the musings of an Ivy League student in the American Metropolis
on the topic that Bboy A and I got together on the day that Big D and I were “planning” to get married.
Emo-tastic A: You’ve got like, some kind of weird obsession with 8, eh?
Me: Yeah, I guess.
A: Is it like some kind of food fetish? Like, the past tense of eat?
M: Or oral sex.
So I just got off skype with Emo-tastic A… after talking to him for waaaaaay too long. -___-”
And I was all pensive and shit about crap that is way too complicated.
(Talking to my past has that effect on me sometimes. Damnit.)
And I’m kind of freaking out because I have so much work to do tomorrow it’s unreal.
Fuck. What am I doing?
I learned tonight that I’m not completely over Big D, that he was some kind of big shot in high school, that he was the better looking of us two… It’s not that I’d want to get back together with him… at this point, it’s hardly possible and it would be so destructive for me. But maybe I just miss our physicality? The way we connected? Will it get better between me and Bboy A? Was it ever this… awkward… or… whatever this is with Big D?
Bboy A told me that he missed me over the phone today, and even though I missed him a lot today, I just couldn’t say it. I tell him all the time, though text messages, e-mails… but putting it into words is a lot harder than either of those. Maybe it’ll remind me too much of the sweet words between me and Big D… I stared at Bboy A’s lips the last time we made out, from the nose down, he looks exactly like Big D… maybe all boys do. Making out with Bboy A is messy, jarred, and at times… too urgent. Maybe I just need to give it time. But, do I like him enough to give us that luxury?
Long distance relationships bite. One-sided relationships suck even more. Thanks, Big D.
M and P were my closest friends in CEGEP, and even before that they were such good friends that the rest of us even came up with a hybrid of their name. In Linear Algebra, we were also known as “Team Asia, A for Awesome” or “Shut up, your team is too loud”. In Physics, we would sit together and come up with ultimatums for physicists, such as “Wife? or the Principle of Conservation of Energy?”
M e-mailed me back today, a really unexpected reply to my “back in the same time zone as you!!!” message. Last time I had come home, M and I sat talking for a long time, about everything under the sun. And of course, as every young adult conversation goes, we ended up talking about relationships, namely, how I still couldn’t (can’t?) get over Big D, how M was doing with her boyfriend and how everybody else we knew where handling their love lives. I guess you can call it a “gossip-fest” (as P refers to it), but to me, it was honestly some catching up and some moving on.
I must have let something slip to P, I don’t remember. But if I had, then it obviously showed that we hadn’t intended anything malicious by our conversation about others’ private affairs, and I guess I definitely believed that M, P, and I were close enough to share these things with each other. After I left for my adventures in the East, P sent M an e-mailed expressing her disappointement, and it was pretty much downhill after that. M never had a chance to clearly express herself in person to P, and P only responds with nasty e-mails.
Obviously, I feel really responsible. If it wasn’t for me and my… inability to get over Big D, M would have probably not started talking about all kinds of other relationships in our circle of friends, and M, P and I would still be on speaking terms. It’s strange, how helping me getting over the loss of love, we wound up losing more of it.
In an incomprehensible and bold move, I dashed into my mother’s closet and took back my box of Big D things. It was stupid, perhaps, especially if she notices. But it was… necessary? It was strange to have two years of my love life sitting at the bottom of her closet, underneath her pantyhose and leather handbags.
I think it will be necessary, also, for me to actually get rid of all these stuff sometime in the future. Like, throw it away, or bury it… (burning it would be too angry…!) Do I need to get rid of what remains of us in order to move on? (or rather, did he get rid of his box of my things?)
As I was organizing the contents of the box, I couldn’t help but remember specific things we did. I still had such a photographic memory of what he gave me over the two years: a business card holder when I got my first summer desk job, a tile from Mexico with our number on it, a t-shirt that read “I <3 my physics geek”. We kept a notebook throughout much of our relationship, kind of like a diary to one another, because we didn’t see each other as nearly often as we wanted to. He wrote things like “I hope you don’t cheat on me in Taiwan…” and “I can’t until we live together; learning from a hot girl is a lot better than learning from a sheet of paper.”
I couldn’t help but ask stupid, instinctive questions to myself like, “How could something like that turn into something that it is now?” Big D and I haven’t written to each other in weeks, haven’t spoken in months, much less seen each other. I know that he has lost the desire to stay in touch, much less spend some time to travel to see me.
It always takes two people to start a relationship, but only one to end it.
It appears that I will be missing two (2!) great concerts as I leave the West for the East. Death Cab for Cutie is in Montreal on June 6th, a mere 3 days after I leave, and Reel Big Fish is showing up for the Warped Tour sometime this July. As I’m typing that last line, I feel somewhat like a phony, because I’m really not that hardcore of a music fan. Come to think of it, I think I would almost rather stay home alone (or with someone close) and listen to their CDs on 300$ headphones.
I’ve only really been to two concerts all my life. Both of them were for Reel Big Fish and both of them were with Big D. The first was in April of 2006. We had been together for about 10 months then, and my friends surprised us with two tickets for our birthdays (which happen to be in the same month). It was also the first night we spent together… and oddly enough, it wasn’t as awkward as typical relationship scenario would usually dictate it to be. The second concert was in Paris, where we spent many a-night together. (It was also the first time a lesbian hit on me, but that’s another story).
