Spare Change

it's snowing like mad. like mad i tell you.

i wish some could fall on me and cover everything white.

She's going. She's going to Bulgaria for two years. She's fuckin leaving me to go grab her dreams - she's been talking about the Peace Corps all this time and yet, today it's real. She's going into something unknown and yet she wants to do it. Stupid stupid stupid! But who's the silly one here. Corporate boy who takes the safe known experience or artist girl risking a good chunk of her twenties doing something she believes in.

sometimes people can still surprise me pleasantly.

it's times like these that shakes my tired senses and awaken them to the full and depressing possibilities of my life. God, what have I done and what the hell am I doing? Perhaps selfishness is a good thing.

godammit.

I sneaked out today and got some ice cream.

and found a bookstore on the way. oh man. just reading the book jackets and titles makes me happy. "babies and their sinful lives" "sleepy dogs" "tired places" "interior decorating: choosing the right colors" "american chumps" "purple musings"...

...

i could have spent hours in there while it started to snow outside.. books crammed together and people slightly shivering in their thick coats, bumping together politely, an unspoken contract between all of us, guilty glances at each other, knowing that we were here on personal pleasure while next door the corporate types typed away on their brand spanking machines using their broken brains...

I’m listening to Underworld and I like it cause techno was the thing back in high school and now I’m back to where I began and I like techno again. I got the CD (1992 – 2002) as a present from my friend April when she first dating her boyfriend last month but today she told me she broke up with him because there wasn’t communication and she’s losing her self respect for him – and I find it cool that my CD has outlasted her relationship – maybe I should get more CDs. April also said that she wanted someone who’s at a similar stage in his life as she is in hers – by hers she means thinking longer-term and being fixed on a career and thinking about marriage and babies and such cause what else do 25 year old girls think about besides going on 26-7-8-9-woa! 30? Do the math she says and I say geez I’ve been doing the math and it’s some fuzzy math right there. But then April says she might just stay with him cause they like to f—k (yeah, I’m writing this at work and combined with their censors and Ashcroft eyes everywhere---) but no the other night she got mad at him and used teeth. Ouch I say why don’t you finish that burger.

I wanna start a movement. God is OnlyGodisloveGodisjusticeGodisdeadThereisnoGod. What comes next? And Underworld is saying, “you got a velvet mouth youre so succulent and beautiful shimmering and dirty wonderful and hot times on your
telephone line just god and everything on your telephone
and in walked an angel…”

Woa. A shimmering movement – I see kids walking and running, by plane and boats and boots, moving all over the world in droves, moving because ideas are coming out like mad, like rivers gushing from the silent mountains, grand ideas and it’s crazy ideas but that’s ok cause, oh what do I see but ideas come crashing together, like waves foaming and loud, ideas lapping against the dry sandy desert of human laziness. Woa.

“let your feelings slip
(boy)
but never your mask
(boy)
random blonde bio high density random blonde
(boy)
blonde country blonde high density”

"Do you ever feel that even though you get what you ask for, it's not all it's not what you wanted?"

Thus spake one of my good friends today. Geez. Way to make a gray winter day even more cheerful. I always get CDs I think are good, but then I listen to them for a couple of days and then don't really bring them out again. I guess my attention span is slipping. I can't concentrate on just one band/one kind of sound anymore. And I'm too lazy to make my own mixes; so I just resort to launchcast and get my music fix.

I did get some new CDx by Switchfoot - I just love their song Innocent Again it has that funky bassline that's really the heart of SoCal. Well, we'll see if the band has replay value after I put it through endless repetition for the workday tomorrow.

The Superbowl's gonna suck this year, even if it's gonna be in my hometown. C'mon. I mean, Panthers and Patriots? I woulda love to see Manning and McNabb go at it. I can betcha that the boys in H-town are gonna party it up come game day. Man, I'd love to go out that night and see all the players and stuff. Talked to one of my buddies tonight and he said that he bought tickets to the club where Jay-Z and Halle Berry are gonna hang out. Speaking of Halle Berry... grrrrrrrr..ufffff gruff! Yum.

I hopped on the train down to Philadelphia to recruit summer analysts. Put on the plastic face and play the record: “Investment banking is… “

On the trip down, my associate and I passed the time by talking about anything but work. After twenty minutes of talking about our respective vacations and college mishaps, Karen got comfortable enough to bemoan her lack of dating options; more so, she wanted my opinion on her current situation of fling followed by hookup followed by a lull period where she’s trying to “get some ass”, all the while she’s following that “one guy”. She’s attractive I thought. She’s friendly and smart. I didn’t want to tell her that she works all day and night so maybe that’s why there’s no time left for a strong relationship. So I just said whatever was on my mind. Then she explained to me girl math: of being mid twenty and biological clocks and engagements and a timetable for getting pregnant. I didn’t know what to say so I said whatever was on my mind.

