ikaw din

after a super fun night out (full details later, I promise) where I finally met someone else: sweet, beautiful, young, attentive, and totally into me....


You know what's coming, don't you?

I was *minding my own business* in the MALL ( a place that "someone" swears he hasn't been to in a year or more) and I rounded the corner and there he was (and thank whatever god there is that he was wearing a rather worse- for- the- wear, slightly- too- small short sleeved undershirt (yes, as outerwear; I can't seem to resist the Stanley Kowalskis of this world) and seen- better- days jeans and I was wearing my new bikini and a very flattering short dress as a coverup, tan all over and with the Jackie O sunglasses on the head just off the yacht look-- The staff of Starbucks whistled when I came in a few moments later- you look sexy! they exclaimed. Thank you, Aries. Face it, breakups are war. And anyone who tells you different was never in love)

And in a move that sent a dagger of ice right to the sweet spot between my shoulder blades, when he recognized me his whole face lit up and he started to smile until he saw my expression, which I would describe as "just give me the last cigarette and light it, guard". I gave him the courtesy nod and the "hi". In return I got the particular wave that used to tickle my fancy, a kind of running scales in mid air with those fucking perfect fingers.

That's how the design it, children. You can have anything you want, just not when you want it, and not how you want it.

Oh, for the days of the "cut direct".

On the other hand, letting a man know he sort of bulldozed your heart is not amor propre, either, so one must rely on looking like you haven't a care in the world while reciting your mantra (in this case "Nipa hut, Naomi. Nipa hut.") and then calling up a very sympathetic friend later.

He was still looking at me as I sailed off, and you know what shook me up: it was the SAME FUCKING look that Ryan had on his face as I ran down the street, fleeing the apartment.

The same look in the eyes of cosmonats with soviet era flight masks over their mouths- a kind of studied expressionlessness below the nose and, above, eyes that seem belong to an ancestor, to be chasing tigers on horseback, eyes that show you what you'll never understand about Asia, no matter how long you live here or who you date or befriend.

As much as I think about it, and believe me, I've thought LONG AND HARD about it, much more than I want to, I'll never quite get it.

But for the meantime, I'm still good. Just kind of wondering (a bit like someone who wins the lottery and then gets hit by a car on their way to claiming their new Bentley) what's next?


Light a candle for your babe in the woods. I'll need it.