love

I’ve been a bad friend, son, brother, and even lover of late. Too much workahol leading to broken plans, missed connections, absurd periods of radio silence. To all the parties waiting or wanting or hoping to hear from me, I truly am sorry.

So here’s what’s been going on.

I escaped my dayjob-infused routine last weekend to attend an Indian Wedding in New Jersey with the girlfriend. Oh yes, that’s right, I’m using The Title now. Reluctance to do so in the past is — hindsight-wise — kind of embarrassingly immature. Also, while it sounds quite nice rolling off the tongue, “paramour” isn’t actually a very flattering alternative descriptor.

For my part, this feels different than previous relationships. It’s more… intentional. I chose pursuit in spite of improbability and long odds. While she’s certainly into me (so I got that going for me too), this isn’t one of those things that just fell into my lap. I had/have to work for it.

This is foregrounded because it’s been long-distance, which is a pain in the ass, and also not the norm for me. Shamus jokingly scolded me that this was the best I could do given my quote-unquote emotional availability. Very funny, but there’s maybe something to be said for the way in which the distance gave the whole thing a chance to sneak around various subconscious defense mechanisms of mine. A trojan horse for the heart, you might say.

It’s gotten harder now that she is in London, and not New York, and timezones are a real barrier, and we have to plan and coordinate even to talk. But people do this, and even successfully. Seems kind of silly not to try.

Another novelty/challenge: she is more different from me than anyone I’ve ever dated before. She is brainy of course, and at a bedrock level we have much in common, and communicate pretty well. I like to think this puts us in a good position to make the most of our diversity. Still, at times the distance (social now, not geographic) between our respective worlds seems daunting. It’s not just her being the daughter of South Asian immigrants, but more the whole variance in life paths: she’s a relatively straight-up lawyer; she’s more conventionally girly than the girls I grew up with; she’s at her finest dancing to top-40 pop hits. These things are strange and quixotic and foreign to me.

In light of all this it makes me happy that she approvingly posted this little excerpt, because really when is this sort of thing ever very logical? It isn’t, I’d say. My goal is not to think about anything more than is absolutely necessary, and generally try not to eff it up.

But yes, so I flew out to New York to spend the weekend in Jersey. It was pretty fun, actually. Unlike most men, I quite enjoy dancing — of which there was plenty — and I find the generally joyous atmosphere of weddings to be pleasant and life-affirming. Plus there was plenty of quality food and booze.

The night before the wedding itself was a tradition called a Sangeet, which is like a rehearsal dinner except bigger (half the whole wedding was there) and revolves around a talent show. This is actually an exceptional idea; there’s nothing like the sharing of amateur and cheeky performances to help bring two families together. I recommend anyone considering a bricolage approach to their own nuptials consider incorporating this genius little innovation.

I also appreciated this quote from the wedding program: “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.” Which is also translated “To love is not to look at one another: it is to look, together, in the same direction.” Seemed apropos.

Another highlight was the after-party, which was back in the hotel/conference center we all stayed in, which had an honest-to-god nightclub. This is in North New Jersey proper, and sort of outside any real town or city center. And yet this joint had an apparently substantial clientele. The crowed was, shall we say, interesting, sort of the end result of Jersey Shore plus 25 years, or, as someone remarked, “I feel like this place is exclusively full of people here to cheat on their wives.” A great moment for human anthropology in and amongst the Dirty Beats.

We finished the weekend strong back in the City, mostly picnicking in Central Park, greeting friends of hers, camping out behind Summer Stage, gorging ourselves on Chicken and Rice back in the apartment.

I had one more day there, so I got to see my Sister on the night before her birthday. Missed everyone else though (didn’t even tell folks I was coming out) for which, again, I am all apologies. Next scheduled excursion is late October, and will be a Good One, I think.

Now back in California, a week later, it feels like much longer ago. Like another world, a place of real summer, and me another person maybe. Another identity facet to blend? Another structural hole to bridge? Time, as they say, will tell.

So, what’s been going on? Clearly I’m not doing a great job of expressing myself in the written word, and aside from what you might intuit from Twitter there’s been precious little to go on in terms of my life and times. If it’s any consolation, I’ve been similarly vague and opaque in real life too; when conversation turns to me and myself these days I’ve been full of noncommittal generalities.

The truth is, a lot is happening, so much and so constantly that I’m not really keeping up with the processing. The spiritual backlog is growing, technical debt to the soul.

One big thing that’s been happening is that I met a woman. When I’ve revealed that to my friends of late I say it with italics — “I met a woman“ — and with a kind of level eye-look that tells them I’m serious. She’s out in New York City, a Lawyer by trade, double Ivy, South Asian, whipsmart and gorgeous (natch) and loves to dance. Her name is Rina and she’s inspired some quality prose and two weekend visits back East this spring thus far.

