life is not made up of things that can be lost or won

12/31/09

leaving is always hard. yesterday i started my proceedings to step away from northwest indiana, what that means is seeing some family for the last time and saying goodbye. since there is a new years party being hosted at my dad's house, i will see much of my family there, but the notable exception - as always - is my mom. last night i fulfilled my duty to travel to her home and spend some time with her saying goodbye.

this doesnt seem as if it too big of a deal, but i have never had a great relationship with my mom. and after consideration it is through mutual fault. and as i drove to the coffee shop this morning to spend my writing time, i had some epiphanal thoughts about my relationship with emily and the way i think about my mom.

first off, i certainly do not give my mom enough credit. when my parents divorced - i was 12 i think - my family life was more like a white trash wonderland than, well, i dont know good enough words for a proper functioning family. both of my parents were alcoholics and my brother was just getting started. my sister was a princess and i felt generally forgotten. it is the curse of the middle child to be constantly overlooked. i didnt get the responsibility laid on my brothers shoulders or the overwhelming attention and opportunity of my sister.

when i was younger i read some books about it. my brother is two years older than me, so my dad was more likely to take him to work and give him actual tasks that he could work out on his own, as i said - responsibility. my sister was five years younger than me so she represented a chance for my parents to not repeat past mistakes. and i was left to just exist, jealous of my sisters attention and scraping at my brothers heels for information. this led to earn my brothers scorn - he took me lessened responsibility more as my freeloading while he had to shoulder a heavier workload. and i was mean to my sister becasue that was a fast track to being noticed, even if in a negative way.

my mom and i

certainly, none of these things were apparent to me at that time. (and, i'll be honest, right now i am having trouble focusing this entry back to where i was initially heading. so i will just follow it naturally - structure be damned.)

my parents marriage led to divorce, so far as i know, becasue of infidelity. again, at the time i wouldnt have known this but the signs were there. my dad was often gone nights and my mom took us kids to homes of her boyfriends during the day. during the divorce fighting i heard my mom yelling at my dad for all the flings that he would have, but i dont think us kids were ever privy to it. and then when they started getting divorced, i beleive it was my mom's decision. she had found a guy that she wanted to be with more than my dad and, if i recall my dad was devastated. i think that guy was her current husband - gordon.

and this is where things wrap into my recently ended relationship with emily. i got my basic ideas of life from my parents and etched deep into my subconscious are the patterns that i learned from their lives. emily and i were in an open relationship for our entire time together. an open relationship allows the partners to see other people freely and openly so long as good communication exists and general rules are established. our general rules were that making out with other people was just fine and dandy, but having sex with another person is something that would need to be discussed beforehand. no nights of passion, act like adults and make things work.

for most of our relationship neither of us really exercised our open options. sure, we would make out with other people but there werent many times that are carnal desires strayed from one another. then 2008 happened. our relationship wasnt the happiest it had ever been. our communication was still okay (actually, i would say it was great because she helped me so much be more open with how i am feeling and say the things that are hard so we could move forward), but with growing frequency we found ourselves talking about intense things at the kitchen table, with tears streaming and honesty eventually coming out. we still liked each other, but we were becoming more like great friends instead of lovers. and then she met someone new. and around the same time i met a friend of mine that i had liked for years.

and so we talked about this and agreed to explore these peripheral relationships. and this is the thing that hit me as i was driving to the coffee shop this morning - this is where it all comes together. but, sorry, i want to say one more thing before i get to it. after my parents divorce i saw little of my mom and that has persisted to this day. this has led me to not really know much of anything about her. just the menial day to day things that she would tell me on our yearly phone calls or every-other-yearish visits. and so i made her a voice. a voice that i would use when i was talking to emily about what my mom and i talked about or when i was talking to other people about my mom. that voice - if you will imagine it - is kind of like a muppet crossed with a duck. t (mean, i know, but honest to my feelings at the time and hopefully...eventually in this post...i will make up for some of it.)

and there was a time when i was recreating (read: mocking) something emily said and in the recreation i slipped into my moms voice for emily's voice. she did not appreciate that.

and so, this morning, i think i figured out why that happened. when emily and i both embarked on secondary relationships within our primary relationship our ideas of how this would look were askew. my idea of it was that i would have a friend that i saw and spent time with, not as a reprieve, but more as a complement to my relationship with emily. i had things that i wanted to go out and do. i wanted to go ice skating and rock climbing, square dancing, i wanted to sit at a bar or something like that. and consistently emily didnt want to join in these activities very often. she encouraged me to go with another person or to go by myself, but i really just wanted to go with her. i wanted to share these things - new experiences and things that i find great joy in - with her. so, i used my secondary relationship to fulfill some of these things.

