How odd that my last post was on Ah Ren, ah again. Even his re-re-return recently failed to motivate me to ruminition - here at least. At least I remembered to tell him I love him. “You too,” he replied, in the safe neutrality of text messaging, after my unsuccessful attempt to kiss him goodbye - again, again - but in a way that could be blamed on alcohol and/or air-kisses in a moving vehicle.
Even that, a month ago, feels epic lifetimes ago - while decades nip at my heels. I interviewed Karl Lagerfeld, I protested a racist fashion event, I lost my job…so much has happened, so much has changed this month so far. I am exhausted yet feel a decade younger, so ripe and drippy with possibility.
Joblessness is scary, and yet - I know I am so intelligent, skilled, competent and capable that I will land on feet. I want to avoid hubris, hubris got me into my current crisis=opportunity. It was not even of the arrogant kind, my usual achilles, but rather of the physical overestimation sort.
Thoughts, terrors, hopes. I am finally able to eat again, after a week of frenzied exerciise on an empty stomach - fueled by coffee and milk, hardly friends to any internal membranes but at least I haven’t gone any worse than woozy. Now it is sleep that evades, at least at convenient hours. I have been minimizing alcohol in hopes of circumventing a seasonal and/or situational funk, but the boozy woozies have been replaced by serious insomnia. Oh, if only I could work well late at night! I can, if on deadline. But otherwise - nah.
I have a three-pronged priority structure for the next two weeks and the beginnings of 二十一十: 1. Book. 2. Freelancing. 3. Revenue. I hope to finish chaptah twah of the book before the end of the year; dare I admit it is undoable? Trying not to. This is one improbable deadline that won’t cost me my job. If I say I can, then I can. And other fatal attitudes.
The past ten days have been a time of much brain-wracking and soul searching. Whither my life? Or else wither my life. My life has been withering for so long, a comfortable stagnation of habit.
The last several years have been groundhogs days, the same articles over and over again, just different information in the templates. Textile moods good, bad, uglies. Famous designer comes to China, says stupid things about it. Rinse, repeat - and you can never rinse hard enough.
I grew fat, comfortable, complacent and unhappy. My life was on pause until I finished the book, but I could never finsh the book under that situation. Oh, it so sucks how it ended - so pathetic and stupid and pointless - but I am now so glad it did. It wasn not a bad job, but it had become a bad world for me. The rut that I allowed to hijack my life.
I have been much curled up with my diary and notes, accounting for and hopefully learning from my fuck up, and exploring the myriad what nows.
I plotted out a lot of plans and ambitions, more specific than and in advance of my year end usuals. What do I need to happen in my life? Book out. Find a partner. Be financially more secure. The big things, the decade’s bucket list, is a little more flexible.
Other things aren’t. I want to have my first child when I am 36. That means that, two years from now, I will be pregnant. Which - makes me want a drink.
I don’t want to get married, but I want to find a partner I adore as much as I did Jifu, but who I can spend my life with. I don’t want to procreate with a random or bland boy du jour. I want to love madly, and be loved by, someone who both fits me and who tickles me in places I don’t yet know exist. I want to meet someone who catches up with, who challenges, but doesn’t condescends to, me. Boys I want to fuck are everywhere; boys I want to cleave to and make pretty babies with are not so easily come by. I am brainy, geeky, nerdy, complicated, culturally convoluted: as I get older, career gets s omewhat easier but loves gets harder.
At the succession of Chanel events that proved so fateful and bizarre, I reconnected with Jiudelai, a Hongkonger photographer I have know for many years, but never very well. It had been months since I had seen him, and at the dinner we beamed at each other. Surprised, nostalgic, awkward. The following day, at the party, we reencountered, and it was obvious enough even for my thick skull: we like each other. I stole a few moments with him, before rushing home to work and file - nothing juicy, just friendly and cuddly. And quite deliciously close to kissing.
I had ran out of name cards, so Jiudelai gave me his. A distinctive design so familiar: I realesized how many copies I must have of his card. How many times I have forgotten his name, unintentionally blown him off. He has taken many of my favorite photos of myself and my friends, he has always been around and smiling so shyly and beautifully - a good photographer yet so unintrusive.
Has he always liked me? I started to like him two and a half years ago at that Versace thing. Jiu De Lai, long time coming, indeed.
And now I cannot find his card.
Even in my transitional mess, I pulled it out as a precious thing, left it in a precise place. Thinking, I do not know if he is what I want and need, but he could be. Now: where? I am so desperate to find him.
Last night at the gym, I saw Biteable for the first time in a year. He is, the same. Gorgeous, awkward. I was busier ogling a hunky ABC, who talks in Mandarin with the ol’ timers (not that I hear much through my news podcasts) but his expressions, wardrobe and body language so give him away. Decent but hardly Biteable, but he has enough of that ABC awkward to endear me — and I admit at point my current bulge battle he is prettier than me.
Tonight was an event at a department store - ah old histories, and also old friends, invites not job contingent. I encountered Tata, a T-A ex-journo with convenient initials who always confuses me. Straight-laced but dryly humorous, handsome and intelligent. Flirty but reserved towards me. He either, 1. is very Christian, 2. has a girlfriend, or 3. semi-likes me back but has hangups: I am white, I am too fat, I am too famous, I am too weird, et al et al.
Onward to the That’s annual Christmas huh. Two years ago I was getting over Ah Ren - that went so well. A year ago I first met Worm in person - that went so well. This time, besides connecting with some old friends, and the odd of a Worm friend hitting on me, it was pretty bland. But Su was there, and it was my mutual friend with Worm who got me in.
Thanks to her, and apologies, but it was a sad little party. Too loud, a creepy club of a venue - Sin - which reminds how little Shanghai’s nightlife has changed in eleven years: from crappy, to crappy and obnoxious. House music is genenic engineering of the worst of pop music: cheesey but fond old music hybridized with the most marketable whack whack whack beats and tunes of of the newest trends.
“This music makes me want to cut myself,” I winced at Su.
“It reminds me of when I was a nerdy left-out kid,” he shrugged. “But I am happy to see people happy.”
“Even mockery would not ameliorate the misery this music is causing me,” I did not say but remember feeling.
I should always, ALWAYS, pack earplugs.