May recap/ delusions of grandeur

On the last episode of my life I decided to stop using proximity-based sexcentric phone applications as a catalyst for a meaningful relationship, I asked my therapist to step up and start pushing me in a useful direction and I've pretended that every person who ever hurt me in my life doesn't exist. At least some of that is productive and healthy.

I've also managed to quit smoking by telling myself that every cigarette I smoke is another man that won't want to marry me and I figure I've narrowed down my pool enough for one lifetime. I'm also applying the same competitive drive and furious rage that fuels my creative endeavors to my work out regimen. I do aquatic interval training every day in the indoor pool in my building and I try to ignore the listless sagging ladies in shower caps paddling beside me. Instead I motivate myself by saying that every consecutive lap is another lightning bolt from the hand of God that will strike down the men who have done me wrong, and judging by my workout yesterday my exes should be crispier than Bob Barker.

I may not be able to squelch my rage and negative thinking but I must find ways to channel it into things that make me better and stronger until I am overflowing with Hulk-like power or at least an advance check from a major publisher. Now that I am in good physical--and passable mental--health, and I am bringing home the mother fucking bacon it is time to bring home another MFB, a mother fucking book.

I told my therapist that after all of the years of tragedy raining down upon me, catastrophic relationships, and emotional wreckage that the silver lining of it all is that I will have the material to write a book and that book will make me rich and powerful enough to buy and sell the people who have hurt me ten times over then buy them again and sell them into white slavery. And I will have enough left over to to buy the Prada sneaker soled espresso colored wingtips that I will use to walk all over them.

My therapist reminded me that delusions of grandeur is one of the key symptoms of both schizoid and narcissistic disorders.

Yes, my zealous disproportionate resentment of people from my past may simply be an outlet for internal frustrations that have nothing to do with them but if it will do for my literary career what it is doing for my quadriceps then I'm going to let the rage pour. It's got to come out somewhere and I've already embarrassingly demonstrated that it can't erupt at work so now it's time to spit creative lava like a Balrog of poetic justice. It is the one kind of justice that has never failed both in life experience and major works of literature.

Sure, poetic justice isn't always easy to see in our everyday grind, it's like misguided religions trying to decipher miracles out of the everyday madness of our existence. But if you look hard enough you can find it. And in my life I have found mine. I may not have any of the qualities of the A-list gays: perceptible abdominal muscles, award winning personality, fun upbeat attitude, great career, and a circle of fun sexy friends that like to spend weekends at Hollywood beach in their speedos, but I have my brain. I have my relentless wit and intellect that may alienate me at times but also is what makes people notice me. I know what makes me different, when so many people can only point out what makes them the same.

So yes, it is perhaps a little unrealistic to hold on to some far-flung dream of publishing a book to validate my existence but in the absence of published work the dream of publishing is the only thing that really even qualifies me as a writer anymore-- that and this bargain bin blog that all of ten people read. So next up on my list of things to do in my life: finish writing my goddamn book.

Dinners for One

A friend of mine basically shook me on the street the other day and told me I'm too negative. I will be the first to admit that I am not the most optimistic of people. I'm cynical and probably one bad day shy of jaded. I kvetch more than anyone I know and I judge people in my free time. Okay, I'm probably the most negative person I know.

On my mother's advice I used a clicker the other day to track negative thoughts. Over three hundred in one day. And that was a day off from work. Imagine if I was waiting tables. Maybe this cynicism intervention was about due.

I don't know when I became so cynical but I have a feeling it has something to do with the men in my life, specifically the gay community. I've complained before that our gay community is just TOO big. And when people have too many options people become picky. And let me tell you-- the gays may not have invented picky but we perfected it.

Dating ads that look like this: swm seeking masculine uncut polish man from ages 28-29 with a beard that lives within one mile of 60611. And you know the worst thing? That add will get a reply in under ten minutes.

First dates are now basically just job interviews for the position of temp boyfriend until someone better comes along.

And if you somehow wind up in a relationship in a city this large it's only a matter of time before one or both of you are ready to trade up.

This heightened sensitivity (read: insecurity) is probably a result of my recent membership to the most depressing and tiresome way to blow $120 over the course of six months, Match.com. This is a website extorting money from the desperate lonely masses by dangling the carrots of a relationship in front of them.  And I am now a member of the cult. I'm gonna trade in my Prada's, I'm buying the sneakers and drinking the strange Kool-aid. I joined a legitimate dating site. I am now a brainwashed believer in ass-backwards matchmaking.

There I got out my one negative rant in a paragraph. I will now cease all pessimism, or at least try to tone it down for the remainder of this blog. The decision to join came after a revelation in the check-out line at Trader Joes when some random register woman read me like a Danielle Steele novel. She asked me if she could make an observation, to which I replied,

"I wish you wouldn't."

"Well," she said persisting, "I just noticed that you're buying a lot of dinners for one, probably stocking up for the next week."

