Category Archives: Old Journal Entries

Dancing to Cop a Feel

So this guy, Serdar from Turkey, invites Kelly over to his place to teach her salsa dancing.  Nina, Kelly’s roommate, asked if I wanted to tag along.  I learned a few good moves from Serdar.  But, I was irked by the obvious attraction he had for Kelly.  Kelly has a fiance.  Does Serdar from Turkey know that?  He asked her over so that he could cop a feel?  He was copping many feels: moving behind her and wiggling her in ways that would make her fiance very uncomfortable if he wasn’t trapped in Tibet.  So, we jammed.

I wanted to learn new moves.  He wasn’t interested in teaching.  He was interested in feeling Kelly.  And, that was bothersome.  Sigh…

My passion for salsa will just have to wait until I’m in Guatemala.

Songs and Heartache

Kaiko’s place is nice.  The sofa makes a soft bed and the insulation for the apartment is much better than the house in PG.  No complaints.

I finished watching “Just Married” about half an hour ago.  Ashton Kucher and Brittney Murphy.  The premise was marriage at young age and the perennial issue of whether love is enough to sustain a marriage over time.  The movie was… blah.  But, it got me thinking.  It got me thinking about Alicia Keys’ song, “When You Really Love Someone”:

‘Cause a man just ain’t a man if he ain’t man enough

To love you when you’re right
Love you when you’re wrong
Love you when you’re weak
Love you when you’re strong
Take you higher in a world when you’re feeling low
He’s giving you his last, ’cause he’s thinking of you first
Giving comfort when he’s thinking that you’re hurt
That’s what it’s like when you really really love someone

Shit.  It’s like listening to a critique of my love for L.  How can I say that I really loved her if it was conditional?  Did I really love her as much as I did if I don’t feel shitty when I think about our break-up?  No heartache.  No regrets.  No “fuck-I-lost-a-good-thing” feeling.  I’m glad it’s over.  I have that feeling Tim Robbins got when he crawled out of the sewers in “Shawshank” — the exhilaration of freedom.  But, that’s it.  How could I have loved L. so truly and deeply if my happiness now can be equated to Robbins’ after escaping prison by crawling through football fields of feces?

It’s a fucking mystery that I’ve tried to solve with all my closest of friends.  No explanation so far really strikes as the right one.

I suspect that I’m just really, really, really pissed off and I’m trying to keep an Hiroshima-type explosion on the down-low… a Southeast Asian tsunami-like sobbing session at bay.  Did this break-up fuck me up so bad, so deeply that I’m still incapable of fully experiencing its full effect?  Was I so thoroughly wounded that I had to shut off my ability to feel about anything related to this relationship?  It would make sense.  I close out any feelings so that I wouldn’t feel the pain, and, as a side-effect, I feel like I’m over L.  I feel like I’ve moved on, that I’m neither attached nor feel the love I once had for her.  Geez… and I thought I was good at understanding myself.

When I drove home that night after leaving R. and her friends, I started thinking about how much I missed that feeling.  That feeling of being around someone who made you enjoy the moment.  Carpe diem.  I always live for the future, work for that day when I would reach my various goals.  When I was with L., I just loved being around her.  I didn’t care about the next day or worried about the future.  I didn’t mind what we were doing as long as I was with L.  I didn’t care where we were going as long as she was going with me.  It was… goddammit… love.

So, I was driving home and David Gray starting singing “Be Mine”:

From the very first moment I saw you
That’s when I knew
All the dreams I held in my heart
Had suddenly come true…

Fuck.  I was bawling.  The tears ran down my face and clouded my vision like the rain that poured on my windshield as I entered Monterey that night.  It felt so good to cry.  I hit the repeat button just so the lyrics could elicit all my pent up emotions again.  Could I have been any more morbid?

I wrote it off, though.  I wrote it off as my feelings for R. that were twisted into my recollections of L. But, maybe those tears were genuinely for our dead relationship?

Whether or not I’m suppressing the full impact of this break-up, I just hope it doesn’t manifest during any new relationship.

MIIS Follies

Who would have known there was so much talent here at the Monterey Institute?  We don’t just have guitar players and dancers and singers, but all of the above who can speak in another language.  We had a woman do a very beautiful African dance.  Norwegians and Danes and Germans singing variations of “You Are My Sunshine.”  Korean students doing a deconstruction of the English language in social settings – that was very much like DI back in my Forensics-days.  The AV Manager did a wonderful juggling and “light-swinging” show.  Gosh… a whole list of performances from 7pm until 9:45pm.  That’s a lot of talent.

Today was quite a jam-packed day.  The morning was spent in Advanced Finance.  Afterwards, I picked up the huge cargo van that I then filled up with all my stuff.  I’ll be driving 90% of all that I have here in Monterey back to L.A. this weekend.  It’s the only weekend that I have available before April comes around.  I need to use those weekends to visit my friends.

Then there was Happy Hour at four.  And then it was the Follies at seven.  After the performances, a whole group of us went to Octane for some salsa dancing.  And, I got back just after midnight.  Had dinner.  Showered.  Now I’m about to go to sleep.  Typing this entry on my lap since my table is gone.  My room looks so bare.  So naked.

Guatemala… I’m thinking, dreaming, hoping that there will be salsa dance teachers there who can show me advanced moves.

Man… my throat feels all itchy from shouting.

Not Homeless

Kaiko and his roommate, Pat, agreed to rent out their livingroom to me for the three weeks that I’ll be in Monterey.  So, I won’t be homeless and living out of my car afterall!  It’s very nice of them, since having a third roommate is quite an inconvenience in such a small space.  I’ll be paying $250 for those few weeks plus one-third of utilities, and taking them both out to dinner of their choice.  Ah… one less problem to worry about.

Guatemala… Here I Come!

I got my invitation via FedEx today!  I’m going to Guatemala!  Hurray!  Hurrah!  Dang, I’m so excited!  Look at all those exclamation marks!

So, as expected, my assignment will be Small Business Development.  I’ll be leaving May 2nd, and I’ll be living with a host family for 3 months before I actually begin my assignment in July.  What a thrill… I get to learn Spanish — and see the Mayan temples of Tikhal.

I read the overview of Guatemala on “The Lonely Planet.”  Looks like a fairly dangerous place.  And, I’m debating whether I should make myself a target of robberies by bringing my laptop.  Heh.  Well, let’s see if I can work something out.

Damn… there’s so much to do in the next few weeks!  So many friends to see.  So many loose financial ends to tie up.  But, I’m know where I’m going – and that’s what’s important.

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