stan and another guy we'll call Shay. Shay was a wonder, and I honestly cannot remember the last time I've been that attracted to a guy I'd just met. I commented on his spectacular height (6'7" -- this party made me feel very short indeed), and we started talking about music, feminism, the film industry, art, and culture. He was spectacularly intelligent, well-read, and witty, not to mention an absolutely beautiful, tall, well-built boy with fawn-brown eyes and little three-inch-long dreadlocks.

Stan was very sweet and also really smart, but he was a tad insecure for my taste. He kept announcing how drunk he was (totally unnecessary, since post-high-school clearly one can get it together to either shut the fuck up or stop drinking), and he was evidently jealous of my conversations with Shay, who I couldn't possibly resist going back to every fifteen minutes or so for another little chat and more flirting.

The drinks were free all night, although the bar did run out of the liquor the screenwriter had purchased for the party around 2:30 am. I still didn't pay for a single drink. In fact, aside from tipping the bartenders, I didn't drop a single cent all evening. Someone was always there asking what I wanted and buying it for me, and no one would take no for an answer. Not that I was saying 'no' particularly often.

The girls at this party were also incredible. I was pretty sure that most of them were flirting with me until I remembered that drunk straight girls are pretty much like that with everyone. I made a mental note to self to queer-down and just act straight for a while, and it seemed to work. It had been a long time since I'd hung out with a big group of (presumably) straight girls, but some things you learn in high school never quite leave you.

Near the end of the evening, though, I couldn't resist flirting with the bartender, this tiny little blonde creature who was laced-up tightly into an honest-to-god black-and-white sparkling corset. I asked her if she'd had help lacing it up the back, and she giggled and replied "nope, I did it all by myself." I told her I was impressed, and said that she pulled it off beautifully. She smiled a perfect white grin and asked me my name. We introduced ourselves and she insisted on buying me a drink. She was a party in a bottle, that girl.

All night people were inviting me to LA, offering to show me around Hollywood, inviting me to the film set, and asking me to act as a Vancouver tour guide for them. I collected and gave out so many email addresses and phone numbers that I was glad for my constant and bordering-on-the-obsessive pen-and-paper-carrying habit.

Near the end of the evening, Stan invited me to go back to his hotel and get high with them (they called it "green," which I found very adorable and American of them). Then, he kissed me. It was a really drunken, wet boy kiss, and it didn't do much for me. If it had been Shay inviting me to his hotel, I might have had to think about it, but for Stan I definitely had to leave something to the imagination. He was just such an exuberant little boy in some ways, to the point where he actually kissed my hands and gave me a little bow when I said goodbye to him.

I'd never been to a VIP party in my life, or for that matter any kind of invite-only event at a club, and I was surprised at how well I felt I was working it. I'm starting to think it's an advantage to be kind of cute and young-looking with a little voice and the willingness to flirt my tail off when necessary. I try not to manipulate appearances to my advantage, but honestly I think that if I were really stunningly beautiful, people would respond to me in an entirely different way. I have a feeling they'd be more intimidated, and thus more sexually aggressive, manipulative, and determined to go above and beyond in order to impress me.

And so it's nice to be cute, I suppose. It's even nicer to have a bartender's knack for conversation and a little bit of a wild side. It certainly served me well last night.

I went to the art gallery today with a stunning redhead I met online. No, not that redhead. This one is about 5'7" and tiny, with beautiful long red hair, bright cat-like green eyes, and, um, a boyfriend. Suffice it to say that while I did meet her on a website for queer girls, she's currently hanging with a shaggy-haired Northern European guy with a large nose and slightly eccentric mannerisms. I don't know why the most beautiful ones always seem to have such unremarkable boyfriends, but who knows -- maybe he's a stallion in bed (I doubt it).

Sorry this is sooo long -- I guess I get fairly carried away in the play-by-play.

Thanks to anyone who's still reading.

-N

p.s. kudos to Dag for the two photos of me with purple hair.

My greatest great-aunt

2006-09-16T12:38:00.000-07:00

My great-aunt told us that she wanted her party last night to be for just the family. She had something to tell us when we were all assembled, and naturally I worried intensely about this beforehand, even after the reassured me that she had nothing negative to share with us. When someone I love turns 85, even a remarkably spry 85, I do start to worry more about their well-being.

