Why Can't We Be Friends?

Like I mentioned yesterday, I saw my ex best friend Hester this week. I blogged about her on Missbehave about seven months ago, so it's been about two and a half years since we'd shared a single word. We met in health class sophomore year of high school...she was the converse and leopard-sporting punk rock girl and I was the converse and plaid-sporting new girl I guess? I think we bonded when the health teacher asked us what we ate all week and I brought in an empty bag of frozen corn (my parents were out of town). Then we shared one of those crying plastic babies for those early parenting classes. Everyday, one of us spent the evening sewing intricate outfits and it was also the only doll with zero minutes of crying (since everyone else threw them in their lockers)! So, fast forward seven years and we're finally decorating our dreamhouse apartment in Bushwickw after moving in together when I graduated from college. I painted. She went out. I worked a couple jobs. She took some classes. I went a little nuts and couldn't hack living with her cause she's always a little nuts and the crazy had built on itself until I couldn't support it and I guess she didn't know it was there. I moved across the street with our mutual best friend Demetra. So we hadn't talked in forever and I lived in fear that we'd run into each other. I had nightmares. I ran out of Beacon's Closet when I saw she was at work. Anyways, she called me last week and we sat down for drinks. My palms were sweating, I half expected her to come in and throw my drink in my face and leave. We talked it out. Two drinks later, we were buddies again and I'm more relieved than I ever imagined I would be. We went thrift store shopping, we went over two years worth of stories of boys, jobs, friends, favorite things, etc. and realized we hadn't swayed so far from each other but have grown into little women. Demetra's gonna kill me for being a traitor, but it's a huge relief not feeling like I have to hide from someone who was once my best friend. Now we're working on a movie. Well...we got drunk and devised a plan to make a movie involving mustaches, godzilla, heroes and heroines. Should it come together, like so few of our outlandish plans, I will make it known...you know, by winning an oscar and being hailed as the next/better whatsherfacewhowroteJuno! Yay! Naranja Julius for everyone!

I don't feel any different: This is not a love song

The new year. It's common for people to make outlandish promises to themselves with no intentions of following through. I never bother because I want the same things every year and I know perfectly well that they would happen if I put forth any effort. This year, I want to get a fantastic job , eat more vegetables, try new things, live without fear of failing, and make fun friends in LA. I read my astrologyzone today, which had a hopeful view of the next two months! Except I know a bunch of virgos and there's no way we're all gonna be happy. I'm in Minnesota at Mayo Clinic with my mom, she's asleep under the polyester bed-spread next to me, snoring lightly. I'm supposed to be taking care of her but have been stricken with a sore-throat and case of new year-paranoia. I'll be up at 6:30am to hit the hospital.

Jingle Balls

Happy Holidays! I spent the day making cookies and preparing festive food with my mom. Mostly, she entertained a friend and decorated cookies. It was a good time anyway...for some reason I feel like I accomplished a lot today? I guess we did go grocery shopping at two grocery stores, rented movies, and bought a torch to make baked alaskas. I didn't write though. I didn't revise the piece I just wrote for Missbehave. Oh well. I think I'm just starting to get comfortable with this being home thing. Not seeing anyone at all but my mother seems to help. So my mom wanted to watch this movie called Far North because she heard it was good. It was about these cute eskimos who have to move around the tundra a bunch or some whiteys will kill them. Then they find a nearly dead whitey who they both fall in love with. The younger eskimo says they're going to run away together, so older eskimo cuts off her fucking face and wears it!!!! wtf! I totally didn't see it coming and there needs to be warnings on movies if that shit's going down! Right? So then we had to watch a whole 'nother movie to get the awful awful image unburned from our tender corneas. So we watched an Audrey Tautou movie called Priceless. It's adorable and kinda like Amelie, except she's a gold-digging fashion horse! The other night, my friend Alex and I went to every bar in Santa Fe for drinks. I don't really remember paying for them...but I'm sure I did. Kinda sure. I vaguely remember reading someone else's Playboy and then kissing Alex at the bar. It probably looked a lot like the kiss above only less hot, with more falling, and without facecutter watching from a distance. I need someone who's not my platonic best friend to make out with...I've got my eyes on the produce guy at this hippie grocery store but I'm pretty sure he has a wallet chain and a bowl cut. I bet he tastes like sixth grade. I also ran into a director/screenwriter I used to work with way back when I donned costumes and pretended to be anyone but myself...oh I guess I'm still doing that...anyway, he's going through a divorce and I'm wondering if it would be sketchy if I asked him to coffee. Not that I want to undress him with my teeth or anything. But it's kind of weird being of a more "adult" age and not knowing how to relate to those who've been adults for a bit longer. I have no idea how he envisions me now. Am I still a sixteen-year-old drama geek in his eyes? Or a 25-year-old straight-out geek? On an unrelated note, here's my bee tattoo!