It’s geographically improbable, but I’m uncharacteristically sanguine. We have passed beyond initial worries that spending 72 hours together might become unbearable — that we won’t actually like one another upon close examination — and into the subsequent worry that oh hey we actually do, and so now what.

Did I mention she’s moving to London? Oh, yeah, she’s moving to London, but again I’m uncharacteristically optimistic. However, it is beginning to dawn on me that this may actually be kind of unpleasant. Time will tell. I play the long game.

Other big news is that I’m in the process of uprooting myself from Westhaven and Humboldt County, the place I’ve rambled to and from but called home for the past four years. Longest I’ve had any one address since moving out of my Mother’s place back in ’97, but my time in the woods is up. It’s time to be back in the world, so I’m subletting in SF for a couple months and looking to spend the balance of the Summer in the Cornell Club again.

A big driver of this is the transition of what I affectionately call “my day job” into it’s latest chrysalis incarnation: we’re up to 22 people and counting, ensconced in professional new Downtown SF offices, organizing 3,000 person conferences, rolling on larger projects than ever, and basically have decided to shoot the moon. We’re trying to turn it into a real business, something that could outlive our selves, stand on its own, grow beyond what just three dudes might dream.

Turns out this is really fucking hard. We’re up against all sorts of challenges — technical, financial, social — that we’ve never had to face before. That makes it stressful, sure, but also makes it an adventure. The groove we carved was good, but it was also getting boring, and we’re collectively more interested in breakthrough success than easy comfort. We’re young yet, and now’s the time to move boldly. It’s who dares wins.

Ultimately this all makes me somewhat unsure about my future. There’s a large and growing part of me that needs to Get Away From It All for a while, to get some perspective on my life and times and Figure It All Out. That’s hardly probable in the next quarter or too, but could happen come the Winter. I need to chart some goals, longer term. Set some sights for myself personally.

For now I’m just happy to be surrounded by good people who inexplicably care for me, healthy, romantically tingling and everbusy with worthwhile pursuits. It’s a charmed life, and I’m looking forward to the next chapter.

Music please.

I got a note the other day that complimented me on the quality of my "public longing" (that as opposed, I understand, to the more conventional "secret longing") and this tender sprout of an idea took root in the unfortunately rocky and barren terrain that is what passes for my subconscious these days. I don't know if it's really something to be proud of, but I think I've gone too far down the road of radical transparency to really make much of a turnaround now. Nothing short of the online equivalent to death (that is, taking the whole thing down) can really extricate me from my legacy. Or, as they say in the middle of a bum trip, the only way out is through.

So public longing it is. New tag. Warning to any groundlings out there who might see this post; it's got mature content, which is preferable to immature content IMHO (and as the man sez), but if yr parents aren't into that sort of thing, maybe trip away*.

I'm back in that Swerengen place, which I know at least some people out there get. It's a nasty cocktail of pressurized and randy, a place I get where the facts of my life stretch me out thin enough that there are a real limited number of things that'll make me feel good, and the first one on my mind is getting epically laid, but of course this is a pretty terrible position from which to go playing the scene.

I ejected from a particularly nettlesome day in the SF office (12 hours spent mostly heads down, and not much to show for it) and ran my bike right in front of a cop against a red light. My bad, totally, and I swung away and saved my own life there, but he wanted to give me some shit about it since I guess it gave him a start too. No ticket, thanks, but it really ruins the near-death adrenaline rush which (sorry mom) is a staple of my urban cycling reverie when you get chewed out by the law after the fact.

So he hassled me into walking the bike, which I did for a block or two in case he swung around, and so got a little sidewalk-level view of Thursday night in SOMA. Ostentatious pretty people smelling good in the sort of atrocious way of perfume. Bouncers and young professionals. Sorority girls past their prime. Needless to say this wasn't quite my scene, but it got me thinking a little bit.

Because, hey dipshit, what exactly is your scene? Sure I can sound some aesthetic or class-warriorish notes, but what exactly am I doing with my life that's more interesting or exciting than the yuppie circus on Townsend? Not much.

And this cuts right to the heart of this whole tied-up wish-i-could-get-some scene I've been inhabiting in and out for years now. My man Jack's commandment #4 is to "Be in love with yr life" and that's been a stretch for quite a while now. I don't meant to cast aspersions on any of the wonderful, talented and entertaining friends, comrades and fleeting lovers who've been my companions over the past few years but the truth is it hasn't really been there for me. What gets you out of the bed in the morning? For me, it's responsibility; the knowing that Shit Will Get Fucked Up if I drop out; which is no way to live, long haul.

At the same time, I'm uber-conscious of my massive privileges. I might have eaten off food stamps and government cheese as a kid, been the first generation of my mom's family to graduate from college, but my pops was a PhD, and even though they weren't together they both loved and supported me fully and completely which is the more important point. It's no legacy Yale admission, but in real terms it's the leg up that matters in life.

