I’ve finished Outlander, and thinking about moving on to the next book in the series….. but not yet. I need time to breathe. The reading was heavy, and the emotional response even more so. Throughout the entire novel, I saw myself as Claire, the young battlefield nurse that in ancient Scotland is elevated to a physician. She waffles between love for Frank and love for Jamie, but also, how that love defines her, as well.

It weighs on her, thinking that she has betrayed one husband for another, much like I have told you that I did (“they both needed me. They both wanted me. Which one was more important? The gay one or the straight one?”). Radiohead’s Karma Police is playing in my ear as I write this. I didn’t know that they never should have been competing for the same space. How could I know that? Knowing appropriate boundaries with love is a future that didn’t happen. I was wrested away from it before I even knew the definitions of “friend” and “lover,” making them one and the same in my mind for far longer than anyone (especially me) should have had to tolerate.

If there is any justice in the world, it’s that the friends Diane has done this to in ADDITION to me also read this web site, I’m sure with pain and baited breath. You see, because I know them. I have worn their scars on my skin. I have seen the effects of her disaster, and the ripples it has caused in my own pond. I am not close to them now, but I was then. I have seen more than one woman lose her shit over the manipulations Diane has thrown in her direction.

Why I thought I could rise above it is beyond me. The way out was not above, but through. I had to feel an enormous amount of pain at the destruction I’d caused before I could finally say, “enough.” I will paraphrase Elizabeth Gilbert, that she doesn’t know of any story of self-redemption that doesn’t start with someone getting tired of their own bullshit. And readers, I am exhausted.

In the past, I haven’t made new friends so much as seduced them into it. Because what could I possibly have to offer anyone but, well? You get the picture. I played with darkness until I realized it was leaving me nothing but a bunch of friends who alternately walked off in disgust or used me until I had no more to give, regardless of what they asked.

Argo is the first friend I’ve ever had that instead of walking away, she whipped my ass. I couldn’t sit for weeks (this is just a metaphor, thankfully). Even while she was doing it, I didn’t think it was undeserved. I was just too proud. I came back at her, claws extended, when what I should have done was thank her for saving me. I looked at everything in a different light after that. Tendrils of new life began to extend from me in a way that I’d never experienced, as if some of my dead places resurrected themselves at her words. I began to see what she meant with her clean, white, pure love, and realized it had always been inside me. I’d just never used it.

But the thing about friendship that broke with Argo is equality. She’s had more time on this planet than I have, and she pulled rank in a big way……. when in friendship, you whip each other‘s asses when necessary. She could not submit to me anymore. She could not listen and hear that I might have a point. Whatever I thought was wrong, sick, and in no way indicative of the friendship where I constantly heard, “you’re right! I never thought of that.” You cannot get a person to hear you when they are convinced that you are wrong before you speak.

I think of it this way. Therapists who work with couples in large age-gap relationships solve this problem by getting the older partner to lay in the younger one’s lap…. to be comforted, parented by them in order to create equality. I don’t know how that extrapolates into friendship, but I do know that the analogy is apt….. maybe not in terms of age, but definitely in terms of balance of power. And, of course, my 25 years with Diane in the same trap convinced me that even when Argo did lay her head in my lap, I wasn’t worthy of it. I remember thinking every time she messaged me out of the blue that it was weird, against the natural order of things. Why would someone seek me out? Why would anyone value my words?

I was such a fool, because she was acting like a true friend, and I dinna ken.

Today I walked the mile and a half to 7-11 and McDonald’s, in that order. I needed to get more snacks, because I don’t tend to eat meals, especially when I’m engrossed in a book (Outlander, Book I). I got yogurt pretzels, banana chips, gummy cola bottles, sour Skittles, sour gummy worms, and debated on buying, like, six more things. Sour Skittles have become a sickness since Prianka and Elena had them at their wedding. I called Prianka today and told her I was almost ready for an intervention.

I don’t normally read fiction. It took me the longest time to get into Outlander because, like I said previously, the story didn’t grab me at first……. and because every time I read someone else’s fiction, I tend to “lose my voice.” I don’t ever want to sound like the last writer I read. It is most noticeable when I am reading David Sedaris. I don’t plagiarize. It’s just style. I want you to know me for me, not someone who’s taking a style and trying to make my words fit into it. I think of it like copying Old Masters. I’d rather invent something than learn by rote, if that makes any sense at all.

I went through a very long Barbara Kingsolver phase, and I am just now recovering from two decades of Wally Lamb, because “She’s Come Undone” is kind of about me. It’s not, really, but I did get interviewed by Olivia, the executive producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show, for 45 minutes as I explained to them why I would be perfect for that month’s Book Club show, a follow-up to the essay I’d written. I wish I could tell you what the essay was about- hell, I wish I could remember the book’s plot. I just remember thinking that for a man, Wally Lamb did a bang-up job writing for women.

It’s not the words that stayed with me. It was their order. If I start to sound like Diana Gabaldon, please stop me. It means the pod people have come to get me and I am stuck in the way she writes and not the way I do.

But I digress.

I got my junk food and then went to get more junk food- a burger and fries from Mickey D’s, the magnum opus of junk food, in fact. By that time, I was stuffed and in no mood to walk back home. I, of course, requested Uber. Rudrick came to pick me up in less than five minutes.

College kid who loves sports. Nigerian. I asked him what sport he liked, knowing the answer before he said it…… soccer….. of course. I told him he looked like a forward. He did- long, lean, fit. When he said he was, I said, “because you’re a forward, does that mean you’re kind of a jerk?” He laughed so hard he nearly ran off the road. He said, “no- it means I am smarter. I am the one that has to get the ball in the net.” I said, “THAT IS SUCH A FORWARD THING TO SAY. You know your wingbacks and your fullbacks have to get the ball TO YOU first….” He laughed again. It’s true. Forwards are akin to sopranos, trumpet players, and Terrell Owens.

I got to blush for a second in 18-year-old love, because my first girlfriend was goalkeeper and she taught me how to flip everyone on the team shit. It has paid off handsomely, I want you to know. It felt great to laugh, because before I decided to venture out, I hadn’t left the house in two days. Too consumed with learning everything I can about Linux and Lollybroch, in that order.

Remember when I said it was violent and rape-y? Well, one of the male characters was just raped and it was even harder for me than the women, because male on male rape is generally about humiliating your enemy, especially in that time and place. You don’t just hurt them. You destroy them from the inside out.

Unfortunately for me, it reminded me of all the times Argo and I went at each other’s throats, and how many times we emotionally destroyed each other from the inside out. My mind went to the terrible things I said…. and not so much the ones she did, because it hurt so much more to know that I hurt her than it did to know she hurt me just as much. I’m supposed to be the one filled with the light of Christ, and I emotionally bombed her into next week. It doesn’t matter that it felt justified at the time. In no universe do I ever want to lose my temper like that again.

Way to use that light, Leslie. We’re all so proud.

Why did those feelings come up for me right then? Because the character talked about how there’s a still small space that you only show to people you love, and that place was destroyed in him. DAMNIT if that wasn’t a mirror image of some of the things we’ve said to each other. I crumpled, sick to my stomach and wishing for peace. It won’t come easily, because I of ALL people know how much words can hurt.