and it was great. one day a week i would go with my new friend and we would do something fun out on the town and then come back and have pretty good sex. it was reinvigorating. i wasnt looking at this as a supplemental relationship or anything, more like a good friendship with a friend that shared the desire to explore and be adventurous with me. and, in the interest of maintaining good communication, i would tell emily about my time out with as many or as few details that she desired. i wasnt trying to keep anything from her becasue i wanted my relationship with emily to work.

emily, on the other hand, approached her new relationship differently. she didnt want to just have a fling with another person or a once-a-week date. she wanted a secondary relationship. something that held similar weight to our primary relationship. and, to this end, she would go out for dates with her new friend and have different experiences. i just started to try and write about these experiences, but - and this is the thing - i have never known much about them. she was less forthcoming with her nights out so i gave it time. but then something developed that, to me, became a wedge in our primary relationship.

emily started staying the night at her new friends house. now, just writing that, it may not seem like a big deal. but, for me, a large part of a long term relationship are the simple common joys. falling asleep together, having a warm body next to me in the bed, having dinner together, unwinding about our days, you know - the things you take for granted. and so i brought up my discomfort, perhaps even my jealousy, about her other relationship. and this led into a deep discussion about our personal ideas of what these secondary relationships mean and their level of importance.

and so our ideas about these other relationships we were engaging in differed largely. i liked the idea that we would both just have friends that we also have sex with. and she felt that having a relationship without a considerable emotional investment was not worth her time. and so this is where it parallels with my mother and father. my father, i do not think anyone denies it, had sex partners that were not my mother while they were together - friends that he also had sex with. my mother, i know full well, was carrying along secondary relationships with considerable emotional investment.

and, although i had never thought about it much before now, this is why i used the imitation of my moms voice for emily. this memory of how my parents conducted their lives has permeated and become manifest in my own life. i think if i were smarter i wouldve come to this conclusion sooner.

and so, as i said, last night i started my goodbyes. i drove to my moms house after she got off work and i was kind of dreading it. generally she and gordon just sit in separate rooms and watch tv until they fall asleep, we dont really talk about anything until it comes time for me to leave. then my mom gets teary eyed and talks of how she doesnt want me to leave. well, this time it was a little bit different.

my mom had gotten a gift from her work friends - a table size bottle of sangria. we opened it upon my arrival and proceeded to drink the entire thing throughout the night. my mom asked me questions about my life and i answered in kind. she asked about my relationship with emily and i told her my perspective of what happened, not what has been written above - that didnt dawn on me until this morning. we talked about my trip, the places i have been and where i plan to go next, she wanted to know what i was going to do with my life.

at some point we got to talking more generally about life and happiness. she told me a story of when she and gordon nearly got divorced, and then we were talking about my siblings. and in a roundabout way i apologized for not being a more present son. and she just blurted out a question - "well, are you happy?" and i told her that i was, and as a mother should, she said that was all that mattered.

at some point i recalled to her my date with vaughnda and my mom got schoolgirl-ish. she tried to take my phone away from me so she could call her and "introduce herself." i thought that was hilarious but i dont think she mustered the courage to do such a thing. and it dawned on me that i was having fun with my mom. that we were having a good time, and i felt bad about the way i have characterized her throughout my life.

i want to be a better person to my family. i am sure that there are more surprises that await me if i were around to apply myself more and just be more present.

1/2/10

well, new years happened. and i wish i had a good story for it but i dont really. the sad thing about new years happening is that now i must go. the happy thing about it is that i am just going to chicago and i am looking forward to some days there. i called vaughnda on new years eve, but during the day. i dont know her well enough to call her at midnight that might be a bit overbearing. but it had been a couple of days since our date, and although i dont really understand dating rules, i was pretty sure that not calling soon after the date would look bad.

so i sucked up my dislike for talking on the phone and dialed the numbers. really i dont dial numbers anymore, i just hit buttons. i got her voicemail - and was happy for that - then proceeded to leave what was probably a too long and not very clear message. you know how i do. my parents planned to have a party for new years, and to my surprise that party was set to start at 2 in the afternoon!

this was just sledding for kids and such, but when the party starts the drinking starts. house rules. shortly after that vaughnda and i had the chance to talk on the phone and that was nice. afterwards i plunged on with the day. i had invited my friend becky to celebrate the ringing of the new year with me, and eventually she showed up. as i have said before, she is crazy. i invited her because i wanted to be with someone, i rarely have a date to enjoy a family function with so i hoped this would be a nice changeup.

