But I’m also, sorta, kinda starting to envy those people. The people with the Heart Walls. I’m starting to wonder if you people have it pretty good.

Is that weird? It’s just that…it must be nice. It must be nice to just write the whole thing off, like, “Know what? Eff this sh*t. Closing up shop! No one comes in!” Deep down you know it’s not good for anyone, but…just for a while, I’d love to feel the RELIEF that must come from completely shutting yourself off so as not to get hurt. Yeah, the force-field of your Heart Wall also deflects all that ooey-gooey lovelight that someone might shine your way, but, you know — love is so short, forgetting is so long. (I didn’t make that up. That was totally Neruda. The last half. Obvie Neruda wouldn’t say “ooey-gooey lovelight.” Or perhaps he did; it just got lost in translation.)

But if this blog tells you anything, it’s that you’ll never seek out my heart only to find a wall. No, pretty sure my heart has a landing strip on it, a little dude guiding your way with those neon-orange light sticks. Or maybe there is a barrier around there, but it’s protected by a chubby, bumbling security guard who’s always falling asleep with donut crumbs on his face and coffee stains on his uniform. This heart’s always on a silver platter.  I’ll ice it like a goddamn cupcake if that’s how you want it.

Enough metaphor for you? Good.

Obviously I’m talking about dudes, here, but really I become enamored with just about anything so damn easily, and it’s exhausting. I’m not trying to get namby-pamby, look-at-me-I’m-a-tortured-artist on you, but that lack of a filter is precisely what drives me to write halfway-decently. If I didn’t let everything in, and experience all the ugly, would I be able to see the beauty in the oft-overlooked slices of life that I find so delicious? Would I get as excited about shooting the broken windows of an abandoned state hospital?

I have it in my head that I wouldn’t. I’m convinced that I would become boring and uncreative.

That’s probably my problem.

“Oh, he’s on his lunch break. Can you maybe wait ten minutes?” she says.

“You know what, I’ll just come back another time. This was just a spur of the moment thing…”

As I’m getting into my car I hear a voice call out to me in the parking lot -

“You want a reading?”

Mark was coming back from his lunch break. Of course I want a reading. He knew that. Because Mark is a psychic.

This was my second time seeing him, and I DON’T KNOW WHY. Sometimes it’s pay day, and you just want to give someone $20 to tell you about your life for 15 minutes. Must be part of that whole daunting-mid-twenties thing: “I have no idea what I’m doing. Just tell me some things, and I’ll cherry pick the parts I want to believe.”

We sit at the table and he starts with a Tarot card reading. I select a card; he flips it over.

“Are you in a relationship?”

[Really? We gotta start with this, Mark?]

“I am not.”

“Well, you pulled the Knight in Shining Armor card. So someone’s going to be coming into your life, if he hasn’t already.”

This. This is why I happily give you my twenty dollars. (Although I’m REALLY REALLY hoping my Knight isn’t Steer-In guy.)

In the thirty minutes total that I’ve spent with Mark, he’s told me things that I already knew/things that could apply to any twenty-something female:

• I’m going to be making a lot of changes in the near future
• I’m very emotional
• I let people in too easily and they walk all over me and then I make excuses for them (duh)
• I’ll find success in something that will “put me in the spotlight,” but not until I gain more experience

And then he’ll hit me with something REALLY SPECIFIC, like

• I’m going to be working in healthcare marketing (?)
• I’m going to have four kids (!)
• I need to be careful for the next two months, because I’m GOING TO BE EXTREMELY FERTILE (!!!)

And then how about this doozy:

Mark: You’ve been crafting an ideal mate since you were little. Your (insert planet here) has been in (insert astrological sign here), so I bet your love life has been TERRIBLE the past couple years, right? And you’ve determined what you DON’T want?

Jenn: Check.

Mark: And now you’re meeting guys that you put on a pedestal, so you construct these fanciful, non-realistic expectations that never work out.

