updated updateyness

so, i guess the first thing i should mention is that i now officially live in manhattan. we got a pretty big apartment way up in washington heights (practically connecticut, according to nikki). aside from some terrible choices in paint color, which can be easily remedied, it's a pretty sweet deal. the place is rent-controlled and it's a long-term sublet from a friend with a great price tag which is all-inclusive. we win. it should also be mentioned that we totally u-hauled our lives together on our five month anniversary.

now i'll tell you how we got there, because it happened much faster than i'd expected.

the whole story is ridiculous and convoluted, but suffice it to say that the roommate situation deteriorated. they wanted katie to contribute financially since she ended up staying far longer than intended, which would have been fine if they hadn't started coming up with arbitrary figures. there was no logic behind anything they asked of us. their reasoning for WANTING money was fine, but everything else was completely skewed.

i tried multiple times to communicate, and was met with hostility by one roommate, complete apathy by another, and two-faced, backhanded bullshit by the one who communicated regularly. in the end, they tried to force katie to give them an amount of money no one had ever suggested or otherwise discussed. not only did they do so, but the first we heard of it was in an e-mail to a potential subletter which we were both copied in on. by that point, we were both done. they'd pushed every single button either of us have, and we began to feel threatened.

in a stroke of luck, we came upon our new apartment on tuesday afternoon, when i e-mailed a close friend asking for his help moving sometime in the near future. when he asked where to, i mentioned that i didn't know, but that it was happening. he offered, we checked it out, and that was that.

when things came to a head yesterday and my roommate threatened to take what katie "owes" out of my deposit, i realized we both had very different plans for finding a future tenant for my room and acquiring the deposit (as the person previously responsible for the room usually takes care of finding a replacement and the replacement pays the deposit directly to the previous tenant. the landlord is so hands-off about the whole deal that he never sees the deposit). at that point, i dropped all attempts at civility, told her to go fuck herself, told my boss i had an emergency situation, proceeded to rent a u-haul van, and packed my shit.

i also snatched up the rent check i'd written for june. my intent was to pay june's rent, find a subletter, and just pro-rate the rent for them. since there was a clear miscommunication there, i started to feel as if i'd never see the rest of my deposit at all, so i shredded my rent check. the deposit covers the cost of rent plus what katie "owes," but falls short exactly $2.50, so i went ahead and broke out my piggy bank. now there's a baggy on the kitchen table with 250 pennies in it. once i get the rest of my shit out of the apartment on saturday--all that's left are things we need boys for--i'll disclose to them what those pennies are for.

i feel like they really pushed my asshole button and i hate acting that way, but i've been uncomfortable for four months due to my roommate moving in a subletter who's a really inconsiderate bitch. since her arrival, my mail has been fucked with twice. once, my mom sent a hundred bucks cash (i know this is a bad idea and has since been remedied) to cover her cell phone bill. that got stolen. the second time, my mom sent a money order, which never arrived. two weeks later, mom got it back with a return to sender on it. i went out of town to see my mom for memorial day weekend and when i came back, my computer was fried. i knew that someone had been in my room because, in a dick fit after yet another e-mail battle with the roommates, i disconnected the internet before i left. when i came back, the internet was working (the wireless network was setup through my desktop), but my computer wasn't. i realize that plugging a cord into the router wouldn't have hurt the computer, especially if it was off, but no one can prove that there was only one roommate in there while i was gone and that's all she did. i can fix the thing, but it just seemed that a really special kind of logic was required for my roommate to go into my room while i was gone without asking me in a time of tension. she also called the cable company and used my name to talk to tech support. i won't bother pointing out the obvious issue with that.

anyway, i'm tired of bitching. shit sucked and i took care of the problem. ta-da!

more importantly, i wanted to talk a little bit about my memorial day weekend. katie and i rented a car to drive down to north carolina to hang with my mom and brothers. she hadn't seen them since the first time we hung out, back in november when we were just an innocent flirtation and she was still engaged. we actually had a really good time. we went bowling, four-wheeling, played rock band, slept a lot, fixed computers, and took my mom to breakfast. my favorite thing was how little tension there was in the house. usually, there's at least one asshole eruption (mostly from tom) during a visit, but everything went so smoothly. maybe it was because the trip was short, but i really enjoyed it. sadly, i didn't take any pictures. i just didn't feel like it. whatever. i miss my momma.

in closing, my entire body aches from moving all that shit yesterday. oh, and shanghai kate decided that she couldn't commit to doing my half-sleeve coverup of those stupid dying stick figures, but only AFTER she took my money. i have to figure out how to get that back from her. also, i have a psychologist appointment today. it took me weeks to find this woman and it's our first session, so hopefully it goes well.

tra la la, peace out.

permanence.

one of my tattoos is featured on contrariwise.org today. more of my work will be featured tomorrow and friday, too. check it.