the party was just some family, pretty small, and becky showed up late. late, meaning before midnight but about two hours after she said she would arrive. that was fine. eventually the new year was rung in and we all danced and welcomed it together. quickly after that everyone left. becky and i went up to bed and had a nice night. i actually slept in the other room, but it was still a nice night. the morning was different, however.

i wanted to start prepping to restart my trip - cleaning my room and my truck, making some rounds, etc - and she was determined to take as long as humanly possible to leave. i have a thing about time, something that i am trying to manage. i loathe being late for a thing (my method for coping/getting over this/accepting this is not setting times for me to be somewhere), in the morning i like to pop right up and start my day (i enjoy some alone time in the morning, but still i generally just

beckia

get up and start), and i am sure there are other things. so becky's taking extra long in the morning irked me.

she left after about three hours of being together in the morning. then i went to my brothers house and watched "hedwig and the angry inch" with him. this is one of my most favorite movies and a damn fine musical, i dont know why i recommended it to him, but he got it and said that it would take me watching it with him for him to watch it. i liked it, him not so much. during my time there my brother was determined to give me a video camera for my trip. he had just gotten this little flip camera thing for christmas and kept on that i would do better with it.

i accepted it, only after giving him all the things i was planning to take back. it worked out okay, he took the stuff back and only had to spend about $30 to get himself a new one. then i came back to my folks house and started doing laundry and cleaning my truck out. that wasnt much fun. things were absolutely frozen back there. i had to thaw out my futon mattress and my "boyfriend" (you know, the pillow with arms), and washed my blankets and such. then i started repacking everything back in there.

i finished that up this morning. but, before i get too far away from the contributing stories, i want to talk about love. the idea, the word, the feeling, all of it. i dont have the greatest words for it, but i do have some recent experiences that are prompting this.

on new years eve, during the day (after sledding, before becky arrived) i was found on facebook by my ten year old girlfriend. not in the pedophile way, but the girl that i dated when i was ten - when we were both ten. her name was hannah carnell, i have written her name a few times previously on this trip. she found me and started chatting with me.

i was happy for that, i had always wanted to find her again. i wanted to see what kind of person she became and how her life had shaped itself after i left it. my mom made the mention, something along the lines of, "she has never stopped loving you" when we were talking. why my mom would know what things have persisted in the life of hannah carnell when she couldnt even tell me how to get a hold of here is beyond me. but i dont think so much that she was so wrong in her assumption.

hannah was chatting me up and somewhere in the conversation, talking about our memories she admitted to being in love with me and asked me if i loved her. after consideration i acknowledged that my ten year old self was in love with her. and i kept the conversation very much attached to my ten year old self and never my current self. i am not sure if feelings about a person can persist through 17 years of not seeing one another or being connected in any way or form. i really dont think that they could.

so i worked through that awkward conversation thinking about what it all means. about what it means to be in love with a person, certainly i care about all the people that have had an effect on my life and the first experiences i had with her are stowed in my heart. they could never leave. is that love? i dont know. i am certainly not smart enough to discern something as weighty.

and then last night happened. after parting ways with becky she called me a few times but i kept on with what i was doing, i would call her after i had left. but she was ever persistent and resorted to sending me a stream of text messages. and the gist of it was that she had never gotten over me and the relationship we had seven years ago and thought that my coming back here was a sign from god. she told me of her undying love for me and that he would follow me anywhere if i ever wanted her too.

i havent yet responded because i just havent discovered the right tact for saying that i dont want her to follow me anywhere. that she is a nice person, but i came back here to visit my family - her god character never intervened. when i do respond i will just have to tell her that she is a wonderful person with great qualities and she just needs to apply herself more to finding what she wants in her life. i wont be there for her and she will have to accept that and move to become a stronger person. change the combination to her heart and drop hints with other people she fancies. i dont know.

and this stuff happens when i am working through the breaking of a long term relationship and i have to reconcile my feelings on that as well. i think the ultimate lesson here is that life is confusing, but there is a light. sure, you have to fight through a blizzard of emotion but eventually you will find that one perfectly backlit snowflake that is so pure and so cold that you almost cant stand it. at least thats what i am hoping for.

i will say this. i am surprised by how much i have grown in these last few months of my life. and i have an idea of what i want but no idea how to materialize it.