First of all, I should tell you in case it wasn't abundantly clear already that I am intensely close to my immediate family. My mom, my dad, and my brother are all major fixtures in my life and I spend time with all of them by choice. My aunt and my great-aunt are two people I consider to be among my best friends, and we also spend a great deal of time together. My aunt takes me to plays, movies, and for long bike rides by the ocean, and my great-aunt takes me shopping, out for lunch, and both my aunt and my great-aunt have travelled with me around Europe.

Family get-togethers in our household are frequent, loud, fun, and never a drag. We celebrate everyone's birthday with great enthusiasm, and we take great joy in giving presents, reusing wrapping paper an obscene amount of times, and seeing who can find the funniest or the raunchiest card.

These occasions are by no-means solemn dinners marked by awkward questions about whether I "have a boyfriend," or if I'm "going back to school soon." We talk, laugh, eat, share, and genuinely enjoy each other's company. They know me, and they know about my life. When Kylie called me drunkenly from the bar last night insisting I come drinking with her and her friends, I didn't for a moment consider leaving my great-aunt's party to join them. It just wasn't in the cards, but more to the point, I genuinely wanted to stay at home and throw balled-up wrapping paper for the cats, eat birthday cake, and watch my great-aunt read and chuckle at her latest batch of funny cards.

I don't believe that I've been "blessed," because I don't deserve this amazing family of mine any more or less than any of the people I know who have dreadful and sad family lives. I just think I've been particularly lucky.

Maybe this background helps a bit to explain a little bit what happened next.

My great-aunt got us all together and told us that she'd decided to distribute to us a portion of our inheritance in advance. This way, I suppose, we could enjoy this money while she was still around to encourage us. She said we could spend it on whatever we wanted, and she didn't plan to judge us for blowing it all at once or squirreling it away carefully for years and years (as my brother will probably do).

She gave each of us a card with a cheque inside. The actual sum of money is a small fortune to a girl who has $40 in her bank account. It's enough to fly me to Australia and back at least four times.

Her card just about made me cry, and I don't cry in front of people. It's written in her immaculately neat blue script, and it reads:

"To ______(Nome)

About 4 1/2 days after you were born, I met and saw you for the first time -- as you were wearing white cloth eye-covers (and not much else), you probably didn't even notice at all. Nonetheless, my "bonding" reaction was instant and strong, and it kept deepening as time and my involvement with you went on. You are, and always will be, a very special person in my life, I'm proud of you, your talents and other enviable personal qualities.

Much love, ______"

I nearly died after I was born. My liver didn't work properly because of my parents' incompatible blood types, and they wanted to give me a blood transfusion during the height of the tainted blood scandal. My mom refused to let them give me blood, and I'm glad she did because I could have ended up with AIDS. But the result was that it was touch-and-go for a while there. I was so jaundiced that they had to keep me under bright lights wearing only little cloth sunglasses and a diaper. That's the incident my great-aunt is referring to, and while I was completely unaware of the situation at the time, I have been aware ever since of how afraid everyone was of losing me. Maybe that's part of the reason why they love me so intensely now.

Somehow sharing this card with you, my readers, feels like I'm giving you a more personal piece of my life than ever before.

On a more practical level, it means that my assertions that "maybe" I'll be coming out to see some of you far away people this spring and summer has become a "will."

So check your calendars. I can't fly to everyone's abode, but I can certainly go see some of you, and I fully plan to do so. My great-aunt has given me a wonderful gift that goes far beyond dollars and sense. She has given me the ability to connect with friends that are separated from me only by distance.

That, and she's given me a promise that the prospect of paying my small Mastercard bill will no longer give me an ulcer.

Sweet.

In other news, Rain gave me less than 24-hours notice to perform in his show tonight as a stripper/prostitute/foot fetishist. I won't tell you why he cast me in this role, but suffice it to say that it wasn't my personality that got me the job. He was an hour late for our meeting yesterday and the script is an unbelievable 10 pages long. I asked him what he wanted me to wear and he said "think Bjork, except a prostitute." Oh god. The things I do for my friends. He doesn't just owe me one, he owes me about ten. One for each page of that dirty, bizarro script of his.

