Coffee Shop Sofa Sex

There is a shift of focus for the content of my life. I am almost thirty and finally ready to be positive. I mean this in the sense of what I joke and talk about, also what I look at. I recognize what it feels like to say negative things about people or to “vent”. I have always done this justifying that I need to “get it out”, but there is no release, there is only more of the same and an insatiable desire to do more. I also find that if I make fun of people behind their back, I feel that much more affected by the idea that people don’t like me. It’s creating the world you live in and recognizing the world only exists to you the way you see it. Cynics will point out that bad things are happening whether or not you acknowledge them, but how much energy do you have to give to the problem before you start identifying with it? I am focusing on a solution... nice things to do and say. Eventually, I wont feel a need to destroy myself, I think. I am sure, because I am shifting. I also am cutting out celebrity gossip... really toxic stuff there.

In this shift I have to ask what I am laughing at; what am I joking about? For example, I was at a restaurant waiting for somebody when 6 Asians walked in, some old, some young. They were tourists and as tourists, spoke English when they asked for a “table for sex”. I don’t want to think that I misheard that, and as the only native speaker in the area, I was alone with my chuckle- so alone that I didn’t chuckle at all. Now is it mean-spirited to relay that story? Nope, because it’s not like I am pulling my eyes apart and dumbing down my voice. It is good natured linguistic fun. So they got to the table and the older man started pinching the little girls undeveloped nipples... maybe that’s an area I don’t feel like taking, because I might have kids someday.

I might have kids, I might write books, but I am considering taking speed more and more. Coffee seems to get me into more trouble than speed would. I was at my favorite coffee shop and found myself being stared at by the attractive barista. I would look up occasionally and watch him for a period of time that could just be staring off, or it could be flirting. It amounted to nothing immediately, because I left without saying anything, even after he sat right across from me with a book and intermittent glances. I was sitting in front of the window, so it’s possible that there was something more to see in my general area, but it feels better to think that we are soul mates. The only thing with delusion, is the down side, when you find the person you never actually spoken with on Facebook and ask them out for coffee. I did this, but I played it as cool as possible considering the context. I haven’t heard back and am starting to plan my next line of defense.

FLOWERS- CARDS- PHONE CALLS- BLOW JOBS

Anything to get my power back and make visiting that coffee shop less stressful again. Never pee where you sleep, guys... unless you are in love. I am not too bent out of shape, it doesn’t seem to me that this guy gets on Facebook everyday. He might be camping or married. I sent him a friend request the day before I wrote him and hoped he would ask me how he knew me, so I could say “I recognized your pants in a photo” or something equally undefinable in it’s creepiness. He didn’t ask, probably satisfied with his life as it is, so I wrote the blurb about us getting coffee... Now, I am just going to find ways to stop eating, maybe mono. I have never had mono and sometimes I think it’s because God hates me, or that I am shy.

I haven’t posted on my travel blog in sometime, so I am going to post this. However, I hope that my ex in Portland doesn’t read it because it will make him sad to read that I am asking guys out. He and I still talk a lot and maybe, you could say, we are still in love. Maybe we are just insanely good friends who don’t sleep with other people because we doubt anyone else will be as pleasant to deal with. Whatever the case, I have been told that I can see someone here and that he would still want to be with me when I get back to the US. I told him the feeling isn’t mutual because I don’t like the idea of sharing that dick. So, now I feel free to explore romantic possibilities with men I am attracted to. Mainly, because I know that if there isn’t a shared sense of humor or connection, I wont kiss them. It’s liberating to be able to walk down streets without wanting to move into every cute building you see. You can look at the space and just because it has a place to sit, doesn’t mean you have to get a rash from a well-worn sofa. Also, my ex should know, if he’s reading this... which I doubt, because he would have stopped after that paragraph about asking the guy out... He should know that I would only fuck somebody if they were really hung. I love you.

