Moving

A thin layer of dust had covered the handle. When was the last time I opened this drawer? I thought, running my finger over the dust and drawing a smiley face. It has been over a week since I stayed in my bedroom, and it's no secret. My clothing lies in unkept piles and my objects of no importance are strewn hither and yon in the frenzy I create when I've visited briefly the last few weeks. I looked around at my room and wondered at what point a room is no longer mine, but just a memory: a snapshot of what was once considered wholly mine and is now more of a place holder in the timeline of change.

I've decided that I will be moving in with the Boyfriend. The Musician is now going to be the Roommate. Now that a date is chosen (sept. 1st for the official move-in) I'm in limbo. My stuff is in two different places and I am reminded of when my parents were divorced and I had to carefully plan where I would have my stuff during the week. If I left a textbook at my Dad's on the West Side of Manhattan, it was a major pain-in-the-ass to go back over there and get it before heading to my Mother's on the East Side. I always kept a backpack packed with papers, books, special bras or underwear I wanted to wear in case I wanted it and couldn't easily get to it until Monday next week. Now, 15 years later, I'm finding myself in a very similar situation. Slowly, the piles of my stuff are accumulating at his apartment and every time I return to my room I need to carefully choose what stuff I want to take with me and have just in case I want it later.

I've never lived with a boyfriend before. The idea of coming back to an apartment that is only occupied with someone I love to see and then get naked around makes me excited. My whole life I've shared a space with other people: Mom, Dad, Sister, room mates, visitors, etc. that I've lived with out of necessity. This time, I'm sharing my space with someone who is carefully chosen and selected out of a pool of worthy candidates and is not only living with me, but sharing a bed with me! We'll have to navigate groceries, rent, saving for that special piece of furniture, travel, and the occasional disagreement. He'll be family, friend, lover, room mate, and guardian all in one! What a concept!

Our stuff. Our home. Our dirt. Our food. "Ours" rings through my head every time I come back to My room and look at the stuff sitting unused and covered in neglect. This is what grown-up's do, so I'm told, yet I can't help feeling like I did at 13 when I caravanned my worldly goods around on my back and made the best out of two very different spaces to live in. I'm in limbo until the 1st, dreaming about a world where almost all things are combined and a place to call "home" is not necessarily a place, but the person I will be building it with.

Single-Awareness Day

Thoughts on Valentine's Day:

YES! To the couple on the subway: You guys are just too damn cute. Take a bow. No really. Take a fucking bow. She's serenading you! And she's holding a somewhat wilted rose attached to a stem that's 5 feet long! How romantic! I love that you included me in this! ...Who me? I'm on a date with my Mom and Step-Dad. They took me out for dinner, bought me chocolate and I'm now going home with them: score! I'd say that's how to court a lady, except, clearly, "Mr. 6 foot 2, chestnut hair, green eyes and ironic leather shoes" over here is winning the evening over because the entire subway car can hear your girlfriend sing a song you both had your first kiss to. Man. I'm jealous. 

Stooooooop the world! Let's all have a look at what's going on across the street for a minute! Looks like he's bending a knee... Oh! He's popping a question! He must have picked this day as a special day. Thursdays are super special, and this one happens to be Valentines Day! I wondered if he thought of that when going through the calendar. He probably figured she would be off work tonight. Haha! Happy Thursday, everybody! It's not Valentines Day: no! It's the couple across the street's special day, now!

More chocolate!? Don't mind if I do. But wait until tomorrow: the day after Valentines Day is really for the single ladies who can buy all that chocolate for half off. I'll call it: CheapChocolateThatsGoingInMyMouthAllDay Day. 

I think it's 11 days now since.... And about 10 months since my last boyfriend, pshht, who's counting though? Don't worry all you happy couples out there! I get a lot of hugs. 

Snot's rolling down my nose. I'm gonna lick it away and then I want to kiss you!

I think I'll buy myself some flowers, take a photo of myself with them, and then post that on facebook. 

The Proposal

"...And I just want to say that I want to spend the rest of my life doing that with you." He concluded his monologue, as in slow-mo he hopped down from the podium he'd been standing on, walked up to his Girlfriend and proposed in front of a room full of audience members who had just finished watching the show for the evening. The room went silent, except for the occasional sob, as the Man got down on one knee and asked if She'd marry him. A small "Yes" boomed through the room as everyone erupted into applause. The happy couple embraced and kissed as the band struck a chord and played a love song.

