The last time I sat down to write about LBB it began the same way -- with me sitting here staring at my computer monitor -- trying to work it all out. Last time I was trying to sort through emotional highs that came from being together in Brazil.
This time it's all about the lows. I had been looking forward to Becky's visit ever since I left her in Rio. I had been thinking a lot about her and trying to sort out what I really wanted and what was really possible. I had big plans about how I would share these thoughts. Well...you know what they say about plans, mice, and men.
I wasn't really under any delusions about my chances. I was pretty sure I would have trouble convincing this girl to make whatever we have work. At the same time -- I didn't really feel like I had a choice. It was a real struggle between my romantic side:
I should mention that I'm almost certain that my sense of passion and views on love, heartache, and longing, have been shaped in good part by Motown artists. There's also probably a number of (non-pornographic) movies that mix in there along with whatever I witnessed from my parents (ALSO non-pornographic) that complete the picture. But those old Motown songs really strike a chord with me. I'm not sure what it is that makes this particular music stand out.
On the one hand it feels a lil melodramatic...but at the same time I think it's more honest as a result. When we get caught up with someone I think most people have a tendency to blow things out of proportion. I'm sure I do. In public I like to think that I come off somewhat rational and even-headed but I know in my private moments I'm much more "Ain't to Proud to Beg". Another embarrassing admission: "Just my Imagination" (even in happy times) still makes me mist up sometimes. I can't get over how fucking sad that song is. Maybe it's the desperation that seems to run through all those songs that I really connect with -- that gut-wrenching sense of longing that comes from really giving into it all.
Anyway. After several weeks of anxiety and some botched attempts to actually spend some quality time with Becks during her short stay here in the States, I finally managed to lay it all out and tell her what I had been thinking about. Unfortunately I had to wait till she'd made it pretty clear that she wasn't really thinking along the same lines as me.
I know that in the past I had said that the idea of maintaining a relationship with her seemed pretty ludicrous. But after thinking about it more and talking to a number of friends I decided: to hell with it. I knew LBB was a special person and worth taking a risk over. Plus I was having trouble thinking about anyone else. I always knew that my chances of success were low but I was still bursting to to get it all out there and let her know what I was thinking (even if it was retarded).
So when I did finally put it all out there I was disappointed to get the response I was expecting (in different places, want to be free and single in Brazil) but at least it felt good to have said what I really felt. I certainly don't blame her for wanting to be unattached at the moment. At some point during all my thinking about this I asked myself how I would respond if the situation was reversed and I'm pretty sure I would have reacted the same way she did.
So that's that. Chapter pretty much over I guess. I'm still disappointed. But I'm not shocked. The best way I can describe it is that it feels like I saved up a bunch of money to buy something special, but when I finally got the store that something was all sold out.
Finally when all is said and done, I consider the whole experience very positive. I'd make pretty much the same choices, even with the foreknowledge of what was eventually going to happen.
hmmm I probably should have actually used a Motown song as the title of this post...just goes to show you how complicated I am I guess.
Anyhow...now I can focus on my upcoming trip to Germany. It will be a great way to move on and drown my sorrows in beer and phallic meat products! Auf Wiedersehen!
Well it's finally about time to kick this blog back into gear. No doubt some of my readers may be concerned that my trip to Brazil resulted in some sort of kidnapping, or jungle mis-adventure. A couple of planes did crash into the Amazon on the day I flew into Rio and thankfully I was not at all involved.
I'll be telling this story via a series of blog entries so as not to drown you in the boring details. (Too late!)
The story on my trip down south really begins about a year ago, on New Years Eve -- the night I first got together with Long Beach Becky. We enjoyed a brief and casual romance over the course of the first few months of the year, but by the time my birthday rolled around in May, I kinda lost contact with her as she spent her last month or so in the States getting prepared to leave the country for a few years.
The two of us kept in touch via Email once she arrived in Brazil and I was a little surprised when, after a month or so I got an correspondence from her telling me which dates were the best for me to come visit.
When the idea was first brought up I was really looking at it more as a great opportunity to travel to South America over anything else. So I picked out a time to go and went about arranging my travel plans.
As the date of my departure drew closer, I became more and more anxious about what would happen between Becky and I on a more personal level. I knew what I wanted (I knew that I missed spending time together), but I really had no idea what she was thinking.
My instinct was to press the issue and figure everything out on the phone before I left, and since my instincts are generally 100% wrong in these situations I decided to just shut-the-fuck up and let things work out for themselves once I got there.