The photos above are of me and my great-aunt in London. I think they sum up nicely her fun-loving and independent approach to life. I should be so lucky to be as lively as she is when I'm 85!

Gotta go.

-N

Job interviews, and yet another redhead...

2006-09-15T14:43:00.000-07:00

Well, thanks guys.

I wasn't fishing for kindness yesterday. Really I was really just sitting by the zen pond envying those pretty little orange koi fishies swimming around in their happy blue paradise without a care in the world. But I'm still incredibly grateful for the sweet and hopeful responses that emerged from the water when I reeled in my line. So, from the bottom of my bleeding heart -- Thank You!

I had TWO interviews today, one of which was in deepest, darkest South Van, and the other of which was actually out in the burbs, in a rather famous Asian-dominated suburb that I like to visit when I feel like Chinese food, excellent bubble tea, and Japanese dvds. I impressed myself with how adeptly I navigated the Yaohan Shopping Center, the HUGE Asian Mall in which I felt as white as the inside of a winter melon but also grateful that I know what a winter melon looks and tastes like. I suppose that having spent five years in the life, heart, and bed of a real-life CBC (Canadian Born Chinese) boy probably helped me out a bit. I could wander the aisles of the supermarket comparing the merits of green vs. jasmine tea (with or without honey), eyeing the Chinese pork sausages (which taste delightfully of fat, salt, and spices), admiring the jellyfish salad (best with lots of chillies!), checking out the steamed buns and sui mai (which my mom can't eat because she's allergic to shrimp), and sampling the salmon nigiri and red bean pastry buns (my personal favourites). Oh how I love the Asian mall!

My first interview (for a private tutoring service and language school) went well, but the Boss wants me to jump through a spectacular number of hoops before she'll give me the job. She wanted TWO letters of references from people she got to pick from my list, my university AND high school transcripts, my social insurance CARD (apparently the number's not enough anymore), a criminal record check, and a verbal promise not to try to DATE ANY OF HER STUDENTS!

The last hoop was an odd one. Halfway through the interview she stopped talking and said in her thick Hong Kong accent "now, I notice that you are very beautiful..." I stared at her, stunned, trying to analyse her tone of voice for any hint that she was actually coming on to me in the most inappropriate context possible. Then she went on to say "my students, they are about your age. They will want your cell phone number, your home phone, and your email address. And they will want to go out with you. They will be persistent. But we are certified by the Ministry of Education and so you must never, ever agree to go out with a student."

I breathed a sigh of relief, and giggled to myself. As if I'd be interested in slick Asian boys with spiked-up hair, fancy cars and business cards (well...). Their cute little sisters, maybe. Haha. I reassured the Boss immediately that such a thing would be grossly inappropriate and unprofessional. But her introductory remark remains the most BIZARRO comment I have ever heard in a job interview.

The second interview went well too, and I suspect they'll hire me there part-time. They made me take an advanced version of the verbal SAT as a "placement test," but since I'm a huge nerd and a word junkie it was really more fun than anything else. And the interviewer assured me that I'd scored very high. She wants me to teach reading and writing and to pick novels for a grade 4-8 after school program. I could pretty much do that job in my sleep.

When I got home, a little frustrated after sooo many interviews and no jobs, I called the guy who had interviewed me for a position yesterday morning and offered him a letter of reference. He said he was just about to call me -- I was hired! He's starting me in October with only 2 hours a week. Most of his classes don't start until November and by then he'll be able to give me more hours. But, I have a job! SWEET!

So, it's been a successful day. I feel good.

And...I've been talking to yet another cute redhead online. She turns out to be a really good friend of Jon's, which is a good sign since I know that Jon picks his friends carefully. That, and he and I have very similar taste in girls. If he says she's amazing, then I'll probably like her. We talked on the phone for almost an hour last night before she had to go to work. She's a painter, a home-care aid, and a very funny and clever girl, not to mention absolutely stunning in her photos.

I'm not getting my hopes up, because at this point that would be beyond foolish. But she told Jon that she likes me, and I was pretty thrilled to hear that.

We're throwing my great-aunt an 85th birthday bash tonight, so I have to go to the sadly white bread market and buy some salmon. Yaohan it is not, but it'll have to do.

Anyone know a slang word for someone who's white on the outside and Asian on the inside? Haha. I'd love to hear it.

