Filed under: Echo Park, Esme Writes, Little Joy Open Mic | Tags: Drunk, EsmeWrites, Little Joy Open Mic, paper, Poemme Fatales, Poetry, spoken word, Story, writing
A few months ago I was standing, semi-drunk (OKAY, A LOT DRUNK- probably a few bottles deep) in my kitchen and a certain Man Of Note (The ONE, the ONLY, Keith Niles) asked if I would be interested in participating in a little idea that was hatching inside of his brain. He ran it by me, and I literally jumped at the offer (Yes, I think I may have scared the Man a little). Anyway the idea evolved into Poemme Fatales and consisted of 6 Los Angeles Poetesses, 2 a night, 3 Saturdays in a row, taking center stage and reading.
We did a photo shoot:
And we all prepped for our nights.
What we read, did, anything that happened that evening was up to us.
I chose to write all new material for the show and here is the first piece I read that evening:
LABYRINTH LIBRARIES
The beginning is where we are all supposed to start. A story told in a succession that commences with Once Upon A Time.
We open books and their bindings creak as the first page is sought. Chapter 1, or the prologue, the background story, the things we want to know about the past that will catch us up to speed, illuminate shadows, open doors and crack windows, fill rooms with light so we don’t have to try. Launch us into the future with sentences and paragraphs.
Except the future is now. And the past was now. And it’s all the same if you never had a clock or a calendar and these blank pages do their damndest to intimidate me.
It’s the promise of emptiness. It is the endless possibility of creation. The limitless fear of the endless possibilities of creation.
I find myself climbing into bed with my notebooks and taking a nap, nose smushed into pen marks. One time I actually woke with the imprint of blue on my cheek.
I sit down at my computer and stare at the blankness and the flashing of the cursor and decide to check out the new guy who added me as a friend on facebook who I try to not be giddy about because the one time I met him last week I really thought he was devastatingly attractive and wanted to talk to him more but now all I have is the façade of a facebook profile and the cutesty little coy post on his wall and now I just do the thing I do where I can’t concentrate.
So mostly its like stringing along an ADD stream of consciousness that refuses to wander in a straight line- like herding fucking cats.
Mostly it’s like
“So what to say? What can I say? The beginning is always the hardest, sitting down and thinking on myself like rock hard, ice-cold introspection (and shit) I don’t want to think that hard about me..”
There is this learned fear that acts like a speed bump. Somehow the judgment potentially passable on anything that pours out from my head causes a catch. It catches in my throat or at the base of my skull where the impulses are sent out and down and around and my fingers are unable to translate the mess.
In my head it is the day after the New Year in a library where we celebrated by tearing all the pages into oversized intellectual confetti.
At the time it seemed like a good idea.
It’s the morning after and below my feet there are now strewn collages of everything I once knew or felt or filed away for some later date of importance. Pack-ratted miscellany, blended with booze, laughter, spilt on the floor. Dried in puddles. There will always be a stain on the hardwood where I let that glass of wine tumble from my fist. It is all mixed with those sparkling shards.
We can sift through and make piles of papers but I have no idea where they go, what book they belong to, which author wrote what words. The collages of ink-laden memories mixed with the vague cartooning of comic books illustrative enough to illuminate but this chaos never seeps down my spine, it doesn’t translate into simple neurotic firings.
Single letters spit out in bursts. Kidergarten morse code.
Blips like radar.
Fuzzy glimpses of what could potentially be.
Mysteries from the depths.
And this page still stays overwhelmingly blank.
And then something might flip and the gears will twitch and I might get one true thing out.
I try to think about the truest thing that I know in any moment and it usually revolves so deeply around love or sex I find it embarrassing and try to change it into something more eloquent or at least less obvious.
At the time it seemed like a good idea.
It was that change that built walls of wheat paste and torn up pages. I can’t see over them. I can only claw at them.
Grab a fistful of paper.
The loss of what once and the inability to find it again the feelings of holes, holes so wide and gaping you can see through me and people liken that to swiss cheese but I find it to be far more dis-tasteful.
Grab a fistful of paper.
The fingerprint smudges and the rickety clatter of the brown line to diversey. My brother so much taller and with a hair cut made him almost unrecognizeable. He hugs like a bear and laughs like me.
Grab a fistful of paper.
Reddened eyes as my friend watched a needle pass through the open wound on my leg. 9 stitches, still drunk. 6am. Job interview at 10.