By the time I boarded the plane I had spent a month or so learning a little Portuguese, reading a bit on the history and cultures of the places I would be visiting, and preparing myself for a strictly platonic vacation (even though one look in my toiletries bag would give you quite the opposite impression).
I packed light and managed to fit everything I would need (along with some various things for Becky) into a carry -on sized bag. It was a large carry-on, but carry-on none-the-less.
It's a long day of traveling to get to Rio and I don' t really sleep well on airplanes, but I arrived in Rio on a cloudy and slightly rainy day, full of energy and anticipation.
Becky - who actually lives in a different city (about 6 hours away) - met me in Rio for the weekend and it was during the process of checking into our hotel where our "inter-personal situation" really worked itself out.
Specifically when the woman at the front desk asked us, "So would you prefer one large bed, or two singles?" There was some nervous laughter from LBB who hesitated -- looking at me and saying, "ummmm".
I figured any such hesitation would indicate she was thinking along the same lines as me and I said, "One big bed will be fine."
****
Rio is an amazing city. Most of our time there was spent in a very small section of it, but I got to see a bit more of it while driving in from the airport. Of course there are the Favelas -- which are hard to avoid. You see a lot of these slums while driving in from the airport. Eventually you drive through the mountain that is home to the famous Christ statue that overlooks the city, and you emerge in the famous costal region of Rio: Copabana, Leblon, Ipanema -- all right there.
Because the weather wasn't really co-operating, we mostly wandered around the city, went to great dinner (my first Brazilian Bar-B-Q), hit up a night club till the wee-hours and fell asleep in our hotel to the soothing sounds of some sort of porno coming from the room next-door.
So what had originally began as an opportunity to travel South America with someone who already was living there had morphed into something very different.
From the first day that I arrived and met Becky in Rio de Janeiro, she and I were essentially “together”. More than that – It felt to me that we were more of a “couple” than we were while we were dating here in the states. Over the course of those two weeks, we had certainly spent more time together than we did over the course of our entire relationship back home. In my mind, everything was working. I learned a lot about Becky in the process and the more I learned the more impressed I was. The more I enjoyed being around her.
So during out last night in Paraguay as our time together was drawing short I decided it was about time to have a short discussion about what was in store for us after I returned home. I wouldn’t say I was quite so deluded into thinking that I could just move down to Brazil and be happy-ever-after. However I knew what I felt for Becky and I knew that I wanted to be with her…even if it was impossible.
In a practical sense I didn’t really know what I wanted. I knew we couldn’t have a “relationship” with me in California and Becky in Brazil. That’s clearly stupid. I guess what I wanted was to hear her tell me that she wished there was some way for this to all work out. I guess what I wanted was something like hope? I don’t know. It’s very hard to reconcile what I know is realistic, and the pie-in-the-sky romantic side of my personality.
Before moving on to anything I had to determine exactly what Becky felt about me. Over the course of the weekend everything FELT very close -- very good. Based on what I was getting from her behavior and attitude towards me, the question, “how do you feel about me” at first seemed redundant. When I asked it the answer I got was, “Well…I mean…I like hanging out. But I’m here and your there”. This wasn’t exactly an expression of the longing I was hoping to hear…
On Wednesday afternoon we said farewell to Regina and headed back to Ciudad Del Este. The boarder town isn’t quite as quaint as Villarrica and we played it safe and stayed off the streets at night and lounged around our dumpy hotel room.
The next day we roamed around the local street markets (well known for their cheap electronics) and than headed for the airport and back to Rio. Once again Rio blanketed by thick grey clouds and subjected to occasional drizzles. No Bikini-filled beaches for me.
The four of us arrived in time to check in (where I received some extremely confusing instructions on how to operate the rooms air-conditioning -- Instructions that seemed to involve a lot of dialing the operator and front desk -- Instructions that I later by-passed in favor of ripping the cord out of the wall.) and walk down to a decent little restaurant that overlooked Ipanema beach. It was here that I tried my first and only caipirinha: a Brazilian cocktail made with sugar-liquor. Despite having plenty to drink throughout the course of this trip, that ONE caipirinha was the first thing that got me feeling really “affected”.
My last day in South America was spent hiking and sightseeing at “Pao De Azucar” – the distinctive rock formation known to English-speakers as “Sugarloaf”. It was a great little hike through a bit of jungle. We saw some monkeys, found a dog that adopted us for much of the hike, and (despite the low hanging clouds) got some exceptional views of the city of Rio.
