three times a lady

one week left and then i'm out of here, all the way. . . next door. i'm excited to be living with women. i've been hanging out with them a little bit, just to get the "vibe" and whatnot. seems good. supportive and a little more sane than what i'm used to. however, it's still going to feel strange not to be here anymore. my current identity is very much tied to this place and the experiences i've had here. c'est la vie. time to figure out a new way to be. one thing is certain, though: i'm doing the right thing (finally.) it feels like i've been holding my breath for a year and a half, and the prospect of being able to let it all out and relax is exciting. who knows what might happen after that.

i'm also oddly excited at the prospect of visiting my friends and family down south in april. it'll be so nice to be around people who have nothing to do with my life here, but are still so much a part of who i am. plus, it's going to be a real holiday with no responsibilities hanging over my head. there will be enough of that waiting for me this summer. it's unfortunate that i work in an industry that's centred around the summer months. however, i've generally found a way to have as much fun as possible anyway. it often feels like a precarious, one second away from catastrophe kind of thing. but, maybe that's just me.

i saw my neighbour last night. he was out of town for a few days, and i was so relieved to see his big, black truck in front of his house when i was walking home from work. i marched right over with a half bottle of wine and plenty of cigarettes. the evening proceeded as it usually does: much drinking, smoking pot and lots of talking. he took a bunch of photographs of me because i wanted a portrait. if you haven't guessed already, i'm very, very interested in myself, so for the last couple of years the idea of having different portraits of myself (especially by people i know) has become more and more compelling. anyway, he took a series of photos, and i hated almost all of them. not because he's a bad photographer (he is, in fact, an excellent, even inspired, photographer) but i really am not photogenic. plus, i always want to look smaller than i actually am. i remember when i got really fat, i couldn't bear to look at pictures of myself because it was so alienating. i know that's terrible, because being fat is not a crime. but, god, it sure feels like it. especially when you're not comfortable with your body to begin with. i thought i'd be over this bullshit by this point in my life, but, no. and on top of that, i still get zits. at any rate, we saved one of the pictures, and what makes it great is that i'm moving, so everything else in the frame is static except me. i'm just a grinning blur. he e-mailed it to me so i could send it to my friend shaeya. he met her when she came to visit last summer, and he thought she was "neat." i think she's "neat," too, so it seemed like a fun thing to show her. (shaeya, check your e-mail. you too, jason.)

last winter my neighbour, room mate and i had a "menage-a-trois." i was a bit astounded by the fact that my neighbour would be interested in doing that with us, given the fact that my room mate is not so secretly in love with him, and my neighbour is very much not into that whatsoever. it was an amazing experience at the time, even though my neighbour was so drunk (and looking back on this, probably weirded out by my room mate) that he could not have an erection. he did, however, perform other "duties" with much enthusiasm, of which i received the full benefit. the whole episode seemed very "organic" and spontaneous. i even recall asking my room mate the next day if this was a "planned event" in some way, because it almost seemed a bit too easy. he said "no." apparently, it was just one of those things that happened, end of story. he even seemed marginally grateful to me that i was the "catalyst" that allowed him to be in the same bed, naked with our neighbour. but, i learned last night that those two had discussed the possibility beforehand. my room mate suggested it, of course. but, they had, in fact, anticipated that i would be receptive, and then created a situation where it could happen. i am so naive sometimes. but i'm not really surprised. and i'm not upset, either. just a little perplexed that i didn't have enough insight to understand how that experience originated. funnily enough, my formative sexual experiences more often than not involved more than one person at a time. i always thought that was a strange way to begin my sexual life, but then again, i felt a lot less pressure than if i was in a "one-on-one" situation. maybe that's weird. i don't really know why it ended up that way, but it did. and now here i am, a sexually curious person, but with a lot of hang ups at the same time. does my emotional response to men have anything to do with that stage of my development? and, if so, how?

i wanted to know why my neighbour decided to do that. why would he get into bed with a man he doesn't want anything to do with sexually? (by the way, they didn't touch each other. it was all about "touching" me. totally fun.) he said he did it so my room mate would stop talking about it. he was curious, of course. he's lived a lot longer than i have, had way more craziness in his life than i have, yet he has very little regret about anything. i admire that immensely.