Grab a fistful of paper.
It is a night of dreams and sweet songs long ago in car rides at night watching the flurry of light from fireflies as we passed woods and wilderness and turned our lights off still flying 70 down the long empty passes.
Grab a fistful of paper.
Searing sun and silence. Staring at empty paper that lined the walls of a library turned labyrinth.
These were the corridors that lead me to where I find myself now.
I know, I so truly know that st the end, as my prize and winning glory is a solitary and beautiful room with a type writer and a window with a fire escape outside.
There are months of work, and letters in the mailbox and a pretty paining above the sink of a bird with words and music floating from his precious open beak.
There will be bare feet and a hardwood floor that doesn’t leave my soles dingy.
There is a closed wooden door and light summer curtains and pots with tiny things that grow and reach out to me.
The labyrinth seems endless. There are trick mirrors and wrong turns and so far it seems as if I have taken every single one of them.
At the time it seemed like a good idea.
The story is long and tedious and heartbreakingly funny.
Filed under: Uncategorized
…what can I say? I spent the last few months on hiatus. Writing, not writing. Doing the safe thing. Doing dangerous things. Trying- I guess- to figure things out. Figure shit out. And it’s all well and good for some philosophical bullshit at 3 am over a few too many glasses of red, all it comes down to is that it’s November 2 , 3 technically, because it’s nearly 1 am, and I am still nowhere further along that trail than I was however-many months ago my last post was. (Don’t tell me, I really don’t want to think about it.)
September passed uneventfully. As did October. November creeped on in with its usual cat-like intuition and is now here to remind me that no, I didn’t feed you and yes, I know you’re hungry. We have had an orange neighborhood cat haunt our kitchen door for a few weeks now. It meows like a banshee. It’s annoying. We threw water on it. It still came back. It reminds me of that one song…
Things are always reminding me of that one song, though. No matter how hard you want something gone it always resurfaces. I need to toss some concrete shoes on that shit, next time. Someone remind me to take a trip to Home Depot.
That’s a store with solutions. Someplace that can solve every minute issue that you might have. Rake it out to the gutter. Duct tape it. Throw some caulk on it. Paint over those toothpaste filled holes in the wall. No one will ever know the difference.
Here’s the thing though. Lately I’ve been working on chipping off those layers. Getting down to the baseline. The exposed brick. The skeleton of it all.
So the big orange depot is not going to help. Nor will empty nights and listless days. Words. They’re a good remedy. Yes. Words just might do it.
We’ll see. Also here’s to maintaining my sanity over 2 weeks of no booze, cheese, pasta, bread, sugars etc etc etc.
I am clearly not thinking things through.
Filed under: Esme Writes, Little Joy Open Mic | Tags: Echo Park, EsmeWrites, LJOM Refugees, Open Mic, writing
So I sit here and spend a morning anxious and over-analyzing whether or not I should text you because I feel like shit and think maybe its close to getting weird even though it’s probably not but you can pretty much make anything weird when you spend 4 hours dissecting it down into things that are smaller than fucking protons. Strings maybe? And these strings maybe harmonizing and maybe they’re not and who the fuck am I to say because I am not a physicist, but the air inside has been feeling charged with a weird current and we blamed the moon last week but what can we blame this week?
It’s the smallest little fault lines that seem to be separating everyone and the tremors from those shifting plates send quakes up through our feet and at varying times we all find ourselves struggling to set our feet down firmly on earth that won’t betray us. We don’t know where the fault lines are, we just know that sometimes the earth shakes and sometimes it doesn’t.
I spent awhile trying to build walls around me without knowing about these interruptions and when the walls wavered I leaned up heavily against them praying they would hold. Dear fucking god or Allah or whoeverthefuck let me hide let me hide and what can you do when you’ve built a strong wall across a geothermal divide? The earth decides and there is nothing you can do.
Its humpty dumpy sitting on a wall but instead of him going tumble and crack, the whole damn thing takes a fall and he’s damaged far beyond recognition and the kings horses and men just mill around wondering who the fuck built a wall there anyway.
Who the fuck built that fucking wall.
Who wasted the time and the effort?
Don’t they have anything better to do?