Baby's Romance

Have you ever considered someone to be a friend for years and then, at some point in time, you're forced to spend a couple days with them and realize that you absolutely, positively hate them and can't figure out how you ever got along in the first place? Yeah, I'm there. My friend called upon me to assist him on a photoshoot. Even though he refused to pay me, I had nothing better to do and was open to seeing someone outside of my Santa Fe friends. We had a good time at the bar mitzvah and headed to a divey sports bar for drinks...where he proceeded to leave me alone for 40 minutes "going to the bathroom". Turns out he was on the phone with his girlfriend. Okay, this requires a back story, we had been seeing each other for a few months when our mutual friend confides in me that he is seeing another girl and just keeping me around as his dish on the side. Now, I don't have trouble finding men who want to date me. I'm generally the one not interested in anyone at all, so for some prick to be two-timing me, is fucked up. We stopped talking for a while, he occasionally solicits me for im sex. I decline. He sends me porn at work. Fast forward to now: he won't stop poking me, has a retort to anything I say, bitches about suitcases at thrift stores costing seven dollars, leaves his shit EVERYWHERE, tracks snow all around the house, and has not ONCE, not even once, asked me about my life, about my mom's cancer, about how I feel about anything. He refuses to watch any of the shows I like, insisting on watching football or the news. He grabs my boobs and puts his cold feet on my warm legs. He wears my father's robe wide open so that not only am I utterly repulsed by his hairy pregnant belly, but I will always feel a perversion to my father in his robe now. I don't know why I maintain friendships with utter losers who make me feel like shit. He's not the only one! Guys who have continually used me as a doormat, broken my heart, bruised my ego, etc. I want to be their best friends! Why is that? Why can't I just cut assholes out of my life? What is it about me that only attracts sexually deviant, manipulative babies? Am I asking for it? Am I deviant? How do you cut these guys out of your life? I feel like the more self confident I get, the more I'm able to say "no" and say "you're an ass, this is why..." but keeping these guys around at all is detrimental to a continuous growth of self-confidence. Yeah, they think I'm cute/funny/will buy them drinks maybe but none of them like me enough to actually treat me well! Fuck. Guys are fired from my life. (Except for Alex and Ryan...and my dad as long as he's not wearing that robe). I refuse to be any man's port in a storm. They've got to start appreciating the things I do to take care of them and then take care of me when I need them! Power to the peoples.

Queen of Squash Blossoms

Something about being home is extremely isolating. It's so strange being surrounded by the same boy faces from high school, but now we're supposed to be adults. I slept in a bed last night in between two of my closest male friends, as if we were siblings. I like to imagine myself as 'one of the boys' because I'm at least as crude and can generally follow a conversation about comic books or video games. But I miss my girls! I miss consuming whole pizzas with Sarah Morrison, trying new pork products at fancy New York restaurants with Mary HK Choi, sake and sushi night with Demetra...even just sitting in the office, laughing at ridiculous emails and instant messaging from two feet away. I don't know how much I can organize my life from my parent's guest house...I'm already antsy to leave. The sky gets dark so early, my drinks get drunken so quickly, and I wake up hurting in one way or another every day. Today, I spent about 3 hours researching apprenticeships at goat cheese farms. Turns out, you can work at a farm, live for free, get fed, and in some cases, get paid while learning how to create a sustainable environment for yourself. God, I'm totally turning into a hippie.
For dinner, I made a pear and avocado salad with crumbled goat cheese, lemon olive oil, and aged balsamic. It was kinda gross unless you ate the avocados first. I've done that a few times...made awful salads that I could barely eat. I'm usually pretty awesome with my food intuition...it's hard when you really want two things that are utterly incompatible. Huh. I think I accidentally just made a giant metaphor for my life. Crap. I'll assume that metaphor has something to do with wanting to do exactly what I want to do while sacrificing everything necessary for basic survival...but come from insanely motivated parents who won't call something a real job unless you are compensated fairly, in which case, I've never had a real job. I don't even know how to do a job hunt. I did make a website, which shut up my parents for a couple hours in the hassling department. Everything up to this point has flowed into the rest. Now I have to figure out if I have anything valuable and convince everyone else of it. So far, the only jobs of interest have been back in New York and I really don't want to go back unless I have enough money to live comfortably! Job searching is depressing though, I kind of assumed that New York was the one place where companies could get away with not paying their employees minimum wage because they're getting experience they couldn't get anywhere else but it looks like LA is just as bad, just in different fields. Am I ready to jump back into the lion's mouth of city life? I know I can't stay here and I'm not sure whether taking a month off to learn how to make goat cheese would benefit me...I kinda just want to exist for a while though! It seems that might be much harder than diving in deep and letting your life go over your head.

