hold the door

parking2
Originally uploaded by kristalynn.

i've recently implemented a battery of new life policies in hope that things will start to work better for me. one of these policies dictates that i should not resist everything, which usually renders myself in a bad mood.

so when i could not find a wingwoman to accompany me to the jazz festival with a date/non-date, i decided that i just had to "go with the flow", and that i was just going to a concert with an old friend. and if he got handsy, that i would simply move his hands from my person and say, "no no no".

"i must have details!" called my friend after me as i set off on my bike.

we met on a crowded corner. he had brought a wingcouple of his own - an old friend from high school and his new wife.

as we walked along the crowded streets to the stage, my date/non-date would place one hand on my back and the other out in front - indicating that i could go first. a pleasant surprise from a few past dud dates who, seemingly impervious to my presence (perhaps too taken by themselves and their unremitting self-sales pitch), would cut right in front of me when turning corners. it was i who had to stop to let them go, while they yammered on.

we ended up at a blues concert. the music was amazing - a group from chicago.

"would you like something to drink? a beer?" he asked.

i didn’t. i was beered out. he went to the beer tent and returned with an iced tea in hand for me. i beamed. so simple, so thoughtful. i was parched. how did he know?

"stand here," he said as he grabbed my waist and moved me to higher ground. "you can see better." i could. and i could also lean up against a tree during my tired moments. he stood behind a tall person. but i happily took the better spot.

his wingcouple got lost in the crowd.

conversation flowed easily. i probed areas where i wanted more information (yoga retreats, martial arts, his custody battle) and he responded freely and candidly. in the middle of a conversation, i'd make a joke, and he'd actually get it, and even build on it. a rarity.

we moved on to a second show. we both liked it only for about 10 minutes. leaving the show we wrapped up our date/non-date with no tension; no lunging lips, and no sweaty, grapple-y hands.

i figure he is just naturally super friendly, affectionate, and mindful. even if it was a non-date, he made me feel like a special person, if just for one evening.

the last of the mojitos

park2
Originally uploaded by kristalynn.

recently, a project manager decided to call me up, yell at me, and then hang up.

"would you read the document before you start giving me a hard time!" he shouted.

he had never sent me said document.

it was a holiday. and a sunny one at that. his abuse, in addition to much else, resulted in my laying down and crying. my sinuses and my eyelids immediately swelled up.

habitually, i would have canceled my dinner plans for the evening, but i knew it would be okay, perhaps even encouraged, to show up in a swollen, red, and streaky state. the hostess was no stranger to similar meltdowns. i once counseled her in the arts of applying ice directly to the maxillofacial area so we could attend a taco dinner party.

"the gay men will make you feel better..." i cooed.


in contrast to making people cry, i've noticed that certain bits of miscellaneous information make them happy.

i love informing the neighborhood eccentric that i've gone drinking with a mutual friend. being almost permanently depressed, it brings a kind of wideness to his eyes never otherwise witnessed. he thinks she holes herself up.

"why did you tell C that we made all those homemade margaritas?" she was kinda mad.

"he just gets so happy..."


when catsitting, i decided to barbecue some sirloin burgers on the grill. the gas ran out.

"now they're gonna know you used their barbecue," said a friend.

"i feel it will make them happy."

when i went to give the keys back, i informed them that the cat only made appearances from day 2 forward and that i used all the gas in the grill.

"oh... i'm happy you used the barbecue," one said while the other smiled.

i loved telling my boyfriend that i was going for a run. he forgot everything else, if just for a moment.

"watch your knee. stay on the trails. here, have some gatorade. you lose too many electrolytes." he watched carefully as i tied up my shoes. "not too tight... remember last time."


my project manager called again today. he didn't yell. his tactic was to pretend it never happened. my tactic was to be professional and business-like. i've never been so cold.

schmap again

parking3
Originally uploaded by kristalynn.

i just got word that my photo of an old speakeasy in new york is being used in the "schmap for the iphone" ad. cool. chekkit.

contain

off the hook
Originally uploaded by kristalynn.

"what size are your feet?"

i knew where this was going even before the words "seven and a half" came out of my mouth.

i was having dinner with one of my best friends and his good friend. this man had been at his sister’s apartment the whole day, packing up her stuff. she passed away a couple of weeks earlier of a brain tumor. she learned of this tumor only two months before that. her boyfriend was at the hospital every morning before she woke up.

"you're the same size. same style. she had skinny arms like that," his chopstick poked me in the shoulder.

i could only nod.

"she's got tons of shoes, clothes... CDs. boxes of stuff. i knew she loved shoes, but did she need a hundred pairs? i've got two pairs of shoes."