Its 1 step forward and 3 back and the 5 forward and then 2 back and so on and so forth until I looked down on the ground and realized I’ve been learning to waltz the whole time and if I had just taken the time to notice all the steps were mapped out on the floor for the entire time. I just didn’t look. Because…
Because I was afraid. Because maybe I would have seen that. I would not have been able to take the time to build such a pretty precious wall around me and I also would have seen the warnings about the fault lines or if I had bothered to ask the guy standing next to me would have told me about the ol’ earthquake of ’91 when he was “shook so damn hard his glasses damn near fell offa his face”.
But it was more imperative. More important to create a shining and closterphobic perfect world. A world the size of the span of my arms. A cylinder. A boring and utilitarian cylinder. An anxious and lonely cylinder.
And when the walls fell they left me out in the open like a sitting goddamn duck and I had to step from the rubble because it was dusty and made me sneeze and cough and both of those things are uncomfortable. Then I said hello to the quake of ’91 guy and he said hi back and we then didn’t know what to say because my walls blocked his views and the dust made his throat scratchy and we were silent for a while which is uncomfortable. I made my way across the sidewalk and started saying hello and some people just glared at me and some people said nothing and it made me want to cry because being alone is uncomfortable. And then one night I felt so alone and stood there and didn’t know anyone else there and I was silent and that is uncomfortable- but you stood there too and I was sick of coughing and blushing and of silence so I said hello. You said hello back. The earth stayed steady. We danced that night.
Instead of wishing for walls then, I sat under stars. And while in my cylinder I thought I was the only person who saw these stars, you talked about them too and saw the same thing that I saw. Us, together.
It’s the togetherness that has kept me going these past few weeks when the fucking moon went crazy and made everyone crazy and then the air was charged with some sort of crazy current and people were snapping and buzzing and growling like monsters and ready to wrap fingers around my throat simply because I looked at the guy wrong.
Maybe it’s the heat, except the heat should make us limp like the tomato plant on my back stoop. Drape limply. Make us lethargic and sigh with dry delicacy.
I guess if it goes on too long we start to crisp and crackle and snap. Rice krispy style murderous undercurrents take hold.
People go crazy. Things make less sense. Hands wrap around throats. I start overanalyze. Dissect.
And What I mean is, I lost my job. Again. Except I didn’t fucking lose it. I know exactly where it is and my manager’s girlfriend stole it. And it wasn’t so much fired as I was taken off the schedule and they stopped answering my calls leaving me with a bank account balance that is less than the cost of most things in life.
And I was left to sort out their reasoning which could be resolved to: there wasn’t any reasoning, and I cried and then I called my dad, who also has proven to be my financial advisor, to discuss very seriously the possibility of declaring bankruptcy. Which made sense at the time.
He advised me against it. I called my banks and told them I didn’t have any money to make my credit card payments.
And what I really mean is that this is a terrible apology to you. I am sorry.
It’s not fair of me to think we’ve spent too much time together this week, and nor it is fair of me to feign indifference to seeing you when it’s the absolute opposite but you know that this one friend helped me get this new job and I felt obligated to grace him with my presence last night and maybe have a drink and shoot the shit and then another hour passed and we went into his room to smoke down some Mr. Nice and I laughed and call it research even though at the collective we only have shake. Then it was 3 am and I texted you probably a lot too late. I hope you had a good night.
Oh- the new job is volunteering at a collective: Cash gifts for my time and fine herbal benefits. That statement is peppered heavily with dots that resemble flies hovering around words. An all around kush job. There is no brushing the flies away.
…
I just want to live my life with reckless abandon.
I want to chase the highs and the blue skies and the brilliant flashes of lights that snap crackle and pop at those moments when you take a hit or someone makes the best joke of the evening. The moments that go in the books as score one for the good times. Always have the tally be in favor of the home team, rolling like rivers and dancing and gyrating and alternating in colors to the beat like a goddamn disco floor.
Why the fuck not?
I want to say fuck off and fuck you and leave me to it.
I will be there with a bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other and jump on the trampoline all night long. I will be there to watch the sun fall from the sky and the moon rise in blood orange glory.
I will be glad when you join me and we end up piled and intertwined girls legs and boys hands, eyes and hair and lips and giggles and whispers and the ends of cigarettes blending into words that echo the calls of the frogs who stayed up to watch us ruin the night. Our secrets suspended in a bubble above our heads mixed with the scent of too much weed and too much wine and too many vodka shots which I vaguely remembering chasing with cake. We breathe a collective sigh together. One of simple joys. Sharing nights together in celebration of our limbs moving, our brains firing to accept the simple truth that we are together.