I felt the unbidden tears roll down my cheek as I tried very hard to choke back a sob. That was such a beautiful moment to witness. I felt so unbelievably overwhelmed by how simple and lovely that honesty and courage was, and how it brought the entire room to silence. I tried to reflect on any other time I had seen a live proposal and couldn't think of any. That was my first one.

I wished that the girl getting kissed and hugged, covered in happy tears: was me. I wished beyond reason that I'd get a call, or a text or an e-mail or that somehow a guy from my past/present/future would come running into the room and, seeing me, come running up and grab me, bundling me up into an embrace before all to see and then tell me the same things I had heard come out of that other guy's mouth. He loved her. He wasn't afraid to tell an entire room. He wasn't afraid of what he felt for her, in fact, he embraced it head on!

I looked around the room at the other teary-eyed girls brushing the salty water from their faces and laughing with embarrassed giggles at how they had all individually "lost it" watching that pure moment of love and happiness. I smiled and laughed along with them. "Yeah, wasn't that funny? I lost it, too! Haha!"

It wasn't until I was on the train coming home later that night, when I buried my head in my hands and had a quick sob, did I realize how impossible that moment seemed for me. That was a fairy tale. A blunder, right? A wish that a young girl dreams of as she falls asleep, imagining her prince charming. Yet, there it was: right before me, happening in real time. It happens. I breathed deep and followed the dance song I had blasting in my ears to help drown out the hopelessness I was feeling. Everyone is different, and everyone has a different sunset they ride off into, that's all... It's not a matter of hopelessness, just patience and a determination to keep doing what makes me happiest in the meantime.

Awkward Friend(relation)ship?

Oh, Fuck.

I just said something that really hurt you, and I really said it unintentionally! I promise!

Oy. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. But, I won't say sorry, I'll just back peddle and try to compliment you a lot.

Does that feel better?

Can you tell I feel bad for making you feel bad without saying that I feel bad for making you feel bad out loud?

Complicated. Yes. Like our relationship, No?

Are we emotionally invested in each other more than what the standard opposite-sex friendship should be?
-----> I refuse to believe that we are (even though I know that we are).

Just stay away from me, ok? I'm going to unintentionally hurt you again by telling you about the guy I went out for dinner with, or what my Ex did recently or how I want to see that movie you want to see, but I want to see it with my sister, instead.

No, I'm too busy to hang out this week. Too busy to get dinner. Too busy to do anything, really!

Oh, Fuck.

I am so sorry.

I can't sort out my feelings about you, and you'll just have to forgive me for that, because frankly: I don't want to lose your place in my life because it gives me a sense of worth that is entirely selfish sometimes. Oh, and there are qualities about you that I find irresistibly attractive, and yet I cannot get over my fear of ruining our friendship if, once I've decided that I will sleep with you, I am no longer attracted to you anymore and I don't actually ever want to see you again because I'm reminded of how I feel horribly guilty about "trying you out" and then deciding that you were not what I wanted. And, I think you're in love with me, but not really me, because (apparently) I can be very different in "relationship" mode, and you're really close to me, so maybe that's not who you really want and that's a lot of pressure!

There. I said all of that with my eyes. And you know me so well, I'll bet you picked up on that.

I need more girlfriends.

My One-Year-Old

Today marks the one year anniversary of my blog!

Thank you, thank you. Yes, it's been quite the year, really. If one were to quantify this all in terms of men passing in, passing through, and passing out there wouldn't be a whole lot to this blog. I feel really happy with where my mind has expanded and explored in terms of what life in New York has thrown at me. Gone are the days of online dating, gone are the long bloated silences between entries in which I felt as if I had nothing poignant to say. Here are the plethora of entries, one parading on the heels of the next as each day seems to come with its own package of wonder and beauty and excitement.

Thank you for reading and sharing and responding. I've now officially reached over 5,000 hits (Yay!) and I'm growing every day from the readers I have in Russia, England, China, Australia, Germany, Canada, Spain, the US and Brazil. I hope to have more people I can share my thoughts with, because that really is a gift to me to be able to do.

Here's to growth! Here's to a really satisfying way of documenting my 20's! And here's to you: my readers! Without you, I wouldn't write publicly, I would just continue to fill up journals with thoughts that wouldn't get shared and by sharing them I feel bolder and stronger and far smarter.

Much love, you wonderful, fantastic readers. Here's to another full year!

Concert in the Park

I sat staring at the magenta sky and allowed the music of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to wash over me like a wave of thick, creamy chocolate. I wriggled my toes in and out of the rich green grass of the lawn and shut my eyes from time to time when a particularly wonderful note was hit. Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Brahms lifted up and over the heads of the thousands of spectators reclining in silence to the beauty and wonder of the masters of music.