"i've got about twenty pairs," i looked over at my friend.

he nodded.


before getting in the car i asked what his sister would think of us going into her apartment, to riffle through her possessions, picking and rejecting. he walked over from the driver's side and leaned against the car. he told me that she wouldn't mind, that she wasn't one who had many secrets.

there were about four boxes of shoes in the hallway; her closets still full of her clothing, shelves still stacked with DVDs, her bathroom full of really great products.

he motioned to the boxes. "see what fits, what you like. the only rule is that if you're not going to use it, don't take it."

she had the exact same pair of shoes that i had just tripped on some new york cobblestones with. i had scuffed them and semi ruined them. i took those and a pair of sexy eff-me boots. i have a high pair, and a low pair. she supplied me with a nice medium length pair. with sexy pointy toes.

while my friend and i were going through some CDs, the brother came into the room with an armful of beads.

"she's got baskets and baskets of these. beads and necklaces and earrings. what is this?"

"a chandelier," i said.

"a chandelier?" he said. "i didn't even know she did this. the whole front room is full of beads. it's going to go to the women's shelter."

i wonder what i would think if I knew i was leaving my apartment for the last time.

charmed, i'm sure

couple
Originally uploaded by kristalynn.

i was having beers in the afternoon sun with a friend, lamenting our relationship strike outs.

“i want something magical to happen to me, like in the movies,” i said.

“people aren’t fantasies, people are real,” he said. “we’re faulty. so far from perfect.”

“it’s true,” i nodded as i for some reason remembered how the creator of ren and stimpy said that anyone was gross if you looked at them up close.


when my sister and i were young, we lived in a tiny house on a military base. it looked like the kind of house kids draw. square. with a chimney on the roof. this chimney had a tiny door in the basement that i guess was to clean the soot or dead squirrels or something. this iron door was about 6 inches wide and 4 inches high. we were decorating the christmas tree when i wondered how santa could make his way through this tiny door.

i asked my parents.

my mom replied with something like, “santa’s magic. if he can visit every single house in the world in one night, he can squeeze through our chimney.”

i bought it.

but my dad replied with, “there’s no such thing as santa clause.”

i immediately felt very stupid. really foolish that i had been duped into believing in something that was not real. and then i realized that there must not be any easter bunny either.

my dad’s excuse was that he didn’t like lying to children.


in trying to regain the lost enchantment of my youth, i get choked up when reading or watching anything fantastical. “one hundred years of solitude” destroyed me. and i always get chocked up when watching people’s reactions to magic tricks. and you may remember that pulling a rabbit out of a box on the subway was one of the more memorable moments in my life.

i recently opted to go to a yoga class instead of joining a friend for a movie. while he waited, david blaine just happened to be shooting a video.

“what!?” i exclaimed. i was just blogging about him.*

“really? that’s so funny. well, he took my dollar and gave it back to me backwards. he also set half of it on fire. in a girl’s hand.”

i stared blankly. “i love david blaine, you know.”

“well, you missed him.”


i’m slowly and sadly realizing that i have to let go of my fantasy. we are not characters in the sex in the city movie. big is not going to show up and build me a closet. people are imperfect and are subject to moods. they also often have hair growing out of their ears.

trouble is, not matter how often i get spurned, i still cry when i watch david blaine turn a homeless man’s cup of coffee into money.


* i had been blogging about him, but changed it to the more generic “magic” so that you wouldn’t have to read “david blaine” 900 times.

... for your thoughts

lady in pink
Originally uploaded by kristalynn.

i once joked with a friend about that macy's day parade and how it precedes the "biggest shopping day of the year".

"if it's the biggest shopping day of the year, how come i'm not shopping," i unfunnily said.


i've been spending some time back in new york, and today, upon ill advice, i went to century 21.

i begged two people's pardons as i tried to get past a handbag display. neither of the congesting parties heard me, so i gently placed my hand on the shoulder of one of them: the gay one. he was yelling across a counter to a friend; asking for advice on a special and unique item.

"sorry, can i get by?" i repeated.

he turned around. "don't push," he bitched. the little bitch.

"i didn't push. i'd just like to get by. there's like this much room." i fairly demonstrated with my hands how much room there was. had i tried to squeeze through this demonstrated space, he really would have been pushed.