badly pronounced and half finished sentences from a stupid suburban novel

when i left portland to be on this trip, the title for this portion of my life was: My Magnificent Travel of the Summer of 2009. see, that title made sense because this trip was supposed to last six months. and then i was supposed to come back to portland as a renewed individual ready to face the complexities of life with a fresh perspective. well, this journey has overstepped its boundaries and will need to be retitled - i am still working on that. as a matter of fact, i think the entire purpose and goals of this trip need to be reimagined.

with that in mind, i am going to summarize my journey of 2009. it will be a poor

the enormity of this trip (santa barbara)

summarization that leaves out just about everything that happens and instead focuses on how my current feelings are reflecting upon my memories...or something like that:

May: I am laid off from my job, simultaneously Emily suggests that we should live separately - yet remain a couple. I acquiesce and prepare for a shitty life. In the course of our discussions, Emily suggests that I dont just have to have a shitty life - she suggests that I could travel. After all, it is something that I had done in the past and it successfully reinvigorating my life. I adapt my pickup truck to function as a living space and set off.

Summer: I am reinvigorated. My life seems to be better out in the world, after some initial awkwardness in meeting some old friends, I remember what it is like to be a real person and free. However, I am often lonely and longing for regular companionship - the road exists not without its drawbacks. Emily and I barely speak to one another, more because of circumstance rather than choice.

my steed and i (st. louis)

August: My beard is long and after spending a wonderful week in St. Louis I am returning to visit my family. This allows me to decompress, assess my life and choices and determine my happiness. I like being with my old friends - the ease of it all. After a month in the region I leave and it is like starting this trip over again. The days grow shorter and my joy thins. Things become tedious and after being turned away from the Canadian border I take up smoking again.

Fall: I power through the east coast, there are memorable and very enjoyable visits with friends, but I am determined not to encounter cold weather. I find myself in Richmond - a city I am in love with. With my friends there, I am comfortable and happy again. Thoughts of my relationship-on-hold come ever more frequently and eventually action must dominate inaction. I take counsel from close friends, and decide to break up with Emily.

November: Despondent again. My beard has grown out of control and months on the road have affected my appearance and demeanor. I am regarded as a regular homeless person and this distinction affects my ability to enjoy certain adventures that had punctuated my trip previously. I find myself in

the friends i have met and made (portsmouth)

New Orleans and am presented with a decision. Head north for the holidays or continue west with this trip.

December: My loneliness and despondency dominates my judgment and I head north towards my family. My personal funds have recessed quickly and I am ever conscious of the money I spend on frivolous things like food. The safety and comfort of being with my family has warmed me to the point that I want nothing more than to be a part of something so wonderful for always. However my head is overwhelmed by the possibilities and decisions i must make pending the inevitable conclusion of this journey.

well, now that that is finished i want to elaborate on my choice of words - as anyone who has met me will know i am a very happy person. despondency and sadness are not qualities that i regularly or openly portray, every single moment that i am here i am trying to be as happy as i possibly can and the moments of overwhelming joy are not few and far between. it just so happens that when i choose to sit and write i reflect more on the side that i share less prominently.

you know, trying to make myself more of a complete person.

painting over the things i thought i knew

last night i had the most wonderful date i have ever been on. i havent held much stock in blind dates, but luckily this one wasnt completely blind. i have written before about being on a dating website called okcupid, and this lady i met last night is someone that comes from this place. as i am traveling i update my location to where ever i am going to be or to where i am heading so that i can scroll through my matches in the area and people watch on the internet. i have never been very compelled to pursue meeting people from this website.

i have exchanged plenty of messages with ladies on the website and even planned to meet up with a number of them, but when it comes down to it i just couldnt bring myself to it. basically, i talk myself out of it. like a tease. so i started a conversation with a lady in chicago and, well, one thing led to another. i had mentioned square dancing on my profile and picked up on that saying that if i ever actually came to chicago she would love to go square dancing with me.

immediately, i searched the internet for chicago area square dances. not only because of this carrot, but because square dancing is something that i love to do very much and i have had a hard time finding dances along my way. to my immense surprise i found a healthy square dancing community that lives in the city of chicago and there was a very perfectly timed dance that happened last night.

so i made some inquiries about the dance, floated an invitation and waited. in the meantime i went through the motions to make it to chicago for this dance should the offer actually be accepted. and it came down to the wire. i sourced some proper square dancing attire, a plaid shirt with leather shoulders, a bolo tie, jeans (!), and a cowboy hat. this would be the first time i have worn jeans for social purposes in at least ten years. there is something very strange about jeans to me, something about wearing blue pants that just doesnt mesh well with my peripheral vision.

