'Twas the night before

Okay, I was going to write a highly creative re-write of A Night Before Christmas, beginning with something like "Twas the night before corporate robot whoredom began," but then I realized I just didn't have it in me tonight. Sorry, world!

This is my first corporate job. I've worked for private companies before, but they were all sort of public-interest-oriented: an exhibit design shop that focused on serving state and federal museums, a publishing company that put out guides to federal funding for non-profits. Tomorrow I become a real corporate drone.

It feels unreal still. Like, what if I just didn't go to the office tomorrow? Just stayed in the studio and watched cable that's for some reason lingering from the last occupant's account?

Sigh. It's been a very productive week. I found out on Tuesday that I got the apartment and discovered that I needed to move in on Friday. On Wednesday, the moving company surveyed my stuff, gave me an estimate, and I hired them. On Thursday, I saw my stuff off, saw a friend, got fitted for new contact lenses, and then got on the plane, getting to Mrs. Esq's palace at midnight. On Friday, I supervised the delivery and then spent the rest of the day in torpor, enjoying Mr. and Mrs. Esq's DVR'd television shows and having a kick-ass sushi meal on Mr. Esq. (I mean, he paid for it, not that we ate it on him. You and your dirty mind!) (Mm. Crispy fried asparagus.) And on Saturday, yesterday, I really moved in.

Today, The Ringleted One drove into town bearing a gratin in a casserole dish and her amazing inflatable bed in the Green Elephant. Ah, Green Elephant! How frightened you must have been to be taken to the Brooklyn Navy Yard! But not as frightened as we were when we came out of the dim sum place and The Ringleted One asked, "Uh, where's my car?"

Stupid obscured bus stop sign! But for your obscured state (by the stupid pedestrian walk sign!), we would not have had those moments when we thought, "Oh dear. I hope, hope, hope it was towed. Because otherwise the Green Elephant is in the hands of a thief!"

Fortunately, all ended well, albeit $300 lighter of wallet due to tickets and towing fees and the like. And Brooklyn has a Target, whereas Manhattan does not, so perhaps it was all meant to be. I have a personal superstition about moving -- when you move to a new place, something goes wrong in the first few days. Her Majesty Ro got beaten up the first weekend he lived in London; The Ringleted One's bike got stolen from her first condo in Our Nation's Capital. Of course, today's unfortunate towing happened not to me but to another. Does that count?

Well, between towage and shopping at Target, I was pretty well distracted from thinking about my imminent robotitude and corporate whore-itization. But here is my last thought about it tonight: 730 days. That's two years. In two years, I will pay off every last penny of my law school loans. That is my raison d'etre for the next 104 weeks, the burning thought that will be behind every Starbucks coffee I forego, every piece of furniture I buy on the cheap, every time I check out a table with a "FREE" sign sitting on it.

This is not to say I am grimly determined to have no fun at all. That would suck. I just don't want to forget that the reason I'm here is to get through and past this dreadful mistake I made of going to law school, so that I can be free.

Tomorrow the countdown begins. T minus 730.

She sprang to her air bed, to her room gave a sigh,
And stared in the darkness till the sandman came by,
But she heard in her mind, 'ere she drifted to sleep,
"Corporate whoredom to all, and oft shall ye weep!"

First night

I rolled into the apartment -- my apartment -- around 1:40 pm today, and have been acting the part of a scullery maid for the better part of 10 hours or so.

It was an odd feeling walking into the studio. I can't really believe that this is my place for a year, that I'm in New York -- that I live in New York, in this studio. I've been leading such a peripatetic existence the past five years, it seems strange to unpack my things with the intent to stay a while.

I haven't wandered just physically, of course, and that's the other side of the weirdness. It feels like I'm starting down a path toward the stability and steadiness that I see many of my peers having reached. Having avoided responsibility, permanence (as it were, in this day and age), and most of all, definition, I have mixed feelings about being here.