You Can't Go Home Again

Today was slightly better. I need to accept that I am kinda homeless now in some purgatory until I move to Los Angeles and find a new life for myself of some sort. I watched two of my closest friends get tattooed at Four Star today, Alex got a red umbrella to finish the bottom half of his sleeve and Ryan got a tiny ghost and "boo!" on the inside of his lip. It looked painful...thinking about getting "scrappy" inside mine, but am afraid I may have stolen that from someone else. Weetzie Bat is sleeping on my butt and I'm in for the night at 10pm which is miraculous. So, um, I'm going to Albuquerque with my ex tomorrow while he auditions and I sell 60% of my closet. I know it's really stupid of me to spend time with him now that I got over him well...yesterday? But I'm hoping it won't be awful and if I'm real lucky, he'll look like shit and I'll remember that there has got to be someone out there who'll love me for reals.

I watched Superbad last night, I forgot how fucking funny it is! (Still really awkward swearer). I'm going to interview Jonah Hill some point in the next few months...pretty excited. Must seduce him into friendship. I've got like 3 friends in LA now. It sucks starting over from scratch when a lot of people are probably settling into adulthood friendships. Wait, do people do that? I don't know. I'm sure everything will be peachy keen. Clark Duke simply has to hang out with me now that we're in love and all. Even though I haven't heard from him since I texted him during Sex Drive to let him know that I was watching him get a blow job...and that it was awkward. Hope I didn't give him the impression that the movie sucked. Zack and Miri Make a Porno was probably worse...even though I adore everyone involved and would probably see both movies again. Crap. No gumption.

I got a package Sarah Morrison sent me that contained a gift and thank you note from Betsey Johnson...she sent a Vosges chocolate Dias de los Muertos skull and $300 gift certificate. It is probably the best thing that's ever happened to me, second only to the time she hugged me. I fucking love that woman. She must be the nicest person to ever live. I'm trying to figure out what I can send her...I'm thinking pinon brittle and maybe one of those little Mexican skeletons in a tutu or something? With a letter maybe begging for her to hire me. Nylon is hiring an assistant to the editor in chief...I wonder how mad Missbehave would be if I moved back for that job? JK. I can't come back to New York until I get rich...and even then I think I might prefer sunshine, good produce, and medical marijuana. It's really weird watching shows set in New York now though...I don't necessarily feel remorseful but it's kinda like watching your ex make out with a hot chick.

We Hurt the Same Black and Blue

I've been drinking too much. This is not an unique realization, but the fact that I've given myself alcohol poisoning more times in the past month than the rest of my life disturbs me. Generally, I only drink too much before a nervous life venture or when something awful has happened. It's a combo now. I'm home in Santa Fe for two months, looking at jobs and apartments in LA and letting my Missbehave responsibilities fall by the way side a bit while I wallow in a half sleep half depressive state. Kicking sand and staring into half-empty coffee mugs.

Drinking half bottles of Bourbon and spending time with my best friend Alex. I feel like I've been imprisoning him a bit. There are only a couple people here that I can stand at all. I've had a breakthrough in my quest to fall out of love with my ex-boyfriend Matt. We had one awkward sleeping-not-touching thing (where he insinuated that lovestruck me couldn't control myself around him) followed by him texting me after snorting some pills asking for help. I went to rescue him. Him, blacked out on a gallery couch. After an hour of coaxing, I managed to get him awake and angry enough to storm out where he stared at me with such drunken hatred that I told him to hit me. He didn't. BUT, and here's where my moral dilemma stems, the next day I told him he did. I told him my nose wouldn't stop bleeding for half an hour to see if it was broken. I told him next time he gets drunk and snorts painkillers to lay in his own puke and think about how awful he's been to people that love him. He had no issue believing this and told me he felt awful and loved me. Now he loves me. Only when he thinks he's beaten me, he loves me. He loves me but not in that way. It was a breakthrough on so many levels. He doesn't love me. He believes he is capable of hitting someone he "loves". I think I'm finally free! But now I think it's the loneliest place I've been in years and years. No one to love. Not even unrequited. Useless.

Now my mother is at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. She found a lump in her breast, they found another. She refuses to label herself a cancer survivor. She's already past it and she still has lumps and radiation and scalpels in her future. I'm scared. I don't know what I would do if I lost my mother. I always imagined that I would move in with the remaining parent and take care of them if anything happened. I always imagined that happening far into the future. I cry spontaneously at bars and in grocery shops. I might not make it to LA until February if I go to Minnesota with her for her radiation. I don't even know what I'm doing. At all. I'm faking it now. The drunk keeps me in charge but irresponsible, uncontrolled. I feel like I'm falling.