The Cabdriver

Lonely, I've always dealt really well with it. 

In my early twenties driving double-digit hours alone in the night to get to a new city where I'd cozy up in a small hostel alone, slip out to a bar and sip rum alone until I struck up a conversation with a new face. I moved to DC alone. And for lack of any real support from the thing I moved to New York with, I can say I moved here alone too. 

But there was always comfort in the fact I could strike up a conversation when my lips were tired of being silent. 

In Paris it was different...

The first few days were amazing, walking around the city, sensory overload, trying to figure it all out alone. I have several friends there, who speak English but resort to French when they aren't directly talking to me, and I would just listen.

There's a man there, mid-forties, a photographer with blonde-white dreds. I've known him for many years although we've only met a couple times. It was the seventh day and we went to have dinner near Moulin Rouge. He says I look better without the septum piercing. I don't hide it. He likes natural, most French people I run into seem to prefer natural. I prefer modified. 

I was standing around sipping rum while he shot pictures of a petite dirty blonde actress, younger than I, with a group of friends. 

She smiled but I didn't know why. He joked but I couldn't laugh. They laughed and I smiled sheepishly. They told stories and I stared, clutching the sticky glass and sucking on the straw when someone looked at me as though that would save me from having to say that I didn't understand. 

And then the bar closed and then he put me in a cab. 

The cabdriver was a woman from Senegal. She didn't speak English, but she was sucking loudly on a hard candy, moving it around in her mouth so it knocked into her teeth audibly, her lips parting to smack. And although this is the most irritating thing (I wouldn't be able to stand it in the States), in that moment I prayed that candy was big enough to last the entire ride. 

Because I knew that sound; I knew what that noise meant.  

So I popped a few Tic-Tacs and started chomping. And it was as if we were talking. And it was comforting.

Trouble

I've really started using New York for all it's worth, including a multitude or pretty good-looking men of all races and backgrounds that feel just as stressed and lonely as I do.

But with that, I've become more secretive and that makes me worried. It makes me feel deceptive. It makes me feel like I'm the liar. It's as if I almost feel ashamed of what I'm doing. Maybe it's the Catholic upbringing, never mentioning sex and when it hit you right in genitals just denying it. Maybe it's that I've always thought of myself as a catch. You know, sure I'll make out with anyone, but to get the good stuff you have to be special.

But I've become frivolous with sex; I guess they call that promiscuous.

I walk into a bar with my mind on finding the most-attractive, most-interesting (opinion-based of course) man I can and then in a whirlwind of vodka and deep conversations say, "Hey, so wanna go back to my place?"
It was ingrained in me from kindergarten to twelfth grade that every time you have sex you will either get an incurable STD that will basically make you equivalent to a leper in the time of Jesus or get pregnant which will be completely shameful, so much so that you will then have to be a child bride. Granted, protection is the key here, but the mentions above, it seems, do not actually happen all that often.

What else doesn't happen?

You don't just jump into bed with someone and fall in love. But that's what I'm looking for... Because sex with a sociopath is so so good. Other people that have dated sociopaths say similar things.
That's really the only thing I miss...

Not even the other "good" parts, like throwing my leg over his lap and whispering about how good we look in those two-seater benches on the L train when the subway car goes underground and turns the window into a mirror; or him crossing his eyes and speaking in a Vietnamese accent, rambling about "your mathaaa" this and "duuuhhh, what so funnieeee" that, sending me into uncontrollable giggling; or even when we'd walk around the city holding hands in front of all those people he didn't want to know about me. None of that even remotely gets to me anymore. It's actually a tad sadistically funny that he will have to live with all he's done to hurt people for the rest of his pathetic life.

While everyone that's he's hurt is getting over it and moving on with people that love...

Now when I daydream of love, I think of that man there, leaning against the door of the 5 train at 8 am, or that one walking out of Grand Central, making eyes with me as he throws his hood over his head but not in time to keep the snowflakes from his brow, or him or him and them.

The thing that worries me though is that I expect to shack up with someone after one date and have the best sex of my life, have comparable sex to what I was having, which just isn't fair really. And if it isn't as ecstasy-inducing as it was  then that's what's wrong with them and I won't give them another chance.

I'm worried that I'll always be wanting them to do what he did when I'm fucking them.
But I'm rational...

It's out there. Every time I try another I'm getting closer to what I want...