For me, being the forward who gets the ball in the net is learning to control my tongue even as my temper flares. Because that’s a damn goal.

My dad took this picture of me when he came to visit a few weeks ago. I am sitting on my beloved porch with my laptop and a cup of tea, as I do every morning… or at least, every morning since I’ve been here.

It’s been a month already. The time has flown by, because I have kept myself moving. I do my best thinking while mobile, so I often type to my heart’s content and then gather my things to take off for the city. They are, in no particular order of importance:

• my laptop
• my phone
• my keyboard
• my mouse
• my Kindle
• charging cables for my iPhone and Kindle
• my wallet, complete with Metro SmartCard
• my glasses case
• my keys

If I lose my backpack, my entire life goes with it. I guard it judiciously, because even though there is nothing in there that can’t be replaced, it’s my stuff. I am used to my keyboard; my fingers fly across the keys as if only gravity could stop them, and doesn’t.

I thought you might want a picture of where I live and where I do my best writing, because it means something to have a setting. There’s a bird feeder behind me, and birds constantly talk throughout the day. I have learned to tune them out………… sort of.

I spent yesterday by the phone, waiting for instructions on what to do next re: my possible job opportunity. No one called, but I used the time wisely. I spent it reading Outlander (Book I) and watching the training videos available on the LinuxJobber web site. Since I ordered their book, I have access to a wealth of information. It is not lost on me that whether I get the job with them or not, I have upped my education level considerably just in the time I’ve been watching. I now know how to put together a LAMP server (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and either Perl or Python). I also know how to create a server Kickstarter file… basically, the best analogy for that is a Cascading Style Sheet. If you’re familiar with creating web sites, a CSS is where you put all the information regarding formatting. For instance, if you just code each page individually, you’ll have to update them individually every time you want to change a paragraph margin or a font family. With a CSS, you can change those things on every page at once.

You can extrapolate (EXTRAPOLATE! EXTRAPOLATE!) that into a Kickstarter file. You put everything you need into it in terms of server settings, so that if you have 15 servers to set up, one file can be pushed across all of them. It saves a considerable amount of time, as you can imagine. So, regardless of whether I am qualified to take this job, I am getting more comfortable with applying for more. This is seriously the best present I could have bought for myself, and you gave it to me. I bought the books and web site access with the money I’ve earned from this blog.

I am using that money to further myself, both career-wise and as a person. Your money goes toward visions for myself that take money to realize. I cannot ask you to provide money for St. James… not yet. I want to get the 501c3 in place before you do that so it’s a tax write-off, just like every other religious organization/church/charity. Far be it from me to scare you away from donating if you don’t care about the tax write-off, but I do want to operate within the constraints of the law- better for me, and better for you.

Anything that comes through the web site now is continuing education for me- any kind of tuition, book, entrance fee, etc. If you make a donation, I want to do something extraordinary with it so that you see the changes in me and how much those donations improve my quality of life… mostly emotionally, because every time I see “Paypal” in my inbox, I know that my words have meant something to someone. I have made someone’s life better by displaying what it means to be a human. I am so flawed, and I show it. I am so perfect, and I show it. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. Every human has the capability for the disaster and the divine….. the holy and the moly, if you will.

If the donations get large enough, so with the education. I will go back to school and finish my degree in Political Science so that I can move on to graduate school. I want to go to seminary, and as fast as possible, because I know what I can do with such a degree. I will move mountains. Easily. If you think I am kidding, please know that I am every bit as capable as the ministers who have come before me, both in my family and among my friends. I am the Type A who was convinced at a very early age that her opinions didn’t matter.

Now, that is not a problem.

I believe in myself more than I ever have before, because my core was changed to accommodate it. The change did not happen overnight. I dragged myself kicking and screaming into wholeness, as you’ll read about extensively if you are just now getting on board and going back and reading my archives. Speaking of which, I know some of you are, and it pleases me to no end. Yesterday, because I tagged Outlander on WordPress, Facebook, and Twitter, I gained about 100 visitors, as opposed to views. The difference is that viewers read one entry. Visitors read many. So thank you, Outlander fans, for reading the thing that brought you here and continuing to read as if I am interesting. 😛

I wrote the other day about trying to create a True North out of a compass that had been rubbed by a magnet too many times. It is interesting how I have latched onto the moral code presented in Outlander, because in some sense, I understand it. The part that had me on the ground yesterday afternoon was Jamie having to whip Claire so that she would remember the punishment and not endanger the men again, and doing it within earshot of them all so that they would remember her punishment, too.

In so many ways, I do that to myself on this web site. I put my sins and my punishments in print not because I need you to see them (I do, to hold me accountable), but because I need that remembrance more than you ever will.

Do you think it is comfortable for me to go back and reread the things I have experienced since this web site started? Do you think it is easy?

It is not.

I showed my abused nature, my willingness to submit to hospitalization for it, my openness in admitting that my relationship broke with Dana because of my own inattention to her as it passed plainly to someone else…………… attention that was wanted and unwanted all at the same time. It would have been fine if I had not crossed the line from love to “in love,” but that was not something I could easily control. I was abused, and because of it, emotions only went forward. There was nothing in me that could say “abort” or “back off.” It was a watershed moment in realizing that I was not in love with a person, just an idea. It is something that should have appeared to me as it was happening, and it did.

However, being the jackass that I am, I ignored it and kept on walking in the darkness, because I was going to win one way or another. I do not mean that I would have been successful in making Argo feel everything I did. That’s just bullshit and I know it. You can’t make anyone feel anything at any time. I just thought that the easier way was across the river rather than backing off and finding a bridge. It got a lot worse before it got better, and I own that the reason it did was because I could not find a way to separate out how I felt about her from the way she felt about me.

I cannot speak to how she feels now; then, it was intense. It was deeper than any relationship I’d ever had in my life. I wanted more than she could give because I’d been wired to think that way from an early age. It made her react sharply- pull away because she could see the dog I was walking and didn’t want to follow. I reacted…………………… poorly. I knew I was wrong; there was something in me that had broken long before she walked into my life, and it wasn’t going to get better with a snap of her fingers. I had to learn how to have friends, real ones, before I could become worthy of the kind of love she wanted to give me.

That moment did not come with Argo, and might not ever, but at the same time, her lessons in love were not lost.

The time and date will not come to me, but I remember sitting in Aaron’s arms, squalling my eyeballs out and telling him that because of him, I had learned how to treat my friends. That his love sustained me in all the right ways, because it taught me how deep friendship could be without ever crossing any romantic lines. That, in some sense, his love healed me from it…. “it” being shorthand for the mark that Diane left on me that says romantic love and friendship are the same thing. I cannot think back to that moment without tears streaming down my face, because I realized that it never would have happened if Argo hadn’t loved me first.

I am comforted by the fact that it’s not like this situation has never happened to anyone before. Plenty of people fall in love where it cannot be reciprocated, same gender or opposite. It just so happened that the way I felt about Argo was so easy, so unencumbered, that it didn’t feel like a sin right up until it was. It was all fun and games until I shot my eye out, kid.

And on that note, I need to get back to Outlander. According to my Kindle, I still have six hours left.

