The Beginning of the End?

Whenever I am asked what sport I engage in, my standard reply is: drinking. It is an endurance sport (at least to me), trying to see who I can outlast at a given drinking spree. I am not alcoholic, mind you. I just enjoy drinking, and I have been gifted with a really high tolerance for alcohol. For someone who is only about five feet two, I can hold my own against people who are twice as big as I am. I also enjoy the company I keep when I drink. My friends and I, we are a bunch of happy drunks. But inasmuch as I hate having to drink alone in public, I am known to enjoy a glass or two (or three) of my favorite Chardonnay, or of a really good Bordeaux (just as I am doing right now as I write this entry).

But something has changed of late. It was gradual. I developed an allergy of sorts to alcohol, not least to vodka. I break into an itch, more so when I drink cheap vodka. But whatever adverse reaction I was getting from drinking never really stopped me from doing it.

Lately however, it’s taken a turn for the worse. I actually get drunk now. The alcohol seems to go up to my head easier and faster than I would prefer, and I haven’t the slightest clue as to why. The amount remains the same, the kind of drink remains the same, but my body seems to be reacting quite differently. I seem to be a different person.

No, this is not a prelude or an excuse I am offering up front for any crazy shit I do when I drink. I do none of that. And if ever I do anything stupid or crazy, I am in possession of my mental faculties (somewhat) and they are in fact conscious and deliberate acts.

For someone who loves their alcohol, this is quite bothersome and worrisome. Should I start chalking this up to age, that my body is now slow to metabolize my intake? Is this a symptom of something more grave? Is this the beginning of the end of my alcoholic sprees?

This reminds me of one episode of LA Ink, where this guy, who loves his cheese with a passion has suddenly developed some kind of intolerance for it and can no longer eat cheese. Ever. To commemorate it, he asks for an image of a block of cheese to be tattooed on his arm as a constant reminder of his love for fermented cow’s milk.

Will I soon have an image of my beloved poison tattooed on my thigh? I tremble with trepidation.

Music is My Radar

I’m not an especially musical person. As a kid, I had spent years learning and playing the piano, unfortunately, nothing stuck and it is as if I never handled the piano all my life. I am not hopeless, though. I can carry a decent tune outside of the shower and the confines of my car, or well at least I think so. But regardless whether I can play an instrument or none, carry a tune or not, music has been and is always an important part in my life.

I’ve never limited myself to one genre and I’m always open to discovering new ones, although rock seems to be the one genre that I’ve always had an affinity towards. And modesty aside, I do have great taste in music, and not just a few would agree. I even thought at one point that I can’t date someone who has bad taste in music, or at least who didn’t share my enthusiasm for it, but as I have recently found out, I’ve broken yet another of my rules. But that’s for another story, and I digress.

My taste in music has even went as far as infecting the people around when in fact, a good friend of mine whose life was one endless series of (perceived) dramatic events have been daydreaming of adapting her life to a screenplay, and jokingly told me that I would be the one to provide the soundtrack to it. And that is precisely what music is to me, a soundtrack to my life, and sometimes to other people’s lives. As cliché as it may sounds, I have probably created countless playlists to correspond to every significant event in my life and even the most mundane of my moods.

So it doesn’t really come as any surprise that I’ve managed to create yet another to provide the soundtrack for the events that have transpired just a few days ago, and hopefully provide a catharsis I need so badly right now. Maybe if I listen these songs long enough and hard enough, I might also be able to get him out of my system for good.

These songs are nothing new, and you may or may not like it, but I’m posting it here just the same. After all, this is my blog and you're just reading it. ;)

1. Superhero by Ani Difranco
2. Untouchable Face by Ani Drifanco
3. There goes the Fear by The Doves
4. Intuition by Feist
5. Hero by Regina Spektor
6. Work by Jimmy Eat World
   
7. Over and Over by Chris Garneau
8. The Way Things Are by Fiona Apple
9. I Know by Fiona Apple
   

Cosmic Joke

He was what the cosmic cat had dragged in. Not that I mind one bit, after all he quite fit the bill—he was intelligent, brilliant, funny, and not to mention really cute. It was an innocuous enough meeting, and I was more than willing to dismiss him as a grandstanding academic but that meeting had led to a seemingly innocent invitation for coffee, his way, he tells me, to kill time before he flies off that evening. Now, it may be argued that an invitation such as that could never be totally innocent, but what can I say? He piqued my interest and so I accepted the invite. A few hours later, I was on my way to meet him at his hotel for drinks…yes, just drinks.

And so we met, after what was supposedly my major blooper, to which he tells me, “I would be mortified if I actually did this on the first date.” So was that meeting, in fact a date? He flatly denied it being so, despite shamelessly flirting with me for the next 45 minutes. For the record though, it was probably one of the most fun and delicious non-date I’ve had in such a long time. Perhaps more fun than the actual romantic dates I’ve gone on.

The meeting was shortly followed by numerous late-night, long distance (and sometimes inappropriate) phone calls riddled with several hundred mixed signals. I dreaded the phone calls and looked forward to them with equal intensity. In one instance, he described it as electric. We had chemistry, he said. I let the words roll off me, I didn’t want to believe it. But I knew he wasn’t lying.

But this wasn’t a simple case of boy meets girl, and all that jazz. “You make it sound so complicated,” he once said. But, of course, it was complicated and he should have known better than to tell me that. After all, these weren’t petty things to which I could easily turn a blind eye. These weren’t negligible details. They meant everything if we were to define what we were doing.

I battled with him and with myself. I hated the idea that he could affect me so much, but it seemed whatever choice I had in the matter had been thrown out of the window the moment we met. I remember thinking, “maybe this thing, whatever it is, is bigger than both of us,” and I have no choice but to succumb to it. But if I do, I can rest on the idea that I actually fought him even a little.

But just as soon as it started, it ended. The phone calls stopped, the messages and the occasional emails had all but came to a grinding halt. And the dance that was seemingly choreographed by fate herself just went out of whack, and here I am left reeling. It must have been something I said, I’m pretty sure of that, or my resistance. Or maybe the fact that I had wished him away, I make no denials. I was scared to even contemplate what he had turned me into, much less what I actually thought I would be willing to do. I want him and I don’t want him at the same time.

Funny thing is, the end came too soon just when I had somewhat decided I would take the plunge. But the bottom line is: why did he give up on me too quickly? Couldn’t he have waited a little longer, until I was ready? Doesn’t he know that these things take time? I guess the joke is on me.

Fate

I am putting in an excerpt from Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. Somehow, I find this to be a fitting first entry for this blog. Maybe because I am right in the middle of one, and I wonder who and what I will be after all is through...

"Okay, picture a terrible sandstorm," he says. "Get everything else out of your head. Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions," Crow says…

Sometimes, fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't about something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how symbolic or metaphysical it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't be even sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. This what this storm is all about."