Soon though it became time for me to get back to the hotel so I could shower up and head off to the airport. I hugged LBB goodbye and boarded the taxi and headed home. What an exceptional experience overall. The combination of being in a new and different place, experiencing Brazil and South America for the first time, and my personal experience with Becky made for some extremely happy two weeks.
I’m not sure if I can sum up the whole Brazil experience. First of all…Brazil is a huge and diverse place. The 10 or so days I spent there are hardly enough time to get a feel for the whole place. You couldn’t spend 2 weeks in San Diego and claimed you’d experienced America, and the same is true of Brazil.
That said I still felt like I got a good introduction to a lot of what makes it special. Especially when it comes to the warmth of the people who live there.
One thing that was NOT as advertised: Brazilian Women. I know that people associate Brazil with legions of gorgeous, lusty women, but I wasn’t particularly impressed. Which is not to say it was filled with ugly women either. There were pretty people and not-so-pretty people. It didn’t seem special in that respect – at least compared to Southern California.
As far as LBB goes, I’m really not sure how to understand that situation. Sadly I think that I find myself in one of those lopsided “I like you more than you like me” situations. I am also aware of a couple important factors that may or may not govern the intensity of my Saudade. The first is that it’s pretty common for someone to develop a more intense longing for things that are out of reach. I recognize that part of me is probably caught in the grip of wanting something more because it’s unattainable.
Secondly, it would be foolish to ignore the unique and special circumstances surrounding our time together. I think that the extra stimulus of being on a vacation like this can sorta take everything else to the next level. I don’t mean to say that this artificially heightens emotions, but it’s fair to say that vacationing through South America is different from what a day-to-day relationship would be like.
On the other hand, spending all that time together is still a pretty good indicator of how well you really get along with someone. Fact is, I think we are a good team and I know that I genuinely care for her.
So where does that leave me. The honest answer is I’m not really sure. Since the conversation in Paraguay, I think I’ve managed to talk myself into believing that “I like hanging out” is less an honest expression of apathy towards me and more the result of less-than-perfect communication skills combined with an sensible unwillingness to commit to someone who lives like 10,000 miles away from you. I figure I got a 40% chance of being right there.
Another thingI want to stress is how important it is to me that Becky have the best possible experience in Brazil. To that end, I really don't want to be any sort of impediment. She's in such a unique position (I'm frankly quite jealous) and I want her to be able to make the most of it, without distractions.
I still get to talk to LBB fairly frequently and I should even get to see her again for a few days in December. I’m still a little unsure of what I really want. It’s still hard for me to get past what’s reasonable, what’s possible, and what takes place in fantasyland.
So I think the solution is to just sort of wait and see. I think there’s a good chance that I could go back to South America in the summer and travel the Amazon and Peru with Becky and her friends. Who knows…I mean. There are certainly ways in which I can make it possible to spend a few months away from work and home without jeopardizing the future I’ve been working towards for the last few years.
In the meantime, I can’t really keep myself from at least dating around a little. I know she wouldn’t wait for me. I mean…I don’t even think the chances are good that she’ll return to Southern California when she’s done in Brazil. So I know I need to keep myself open to the possibility of meeting other people, although it’s still hard for me at this point to generate interest in other women.
The short way of saying all this is I’ll just have to take things as they come I suppose.
My first real "Relationship" with a woman was actually my first everything. My first kiss, first sexual encounter, first love, and first break-up. For me, My first girlfriend was really all about those firsts. I was so excited and eager to jump into that phase of my young adult life that I don't think WHO the girl was really mattered all that much (Sorry Sara). That first relationship was simply a voyage of discovery. Like Columbus but without the smallpox and rape.
My second Relationship was about taking everything I thought I knew about women and scraping it. I made the foolish error of assuming all women were exactly the same. It was terribly confusing for me to watch all the things that seemed to make Sara crazy about me, simply make Liz crazy. So where my first relationship was basically a nessesary exploration of ME and MY reaction to all this stuff. The second one forced me to realize that there were actually TWO people involved. Good lesson.
Subsequent relationships were really just fine tuning the lessons learned from the first two. Specifically: Understanding what I need combined with what I should be willing to provide. Each romantic experience leading me to where I am today...which is relatively clueless.
Things have changed of course since I first began dating. 17-year-old Baditude (A.K.A "Acne-tude") had different conscerns and goals than the 31-year-old version. Actually it's more acurate to say that both versions share the same goals, but 15 years later I just have more things I'm trying to accomplish. [ATTN Math Nerds: all ages are aproximated. Get off my back.]