As I have mentioned on Facebook, my roommate Samantha has decided to accept all applications to date me, and will pass on the candidates that make it through her screening process. This is because I am Southern, and she is not. Leave that up to yourselves to decide whether that’s a compliment or not, because I’m not saying she’s not nice. I am saying that she is not shy about asking things that would make a Southern woman crawl under the table and die. For instance, she will want to know your annual salary and require proof of income.

Do not show up for the interview unprepared. Pretty sure she’s going to want a W-2.

I do not know how I feel about all of this, but I’m willing to go with it. I think her natural reaction is to want to marry me off to someone rich, because I’ve told her that I’m a writer. In fact, I think the first time I told her I was a writer, she told me everyone in the neighborhood with a government pension.

So there’s that.

I’m sitting in the grass outside the Takoma Park Metro, trying to decide if I actually want to go anywhere, or if I just want to get back on the bus and go home. It’s a down day for me. I don’t feel particularly sad about anything, I just don’t have a whole lot of energy, either. It is as if taking the bus to the Metro has already used up my spoons, even though of course I had more plans than this. I wanted to go to a coffee/tea shop and think rather than right here, where I am, because there are bugs on my laptop now. There are also bugs crawling on my leg, but that’s ok. They’re not the sting-y, bite-y kind. They’re just curious.

So am I, really. Just curious about everything. Learned today that POTUS has a Twitter account and asked him if it wouldn’t be easier for us to just meet for lunch, because OH GOD SERIOUSLY? REALLY? You want to be on TWITTER? What the hell FOR? Barack Obama and I both are way too old for Twitter, and yet, there we are. (@ldlanagan and @POTUS, btw) I think the reason I’m too old for Twitter is that I can barely make my point in 800 characters, much less under 200. I’m like an old man trying to navigate my way around teenage bullshit, mostly because I cannot subjugate myself into abbreviating “you.”

I like the Outlander tag because I started reading the first book a year and a half ago, hated it, and have picked it up and put it down ten times since. I do not get the appeal of Outlander. The writing didn’t grab me, and I still have no idea what happened to Frank, or as I call him, “Mr. Exposition.” I mean, seriously. I am sure he will reappear at some point, but that will probably tell you how little I’ve read. I keep battling through because I have friends who like it that insist it will get better. If by better you mean violent and rape-y, well then, I suppose they’re right. I also spent a relatively lot of money for one book, and I feel like I owe it to myself to at least finish it. At some point, I will probably concede defeat. It’s just not my jam. However, now Outlander is a TV series, and I am hoping that it can shed some light on the book so that it will re-spark my interest in finishing the story….. keeping in mind that I do not actually watch the TV series, because I do not actually watch TV. I will occasionally watch Netflix, but I don’t sit down and watch anything at the time it airs. I like the Outlander tag because I can find out what happens in a bite-sized morsel. I love spoilers, because it allows me to see what happens without putting in any actual effort.

It’s the same with all my other TV tags. I haven’t watched Doctor Who in ages (forgive me, I know not what I do). I stopped watching Scandal so that I could save it to watch with Dana, then we broke up and I just didn’t want to go back and watch it on my own…. yet…. and then Jake Ballard died and I cried like I lost a family member. It wasn’t pretty. So I keep up with the characters on Twitter for that show, too.

And this is where my mind goes when I’m looking up at the sky- all the things I do differently now that I have downsized so much. I’m not taking care of anyone or anything, which leaves me a lot of time to focus on myself. One of the ways I am so different is that pulling away from media has left me a lot more room to handle interaction with real people…. up and to a point.

I spent all day Saturday at the wedding, and then there was a feast at our house on Sunday….. which I missed because I went upstairs to take a nap and didn’t come back down until the next morning. Hayat left me food in the refrigerator, which I scarfed up cold for breakfast (ZOMG stuffed grape leaves om nom nom). What I have learned from this experience is that I cannot go to a wedding all day and go to a party the next day. I think the nap was my body’s way of saying “there are going to be a whole bunch of people here you don’t know.” Avoiding social interaction by “accidentally” falling asleep. The reason I think it was subconscious is that I fully intended to go to the party. Fully intended to be an amazing hostess.

That is when my body said, “not so fast, Leslie.”

The clouds are still rolling- I think it’s getting windy and possibly going to rain. I need to make a decision. It’s just the the ellipsis is so large, and so many things could fit in it.

In the post about Prianka’s wedding, I thought that both brothers Nandy had been born in the US. Turns out, Avik was also born in Calcutta. Those responsible for the error have been sacked.

My job interview went very well last night, and I think I will hear something soon. The pay is beyond my wildest dreams, doing something I want to do (and have been doing), anyway- bring Linux to the masses. Linus Torvalds has long been my favorite Finlandian (not sure that’s what they’re called, but doing it anyway because Sibelius), and the chance to give him the pleasure of furthering his life’s work pleases me. I started using Linux when I made friends with Luke in the middle of a Kinko’s in 1997. Seriously, we were both working on our own things at the computers there, struck up a friendship, and together with our friend Joe started a Linux server called Darkstar. My web site lived on Darkstar for years, and I will never forget learning Red Hat 5, Caldera, and Mandrake. It prepared me to be a Rock Star now, because I know how to do something that most people do not- sit down at any operating system in the world and make it work.

I am partial to Linux because I do most everything with the command line, but in terms of the graphical user interface (GUI), I am operating system agnostic. What I have learned over the years is that when you double-click the Firefox icon, Firefox comes up on anything. It’s just not worth it to argue, especially since we are going toward cloud computing and soon, I believe, operating systems will stem from web-based applications instead of storing data on your local computer. For instance, I have a 250 GB hard drive on my laptop, and I have used maybe a quarter of it for data. Everything I do is either a Google Doc or a blog entry. That way, if my computer gets hosed, I don’t have to do anything to it except reinstall linux. I need to stop doing that and get down into the details on how to troubleshoot, but I do that on OTHER people’s computers. On my own, just blow it away. I can hang.

Speaking of which, I formatted my computer this morning so that I could switch from Ubuntu to Fedora (the open source version of Red Hat) because the company I want to work for is using both Red Hat and CentOS. I haven’t been disappointed, mostly because the “disable touchpad while writing” feature actually works. The command line is a little different, but the applications are the same. I am still playing open source Quake as often as I have time. It calms my anger a lot to take out aggression on animated pictures of people, some of whom look like spiders, ghosts, aliens, etc. You can shoot a character and they go down, but if you shoot them a second time their guts explode everywhere. It’s very satisfying, because I don’t think I could shoot an actual person, but a picture of one is another thing entirely.

It’s like that scene in “Modern Family” where Claire disappears and her family has no idea that she’s actually at the gun range. Going to the gun range is fun for me, too, especially since the first time Volfe took me, I found an old Dell computer that somebody left there and literally lost my everloving mind shooting the shit out of it. A bullet for every user who’s asked if their computer has to be on for me to fix it…………. yes, that’s happened.

I have a ton of stories like that.

One time a user called and said that his computer wasn’t working and he’d accidentally plugged the power strip into itself instead of into the wall. It took me 35 minutes to figure out that one.

Another time a lady called me and said, “I heard that there’s a network outage on campus, and my monitor is blinking on and off. Are those two things related?” I shook my head and said, “ma’am, I hope not.”