He’s gone to two more Reel Big Fish concerts. Once right after he cheated on me, during the summer of 2007. Once just recently (as he told me via e-mail) at a small place in Ithaca. I sometimes wonder if he misses going to concerts with me. I also sometimes wonder if… I will be able to enjoy a Reel Big Fish concert as much as I have without him skanking by my side. It’s a strange thing, to relate concerts to him, because I’m hesitante to start going to them alone, or with someone new.
I was planning on visiting the underground ska scene in New York, but safety concerts (um… roofies?!) and lack of time deterred me from visiting venues. But Beijing is looking promising, because we’ll be a bunch of Westernized kids looking for things to do every night. There is this club, D22, looks promising, who knows? Because… oh, those summer nights!
Montreal reeks of Big D and me. We spent many a good times here, and it’s impossible to go through a day in the city without thinking “I remember when D and I did [this] here.” I think one of the things I miss most is just… doing things. Little things, routine things, everything together. We were a weird couple like that: joined at the hip and never sick of each other. It was really interesting because I could always count on him to be free to go do something strange or outrageous with me. Or just something low-key like cook breakfast together and enjoy a good meal.
I was supposed to have a brunch get-together with S, C, and Emo-tastic A today. I hadn’t seen S and C since winter break, and I really wanted to catch up on things and ask them about their impending South Asia backpacking trip. So, like the eager-beaver nerd that I am, I went to pick up groceries and drew up a brunch “menu” for us to enjoy. Well, turns out that they all have shifts in the early afternoon and none of them realized that I was pretty far (public transit-wise) from their work places. (Although I did specifically ask if C would have prefered a brunch at a restaurant closer to her workplace). In any case, it got me kind of down. And kind of wishing Big D was still here. He’d come, and we would have a blast making kiwi-blueberry-mango, yogurt-less smoothies.
I was out in Chinatown today, hanging with S, D, and Emo-tastic A while enjoying some very good L2 bubble tea. Suddenly, we started talking about… sex? porn? Nip/Tuck? And S chimed in a with “Hey, didn’t you once tell me that you thought people with knowledge were sexy?”
It was interesting because I hadn’t seen S in nearly 2 or 3 years. He is 2 years younger than me, someone who I’d met through band, back in the day. We have a comfortable sister/brother relationship and I totally love hanging out with him. It’s interesting because maybe I haven’t changed very much after all. It’s true that I find knowledge very sexy, and that kind of comment isn’t really far from the recent discovery that raw talent is equally sexy.
Almost one year ago, my parents and I had a huge trans-continental fight where I basically had to promise not to see Big D ever again (which worked out well, since we had broken up anyhow). My mom had gone into my closet and found my box of Big-D things (letters, gifts, stupid trinkets I’ve saved from our dates), which prompted her to call my dad and me in Singapore and the rest is history. When I came back, I assumed that she had the box of items in her possession…. but she told me that she had thrown it all out. I was pretty much devastated…
So today, I was helping my mother find something in her closet and I stumbled on the box of Big D things! I mean, even she probably forgot that she had kept it in her closet all this time and lied to me. I totally freaked out. It was kinda weird… now I feel strange knowing that 2 years of my love life is sitting in her closet. I don’t particularly want to go get it back because 1) she’ll start wailing on me again about dating a white guy and 2) because I have no particular inclination to relive that period of my life through mementos.
My friends on the Table Tennis team stole this for me:
… because I thought he was incredibly cute and was obsessing for a while. Later, upon closer inspection and after experiencing my friends’ disbelief & mockery, I’ve come to realize that isn’t that physically attractive. But rather… that it was his awesome, AWESOME table tennis skills that got me.
This is comforting in some ways, and really not that novel in others. Socially, women have always been attracted to men with talent, or power (or both), while men seemed to go for the pure physical attributes of the other sex. It’s good to know that I’m perhaps not attracted only to people themselves (ie. Big D), but rather to the skills or talent that make them who they are (ie. physics, pilot, swimming)… It’s comforting to know that it’s looking more like I am only in love with the idea of him… and ideas are can be more easily replaced than people.
On the other hand, as a girl of modest looks and awesome talents (and modest, too!), I seem to be at a sexual disadvantage. No wonder I’m mostly single.
In the midst of this nothing, this miss of a life,
Still there’s this one thing just to see you go by.
It’s almost like lovin’, sad as that is.
May not be cool, but it’s so where I live.
It’s like I’m your lover or more like your ghost.
I spend the day wonderin’ what you do, where you go.
I try and just kick it, but then what can I do?
We’ve all got our junk, and my junk is you.
See us, winter walking after a storm,
It’s chill in the wind but it’s warm in your arms.
The stop all snow line, may not be true.
We’ve all got our junk, and my junk is you.
Well, you’ll have to excuse me, I know it’s so off.
I love when you do stuff that’s rude and so wrong.
I go up to my room, turn the stereo on…
Shoot up some you, and the you is some song.
I lie back just driftin’ and play out these scenes,
I ride on the rush all the hopes all the dreams.
I may be neglectin’ the things I should do.
We’ve all got our junk, and my junk is you.
See we still keep talkin’ after you’re gone.
You’re still with me then, feel so good in my arms.
They say you go blind, maybe it’s true.
We’ve all got our junk, and my junk is you.
It’s like we stop time. What can I do?
We’ve all got our junk, and my junk is you.