my date, vaughnda (i know, what an awesome name), took some time to get back to me. for a day or so i felt as if she just wasnt going to respond. meeting people on the internet is wierd and i had started our conversation ensuring her that we would never meet one another and in just a few days time i am asking her on a date. but i had already set everything into motion and whether or not she wanted to come out with me i was headed to chicago for the evening. fortunately, the night before the square dance she got back to me, allayed any stranger danger and agreed to come out with me. i was happy about that but also nervous it would be hard to back out now. so i took some deep breaths and allowed this knowledge to course through my body and slept the night fully.

the next morning alex and i went out to some thrift store to get the jeans i wore and we went to pick up a digital camera from my sister because mine had recently crapped out - hence the lack of pictures recently. around 3:30 in the afternoon we left for chicago, i drove his little car/truck thing up and proceeded to go the wrong way on the expressway while he slept in the passenger seat. normally i am not bad at driving and i have made the trip from indiana to chicago hundreds of times. once i realized i had gone the wrong way i woke up alex and inquired about our next move. he navigated us through some southern city suburbs to find the proper expressway again and we set along our path.

we got to his work right at 5, which is also the time he had to start work so he sent me on some errands he wouldve accomplished had i not gotten us lost on the way to the city. i went to the store to buy some supplies for the bar kitchen that night. shortly after i finished shopping and was driving back to the bar vaughnda called me. this was the first time we had talked to one another and i was relieved to hear that she had a very pleasant voice. there was a bit of awkwardness but that was to be expected. she said that right at the end of her workday she had been given extra work to do. upon hearing this i thought she was giving me a line to get out of this date we had planned and my hope tanked for a moment.

but this was not the case. she just said it would delay her leaving working for a few minutes and we planned to meet up at alex's bar - the black rock. i went back to the bar and proceeded to freak out - internally. i had a beer and smoked cigarettes at a rapid pace. alex assured me that the train from downtown to here would take at least 40 minutes so i had plenty of time to compose myself. in this time i proceeded to feel very dumb for the outfit i was wearing. already i felt out of place because it was such a departure from how i view myself - even though i knew no one around me was thinking this, they have no idea how i regularly look and certainly most people do not consider jeans an awkward choice of leg coverings - and knowing that vaughnda was coming straight from work i figured that she would be much less dressed for the occasion than i was. alex comforted me by suggesting that the possibility of her bringing along a change of clothes existed.

i stood outside of the bar, smoking, watching the corner where people coming from the train would emerge. i caught her just as she rounded the corner and immediately appreciated her - if just from a distance. heart pounding i darted back into the bar pulled from my beer, chewed down a peppermint, and then tried to look casual. of course i was laughing at the ridiculousness of myself in this moment.

the thing of it was, i had never really asked anyone out on a proper date in my life. this was a first for me, so the middle school butterflies that i should have long since bested were flitted madly about my insides. i was nervous and giddy, excited and scared. and then the door opened. she was wearing a long orange parka, a colorful knitted hat with flaps that come over the ears, rectangle glasses and a wonderful smile. she sauntered to my position at the bar, i got out of my chair and i think we shook hands. i asked if she felt more comfortable sitting at the bar or in the back room on a couch. she chose the bar. and that was wonderful. frequently i find that women are more comfortable sitting away from the bar, but i like going to the bar to sit at the bar thats what it is about.

she took off her coat and i was happy to see that she was wearing what i would call a jumper dress that buttoned up the front. pleasant earth tone plaid with a small dark gray sweater, black tights and some black boots. she was very cute. and i was happy for this. happier still was when she sat down, ordered a point pale ale, and we had a laugh. her smile and laugh was very relaxing and we fell quickly into some random conversation. it was very easy and i appreciated this. at some point she noticed that it was well past our time to leave for the start of this dance and we quickly paid the tab and departed for evanston, il.

it took us about twenty minutes to get there and we kept up a healthy conversation, the fear of failing conversation is a heavy burden for a first date, but nothing seemed forced. when we got to the space we were about twenty minutes late for the pre-dance training session. vaughnda had never been to a square dance before, so there was a little bit of concern from missing the training but it wasnt overbearing. i was expecting to walk into this hall and see a number of octogenarians and a crowd that was mostly 50+, at the very least i expected to be some of the youngest people there. this was not the case.

the training was still happening when we walked in the door, no one was taking money at the door so we just came in and jumped into the training. i was happy for this, because i am not a big fan of paying for things, but i was prepared to. we met some people quickly that seemed to be younger than us and finished the few minutes of training that was planned. there was a short intermission between the end of the training and the beginning of the proper dance. and any fear that i had of the square dance being too complex or this not being an awesome evening vanished.