In other words, the predicament I find myself in is nobody's fault but my own. Ain't no excuse for not living the dream 'cept maybe it's hard to get to sleep sometimes.

Honestly I think I'm afraid to put my desire out there. It's easy to write public longings in the removed digital safety of a blog, but I mean in meatspace, dig. Here I wrote a whole play riffing on the Jungian conundrum of self/shadow-self, and a short decade later I'm too uptight to let my sexy out. I'm unsure whether it's ye old fear of success, or the less glamorous and more cowardly terror before the specter of rejection, but these submerged parts of my consciousness are pretty well deep under.

Which is, again, no way to be long run. This leads to weird flailing thrashes of emotionality. I can see it clearly: too long out of circulation, starting to make more out of things than they really are, the tone of voice when someone's talking about a relationship that tells you not to question their commitment to sparkle-motion. Playing catch-up on the emotional spectrum. Bringing around someone and making all my friend pretend to like them.

That's not me, but I can see it out there, this dark future.

The alternative is to find something to love about my life, about being a grown up, a professional, a self-made man. I've made much hay from my ability to bridge structural holes over the years, but it's left me with a lot of scattered bits of my identity. My political people and art people and red dawn people and drupal people and oldest dearest friends all know different flavors of a Josh, and explaining one to the other can be difficult verging on impossible. Me is somewhere in-between.

And underneath all the sexual frustration in the world is the prom-night romantic hope that maybe just getting with the right girl would bring it all back home. Seems kind of unlikely, really, but it's there.

More likely is I figure out my shit, own it, love it, rock it, and that makes me feel pretty good, loose, hot and free, and then interesting things start happening.

Until then I don't see much alternative to continuing to fumble along, and try not to let any opportunities pass me bye.

---

*I feel increasingly compelled to do these sorts of disclaimers now that I realize my teenage nieces and nephews are on the internet as much as I am, and since my feed hookup cross posts all my stuff to facebook. This whole thing was a lot less complicated when it was more samizdat and all I had to worry about was offending my mom, who's very hard to offend.

A blog post about the feeling of wanting, or rather of wanting wanting.

I remember a night cold as this, twelve odd years ago (jesus, twelve!) one of the first times I ventured into Brooklyn as a young student; a classmate who lived out there at a young and early age, no dorms for her, was throwing a house party and everyone from our section was going, including the girl I had an enormous and unspeakable crush on. I remember a lot of talk, and some minor dancing, and seeing her mostly across the room but feeling so damn much.

It’s strange. In some ways I remember most sharply these feelings which sprang from fantastical unfulfilled crush-dreams. Times I was in love — which is a reciprocal situation, something of considerably greater depth and complexity — I know about feeling-wise mainly because I wrote about it in one place or another. Of course I remember all the facts, but only bits and pieces of the real emotions: saying goodbye the very first time, at a subway gate; bawling my eyes out on a hardwood floor; romantic petty theft; brief but indelible bedroom moments… still, by in large these quantities of time and whatever ticked by inside me have submerged below accessible consciousness. Amnesia of the heart.

And on a night like this, pedaling a borrowed bike through the city of my birth, a cold foggy Saturday night years beyond years beyond any of these times I remember, remembering those kinds of feelings makes me wish I had some of that kind of jumpy excitement in my life. Honestly I’m inwardly still somewhat Buddha calm about things like settling down and having kids; what piques my angst is this bland numbness, the staggering lack of epic romantic fantasy.

Thus the allure of fanning old flames. Thus the desire to radically switch up my situation. Thus the tendency to rhapsodize the potential of things that never happened. Thus the desire to play the lottery, to strike gold after scaling some yet unknown height.

And long run I have an inner calmness, knowing outside of all facts and figures that it’ll all work out some day, but damn if I’m not hungry now, and damn if it ain’t lonely, this kind of hunger.

Is there a word for this particular combination of stressed-out and horny? Ala Al Swearengen, “I need to fuck something.” Somewhere in the nexus of sexual frustration and nihilism, where the survival urge cycles like a mobeus, inside out and never ending; that’s where I’ve been finding myself lately. Kind of amped, kind of tired, kind of desperate and kind of over it too. It’s a peculiar place.

Personally, frustrating though it is, this seems like a small measure of progress, hunger being preferable to numbness. I feel meta-better with itchy and pent-up than I do with bored and blase. It’s been a while since I’ve had a steady lover in my life — or much action to speak of at all, really — something that’s not terribly likely to change without proactive effort, itself unlikely without some genuine desire. So this is where it starts.

