This summer I will attend five weddings, one a month from May to September. I have plenty of dresses and shoes and cunning little purses to carry me through–as well as travel survival kits, since they are scattered all over the country–though I sometimes wonder if I have the emotional wherewithal to survive the schedule. [...]
I posted my first online dating profile in July 2009, and went on my first date in October. I’m pretty sure I’ve read the OKCupid profile or Craigslist ad of every man who’s used either site in the last year. Cursed by my freakish memory, I can ID the ones who appear in multiple places, [...]
Originally published April 8, 2004 Ten years ago today, I was in New York City for the very first time with the constant companions of my college freshman year, who I thought I’d be best friends with forever. It was my birthday weekend (ten years later, it still is.) I was in my mercifully brief [...]
Originally published October 13, 2004 On Sunday, I attended the dedication ceremony for a tree planted in memory of my uncle Pat, who died in January. I’ve tried to write about Pat before in this blog, but I was too angry to write anything worthwhile. Pat was my father’s twin, his mother’s favorite, youngest boy [...]
I know what I want from a relationship. I think it’s pretty simple. I want to be with someone smart and kind who wants to be with me. I want to build a life together, with all the mundanity that entails: hanging pictures and trips to the grocery store and negotiating where to spend Christmas [...]
I’ve never been in love. Or rather, I’ve never been in love with anyone who’s been in love with me. Is there a difference between being in love when it’s unrequited and loving someone who loves you back? Does love that’s returned echo and multiply? Is the unrequited variety a weak shadow if its twin? [...]
Once upon a time, not so long ago, I used to work on a dock. Okay, that’s not true, but I didn’t have sex for six years. I would rather have worked on a dock. Six. That’s a lot of years. From the time I was 28 until I was 34. My sex life became [...]
I was sitting in my backyard this afternoon, smoking a purloined cigarette and reading a memoir about Irish-Catholics and heroin addiction, and I thought, I should just leave this city. How much would I love to start again in a whole new city, go back to school, live on student loans and cheap coffee, and re-invent myself again. Maybe get it right this time. By my next birthday I will have been here for half my life. There was no rhyme or reason to how that happened, just the urge to flee the midwest and a few years of desperate scrabbling to hang on to my life here, with its taxis and Thai food and challenging crossword puzzles.
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