There's Bharat, a sheltered Indian boy that had "smoked weed one time" and always asked me if he could kiss me. There's Jit, another Indian that had many interesting ideas about technology and liked hearing mine as well. There's Matt who got drunk off two dark and stormy's and then wanted to make out every ten steps. There's a group of them that use "u" instead of "you" and other shortcuts when texting me nice things. There's Andy who was so fascinated that I could be open about my sexuality that then everything I said was followed by "so tell me more about what you're into." There's the bro. There's the hipster. There's possibilities but they live states away.

I'm not alone. I'm not without kind words and free meals.

But I am so fucking tired of telling people that I'm from Missouri and I'm a writer and I like art and food and drinking and dancing and traveling and everything, just everything.

I want to lay in bed watching bootlegged movies with a friend and get to know each other slowly in between really sweaty sex. I want to look at someone and smile as we walk my sheets to the laundrymat for the fifth day in a row because no one knows what we know, no one sees what we see.

I want fast infatuation and slow romance. That's what I had with him.

This is what I'll always want, and hey it might lead me to trouble again but... I'm quite good at handling trouble.

It is what it is... and it's your past.

• "C'est la vie says the old folks, which goes to show you can never tell." -Chuck Berry and numerous other musicians that covered this song which was written while Mr. Berry was in prison for intent to commit a sex crime...

  This was said to me several days ago, followed by some ramblings about how he wouldn't be dwelling on things that are upsetting and thinking about the past.

  But I say this...

  That's because old folks are idiots. They're near death and merely trying to believe anything that will make them feel better about not doing all the things they wanted to.
  The past is really all we've got. The present the next second becomes the past and the future is always so unknown. I'm not sure I understand the idea of not thinking about the past.

  My sociopathic ex used to say this, "Bailey stop dwelling on the past because it doesn't define me. Let's just get in bed and we can both be in love again tonight." And he only said this because his past did define him and he knew it... and because he wanted to sleep with me which usually made me even more delusional...

  The past does define us god dammit, every one of us. Because that's all you've got to show.

  I don't believe someone isn't snorting massive amounts of cocaine in the path of ski runs off a Park City, Utah mountain trail map until their nose is clean... until "good behavior" becomes the past. I don't believe a husband isn't going to cheat on his wife again when he's mumbling that out of the side of his mouth because the rest is busy making out with his secretary... until loyal, selfless behavior becomes the norm.

  It's something like this key phrase I picked up from my father: Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

  I'm not saying a specific past has to define us, but it will until we change our more recent past.

  Now most people know I'm not perfect... Honestly my past defined me pretty well in high school when practically no one was allowed to hang out with me because I got so drunk during off-campus lunch I vomited in 7th period sociology and I spent every night watching my mother watch me sneak out. I was a hellion, and I feel bad for the people that cared about me that were praying my life wouldn't be short and sour.

  But hey, I was a teenager... I got it all out. And now, well shit, I think I've proven myself pretty stable (loosely) and doing my best to make a positive impact on the world. But that took some time... Mostly college, when I was working my tuckus off to make the most out of that abysmally lazy journalism program when all the high school prudes were out getting fucked and skipping business classes so they could some day slog through life as some kind of manager at a soul-sucking corporation.

  In no way does this mean I have any idea what I want though, not a fucking clue. I'm passionate and raise my voice during intense philosophical debates on the regular, because I'm angry about the injustices that plague society based on a closed mind. That much I know is me.

  Sometimes I'd like to go back and make better choices; sometimes it feels like I've wasted a lot of time. But I wouldn't be this human being if it wasn't for my past. And I'm happy my past continues to define me.
  I spoke with the CEO of a payments startup today. He told me he's all been adventurous, even reckless, and that's really what it takes to start a business, to create something innovative, because you're likely to fail. But failure doesn't bother him... Some might call that negligent; I call that logical. Why should failure get us down? It's merely the small necessary step before success.
  Haven't you read any inspirational quotes recently?

  
  

  And in case you'd rather hear it from a genius and raving lunatic, here Mr. Hunter Thompson sums up what we should be striving for: 
  "The answer — and, in a sense, the tragedy of life — is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man. We set up a goal which demands of us certain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a concept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It's not the fireman who has changed, but you."
  

  For more of this ingenious wavelength check out one of my favorite blogs-BrainPickings