The other morning on my way to work I heard this bit on NPR about the prevalence of hooking up as opposed to traditional dating and courtship. I think their square-world take on it is kind of prudish — “sex without intimacy” is an awfully normative frame, and I’d say hooking up can be quite intimate, even when it is ephemeral — but there’s something to this. One part that particularly struck me was where the young woman they interviewed talked about how bringing someone into her circle of friends seemed like a much more scary (or, specifically, vulnerable) thing than bringing someone to bed. I can understand that.

But the part that really got me was the lyrical description of the process. The idea of a dance. That’s something I miss, powerful like. It’s not something that life in the woods offers many venues for, hooking up, especially when one lives and socializes with a smallish inner circle of peeps.

I don’t really know what to do about this. Kellymundo and I used to joke about “secret hour” — going out on the solo-prowl — but I’m not sure this is really my style. More’s the pity, my daily life routine isn’t conducive to casual social commingling with pretty and available ladies. Most of my friends are settled down, and they pretty much hang out with one another. Not that I blame them, but it doesn’t help me out that much.

So I’m stuck. Toe-tappingly, jaw-grindingly arrested in space. Contents under pressure. In the words of Yousef Islam, “It’s another Saturday night, and I ain’t got nobody.”

The killer thing is that it’s not like I can just go out and get fucked. That might be literally possible, maybe even desirable, but the truth is I’m not really down with the lowest common denominator, and even if I were the logistics seem daunting. I envy those satyr-like dudes, those ready willing and able to get it on wherever and whenever (and with whoever) they can. It’s not particularly classy, sure, but it’s honest, uncomplicated.

I envy too my younger self, my sluttier self, more willing to let the moment roll and go along with someone else’s notional good time. These days, I’m too wrapped up to turn off my mind, relax, and float downstream, and when I look out at the world it’s all pessimism and reasons why not. Hardly a winning attitude.

In the long run I’m sure this will all work out, but in the short run, it feels like I need a little more adventure, and that’s something I gotta work on. No real conclusion here, natch: it’s sort of my deal to work these things out semi-publicly. Helps sometimes to confess, and the sticky personal business generally makes for the best writing, so that’s what I do. With any luck, even when I overcome my petty personal pathos I’ll still find worthwhile inspiration for blogging. Pretty sure that will work out too.

For now, it’s time to leave the house and get out into the world for an evening.

I’ve been doing my level best to resuscitate my love life of late. Putting in the nuts and bolts effort. It seems important. Spring awakens, and the fields should not lie fallow.

It’s good to be reminded that I have something to offer, that I’m good looking and can make conversation when called upon. It’s good to do a little kissing. It’s also quite interesting to feel just how different all this is from what I remember of years past.

One thing that remains unresolved for me is the way in which my questionably ruthless sense of ambition is bound up in my romantic desires. There’s a verifiably vain aspect to this — self-aggrandizing thirst to be a part of some putative power-couple; pre-middle-age trophy-wife tendencies — and also a more wholesome angle around punching ones own weight and not settling for less than what one really desires, etc.

This latter bit gets at the deep muscle of what I’m trying to feel out in my own life. To wit, what exactly am I hoping to accomplish? I remain a high-sighted sort even in all my indecision, and ultimately that’s something for which I want backup. Partnership. But how this fits into the context of normal “dating” (is there such a thing?) is honestly beyond me at this point.

At long last, notes from my trip to South America.

3/8/09 The Great Escape
Passport scanned and security passed — metro mix-up rebounded w/cab score; Islam on the radio, honk-honk-honk at the girlblonde in VW Golf taking a slow approach to a fast merge. I am all but flying.

Body is sore from conference uptempo over the past five days. Animated action and nightly partytime reminding me I’m up against the three-oh and have lost a bit of bounce. It’s not just gutfat and buttsag, you know. The blood and organs feel their age as well.

An enlivening experience. Opening. Got a chance to kick it with my old colleague Mr. Moger for a bit — he’s tapped into the Beautiful People scene in government; it exists, I tell you: smart girls in paddington bear coats working for homeland security and the whole bit — as well as dear Howard Park, who gave me a lot of info and advice for Argentina.

It’s a funny thing. I’ve been un-attracted in general of late, and I find myself resenting the pressure to be someone or something, to sizzle, saddle up the savior faire and lead some freaky charge. Like that bit in Cool Hand Luke where he gets upset at the other inmates for living through hi,.

Seems like a symptom of depression, feeling put-upon like this. Means I don’t actually see myself in these ways: wild, fun, sexy, free. From whence came this beat-down creature of routine?

The first love is self love and without the zing and pop for my own enthusiasm for me, it turns out to be a bit much to maintain, the facade. Nobody likes living a lie.

So the stage is set, yet again, for re-invention, timed to coincide with an escape from the usual routines. And reading of old dead David Foster Wallace and the Icelandic Banking Crisis, and thinking of the slow revolution we live in, the turning of another cycle in The Great Transformation, I feel for a minute like a pretty special little guy.