on sunday, we went to the nyc tattoo convention at roseland ballroom. it pained us, but we made it through. i took some pictures, too.









katie, troy, and myself are renting a car this weekend to drive to north carolina to see my family. my mom asked me what i wanted for my birthday a couple of weeks ago, and i told her i wanted matching tattoos. she agreed, but even though i've thought about it pretty constantly, she hasn't been able to, so we decided to postpone tattoo time until later in the year. she kept vetoing my ideas, anyway.

next weekend, i have an appointment with shanghai kate, one of the first (if not THE first) female tattoo artists. she worked with sailor jerry and ed hardy. she's fancy. she'll be doing the cover-up of my half-sleeve stick figure massacre. i initially wanted to try and keep some of the figures, but it's not possible, so away they go. i'll just need to take some good photos in the next ten days. it'll be nice to NOT wear my broken heart on my sleeve anymore.

ugh, monday already.

i'm stressed out. i'd forgotten how money woes can throw you out of whack. i'm trying to pay bills on-time, keep the two of us fed--and not solely on cheap, unhealthy foods, but things we enjoy making and eating, save money, and have some leftover for the occasional night out. we went to massachusetts this weekend partially to see katie's family and partially to see amanda palmer's [brilliant] play, with the needle that sings in her heart. it ended up costing around four hundred dollars for various reasons (budget rent-a-car can go fuck themselves), which was not the way it was budgeted. i have yet to take a look at the BANK ACCOUNT CARNAGE.

i got to meet katie's extended family: maternal grandparents, cousins, second cousins. now i've got faces and personalities to go along with the names i've heard. we found out a couple of days before we left that one of said cousins asked what the deal was with katie and i, and guessed correctly that we were dating. while my entire family knows about us and has met katie as my girlfriend, i've met various members of her family here and there as her friend. this is alright with me, mostly because i understand how hard any sort of coming-out is, especially when the person doing the coming-out is a well-established heterosexual. soon after meeting my mother, while still engaged and, obviously, before we ended up together, katie professed her love for the cock very loudly. you see where i'm going here. i can't expect her to just up and affirm her love for me in front of her entire family, especially her parents, with the circumstances as they are. but, as it seems her cousin is wont to do, it felt very much like word had gotten around to the other cousins and i definitely felt like we were under the microscope the entire time. luckily, it wasn't an uncomfortable sort of observation. i feel very at home with her family. they're welcoming. it was actually pretty amusing that i knew that they knew and they knew that i knew and we were all still pretending.

anyway, i generally let my blog entries take whatever direction they will, but my goal for this particular one was to get down the novel feeling of having a partner. i guess i've never really had one before, because i'm somehow surprised at the novelty of the feeling. if i have a problem, she listens and offers solutions. we discuss, we come up with a plan. she is positive, but realistic. one of my favorite things about her is that, even though she comes off as a hard-ass, she's very compassionate and giving. she understands people in a way that's so innate that it puts my psychology degree to shame, that's for sure. what i'm trying to say is that i'm stressed out, but i'm happy.

fluid.

so, i'm 26. a few of my friends said, "you're old now, like me."

i think about my mom a lot. when she turned 26, she had an eight year old kid. she was probably still a bartender, maybe at norm's hideout. she was living with, and wanted to marry, a man who would end up cheating on her, and who she would end up leaving for my brothers's (grammar police, help! is this right?) dad. she still did recreational drugs. she still slept all day and listened to loud music.

she was still a kid. or maybe she wasn't. i still feel like a kid. i wonder if she did, too.

i have a hard time setting out my life against hers, making that parallel. we took different roads. i went to college, waited tables, traveled. i've had similar enough troubles: a broken heart and money problems. i live in new york, hold hands with my girlfriend, take pictures, walk the dog. i don't have an eight year old kid. i can't conceive of the possibility. my mom had a lot of help, raising me with my grandparents, but even so, even if i'd been in her shoes and had that same help, how many different ways would i have failed?

when i have a birthday, that's what i think about: my mom, my grandparents, the passage of time. how different they looked. my grandmother in her pale grey table supply polo; my mom with curly auburn hair and bold eyeshadow, tight pants and big tits; my grandfather's dark hair and his cigar habit, all the colorful wires in our garage where he played tv repairman. i'm so aware of their changes and the ways they've aged, but less aware of my own. i know that my body is changing, is less elastic and likely past the prime i watched it hit when i was 23 and couldn't stop looking in a mirror. i can see the way my face has changed in photos, the way my jawline developed as my baby fat disappeared, how transparent my smiles have been in their inability to mask pain. i can put every major life event neatly into a timeline as proof that i've seen and done a few things. i can map the ways my thought processes have changed, my personal philosophies evolved, my writing matured.