I Nreed Some Brinds

I live in a chambre de bonne next to Sorbonne University, in Paris. A chambre de bonne is a make shift room, at the top of buildings and it’s where the help used to sleep back when people kept servants. My room is about half the size of the smallest image I have seen on the internet. There is a dorm room fridge, a sink and a toilet. My toilet is electronic, so when I flush, it stalls for about 7 seconds before loudly announcing it’s function to anyone within earshot, which is everyone because my walls are as thin as the servants who lived here used to be. As if a frightening noise weren’t enough, it’s process is different from a traditional toilet that flushes into a sewer. I am not entirely sure about the exact logistics, but when you flush, it grinds whatever you did into everything else that’s ever been done. It doesn’t matter if you pee, poop or vomit, you will smell a lifetime's evidence of all these things. It’s like a little movie I would call “Shaw-Stank” Redemption, without the ass rape (although, the movie's not over yet). It’s basically a movie that goes on for 11 months and is set in the sewer Tim Robbin's character had to crawl out of, in the original movie, to know freedom (myself).

My toilet is right under my window, which is helpful to flush out the flush smell, depending on the temperature outside. My window faces into a bunch of other windows, of wealthier homes, which I have only recently discovered, has made me quite a spectacle to some old man’s grandsons. I got a formally written complaint asking me to get some curtains. I thought I was being discreet, but assumptions really do make an ass out of... and visible to obtrusive teenage boys. I avoided hanging blinds because my window is slanted with the roof, that tops my tiny little space. A hung curtain cuts off half of my room, unless I pin it and then the air flow is obstructed making bathroom time noxious, but hey, I’m in Paris and in my own, imaginary movie!

Like I said, the walls are thin (or athletic by today’s standards) and my other neighbors, who share my walls/ are poor, are also Asian- Vietnamese- I think... I’ve never been good with that sort of thing, but wanted to convey that I know a specific country over there. My neighbor is up late and when his girlfriend comes over at the end of her restaurant shift (I assume at a Chinese place),they catch up on their day- Of course- they haven’t seen each other all day! It is ridiculously loud and bounces out their open window, and off of the glass of the horny French kids and every other spectator’s window who can’t smell my toilet, but know it’s there. I wonder why their talking hasn’t gotten a complaint and my sloppily discreet wardrobe changes have. I thought about what complaining about them would sound like and I'm pretty sure it would sound racist. The thing about their native tongue, is that it’s a tonal language, so me making a noise complaint is like a hate crime. I hate that I have to wake up at 6 in the morning and they want to communicate. However, if I did voice a complaint, it would be a lot like being in America and complaining about my Mexican neighbors not speaking English to their 7 kids. “It’s really awful because I hear them and then I think it’s early May (Cinco de Mayo).” So I have ear plugs and one of those plants that dances when it hears noise, super hypnotic.

Poor Asians, so easy to pick on linguistically. My French friend and I were at a grocery store here and it was after the cut off time the store would sell alcohol. We got to the counter after some disgruntled party people, frustrated they couldn’t get some more beer into their expanding guts. I decided it would be fun to fuck with an already disgruntled clerk. We put our stuff on the counter and I leaned on the counter with the kind of swagger a handsome oil tycoon has in the movies when he approaches a cheap blonde at a bar. In French I say to the clerk “good evening, this [signaling the food] and [pausing for affect] one bottle of Smirnoff.” He humorlessly explains that they aren’t selling alcohol at this time, to which I throw my hands up in mock defensiveness, then respond in French “okay, okay [pausing again, for the same reasons] TWO bottles of Smirnoff.” He hears me and thinks that I am just a stupid person who can’t understand what he’s saying, but I clearly need booze, so he let’s me in on a little racist secret. In a French/ English combo he explains that there is a shop on the corner that sells alcohol late, then he clarifies (in French) “a Chinese man," as he says this, he takes his fingers and pulls his eyes apart. I know that he was just frustrated with my inability to understand, so instinctively did what he could to survive the communication jungle we were now hacking through. To let him know I clearly understood, I said “CHINESE!” and put my hands together over my head, making a triangle of my arms, mimicking a Chinese rice hat and started saying “ah ah ah ah thank you very much,” in the most offensively racist Chinese accent I could muster. My friend and I had a good laugh and were off with our food. We weren’t going to buy alcohol anyway, which is fine, because I wasn’t home and that’s the only place I would NEED to drink anyway.