the dance was very similar to the ones in which i participated in portland. the caller walked through the entire dance before the fiddlers came in and the actual dance was called. there were many moves that i had no recollection of, so the walk through was very helpful. the dance itself started at 8 and went to 11. we danced there for the entire three hours, sitting out just one dance i think. and, i dont think there exists a better or more complete way to experience a first date than to go to a barn dance. you have a primary partner and throughout each dance switch partners frequently. there is plenty of touching and you get to sweat a little bit. there were no moments i liked more than when we got to swing together and we pulled our bodies close together and danced around in a circle two or three times. our faces close together, both smiling, nothing better.

well, i guess there was one move that i liked better. i dont recall the name for it but i will walk through it now. there are two couples that form a square. the gents are facing each other, as are the ladies. the gents come to the middle, grasp hands and lift them in the air. then the ladies come inside the gents, clasp hands and similarly lift them in the air. then the arms - hands still tightly clasped - come down around everyone so we are tightly locked together. everyone puts their right foot into the middle toes touching each other. this foot stays on the ground and with the left foot we run around each other to create the effect of, well, the carnival ride "tilt-a-whirl." after going around two or five times very fast you unclasp hands, draw your partner close to you and swing.

there is nothing better than this move because a person cannot help but have an amazingly large smile on their face after this tilt-a-whirl move and then when you draw close together there is just a wonderful connection there. like we both just had an amazing experience that will shortly be recreated. i love square dancing.

each dance we were encouraged to find a new partner. i didnt want to do this - i liked my partner very much - but i acquiesced for two dances. these were just as fun, but i found myself looking around the room to find vaughnda and when the dances brought us together again, things were good. at a few points in the evening there were breaks in the large square dances for couples dancing and we did this each time it was offered as well. i was happy - ecstatic more so - to have such a willing partner. we had no real idea how to do couples dancing but we continued to bump our way straight through the dance floor, laughing all the way.

but the dance had to come to an end. i had mixed emotions regarding this. square dancing is labor intensive, i was dripping sweat and my back was drenched by the end of the dance and i would have wished not have a sweaty back on our first date. luckily out of the two of us i wasnt the only one with a sweaty back. so i was happy to get outside and cool off, but when the dance was set to end i knew our evening was drawing ever closer to its end and this was not something i was happy with. i was in such a state of joy i dont think i have yet learned the words to describe it.

but we had to leave. and so we were outside and soon back in the car. having to decide our future. i equated my situation as a cinderella story. at 1:am my pumpkin, my dress, and all my little animal friends that had helped make this evening a success would have to return to normal. so we went to a bar, her local bar the whirlaway. we sat there drinking two beers continuing talking and at this point i was a little bit sad. i wanted so much to be swinging my partner with our bodies drawn close to one another instead of sitting at the bar watching one another intently and sometimes having our legs touch. it was at this moment that she admitted to her like of me. and that was nice.

so, in my typical saying wierd things at inopportune moments i posed our situation to her. i let her know that this night was our entire relationship; the beginning, the good times, the bad times, the end of it all. and all crammed into seven hours. i dont remember precisely what she said, but i admitted to my liking of her around this moment and that i was sad that we couldnt spend more time together. maria, the bartender and proprietor of the bar, offered us a shot as we were leaving the bar. our wonderful romantic evening drawing to a close. neither of us accepted the shot, i had to drive.

by this time, regardless of how well everything was going, my intense attraction to this wonderful person next to me, i had made my mind up not to kiss her. it felt rational in my mind, i knew that i wouldnt be around and sealing the evening with physical romance would only lead to longing. and, especially for me, questions. however, when we got outside she turned to me and said very abruptly that she was going to make out with me now and there was no way i was going to say no. for 10 or 15 minutes we stood outside the bar in the freezing temperature making out with one another. and it was divine. i was very torn and wanted nothing more than to come home with her and continue with this night.

but i was poorly dressed for being out in the cold so long, shivering through the delight and knowing that my 1:am call time was drawing ever nearer and perhaps had even passed already. i wasnt going to leave that spot, i wouldve stood there in the freezing cold as long as she was on my side of the road. like leonardo dicaprio in titanic. as soon as her boots fell on the opposite sidewalk my heart was deflated and i was very confused and sad. i sat in the car/truck thing and debated with my inner self. i was also texting alex. after a few minutes he said that i could stay out until 2 and he would just sit and drink at the bar, but i had already watched vaughnda turn the corner.