Thank you again to everyone who left me sweet comments, emailed, or called me. You're all so wonderful it makes me want to feed you mango pudding and shrimp rolls with chilli sauce. Because let's face it -- feeding someone is one of the most ultimate acts of love.

Laters,

N

p.s. That's my dirty little brother above. I'd like to say this cheeky stunt on the beach in Cannes was my idea, but actually it was his. Never underestimate the raunch factor of an 18-year-old boy. I'm reposting it because nearly four months after the fact, it STILL makes me laugh hysterically.

Ruins

2006-09-14T16:18:00.000-07:00

I feel like shit today, and I don't quite know why.

I had a lousy sleep, my mom is mad at me, and I am sad and angry with the world. Good news doesn't seem to excite me, and bad news is just more pessimism to add to the growing pile.

I can't seem to make anything better for anyone in my life, either because they're too far away or else because they simply won't let me. I just want to be able to make life better for someone I care about.

Life doesn't even have to be better for me - I would be quite happy just bringing a little joy into someone else's world. I wish I could take the pain away, even for a moment.

I just want to matter.

But I feel so incredibly small.

-N

The Day's Beauty Quotient

2006-09-13T16:12:00.000-07:00

I am not and have never been a fan of the particularly ubiquitous little tune that is James Blunt's You're Beautiful. It's repetitive, silly, sentimental, and just plain bad.

But for what I think are fairly obvious reasons, this video (it won't let me embed it, but I give it major points for being named after my favourite D.H. Lawrence novel) makes me suddenly like that song a lot.

Do I even need to warn you about sexual content? I guess I just did.

Girl-on-girl action ahead.

Well, OBVIOUSLY!

-N

p.s. Oh, and Curlz, you can add Women in Love to your version of Nome's English Canon Reading List, and no, you don't have to read The Rainbow first. Only read the first paragraph of Wikipedia's description, lest you encounter spoilers!

p.p.s. Alicia Witt is my new favourite never-gonna-happen girl thanks to the now-thoroughly-linked-out Purple Owl. Thanks, babe.

Nome = Bleedheart

2006-09-13T11:09:00.000-07:00

That would have been my name if I had been alive during that ridiculous circus of 13th century Scotland that was the setting for Mel Gibson's ludicrous epic Braveheart. And I'll tell you why.

I wish I was that big orange cat right now. He hasn't a care in the world.

First of all, is there anyone out there who doesn't think that this little bit of self-indulgent nonsense is anything other than a really, really shitty idea? [pun intended]

Many thanks to Koko for the link.

It seems like a good time to tell you all to go encourage an up-and-coming blogger, Ms. Curlz of the illustrious NYC. She's become a dear friend to me, but she's also really a rather good writer, so I thought I'd direct those of you who appreciate good writing her way. I love this post for its sensitivity and sensual descriptions. It really made me feel, and it's written in a style that's somehow both particularly subtle and intense. I know Purple Owl will like it, because it reminds me ever so slightly of her piece called No One Should See. That link doesn't open properly for me, and if it doesn't work for you either you might try just scrolling down on the main page of her blog here.

I'm feeling kind of ill-at-ease this morning. I blame it partly on an insanely bad migraine I got last night, which was probably the result of too much wine and bright September sun and nothing to eat all day. I took one of my scary turbo migraine pills and the headache went away, but it left me with this dull throbbing pressure behind my eyes and a slightly dizzy feeling. I had a lousy sleep and I woke up feeling dizzier than when I'd gone to bed.

I also felt vaguely frustrated and disappointed, and this continues to linger. The girl I went out with yesterday both emailed me and sent me a text message last night, saying among other things:

"I had so much fun today. your thoughtfulness really touched me. thank you. there was a little bit of everything today -- goofyness, heart, laughter, conversation, kite flying... i think the only thing missing was a big purple bow to tie around it all [although your toes made up for it]. you are completely adorable. i look forward to getting to know you better. i hope your headache passes soon."

Oops. So, why is it that people I don't like all that much seem to be so taken by me? I sat down and tried to analyse the situation, because I'm kind of like that. If I did one very stupid thing yesterday it was probably that I was my normal, thoughtful self. Like I've said before, I'm not really one for chivalry. I didn't try to sweep this girl off her feet, but I did leave the house yesterday morning with a ziploc bag filled with damp paper towels, an elastic band, and scissors.