"i'm talking with my friend. just wait."

i hated century 21 and promptly left, purchaseless. i sat in a coffeeshop on broadway to decompress and people watch. it was a rainy day, from beginning to end. a homeless, or an ex-homeless, man was collecting money for a homeless organization. he was draped in a rain poncho, but it was doing no good. i was watching him not collect a cent.

i noticed that the jug into which people were supposed to put money had a little white paper cup over the mouth of it, to protect the money from the rain.

i burst into tears.

three items of note that were shouted at me today

cactus
Originally uploaded by kristalynn.

item of note #1: "Hey green eyed lady... Or grey eyes. Can't tell."

item of note #2: "Nice nips!"

item of note #3: "I'd like to see your p*ssy!"

from the ground up

Originally uploaded by kristalynn.

two days before christmas, my boyfriend, after nine years, delivered some news that kept me up for weeks and kept me from eating nary a melba toast.

when you're holed up in your hairdresser's apartment, in the dead darkness of winter, starving and going mad due to insomnia, the true gems in your life start to show themselves. friends and family drove miles and miles to come see me, while a local friend threw her house keys at me, saying i didn't even have to call before i dropped in.

"i'm sad that as adults we've lost the art of the drop by", she said.

"dropping by makes me feel desperate," i replied.

"we need a paradigm shift and must not see it as desperate, but instead as footloose and fancy free."

she sat by me as i time-consumingly ate a slice of pizza.

my sister and her husband flew me out to their new home on the quiet island of prince edward island. in summer the place bustles, but in the dead of winter there wasn't much activity but a snowstorm every second day. it was perfect for me to lie in bed with a space heater aimed directly at my face.

"why won't auntie get out of bed?" my three-year old niece asked.

"uncle g hurt auntie's heart," replied my sister.

my niece placed her head into her hands.


as that old stinky cliche goes, time does heal. or something. i started sleeping. without narcotic aid. and i started eating. even if it was an entire bag of doritos.


severraal years ago, when my boyfriend and i were still together, gunshots rang out at 3am, right after the club across the street closed. it was the second shooting in two weeks; this one being the retaliation.

before the end of the five shots, and before i could finish screaming, "fuck! NOT again!", my boyfriend had thrown his entire body on top of mine, in some kind of movie-type protection.

as the drive-by car drove by, we slowly got up and peered out of the bottom of the window. we saw the body lying on the sidewalk.


"if you ever doubt g's love, remember how he charged at me and gary. he was gonna clock us," said a friend. i had been showing my apartment to his friend, for a potential sublet. my boyfriend had stopped by and heard male voices coming from inside. he charged down the hallway to defend my honor.


the dysfunctional club across the street closed shortly after the second shooting. i heard that the guy lying on the sidewalk lived.

i'll take it

margarita & tat
Originally uploaded by kristalynn.

several years ago, i mustered up the courage to ask a friend who was responsible for doing her hair. it was much nicer than mine.

"oh, it's "M", she was surprised that i didn't know.

"who? do i know her?"

"she does the hair for the cast of the french version of the office."

"oh..." she was out of my hair’s league. but i bravely asked for the number anyway.


M always seemed to run behind schedule for my appointments. the first few visits consisted of me waiting on her red velvet couch, having to listen to a 45 minute conversation between her and a metrosexual about the customization his fauxhawk. his high energy and her enthusiasm drained what little i had. when it came my turn to sit in the chair, a pale, pallid, exhausted, and ugly person stared back at me.

"you dyed your hair too dark," she gently counseled.

"yeah..." i sighed. the dark circles under my eyes seemed accentuated.

these awkward exchanges continued for months. until one day when i showed up with a little extra energy and she wasn't running behind schedule.

"you got a little sun. and your hair isn't as dark. you look good," she said.

"thanks," i said. "i really like the dark hair on you though. it works."

she proceeded to tell me how she saw felicity huffman during her recent trip to mexico. i feigned thrill. and noticed my smile lines.

and then she divulged a friend's sexual orientation temporary derailment.


"i heard you had a breakthrough with M," said my friend who gave me the number. "she had been waiting so long."

i gushed. "we talked about a momentary lapse of gayness..."

i catsat and moved into her apartment when she and her boyfriend returned to mexico for 6 weeks. and i even appreciated it when, after trying to coordinate a sunny afternoon beverage through a facebook thread, she barked "NOOO COFFEE" at us.

did she talk to the metrosexuals like that?

someone cared about split-endy me.

the embarra-crush

alexe and sosi
Originally uploaded by kristalynn.

not too long ago, i revealed to a friend that i had developed an unfortunate crush on leonardo dicraprio. it was due to the watching of blood diamond. and the reason was his perfectly awful south african accent.


in late winter i noticed that a "comedy writing workshop" was being offered by a man who i have been triflingly stalking for a couple of years. not for reasons of any accent, but for reasons of his writing.

i was too scared to join alone, so i forced a friend to sign up as well. during the first class, we all introduced ourselves. there was "sweater", who declared that graph paper was the only way to go when writing down email addresses. there was the "angry russian journalist" who could not understand the difference between kramer and jerry, and the "stand up comic" who responded to statements like, "that can be a pain in the ass…" with "... and so's a greek with a hard on!" and finally there was the guy who could not stop mentioning warren buffet.

comedy class.