I'm wondering too if I'll like living by myself. I like living with roommates, and I especially loved living with Mathgirl and hus (all the fun of living with friends, and none of the responsibility!). I faded into myself my senior year of college, which was the last time I lived by myself -- even though I lived in a dorm, my room and entryway were a little removed from my friends. I hope that won't happen here.

About 40 minutes after I walked in, the doorman rang up and said there was a package for me, a delivery of flowers. I was certain it was the wrong address until I opened the card and saw it was from my dad. Man, that gave me the warm fuzzies. It's a huge leafy green thing -- I do believe it's four different plants in one large ceramic pot. With its arrival, I didn't feel quite so alone.

It's time to go to "bed" here, "bed" tonight meaning a layer of cardboard boxes on the parquet floor, with a sheet and blanket on top. I'm not quite so permanent and defined yet.

Last night in Crimson City

The moon is bright tonight, bright and full, pale and cool, uncaring but illuminating.

I will be sorry to leave. I wish I didn't have to leave this comfortable house and its owners, of whom I have grown very fond. (It's a bit like living with parents who take care of all the annoying parts of being an adult but who are also your friends -- the best of all possible worlds!) I'm sorry to be leaving my friends in Crimson City, several of whom I've seen in the past few days, and toward whom I feel much love and affection. I've gotten used to life in Crimson City, and now it's over.

But before it's really over, there are movers to deal with, eye appointments to keep, lunches to have, and last-minute clean-ups to manage before I take off at 7 pm on Thursday toward more challenges and beginnings. Undoubtedly, I will have more to say on the subject before I actually leave.

Speeding up

I thought I was going to enjoy a relatively leisurely week here in Crimson City, but
it turns out that: (1) I got the approval for the apartment in the condo building (good); (2) the condo building does not permit any moving on weekends (bad. goddamn frickin' condo policy); (3) the moving company needs me or a representative to be there when they deliver my paltry belongings; and (4) I have exactly three business days to spare before I am going to be all consumed by my job and will not be able to hang about my apartment waiting for movers; but (5) hello, my lease starts on Monday, Oct. 1. Shit.

Thanks the sweet baby Jesus for this one, though: after several slightly panicky phone calls to the super, the management company and my landlord/lady, everyone agreed it would be fine if I moved my stuff in on Friday. Mr. and Mrs. Date Tree are still going to be there, but they sweetly said it would be fine for me to move in a few boxes. (I tried to make them understand that it was more like 10 boxes, 7 storage containers, 2 suitcases, 2 tables, and several bags of various sizes and shapes, but I'm not sure they understood. Oh well.)

Thus, I am either (1) going to have movers get my stuff on Thursday, fly/train out Thursday, and receive on Friday; or (2) if the estimate is beyond the $3,000 I can get reimbursed from the firm, I will get a moving van, load my shit up, and drive it down to New York on Thursday, park it overnight, and move it into the apartment on Friday morning.

To make everything even more glorious, I lived about 10 blocks from the UN, which is holding its General Assembly this week, causing multiple street blocks and re-routes just around my neighborhood. Lovely.

Is it because I leave things to the last minute? If I had found a place earlier, maybe I wouldn't be pulling shit together like this -- slightly panicked and all dependent on the forces of the universe smiling on me for two days.

Fortunately, I exercised this morning for the first time in two months, and I feel able to deal. I really do need to get an elliptical or something for the apartment. It's remarkable how different I feel when I'm getting regular amounts of exercise. Without it, it's so easy to slip into the low-grade depression that constantly hovers on my mental-emotional horizon. I have been feeling moderately terrible the past few weeks due to a draining apartment search, an excruciatingly stilted phone conversation with the Scientist (why did I pick up? why why why? and why does he want to have lunch with me? go away!), and general dread about the upcoming Start of Corporate Robot Whoredom. But today, things seem a little brighter. Onward and upward.