Today was a beautiful day. I read an old friend’s blog and was reminded of some very simple pleasures. Like writing haikus. about cake or shadows or dancing. I remembered that today was amazing.
1- The heat of the morning woke me up from nearly 12 hours of sleep in the heaven haven of my room, needs cleaning, but still mine.
2- I decided I would go on an adventure today.
3- Jt and I wrote/worked for a few hours together, he put up with my crazed still slightly insane touchiness.
4- Two friends joined us and we clambered into Clifford and had gorgeous drive on the 1 to Malibu.
5- Pacific Ocean. Point Dume.
6- Games, waves, laughter, little kids, kites, almonds, Oh MY GOD, frozen feet, sunset, golden air.
7- flames licking the california hills. seeing the actual fire.
7.5- Cracked my favorite beer that I have been saving for awhile and drank it in the shower.
8- gifted a book from someone who has become so nearly and deeply dear to me out here. He bought it for me today after accompanying me on an anti-crazy session last night.
9- Dancing alone in the middle of a living room.
10- Hot as hell apartment and a cold beer.
In 1985 my mom told my father “Don’t drop her”, that same year my mother’s mother told her “let her cry”.
Years later I watched my mother drop my brother in the kitchen right before dinner. He sat on the linoleum floor and looked at her with betrayed eyes. He didn’t cry. He just sat there looking and looking as my mother gasped, looked him over and reached for the phone to call my father.
My brother reached for the toy car that had fallen from his fist and held it with a fierce grip. I sullenly stared at the snow falling outside. It was Halloween night and it was snowing and I was being forced to wear a snowsuit over my princess costume.
Years after that my mother confessed to dropping me or actually I fell down a flight of stairs or rolled. Or something.
I didn’t cry either she said. Just stared and stared.
She said my brother and I had big haunting eyes when we got hurt. We would cry but there would be these moments where we would just stare at her.
Like it was all her fault, she said.
It creeped her out, she said.
Mind you, this is my mother I am speaking of. And yes, I know she is not the first and surely is not the last person to drop her children on a kitchen floor or down a flight of stairs- but she’s carried everything with her since those moments where she felt she first failed with us, my brother and I.
And this isn’t about her, really because I want it to be about me or maybe about my brother- but it’s been since march that I’ve seen her and since December since I have seen him and I feel so far removed from their lives lately that it doesn’t make any sense to talk about them except to say that I love and hate them equally.
Which is all you can really ask from me these days.
I threw a glass at someone’s head the other day. To make a point.
Well not at his head, per se, but close enough to his body to do the proverbial “knocking some sense into him”. He got the point and left. Everyone left standing had a good laugh about it after, but still I feel bad about it.
What it comes down to is, though, that he said I wouldn’t do it. As I stood there, wine glass in hand, stating that I am so mad that I am going to break something, and you cut in with “riiiight. Youre not going to break shit…” DO NOT be surprised if the nearest breakable object comes sailing elegantly through the air close to you to shatter comfortably on the floor. In this case it happened to be a wine glass. Full of wine.
And what it really came down to is that he got the picture. And I did it.
And the poor guy, I don’t hate him, its just that I don’t love him. And not that I don’t love him I am just not in love with him and what it boils down to is that 1) I really love cooking but 2) that this was a soufflé recipe that would not stand.
It fell. Not the good fall. The bad fall. The type where it isn’t rising. Just depressing. Some kind of thing that requires broken glassware and laughter in the end.
So I guess this is just a story of someone, somewhere who is just trying to do something. Like those stories we all know that go:
Once upon a time there was someone who did something and it was heroic and brave and lauded him with the praise of everyone in the land.
Once upon a time there was someone who did something and it was passionate and brave and lauded him with praise of everyone in the land.
Once upon a time there was…
There was me.
Here.
Right now.
And that one time is now too.
And I don’t know what to say.
I got a new job.
I haven’t had to go into work in 4 days. Its making me anxious.
I cut my finger on a picture frame this afternoon.
I got my first Brazilian wax this morning.
Today I was afraid to wear a bikini to the beach and also afraid of being the only one who wasn’t wearing a bathing suit so I lied to get out of going.
There is a massive spider that lives in the electrical wires outside my window and it scares me because I am afraid he is going to bite my face and melt half of it off and then I will be that girl who had a spider bite her face and melt half of it off.
At the bar last night I bought everyone a round of drinks that was their Drink. With a capital D. You know that one drink during the evening that pushes you over the edge.
