An Inconvenient Time to Clear the Board
27 October 2008 
I just swallowed The Pill for the first time in my life, followed shortly by a swig of my tart margarita. Shocking, I know. Not so much that I swallowed medication with alcohol, but that I’ve never been on birth control.
Ironically enough, any chance of pregnancy was quite cut short yesterday. The Poet and I agreed to go our separate ways and meet for coffee in a couple months. And if I had ever indulged the idea of anything beyond kissing – even a recurrance of kissing – with Tall, Dark, Handsome, I’m sure it would run contrary to yesterday’s encounter when I sat hungover on his couch, in dire need of a shower and talking comfortably of prostitutes and football.
What is that familiar phrase that women use at times like this? Oh right, looks like I’m “back to the drawing board.” As if even when we somewhat appreciate the freedom of having our options open, we’re still running over to that large white sheet to conjure up a suitable man with our pens, or if we’re lucky, with colorful paint brushes.
I know women who can successfully write off men for long periods of time. After all, there are so many other pieces of life to set our minds to and chat about with our friends. But rather than read about the Alaskan senator’s ethical violations or catch up on the most recent Newsweek and Time magazines on my kitchen table, I sit here pondering my drawing board. How it was erased so quickly and how long before I’ll start to fill it up again.
At least I can take comfort in the fact that I’m using The Pill for precisely the reason I told my doctor I needed it. Not to prevent pregnancy, but to ease PMS.
Sleeping over
24 October 2008 
The first time I went home with the Poet, he wouldn’t let me spend the night.
“It’s more intimate,” he said. “I have to get to know someone before I sleep next to them.”
I thought it was an odd request. I was insulted that kissing me, taking my clothes off and other undisclosed activities were somehow not intimate, or at least not as intimate as sleeping. But I complied and let him walk me home, because well, what else could I do?
This happened several times before I broke the sleep-over threshold and he invited me to stay. He has lovely egyptian cotton sheets and fluffy sinking pillows. He makes me really strong black coffee in the morning, just how I like it. And when we spoon, I disappear in between tanned, toned arms and tangled sheets. But I can’t sleep. Even when we’ve had so much bourbon that sleep should be a natural conclusion, I toss and turn all night. And it’s not because of the snoring.
In a change of scenary, I spent the night with Tall Dark and Handsome last night. His sheets are not Egyptian Cotton, he did not make me coffee in the morning; we kissed drunkenly, he gave me some comfortable clothes and we passed out. And I slept better than I do in my own bed.
Why? Because I trust Tall Dark and Handsome.
The Poet is perfect in almost every way. But I don’t tell him everything that comes to mind as I would with any of my friends (TD&H included), and I can’t fall asleep next to him. I don’t trust the Poet.
And finally I understood that he was right. Sleeping next to someone is more intimate than other things. But it’s not a matter of getting to know someone, it’s a matter of trusting someone.
A quill, a pen, a text?
21 October 2008 
Sitting in Starbucks, writing my Grandmother a letter, I realized how much I loved etching each word, careful that my handwriting was legible, leaving a print of myself somwhere between the paper and the pen.
I thought of the text message I had received the night before around 2 a.m., “U up-ish?” and I decided that technology had made dating a lot less romantic.
Oh would that he write me a letter! I thought with a laugh. Wishful thinking. Even letter writing has been reduced to Microsoft Word documents. And soft journals or diaries, precious drafts of novels with lines scrawled out and notes cramped into the margins, have been replaced by, well, blogs like this.
Granted, I would guard my Backspace button for all I’m worth, but when it comes to romance, shouldn’t there be a little sacrifice of time, a little careful etching? Or at the very least, a little thought and wit thrown in.
And no, I was not “up-ish.”
Letting my senses fall
I lay slowly inhaling his breath, dense with smoke, as it enveloped me. I couldn’t sleep. The curve of his body next to me, the sound of his relaxed breathing, with the occasional soft snore, his cigarette and bourbon taste lingering in my mouth…my eyes were closed, but my senses couldn’t relax.
My senses live for this kind of man. The kind who resides in a pleasantly musty apartment building, with creaking spiral stairs and dust-covered banisters, which culminates in the smell of books that line his apartment walls when I open the door. Covers and pages that are meant to be opened, that are opened. And then my nose turns over to my ears as he begins to read. He reads with purpose, a slow and intentional, deep and curious voice. As I sit on the couch listening to his monologue, my eyes, perhaps feeling left out, glance up and are almost knocked back down by the glittering force of his eyes.
“My mother has crazy eyes,” he said, showing me photo of her when she was 9, and another from her wedding day. He was right, her eyes were captivating, glowing deep with intelligence and mischief even in black-and-white. His eyes are a different color, a different shape, but they feel exactly the same.
My senses have fallen in love with the Poet. I lay there and wondered if he were also awake, thinking of me. He had no reason to be, I decided. He tells me so much about himself, and my senses keep falling, and the faster they fall, the more I pull back. I tell him nothing. I smile and laugh, comment on his books, compliment his taste in music, respond to his stories, but I give him nothing that is my own.
My senses have fallen, but my head is holding onto my heart with a string of logic and a board of my own mystery.
Men who fall hard write great poetry
(Note: This was written two days before I posted it. I don’t have Internet in my apartment…)
I caught his eye as he glanced up in between lines of poetry, across the candlelit table. I probably shouldn’t have been there. It was well after 1 a.m., and this Man is more than 10 years older than me. But he has a library in his apartment, his body is breathtaking due to his devotion to yoga, and in case you forgot, he was reading me poetry across his candlelit kitchen table — poetry that he wrote two years ago.
He read me the entire book, sipping on tequila and pausing every few poems to ask if he should continue. I always said yes. I had never looked through such an intimate window to a man’s broken heart.
After talking to Kitty over the phone the next morning, I couldn’t help but think of Poet. His words from two years ago were those of a lover who had fallen hard. Twenty to 30 pages of aching heart, searching for explanation, delving for a memory when something everything went wrong.
Kitty told me that she had kissed Tom. And I realized that I would never write with the brokenheartedness that Poet did.
Women fall in love easily, a lot more easily than men. But I listened to him read from warped white pages, lines he had perfected over years of inner turmoil, I met his crystal blue eyes over the four small candles between us, and I decided that when men fall, they fall a lot harder than women.
My own recent fall apparently didn’t bruise me very deeply at all — something I didn’t realize until that morning. When Kitty confessed her kiss, I searched my heart for any form of anger or jealousy, any sense of betrayal, and I found none.
Where I should have found a shaking choke in my throat, an accusing finger reaching through the phone, I found instead an easy curiosity. Did his hairy chest bother her? What was he wearing? Sarcastic as usual? Oh God, he used the “I’m in bed with a really pretty girl” line?! He should really come up with a new one, honestly! We laughed.
Did I never fall for the one guy I thought I fell for, the guy I lost my virginity to and dated for a collective almost three years, the guy who was going to move to NYC to be with me before I shattered his heart (for the second time…)?
I fell, and I think I fell quickly, just not hard enough.