The future to the past

I came from my future back into my past today when Mathgirl and her husband gave me a ride back from New York to Crimson City and we stopped in N'Haven (how the Metro North guys pronounce it) for lunch. We walked around campus a bit, and stopped into my old residential college, which was recently renovated as part of a bazillion dollar renovation campaign begun just after I graduated 10 years ago.

It looked fantastic, and we just happened to meet the "new" master of the college (who actually became the master in 2000 -- I just didn't know, so she's new to me). She talked to us a bit about the renovations and the discussions about the possibility of two new residential colleges.

I walked through the sleek marble foyer and marveled over Maya's Room, the art space (for which I planned a show one year and for which I served as treasurer for two years) that used to be on the top floor of the dining hall building and is now a proper first floor gallery space. I pointed a dozen times to various rooms and details and repeated, "That's new!" I remembered the time three of my closest friends and I drank wine -- something so new and so grown-up to us -- at the marble chessboard in the courtyard, and one of us accidentally tipped the half-empty bottle over, where it shattered on the ground.

Nostalgia washed over me. Not for the actual days of college, which were so trying and so challenging in many ways, but for the unfettered promise of those days, when I could have wandered down a thousand different paths and become a thousand different people.

I chose the past that is now mine, and this is the path I chose -- a meandering, questing, seeking path of multiple cities and jobs that now leads, in a week's time, to life as a corporate lawyer in New York. As my friends settle more deeply into the roles they have chosen (in the words of Fearless T, actualize what they were learning and training for in their twenties), I wonder, did I choose right? What if I had had the confidence to pursue the writing jobs right after school? What if I had decided to go into academia, letting my enthusiasm lead me, disregarding the doubts about my commitment or my ability?

There's no point in wondering, because you can't change what was.

But it's sad to think about what could have been, because what is today holds no joy for me.

So I wonder. And -- in a departure from my usual outlook -- I regret.

An apartment, an apartment/ My kingdom for a g-d apartment!

I think I have one -- the application to the condo board is probably going in tomorrow, so if it gets approved, I should have a place to live in Manhattan. Yes, after much wringing of the hands, rending of the clothes, gnashing of the teeth, and multiple phone calls to multiple life coaches, I went out yesterday at noon, and:

1. got 5 money orders at the post office for a total of $1230.25 and 3 cashier's checks at the bank for $7140;
2. went to the broker's office and read through a mind-numbingly boring lease that I don't think is entirely legal (I don't think you can sign away your right to withhold rent if the apartment becomes uninhabitable, for instance);
3. argued that the stupid management company should not charge me $75 for lead paint disclosure when I had to sign an exemption from getting the disclosure because the place is a studio (I won that one);
4. complained about the incomprehensible documents that I had to sign;
5. and generally made an annoyance of myself, forcing the broker to really earn his 15% commission (that's on a year's rent, folks, which equals $3,510 for approximately 2 hours of walking around and 2 hours of paperwork) before signing everything.

It is horrible to be a renter in the NYC.

I am getting out of here as soon as I can.

On the work front (which is coming at me full steam -- ack), I got the schedule for the first week, which is "U.S. University" for all the first year associates. Argh. There's a social event almost every night that first week, including "Night on the Town" on Thursday. Good god, shoot me now.

On the more substantive front, I heard back about my placement in the real estate group, and it was actually a very nice reply -- it's too late to switch out of my first rotation, but they'd try to accommodate me in the future. Apparently the employment group is so small, they can't reall support a full-time rotator, but they would see about maybe splitting my time between that group and another. Surprisingly nice, when they don't have to be.

And on the debauchery front, I went out for din-din with J2 and J3, and had a rocking good time singing karaoke and drinking ice cold beer with the sistas. (The aunties, now. Eek!) I am so glad I'm going to get to know them better. They are kewl. (Not so kewl: getting vomitous in the wee hours. But it might have been the sushi. Or, okay, perhaps I cannot put away 3 beers in a night anymore. Could I ever? I feel there was a time when I could. But that might have been right after college, when I lived on salad and beer. Or is that also an exaggeration? More likely it is my mind making up things where my memory has failed me. Okay, I need to stop now.)