Jenn: Check.

Mark: So now that your (insert planet here) is moving back into (insert astrological sign here) you’re going to be finding ways to pull back closer to center.

Jenn: Uh-huh. So that’s what, the next couple months or so?

Mark: That’s the next two and a half years.

Should’ve asked for that $20 back so I could buy some wine and chocolates, because: AAAAAACCCCCKKKKK.

When Robert Taylor came on screen, I felt my heart swell. I guess I have these momentary bouts of love that I can’t really explain. They are ephemeral, but so intense. For about five minutes, I literally feel myself falling in love, my chest aching for this man who died thirty years ago. Seriously, though — perfection.  Dream. Boat. Dreamboat.

photo via Meredy.com

Joan Crawford agrees, as her character Peggy swoons in the first act:

“Oh, but he’s so alive — always laughing, always warm, and…and tender.”

THAT’S IT. That’s what I want, I decided, thinking back to a Formspring question asked of me a month ago. Someone so alive - always laughing, always warm, and tender. That head-in-the-clouds mentality f*cks me over every time, but I don’t really care.  A year of being single has sent me through the gamut of emotions: ambivalent to tortured, viciously spiteful to hopelessly romantic, and back ’round again.

You know what they say. “Getting back into The Meet Market: It’s like riding a bike!” They’re right. It comes back: Lingered glances over table tops. Feeling sixteen again. Trying to get from Point A to Point B, where Point A is “Top Five Desert Island Albums: Go,” and Point B is OMG JUST KISS ME ON THE MOUTH. Late nights. Green lights.

While you’re busy with all that, you render yourself completely unprepared to deal with what happens next: Mixed signals. Bad timing. Bruised pride. Things left unsaid. Contrary to popular belief, he did not look at you like Kevin Arnold looked at Winnie Cooper. You manufactured the whole damn thing in your head. You are foolish. You are a fool. And it’s terrifying.

“It’s like riding a bike!”  A ramshackle, rusty ol’ bike, with a tattered basket and bent handlebars, one where you keep getting your shoelaces caught in the chainwheel so many times, until you’re finally like,”Know what? I think I’ll just walk.”

More at my Flickr set, “Epic Weekend #985231495.”

This was a pretty hazy night, especially for a Sunday — one of those where you wake up and hope to God you didn’t say something too inappropriate (or, in my case, more inappropriate than people expect).

Also? After the Matt Wilson drunk dial incident? I’m always fearful of going Cathy-Comic after I’ve had a couple. [AAAACK!] I’m having these Morning-Afters, these faintly-remembered conversations wherein people (cough Dodge cough) are patching up my self-esteem. ["You are NOT revolting." "Guys DO want to make out with you."]

See, sometimes I tend to project myself like this:

When really, on the interior, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO MEN, I’m TOTALLY this:

Which, yeah-yeah, I’m working on. But I don’t want YOU to know that. [She writes, in her BLOG.]

I know the easy-peasy solution is to PUT DOWN THE WINE, but psh, do you know me AT ALL? I need a little help, some people to hold me accountable. So? PACT: If I go Cathy-Comic after a few brewskis? Just slap me upside the head and tell me to stop. Deal? Deal.

“No, we broke up, like..a year ago,” I replied. “Yeah. It’s been quite a ride since then.”

Understatement of the Year.

TOP TEN RECAP.

In eleven months and five days, I :

1) Broke up.

2) Became pretty much a hot mess for a month.

3) Contemplated running away.

4) Saw the silver lining.

5) Moved in with one of the COOLEST GIRLS ON THE PLANET.

6) Defibrillated my Photography Bug.

7) Realized that, yeah, dating? NOT WHAT IT WAS IN 2005.

8) Found myself unemployed.

9) Seduced Apolo Ohno

10) ???

10) . . .

Well, I’m not sure when “10″ should be. Something like, “found myself right where I needed to be,” but less schmaltzy-sounding.