I've never heard the New York Philharmonic before. In fact, when asked if I wanted to go to the concert I hesitated, unsure as to whether I wanted to get lost in the crowds, search for a place to sit, buy food to eat, and potentially: get bored. The last time I went to the park to see a free concert I was a lot younger. My babysitter Pat took my sister and I to see Garth Brooks and all I remember of that experience was people walking on and across our blanket and Pat smoking like a chimney. Thankfully, I went with my better judgement and tagged along to see the music last night.

Rarely will a musical piece move me to tears. I work at a cabaret space in Manhattan and see quite a lot of live Jazz, Folk, World music, Classical and Alternative music. There have been a couple times in the two years I have worked there, that I have stopped what I was doing and just openly wept at the sound coming out of the musicians fingers/lips. I remember vividly when a folk group came in and a couple playing their fiddles were harmonizing and I could not keep the tears from rolling down my cheeks. Or, when a South Indian group came and played traditional Carnatic music and two violinists played as if making love to each other, I smiled and got teary eyed at the beauty of what they were saying with their music. 

It's lovely when experiencing a piece through the lens of your own life moves one to tears. Music which can transcend language and time and even cultural differences, can create a story that I can watch in my head and cherish on such a personal level, that the hopes of trying to describe that experience to someone else is all but impossible. Yet, there is a shared understanding when I look at a perfect stranger and watch as that person is probably going through their own version of the same ecstasy. 

I am so glad I went to that concert last night. Plus, the final cherry on that sundae was the firework show at the end. So awesome. And free?! New York: you can really rock. 

The Tip Of The Tongue

We were standing on the platform for the 7 train. It was another one of these deliciously warm spring days we've been having so many of this season. The sun was beginning to set and we had both paused to watch the train we had just gotten off pull away and then travel on into the distance. The Woodside station in Queens sits pretty high up from street level, and if you stand at the right place, you can see a gorgeous panoramic view of the skyline of New York.

I felt my hand go up to feel his and the two of us stood in awe of the sheer wonder that the scene was displaying for us. "This would be a great moment" I thought, "to say 'I love you.' "

"What'cha thinkin', Nat?"

Oh, a bunch of things involving a three word phrase that feels like it's ready to pry open my lips and jump out of me, but I feel like I can't say... just yet. We've only been seeing each other for a month!

"I'm taking in the scene, Serendipity. I'm drinking this in. It's so beautiful."

"Yes. Perfect."

"I l-l-liiiikke you so much."

"Me too, Nat."

I leaned in to kiss him and we smooched on the platform for a few minutes, until the next 7 pulled in and hundreds of Mets fans poured out of the train, diluting the breezy subway platform make-out with drunken sounds of cheering and screeching train brakes. Pulling apart, sharing a smile, and without saying a word, the two of us began to make our decent down to street level to go grab a slice of pizza and ice-cream. As we made our way I looked back at where we had stood in that moment and promised myself that more moments are coming.

And then I wondered how much strength I have left to not say the 'L' word out loud the next time a perfect moment comes along.

The Boyfriend

Some quick highlights:

#1: Beautiful day. Walking. MoMa in Queens. Wow. You're cute. See you soon.

#2: Yes, Let's get wine. Talk Talk Talk. Mmmmm....

#3: Hi. Makeout. Talk. Makeout. Talk. Walk. Makeout.

#4: Meet my Sister. Talk Talk Talk. Wow.

#5: Are we dating? Cause this is outstanding.

#6: I'm gonna leave my tooth brush here.

#7: Yes. I'll be your Girlfriend. Yes.

Ok, so it might have happened with slightly more time details and more bullet points, but I've leapt head long into a relationship with Serendipity.

The amazing part of this relationship is calling it one. I couldn't believe how much of a bold statement I was making when I announced that I had a boyfriend. Even saying that I have a boyfriend seems so, high school? I'm so used to being single and dating occasionally that it was quite the shock to have a guy in my life that I am making future plans with. "You mean: We might be dating in another two weeks? I won't not see you again?"

Plus, Serendipity and I met on the streets of New York. I was hustling and he was bustling and yet, in the stream of on going movement, we had locked eyes and struck up a conversation that eventually lead to all of the events leading up to me in my kitchen writing this blog post. Serendipity is not on Facebook, doesn't text a whole lot, and doesn't keep a blog, but I met him the "Old Fashioned way".

I'll have more to report once my brain stops reeling from this relationship I've jumped into head first.