Also, this weekend I drank probably a little too much tequila.
I want to work out more, do yoga, eat fresh veggies go to farmers markets and plant tress. I also like potato chips in large quantities, watching hulu and lazing around on my couch for full days.
I want to cook more for people and teach more people to cook which makes me think that I should try to get a cooking show but then I think of soufflés and recipes and fucking Rachel ray and kinda gag a little and decide that I’d rather wait on that whole plan.
When I was little I was in love with Indiana Jones and Hans Solo.
I also would dance for hours on end in a tutu to songs like American Pie and I Wanna Hold Your Hand and The supremes.
I lost my virginity at 19. After my first year in college.
I like clay and sculpture and have dreams of things I want to make.
I also have dreams of the future. No, really, like things that actually happen but they are boring things like making toast or someone sneezes in the middle of a conversation.
Once in a book I read the line “I fall in love everyday”. Nothing felt truer.
Once in a song I heard the line “After changes upon changes we are more or less the same” Nothing felt truer.
Once in a movie someone said “I’ve always been considered an asshole for about as long as I can remember. Uh, that’s just my style. But I’d really feel blue if I didn’t think you were going to forgive me.” Nothing felt truer.
And I am sorry that I stole birdseed.
And gum.
When I was six.
Because I liked the color of gum and wanted to feed the birds outside my window.
It all started in kindergarten. I blame you Jacob. My first boyfriend. He confessed his undying love for me with a stuffed dolphin from sea world.
Then I remember getting mad at him because he followed me around all the time.
Jacob, it’s not that I don’t love you. I’m just not…
…
It’s been awhile. I know. A really long while.
Like everyone I sometimes get side-tracked when a lot of things happen. Well, maybe even when not a lot of things happen but some stuff has happened in the past month and yes, I know I haven’t written a damn thing in that blog but I have written.
One piece, in particular, I performed for the refugees of the little joy open mic at the Three of Clubs in Hollywood, was key.
I haven’t decided if I will post it yet.
Why? Mostly because I feel like it could hurt some people, even though I was hurt a lot by the whole situation. Some things are not meant to be spread everywhere. Anyway it might make the perfect start to a book someday and I want to save it.
It was special because I am never that honest. Not with the people around me and probably not even with myself. Yes it was glossed over with some writerly over-arching story but it was honest and I admitted to what I did and people really received me. I always…wait…I guess to see where the words can weave my experience. A more delicate setting or complicated words to mask what happened. Then I realized.
You end up with ghosts that way.
This afternoon I was sitting and chatting with those ghosts. It’s a very interesting dialogue because these ghosts can only repeat the words that I give them in my memory and I am finding that my memory is faulty. There are holes. Lots of them. Hidden ones. In spots where I really wish I knew what was said.
All I have are the impressions and the shadows.
And anyway, its been a month and I got a new job and added a roommate and auditioned some more and got a lot more frightened and determined to be alone and saw some movies, and went on drives and maybe drank a little too much and danced and broke some glasses and sat out late at night, and got yelled at by the neighbors and keep finding myself getting angry.
Straight. Up. Angry.
At. Absolutely. Nothing.
And. Absolutely. Everything.
It’s a fucking bi-polar existence.
So I stopped writing because that’s what some people do. And that didn’t work so I started writing cause that’s what others do. And that didn’t work so I just went outside and sat in the sun. Because that’s what cats do.
And they have it figured out.
Cause I sat there and I just sat and felt warm and happy and kinda hot and a little sweaty but mostly happy and just sat. It was good.
And then I came inside and wrote. A lot. And it wasn’t that good.
But it was honest.
And that’s more than I have had in awhile.
So right now this is just rambling but what it is to me is a chance to say hello again and hope you are well and let you know that I just want for us to be honest. You, and me. And I will try my best to tell you when you get too close and I can’t do this anymore but for now, we are cool you know, we are good. And if you would just do the same for me, I think it could be the best. The absolute best. So, do you want to?
Here we go.
Filed under: Esme Writes, Love | Tags: birthday, bunnies, gifts, presents, zombies
The time is almost here- the day where I rejoice in the fact that adding another 365 hash marks to the figurative cell wall of life has not done me in. In fact, I like to think that at least 207 have taught me lessons. That’s 56% kids! More than one out of every two!