F*ck it. I’ll be sentimental.

In the midst of a year that could have easily rendered me completely useless (and let’s be honest - some days it did), I managed to surround myself with the most amazing friends a girl could ask for. Dewy-eyed romantic that I am, it takes all that I have not to continuously blurt, “I love us,” when we are gathered together. Instead, I just sigh and take another series of photographs:

Happy New Year.

This one is from February 9, 2005. Enjoy!

—————————-

My words rained over you, stroking you
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

That’s Pablo Neruda, XIV from Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.

You know how old he was when he wrote that? NINETEEN!
I was wondering what kind of boyfriend Pablo Neruda must have been.

“I wrote you a little something,” he would say, sliding a hand-written note across a candle-lit dinner table on Valentine’s Day.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

I bet his group of close guy friends despised him, whipping out poetic pick-up lines like a Chilean Cassanova. I haven’t found much specific information about the loves of Pablo Neruda. Surely he had a muse, the passionate love of his life?!

No. He was married — three times.

I think this just goes to show that even the most brilliant poets find their inspiration in the chemical bath of love. Sure, initial dates would be listening to him spout sonnets like,

Your breast is enough for my heart,
and my wings for your freedom.
What was sleeping above your soul will rise
out of my mouth to heaven.

It’s months later when Pablo Neruda leaves the Post-It note on the fridge, saying,

Maybe
it’s better
that we just
be friends.

It’s, it’s not you –
it’s me.

“I need you to do me a big favor. I need you to tell me that boys are stupid. And that I’m pretty.”

“We’re idiots, all of us. And you’re gorgeous.”

——————————

[Raises hand]

You: Yes? Jenn?

Me: Hey. Yeah, um….WHEN DID IT COME TO THIS?

——————————

Seriously.

Is this because I rejected a bunch of guys in high school? Is that what this is about, Universe? ‘Cuz THERE’S YOUR KARMA. [Sorry. I always wanted to do that - say the name of my blog in an entry. Thought that would get a chuckle, like it does in the movies.] Somehow I got to the point when I am out in the freezing cold, slurring into my blackberry to get validation from a man 700 miles away?

This is stupid.

It was just a few months ago that I was telling Bess how things are so much different when you’re older! I’m not fourteen anymore! I don’t have tear-stained scribbles in my journal asking why I never get asked to couples skate to “Water Runs Dry” at the Plainfield Roller Rink (IT’S SPECIFIC BECAUSE IT’S TRUE). I am a W.O.M.A.N and I know what I want now, and it’s liberating, and watch me flirt with all the boys at the bar, but wait, I don’t really remember how to do this anymore, oh God, I suck at this actually, and wait, the boys aren’t pooling at my feet, there must be a horn growing out of my head that I don’t know about.

It’s exhausting, trying to get you to fall in love with me, Boys. So I’munna go ahead and sit this one out for a while. And maybe not drink as much, so Matt Wilson can catch some Z’s.  I refuse to be That Girl. A pity, because drinking was the driving force behind this whole entry. See, I opened my laptop this morning to find my browser logged into Twitter. In the text box was a tweet that I wrote, but never sent.

It read:

“Argh. Conclusion: Don’t try so hard.”

I have NO recollection of writing this, on account of The Drink. It was like a tweet-in-a-bottle, sent from a different version of myself. Good advice, Drunk Jenn. It was like when Jim pranked Dwight with faxes from the future.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGXKCtHooHA

Heh. Classic.

As a single woman.

No one has said anything, per se. There was no intervention, no somber gathering of friends to break it to me gently — You need to calm down a second, kid. And possibly just get yourself laid. I’d talk excessively about the tumbleweeds rollicking through the ghost town of my bed, in order to score a cheap chuckle from friends. And then I started catching myself doing it. All the time.

