Yes, another blog post about Facebook - but yet different somehow

Facebook is an essential tool for stalking.  Duh.  I'm sure this wasn't the most groundbreaking sentence since Shakespeare asked us "To be or not to be... blah blah blah some other stuff".  Which reminds me - "Hamlet 2" was hysterical.  See it.  I swear you won't burn in hell. 

Anyway, back to Facebook.  Last night, while enduring the longest night at work in ages, I decided to poke around on the the ol' book.  I joined this group called "If you lived in the Whitestone, Bayside area and grew up in the 80's, 90's..."  and managed to find all of the people I went to Jr. High with.  It was quite the event.

My personal favorite was when I discovered the boy I shared my first kiss with.  Ben.  He was a scrawny little thing with big blue eyes and a love for Green Day that I so admired.  We wrote notes in class and he would roller blade to my house and kiss me.  Then he would roller blade off into the sunset and I would walk around all dreamy-eyed for the next 6 hours and write about it in my journal.  Ben and I ended when his BFF Matt decided he liked me and sent his brother Nick to throw an egg at poor old Benny Boy.  Hit him square in the stomach.  Then Nick walked me home because Matt had baseball practice and Nick kissed me, much to Matt's dismay.  

I felt very important being the center of this dramatic love square.  I even wrote poems about it.  Sadly, it wouldn't be the last time I enjoyed the drama of friends and brothers fighting for my honor.  

Anyway, when I came across Ben's page, it turns out he's become one of those Pre-Pubescent looking Male Models.  And most likely he's gay.  I wonder if it's the bitter taste of the ill-requited love he felt for me that turned him off to women forever??  Probably not.  But I like to think I make an impact.

Facebook is like an open window into the pasts and futures of everyone you know.  If you look hard enough you could link so much together.  You could find out who they were before you knew them.  The nerds, the whores, the weird kids.  Do enough detective work and it all comes together.  Not that I have that kind of attention span.  I'm just saying - you could.

A Book Review and How I Was a Fatty

The weather is beautiful, the pool is huge.  A perfect setting for doing absolutely nothing except what you want to do.  This is what Montauk is.  I'm awake by 8am every morning, but it's ok because there is plenty of time in the day for napping.  I could live in this small town by the water for ever.  I could leave the city - with it's sirens and it's crowds.  I could get used to nothing to do but read and write and have bonfires on the beach at night.

I'm sure this is what was needed.

With little to do but relax, I just started reading Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp, by Stephanie Klein.  It reminds me of my childhood.  Of the days in gym class where I was petrified of health day in gym - where they weighed you in front of your classmates.  I'm taken back to the days of peanut butter and Fluff for lunch, of jogging suits and over sized t-shirts.  Pool parties I was scared to go to, nicknames and having to develop a personality because I wasn't the pretty one. It all comes back.

If you were a fat kid, you had to develop something special - a talent or a persona.  Because that's all you had.  For me - I was a tomboy.  I wore Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sneakers and read comic books.  If boys didn't want to date me, they sure wanted to hang out with me.  My vast knowledge of early 90's action heroes and killer taste in music was my saving grace.  Plus I was an insider.  I knew all the pretty girls in the class.  I was friends with them.  I could be a matchmaker.

I was certain I was doomed to live my life as "the friend" forever.  Then high school came.  Baby fat melted away.  We moved out of my grandma's house and no longer was I forced to be a member of "the clean plate club".  I chose my meals and my drinks.  Boys noticed me.  

I was boy crazy since pre-school.  My first boyfriend was Santiago.  I liked the exotic men.  We would cuddle together at nap time.  True love in the sandbox.  Being the fat tomboy, though, I didn't get to explore my true potential until I was 14.  From then on it was boys, boys, boys.

If they were cute and wore flannel - I was in love.  Armed with keen music taste and an interest in comics (leftover from my fat days) I became the pretty girl who liked boy things.

This book makes me nostalgic for my childhood.  I want to go back to the days of no worries, no need for a plan.  I want to go back with the knowledge I have now.  I want to tell the pudgy little me that this passes.  That boys who call you a cow are the same boys who want to date models and trust me your future has a much sweeter boy in store for you.  You'll be pretty one day - but you won't own it.  Just like you don't own fat.  All you have to be responsible for is the way you treat others.  And never forget what it feels like to be judged.  