But seriously, our old models are dead, and the reason I’m alone is because I haven’t loved myself enough to accept the same from anyone else, which is why confident happy people annoy me, and why in my history I get crazy lucky before reeling in a big fish. The unconsciously confident great dane of a man, scarfing up the world as his due.

And in this spirit will I find my bride of the revolution, because unless/untill I believe I can change the world (again), I’ve got a zero percent chance of attracting a mate with similar interest. How my workaday life fits in is an unknown, but in the buzzing afterglow of Drupalcon it feels like an imminently solvable problem.

3/9/09 Morning in S. America
Floating now over unknown country, an organic and gridless expanse of mottled green, brown and blue, drinking in the turgid riches of another hemisphere along with my semi-bland airline coffee.

Ambiensleep was a win. Big challenge of the day is to locate the Berquebus catamaran to Montevideo. Next up is customs, and the we find out just how degraded my spanish has become.

—-

BA like beautiful, sweaty, pre-boom New York City. Shared a cab into the city center w/a pretty pediatrician who was on my flight from DC. Mealy-mouthed self-conscious hush spanish at the sandwich place. Just enough to communicate. Mission is sunglasses.

Mission accomplished.

Passed through park with a great ancient tree which would have been killer for climbing in its prime. Now long limbs span over the parks stone walkway, propped up and braced at various strategic points. A living monument, in it for the long haul.

Passed a street protest, red banners and a giant Che, stalled along a narrow street where giant steel police barracades and riot cops blocked the way. Folks up front are ready for action — clubs, facemasks, a weary air of resignation — and warned me off taking photos of the cops.

Socialism is a real thing here, and people talk openly and seriously about class struggle. I’m more and more convinced that my revolution is different. Organizing Alynski’s “Have a little, want more” types. You revolutionize what you know.

The problem is that the putative “have a little want mores” are pretty comfortable back in the states. The infinity of consume lust notwithstanding, it’s unclear what they might actually want more of.

One path to address this is traditionally through vanguard-building, or through a long march to institutional control. That is, a motivated revolutionary elite gradually (or quickly, in the event of a coup) assumes control of existing levers of power, putting them (we hope) to better use.

This is both open to egregious watering-down, and prone to all the blind spots and pitfalls of elite organizational tactics. Just look at team Obama, opaque and cautious, tinkering with the existing machine as if all we need is to change the oil. Open source revolution this is not.

What might it mean when the servers liberate the champaigne from first class? Is it a blow for freedom, or just another greedy little score? Well dude, we just don’t know.

The “wanting more” must transcend the material plane, or at least the monetary. The Cuban revolution was possible in part because they really did bring health and literacy to the people, even in the midst of the struggle. No small feat. Our own American Revolution succeeded not because people wanted to stop paying taxes, but because the taxes they paid (plus everything else the crown demanded) were stifling real innovation and self-improvement.

The best revolutions focus on this kind of uplifting and liberation action, not on the destruction or overtaking of an existing order. The best revolutions are in a core and moral sense democratic — they widen the circle.

The US and most other “developed” places are set at most (and hopefully) for incremental progress and development, caring better for their people, creating and learning more, helping to solve big systemic problems like climate change, etc.

The emerging new global players (heavyweights like China and India, but also Brazil and a whole host of others) are on a faster track, and also unripe for fist-in-the-air revolution of the old type. Criminal cartels and indigenous liberation movements may challenge for local control, and unrest will continue, but a big takeover of collapse feels unlikely.

In the remaining pejoratively-termed “third world,” places getting mined and logged and not much else, who knows. The authorities are strong where there’s money to be made, and elsewhere the sheer poverty and wrechedness of life is a tragic damper on any sort of progress. Hard to have much of a revolution when your road is an open sewer.

So then maybe the hot spot is in the in-betweens, in the way we work as co-captains of Spaceship Earth, beyond our respective national boundaries. With ubiquitous global communication (including and implying commerce), we don’t have to rely on heads of state and elite gatherings in Davos to conduct diplomatic relations. Perhaps the big “want more” has something to do with being global, being free in that new way. Bears thinking, at least.

3/10/09 Montevideo
Disaster strikes, or rather adventure. No Marko at the dock, quite likely because of daylight savings, or because they don’t let people walk in, only out. In the city center now securing food, shelter, etc. Friendly guy at the internet cafe. Hippies. Looks like I’ll make it.

Great success! We meet at Independence Plaza. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

In the morning, meatloaf for brakfast and quick tutorial in local language:

• Todo bien: literally “all good,” but used a lot particularly in Uruguay
• ta-ta-ta: the equivalent of “uh-huh” or “sure”
• ¡Barbéro!: “barbarian”, meaning pretty fucking cool
• Ayeva: that’s how it is

• Muy importante: “very important”, but seemingly said a lot w/local flavor

It’s a shopping/mate day. We walk the heart of the city, saying goodby to Hotel Splendido and its many beauties — Hostel Barbie and the heartbreakingly lovely and gracious proprietess. The streets are alive and bustling.