i debated the merits of running after her and wrapping her in my arms while we continue to kiss one another, but then i thought about how unfair that was. to everyone involved. and i was upset about the path of life i am on where i am developing relationships with wonderful people throughout this country and after hours or days or weeks of being around some awesome people i am ripping myself away from places where i could easily be happy for a much longer period of time, and all for what? i am unhappy with my unreliability to the people that flit throughout my life. and my inability to just give myself more time.

i came back to the bar, and i was beaming. absolutely. although i had some fleeting sadness about the state of my life i pushed that aside for another time and reviewed the magic of this evening just bursting to tell someone about how wonderful it was. alex was outside smoking when i rolled up and i proceeded to unload my tale upon him. i came out as a jumbled mix, not very coordinated at all. we sat at the bar for about a half hour and then we came back to indiana. alex had been drinking so i had to drive again. and that was okay. it gave me more time to rerun the evening and gush as something new was remembered.

we made it back very safe and sound, and had some text messages from vaughnda on my phone. alex proceeded to confuse me, but detailing all of the merits of moving back to chicago - using this evening as a general pretense - and also playing on my confusion over life and especially my confusion over what awaits me back in portland. sigh.

the loneliness that you call freedom

well, its been ages since i have been able to sit down and write a bit about the life happening around me. most of it has been family things. i went to my aunt carol's 50th birthday, then shopping with my siblings for pictures, a small pre-christmas with my mom and stepdad, christmas eve with the family on my stepmoms side, christmas day at my dads, and then the day after christmas at a surprise party for my grandpa. a whirlwind of family activity.

and, unfortunately, not much excitement. i guess i wasnt really expecting any kind of excitement. mostly the times have just been good family time, something that i havent had given time for in years. in between these family things i cut off all of my hair, and met up with my old friend becky again.

the most surprising thing about being here, without much notice, for christmas was the amount of gifts i received. and this was a strong reason for me not to want to come back here for the holidays. i think stopped celebrating the holidays about 10 years ago, basically renounced the season and the gift giving and things like that. at first i was pretty militant about it and actually got upset at the idea of people wanting to exchange gifts. i remember sending my sister an email when she was 15 describing all the reasons why i dont choose to participate, mostly because of the rampant consumerism and the automatic reflex, unquestioning devotion to this holiday.

over time my views softened and just last year i sent gifts to a number of people in my family. those gifts were macrame plant hangers and owls, crafts that i made by hand. this year i didnt put enough thought or time into it and i was somewhat embarrassed coming to the three functions where i received gifts and didnt have anything to really give in return. well, i was part of a group gift at all the functions.

on the walls of my moms house the most recent picture of me is from my sophmore year in high school - pretty embarrassing. my dad has more recent pictures, but the last 'family photo' that he has is about 15 years old. also embarrassing. i was - at the time - a rebellious kid and didnt take to following orders from anyone. in the picture i am the only one not dressed up, i wear a dumb expression and am generally untidy. my sister had the idea this year that us four kids and our nephew would go get professional pictures and give them as gifts to the family. this worked out wonderfully.

i dressed in my best clothes (which still werent very good) we went to the mall and had eight shots taken of us. one with my brother, me and our nephew bryce, one with me my brother and my sister, one with all of us, a funny one, and some others. we got frames and gave these as gifts to my mom, the aunts and uncles on my stepmoms side, and to my dad. they went over well.

on the day after christmas, at my grandpas surprise party, i got to hang out with a number of my cousins that i havent seen in years. at these functions i generally cringe. i prepare myself for answering the same questions over and over again. i live in oregon - not "warshington", i have been traveling for seven months, i am unemployed, yes it rains alot, those types of questions. i dont feel that there is much i have in common with these people and my prolonged separation from them has led to me thinking of them more as strangers than as family. thats sad, but true.

so i was surprised when my cousin josh spotted me and made to talk with me. josh is like 38 years old, so he was always older than me and growing up i didnt know much about him. but at this event he came to talk to me and felt that i was a kindred spirit. he started talking to me about his ideas on life how capitalism is fucked up and that he would want nothing more than to walk around the country with a backpack. and that he wants to just have a bit of land somewhere hunt and fish for his livelihood and raise a family outside the bounds of what society has become.

then he got metaphysical on me and started talking about religion and his life experiences and these things. if i didnt have such a wall built up for the people in my family i wouldve been more inclined to pursue these things with him, but we were both at the mercy of the rest of the family and mingling that we didnt get to expand very much on these topics. i did share some stories of my time in the anti-globalization movement and my desire to be self-sufficient. we exchanged numbers.