The thing that really makes me want to play Quake and shoot people repeatedly is when people call me from the car on their way somewhere and need me to fix their what the fuck ever application. If you are not actually sitting at said computer, how am I supposed to help you? You’d think that people would know this, but they don’t.

With my family and friends, I generally create Logmein.com accounts so that they don’t have to explain to me what’s wrong. It’s just easier that way. I can see it faster than a non-technical person can explain it to me in words so non-standard that I have to scratch my head and try to figure out the question they MEANT to ask.

I am a voracious BOFH reader because he does all the things we WANT to do to you and CAN’T. Here is my favorite excerpt:

Another user rings.

“I need more space” he says

“Well, why not move to Texas?” I ask

“No, on my account, stupid.”

Stupid? Uh-Oh.

“I’m terribly sorry” I say, in a polite manner equal to that of Jimmy Stewart in a Weekend Family Matinee Feature “I didn’t quite catch that. What was it that you said?”

I smell the fear coming down the line at me, but it’s too late, he’s a goner and he knows it.

“Um, I said what I wanted was more space on my account, *please*”

“Sure, hang on.”

I hear him gasp his relief even though he’d covered the mouthpeice.

“There, you’ve got *plenty* of space now!”

“How much have I got?” he simps.

Now this *REALLY* *PISSES* *ME* *OFF*! Not only do they want me to give them extra space, they want to check it, then correct me if I don’t give them enough! They should be happy with what I give them *and that’s it*!

Back into Jimmy Stewart mode.

“Well, let’s see, you have 4 Meg available.”

“Wow! Eight Meg in total, thanks!” he says, pleased with his bargaining power.

“No” I interrupt, savouring this like a fine red at room temperature, with steak, extra rare, to follow; “4 Meg in total..”

“Huh? I’d used 4 Meg already, How could I have 4 Meg Available?”

I say nothing. It’ll come to him.

Copyright of Simon Travaglia

Reading Simon is a guilty pleasure- if you are in any way connected to an Internet Help Desk, don’t start reading this unless you’ve got some interrupted time. The first time I stumbled upon the archive, I didn’t move for eight hours, and I needed to go to bed like, yesterday o’clock.

On the whole, though, I enjoy working with users. There are just those difficult people just like the ones waiters want to strangle. No, I’m sorry I can’t log into your computer and help you while you’re at Target.

In this job, the students will be in a lab, so I won’t have to worry about that part of it. I will also be making videos for the students to watch, which will be great fun. I want to up the production values, and use a desktop recording tool so that the students can see what I’m doing in real time. It would also be neat to teach over the web with Hangouts, which is the best collaborative tool I’ve found for demos, sharing documents, etc. The best part is that it’s operating system agnostic, too. Hangouts comes in every flavor, including iPhone and Android.

Your Love is My Drug just came on Spotify. Time to shake my ass.

The weather is beautiful, and the birds are singing and chattering eagerly with the busyness of “I got shit to DO.” I don’t know my birds, but there’s a red cardinal and some black thingmes all going at the bird feeder like teenage girls at a Taylor Swift concert….. they actually sound like them, too. I am beginning to understand why British men call women “birds.” I don’t mean it in a pejorative way because I am a woman, but the chatter is similar. Very similar. I am convinced that the reason men don’t listen to women is the lack of bass in their voices, so I try to use my cigar and vodka range whenever possible. I have found that talking to a man is similar to talking to a dog…. Also not meant pejoratively. It’s just that in order to train a dog or get a man to listen to you, you have to have a certain amount of power to your inflection, and to both dogs and men, that comes with reaching deep down into your range. Don’t believe me? Try it. I promise you will get results. Stop being delicate when you say things and men will startle because they were not aware you could mean business.

So we’ve gone from birds to women to dogs to men. I think we’re off to a good start, don’t you?

I don’t know what to write about today, but I know I have to, so pack a lunch, son. It’s going to be a while before I hit brilliance. Speaking of which, I thought I was very clever yesterday with aforementioned asshat conservative who, halfway through the conversation, said “I didn’t know you were gay.” I said, “I’ll BET.” But that’s not the clever part. He said, “are you a man?” I said, “I am more of a man than you’ll ever be and more of a woman than you’ll ever get.” I am not sure it did me any favors, but I thought it was a good line nonetheless. You can steal it from me, it’s ok.

Because of my relationship with Argo, I reveled in gender not being an issue. I stopped seeing it at all. I stopped caring whether people wondered if I was a man or a woman, because the answer is “yes.” Everyone mentally has both sides inside them. I choose to acknowledge that truth. I started seeing gender bending as hot, because when it hit my brain, it hit my wardrobe as well. I mean, why wouldn’t it? I have written extensively about how much more men’s clothes appeal to me than women’s, because I do not want to look like I am for sale, a bird preening to get attention from the opposite, or the same, sex. I do not want to accentuate my rack in order to get out of tickets or get the “cute girl” discount at Starbucks. Those things are nice, sure, but it’s a system that needs to go the fuck away. There is so much pleasure for me when the people I CHOOSE to let see my body do. One girlfriend in particular made my year when she said, “you got the boobs I always wanted.” Beat that with a stick.

My male side comes out in that protector/tiger mode, and I think it does for a lot of women. Hell hath no fury like me when one of my friends is in danger. The thing is, though, most issues don’t need that kind of fury and I put it out there, anyway. I would have been a horrible soldier, because my answer would never have been to use my head. It would have been “blow ’em up. It’s easier to apologize than ask permission.” And I wouldn’t have done it for me. I would have done it to protect everyone else and hope I got included. The phrase “hothead jackass with a God complex” that I wrote yesterday is still ringing in my ears because it describes me so perfectly… except I’m not out for glory. I’m out to be “the guy.” The leader. The one you want in the front… getting there because everyone wants me to be there and not because I needed the clap on the back.

I read a thing yesterday that cracked my shit up because it was so accurate…. That hell for an INFJ is being in a room full of people where they’re sharing their ideas and no one thinks they’re interesting. The “oh my God, that’s so true” is strong in this one.

I may get a chance to be a leader yet. I took a break from writing to answer a phone call (LOOK AT ME! I ANSWERED THE PHONE!) and it turned out to be the guy from LinuxJobber. He asked me some questions and said, “clearly you know what you’re doing. Let me have someone call you back.” The funniest part was that we ended up having an interview, but he originally called to tell me that my book had shipped.

I’m good at this game. 🙂

Now that gay marriage is becoming a reality for the United States, the last few that don’t have it and don’t want it are fighting even harder. Gay bashing has gone up, and agreeing to disagree has gone down. It’s too important now. I don’t think I would have such ill will had Texas not already started drafting legislation to circumvent the Supreme Court on its federal decision. As of right now, the government of the state of Texas is on my shit list, and I want to take them down for all they’re worth….. which is not much.