But it’s a familiar story to me. Girls who, for all practical purposes are funny and witty and charming but somehow, in this tangled life, they draw empty on meaningful relationships. When it comes down to it, many of my friends, like Karen, work too damm much to have relationships. And the work, as I define work, don’t allow time or personalities for rewarding relationships. It demands your primary focus and it sucks you dry. Or maybe it’s because of the type of work that they’re in or the types of guys that they – there is a dearth of the Prince Charming/Cinderella relationships. What happen to the cool guys, they ask? They’re all around I said, but like you, they’ve hardened and have shelled up.

Being a midtwentysomething apparently does not allow for fantasies any longer. It’s about work and careers and “building a life”. That’s what we surround ourselves with, isn’t it? We’ve replaced dreams of castles and feasts with windowed offices and bank accounts; we’ve traded our galloping stallions towards beastly dragons for morning subway rides to sanitized cubicles; we’ve stopped feeding our minds because we worry about feeding our 401Ks and IRAs and brokerage accounts.

I see a generation of uninspired minds, dutifully obeying their common sense and rejecting their imaginations. And for me, common sense isn’t very interesting. Practicality doesn’t incite passion or irrationality or emotion; you can’t coax love out of its sleep with pragmatism – it doesn’t care (oxymoron) about the math of life – it only cares about the burn and the heat and the fire of exuberant illogical idon’tgiveadamm chemistry, that spark that ignites something inside of us - pushed back but never quite forgotten. The clincher is, we’ve twisted ourselves into this lifestyle, and while we all want the passionate indescribable love that we know exist, we’ve been beaten down by our common sense to settle for a workable commitment – from anyone. Tired eyes staring into tired eyes. Grouchy mornings returned by hungover nights. Cynical voices echoing pessimistic thoughts. We’ve convinced ourselves to become attractive to someone based on our own affordability (what we emotionally expend, what with all the other responsibilities in our lives) instead of falling into attraction (headfirst and anticipating that thrill) because of the call/because we can’t help it – we’ve constructed our own palatable relations and man the gates for love the intruder, cause we think it’ll never come and we’re afraid of waiting alone with the stable boy. We’ve settled for the stable boy. We’ve folded our hands and gotten out, settling for a pittance of what we could have attained because the risk (of growing old and alone, but financially stable!) was too great. We think that we can learn to love someone, if we can only stand them first. But love isn’t like that; sure you can learn to love someone, but love is a living thing, it grows and expands, collapsing and blows up and burrows deep. How much love will you miss if you spend all those years learning to love someone? But so we’re convinced, that tempered love can work, and our story will be one of love wasted.

I had a couple of beers with my ex from Penn after the recruiting event. It was strange. We’ve both moved on but the first moment that I saw her again, the old attraction, sexual and raw, came galloping back. And I could see it in her too. Here we were, talking about our respective relationships, but all I concentrated on were the familiar lines of her face, how her lips moved, how her hands gestured; it was all very surreal and too awkward for me. At one point in the night she was talking about her indecision about career choice (studied finance, but now she’s veering for liberal arts) and I joked, “Why don’t you become a hand model?” Silence. We both laughed uncomfortably because her hands were one of the things I complimented her on the most and that electric reminder of how things have changed made our sense mute. In any case, she asked if I was to stay the night and I said, no, no, I’m taking the next train back to NY. I said “See ya” and she said “Nice to talk again, after these years” and I said, “Yeah” and we hugged and boy, am I glad to get out of there.

Monday morning, first day of work after the holidays. I see bleary eyed people all around. Cramped in the subway like sardines squished together. Squish squish. My crotch is frighteningly close to a gentleman’s bald spot, my fingers desperately inched for the railings, my elbow is hitting someone’s stomach and my back is pressed against the door. Open. Close. Openclose. Open. For the love of God, please let this train move. A burly man rushed onto the train, a couple of cars ahead of mine. You can hear shoving. Then shouts. “Get the fuck off!” The doors won’t close. The big fellow is pushing his way in. “Listen prick, get the fuck off!” “Shut the fuck up!” he replied, but some people had pushed him out of the car. There was no room. I can smell the deodorant on the girl next to me. “What the fuck! Screw you guys!” he screamed, and a stream of profanities followed, like lava oozing from the mountains. Someone called for the police. The people around me groaned and glanced at their watches. To no avail. The car stood still. Then shrill whistles came from behind and the people further inside my car craned their necks to see. Two uniformed security guards jaunted slowly up towards the yelling, but when they got there, the interloper had already left. A couple of moments passed, then the subway slowly creaked and pushed its way into the gaping tunnel.