I told this woman that I swear to god if she finished the thought I would send her my next therapist's bill. Then she said,

"I just thought it would be more economical to buy family dinners and save the leftovers, they'll keep for a day or two and you could save money." The she added the kicker, "I wasted a lot of money on TV dinners when I broke up with my boyfriend."

The thought of this woman alone on her futon eating a TV dinner sent shivers down my spine. I realized in that moment that if I didn't find a boyfriend soon I would wind up offering guidance to wayward singles in the register line trying to purchase single portions of Panang curry. So help me I would do anything in my power to not be this woman, and to never own a futon. I've had it, no more dinners for one.

24 going on (dates with) 44

When you're in Vogue, the age issue comes up annually. When you're in a relationship the age issue can come up a bit more frequently. As someone who has a preference for older men but a reluctance to settle down with them I find myself in persistent relationship limbo. I am attracted to people who want to settle down, yet I myself am apparently not ready to settle.

I think my problem stems from the fact that although I may be an old soul I'm still young and have a lot to do and experience and if I were to settle down with someone who has already done and experienced those things it is inevitable that I'll have to forgo some of the life I would have had for the the life I could have. Would. Could. Should we be using these words when it comes to relationships or are these words the ones creating and perpetuating all the unrealistic expectations men seem to have.

The worst part about being 24 and dating men in their forties is I have to ask myself, and sometimes them, the inevitable question, really, truly, how much time do you have? This is not the for better or worse discussion. This is the for better or I'm out kind of dating. A guy nearing fifty can be in great shape, fun, athletic, sexy and still get around as much as I can but for how much longer? Sixty? Seventy? I hate to ask these questions. They're completely scary, not-supposed-to-talk-about-it kind of questions but will I want to be dating someone who is seventy when I'm forty? And for how long is this man a viable partner?

In a restaurant we can 86 items that are not available, but in a relationship can we 86 topics that are too scary to talk about?

An Understanding

My mother once gave me some advice: if you ever dislike someone you probably don't understand them. I would just like to say that there is a lot I don't understand about people at the moment.

As I continue moving on in my life and my relationships, marking months rather than weeks, I find it hard to let go of certain baggage. I have been dealing-- or I should say refusing to deal with--a barrage of e-mails and now text messages from my old roommate who is not a student of the take a hint school. She wants me to pay for things in the apartment that were broken "as a result of my actions," not things broken by me. After all I have been through in this breakup and subsequent move I could not care less about her picture frame or her invoice for four-hundred-and-some-bullshit dollars. I have suffered consequences, many many consequences, as a result of my action and it is not up to this woman to assign more as she sees fit.

In a recent e-mail she stated that, "Perhaps you are not ready to move-on but we all are..." as if everyone from my past is standing on the other end of the moving on finish line waiting for me to catch up. But part of moving on has been ignoring these people and cutting them out of my life. One of my rules in life if that I only want people who add things to my life around me, not people who subtract from my bank account. It became clear immediately after the breakup that this roommate was not concerned with me or my wellbeing, as a friend would be. It occurred to me that she was not a friend, nobody in my life was or if they were they were the fair-weather breed that didn't seem to want anything to do with me when things got rocky in my life.

One of the most powerful lessons that I learned was one in understanding. At first I hated all of these people and then I thought about what my mother said about not understanding the people we dislike. I didn't understand how these people could just cast me out of their lives. I then had an eye-opening "he's not that into you" type of revelation about my ex: he just doesn't care. He never did and never will care about me. I wasn't used, he wasn't mean spirited or evil or any thing of that nature. He just didn't care. He still doesn't care. And he never would care. And the love that I felt was something I invented. It never existed. I didn't lose the love of my life, I never met the love of my life.

I have been trying to apply this principal to the things that upset me. If someone doesn't care about me I need to stop caring about them. I need to be indifferent. Not mean or spiteful, but completely unaware. It means not checking their Facebook pages because there is a morbid part of me that wants to know how they are doing. It means not replaying the relationship in my head and looking for things I could have done better (I realize now nothing I could have done would have changed the outcome). It means not responding to their messages, however benevolent sounding. It is my turn to not care now.

Clothing/ anarchy

Clothing creates order. It is my opinion that without clothing and accessories there would be anarchy. Without clothing how would you designate a police officer? Without accessories how could an officer do his or her job? If athletes wore no clothing how could tell the teams apart?

Uniforms can be political, a tie can represent partisanship or merely bad taste. In a place of business uniforms designate people that can help you.

What some call tools of the trade are just highly functional accessories. Investment bankers are pairing Starbucks and blackberry with navy suits this season. If you wear an apron don't be caught without a tray and discontent expression to complete the look.