The problem is knowing how to do it. There are plenty of Texans that accept and even further the idea of marriage equality, but they are being drowned out by a congress awash in “Christianity.” It offends me that what they’re doing they’re calling “traditional.” That is a line of horse shit. HORSE SHIT. It’s not that it’s tradition. It’s that Republican candidates can’t get elected without pandering to a conservative religious base, and their churches all say that homosexuality is wrong, so the politicians who could probably give two shits about gay marriage all of the sudden start this tirade against it because it doesn’t cost anything to give people rights, but it does cost them their seats. The GLBT community is the last politically acceptable group to hate. For instance, yesterday on Facebook I had a guy tell me that somewhere there are people trying to get it legislated so that monkeys have rights and that I could just marry my monkey. First of all, he’s already married, thankyouverymuch. Second of all, WHAT? He also said something about how I should be able to marry my dog because aren’t people close to their dogs? I said that you can’t go with the dog argument because a dog cannot give consent- it’s like raping a child- and second of all, a dog cannot hold a pen to sign a contract.

He also said that my dildo was probably bigger than him, but that didn’t take much. I think he was trying to be funny, but guys say this shit to me all the time like it’s nothing and I am so tired. It gets so old that I internalize it and don’t even remember it’s not normal anymore and spout that shit to other people because I’m as fucked up as they are. Common decency has to make a comeback, which has to start with me and yet, I rebel against it at the same time. I grew up in such a fish bowl that being shocking is just my MO. It’s my teenage rebellion way into my 30s because it never really started when it was supposed to and in a lot of ways, my development was arrested at 14 and I am just now learning the pros and cons of good manners and whipping bullies into submission. I’m never going to be one of those people who is as direct and clean as a soldier. I don’t have that code of honor. I don’t have any code of honor, and I am trying to make a True North out of a compass that’s been rubbed by a magnet too many times. I’m not ldooking for a fight, but if you start it, I’ll by God finish it, mostly because I have been so meek and mild my whole life that I’ve never taken up much room. I have the ability to be so quiet and small you wouldn’t even know I was in a room if you weren’t looking for me. I have my moments where I am talkative, but they come less and less often as I age, and the personality change I underwent as a teenager was drastic. I smiled less and less. I came out of my shell only rarely, especially after the kids in my 10th grade English class decided that they were going to call themselves a family and made me the dog. They asked me to bark routinely until I grabbed one of the girls by the lapels and pushed her up against the stairs and threatened to push her over if she didn’t stop that shit. I will never forget the look in her eyes. For a moment, the bully shrank and she was scared of me. She should have been. I would have ensured that she cracked her head on the linoleum, because she had tortured me every day of high school until that moment.

I feel the same way about gay rights. I have prayed for change. I have been polite. I have understood how the Christian right has managed to hoodwink people into believing that homos are evil because they threaten the Christian way of life, even though plenty of gay people have faith.

And now, I’m done. The president of Gambia wants to slit all gay people’s throats? I hope someone slits his, first. No good can come of a president who wants to execute people, because there’s precious little anyone can do to stop him. I feel the same way about leaving Texas. I was polite for as long as I could be and then finally just decided to get the hell out. Argo and I were talking about Texas when we first met and I said that I didn’t do well there because I just walked around with this big chip on my shoulder all the time because people say and do things both without thinking and with extreme prejudice that make it where my mind doesn’t leave my own plight and how sorry I feel for myself that I have to put up with this shit all day long, every day of every year. I have actually explained how I felt and heard, “tough shit, dipshit.” Not once, not twice, but many, many times since I came out in 1990. I wanted to be one of those Martin Luther King, Jr. type characters when I was very young. Wanted to lead Texas into equality. Now, 25 years later, I have decided to stop spending energy on it that could be used for actual change instead of always feeling like I am knee deep in dark molasses.

The change has to begin with me, though. I have to learn that the vocabulary of a teenage line cook is not always going to do me favors. I have to learn to get what I want without resorting to being a hothead jackass with a God complex, because it doesn’t take much and I will try and own your ass, because 25 years is a long time to be mad about something and not have it boil over into the rest of my life. I don’t need that kind of anger in every situation, and I am trying like hell to get it to back down. I breathe. I drink tea. I take long baths and sit in the sunshine. I exercise regularly. I eat vegan food most days, and when I don’t, I feel the repercussions because I’m not getting the same nutrients and I don’t feel as well. I am trying to make it so that every day feels some modicum of sameness, so that my schedule doesn’t feel out of control. All of these things are working to manage my anger and then some conservative asshole picks a fight with me and I am back in that small place, struggling to stand up to a bully because I don’t have much practice at it. I cannot just make my point. I will send a drone with a voice signature because you made the egregious mistake of using “female” as an insult.

No, he wasn’t worth it. He was just some asshole looking to fight just for fighting’s sake. I could have taken the high road, but I didn’t. I told him I would wipe the floor with him, and I did. He ended up conceding defeat with a picture of a flame that looked like a hand with the middle finger up.

Maybe he had to go marry his monkey.

I got to talk to Dana last night for the first time in over a week. That hasn’t happened in 12 years, us going 8 days without talking. I needed space and I took it, because she didn’t sound like the Dana I know the last time I talked to her, and I needed to sit in that fact. I needed to sit with the fact that OF COURSE she’s not going to sound the same. We’re not the same kind of people to each other. I just needed her best friend vibe to come through the phone, and it did. We’d been chatting online and I realized what bullshit that was and I called her (LOOK AT ME! I CALLED SOMEONE!). It was then that I realized I would never chat with her online ever again, because it was setting us up for an Argo-like failure in communication to do so. Dana is not a writer. Dana is a talker. I’m never going to get “the real Dana” if we’re writing. So, I think that chat is best used to make appointments to talk and FaceTime and Hangout and Skype. I originally chatted her up to tell her that Pri-Diddy wants to see her and if she has time, would she like to meet with the three of us (Pri-Diddy, her wife Elena- they’re getting married on Saturday, and me)? She said……………. wait for it………….. yes! Not sure about timing because even though we’re both in the area, her parents live over an hour from me by car. We’ll just have to see. But what I know is that Dana’s WANT to see me is more important than the making of the plans.

Oh my Jesus my day got better in a hurry. My Dana. The one for whom my heart beats in a best friend way even if we never reconnect romantically. She makes me laugh like no one in the world, and nowhere was that more apparent than on my front porch last night. She told me what was going on at her work, how “our cats” are doing, and how her friends are. It was just like when we were separated by miles before, when I lived in Houston and she was still in PDX…. except it was better, because she did not get distracted by the TV and start narrating the plot as she was watching. 😛 Seriously, I know the plot to every M*A*S*H episode ever broadcast just from being on the phone with Dana. Her reply to that, and I can predict this one, would be “oh…. come on… you’re exaggerating. Two thirds.”

Everyone in the house thinks that I’m batshit crazy that I want to talk to my ex. They’re straight. They don’t understand that lesbians only have two kinds of breakups…… thermonuclear war and best friends. I hope you guys understand it better than they do, especially my readers who have been with us from the beginning and saw the way we cared for each other before we fell in love. So much that my dad thought the entire reason I was moving back to Portland was for her. It wasn’t, but it quickly became that once I got there because we realized what idiots we’d been for not trusting our friends’ instincts the first time around. Yes, it’s true. Everyone talked about us and we swore up and down that nothing could ever happen between us because we were both too high-maintenance. Hey, that’s a good line. Maybe we should go back to it, D3 (Darling Dangerous Dana).