And finally, on the relaxation front, I did not leave Fearless T's apartment today, nor shower, nor change out of my pajamas. I was a trashy novel-readin' sloth today, and I defy your judgin' eye! Whoo hoo!

Decent choices!

1. Studio in a condo building on 51st and 2nd Ave. Doorman, elevator, laundry in building, drugstore and Food Emporium around the corner. Clean, bright, southern exposure (so I don't wake up to blinding light), owners are a cute Jewish couple living in Florida and camping out in the studio til they find a tenant. $1950 a month, but with condo application fees (a whopping $725) and the part of the broker's fee I have to pay out of pocket ($510), it's really $2050 a month.

I liked it immediately, and even better after talking with the owners.

2. After seeing the condo and saying I'd take it, I went up to see one last place, a random apartment I found out about by walking by a sign advertising it. The "broker" is a chatty octogenarian with a penchant for patting me on the cheek. It would be creepy except that ... no, well, it just might be creepy behavior. Anyhoo. Fourth floor walk-up, no laundry, no doorman, no elevator... but sooooo cute. A true one-bedroom, with two healthy sized closets, new appliances in kitchen and bath, arched hall doorways. The building looks squeaky clean, and the apartment is -- I can't say it enough -- just darling. I love it. It's $1900, with no broker's fee, just a $75 credit check fee.

Thoughts? I put $300 down on the condo to take it off the market, which I lose if I back out of the deal. It's got the amenities and it's a 15 minute walk to work, versus a 5-minute walk to the subway, 10-minute ride, and another 10-minute walk to the office.

My head says condo, my heart recoils at the $3510 in broker's fees (though I get reimbursed $3000 of that) and $725 in condo application fees that go with said condo.

All thoughts welcome.

I do not *heart* New York

In fact, I hate it.

I reached this conclusion after seeing my seventh apartment yesterday, in the third neighborhood I'd walked around.

1. Tudor City. $1700 gets you 250 square feet of space. It's charming, yes, but you could practically touch both sides of the apartment with your arms spread out. Dorm living is so 2006. And there's a large complex being built to the west, right outside the building. Anyway, there were no studios or one-bedrooms available in October.

2. Meet broker from Citi Habitats on the street and sign a contract. On the street. Classay! Then to a place on 45th St., Hell's Kitchen. $1625 gets you a studio on the second floor looking out over a construction site, plus roach traps under the sinks. Gross.

3. Onto 47th St. $2010 will get you a one-bedroom on the fourth floor, across the street from a school. Not bad, but no laundry in the building.

4. Another place on 47th St. $1895 gets you a second floor walk-up that's not as nice as the one down the street.

5. Walk 10 blocks with broker to 57th St. A wood-paneled lobby belies the leaking faucet in the bath and the roach traps in the kitchen and bathroom. Ew.

6. That's all from the broker. I continue on alone and decide to check out the Upper East Side, which is now supposedly the bargain neighborhood for yuppies. I walk along Central Park South and spot Giada DeLaurentis, from the Food Network. She has perfect hair and appears to be shopping with a friend. She's cute.

I check out an Eberhart one-bedroom on E. 82nd. $2400 gets you a small but well-constructed apartment across the street from P.S. 200. The "bedroom" is a kind of a joke. There's one closet. And there's roach traps under the kitchen sink. God.

7. My Halstead broker, whom I kind of love, calls with a last-minute apartment in the East Village. I call Joiner to join me (ha ha), and we walk around the block. It's on 13th St., a few minutes' walk from Union Square. The building faces an empty, overgrown lot (at first I thought it was a crack lot, but my broker says NYU just bought it). $2100 gets you a basement apartment that's been newly renovated, with a private garden in the back. It's also right next to the recycling room. Pest potential very high. I sneeze about 4 times and start getting a headache while I'm in the place. It has great potential, but I can't see putting the time in to make it what it could be.