"i don't want to read my story to these people. i don't want to share any part of myself with these people." stated my friend after one of the classes. i was debilitated with guilt.

"i'm sure we'll be laughing about this in a couple of days... hey - do you think we should maybe call the police? i'm sure those jokes about the arabs and the jews constitute hate literature."

"i think that guy has a goiter. that's not just a double chin."


on another occasion, my stalkee-teacher decided it would be a good idea to present audio clips of stand up comedians to give us an idea of what's considered funny. because it certainly wasn't our efforts. he played a five-minute bit on someone going on about hot pockets - that weird microwave thing. sweater, anger, and the closeted homosexual sat grim-faced while every time the comedian sang the "hot pocket" theme, i curled up in laughter. but because no one else found it funny, i suppressed my laughter, which only made tears flow.

while digging my friend's car out of the snow after class, i confessed how the singing of the hot pocket song made me break out into a sweat.

"i got really cold when it ended," she confided.

"my knees almost gave out."

"holding in my laughter made me pee."

"i don't see how anyone could find warren buffet funny."


later that week i emailed the teacher with my concerns about the anti-jewish/anti-arab sentiment from double-chin (the goiter is under investigation). he emailed back saying that "sometimes the attempt at comedy can be ugly."

he shall be stalked no more.

los cabos

i'm heading somewhere warm. somewhere with tequila and sombreros and surf.

i'll be back soon to blog about leonardo dicraprio.

guest speaker, unbeknownst to him

soho dogs
Originally uploaded by kristalynn.

i recently wrote about high roads versus low roads. and how i got very short-term satisfaction, yet long-term malaise, from giving in to unqualified temptation and taking the low road.

in spring cleaning my apartment and computer, i came across an email from an ex-boss. an email that i will soon copy and paste into this post, so that you can all learn how to act like decent human beings, and not sloppy, cheap spumante-swilling, be-breasted man lumps.

about ten years ago, i walked into an office for a job interview. when the suave, dark-haired, dark-eyed italian interviewee and i looked at each other, hardly able to muster the wherewithal to shake each others' hands, i knew i not only had the job, but that we just fell in love.

our favorite thing was to go take really long breaks and get gelato. he made me laugh. to the core.

but i didn't permit anything to happen. because he had a girlfriend of ten years.

his ten-year relationship was assy, as all ten-year relationships tend to be. but i told him that he would have to sort that out before anything could happen between us. i wasn't going to be *that* woman. essentially, i wanted to see if he could grow a pair.

he went on a "boys weekend" and he told me he would soul-search and come back with an answer. this is what he wrote:

"So....here I am in [undisclosed location]. Well the boys got together; the boys talked. Five mature men who seemed to spend a little too much time talking about oral sex, but we won't get into that sordid tale... I presented my conundrum, albeit in a hypothetical manner, and all these guys that always assumed that meeting another woman would just be a matter of feeling guilty about a brief but passionate sexual encounter were truly having difficulty wrapping their beer-soaked heads around the possibility of falling in love with another woman and thus having to make a decision. But to their credit they worked it through and came to the conclusion that the situation would indeed represent a pickle and that a monumental decision would have to be made.

Everyone agreed that it would be impossible and foolhardy to pursue both avenues simultaneously. In short, everyone agreed with everything you said. So I spent a lot of time gazing into the fire and staring across the lake and walking through the woods and looking thoughtfully at the stars, and... I just felt weary and sorta numb. So no decisions have been made, no action will be taken, no changes are afoot. Maybe I'll snap out of it and spring into action, or maybe I'll just plug along in this catatonic state indefinitely.... But at least I'm thinking about it and questioning things. I'm sorry that I have to be so thick and slow. I'm an emotional half-wit sitting around eating french-fried pertaters and fixing small engines and saying "uuuh-huuuh" to everything. I'm pretty disgusted with myself really. I'm not even feeling sorry for myself; I'm just disgusted with my brain and its pitiful thoughts. That's what came out of the weekend. I would have to, I think, go back even further than my current relationship to tear things down and rebuild. I would have to spend time alone for a while. I would have move away. I could not, I am beginning to understand, break up one relationship and start a new one immediately. So goodbye for now - I'm assuming that this will mark the end of your patience. Thanks for trying to change me. I'll let you know if/when it works. Ti voglio bene."

i accepted his letter of resignation. that's as high as it gets.