Antique table trade in the plaza constitucíon, relics of the last regime. Stately old men smoking pipes. The many babes of Montevideo. We search unsuccessfully for mosquito netting, but Zya finds some summer clothes at the hypermart — 30 small clothing shops/stalls crammed inside a larger commercial building, like that parking lot on Lower Broadway.

Callemocho clinic at the sidewalk cafe where the waiter is the Hileme of Uruguay, and made a special trip to the store to get us some ketchup. A great hung-over mate day in the city.

Last night’s events were celebratory scotch in the “presidential suite,” awkward anti-oogling of Hostel Barbie, steak and wine dinner, room beers, hop on over to the Casino Raddison where we win about 600 pesos at roulette and a video slot called “Turkey Shoot” what mixed funk music with cracker sland, then out to the sidewalk cafe to blow the winnings on a shot of Johnny Walker Blue, followed by beer and a giant meat plate, then more beer (supercheap) across the street, with discussions of how we might have to heavy in on some pathetic Napoleonic machismo — we’re the world police, and were with the gays, bitches.

Morning came with a loud rumble and sticky parch, but we found our way to soufflet, espresso and meatloaf breakfast (muy importante). That closes the loop on the past 24 hours.

Currently on the bus to Punto del Diablo, observing the front of Uruguayan commerce flow by: lots of piles of firewood, cellphone stores, chineese cars, election posters, martial arts studios, bicyclists, pre-fab pools, solar power/water-heating. It’s an interesting mix. Dirt roads off the side, and the omnipresent litter, but still very modern in feeling.

—

(And now the coffeshop is closing. More notes later.)

Explosions in the sky. Humidity. The smell of tall grass and misquite. Heat ripples rising off the road, little water-mirages evaporating in the endless planar distance. I’ve been watching Friday Night Lights as my distraction du jour, and it gives my heart a tug for Texas, the great ritual dramas of teenage romance and football, and the deep allure of that thing the preacher-man calls “the purpose-driven life.” Pulls me in two directions, it does: on one hand the familiar nostalgia for those heady hormonal live-or-die days of adolescence, and on the other hand the fantasy future of being a family-man. Good theater.

Last night went out to a bonafide house-party, out on the edge of the Arcata bottoms. Skater house kegger, connect via Kellymundo of course. Lots of kids, tatoodles, ramp in the garage, decent conversation with various strangers around the margins. It was energizing to be around youth, and a weird hangover let-down the next day; one of those things where you realize something’s been missing, but you’re not sure how you feel about missing it.

Like, I think it’s questionable to find myself later on looking for the college girl I talked to in the kitchen. I’d slipped away for a reason, or maybe a small pack of reasons — fits of uncertainty, self-consciousness and ostensible “responsibility” all in the mix — and to then catch myself a half-hour hence with that hunting “where’d she go” frame of mind… well let’s just say it makes a man wonder.

That story has an ok start, but not a lot of juice to it really. It’s fun to flirt, but the scene got broken up by the Sheriff just after midnight — when was the last time you were at a party that got “busted?” — and so we retired to a more grown-up Westhaven after party of homebrew, John Prine, and dominos by the wood stove.

Familiar complaints for regular readers. My laments in love have long located around a low-ebb of liking, a late, languishing lack of lust, lessened lasciviousness. Drying out, or retirement, I’ve called it.

I’m aware that this is in part due to my spread of time and space and energy, and that I don’t casually encounter those putative “prospects” in any great number on the daily beat of my routine. Sure, it’s not Brooklyn out here, but I also think I’ve developed a little sanctimonious ego cocoon around this idea, a little conceited investment, a safe special space of non-wanting untouchability.

Earlier in the evening I got a chance to catch up with Franko on the phone, which has been to long coming. He’s out there, really doin’ it. This and the note before about the wave’o‘babies, it reminds me of that shopwarn question, “are you looking for the right girl, or the right-now girl?”

And the answer is most definitely the right girl — yes, Matilda, I’d like to settle down one of thse days — but I think this aphorism presents a false and bogus distinction for the most part, because at some point in time the “right” girl has to be “now” as well, or else what’s the point?

Yet, in practice I tend to dance away reflexively, some kind of weird internal vetting process going on, stacking the deck. It’s hard deciding what you want; even harder is going out to get it.

One of my great old lovers told me later, when we weren’t current anymore, that I’d get swept up by a younger woman, one of those fortune-cookie predictions from close people that sticks with you — like when the Girth told me I aught to think about marrying that Cinnamon Girl, back in the day in San Francisco. These ideas may or may not have any actual truth to them, but they have a way of sliding under the usual psychological radar. They make you consider.