Now I have to start thinking about what I’m going to get her for her birthday. I am good at this game. I get creative. For her 30th birthday, I went to the Dollar Tree and got her 30 presents. Now she’s going to be 40, which is too young for denture cream and too old for…. wait a minute. Dana’s not too old for anything. Maybe I’ll get her some bath crayons and a rubber ducky. Her shower is white. She could paint that bitch up. 🙂

Technically, I could say that I’ve already gotten her a birthday present because I moved into a house that was already furnished after I’d already bought a TARDIS shower curtain for myself and realized I didn’t have to take it with me. I’m not going to do that to her, though. The “I already got you a present” line is unacceptable. Maybe I will get her a Metro card, tongue in cheek. I am really trying to sell her on DC, because she is so damn happy in Houston that it’s completely irritating to me. We are SO FAR AWAY! Plus, I still remember the days of “I could never live in Houston. It’s TOO HOT.” She visited me in July and it was all downhill from there.

I did, however, tell her that since she makes so damn much money (overtime, bitches. Look into it.) she needed to at least come here more often. Flights on Southwest are so cheap from Hobby to either DCA or IAD that we could meet for lunch for less than $200 if she plans it right. And it’s not like I’ll never go back to Houston, but we would honestly have more fun here because all she’d have to pay for is the flight. All the museums and the Zoo and everything is free. Plus, unsurprisingly, Dana has done a lot in DC, but not THAT much. She didn’t really grow up in the city. She grew up in a town that’s like, 40 minutes away, like growing up in Rosenburg and calling it Houston or growing up in Newberg and calling it Portland. Her hometown is called Dumfries, and I remember telling Dana the first time I met her all those years ago that Dumfries was one of my favorite places in Virginia because it’s the closest Waffle House to Alexandria.

I remember clearly Kathleen and I driving all the way out there because a Waffle House that was far away was better than no Waffle House at all. It’s not the best food in the world, but it tasted like home to us. It’s still the closest Waffle House to me, I think, but even if I took the Metro out to the last NoVa stop and Ubered from there, it would still be the most expensive waffles in history.

The other thing that Dana has never done that we’ll have to plan way in advance but is TOTALLY worth it is that Dana has never been to Manhattan. I want to show her “my NYC.” I’ve been there enough that I know we need to stay at The Time, we need tickets to a show, and we need to eat hot dogs until we explode because NYC hot dogs are really the only ones I like. It doesn’t matter if there are Chicago toppings on it, the hot dog itself is just better.

Trying to think of what color Dana will want at The Time. I am going to leave you with that sentence, because if you don’t know what I mean, you’ll just need to Google it.

Did I mention that I got to talk to Dana last night???????

I tried to kill you off, tried to forget that our relationship was sacred, tried to forget how much you meant to me. I tried so hard, because you didn’t want this relationship anymore and I did. I had this image of us walking arm in arm downtown, talking about our lives in a way that only we can. Walking arm in arm because you know that if we don’t, I will trip on a manhole cover and possibly fall in.

Falling into a manhole is an apt description, because I dug the tunnel myself. I sit in it daily, trying to work out what is what and where is where. I work backward from the death and into the days when we cared for each other in a way I’d never had with anyone else. I work backward from my sins into the wholeness I felt when you found me.

I have days where I remember everything, and all I can do is cry. I miss Dana, I miss you, and my tears won’t stop because it’s all my fault. Or at least, it is today. I feel off-kilter because I was so secure in both of you and now I am creating a future that doesn’t include you because that’s not what you want because of the way I behaved. I have shown both of you that I am capable of reacting like a wet cat with claws extended when I cannot function, or I forget who I am and who both of you are and start fighting with someone else that’s not even in the room. Transference and projection are deep injuries that I walk and talk with, trying to resolve. I never want to be in this place again, this feeling that I have no power to change the past and bring it into wholeness on my own.

I long for the days when we could just flip each other shit and enjoy each other’s company. I long for the days when I didn’t threaten you, I was just leslie, a woman standing in front of you broken, and you knew it and loved me anyway. I am lost in the end and trying to save the beginning, knowing that closure may never come from anyone but me. I hate my feelings of grief and regret because they bother me more than you will ever know. I am sobbing as I write this because the future I envisioned is gone at my own hand. I emotionally destroyed me, and sit in your love instead of your anger. When I do reread your anger, it’s a mixed bag of “I don’t think she understands where I’m coming from” and wishing that you’d heard me in the way that I intended instead of the way you took it. My words are heavy and when they come across the Internet they hurt, but never intentionally until my yard was threatened and I defended myself like a junkyard dog with a Napoleon complex.

I stare at your e-mail address in my followers list and wonder if you are listening without talking, because I can do enough talking for both of us. Trying to work it where I feel grief RIGHT NOW so that it doesn’t continue to weigh me down forever. Trying to process our demise so that six months from now, it’s less of an injury, like moving down from a heart attack to a scraped knee. It’s a shallower well of grief, so it looks different than I look now. If you came to my house, you would see my decadent porch and me curled up with a laptop, trying to let go and not knowing how. As I have said before, you took my grief and kissed my broken places so that light could shine from within, and I can’t forget that part. I can’t forget the way you are stitched into my heart.

I pray without ceasing that you are well, healthy and whole. I pray that God will prosper my ministry. I pray that I will be forgiven for the sins I committed in this relationship because I talked too much and not so much with the listening.

Not now, not ever again. I don’t want to bring out the worst in you, and I don’t want you to bring out the worst in me. I completely understand that this problem is not of us, it is of the Internet. If we’d met under different circumstances, I don’t think that we would have had our blowouts to begin with.

We’d have walked, arm-in-arm, linked because you know I’ll fall. When I trip, you’re there to catch me, because that’s what you’ve always done. I promise, Argo. I can catch anything you throw at me, because you do the same for me. I have not done that in the past. I’ve talked more than I’ve listened, and taken more than I’ve given. You are an enormous gift to the world, and not one that should have been cast aside. I should have taken you and held on to you and loved you until your fur fell off, my velveteen friend.

The end is the beginning is the end, our cycle in the months where emoting meant anger and unworthiness in response. There are days where I feel enormous, and you have given me some of them. Other days, I cry like a toy has been taken away, that ugly cry expressing so much pain and sorrow you have to get it out.

Grief this large shouldn’t just sit. It needs to be harnessed into miracles. I am working on them. Piece by piece by….. peace.

I am working backward because there are no do-overs, but there is a great deal of wisdom in learning about the past.