Like any good birthday I plan on drinking a little too much, saying some things I shouldn’t, dancing on top of a coffee table or two, wandering around Echo Park, attempting to get free drinks out of the whole situation and generally encouraging debauchery from all those around me. Oh, and I will probably light something on fire, because what 24th birthday is complete without pushing limits and laws??
Since I know you guys are all racking your brains to think of some exquisite gift to get me, The Girl Who Has Everything, I thought I would make a nice little list to help you on your quest for The Perfect 24th Birthday Gift:
Giant Bunny Rabbit
- bigger is always better, especially when it hops.
Ask her:
Classy Brass Knuckles
-Always doin’ heavy damage….to wine bottles and faces.
Sailboat and/or Sailboat ride and/or sailboating lessons
- I like to consider myself a burgeoning sailor and an amateur cartographer.
A shirt with this on it:
- To wear when I am wearing the brass knuckles.
A Giant Sandwich Man
- At the sound of a tiny silver bell he would show up and be delicious. If he could always have a buddy, Bowl of Soup, with him that would be great too.
Horror Movie Marathon at a Drive-in
- Top down, 1969 Mustang convertible, complete with Zombi 2, both versions of Dawn of the Dead, The Thing, Halloween, and Beetlejuice.
Viola Playing Robot
- Trained to make divine cocktails, as well as do dishes and acupuncture.
This recycled necklace from Talking Squid on etsy.com
- Recycled and AMAZING.
Wall of Outlets.
- The whole tv set up would be cool too, if you’re feeling generous, but mostly just a wall of outlets. You know you wish you had one too.
Zero Gravity Sex.
- I may have made this up…but……
As always, cash is acceptable, as well as rent for the month of August paid in full. In addition, vintage necklaces, sushi, casks of wine, barrels of whiskey and giant wheels of cheese will be accepted with utmost gratitude.
Oh. Also your love and support is good too….. if it comes in a card with a check in it.
Love,
The girl in the middle who, 19 years ago, had no idea…
Filed under: Echo Park, Esme Writes, Love | Tags: Geek, Gundam, Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, Love, Math, Nerd, Periodic Table of the Elements, Silverlake, Swan, Ugly Duckling, WOW, zombies
This morning I was traversing the interwebz and I stumbled into this cartoon:
From toothpastefordinner.com
Obviously the tall fellow is the nerdy fellow’s more attractive, athletic and, of course, far more experienced counterpart, who is attempting to let him down easy because (you and I both know) he slept with the apple of nerdy guy’s eye last night. You know, the ol’, “I’ll drop you off first, man and then take her home” routine. Oh, and this isn’t the first time it’s happened.
What Attractive Fellow is really saying is that he thinks Nerdy Guy needs to do the proverbial Getting Out There, to Play The Field aka Fuck Anything That Shows Interest Because Lord Knows You’re Twenty Two And Still Have Yet To Get Laid. And if you can’t do that, you should curl up and die, you pathetic loser, because there are still those times where we hang out and SERIOUSLY MAN if you mention how terrible the movie The Watchmen was based on how they changed the entire ending which meant that the entire philosophy of the graphic novel was altered to promote a more viewable film for the general public or how when you were in high school you completed your build of a Wing Zero Perfect Grade Gundam after only 5 days after scouring ebay for it for three months, I will seriously punch you in your ironic buddy holly frames and NO MAN! I do not want to sit around for another weekend playing co-op Halo 2 campaigns with you!
I just want you to find a lady. Get laid.
Nerdy Guy just sighs because he understands the nuances of Attractive Fellow’s front, and deep down knows that he has his back. He also knows that one day he will meet a Geeky Girl just for him.
Geeky Girls: They Do Exist.
I’ve found in Los Angeles that they just have mostly been reincarnated into the form of a Hipster Girl. Seriously.
I am one of them.
Growing up I spent my childhood reading and playing extensive games outside that involved magic and trees talking, pretty much my very own LOTR world before I had read The Hobbit.
In forth grade I got glasses and braces. I was no longer cute. Throw a big ol’ afro poof on Nerdy Guy up there and you basically had me.
I loved reading and writing and drawing and singing in chorus. And science class. A lot. I memorized the Periodic Table of the Elements.
Then I got contacts and my braces came off and as much as I would like to say I was the ugly duckling turned swan…I still didn’t kiss a boy until I was 16. At a “Make Out” party. Where everyone was kissing everyone.