I remembered the girl (let's just call her Danielle) having told me a story about inheriting her grandmother's yellow rose bush, which only bloomed once after her grandmother's death, in the middle of the winter. So I knew yellow roses were special to her, and so at the end of the day I took her to this spot by the water where there are two yellow rose bushes and I cut a little stem for her.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Bleeding heart romantic sap, right? I confess. I'm such a hopeful romantic even at the least appropriate of times.

But I suppose I figured even after that date that everyone deserves to know that someone remembers the small things that matter to them in life. And even if I wasn't going to fall for her, at least I knew I could give her that much.

Though it looks like it might get me into a great deal of trouble.

At least I know I've brought it all upon myself.

-N

p.s. I've posted that photo of the little boy above because he makes me insanely happy. That funny face is my favourite cousin's cute little mug, and I took the photo when he was very little. I haven't seen him in ages, and he's growing up fast. His ability to make me smile began when he was less than a year old, and it has never ceased to amaze me. So I'm posting it because this little person makes me feel good.

Why Being Single Sucks

2006-09-12T17:12:00.000-07:00

Hmm.

Well, my date went okay.

It was not mind-boggling by any means, though. We went to the market, bought a bottle of wine, and flew a kite in the park, all which should have been somewhat more entertaining activities than they actually were in practice.

I feel like this girl is a bit....dare I use the expression self-involved? I suppose I just did. At any rate, she talked a lot, mainly about herself, she was loud, she didn't ask me a lot of questions, and she definitely seemed to want to run the show. She was really aggressive, which was quite something. She got into a big argument with this guy who wanted us to fly our teeny tiny little kite away from his big red fancy ones, which I just didn't think was worth the battle.

She talked me into buying a bottle of wine that was way out of my non-existent price range, and she seemed to have many firmly-held opinions on a lot of things that she was willing to expound on for twenty minutes at a time while I scarcely got a word in edgewise. I suppose she reminded me of all the things that I spend so much time trying NOT to be: a poor listener, self-centered, inflexible, rude, and even borderline closed-minded.

She was attractive enough in person, with pretty blue eyes and short reddish-brown hair, but I didn't find myself electrically attracted to her. Maybe I'm expecting way too much from a first meeting, but it is safe to say that stumbling across the bumper sticker above was probably the highlight of my day.

I'm not going to be judgemental. She seems like an interesting enough person. But I was definitely not as attracted to her in person as I was on paper.

It's a shame really. But I suppose there are more fish in the sea, and I have to be careful here. I don't want to rebreak a heart that's still mending. I have to be discerning, and so I will be.

First dates are tough, though. I maybe shouldn't let first impressions sway me too much.

Dilemmas like these are the reason I hate being single.

That, and the feeling of really, really needing to get laid. This is not a feeling I have ever enjoyed.

Ah well. Back to the drawing board.

-N

The sun sets on isolationism

2006-09-11T18:00:00.000-07:00

I suppose that I may seem very, very self-absorbed to all of you today. I've been particularly sensitive to that idea since Mr. Boring Nice Guy here so kindly decided that I was self-centered, and you all know that I'm the biggest bleeding heart this side of the Canadian border, so of course some insensitive stranger's comment wounded me. How tedious, indeed.

But I DO know, recognize, and appreciate that it is September 11th.

And while I do somewhat agree with Bicyclemark and his remarks about the Big American Cliche -- I definitely did take some time today to think about New York and how the place and its people are healing. Any New Yorkers want to comment on this? Curlz? How about my other American readers? How has it affected those of you in Europe, England, and Australia?

My most profound feeling on the day is just how very surreal the idea of two commercial planes crashing into and bringing down some of the world's largest free-standing structures still is for me. It's astonishing, really, how much it still feels like a horrific disaster movie rather than something than actually happened in a real place where real people died. This may just be a function of the generation in which I was raised, although I do hate to generalize myself based on my age.

So what are your thoughts on this day, my readers?

I'd love to know, because I care.