Dear Argo,

1. I cannot walk in high-heeled shoes properly. The last time I did, I thought my feet were going to have to be amputated at the end of the evening.
2. Current favorite beer: Bridgeport India Pale Ale
3. Current favorite wine: Rosemount Estates Pinot Noir
4. Current favorite spirit: Bailey’s Irish Cream
5. I am currently housesitting for my friends Ann and Scootter. Therefore, for the next three weeks, I have a dog. She is a boxer and her name is Radley. I love the name so much I might name my first daughter that, but she will never know it came from my best friends’ dog. Unless I’m mad.
6. Ann and Scootter call people they like by both their first and last names, and fortunately or unfortunately, I have picked up the habit. If I don’t call you by both your first and last names, though, it doesn’t mean I don’t like you. It just means I like other people than you MORE.
7. I do not like white wine, and I get migraine headaches from red. But does that stop me from ALWAYS picking red? NOOOOOOOOO.
8. I am married- but not emotionally… and divorced… but not legally. It’s very complicated. In short, no matter how much you love someone, do not fall for that old “let’s get a civil union certificate in Vermont” line.
9. I am a native Texan, but currently I reside in Oregon.
10. I have dated three women seriously… and two boys.
11. I met my current girlfriend through Friendster, and it has caused no amount of grief among my friends.
12. Especially when we moved in together after a month. Well, technically I’m just staying with her until I find a new apartment/house, but it was worth saying that just to give my parents a heart attack. 😉
13. I sing in an all-women’s chorus called Belle Voci. It means “beautiful voices” in Italian. Some days, I’m not so sure.
14. My father’s family is from Ireland, and there’s a fairly interesting story behind it. Apparently, our family is not related to anyone else with the last name of Lanagan in America because my great great great great great grandfather was the captain of a ship during Ireland’s cholera epidemic. Therefore, he was out to sea when it hit and our clan survived.
15. I am active in my church, Bridgeport United Church of Christ. I sing in the choir and I teach senior high Sunday School. If that doesn’t get me extra brownie points in heaven, I don’t know what will.
16. My father is the clinical coordinator for Angela McCain, M.D. Incidentally, Angela McCain, M.D. is my stepmother.
17. My mother is an elementary school teacher in a neighborhood so horrible that the teachers in the accompanying junior high and high school receive hazard pay. Her husband, my stepfather, is the Chief Financial Officer for the Port of Houston.
18. Once, on a job application in high school, I was asked this: “Give an example of extraordinary customer service.” I replied that one time a blind man had come into the Eckerds in which I was working and needed a greeting card for his daughter. So I read him an entire aisle’s worth of cards until he found just the right one. It didn’t happen to me. But it was a damn good story, a tearjerker even, so I wrote it anyway.
19. By now you’ve probably learned that for me, morality is a sliding scale. This happens to a lot of writers. I hope it doesn’t get in the way of our friendship.
20. I hope that clears up before I start seminary. I want to be a minister when I grow up.
21. The best book I’ve read this year is The Solace of Leaving Early by Haven Kimmel. I wish I could explain it to you, but I like very complicated stories and I only have so much room…
22. I also like John Grisham novels, however, as I believe that they are the literary equivalent of crack.
23. The man who sat next to me when I was volunteering at Oregon Public Broadcasting thought it was HYSTERICAL that I wanted to be a minister. I’m trying to decide if he thought that because I was sitting next to Jenn and clearly indicating that she was my girlfriend, or if he just knows me entirely too well for sitting next to me in that short of a time period.
24. I am horrible with e-mail. I try to keep on top of it as best I can, but I get so many a day that I think my brain is going to explode. So if I haven’t e-mailed you lately, don’t give up hope. One day I WILL wade through it all.
25. When I was in grade school, I was such a dork. I had braces and a headgear and I wore glasses. But just look at me now, baby!
26. I have met most of the really great trumpet players: Maynard Ferguson, Marvin Stamm, Dizzy Gillespie, Wynton Marsalis, Clark Terry, Barry Lee Hall, Jon Faddis, Dennis Dotson, Lew Soloff, etc. The story about meeting Jon Faddis is the funniest, because when I went to meet him I was absolutely punch drunk on the experience. I had just met Lew Soloff, the lead trumpet player for Blood, Sweat, and Tears, who thought that if I knew who he was then I must be a trumpet player myself (well, kinda…). He told me about an audition in New York for the Manhattan School of Music, which I took down for a friend. So after that, I was on cloud nine. I went to Faddis’s bus and told the guys already on board that I was a big, big fan and I wanted an autograph. Total MISTAKE. The guys started ragging on Faddis like, well… like junior high band geeks, frankly. So I finally get my autograph and my few minutes in the “FADDISPHERE” and I just about walked away on air.
27. I WATCHED CANADA SHUT OUT CHINA IN THE 2003 WORLD CUP, AND I WILL NEVER, EVER FORGET IT! Miracles do happen, and I was there for one of them.
28. I have managed to turn my girlfriend, Jenn’s, attic into usable space, but only because I have a futon and an electric blanket that can be turned up to HELL.
29. My favorite blogger in the whole wide world is Heather Armstrong of dooce.com.
30. My butt is starting to hurt, and I still have 70 more to go.
31. I was born in Tyler, Texas at a hospital that has a statue of Jesus looking like he is directing traffic.
32. I am still in touch with my first love.
33. I have always been a voracious reader, and I would rather read than do almost anything else.
34. Currently I am rereading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and reading David Sedaris’ Naked for the first time.
35. My grandfather died when I was in junior high, and I played Amazing Grace on my trumpet at the funeral.
36. What is really weird is that although the only people I’ve dated seriously have been my age, I don’t normally have friends that are the same age as me… but I do not discriminate. That’s just been a force of nature.
37. I am three years older than my mentor was when I met her, therefore I regret just a little bit not getting to “catch up” to her because she’s a different person now. We would have been great bad girls together.
38. I am starting a writing class on Sunday regarding spirituality. Our first assignment is writing about something that’s a curse as if it’s actually a blessing. So far, I’ve got nothin’.
39. For some reason, actresses do not appeal to me. Perhaps it’s because I prefer really down-to-earth, crunchy granola girls, or perhaps my crushes are on actors because I’d rather be them than be with them.
40. I’ve had four Diet Cokes today. It’s a sickness.
41. I have now been to Seattle, and while I was there, I ate at the restaurant in which the tiramisu scene is filmed. Or at least, I think it’s the tiramisu scene. There’s a big picture of Tom Hanks in the front window.
42. For the first time in my life, I am dating someone who is ALSO a first child… but we’re still very, very different.
43. My favorite recording artists (in no particular order): Eminem, They Might Be Giants, Ben Folds, Live, Panic in Detroit, Koufax, Indigo Girls, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Staind, Tenacious D, and Weird Al Yankovic.
44. Favorite character in the Potterverse: Arthur Weasely. His fascination with the Muggle world is endlessly entertaining, particularly in the fifth book.
45. Though I’ve only seen him once on Comedy Central, my favorite comedian is Stephen Lynch. He does this great show with beautiful music where the lyrics are all twisted, such as, “Had to see you one more time, there’s somethin’ on my mind… How about bitch, gimme my money…. Gimme my money and I want it fast…
46. No, of course I’m not bitter. Why do you ask?
47. I have never cheated on anybody, but I do, much like Jimmy Carter, lust in my heart.
48. However, having been cheated ON does not make me a martyr. For long. Two months tops. Okay, four, but that’s my final offer.
49. My favorite driving experience was loading up Kathleen and Lindsay and going to Manhattan. I drove the entire time, and I wasn’t scared once. It’s a new record for me. In fact, it was especially cool cruising down West Side Highway and looking out over the water.
50. My two best friends in the whole wide world have the same name… Sorry if it’s not you.
51. I’ve really begun to feel the responsibility that is involved with the term “faith community.”
