Cathy Ames

It didn't work out with Bree and I am very disappointed. I knew for a long time that she liked me. She had said something a long time ago to one of my guy friends, Nick or Darren along the lines of "Why is he dating Jasmine when he thinks she's so vanilla, he should be dating me". I saw a note she had left for me at my camp at Burning Man about how she wanted to spend some time in the cuddle puddle together. I thought she was attractive, but I didn't know if I liked her. Nick and Melissa both had said that she was toxic, a narcissist, and "fuckin' crazy". I think I decided that I did like her after we had went on our trip to San Francisco together. I would like to think that when we stayed at Leif's house in Berkeley, I didn't sleep in the same bed with her because I wanted to keep things pure between us till I was no longer with Jasmine, but the truth is that I just wasn't getting the vibe from her. She had told me later that she was surprised that I hadn't come in, that she had been expecting me and stayed up waiting. She thought that maybe I didn't feel the same way and the next night after San Francisco decompression, she told me to sleep on the air mattress that I had blown up. I thought this was perhaps another type of rejection. I was pretty fucked up that day and think I definitely would have gotten all types of handsy had she let me stay on the couch with her. It wasn't big enough for the two of us anyway. I got an earful from Jasmine the day after I had gotten back. Bree did laundry and passed out for a little while on my bed, Alejandro, who is Jasmine's ex-boyfriend who she set up on a blind date with my roommate Sarah and they're dating now, saw this and reported it to her. I was a little pist off about a pinche rata columbiano en la casa, but I realized immediately that he was being a good friend to her, and never said anything to him about it. I spent a lot of time with Bree after that. I helped her move things from her storage unit into her mom's basement or into the basement of this dude's house who used to follow the Grateful Dead with her mother. It was to become a studio where she could work on her sewing projects. I would come over sometimes and press buttons or go through magazines and punch out images for them while she sewed. We didn't talk much then, just kinda worked and listened to a podcast she had saved of English dub-step (which, honestly, I kinda hated. I wish she would have rocked out to something different, but whatevs). It should be noted here that I broke up with Jasmine. Bree had little to do with it, perhaps maybe nothing at all, but I do have a history of not jumping ship till I have another boat on the horizon. I spent an evening at Bree's house and just felt the spark. The wiggliness. Electricity. She perked her head up one point and reminded me totally of the squirrel in The Sword in the Stone who chases Arthur all around the tree. I moved in and we had a wonderful makeout session. I got past second base. It was lovely. I spent the night on the couch. I should note here that this is at her mother's house where she lives. Her mother had a stroke awhile back and has limited motion on her left side. Apparently, this also dampens her sensors of what is appropriate to say and she is a little edgy sometimes. Bree is like her very much. I can see her mom getting incredibly angry sometimes, but then it just passes right away. Bree is the same. Bree was her official care-taker for a long time and getting paid for it as well, but she gave that job up because...because I don't really understand why. I guess her mom could really press her buttons sometimes and would act more helpless than she really was and Bree couldn't stand it, so she relegated the responsibility to someone else, but she still helps out alot. The next day we went on a walk to Idlewild and kissed in the sunshine and it was great. Everything was new and great. I love that point in the beginning of a new romance where no one has made any mistakes yet and it's all so perfect. Things kind of continued like this. She would come over and we'd eat together all the time, watch movies on the couch at her house or mine. She finally spent the night the day before I left to go ride dolphins in California with my best friend, his sister and her husband.

Then the shit show transpired at Zombie Crawl while I was away. I need to back up here a little bit and say that she and my very recent ex-girlfriend Jasmine were "friends". Jasmine had contracted a fur coat for Bree to make before Burning Man. She would go over to Bree's house when Bree was living with Melissa and Nick and get measured and later we worked on matching fur leggings and they had hung out at various gatherings. They weren't best buddies or anything, but maybe they could have been someday. Jasmine had texted Bree saying that my intentions weren't just friendly, though Bree knew this already. So it was quite a blow when they saw each other at the Zombie crawl and Bree said some fucked up shit to her. Jasmine had known that we were hanging out all the time, Alejandro and Sarah told her. Bree told me that she had confided in Sarah and that she had pretty much told everything to Jasmine. Bree said to Jasmine something like "I don't know what universe your living in, but we're not friends. You only call me when you need something, and you never ask how I'm doing or anything like that". To which Jasmine pushed her against a wall and ran off crying after saying something back. Things never got better between Bree and I after that. We never made out again, though I thought for a second that things had gotten a little better. We went to Sacramento decomp together and I thought we would sleep (and when I say "sleep" I mean sleep, but hey if something more happens, then so much the better) together in the same tent on the same mattress pad that she brought. She iterated tonight, that she wasn't comfortable with that and so she ended up staying awake all night partying instead of coming and cuddling with me. She tried to explain why this was to me, but I didn't and don't get it. She was saying something about my friends asking what was going on, where was she going to sleep, and she wanted it to be obvious that we were together and somehow I didn't do the things to make that apparent, so she didn't feel comfortable. I still don't understand. I think that she overcomplicated it somehow and I really wanted it to get back to the visceral, basic, primal...littlekidwritingonanote"Ilikeyou,doyoulikeme?" stage, and she was so wrapped in her head that she couldn't. When we were arguing she kept telling me that I didn't get it. She's right. She was doing all kinds of mental girl gymnastics and verbal wrap-arounds. I see now that I fell into a lot of traps. She accused me of things that make me think she was doing them because she brought them up. Like when I finally arrived that it wasn't going to work, that I couldn't do or say anything to make it better (and frankly, her lack of affection made it a lot easier to arrive at that conclusion) I told her that I needed to get my skateboard out of the car. She said "That makes me think that you are just not going to blah blah blah" But she had texted me earlier asking for a stack of movies at my house, the final "getallmyshitbeforewebreakup" task. She told me that I didn't have to jump through a bunch of hoops to try and make it work, that I was doing it just for show and that it didn't really mean anything...but her saying that makes me think that that's exactly what she was doing.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Shadrach Close