I realize I hate New York and don't want to live here.

Losing it. That's the only explanation.

The Ringleted One drove into town this weekend to help me look for housing. We met a shady broker, saw an amazing two bedroom apartment in Hell's Kitchen, aaaaand... I decided not to take it. I just had a funny feeling about it, like there was something not quite right about the situation. I was weirded out by the shady broker quoting a rental price of $100 less than the current tenants were paying, and reports of an asshole landlord... I don't know. Maybe I'm losing my mind.

Did I tell you I was assigned to the real estate practice group at my firm? Yes, I actually put this down as one of my preferences, even though I have no idea what this practice entails. I looked at the services offered by the firm after they sent me the assignment and understood nothing of what I read. Sigh. I should have requested employment/benefits. What's wrong with me? I just sent an email to the firm asking if there was any possibility of switching groups, which I know there isn't, since they were very clear about the non-possibility of switching groups after they double and triple-checked with us about our preferences. God. I must be losing my mind.

Well. Off I go to search some more. Maybe I'll find my mind along the way.

Starting the hunt

Well, I actually ventured out today and met: (1) a laid-back and (to my eye) trustworthy broker; (2) a friendly young (and, dare I say – cute!) resident/doctor-type who gave me his number and urged me to call; and (3) the side of myself that refuses to be sealed into a hermetic all-inclusive, pampered residential community for young professionals where “you’re not paying for the square footage, you’re paying for the lifestyle choice.” Barf. You can keep your cloying, snotty lifestyle, with the gym and the dry cleaners and the shuttle to midtown.

I have complete sympathy for those professionals, young or not, who are for whatever reason in jobs so demanding that the rest of their lives MUST be as undemanding and convenient as possible. I have a sickening feeling that I must count myself as one of those, if the experiences of my friends in the corporate law world are any indicator. You pay to have a life that is clean of the grit and grime, to have a life that functions without a hitch, because you don’t have time to deal with the hitches, or to dust off the grit and grime. I get it. Totally.

But I hate that a job would require that of people (well, maybe outside people doing really important stuff, like saving the world and shit). I mean, whatever, I have thoroughly enjoyed hiding out in Joiner’s fancy Upper West Side apartment with the health club and the indoor pool and the dozen doormen. But there were some places I looked at today that went over the line in my mind – they made it too easy to avoid anyone who wasn’t serving you in some way.

In a way, I think BC’s apartments in New York – the Upper East Side one she lived in just after we graduated college and her Harlem one later in grad school – became imprinted on my mind as the type of apartment that a real New Yorker lives in. Both were walk-ups in small buildings, on side streets in neighborhoods where a lot of people had lived for a long time. This is probably why, at the end of the day, I feel so kindly of the first apartment the broker showed me today. A tiny studio on East 52nd Street, it was most emphatically not hermetically sealed against the world – it overlooked the onramp for the Queensboro bridge and all the traffic noises filtered in. Not the most desirable quality in an apartment. But it was real in a way that the $2300- and $2500- and $2600-a-month studios in “luxury” buildings weren’t.

Am I romanticizing it? I admit that’s possible. But I also think that apartment, or at least that style, is more me than the ones in the fancy high-rises with the super views of a city I’m sealed off from.

Laid low

I thought about it, but for reasons of mental health more than physical, I didn't. Go out. At all. Today. To look for apartments.

It's true that I have a decent-sized head cold and feel fairly crappy, but I could have gone downstairs, at least, and asked about any vacancies in this building. But I didn't.

The thought of picking the right place, dealing with possibly shady brokers, having to fork over thousands of dollars, possibly not finding a place in time for my start date -- ugh. I feel defeated, even before I've begun. Maybe I should give up on living in Manhattan and just live in Astoria, where I could get more for my money.

Maybe I should just chalk this day up as a loss and be more focused tomorrow.