52. I often have ideas that do not stick with me, so when they do, I know that they’re worth pursuing. Right now my dream is to retire in Greenwich Village. Therefore, somebody better tell both Simon AND Schuster that I’m alive.
53. I wrote in my last 100 Things that my friend Giles is getting his Master’s degree at University of Montreal and I was wrong. He’s at McGill. In Canada, that’s like saying, “he’s at Harvard.”
54. My standards are bendable. If I truly hate a movie and all my friends want to watch it, I’ll go ahead and give in for the greater good. Though I think it’s prudent to think of a way my friends can pay me back for all the crappy movies I’ve sat through.
55. At ExxonMobil I had a 21-inch monitor and an Aeron chair. It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
56. The reason my hair isn’t red anymore is that it costs money for hair dye and I’d rather spend that money on other things. But the hair will be red again when I have copious amounts of disposable income.
57. My favorite DC memory is standing on the roof of Molly’s apartment building watching the fireworks over the Potomac… and the ones in Virginia and Maryland in the distance.
58. Even though I am 26 years old, when I hear a song that was played a lot during my senior year in high school, I forget that I’ve aged at all. I particularly enjoy Back for Good by Take That, Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Deep Blue Something, and Santa Monica by Everclear.
59. I have daydreams of the lovers/friends/acquaintances I’ve lost over the years that will suddenly flock to me when I sell my first novel, short story, and or New Yorker article.
60. There is a cry that comes from deep within me that I know is the sound of true sorrow. Fortunately, I’ve only cried that cry three times: when my parents broke up, when my first love left for college, and when my first wife told me that we should get a divorce.
61. It’s been over a year, and I still can’t believe that I now have to say first wife. Because I still believe in marriage. It will just take a lot longer for me to enter into it.
62. My church is throwing a Halloween party on the 25th of October, and they have asked me to be Dr. Frankenstein. Perhaps because I have nice knockers?
63. Meagan was the first person to whom I ever wrote a REAL love letter, and when I gave it to her, I learned just how much time could slow down while people were reading.
64. My friend Chason says that I have a bigger smile than anyone he knows, and I really can’t dispute it.
65. My AOL Instant Messenger Buddy List has 42 people on it. My screen name is Leslian.
66. I was so premature when I was born that my six month old pictures look like the day I came home from the hospital.
67. I have a long scar on my chin because I busted it open three or four times and had to have stitches. I think each time was due to the concrete steps at my nursery school.
68. Speaking of injuries, I once had to be rushed to the doctor because I had watched my dad put in his contacts and then at school stuck a red sequin in my eye.
69. I’m not terribly fond of the Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays.
70. My biggest pet peeve is when something doesn’t go with my outfit. Like if I’m wearing a brown shirt and I don’t have brown shoes, or I’m wearing a belt that has a gold buckle and I can only find my silver earrings. Being ADD means that I’ve just learned to deal with it because I never remember to put things back where I found them… mostly because I don’t REMEMBER where I found them.
71. I love the heaviness of a good fountain pen, and the absolute dazzling quality of a good purple or deep red ink.
72. Radley just farted under my desk.
73. I have a membership to SuicideGirls. It was a birthday present that I did not ask for, but well loved nonetheless.
74. The thing I love and hate about being in long term relationships is that if they end and you move on, there are still really intimate details that you don’t need to know anymore that stay with you.
75. The entire time I’ve been writing this, little ants have been crawling around on my desk. Ew.
76. I’ve probably had 400 ideas about what to write on this list, but haven’t put them all down because I can’t think of a way to phrase them correctly. I am SUCH a writer.
77. My girlfriend has gotten to meet David Sedaris, and I am so jealous that I could spit nails. But not at her. Directly.
78. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I think about the piece I’ll write that will get me on Oprah. I don’t know why I like Oprah so much, but ever since she played Sofia in The Color Purple I’ve followed her career both as an actress and talk show host. I didn’t much care for Beloved, but I thought The Women of Brewster Place was great. I apologize if my admiration for all things Oprah makes me sound more like a Midwestern housewife than a crunchy granola Portland lesbian, but that’s just the way it is.
79. My hair is terrible in the mornings. Scootter calls it HAIR NOT FOUND IN NATURE.
80. There are only three commands that I would like to teach my dog if I ever have another one of my own: 1) Sit. 2) Lay down. 3) Bring Mama a Diet Coke.
81. I’ve only smoked pot once, and I will (probably) never do it again. The reason why is because Matt was using a broken lighter and set my fingernails on fire. If that isn’t enough of a deterrent, I don’t know what is. You might think that one cannot set one’s fingernails on fire, and you would be wrong, grasshopper. If there is plenty of acrylic on the tips, it lights most magnificently.
82. But I will sit in the backyard and smoke cloves with you if you bring me one, INSERT NAME HERE AND YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE(S).
83. I thought Spirited Away was the most fucked up movie I’d ever seen in my life and I can’t believe they show it to small children VOLUNTARILY.
84. I never knew true natural beauty until I went to the Columbia River Gorge for the first time.
85. Some of my best Portland memories so far are about being in a kitchen with lots of women and making soup… I’ll probably write about it- Divine Secrets of the Church Lady Sisterhood.
86. I’m not afraid to disagree with people as much as I used to be. My girlfriend can attest to that.
87. I am not the guy that you want implementing or wrapping up your project. But I am definitely the guy you want comin’ up with the ideas.
88. Listening to my friend talk to her father after the Cubs lost the NLCS championships made me incredibly homesick, not only because it made me miss my own dad, but because she and her dad have roughly the same accent as we do.
89. I opened a tampon just to see what was inside the little plastic thing. What do you mean, why? It wasn’t that exciting, so let me save you a tampon. It’s cotton. It’s string. No big whoop. I thought it was somehow going to be more than that if you have to put it in your hoopdedoo. Big disappointment.
90. I did not like breakfast food until I found French toast flavored bread. I think you are supposed to use it to make French toast, but I just like to put it in the toaster and then add butter. Normally my breakfast is a smorgasbord of whatever leftovers there are in the fridge.
91. I find it ironic that when I went to Boston, I was not nearly as taken with the history of the city as I was with The Real World firehouse.
92. Though I have several different online handles, I don’t generally let people call me by them because to me, when you get called by your online handle it is proof that you haven’t been spending enough time offline.
93. Last night I went walking with Radley and Kristen whereupon I proceeded to fall flat on my face on the sidewalk because I had my hands in my pockets and couldn’t break my fall. Surprisingly, I walked away with just a scrape on my pinky and on my knee. But they both hurt like a mofo this morning.
94. Sometimes, if I can’t get into whatever is being said at church, I lean up against my friend Diane or Matt and think about what I’ll wear when I meet Matt Damon.
95. I eat too much because I am such a foodie.
96. Before I was asked to play Dr. Frankenstein at the Halloween party, I had come up with several ways in which I could make a SpongeBob costume. That’s right, kiddies. I was going to be SpongeBob for Halloween. Bring it around town.
97. I am often accused of being on drugs and it is always a moment of displeasure for me when I have to reassure the accuser that no, really, I am this way. Sometimes even on purpose.
98. I should never get manicures. Each time my girlfriend has manicured my nails, I’ve forgotten about the polish and it just starts chipping away week after week. Since the last time she painted my nails I asked her to make them “margarita green,” it looks like I have little pieces of booger clinging to the ends of my fingers.
99. I am just now starting to realize what a gift I am to the world. Before now, I needed lots and lots of people telling me how wonderful I was and I didn’t really believe them.
100. I still remember how cold the surf was in the Pacific Ocean when I stepped into it.