the thing is that none of those things make me feel more like an adult. none of them make me feel more like a woman and less like a kid. it feels like time propels us all, and even though i'm going forward and changing in the same ways everyone else has and continues to, i'm somehow suspended. the reality, the very fact that i know better, makes me feel like it's all slipping away and i'm left wondering exactly how to get a grip.

this is telling.

i would like to document the awesomeness that is my grandmother's mother's day card. it's got some glittery tulips on the outside, and it says, "mom, i feel lucky to be your daughter." and then on the inside, it says, "...and i may not say it enough, but i'll always love you. happy mother's day."

whitney houston/bodyguard jokes aside, here's what i wrote:

hello, whoredog--

i'd like to start by pointing out how completely unacceptable the selection of mother's day cards is. they even have cards for black mothers, but i can't seem to find any cards NOT completely full of bullshit unless they're minimalistic like this one, so there's that.

the point is that i love you and i'm sorry i can't be there to have a lazy mother's day sunday with you and shoot the shit in person, as opposed to on the telephone. if i could, i'd even bring you a dozen yellow roses and a sausage or something as a token of my eternal gratitude to you for raising me to be the completely AWESOME, albeit gay, human being that i am today.

love to love you, bitchface.

xoxo,
des!


i'm such an asshole. my message in my mom's card isn't as funny, and really, i wasn't kidding: the selection of mother's day cards is terrible. katie and i went into a TWO STORY hallmark (to no avail) and then to an american greetings store. i had the cards i ended up purchasing in my hands as MAYBES when the cashier came up to me and told me that they were closed. there was no warning and i was already irritated because i was having trouble finding the perfect card that expressed the exact tear-jerking sentiment(s) i was going for without all the superfluous frilly bullshit so, as a knee jerk reaction, i bought them. i'm unhappy with said purchase and with holidays or days that are More Special Than the Rest as a whole at this very moment, so my messages are tinged with cynicism.

i really just kinda wanna punt myself these days, but i know that this too will pass. so there.

placeholder.

have some pictures:

shut up and put your money where your mouth is

one of my best friends tells me i pay too much attention to "signs." i'm always looking for synchronicity. my intuition gets muddled by my penchant for logical thinking.

on that note, katie and i have been discussing the possibility of getting a place together, which you either know because i told you or because you know how i function and intuited that we were headed down that road. besides, we're four months in and way past the second date. where's that u-haul?

anyway, i WANT to move in with her, but we'd spent so much time discussing not moving too quickly, not wanting to fuck things up. and then she did move up here and she is living with me, but there were stipulations. she'd made plans to move in may or june with friends who want to live the dream, too. turns out those friends REALLY want to live the dream and may need a bit of a reality check. their expectations are too high and so is their intended budget. they don't realize what a challenge this lifestyle is and it feels very much like watching a ship sink. i would like for katie not to be on that ship.

so we did a budget for her. we've talked about the different options--the realistic ones: a). find other roommates willing to live in jerz, b). move in together. we discussed our hesitations and our needs and our desires, what will happen if we break up.

so, the chips have been falling, and slowly enough to give me (and us) time to work through it. until last night.

i still hadn't made any sort of decision. i thought i had time to work through it, as the date agreed upon by all parties was may 16th. i talked to some friends about the situation: most were for and one against. i talked to my mom briefly about it yesterday afternoon. she's a protective momma bear. she suggested we get a place together, but again, there was the emphasis on what happens if things don't work out. basically, my mom watched the bottom drop out of my life three years ago and would prefer it didn't happen again. this seems reasonable. the fact that she suggested it, though, was something to pay attention to: a sign, if you will. and i will.

so, back to last night. katie and i were sitting in the kitchen when my roommate came home and told us that the landlord had texted her asking for all of our names so that he could draw up a lease. sign numero dos. our tentative plan had been to stay until september in order to save money. we would also simultaneously be taking care of the ass end of a shitty subletting situation that has made me uncomfortable in my own home for the past three months (by booting the shitty roommate end of may and having katie take over rent until the end of august). when i heard those words, though, i said, "i guess i should tell you that i'm moving, then." katie and i had discussed just yesterday afternoon when and how to tell my roommate, and planned on waiting until i had made up my mind and we were positive that this is what we wanted to do and had worked out the logistics. i'm not willing to sign a lease, though, given that i've lived there for two years, never had a lease to begin with and, to say the least, i'm over it.

so, the ball's dropped. i didn't expect for any of this to happen, didn't plan it. i had my not-so-secret desires, but my intention was to be patient. clearly, this was not meant to be--and don't get all up in my business about how deterministic that is, because i don't want to hear it. now comes the planning, the saving, the waiting as long as possible. i don't know if we'll make it to september, though, given the recent increase in apartment population (typically absent roommate number four has returned, along with boyfriend). guess we'll see.

the idea of having my own space and not feeling cramped or lorded over in the kitchen or hurried out of the bathroom is refreshing, though. oh, and y'know, hanging out on the couch watching tv. naked.