“Absinthe makes you crazy and criminal…”

“…It makes a ferocious beast of man, a martyr of woman, and a degenerate of the infant, it disorganizes and ruins the family and menaces the future of the country.”
- 19th Century French Critic

Funnily (yes, “funnily”), absinthe is now legal in the US, and is being served at only one place on the West Coast, which is a restaurant/bar called Absinthe. They’ve been around for years, but I bet they’re going to get tons of business now!

Guess what Lele and I are planning for this weekend?

You’re smart.

She found a place!

The roommate from hell is moving out Decmber 1st!
Maybe I’ll have a party for New Year’s, after all!

Maybe.

Magnetic Poem of the Day

exposed through time
how will the story go
sweet funny light
or sour mouth cliché

Coming Soon: Are All Writers Narcissistic?

Work in Progress. To be posted by the end of the week.

Bohemian:

"One with artistic or literary interests who adopts manners markedly different from those of the majority of society."

-Webster’s II Dictionary, Third Edition

Rohna is very diplomatic...

Last night, I was shopping with my friend Rohna, and we were having a conversation about our weekends, just catching up. My weekend, a major part of it, was spent with Lele, and Rohna thought it was really weird that we can spend hours playing game after game of Scrabble. So I was telling her about all the “shit talking” we do when we’re playing and I jokingly said that Lele is narcissistic (which I have told him many times- also jokingly) and she turned to me and said, “Well so are you!”

I was surprised. And then amused. And then intrigued. Really? Well, yeah, I guess I am. But is that how I appear to others? To my friends? She didn’t seem to mean it in a bad way, either, and I asked her to explain herself.

Rohna: You like being the center of attention!

Me: (laughing) Well, I can’t help it if I am.

Rohna: I guess we all like getting attention. But you’re kinda different. And you’re such a flirt, wrapping men up around your little finger. All giggles, and batting lashes. And there’s that thing you do with your wine glass. You pretend to hide behind it when you say something naughty or when you laugh.

Me: I’m a girl. I’m supposed to flirt.

Rohna: But you’re very ostentatious about it.

Me: Huh.

Rohna: And you dress kinda out there.

Me: But that’s my personality!

Rohna: Exactly.

Which got me thinking. Is it cause I’m a writer? Or am I a writer cause I’m a narcissist? Are all writers narcissists?

Slowly...

Today I got a, "Hey, Uzma" and a wave.
While wearing the sweater I gave him for Christmas.

A wave of Nostalgia washed over me.
But then Memory kicked in. Hard.

I waved back.

On the other hand:

My manager, Lynn, came up to me with a sheepish look on her face, kinda nervous, and said she had to ask me something.

Me: Sure. What’s up?

Lynn: But I’m not sure if I should ask you and you can totally say no, because I feel lame asking you.

Me: (Build the suspense, why don’t you) Lynn, it’s ok. Just ask.

Lynn: I have to burn a CD.

Me: Oh. (Uh oh)

Lynn: And I realized maybe I shouldn’t ask you to come with me.

Me: Oh. (Cheeks burning)

Lynn: But I don’t know how to burn the CD.

Me: Oh.

Lynn: So I feel really lame.

Me: It’s ok. I’ll go with you, but I won’t go by myself.

The CD burner is right next to Doug’s desk. Luckily, he wasn’t there. Lynn grabbed a couple of Twizzlers from his desk and tossed me one. It landed by my foot. I picked it up, realized what it was, and almost dropped it again, thinking, Are you crazy? I’m not going to be seen with a Twizzler from his desk! What if he returns? So I hid it in my boot. (Yup). But then, Lynn realized she didn’t have the files she needed to burn in the right folder, so she had to go back to her desk. I managed to sit there, looking around, panicking, biting my nails, hoping he wouldn’t come back before Lynn did.

He didn’t.

“I can tell that we're going to be friends” – White Stripes

Slowly. Surely? Not quite. But yesterday, for the first time since we broke up, we wrote a couple of personal e-mails back and forth. Non work-related. Well, it started with me asking him something work related, and then turned into him asking me something personal.

Nothing exciting, but it’s something.

Ugh.

Poetic License

It’s a word, if I say it’s a word.
End of story.

"The District Sleeps Alone..." - Postal Service

Friday night my friends Rohna, Sara, and I went to District- a really cool NY-style wine bar that my intern/assistant Blake (yes, the one I was talking about at the end of The Blake Paradox) had been raving about for months. I hadn’t expected what I found. I was thinking chichi, mellow, wine bar with expensive drinks and rich men buying rounds at their tables kinda deal. No. This was entirely different.

Blake said it’s the kind of place he’d take a date. Would I take a date there? No. Besides the fact that I usually want to be able to hear my dates, it’s also too crowded for anything but single people who want to bump into that hot guy who’s drink is totally going to spill as he tries to squeeze past you. And I’m not really the bar date type, anyway, unless there’s some familiarity with the other person. And the guys I date are usually not rich (this fact NEVER changes), but rather, most likely starving artists. Really.