Forget what I wrote yesterday. I'm totally not equipped to be an adult.

And back again

I have been very amiss in updating as of the past two weeks or so, and for that I am sorry, not because I imagine that you have been holding your breath in anticipation, but sorry because perhaps creating the narrative of my life, as this blog tries to do, might have helped clear the fog in which I feel I have been wandering during that time.

(Whew! Long pompous sentence completed. Time to stop writing like a 19th century politician -- not strange, though, bc have been reading about Lincoln in attempt to actually learn about
the people/places/things I say I like. End T.M.I. parenthetical.)

After returning from the journey back to the East coast (and partly back to myself), I dithered around Crimson City for a few days, running errands and trying to take some time to decompress after the trip. In that time, as you might have read, the Scientist and I broke up, much to my lustful heart's discontent. Eh. I'm over it.

Mathgirl drove me to the airport last Saturday so I could catch my plane to Our Nation's Capital, where I met up with the Ringleted One and her sweet southern friend for a weekend of memories and movements. Many fine moments took place in DC when I lived there, and many less fine moments as well. I'm not the person I used to be, nor are the friends who still live there. I like to think we've gotten better at being who we are, less offensive to ourselves and to others.

I got my crap out of the basement of One-Armed Maggie's dad, who has kindly held onto it from before I went to Korea. Five years! I can hardly believe it. I couldn't even remember what I'd put in that basement.

After DC, the Ringleted One, SSF and I went in the loaded-down (with my crap) Green Elephant up to the Ringleted One's house in P'kpsee (how it should be spelled), which will house my crap for a bit longer before I have it transported to my apartment in New York.

That is where I am now. New York, that is, not my apartment, which will hopefully reveal itself by the end of a few days. I am in Joiner's apartment, a one-bedroom in a prime Upper West Side location. It's much nicer than what I will get, but that's all right. I am not in New York to luxuriate or revel. I am here to pay off my stinking student loans. I do not expect to enjoy my job. I hope to be able to bear it for two years.

If I sound grim, it is because I feel a little grim. I reached a level of happiness during the trip across the country that I hadn't felt in 3 years. It was like a journey back to myself: the happy, open self who likes talking to old codgers and free spirits; the good-natured, kooky self who blasphemously laughs at interstate billboards reading "HELL IS REAL!" and "HEAVEN OR HELL: IT'S YOUR CHOICE"; the thirsty, curious self who wants to know more and more and more, whether it's about caves or the 16th president or horse racing.

But the fun is over for now, and I must turn my attention to the so-called adult world. It's funny. I've been getting a sense from others -- or maybe it's just me -- that it's now time for me to be an adult, with the trappings of the adult life. A decent-sized apartment with decent furniture, decent clothes for work, etc. No more dorm living, no more mooching off friends, no more moving by myself. Be a solid member of society rather than a free-wheeling, indecisive, tra-la-la-singing child-woman.

Well. I say to that part of myself: if that's all it takes to be an adult, that's a club I don't need to join. Someone I respect and admire paid me a great compliment recently. She wrote: "You seem to me someone of great integrity who doesn't settle for easy answers." I keep thinking of that, and hoping that it's true, and hoping that although I tend to make my path rougher than it could be, there is some value to thinking about every step and struggling with every decision with an eye to how it becomes part of the me in progress. So often the struggle seems pointless, especially now, when I have only just reached the point where my other lawyer friends were 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 years ago.

But then I remember. Maybe I don't possess the trappings of adulthood. The car, the house, the profession, the baby (and there are so many now!). But after a hard-won fight, I am pretty fond of me.

I was lost during law school. No, I didn't wander around the moors in my nightgown, aimlessly yelling for Heathcliff, but I did the mental and emotional equivalent of that: I told myself that it wasn't that bad, that some classes were interesting, that it might work out for me after all. Instead of facing up to the fact that law school was the wrong place for me, I got lost in the mire of my own rationalizations.