Trying to determine if the woman I'm dating is someone I want to have children with adds a whole different dimension to things. It kinda adds a lot of baggage to an already crowded overhead compartment. This added concern can weigh a realtionship down and cause one to over-analyze the person they are with rather than just enjoy their company.
Enter "Long Beach Becky" - another first for me. My first entirely casual/romantic relationship with a woman. I've kinda known Becky for years now since she's been lurking around the fringes of my social circles. At New Years we found ourselves talking quite a bit and getting along well. We were also the only 2 unattached peoples at the party (which may have helped). One thing led to another and by the wii hours of the morning we were giving the married couples something to giggle about.
One of the things that attracted me to LBB that night was her laid back but adventerous spirit. It is this very combination of personality traits that makes our relationship fun and easy and doomed all at the same time. This is because Becky's adventerous spirit is taking her out of the country for 2 years come July. But it's her laid back attitude that allows us to still have fun together.
Now I will freely admit that while the two of us have no problem getting along, I'm not entriely sure that we have a lot in common in terms of how we chose to spend our time. If the circumstances here weren't so finite, it might give me pause for thought. I'd have to go through all these different senarios in my mind: "Are we compatible in the long run?", "Would we be a good team in terms of rasing kids?", "Would our families get along?", all those annoying questions that start to pop into my 30-year old head when I start to "evaluate" a potential partner.
But LBB is outta here in a couple months and there's really no reason for me to harbor any expectations. There's no need to break anything down. We just hang out and have fun. Which is pretty cool. I would even go so far as to say that I probably enjoy this whole thing MORE as a result. There's no pressure, no hard and fast rules and we are both understanding of the other's situation.
Basically this means I don't get bent out of shape when she can't hang out due to her crazy schedule (I actually haven't seen Becky in like 3 weeks), and I'm free to investigate other possible romances. In a word this whole thing is just "easy". Will I be bummed when she leaves? Of course. At the same time I dont know if I would have gotten very attached to begin with, without things being so...attachment-free.
So there we are. Oh and those of you paying attention to the title of this post: Yes that does mean that I'm the "Compton". This is because I'm gangstamuthafucka.
When the heavens open up and drink from the silver cup The creature thus be born! And blow the magic horn!
(Those lyrics are from Master Shake's idea of what should replace the standard birthday song.)
Well my brother is now a father, which makes me an uncle. A few years ago my brother was wearing the same outfit everyday for weeks at a time and peeing in the shower...even when he wasn't taking a shower. Now he's responsible for the growth and development of a brand new human.
I guess he's had some practice on several cats (many of which he's already pawned off on my mom).
My bro really has come quite a long way in the last few years. I'm still a lil curious to see how he handles fatherhood but I suppose I believe in him. Besides, I know he's got a good family to help him out.
I would love to see him start a blog that documents his thoughts and feelings as he begins this new stage of his life and compare that to Streamside.
So congrats to Seando and welcome to tha world Eli!
(so fuckin weird....)
Dating.
I don't think I know anyone who really likes "dating". At least as far as we understand the term "dating" to mean the act of searching for other singles. Even people who don't want to be tied down or married must admit that the potential for awkward and uncomfortable situations far outweighs the potential for successful pairing.
Dating is like flexing. When you look in the mirror and flex your muscles...that's really you, but it's not really you as you always are. Being single and meeting women is like keeping your entire life clenched up like that. Your always showing off your emotional muscles, your personality pecks, your brain's biceps. It's still you (unless your deceptive asshole), but it's always gotta be your BEST you.
Stand in front of the mirror and flex for about 2 hours...it's exhausting.
That's dating.
There are payoffs however. This weekend I got to experience such a payoff. When you do meet someone with whom you click with, there is this dizzying whirlwind of pulse- quickening excitement. Everything is all new and undiscovered. Jokes are twice as funny as normal, conversation is invigorating, and your ego is basically getting shot up with steroids.
So I had a good weekend. A couple people have already asked me about it and my answers seem to underwhelm. Suffice it to say I am cautiously optimistic. "So far so good" is a better way of putting it. I dunno what the long-term holds (if anything). I have no expectations either way.
There is this romantic notion of love-at-first sight, that sort of conflicts with how things usually happen. When you first meet someone people want to hear a definitive "She's the best" or "She's the worst", but really it doesn't work that way. You can't possibly know someone well enough in the early goings to determine how much time you want to invest in them.
People who say otherwise are misguided. You always hear the, "I knew from the moment we met that we would be together forever". These people are allowing their genitals to cloud their judgment.