But. I was there with my single girlfriends, and we were totally that threesome who took advantage of all the bumping, squeezing past, drink spilling. It probably also owed to the fact that we were the only women-of-color (ok, that’s a bit too PC for me) at the bar, that we got more attention than we wanted. One guy, pretending to be the owner (there’s one of them at every bar), thought he was so cool he could grab my hand and pull it to his chest even as I stood, deeply engrossed in my conversation with some other guy. (His other hand always seemed to graze my back as he smiled and slloooowwwlllyyyyy walked away, facing me, crashing into everyone behind him).

The guy I actually ended up talking with the rest of the right was one of the guys whose couch we took over when we first walked in. He and his friend scooted over to the chairs, to make room for us. He had a British accent and Sara thought he was cute. I thought he looked older. But he was staring at me while I twirled my legs, made space for the plate of roasted almonds on my knee by lifting up my whitewhite skirt, giggled, and sipped at my wine with my redred lips. He was also the guy who volunteered to babysit our coats when my friends and I decided we weren’t going to meet anyone sitting down and so went off to flirt with other guys. When I came back to check on our coats, an hour later, I stayed for the scintillating conversation.

On the other side of the room, my friends were having their own fun little time, acquiring free drink upon free drink. By the end of the night, Sara had consumed seven drinks! And that is probably a big part of the reason we lost her. (One other, insignificant detail being that there was this suited, fedora-ed, african american guy who’s ear she’d been nibbling on... but that’s a very insigificant detail). We did eventually find her, but it was… uhhh… a little too late.

Overall, it was a very unexpected, surprisingly fun evening. A little too much excitement than we’d planned, but we’d definitely go back.

Oh, and the guys were definitely not starving artists, because I didn’t pay for one drink. Does that mean that there was no one in that room I would have made out with? Hmmm...

Sometimes It Rains, Sometimes It’s Sunny…

It’s that time of the year again. Already.

Last year, I was worrying about what to buy certain people for Christmas. At least I don’t have to worry about that, this year, so I’m concentrating on finding a dress for the holiday party, instead. Even though I’m already not looking forward to it cause I think it will be really pathetic. No dance floor, not enough space for people to do anything but sit at their dinner tables. No DJ, either, so they’re putting together some music to play on the sound system. At least we’re still having an open bar- not that I can even allow myself to drink much. And at least it’s just a few blocks from my house, so I can leave whenever I want to. And at least it’s in the Mission, so my friends and I can go somewhere else after we leave. And… well… I’ve been meaning to try out Farina.

But the dress. It has to be something nice. And not black. I’m thinking green. Unless that other older co-worker buys me one of the red dresses he’s been pointing out to me. (Kidding). Yes, I know. You want to hear all about my perfect-dress-hunt. (Kidding, again).

Anyway. Ho hum. It’s that kind of a day.

Magnetic Poem of the Day

people ask in whispers
so I confess silently
my truths

this is me

obedienter than you

The Blake Paradox

A few years ago, to get out of work for a couple of days, I told a lie. Sure, that’s how it’s done. You say you’re not feeling well, your basement flooded, your car broke down, there’s been a family emergency. Some even say there’s been a death in the family. I went one step further. I called my manager one morning, sobbed into the phone and said, “My best friend, Blake, got into an accident last night and died. I’ve been at the hospital all night.”

Two days later, when I finally went back to work, everyone came up to ask me how I was doing. They asked me what happened, if I wanted to talk, assured me that they were there for me if I needed a shoulder to cry on. Tears readily sprung to my eyes, and surprised even me. The story rolled off my tongue without me having thought it out. There was an accident. My friend was driving home after dropping me home on our way back from a movie. It was late. Some guy, drunk, ran a red light and swerved to avoid hitting a parked car, landed into the wrong lane, and crashed into my friend.

The HR Director called me into her office to ask me if I was ok. She told me about her ex-husband who’d recently passed away, and who’s death she only found out about one day as she was browsing the Internet. She asked me if Blake’s family had been notified and I told her his dad lived in New York and I didn’t know how to get in touch with him. I said I had keys to his apartment, and she suggested that, difficult as it may be, I had to go back there and see if I could figure out a way to get in touch with Blake’s dad. She asked if I had someone who could go with me. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I didn’t say anything at all. She took it to mean that I was in shock, took my hand, and said, “I want you to go home. Take some time off. But please tell me if there’s anything you need.”

It struck me then, that they really believed me. I realized the implications of this big lie I’d made up, and would be compelled to continue making up for as long as they remembered.

Though no one had ever heard me mention his name before, Blake was a close friend of my main character in the novel I was working on at the time. I knew my characters really well, very intimately, having been the one who created them. Two months later, when my computer inexplicably crashed, I lost my novel and this Blake character. I realized that I had lost this fictional best friend, once again.