The problem as per the above is that I just don’t seem to get swept up by much at all these days. The cocoon wards against this, keeps me clear of having to make many real choices, take any risks. And of course this cuts against all the things I “believe” — it’s who dares wins, and fortune favors the bold — which whips things into a meta-cycle of judgment and doubt, the old post-modern mind-trap.

Thus, here’s hoping that I can find my way back into the poetry of the moment, lose the worlds weight for a turn or three. I once wrote:

life – your life included – if infinitely full of truth and beauty, and anyone who tells you different has been jaded by their inability to participate

And it’s true. I feel lucky to have this art, these letters-through-time to myself, because even though I sometimes feel like I’ve worn-in my own set of cliches, owing to the fact that they’re personal and mine they can still get through, much like those fortune-cookies from friends.

It’s all so simple when you say it. It’s a simple game: you throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball.

It’s a heady collection of tags: authentic experience, nyc, love, sex, friends; should be a real barn-burner of a blog.

Back in Humboldt for a week now, feeling the raw world-conquering momentum bleed away into wood smoke and the smell of fallen leaves. It’s not unpleasant at all, this country home of mine — next week will be alive with family and friends; the way I fell in love in the first place — but today it gives me a feeling of wistful sadness.

It seems I make myself a smaller person here, or maybe it’s vice-versa with the Mother City making me bigger. Much as I believe the hype about the internet flattening the world, it will always be true that different things happen in different places. It was an immense recharge, to walk again the streets of Brooklyn, to feel the quick hard snap of real subway doors, the great heaping crush of humanity, densely packed ambition and excellence. I draw power from the capital of the world.

And it’s not just the women, but I won’t lie: they’re a big part of it. I have a no kiss-and-blog policy, but this little slice from William Gibson has stuck with me since adolescence, and pretty much nails me to a T:

But Bobby had this thing for girls, like they were his private tarot or something, the way he’d get himself moving. We never talked about it, but when it started to look like he was losing his touch that summer, he started to spend more time in the Gentleman Loser. He’d sit at a table by the open doors and watch the crowd slide by, nights when the bugs were at the neon and the air smelled of perfume and fast food. You could see his sunglasses scanning those faces as they passed, and he must have decided that Rikki’s was the one he was waiting for, the wild card and the luck changer. The new one.

I’m glad to be mature enough to appreciate how things work above and beyond (as well as in and around) sex. Brilliant conversation beats mediocre fucking any day of the week, and anyway good conversation is how you scale those shining peaks of physicality. Takes time, but anticipation works. So I’m happy having a drink and catching up with an old flame, or striking up an honest new connection; not so much of an agenda, just moving on the moment. That’s how all my good times have happened.

It comes in a flood though, my confidence. Once I start feeling good about myself, quit apologizing, ducking out of eye contact, it’s hard not to go over the high side. Josh the Lothario is a natural groove for me; crackling with energy. “Because I can” becomes a powerful rationale: I’m a lucky guy; I can do a lot of things.

Indeed, I get a thrill having more than one love interest, and it’s time I owned that, quit trying to dodge/judge myself. As the man said, the only way to foster Love in your life is by being yourself at 100%, and so I choose (now) to embrace my polyamorous free-lovin’ playboy status.

But then it comes to babies, to the existential question of Settling Down. That posterized photo up there is me and Frank Edward Robbins VI, aka Freddy — or me being a god-fatherly figure here, “Fredo” — who I got to meet and hold in Greenpoint. A pure delight, and a clear indication of things to come.

Indeed, the first wave is on. LGD, author and progenitor of the “35 To 55” strategy will be moving to PDX in the new year to start his family. Jumped the timetable a bit — switched to a Patraeus-like surge, he did — but it’s a happy thing. He was ready, as others are rapidly becoming.

And yeah, I’m a family man in my heart, though not yet in that state of readiness. When I moved to Humboldt I took on a sort of homesteader’s outlook, putting myself through a nesting phase, but without another bird or any eggs. It was lonely, and in some ways a bit of a force, but overall a good thing for my maturation I think. I can feel the potential, the theory, a slick hot run of fortune and luck leading up to the Big Jackpot. It’s a fantasy, sure, but that’s what I need these days.

The question here and now is what comes next. Back in the country, my confidence wavers. The sheer logistics of my life here exert a powerful force: lots and lots of work (I am procrastinating right now, in fact) and a home 10 miles from town. The cute bartender down the hill might pour me an extra/full glass of wine and let me hang around while the waiters fold napkins and talk shop, but I can’t make anything of that. I turn to a shrinking violet. Strange. Hopefully that opportunity knocks twice.

Part of me wants live in New York again, and while my next move is into the garage here in Westhaven, I know for a fact I’ll be visiting NYC more often in the near future. It’s a big life, and I’m a big guy; need my big city fix from time to time.