There’s a line between the self-deprecation for which I’m known and the all-out desperation of the clearly undersexed. The joke within my circle is that I’m bound to embark on a “Slutty Phase,”  celebrating my singledom with a burst of promiscuity.  However, I’ve been single for nearly six months, which is just enough time to remember that I’m really, really bad at it.

Baby steps. Remember, people, this is territory I haven’t explored since the Summer of 2005.  And I’ll tell ya - the landscape has changed. Summer of 2005? I was a glowing, new college graduate. I was also living in a town saturated with boys who drunkenly shouted Dispatch songs from the abandoned couches of their fraternity front porches.

I still have the option to meet guys like this.  We have clubs where, “Hi, I’m ___, it’s nice to meet you” is replaced with, “I know you didn’t ask for this, but I’munna go ahead and grind up against your backside to Funky Cold Medina.” That’s an appropriate guy to kick off your Slutty Phase.  Someone meaningless that you never have to see again.

Alas, I don’t go to clubs.  (Which is a shame, because I do take a hip hop dance class, so I should really expose the world to my moves. Instead I break out the “stanky leg” in dive bars, for my friends’ entertainment.) No, I go to these music venues, full of boys in skinny jeans. Boys in skinny jeans do not approach you.  And you can run that fantasy in your head of you and him reaching for the same vinyl in the record store basement a million times. Ain’t gonna happen.

Also? Can you imagine me taking home the dude from the club? I mean, really? I don’t even want to see that guy naked. Pecs and delts and hair gel = not a turn on. Offhand comment about your favorite Beatles album = turn on. And let’s be honest, by the time you’ve made the Beatles comment, I probably already genuinely like you. Therefore, I don’t want to mess things up by trying to take you home and embarrassing myself [which is inevitable].

One thing I know for sure is that dating provides an endless stream of blog fodder. Hellloooo, who could forget British Guy? Plasma Guy? And of course, DUSTIN and the WORST DATE EVER?

It’s like you have a front row seat. Except you should probably bring a poncho, like if you’re going to see a show at Sea World. Or Gallagher.

Still, I become enamored with people very easily and often, and my unrealistic imagination fires up fantasies accordingly. “Unrealistic” in that I assume that they, too, are enamored with me, as if the world was put here for me to fall in love with, and vice-versa. By the time the wavy-haired boy at the library has broken his one second of eye contact, I’ll have concocted our adorable, witty repartee in my head.  (Reality?  I probably just had mustard on my face. And he walks away.)   Inexplicably, I do this ALL THE TIME, with complete strangers, guys I know or have known. And Bess, that flibbertygibbet, she’ll feed into it. I’ll say, “I haven’t heard from so-and-so in a while…” you know, someone with whom I’ve manufactured a make-believe romance, and she’ll respond with something like, “Do you think it’s because he finds it too difficult, because he’s discovered his true feelings for you?” Dead serious, like it’s not hard enough for me to stay tethered to earth on a daily basis.  It’s incredible and hilarious. Or possibly just narcissistic and sad. I’m not sure.   I mean, I also fall hopelessly in love with things.  Like Mozart concertos, or a good hollandaise.  Logic dictates that I just shouldn’t throw around the word love when talking about a clarinet quintet or a basic emulsion but I swear to God,  it’s pretty damn close. And much longer lasting. (You hear me, Billy Collins? Yeah, I know ya do.)

Jesus. What was my point here. I’m not even sure now.

Inevitably, if someone intrigues me, I’ll start stalking them online, not in a creepy rabbit-in-the-stew-pot way, but in a if-you-list-The-DaVinci-Code-as-one-of-your-favorite-books-I’ll-know-to-just-stop-now way.  I was flipping through one such person’s photography today, and something stopped me when I came across one particular image of a woman he knew. Holy crap. He was in LOVE with her. You could tell by the photo.  The composition and the light and…everything. He was in LOVE with this girl. He was NOT going to be giving me any glances, not even for one second.