PO Box 8573

Reno, NV 89507

Tel 775-225-4379

Dear Alex,

I hope this letter finds you well. I'm writing to tell you about Burning Man. It was quite a pity you missed out, it was a great burn and your brother was a fucking rockstar. I had a shit ton of people staying at my house the night before Nolan arrived. I had a little list that I had posted on the facebook couchsurfingcamp group, but even though I had it tagged with everyone who was coming, when they were arriving/departing, everyone who was supposed to show up on Sunday came on Saturday. My house was so full that no matter where you were, you were goosestepping over people to get to the rest room. It was an awesome party though and it was really cool to get to know people who were going to be in our camp for the week. I was up early that morning, and I was washing my car when your brother called me from the Greyhound station. I wanted to wash all the sap off of the roof so that when I strapped the mattress from the couchbed, it wouldn't be all sticky...but it's still kind of pointless to wash your car before Burning Man. I was constantly worrying beforehand about Nolan because he was so non-communicative. I told him to read the guide, book the flight, think of questions to ask me, and had very little response. It was a tight squeeze of two hours from when his plane landed till his bus departed in San Francisco (which btw, I wanted to ask you about. I had told YOU that IF you were going to arrive in SF a few days in advance AND if it were SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper, fly into SFO and I would come get you and we could hang out in The City. I was really peeved that the flight was scheduled to arrive late Sunday. I looked at flights from BWI to RNO and even with short notice, it was only about $50 more to go to RNO than SFO, factor in the cost of the bus ticket and BART to get to the station and it's only about a savings of $23 and adds a shit ton of time and pain in the ass to the equation).