Well, I don't want to get stuck in that bog again, jumping from the "it's not so bad here; other firms are probably worse" tussock to the "well, finance is sort of interesting, I guess" lilypad. I know the firm is the wrong choice, that law is the wrong field, and that, to a certain extent, New York is the wrong city. I will make the best of the situation, not to worry. But I am here for a purpose: to pay off my loans. And then? Then I continue on toward another stop on that long road trip of life, which will undoubtedly still be rife with decision-making struggles. I think, though, that the voices in my head, the ones that argue and jeer and cheer (sadly, very rarely) and compose long disgustingly self-absorbed journal entries -- those voices are ones I can travel with, because they are, in the end, me.

The End
(Part I, and not safe for bigbros)

I'll (probably) write something about the end of the trip soon, but for now, this "ending" is for whatever I had with Scientist, for it is kaput, gone, dead in the water, finito, ended.

"I'm moving to New York," I said, after dinner (where he showed me picutres of his cousin's wedding and new nieces), after he asked in the car what I was thinking about, since I was being so quiet, after I replied, "You know. Stuff," after he replied, "About me?", after I said, "About us. I feel like we should maybe...talk," and after we went to his apartment to have the agreed-upon talk.

"I know, you told me."

"Well, I assumed that it would be the end, because you said you didn't want a long distance relationship."

"I still feel the same way."

After a few go-arounds, we both agreed that it was a natural breaking point, and that it probably wouldn't have lasted even if I'd stayed here. And then, in a weird therapy-like way, we exchanged some compliments and some criticisms. (Him: "You are really different from most people. And some of that's good, and some of that's neutral." Me: "You are... unique." Him: "I really liked spending time with you." Me: "It was interesting. It was different.").

After it seemed like there wasn't more to say, I came out and said what had been weighing on my mind since the beginning of the evening. "So, are you really not going to sleep with me tonight?"

He really wasn't.

"For real? For serious?"

For real. "It's really something I have to do for me... I really want a longterm, serious relationship soon, and it would confuse things for me. Please don't ask me. It's not something I can do right now, and it's not negotiable."

Aaaaaaand, proving that I really was the man in this ... thing we had, I'm really more upset about this exchange than anything else. I mean, what red-blooded American man turns down break-up sex? It's like, my goddam constitutional right!

"If we hadn't had this conversation tonight, would you have slept with me?"

"No."

"So you unilaterally decided this? Whatever happened to making decisions mutually?"

I ended up insisting that I walk home alone, and that he not drive me, as he has every other time I've come over to his house. As I explained to him, "I'm a little embarrassed and hurt, and this is a way for me to reassert control over my life." He tried to persuade me that I shouldn't be embarrassed, which is like, whatever, you can't argue someone into not being embarrassed, but I refused, and he finally said, "Why does it have to end like this? I'd really like for you to stay in my life."

"I don't... know what that would look like."

"We could try."

I considered this. And wondered, for the hundredth time, if I wasn't in it just for the sex. Because every time we'd gotten together, everything we did seemed like a prelude to bed. It was the thing I looked most forward to, far above and beyond the talking and sharing.

"I'm not hopeful," I said slowly, "but I guess we can try."

And after a little more wordless staring, I stepped forward, gave him a hug, received and hug and kiss on the cheek in return, and walked back home along the dark streets of Crimson City.
I won't deny that I shed a tear or two. But by the time BC got done with bolstering my self-confidence, and by the time I reached home, I was pretty much done with grieving.

It's been a long time in the coming, and (as Scientist had the gall to say to me) I want and deserve -- everyone deserves -- someone who wants to be with me. Who's sure. Scientist never let himself be affectionate with me, bastard, and I blame him for succumbing to the sex when he knew it wasn't what he wanted. I blame myself for the same thing.

I'll probably spend a few uncomfortable hours with burning cheeks for throwing myself at Scientist, but hey, a girl's gotta try, you know? At least I swung the bat.

(Note to self: no more WASPs. Too reserved.)