It reminded me of the shot of Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis, at the end of the song “The Boy Next Door.” It was during this film that Vincente Minnelli, the director, and Judy had fallen in love. And man, can you TELL. Minnelli constantly frames Judy like she’s a moving painting.*

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pspHETLjs40

Yep. Perhaps we could trace the origins of my romantic frivolities back to the first viewing of that last, insanely diffused shot.

*It should be pointed out that although Minnelli was a pretty private man, he seemed to live a predominantly gay lifestyle.  So it’s possible he didn’t “love” Judy in “that way,” and instead managed to fulfill every gay man’s dream by directing a film with Judy Garland. That’s good enough for me. If I can’t be on the opposite end of someone’s insanely obvious infatuation, I could stand to be a gay icon.

Still, if you want to talk about dating in college, at least on the casual level, you have to throw up some quotes –  “dating.” At least that was my experience. “Dating” was two people, trying to make a go of something in one of the most developmentally volatile times in their lives. Maybe they stopped transitioning long enough to grab a cup of coffee.  Or a one night stand.  Whichever.  Ask me what I had learned, then, and I’d throw up my hands and yell, “NOTHING! I LEARNED NOTHING!” But perhaps, like a lot of things, the lessons were there - I am just slow. I am just now learning them.

[The Doogie Howser theme song just popped into my head. Why? I mean, I've been typing out my thoughts for YEARS and this is the first time. Weird.]

Anyway.  I just came across one of my old, and few, “friends-only” journal entries.  It detailed my date with a guy from one of my classes whom I aptly named “Art History Kid.”

It was some catch-all course, a 101 covering everything from Renaissance to Modern.  I was finishing out my senior year, and I was ready for school to be over. [Shakes my former self: "For the love of God, CHERISH IT."]  He was a sophomore majoring in fine arts, young and full of ardor. Okay, I’m making it sound like I was some sort of cougar at twenty-one, but he was nineteen, and doesn’t that just sound young? (She asks? At twenty-five?)  The fact that I had the maturity of a thirty-year-old paired with that inevitable chasm that occurs once you turn twenty-one — my mind was already against it.

Which was too bad, really, because it was a great date. He took me out for sushi, and the only thing I remember from the conversation was that he was OBSESSED with ceramics.  At dinner he carefully studied the Japanese cups that held our green tea.   He talked about pottery in such a way that made you believe if he died, he would like to come back as a tea pot.  We went to an art opening at the campus museum, then the post-party at the art studios. Everyone was cool, and drinking PBR, and had interesting things to say, and there was dancing.

Regardless, he was nineteen, and proceeded to get drunk, and started gushing, which immediately freaked me out. The sentences started off with “I’m probably saying too much…” and sadly, my guard was already up. I was graduating in a few months and I was not looking for a boyfriend or a one night stand or a husband or anyone, really.

He walked me back to my house, and as we sat at the kitchen table I nearly drowned him with cup after cup of water to sober him up.  “You’re amazing, really amazing. Has anyone ever told you that?” I can remember everything about that moment.

A few days later he called to see if he could stop by. He made me nervous, now, someone who just put everything out there. He wasn’t playing the games to which I had grown accustomed — he wasn’t playing it cool, feigning ambivalence.  When I answered the door he was holding a single orchid in a small pot that he had made.  He had inscribed on the bottom: “A very strange pot for a very strange flower.”

We never went out again.  We met at a weird crossroads where the timing was completely off, where he was bright and optimistic and I was cynical and mellow.  Right before writing this I looked him up on Facebook, and although there was a page of people with his name and none of the pictures looked like him, I knew in an instant which profile was his: Interests: Ceramic, Tea, Pots. Apparently he’s teaching English in Korea.  He has albums upon albums of all his work, hundreds of vases and mugs and plates and bowls and they are BEAUTIFUL.  And although we just had this brief passing in each other’s lives, I couldn’t be happier for him.