This time when I cried, there was no one I could share that loss with. My co-workers thought I’d lost him a while ago, while my friends outside of work, didn’t know he existed. My nostalgia was implacable. On top of that, was the guilt of having plunged Blake into non-existence; I felt I had killed him.

My conscience nagged at me, so I constantly recreated Blake, by making him a recurring character in my writing. But in every piece that he appears in, he is lost to me. He is the best friend who dies, the lover who leaves, the stranger who comes into the main character's life for a brief tryst that is never consummated, the friend who’s ashes a character is bringing back to his family.

Now, years later, I have a co-worker/intern/assistant named Blake. Every time I speak to him, I feel guilty. When I say his name, I feel like I’m lying. I’ve become friends with him but every time we have a conversation, I’m thrust back into my fictional world, the only place Blake actually exists, if even for short periods of time.

Perv Alert

Why is it that old married men seem to think it’s ok to tell younger female co-workers that they are insanely attracted to them? What is it about me, that I attract such nuts? Do they really think, that I will smile and say, “Yes, I think you’re hot, too. Let’s forget about your wife?”

An older co-worker, who is definitely a bit socially challenged, a creeper (not just a creep), has been asking me to go get coffee with him for a while. We have a Peet’s downstairs in our office building, and any of various combinations of people from the office go down for a cup of their preferred poison, on any given day. This fellow has, on another occasion, tagged along with some of my other co-worker friends and I for a coffee, uninvited. I didn’t think much of it, except that I couldn’t be bothered to spend my coffee breaks with him, so I kept ignoring his requests and appeared to be busy when he dropped by. Thursday morning, though, none of my usual coffee buddies were around and right before I got into the elevator to go to Peet’s alone, I decided to give him a call.

On our way over, he started his nosiness:

Old Co-Worker:
So, are you and Doug still an item?

Me:
No. It’s been a few months.

Old Co-Worker:
Really? How come?

Me:
Oh, it just didn’t work out.

Old Co-Worker:
Why? What happened?

I was incredulous. Did he really think I was going to tell him? I ignored his question and he started prying more into the previous office romances Doug had been involved in, while we waited our turn in line for the barista. He obviously hadn’t been on the office rumor mill but was dying to get on. Eventually, it was my turn to order.

Old Co-Worker:
I can understand why. You’re a very attractive woman.

Me:
(To Barista) Uh, yes, I’ll have a small Masala Chai Latte, please. (To Old Co-Worker) Thanks.

Old Co-Worker:
I have to fight myself all the time, when I see you.

(I almost dropped my change. The barista smiled. Do you want your receipt? I shook my head, no.)

Old Co-Worker:
But I’m married, you know.

Me:
Yes, I know. I’ve met your kids.

This was the… fifth such incident? Sixth? I forget. Of course, this is besides the other older, married co-worker who constantly suggests various sexy red dresses that he’s seen at stores, or in magazines (he brings me pictures), that he thinks I should go buy for the holiday party.

I should smile sweetly and ask him if he’ll pay for it.

Magnetic Poem of the Day

strange
that
every old man must feel
compeled to confess
his desire for
the girl
without understanding
it is
better he ferment silently
and she never know

Another freak along the way, down the roommate hunt path...

A young woman, in response to my ad on Craigslist, e-mailed me a link to her Facebook profile instead of writing to me about herself. So I, a little surprised and definitely amused, attempted to check out her profile. I couldn’t see it because, of course, I’m not friends with her on Facebook. I e-mailed her back and asked her to tell me more about herself and how old she was etc., because I couldn’t look at her profile.

She wrote me again and said that she’s going to be 24 on Thanksgiving (when I specified an age range of 26-34 on my posting), and that I should “poke” her or send her a message on Facebook in order to gain access to her profile.

So I did. And I got to see her profile, and guess what? She is sooooo 24.

Her “About Me” section says:
“1 story that sums me up: i didnt want a surprise party for my bday. but someone threw it for me anyway. 100+ people showed up. i found out. so i decided to skip my own surprise bday party, to hell w/ everyone. lesson here~~ i mean what i say.”

Would this make me want to live with her?

Roommate Hunting... Will it ever end?

Well, after 2 months of not cleaning and refusing to unpack her 20+ boxes, we've finally had to ask Renu to move. I'm tired of looking for new roommates, though. I'm starting to wonder if I really have it in me to really read people well. I can think of too many examples where I've failed...

On the contrary, I am looking forward to finding another person who Sabba and I mesh well with. As much as I was hesitant about living with girls, it's actually been fun, over all.

(Gasp!) Could it be that I am, for once in my life, finding it easier to get along with gals than guys? Maybe it's just that I'm not bothered with men lately... I'm tired.

C'mon already. Perfect Roomie, aren't you out there?