He went away

Just like that, he was gone. I was standing on a road in Red Hook, covered in sweat and my skin burning under a cloudless afternoon sky. I stared at my phone, my heart having dropped somewhere, laying on the sidewalk between my running shoes, maybe. He was leaving. It was over.

It had been all summer, and I had used any and every excuse to keep in touch with him all along the spectrum of passion, and just today I had hated him. I hadn't slept with anyone else, and the fucker gave me a case of HPV that ended up turning into precancer. I was pissed, convinced he'd given it to me from sleeping around with whoever and not giving two shits about me when he was all I'd been able to think about for months. I yelled at him, pretending there was no way I could have gotten the HPV from the Crocodile before he'd gone off his meds and held a knife to my throat.

I intended to yell more. Then he said he was leaving New York for good. Something about his mother. He hated it here. Then my heart fell out and suddenly I was standing there in the sun, the conversation having ended minutes ago without me knowing how or why. I was parched. I wanted to lie down right where I was, on the dusty sidewalk in front of wherever I was. It was over.

Then Josh moved out. He had moved in just six weeks before, after a several month tour of Europe and Africa, the two of us sitting in bars and crying in our beers about how useless it was to meet the person you're meant to love if that person doesn't want you back. Just six weeks and now he was leaving, right when I needed a friend to cry with. I felt like he was cutting our friendship apart with a knife.

Two weeks later, I forgot my best friend's birthday while she spent it taking care of me after the surgery to remove the precancerous cells from my cervix. I was lying on my couch with my head in her lap when my landlord called me and told me he was selling the building. I didn't remember it was her birthday until the next day, when she had gone back to Long Island.

I think I stared at the cats wondering if one of them was going to die.

Then I looked in the mirror and wished I would die.

I wished the Crocodile had cut my throat. I imagined the blood all over the floor in the foyer, seeping under the door. I imagined the police kicking the door open to find it slamming into my lifeless body, my purse still slung over the arm. I imagined them finding him in the bedroom, overdosed on whatever the fuck he was on, and finding the three bottles of untaken antipsychotics and looking for my ID in my purse. I wondered how they would find my mother's phone number.

I spent much of the next few months feeling sorry for myself that I was still alive, but I got a therapist. I knew I needed a therapist. I felt insane. I felt like everything was crumbling around me, and my home was once again going to be taken away. She didn't even know where to begin, my intake took three sessions and my problems, while not dire, all rooted back to this one thing: loss. Coping with loss. Regret of loss. Fear of loss. Worthlessness from loss. Emptiness from loss. Anger from loss.

Thanks, Dad. Thanks a lot.

I keep running back to that road in Red Hook. I go to the track just to turn around and run over that pavement in the sun and bring myself back to the moment my phone rang. I check it. I see that it's him. I don't answer. Even if I hate him, I don't want him to be gone.

Attn Stalkers:

Bellydancers for BARC. Good beer, fun prizes, $5 all-you-can-eat food, selflessly aiding cute animals, and me!


I'll be dancing two numbers in the benefit show for BARC, the Brooklyn Animal Rescue Coalition, which is a nice private shelter in Williamsburg that preys upon every sentimental cell in my body by helping homeless domestic animals find food, shelter, and someone who will neuter them.

Saturday at The Boulevard Tavern in Williamsburg/Greenpoint (get directions here). I'll vouch for Boulevard as a cool place to hang out. The food is delicious backyard barbecue grill-out goodness with options for meaties and veggies alike, plus bonus potato salad. Save a dog or cat, buy a beer, or just come to watch me and my bellydancer friends swish around in our fluffy skirts, midriffs blazin'. Bring your friends! Helicopter will be there! Be there or be square!

Tell me why Brooklyn is so damn cool.

F-ed in Park Slope is gathering reasons why Brooklyn is great. Go see! Write your own!

Mine: Brooklyn is awesome because we have the most reliable subway line in New York! Sure, the Franklin Avenue Shuttle doesn't take you anywhere you really need to go, but at least it will get you there on time!

Amazing, wonderful, supportive, style-cramping sidekicks.

I haven't posted anything about my home life in a long while. I guess that's because I equate life with being social, and now that I have roommates I actually have a home life.

I still firmly hold the belief that it is less cool to live with roommates than to live without. However, my quality of life has drastically increased thanks to my two roommates, The Starlet and The Booklet. They are truly awesome, because I get along with them. I am not at all an easy person to live with, but these two girls...well, when describing them to others, I often liken them to "the two little sisters I never had." I attribute much of our dynamic to the age difference: they're twenty-two and fresh out of college.

Seriously, my life is better with the girls at my side. I feel like a superhero with two adorable, fun-loving sidekicks. They're there for me if I forget to feed the cats or if I lock myself out of the apartment when I go running. They're there to talk to at the end of the day. They buy me dinner when I get canned. They got me flowers for my New York Birthday. I no longer wander the streets of the City alone; now I have my dear sweet girls with me, and together we explore lovely Brooklyn under the pretext of our brunch club. We go out together, we stay in together... We share....like.... EVERYTHING. Even feelings, and that's saying a lot for The Booklet. These two personify what roommates should be.

Okay, so there's that.

Now I've been doing a little of that dating thing again. And...well...I've managed to avoid it thus far, but eventually it's going to come time to bring someone to my apartment.

Panic.

So, happy as I am living with these two wonderful gals, why the panic? I'm not ashamed to live with them; quite the contrary! But I must confess that I am a little ashamed that I am twenty-eight and live...you know...with two roommates. In Brooklyn. It's not exactly the life I pictured for myself when I set forth on this adventure. I figured if I was going to live with roommates I would at least live in Manhattan. And if I was going to live with roommates in Brooklyn it wouldn't be...you know...two of them.... two...22 year old...roommates...

See, I tend to like people who are slightly older than me (know anyone cute and in their early thirties?). People who are generally a little more...ahem..."established" than me. People who can afford solo apartments and who are old enough that they just don't want to do the roommate thing anymore. Hell, sometimes I think I'm too old for the roommate thing (but I'm so much happier this way).

But I'm happier this way! And our rent is dirt freakin' cheap!

This strikes a panic in me! What do I do when it happens!? How do I explain all the tofu in the fridge (they're vegetarian and vegan girls, respectively), or Starlet's gigantic electric toothbrush that always falls out of the medicine cabinet or Booklet's intense breakfast-cooking regimen right outside my bedroom door? How do I explain the lack of nice furniture or decoration on the walls (this is their first apartment and I came from a studio)? How do I have some nice person sleep over in my big giant bedroom with my adorable cat purring on the foot of the bed, only to have this nice person run into a 22 year old on his or her way to the bathroom?

OH MY GOD. My room is next to the kitchen...What if I bring someone home and we're...you know... and.... OH MY GOD!

Oh the horror. I can't expose my dear sweet little girls to that. I can't face their innocent, darling little doe-eyes after something like that.

And then, what happens when they meet this hypothetical person? What if my adopted little sisters don't like him or her? What if it's a her and they freak out? They know, but it hasn't been in their faces yet. We all know I'm not looking for my next great romance too...what if they disapprove of my casual approach!? Oh the conflict! Oh the angst!

Panic. Quiet, dull panic, but panic nonetheless.