my native tongue

She is everything I want today...

2012-01-18T23:30:00.001-08:00

...so what the fuck am I doing, exactly?

Fear

2012-01-04T15:06:00.000-08:00

Jess might have been smarter than me; she was definitely a whole lot nicer to look at. She'd been a professional ballet dancer for 3 years until a fall while training had ended that dream. She moved into fitness instruction and athletic training for a short time, even listing the NHL's Ottawa Senators as clients. She had a business card, and she looked like a total fox on it. There are a lot of better men than me that would have been overwhelmed or at least a little bit intimidated.

Reasons I was not scared:

1) Jess, despite her body's many talents and graces, stood at all of 5 feet 2 inches tall. Try as you might, it's tough to be intimidating when you're most of a foot shorter than someone. (Yes, this is superficial as all hell but it is true so I am writing it.)

2) I was barely a week removed from the longest and most rewarding relationship of my life. Jess was the first woman to show interest in me, but I was in no shape whatsoever to be interested in her. There is something awkwardly fascinating about a beautiful woman showing interest in you when your soul is completely crushed - I may have been a total train wreck but part of me was overwhelmingly curious and just wanted to watch what would happen to me if I spent any time with her. It was just such an unlikely situation that I wanted more than anything to put myself in autopilot, pull out some popcorn, and snack happily away while watching myself drown. I know this is twisted but I told you I was at bottom.

3) Jess made all of the 1st moves. Not only did this facilitate what my otherwise broken self would have found impossible but it also kind of helped absolve me of any guilt I felt for flirting with someone so soon after the break-up. As long as Jess led the way, everything felt like her choice.

An interesting aside: I have long believed that a man can make himself attractive to a woman just by letting her talk to him, asking a question here or there, and taking care of two things: A) smelling halfway decent and B) refraining from saying anything completely fucking stupid. Tell me I'm wrong - I dare you.

So it was surprisingly easy. I may have even helped my case by presenting myself as reserved - I really have no idea. Suffice to say, Jess was into me despite her strengths and my weaknesses at the time and I wanted to see if I was still capable of being honest with women (and myself!)

Next up: The fun parts and how that long goodbye almost made me miss my train home!

March 3, 2011

2011-12-29T10:07:00.000-08:00

"I know you from somewhere."

Honestly, if she hadn't been pretty, it would have been a pretty annoying way to strike up a conversation, but that's a rant for a different time.

Jess was a hipster. Or she dressed like a hipster. Or she had the haircut and glasses of a hipster. One way or another, she conveyed the sense that not only was she much more committed to her left wing ideals than I was to mine but that she was also intelligent enough to dance her way out of any political criticisms I might throw her way. This intrigued me. Also, despite being very pretty, she stood all of five-foot-two-inches and was hardly intimidating. As someone whose heart was reeling after recently ending a seven year relationship, Jess was exactly what I needed.

Also, she was right. We did know each other from somewhere.

It turned out that a few months prior, we had been in the same "artists constituency" workshop in Ottawa. I should say that her status as an "artist" was quite genuine in that she had been a professional ballet dancer for three years while my own claim was slightly less impressive: I had acted in all of two plays during my university career and in one of them I did so almost passably. I'll be honest and say that I was a little worried my lack of hipster street cred would quickly be exposed.

Instead, Jess took my hand, put it in hers, and gave me a tour of Vancouver that I will never forget.

Next: how I overcame this fear and a long goodbye that almost cost me my train ride home.

The memo was titled, "Growth".

2011-12-29T09:31:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, March 6th, 2011, I added a new memo to my phone. I don't think I realized the significance of that particular date when I wrote the following:

I am still capable of feeling real emotions.

I'm not ready to express them fully yet. I can feel how far away from that I am, and I know how alone I will between here and there, but I know one more thing:

I'm going to make it because I'm learning how to be honest with myself.

Kind of a cheesy thing to write, no? The pride in that first paragraph, the loneliness in the second, and the optimism in the third - almost like a 3 act melodrama with a hopeful conclusion.

How have things gone? To tell that story I would have to start by telling you about Jess.

The house

2011-12-27T18:11:00.001-08:00

"Can you pause that for a second? I want to see if this is funny or not."

That's Pete. He is the house's meme-aficionado. He has proposed that we get a second TV mounted to the wall so that we can have a constant Reddit ticker in our living room. This idea was met with some enthusiasm, though we are still a uni-television household. Room to grow, I suppose.

The video is a mockery of Cricket as a sport. "And then everyone claps, even though nothing really happened, and then you get drunk (which is the conclusion of pretty much every other British activity I know of)."

"What else do they make fun of?" asks Nik. He is the reason we have this house and the connecting force that brings us all together under the same roof. He put $50k down on this place and plans to have the mortgage paid off within 10 years even while charging Pete and me a fraction of what he rightfully could to live here. What a gem, eh? The truth is he smells terrible so it all kind of balances out.

That's our household, for you. Peter, Nik, and me. Soon: our adventures.