Stay safe,

N

She Loves the Bass

2006-09-11T17:02:00.000-07:00

Is it so hard
To satisfy your senses
You found out to love me
You have to climb some fences
Scratching and crawling
Along the floor to touch you
Just when it feels right
You say you've found someone to hold you
Does she....? Like I do?
Baby tell me does she love you
Like the way I love you?
-Lesbians on Ecstasy - Tell Me Does She Love the Bass

That's probably the sexiest song I know at the moment. I just can't get enough of it.

I was thinking as I walked through the unwilderness of parkland on my way home today how scary it must have been for the people of North America who lived, oh say 40,000 years ago to know that they were walking through forests inhabited by sabertooth tigers, and lions twice the size of the lions in Africa. I was a bit distressed to find that I couldn't decide whether the threat of a bloody death by wild animals was better or worse than walking on a teeny tiny stretch of forest with the highway's endless yellow line glinting unforgivingly through the trees.

The only sabertooth tiger I've ever seen is the big orange guy on the top right. And he's a big softie. Just look at him. That said, sparrows, deer mice, shrews and other small adorable forest creatures -- beware!! This wildcat has a fatal attraction to cuteness.

Speaking of a fatal attraction to cuteness, how cute is Gwen Stefani and her little harajuku girls? Damn cute, and more than a bit scary.

This is the other song I'm obsessed with. It's something of a sub/slave anthem (Storm Rider and Wind know what I mean), and Pandora.com has decided that I like it a lot. Pandora's right, actually, I think the song is great and I never get sick of it.

Sorry to bombard you with lyrics. The best thing you can do should you really want to be inside my head for a little while is to download these songs and listen to them, loud, in the bathtub. Get Soulseek, it's brilliant. Anyway:

You only wake me
Up when you’re hungry
I’ll make some dinner but not today
You only take me
When you get lonely
Into the sunshine where we can play

And then we’ll light a cigarette, for two
Maybe we’ll ride on handlebars, so new
Go on and give it to me

Yeah Yeah Yeah just kick me to the curb, that’s what I’m needing

You only spank me
When I get naughty
Sometimes my manners they go astray
You only thank me
When you get greedy
You know I’ll take you back so it’s okay
-The Dollyrots - Kick Me to the Curb

The Bro and I went to play night tennis last night. Unsurprisingly that's just regular old tennis, except at night, under big bright lights that throw you into complete darkness when they shut themselves off rather unceremoniously at 10:00 pm. I used to play competitive tennis back in the day, but no matter how much I would have liked to be a really short, brown-haired Maria Sharapov a, (though as an aside I do think that athletic girls are hot beyond belief, especially when they're 6'3" and Sharapovamazing) I know that my competition days are over. But there's still something so satisfying to me about whacking a tennis ball really hard over a net over and over again. Maybe it's that unbelievably visceral TOCK! sound it makes. It's almost like that moment during sex where you get that theresthespot feeling. And finally, you're in the game. But that's as far as I plan to take that particular metaphor, so don't worry. I'm not going to do any stupid sports = sex equations. Not this week, anyway.

Above to your right is the worst pedicure ever. But check out my sandal tan!! SWEET!

In other news an actual clinical psychiatrist listened to me talk for an hour today and at the end of it informed me that I was "psychologically very healthy." Score. Red stamp of approval. Now I just have to convince the rest of the world.

This is way too long. Sorry.

I'm meeting someone very, very hot tomorrow. But I won't tell you anymore until it actually happens. Thus my hopes remain at a realistic level.

But I am EXCITED like you wouldn't believe.

Or maybe you would.

Happy Monday, all.

-N

hop, hop, hopla!!

2006-09-10T17:01:00.000-07:00

That's what waiters say in France when they're coming past you with a full tray. French sound effects are beyond sexy.

Speaking of beyond sexy, I couldn't keep myself from signing up again for the same website my stalker was on. This time I was smarter, though. My photo doesn't show my face and my whole profile's pretty cryptic. Now I'm talking to all kinds of neat girls, and I'm even going to meet a few of them on Tuesday. I can't believe how many new and adorable people are on there now.

Check out how long my arm is! Freaky!

Lest you think I live my entire life on the internet, I will point out that I spent a rather great weekend reviving my actual IRL social life. I went to Rain's birthday last night, and we had some amazing food (duck spring rolls to die for) and listened to some great jazz sung by a mellow red-haired gal.