I want to tell future me that if I ever have a daughter - please don't let her in on the weight obsession.  Don't fill her childhood with the words "diet" and "muffin top".  Keep those trashy magazines of thin celebs away from her and maybe she'll have the chance to grow up with a positive view of what healthy is.  Maybe she'll have a donut one day for breakfast.  Don't make her have spinach for dinner to make up for it.  

Yes, this is what the book makes me think about.  I think it's a true bestseller when it has people relating it's contents to their own life.  Good job Stephanie Klein. 

The Power of Smell, Good Playlists and Past Relationships

I read somewhere that the sense of smell is most closely related to making memories.  I think that explains why I love the smell of The Boy.  And my dog's breath.  And certain subway stations.  Each and every one of those scents brings me back to a certain time in my life.

"Stop smelling my armpits - you weirdo.  I told you, you can only do that when we're alone.  Not in public".

That's an excerpt from a normal conversation between The Boy and I.  I remind him that I'm making memories.  I'm half kidding.  But I really mean it.

I remember one day a long time ago, I was on the subway.  I had just broken up with my high school boyfriend of four years and everything set me off.  I was like a time bomb.  Some guy standing near me smelled just like the drug store cologne my ex wore.  I remember wishing to the heavens that I could just forget that smell.  Because I was 18 and dramatic and breaking up is hard to do.  I thought I would forever be haunted by that smell.

A thousand years later and I wouldn't be able to identify it anymore.  It's been replaced by the smell of growing up.  Certain areas of the ER where I work, the perfume I pull out for first dates and new beginnings.  My own shampoo.  Spring.  A lot of memories were created between then and now and my mind has (thankfully) replaced that smell.

The sense of smell is crucial to my existence.

Another memory maker is music.  I think if you polled 100 people with a variety of songs - they could assign a place, a time, a feeling and an event to many of the songs.  And they would all be very indivdual.

The Boy has a very eclectic list of songs on his pod.  I love his pod.  I love sitting in the car, playing DJ from the passenger side - because I know he has songs that I'll like.  And because he has no qualms about me playing songs on repeat.  The way I like to listen to them  But sometimes, when I'm feeling masochistic and retrospective, I let my mind wander.

Do some of these songs have a meaning assigned to them?  Does he think about his ex when he hears certain guitar chords or certain lyrics?  I try not to dwell on the past.  If you get me on a logical day I'll tell you all the many reasons I know I have nothing to fear when it comes to the past.  

I think the fact that I obsess over it sometimes has to do with how little I know.  He never really talks about why it ended, who she was or any of those little details your stomach can't handle but you have to know.  He doesn't do this to be secretive.  I know if I asked he would share.  (I think).  But I don't ask.  I don't want to know.  But I do.

It's not as though I've diagrammed out my entire relationship with my ex either.  He doesn't ask.  And I hate to sound bitter, so I don't tell.

But, sometimes I can't help but wonder if it's crucial to the "now" to know about the "was".

But then I turn up "This Must Be the Place" by the Talking Heads real loud (to drown out my insecurities) and realize - this song is our memory maker.  

That and his arm pits.

Past musings

I think back now to that day he moved out.  "I just need to get away for now.  I don't want this to be for good"; I didn't believe him then.  I knew it had to happen.  Hell, I moved out myself just a week before.  But I was only bluffing.  He, the well seasoned gambler he had grown to be, called my bluff.  He left with most of his stuff (the stuff I hadn't thrown out or given away to the local homeless in a fit of anger just weeks before).  He left his ties - I held on to them as a tiny smidgon of hope.  Months later I would use those ties as fashionable belts.  Break ups make me lose weight.  I was a size 2.

That day, he forced me to grow up.  Before that I lived in a world where I payed $400 a month for rent on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (unheard of), I shopped online like a fiend looking for her next fix.  I was living like a kept woman.  Those sad cases you see on the reality shows where you wonder "how the hell can they live like that??"  I was fixated on a diamond ring but terrified the day I found the Zales bag in his nightstand.  I knew deep down that I didn't want to live like that.  I just didn't know any other way.  

Today, almost four years later, I want to thank him.  For being an online pervert, for the cheating and the lying.  For the life experience he gave me.  I would thank him if we were speaking.  But that would involve me giving his ceramic Buddha back - and I destroyed that months ago when I moved into my new apartment.  I wanted no mementos.  NYC studios do not accommodate tangible memories.

I look at the woman I've become - I found my funny side, my artistic side and yes - my rent has increased significantly but I pay it.  So, maybe one day, when you're searching the Internet for some cheap porn/hookers (like you did in old times) you'll come across this post and know I just really want to thank you.  For making me the best grown-up I can be.