I picked him up from the station and the sun was just barely coming up. He told me he had slept most of the bus ride and that the taxi from the airport into the city was really expensive. I really wanted to talk to him before he left home to tell him "This is doable, but you have to ask for help, you gotta ask a lot of strangers questions like 'how do I get into the city with the BART?'" and other things like that. I was bummed he spent alot of money needlessly. I was so stressed out when he called me well after his bus had left saying "I'm in San Francisco, now what?" I frantically looked on Craigslist and CS for a rideshare and actually found him one, plus I had it set up for him to take a BART to Berkeley where a good friend lives who could have hosted him for the night and found a dude on couchsurfing to take him the next day. If he had waited in the airport for an hour or so, this could have been worked out, but he decided to book it into the city and get a hotel. I was actually on my way up there in my car to get him and drive back when he called me and told me this. I was blabbing with you when I discovered that there was another bus leaving at 1am and he got on that one. He told me that he slept most of the time on the bus and said little about his 7 hour stint in SF. We went to Starbucks and got coffee, then went back to my house. Mom was up, but no one else was, so I just kind of puttered around my room getting piles of costumes and stuff together, then doing the same in the kitchen with food. When people woke up, I started really staging, getting everything that we were going to bring with us outside by the car. Finally, I had to wake up a surfer and tell her "I need the mattress from the couch, it's time to get up". Then I used my masterful Tetris skills to get all that shit in the car and on the roof and on the bike rack. We headed out just before noon and stopped for lunch at a brewery. Nolan was tired. I imagine he didn't sleep very well on the plane, in SF, on the bus, or the night before he left. This German dude David came with us in his minivan. He was 24 , very well prepared for the festival, and kind of introverted. We stopped for gas off I-80 in Wadsworth. There were a ton of burners there doing the same thing and an Aussie guy came up to me and said "Ey mate, yoo got a flat tire." Some people gave me a can of fixaflat, but he said "Yoo bean driving on the sidewall mate, it's proper fucked, you gotta put the spare on". This sucked a little bit, but as he pointed out, at least we were at a place with shade, cold drinks, a bathroom, and it didn't happen on the side of the road, on the playa where it would have been a major pain in the ass to get a jack under it, or god forbid, while we were on the interstate doing 70. We swapped it out fairly quickly and headed out on the road. David, mein deutscher freund behind us in the mini van, told me that my spare was really low. We pulled over and I was just going to find someone who had a bike pump, but we lucked out and found a dude with an air compressor and got my 30psi tire to 60. I busted out the button cape and gave him and his family some as thanks. Then we got moving again, Nolan slept. We made it into line eventually, and cracked some beers and got to partying. There was a group of Canadians I recognized from two years ago in line next to us. I came up to him and said "What up Tundra?!" and we partied together for a short while before wandering to the next place. I donned my button cape and bounced from car to car collecting treasures and conversations. The wind picked up and I hid in David's van with him. I felt somewhat guilty that Nolan and Mom were in the other car, but I figured that they had each other and David didn't have anyone to talk to. I liked David. I liked how he was trying to come out of his shell and experience things that were strange and foreign to him. Some moments I would like to mark about David, to show his character, like how I said since he had a minivan, he should take someone with him, someone being a total stranger who needed a ride. Dude had a freaking minivan, if he packed it better, he could have taken several people, but the idea of taking a total stranger seemed so dangerous and weird to him that he completely rejected it. Another example, when we first got to the festival, we drove to the Couchsurfing camp. He didn't know where he was going to camp. We found a pair of girls who were on a sofa together and chatted them up and David ended up camping next to them, not too far away from CScamp. The way he reacted though when I told them to get in the van and show us where to go though was funny to me, he seemed reluctant and I thought it was because he was afraid that they were going to crush his things, or that he was weirded out by two strangers getting in the car, even for a short ride. He told me later that he didn't want to inconvenience them, and I got the impression later that it was extremely important for him not to be a burden on anyone. It was cool though, they helped him set up his tent, and I think they wanted to go back to their camp for something anyway. When I went back to our camp afterward, Nolan and Mom had been setting up for a long time and were almost done. I fixed us a dinner of rice and beans mixed with mexicorn and chicken on tomato basil tortillas. It was kind of a chore to give it all away afterward to random people so my pot would be clean. I remember having to drink a lot of watered down, burned up food just so I wouldn't moop it anywhere. Mom went to bed and as exhausted as Nolan was, I told him we HAD to go out on the esplande for at least a short trip. We rode our bikes to a giant trojan horse that was covered in red neon. We parked our bikes and walked up onto it. Nolan smoked a cigarette and remarked how it was like some massive multiplayer online role playing game. I thought "yeah, it kind of is, people have all these weird avatars going off on their quests with their blinking lights and strange costumes. We headed out again and ended up in a giant fur covered cylinder. It had a wheel on one end and a stake on the other and it could be pushed in a circle, which was helpful to block the wind. There were two girls inside smoking cigarettes and writing shitty poetry. I took a flask of whisky with me and had a few pulls...or did I...I can't remember...Nolan smoked a cigarette. I gave the girls who were with us some "Hi, my name is" stickers that I had with me for them to write poetry on. More people showed up. I remember a guy laying on his back and another girl saying "I have a trick, wanna see?" the guy said he did and she pulled out her tit and squirted him with milk. Nolan and I looked at each other and laughed. This particular episode is what I tell people was his first taste of Burning Man..some dude getting lactated on. We went back to camp after that and passed out in the tent together.

Tuesday

los cliches son verdaderos...

Sometimes I look back on my youth, mostly early twenties and wonder how the hell I did the things that I did. I remember for spring break in Spain I took a trip from Madrid to Paris, Paris to Berlin where I met up with my sister, then took a train from Berlin to Munich, Munich to Amsterdam and then back to Madrid. I never worried about the in between details of "how do I get from the airport to hostel" (Nice guys named Juanjo say "Yees, I know wher eet is, buht my companee ees paying me a taxi, and eef yoo want, I am can take you there" or the heroin addicts in Holland will get your train pass for you if you give them a couple Euros). Now as I get older, I get overwhelmed by the minutiae. The mountain of what is in front seems so massive that I'd rather go around to the smaller ones. It just seems so unbelievable how well everything worked out and how everything fell into place. I remember after my sister's wedding in Leipzig I was very hungover the next day and in the post apocalyptic hangover insanity I almost had a panic attack of the seemingly insurmountable things I would have to do in order to arrive home. Then I just took a breath, stepped back, and told myself "one thing at a time, put one foot in front of the other, and everything will be fine". It's weird how true the cliches are sometimes. I got home safely and pretty sure everything (dignity included) was intact.

My heroes and the people who I've met who are close to me are mostly people who took off and went. Meggs followed her heart to Oz for love. Carrie followed it to wherever it was snowing, Colin followed it to serve his country, and it was super dangerous where he was. So why can't I follow mine? What is it that holds me back? Where does the fear come from? I've never flat out failed with my traveling adventures. I've got the time and the money. I guess I should just get the ticket and go. See what happens. Piss away my savings there instead of here.

Hmmm..."And of course you can't become, if you say what you would've done, so I missed a million miles of fun...