Morgan, my dear American friend, picked me up her usual twenty minutes late in a rental car, and she told me the story of how she'd totalled her precious Chevy by getting into a T-bone crash at an intersection last week. This is the reason I don't drive. She was covered in bruises, and had the bone part of the T been a little bit to the right, I would, as she put it, "still be wondering: gee, I haven't heard from Morgan in a while." Her morbid sense of humour is at least still healthy. That was a close call indeed.

I simply adore Morgan. She's really one of my favourite people on earth. She's had such a tough life, and her family sounds like a real piece of work, but she approaches every aspect of her existence with such humour and hilarity than hanging out with her is always a good time. She was very sympathetic about my break-up, and she told me that whenever someone asks her how she's doing and she doesn't want to get into it, she just tells them she's F.I.N.E. -- Fucked-up, Imbalanced, Neurotic, and Enraged. It's become my new favourite acronym.

Today I had a fabulous brunch with my great aunt and the Bro, and served as his fashion consultant when we went clothes shopping. Somehow a mushroom-spinach-jalapeno omelet and a new pair of pants and some cute shirts makes everything in my life that much peachier.

Mac is still sending me text messages. Anyone have advice as to how to let the boy down gently? Is telling him that I'm gay simply bad form? I just don't know.

I appreciate all and any advice, unless you're going to call me self-centered and tell me I'm mean. I don't want to hurt this boy, really.

Hope everyone's having a lovely weekend.

-N

Why Straight Boys Should Probably Not Fall For the Nome

2006-09-09T17:22:00.000-07:00

So, I went out with a boy last night. It was a strange sort of situation.

He started messaging me online, and for reasons I don't quite understand, I decided that he was cool enough to hang out with for the evening. I was deeply bored, he was there, and seemed like a profoundly innocuous and sweet lad. Let's call him Mac.

He drove me in his refurbished 1984 Honda Civic out to the Richmond Night Market, which he couldn't possibly have known is one of the places I've always wanted to go but could never get to on the bus. We laughed, listened to music, and chatted about life. He shares my affection a semi-obscure Ohio-based garage band called The Black Keys, and we blasted their music all the way out to suburbia. We ate A&W fries and drank rootbeer off his dashboard, and walked through the night market drinking bubble tea as I cooed over hair clips and Hello Kitty stationary.

It was the greatest time I'd had with a total stranger I'd had in ages, except for a couple of things:

1) This guy was the straightest, most chivalrous, traditional gender performing individual I'd met in ages. He held my coat and bag while I tried on a jacket in the market, he held open doors, he wanted to pay for things, and he treated me like such a bloody female that I had to stop and question why his behaviour disturbed me so much. I still don't know. But it did disturb me deeply.

2) He was so incredibly nice that I was a bit shocked when he used the f-word. I conclude that I find edginess way more attractive than I realised.

3) I wasn't attracted to him. Not at all. Not for a moment, although he was a very conventionally attractive lad. Very handsome and tall with a pretty boy kind of a face. But when it became abundantly clear that he was into me, I started to have a lot less fun.

4) He seemed to not get that I was into girls. Maybe he thought it was a lark and that I mainly liked boys or something, but it puzzled me. There's something about straight boys who are fairly mainstream that I find baffling. They don't seem to understand queerness no matter how many times you hit them over the head with it.

5) While he laughed at my jokes, he really wasn't making any of his own. Funny is an absolute necessity for me.

6) He sang a song about an enormous penis on the way home. I think that was the dealbreaker for me.

7) Outside my building he came around the other side of the car to say goodbye to me. Then he rather stiffly and formally asked if he could take me out on a date next weekend. I told him not to get his hopes up, and that it was complicated, and that it was nothing to do with him. But in hindsight I think it had a lot to do with him. He was simply not for me.

So what do you think, guys? Am I just too queer for school? Or was this guy just not Nomerific material?

Rain's b-day bash is tonight and Morgan's picking me up in a half hour.

Gotta fly,

N

p.s. Anyone remember my ancient love of motorcycles? Well, the boy who introduced me to the motorbike was a hot one indeed. Remember Jordan? Even if you don't, this little piece of writing by the brilliant Sac Man (can I call you that? It rhymes with Pac Man and I love it) should explain a lot of the joy of that dangerous pursuit much more eloquently than I ever did.