...And Away We Go!

Euthanasia of the Heart
It is at once exciting and very sad that I am single again. I had that few days where everything seemed perfectly alright and then I was hit for about 3 weeks of grieving and sadness; nothing debilitating or too difficult, but just surprising. I know Nick didn't intend to hurt me, so I don't take it as a hurtful choice of his to move in a different direction than we thought (for nearly four years!) Still, I miss everything about our relationship; and because that is the only way I have ever known Nick, he now seems like a stranger to me. I think that makes me the saddest of all. I'm trying very hard to be his friend, but for now I can't seem to reconcile the momentum of our routines, concerns, plans, and affections as boyfriends and these new, muted behaviors that would support only friendship. It's just awful to have to make a profound effort to let someone go, but even worse to actively have to kill a happy, loving, affectionate part of your Being so that it can accommodate a new version of a relationship. But I am trying.

Dating Delirium
In an effort to "move on" and harness the tiny part of me that might be excited by being single again, I have actively announced my single-hood and posted/updated my Personals Ads everywhere. I've received numerous friendly, complimentary responses, which is nice, but 99% are, of course, not compatible with me (based on reading their ads). I am not opposed to going out with someone who appears incompatible with me, but there must be SOMETHING intriguing about that person. Sometimes that intrigue is in their look, sometimes it is in their interests, sometimes it is just intuition.

So today, or sometime this week, I am going on my first date with one of about 4 possibilities I have decided are of interest, with one particular guy in the lead. Ironically, this one is the most interesting, intriguing, and challenging of all of them, with very little in common!

In my fantasies, I always want to date someone "just like me". I have this general idea about what I am attracted to, and lo and behold, I never EVER end up with that kind of person. NEVER. I have NEVER dated someone like me. I can only conclude that there is some freakish part of me that loves the learning more than the idea of comfortable love. I think I have this idea that love must be challenging and stretching of my capabilities.

The first guy (I will call him "C") I am going out with is an adorable, gorgeous, impatient, restless, calloused, homo-hoodlum with a caustic sense of humor and a secretly-huge heart. I think I am attracted to the contradiction within him. He is pierced, defensive, cynical, and arrogant, yet this seems to cloak a creative, gentle, yearning, devoted heart. We have spoken on the phone, exchanged emails constantly, chatted for hours and hours, and developed that strange, deep affection across the internet. I really can't wait to meet him. I am sure that even if we aren't attracted to each other in 3D, we would be very interesting friends to each other.

There are other guys I want to plan to meet and go out with, but I am terrible at that part. I have a hard time "dating around". Once I have met one, I feel like I can't meet any others until I determine what's going on with one. I am weird.

Another guy I am seriously interested in meeting is "M": a very cool, ex-club kid poster boy from the 90s with a genius streak and an over-the-top, semi-famous presence in the NYC underground and across the web. He wrote me in response to my blog when I announced I had been dumped (hi "m"!) I guess he has been a fan of my website and varying incarnations of my blog for about year!

Who knows what will come of the New Year... I have been dumped and I am on the rebound and I am working harder than ever, even joining a gym! It seems so ironic that now that my life is so much more stable, defined, and happy, that my boyfriend would find it important to dump me. Ahhhh, the irony.

DREAMS:

I have been having massively-packed dreams lately, but I couldn't remember them. I remember Friday's and Saturday's, though.

Friday: I dreamt I was walking around Brooklyn Heights with Don and I kind of wanted to go home. It was chilly, grwasn'tand damp out. Don wasn't ready to stop hanging out, I could tell, so I suggested walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. I suggested this, but I remember thinking that surely he would dismiss that option because it was so cold, windy, and late. Instead, he blindly said, "oh! Ok!" I was annoyed, but couldn't back out, so I started making comments as we climbed to the bridge, pointing out how long it was and how it was farther across than it appeared. Don continued oblivious to my disinterest in doing this. As we walked onto the walkway of the bridge, instead of it going straight across, it severely curved upwards like a giant skate ramp. We pushed forward, climbing the ever-steeper incline until the incline literally became vertical enough that you had to climb by hanging onto something. Toward the top, we were actually climbing by sticking our feet and hands into grooves worn into dirt, as if the material of the bridge had now become the side of a very steep hill. We reached the top and found a room. Gently, I began to remember that I had been there before. There were people there, milling about and having cocktails. Some people said hello to me as if they remembered me. I was fascinated by how high we were and wondered how everyone got there. It seemed at this point Don went wandering off. I went to a doorway that led to one of the huge cables that hold the bridge together. I remembered it used to be okay for us to scoot out onto the cables, but people had fallen and died, so it was discouraged. I still found myself hanging onto the thinner cables and standing on the giant barrel cable, working my way out about 10 feet. I suddenly had a flash of a couple of people falling, watching them seem to go in slow motion, and then seeing one of them hit a part of the bridge and slice himself in two. Suddenly I got really nervous and wanted to get back inside, but I also made a note to myself in the dream that the memory of others falling was from a previous lifetime and that I had been one of the people who had worked on building the Brooklyn Bridge!

Saturday: I dreamt I was on the set of part of the filming of the remaking of DAWN OF THE DEAD. Now I can't remember much, but it was scary. I also dreamt that Michael Myers (of Austin Powers fame) had responded to my personals ad! What up wit dat!?

MOVIES:

2 rather disappointing movies seen recently: THE SECRET WINDOW and DAWN OF THE DEAD. Both were very well-done movies overall, but there was nothing of substance to them. I mean, I was not on the edge of my seat, the plots were predictable, and I left feeling nothing. They looked good and should have been exciting, but they were not. I was disappointed in both, even though they were worth seeing. Dawn of the Dead I would see again if in the mood, but Secret Window, I would not. 28 Days Later was much more genius and scary compared to this Dawn of the Dead remake (and I actually liked the original much more). Secret Window was good ONLY because it is such a treat to look at Johnny Depp and watch him act. He is oddly mesmerizing and so likeable. Secret Window, however, is a Stephen King story and is a recycled story of The Dark Half (quote: "Novelist (Tim Hutton) is shocked to discover the alias he uses for some of his books, has manifested itself and is acting on the violent urges and thoughts the author has.") Hello, that's the same story as Secret Window. And I don't know if it is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but Timothy Hutton was in this film, too. This film would have done better as an Outer Limits episode.