Monday morning and I climbed up the slick stairs at the Columbus Circle stop. It was raining, and you can see the puddles on the ground, rainbowed by the oil and waste of the city. Four blocks. Four blocks and it starts again.

What’s there to do on a Sunday afternoon besides watch crappy TV, sex, or drink? I’m not quite sure but I’m hooked on Spaten. Good hops and it goes down so nice. Ha. Sunday afternoons always depresses me; it makes perfectly clear how boring my life is. It’s raining outside and there’s nothing to do except to settle down with a good book. Perhaps that’s what it is. Since I started work, everything has been so sedentary. I’m either sitting at work or sitting at a restaurant or sitting at home. Sit. But really. And now that it’s the middle of winter, daylight fades fast and at night who wants to be active outside? A run through Central Park at night isn’t exactly thrilling. I’m restless. Restless and not very good company since everyone is annoying. Bah. I guess sex is activity. But damm, I do miss hiking and oh, the feeling you get on a road trip, all tingly, opening car doors and running towards something you’ve never seen before.

I want a basset hound. Oh man, I think I can just pick up one of those fat, wrinkly, droopy faced (slobber and all) dogs and love him silly. We’ll have walks – him on dumpy short waddly legs – and I’ll let him romp and chase squirrels (those varmints) and he’ll sniff and sniff and smell everything and it’ll be awesome. Of course, when I’m writing or reading he’ll be there, plopped on the bed sleeping, or when he’s really excited, pop his head up and give me a sad stare. Except his tail will be wagging (thwap thwap thwap) and I know he’s happy. Brown and white and I’ll make up a cool name for him. Like Nefarious or something cause one look at him and you’ll just laugh cause he’s the most lovable dog you’ll see. Oh, and of course he’s a stud cause he’ll attract all the chicks. Yeah. And I’ll say things like, “Dude, Nerf, your breath stinks” and thwap thwap he’ll lick my hands and go “Aahooooo…” and go pee on a tree. Or something. And on those lazy summer days when I’m not working, we’ll just have a nap in the park, but not after he has rolled around in the grass and bark at smaller dogs (just for fun). Then he’ll sit his fat butt next to mine and I’ll look up at the blue sky and he’ll look at the stupid pigeons, eyes between his paws, cause they’re silly little things. Oh you may think I’m just imagining things but you’ll see.

There it is. I’m home.

Love.

I remember my first crush. Well, my first exciting and thoroughly maddening crush. Freshman year of high school and I met her through Adam; two years older than me and I thought she was perfect. A small girl with slanted marbly eyes, like liquid pools of sunlight. An alto voice that rose shimmering during a talent contest and a body that held secrets I could only secretly dreamed about. When we held hands—it was thrilling and dangerous and non-contemplative. It was a love that made me mad because I wanted to know what to expect, what to do. I had no idea that those first pricks could be so fatal, so intoxicating that I would do anything for her. It was a stupid love, a love without fear, like driving too fast, reckless and unwitting. But I didn’t care. When the words came, I was devastated. I acted like foolish boys did and fumed and wrote her letters and quoted from Billy Joel and didn’t know how to deal with the hurt because I had never felt the hurt before.

It was a stronger love in college; the culmination of high school crushes and disappointments, of boredom and thoughts of “how things ought to be”. She laughed infectiously and stared straight into my eyes unflinching. I used to brush her hair with my fingertips as we coyly dreamed of our futures and talked about the silly things that college kids expounded upon. We kept it secret because it was beautiful that way. I looked at the stars and got drunk when we hugged for the last time and went our separate ways. I got drunk again when I thought of our perfect arguments and her small hands and how she was the ultimate love of my life. It was a giddy love.

Expected love. She loves me now and I’ve settled into the silent cocoon. We talk about our dreams but they seem more like dreams now. We hold hands and I think nothing of it. It’s a love strung together by tiny happenstances. A walk through the park with nothing on our minds, sitting through a movie that goes nowhere and yet we laugh because we don’t have to get anywhere—dinners where she orders for me because she already knows what I want. I wake up next to her and get dressed for work and she turns over and mumbles, “Have a good day” and I leave quietly lest she wakes up.

As I get older and love matures, it becomes familiar. I’m not singed by it any more, I’m afraid, because the warmth is steady now. I’m less likely to jump into the abyss and more likely to wade in, left foot, then right, then let the familiar feelings soak in. I do miss the heady days of love abandoned, of those terrible feelings, ripping my insides apart, and can’t help but feel a bit sad to recognize the familiar face of love. Somewhere along the way, I’ve gone and become sensitized to it all. I’ve been hit with the disease for so long that I’m partly immune to the fever. It’s like a puzzlebox that’s infuriating to figure out, but once you’ve smashed it and put it back together, it’s not as fun to solve any longer. I think I must be a fool, and yet, love waits and doesn’t tire.