an explanation, not an apology

hi. i know it's been a while. i'm not going to use the s-word (again), so here's an explanation for my sudden silence:

all that weird attention i was getting from the opposite sex earlier in the blog blew up. and it wasn't funny.

my computer's back!

hey, i'm back and so is my computer. i don't know where to start, because my life has been so eventful since my last post. so i'll do it another day. ciao.

the scot, part 3

the scot's name is officially mud.

following a conversation with a friend about my situation with the scot, i realized that the girl who told me about his alleged girlfriend wanted him for herself. therefore, she had no reason to do me any favors and was probably lying about his purported relationship. this realization and the scot's continued messages convinced me to give him another chance.

after almost three months of failed meeting attempts, the scot and i met for coffee (tea for me). not surprisingly, he barely recognized me and things were awkward. as it turns out, he is extremely soft-spoken and shy (though no less roguish), and so, had difficulty meeting my eyes for most of our time together. it was sort of endearing at the time, but now i think it had more to do with guilt than coy modesty.

near the end of our time together, i decided to get the girlfriend question out of the way. thus, i asked, very directly, "[jealous girl] told me your girlfriend was visiting this week. where does she live?" to which he responded, without pausing, "in [large city]."

update (5/4/07): what makes this story even more incredible is the fact that he was still sending me messages a week later.

the scot, part 2

i wrote this post on january 20:

tonight i went to a party at the apartment where the scot and i first met. from across the room i spotted one of the scot's friends, a girl who wanted to be more than his friend. the night the scot walked me home, she fought me for his attention, but failed. i didn't say anything to her at first because i didn't think she'd appreciate it, but then she asked me if i was the girl the scot walked home two months ago. i told her that i was, indeed, and asked how our mutual acquaintance was doing. i already kind of knew how he was doing because he hadn't stopped sending me messages for the past couple of months. we had tried many times to get together, without success.

the girl replied tactfully, but not without a bit of satisfaction, that he'd been extremely busy lately because his girlfriend had been visiting him. i made her repeat herself, then stared at her dumbly. my first thought was: "villanous knave!" the second was: "yeah, i should have seen it coming." despite all his sweet words, the scot made less of an effort to see me than he could have and tended to disappear for a week at a time.

not long after that conversation, i left the party and was struck for at least the twentieth time by the overabundance of cats prowling the streets. judging from the long, lusty meows that my roommate and i hear all night every night, i would guess that mating season has come a few months early. tonight, i found one of the chief meowers under a car and stamped my foot at him, hoping to scare him into silence, only to find that i had interrupted a cat orgy. no fewer than five cats emerged from the underside of the car, gathered their dignity and scattered in all directions.

even the cats in this city are promiscuous.

sorry

hey,

i haven't been able to post for the past several weeks because my computer is somewhere between paris and chicago. someone owes me some money.

oh, racism

"There are still parts of the Muslim world where historical enlightenment still needs to be implemented," [Germany's Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble] told Brussels-based journalists on Thursday.

what i understand from his comment: "white is right."

*sigh*

"Beckham Agrees to Galaxy Move" why, why, why did david beckham have to wait until a year after i left los angeles to move there? i would have bought a season pass, even though i would never have been able to recognize him from any of the seats i could afford.

2007 is off to a strange start; macguyver would not approve

yesterday i managed to lock myself in the bathroom. i accidentally slammed the door a little too hard and the lock fell onto the floor. when i tried to re-attach it to the bolt in the door, i only managed to push the bolt through the door.

i tried picking the lock with two hairpins, but i needed something in the shape of the missing bolt. thus, i tried to fashion a rectangular bolt out of some newspaper in my coat pocket. it didn't hold its shape well enough, so i put the hairpins inside the paper, which would have worked (or so i'd like to think) if my makeshift bolt had been a bit longer. thank goodness my cell phone was in my pocket. my roommate was still out of town, so i called my landlady, who was in a play. i spent the next two hours sending text messages, trying to find someone, anyone, who wanted to entertain pitiful universal muse trapped in her own wash closet.

my landlady finally arrived and pushed the bolt back through the door so i could put the lock back together and liberate myself. then she laughed at me.

not really a happy new year's eve

my new year's eve was wrapped in a haze of (literally) foreign substances. of the actual stroke of midnight, i remember very little, aside from the fact that there was a lot of champagne. i spent the night in paris surrounded by unrealistically beautiful people, but despite the lovely scenery, my fete was dominated by a run-in with an ex-not-exactly-boyfriend.

i know i'm not the only girl who has convinced herself that carly simon wrote the song "you're so vain" for her ex, but i think my case is especially juste as the french would say.

take the first line, for example: "you walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht." not only did he walk into the party as though it were a yacht, the party might as well have been a yacht. he was superb, dressed all in black, fine fabrics from head to toe. the party was, in a word, swank. it was overflowing with foie gras, courvoisier and, as i learned afterward, cocaine. i was completely out of place, a gauche and un-elegant american girl among cultured, worldly young europeans.

as far as the second line of the song goes, believe me, his fedora was "strategically tipped below one eye," though his scarf was black that night. he actually does own an apricot ascot, however. i teased him about it the one night he wore it in front of me.

just like the night we met, we ignored each other for several hours. both on the night we met two years ago and at this new year's party, i ignored him because i'm incredibly shy around attractive men and he's not only attractive, but intimidating. he ignored me the first time in order to make me chase him (you can imagine how well we worked as a couple), but this time he ignored me because he didn't want to talk to me. he told me as much at the end of the party when i confronted him. i asked him very directly why we weren't talking and he replied that he didn't realize that i expected so much (a conversation) from him.

this last meeting between us seemed totally unreal, and not only because he dared tell me that five minutes of his time was too much to ask. i'm pretty sure i had a contact high from at least one of the substances being smoked at the party--i really hope it was pot. since i've never smoked anything in my life, my head was spinning throughout the party and i remember falling at one point. in addition to the atmospheric influences operating on my senses, a bit of nostalgia lent a surreal feeling to our last conversation. you see, we had never properly broken up, so this was perhaps the closure i needed.

all these elements combined to give me the impression that i never saw him, though i'm sure i did. he exited my life almost as smoothly as he entered it, though i must admit I cried after the party.

among all his harsh words (i gave you the short version), he did manage to slip in a compliment: he likes my writing. he wants to keep receiving emails from me, not because he wants to know anything about me, but because he thinks i've got style.

Happy New Year!