after this event my brother and i left. he wanted to continue going out, as he always does, and i was the designated driver. being the designated driver in my family does not mean that you cannot drink, it just means that he cannot get so fucked up people can tell you shouldnt be driving. luckily i dont get this way often, so being the driver wasnt that big of a deal. however, i was ready to call it a day and just head back to my dads house. he convinced me to continue being out.

we went to my aunt tina's house to pick up his girlfriends camera which was left there on christmas eve, then we went the liquor store where he bought a case of beer and some hot damn. hot damn is a cinnamon schnapps which is popular with my moms husband and my brother. then we went to his friend tatum's house and had some beers. there he convinced them to continue the night out to meet more of his old friends from high school at a bar in downtown crown point. i acquiesced.

i did take the opportunity of being out and about in crown point to call my old friend becky, she lives in crown point and i had been meaning to get together with her but a sympathetic situation had not yet arisen. i called her and she asked me to come pick her up. i dropped my brother off at the bar and then went to get her. it took me a half hour to get to her house and then she jumped in the car and we drove back to the bar. there was nothing groundbreaking about us coming together. neither of us were dressed fancy, which came as a bit of a shock when we got to the bar.

the bar, called the zodiac room, was a fancy place. the patrons were all in suits and general business attire, so i immediately felt out of place. i can only imagine how becky felt, but we sat down and chatted with tatum and his girlfriend kelly and eventually my brother came back to us. my brother is a social butterfly and his idea of a good time is going to a bar, getting as completely fucked up as possible and before leaving he is compelled to meet every single person and touch them in some way. he just walks up to tables and sets his drink down and start talking about something. it is annoying.

but it is also a family trait. i can do this - certainly not as well or as willingly - because we learned it from our father. so, he flitted about the bar while the four of us sat and talked, mostly amongst ourselves. meaning i talked to becky and tatum and kelly talked to one another. eventually joes friends showed up, including some girl that he used to date and has always ben in love with. this brought him back to the table and becky and i moved to a loveseat. an hour or more later, my brother owns the place and more people he knows are streaming in. this isnt fun for me, so becky and i decide to leave.

wait, something i forgot to mention. at some point becky and i went up to the bar to smoke and my brother was there talking to someone. he wrapped up that conversation and then turned to us and asked me if i know who the person sitting at the bar was. i had no idea who it was. and this is something that happens often, my brother wants me to remember someone and i have no recollection of them, then he introduces me to them and act like its the first time meeting them. because, for me, it really is. however, this person was someone i did remember. it was my step-brother. but, i didnt remember his name. i thought it was jason, but it turned out to be adam.

so we got joe ready to leave, but he wanted to go to just one more bar and we obliged. a pile of us left the bar to walk down the street. by this time becky and i were just making out with one another. these bars were not going to offer us anymore. we went to the next bar and it was a regular bar but it was also completely packed. we took one step inside and decided not to stay. by "we" i meant becky and i. to my brother this was mecca. i wrenched him away from whoever he was trying to meet just then and told him we were leaving. since i was his driver, i told him to call me when he is ready and i will come get him. it was only about 10:pm so i wasnt expecting a call anytime soon.

becky took me back to her house where we "got to know each other better" and that was nice. around 1 in the morning i tried calling my brother to see if he was ready to go but he didnt return my calls or text messages, so i fell asleep with becky in her bed. and that was even better. i do miss cuddling like that. i woke up at 5 in the morning and decided it was time to leave - brother be damned. mostly i wanted to leave because becky lives with her parents and i didnt want to be leaving in the morning when they were having breakfast. her family is dysfunctional enough and i had no desire to meet them just then. so i got dressed, called my brother some more and when he didnt answer i went back to valpo.

i got home at 6:am and promptly fell asleep again. my brother called me at 9:am, i got up and left to get him. i told my parents what was going on and then left again to crown point. i picked him up some house where a mom invited me inside and talked to me about portland for a little bit while joe got his things together. that was uncomfortable, i didnt want to meet the parents at the house i slept at so why the hell do i have to meet the parents of the house he slept at?! then we drove back to valpo.

and we had the frequent conversation concerning my brothers happiness and his direction in life, why he gets up to things he does and why he treats himself the way he does. the conversation is getting boring to me because he recognizes his problems and just doesnt do the work to turn it around. then we had a lazy day.

now i am at my friends alex's house in griffith, preparing to go to chicago with him tonight. first i need to buy jeans.