Since my senior year in high school I decided that I would just embrace my passions, my hair that has a mind of it’s own and the fact that I really really really love playing Halo and Halo 2 and Halo 3. And N64. And Wii. Okay most video games.
Since then, I have discovered that the number of Hipster Girls who also loved video games and have read The Watchmen (prior to the release of the movie, mind you), who were into riding bikes, playing board games on a Saturday night, and yes, also those who have watched Cowboy Bebop and loved it, are a lot higher than I ever would have guessed.
And how many times has the situation occurred when you see a Hipster girl and ask yourself, “why is she with him?”
It just makes sense.
We love our Nerdy Guys.
1) Attention to detail: anyone who can spend a week putting together a model of anything with 8748172648237 parts and do so while the instructions are in Japanese, is aware of subtleties and the array of complexities that occur when you have two very similar pieces in the same color with only slight differences. They then apply this to RL.
2) Imagination : Nerdy Guys tend to have an expansive imagination and ambition honed from hours in RPG land and being the hero of most of their games. This also leads to a higher level of chivalry than in most dudes. Think King Arthur meets WOW.
3) Brrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaainssss : Nerdy Guy tends to know a lot more on an expansive range of subjects, stemming from their interests in learning or just spending hours on Wikipedia. They can talk about a lot of things from Russian KGB training to the silk road of china to why Lyndon B. Johnson is an underrated president or how today’s economic situation mirrors the lives as seen in Steinbeck’s The Grapes Of Wrath. They also usually appreciate fine Zombie Cinema.
Attention to detail + Imagination + Brrrrrraaaainnnnnssssss = <3
Less than three them. So. Much. Luffs.
My final point is (not to make a gross generalization) in my experiences as a Geeky/Hipster Girl, the Attractive Fellow seems to be the worst in bed, I think it stems from the fact that in their career they never once did have that moment where their lady in waiting tells them that they are doing just that….waiting….and waiting….and waiting……………………….still waiting. They just fake it and chalk it up to “Well he was hot” and then feel bad that someone so pretty can’t do it right.
So what I say is:
Cheer up, Nerdy Guy! You can always move to Echo Park or Silverlake.
EPIC WIN!
Filed under: Echo Park, Esme Writes, Little Joy Open Mic, Poetry | Tags: Isosceles Triangles, Little Joy Open Mic, LJOM, Poetry, Reading, Rotation, Therapy
I took a deep breath and looked at him.
He asked me to convey what I had just said in a sequence of isosceles triangles.
My breath caught in my throat, a suspended burst, a truncated laugh, ready to explode and fill the sterile room, until I saw his eyes.
He was serious.
This man with his pad and paper of illegible notes and Sanskrit or gibberish otherwise, wanted me to use three lines and three angles to pour out a story that had taken me nearly an hour to tell.
The silence ballooned around my head.
Fumbling, I looked to the shelves on the walls, the plaques, the desk, the slightly swaying cord of the blinds in wake of summer’s AC, remembered the wet embrace of the humidity outside and bit my bottom lip, left side, there was always a wound there from my unforgiving teeth.
You would draw a row of triangles point down to begin, sharp and narrow. Daggers. They would arch over three thickly fat ones, filled in, one above, two below.
Then the dagger triangles would circle around and around until they blurred and the three were invisible behind the blur.
Then one by one each triangle would fall from the rotation until it was just one, spinning and spinning. Alone.
It would stop one day, one day suddenly just pause then begin again then spin in the opposite direction. Then pause.
Then at random times a few would attempt to join it. Once in awhile. One at a time, or two. Then she it would spin like mad. But as before, the force would eject it’s companion. She-it would pause again for a second and continue to spin.
Then one day it would spin with one for awhile. Together. The first triangle began to rotate on its axis within its orbit and the other one joined the rotation. Around and around and around with her- it. The speed and velocity and them, together whirred and purred and moved in beautiful harmony.
Until one day she-it stopped.
The momentum the two had gathered threw that last beautiful triangle out. She began her circular rotation alone, pausing here and there, ignoring the new triangles to come.
She likes her lonely rotation. It is comforting.
The blinds swayed slightly as the AC coughed on, and my eyes went from the window to his eyes.
They all traced a lovely pattern together, though. In fact, it was such a delicate dance. Those angles and those sides. It was almost like music.
His pen scratched his Sanskrit and I shifted in my seat, praying he didn’t next ask for me to tell it again, this time in Morse code.