For now I want to try carrying some more of that energy along, keep some of that swagger on me out in the woods. Unshrinking. Walking tall and getting “out there” out here too.

As a followup to my Californication post below, I’d like to try and shed a more positive light on things. Clearly that kind of writing elicits a reaction — hey, sex still sells, and it’s some of the more honest blogging I’ve done of late — but I think I may have given some people the wrong idea. Not that I don’t appreciate all the ego-boosting, but I can’t help but feel a little bit guilty, like when as a kid you’d fake or exaggerate an injury for attention.

So yes. Let’s get down to brass tacks. In our last installment, I concluded that there was some serious Fear going on, and this was why my sex life was more or less dead. And yeah, the more I sit with that the more accurate it feels.

That’s not particularly great in and of itself, but the first step to happy living is figuring out what you want. Then you have to get it, and that’s another mountain to climb, but just getting some direction is a vital and necessary first start. I honestly feel better already.

When I survey the past couple years — relatively sexless and workaholic — they seem a cocoon. On the one hand maybe I’ve been gestating, and am preparing to emerge chrysalis-like in new glory. On the other hand, maybe I’ve been in hiding, retreating into the woods to bury my shame under a thousand layers of self-made silk. Or something.

Maybe it’s both. More than anything else, I get the feeling I’ve been keeping myself under wraps, off the scene. It’s not a new revelation, but every time it comes up it’s with ring of truth. I think I’ve got a stronger way to say it, one that comes to mind with an anecdote:

So, I was at this wedding after-party and a tall chesty and very drunk girl decided to catch my eye, much though I may have been ducking hers. She wanted to know what I was made of. “What is your story?“ she kept asking me with narrowed eyelids, high-heel-stumbling in place, slumping tits-first into my shoulder and then threatening to tip over backwards. “You’re one of those nice guys, aren’t you.”

It was phrased as an accusation, and maybe that’s why the question got through my normal social filter, because, in the way she meant it, I had to answer deep down that no — no, I’m really not. I’m not one of those nice guys. I am in fact a pretty bad guy, the way you mean; bad in the way you’re probably hoping for right now. But I’m in retirement. So, sorry babe.

She didn’t quite get me, so I told her I didn’t want to make out with her, after which she left me alone.

This exchange was definitely on my mind when I wrote my previous post. It was an authentic unrehearsed moment, and turning it over in my mind there’s a feeling of something true in there.

Much as I exhibit many of the qualities of the nice guy — first and foremost that I am nice, and also a guy — my nature is… something else. And for whatever reason I have been trying to shoehorn myself into this somewhat plastic “nice guy” mold for the past couple years. I won’t waste too much time speculating as to my subconscious (heartbreaker’s guilt, playing it safe) motives, but as a diagnosis this feels like a Real Thing. And again, the point is to move onward, not wallow in the past.

Now. Let me be absolutely clear. It does not follow logically that because I believe I am not a “nice guy,” that I am a not-nice (mean, bad, loathsome) person. Just like any other guy pushing thirty who’s lived a few interesting days in his life, I’ve got a shabby pile of self-loathing lying around. We’ve all got dirty laundry, but this isn’t a pity party. I realize I am a wonderful person, capable of great love, and with all the things to offer you’d expect from the 99th percentile. Indeed, I revel in this.

Moreover, and not to get too post-modern on y’all, but I fully realize that this shoehorning, much as it may be ostensibly motivated out of the desire to quote “do the right thing” — to do right by the women I welcome into my life — is deeply and terrifically counter-productive at achieving this end. Going through the motions is simply an awful way to behave, romantically. You will either:

1. Be unmasked as inauthentic or condescending, and hurt the poor girl’s feelings.
2. Simply lose interest because your heart’s not in it, and hurt the poor girls feelings.
3. End up stuck going through the motions until finally you have to break things off, and hurt the poor girls feelings.

The moral of the story is that our protagonist (“poor girl,” for those of you keeping score at home) doesn’t have a chance as long as I’m faking it. It’s just as inadvisable for me to behave this way as it is for her to fake orgasms. So why have I been doing this?

A lack of confidence feels about right. Without the gall and spine to carry off a love life under my own terms, I’ve degenerated back (role confusion) to the lowest socially-acceptable common denominator. To paraphrase a great film, there’s that fear-talk we talked about.

Und zo, as I said before, I feel a thrill at finally getting my hands around the problem. Coming to grips, it seems imminently solvable: I just have to man-up and master the fractal enigma that is my own authentic romantic persona, and that sounds like an exciting endeavor. It feels damn liberating.

Maybe it’s just my recent-haircut attitude talking — less tangles, more angles — but it feels like I’m entering the prime of my life. I’m fit, smart, witty, and I do pretty amazing things with myself, even if they do keep me at the office until a lot later than I’d like sometimes.

Hopefully this sense will grow. There’s a lot of positive momentum right now.