So why is it that this very powerful tool of sociopolitical importance is so often written off as trivial? I often refer to my uniform as my slave clothes. They bind me to my position. They are pretty much the last thing I would ever purchase. They actually require us to wear gap jeans. Let me tell you about shopping for jeans at the gap store on Michigan avenue:

You will walk into calamity and chaos as this weekend a plague by the name of bogo has descended upon the store. You'll have to push through a mob of every fat dumpy Midwesterner from here to Ypsilanti to even enter the store. You'll ask a sales person to help you find the jeans designated by the restaurant manager. This incompetent person, wearing his incompetent person uniform, will try to sell you red jeans. You did not ask for red jeans. When you find the style you're looking for the sales person will not be able to locate your size because the store is a garbage pit of unmarked and improperly stocked goods. It will take no less than three people no less than twenty minutes to find these jeans. They will be the one pair of jeans not on sale in the store for some reason that nobody will be able to explain to you.

This is clothing, something that represents order to me, at it's worst. I want shopping to be easy, enjoyable, pleasantly air conditioned. I was sales people climbing all over me trying to make my job of finding clothes as easy as possible. I do not want a slop pile of schlock merchandise obnoxious tourists and witless employees

If clothing represents order then the gap must be anarchy.

The sexiest place on earth

Imagine the sexiest place on earth, full of fire and tantalizing aromas, heightened senses, warm romantic ambiance, dim lighting. The people who work there are all attractive, bodies glistening with sweat, moving so quickly you barely have time to undress them with your eyes. In this place, the sexiest place on earth, your most primal animalistic urges and gluttonous desires are fulfilled. The staff will do anything to please you. This is a place of decadence. People come from all over the city for it. This place is not a strip club, it is not a sex shop and it is not the Saks Fifth Avenue spring pre-sale. This place is a restaurant. And it is hot. Literally hot. So hot that walls can barely contain it.

In the summer, restaurants pour out from the brick and mortar to spill onto sidewalks all over the city. It's patio season. The servers both dread and eagerly anticipate the patio. A guaranteed full section for eight hours straight. People in naturally good moods dining in an environment that encourages much drinking. What more could we ask for?

But the price we pay for prime covers is the pervasive heat. We are, more than ever, aware of the fire that drives restaurants. Restaurants run on fire; it cooks the food, it cooks our tempers and it draws people closer. The heat heightens our sensations. Every person that so much as looks at us wrong is the worst person in the world. Every minute the person that asks for mayonnaise or wants to know if theres anything you can do about that blinding light known as the sun replaces the last as the worst person in the world. We judge harder than ever. We criticize everyone. We rank people from a scale of 'passable' to 'beastly.' We try to smile as the sweat collects on our bodies and will only pool in the most uncomfortable of places. Fabric clings to us in worst ways. Everyone grows cranky, tired, and hungry.

What may be the sexiest place on earth for the diners is simply the sweatiest place on earth for the servers.

Eventually water ceases to cool us down. The pressure inside builds until we feel ready to burst. There is only one thing to do to release the pressure: complain. We kvetch. It pours out in every direction. We complain about the uniforms being to heavy, we complain about the plates being too hot, we complain about drinks taking too long, tables camping out for hours in prime restaurant real estate.

Also with the heat comes the tropical creatures known commonly as Europeans. The fly in bright colorful scarves clusters with designer eyewear and strong currency. They swoop down upon us every summer to activate our fickle economy by gorging themselves on food, wine, and Louis Vuitton purses. These strange breeds have a unique way of communicating that often involves snapping, waving wildly, and even the ultimate in gauche restaurant gestures, whistling. They give us ample complaining material.

As the kitchen becomes busier and busier the food "downstairs" for the servers and hotel staff becomes an increasingly dire situation. Strange otherworldly chicken balls sit untouched for hours in a hot dish. Chicken hammered and painfully contorted into an egg shape, with a pat of butter enclosed in the center like a yolk, breaded and deep fried on the outside. This confusing abomination is served two to three times a week and will guarantee you food poisoning for the next three hours if you're lucky. If that's not glamorous enough it's served with a side of fries and crusty pizza. This is not so much food as it is a promise of diabetes.

So much for the sexiest place on earth.

The American Dream On

When I quit my job medical billing and started working in a restaurant everyone told me to have an "exit plan." People told to have something to work toward or risk becoming a career server, a fate worse than death I'm sure. I expected people to not understand why I would leave a cushy low-input job for a not glamorous industry. When I tell people what I do they ask what I really want to do, if I'm a student, if I still live with my parents. Everyone seems to think that if I don't have the career part of my life nailed down every other part must be in shambles. People talk about my job like we live in a caste system and I was just booted out of the upper echelon of gays to the d-list gays that bring you other sizes, bring you a pillow for your flight, and serve you cocktails.

I admit as writer, artist, and knitter there is something unfulfilling about my life. It seems that the greatest rewards come from manual labor, and creativity affords you a blog that nobody reads and a collection of hand-knit sweaters. I've been thinking a lot about achievement. It seems like everywhere I look it's being forced fed into us. Get a better degree so you can get a better job. Buy this car to drive to work, and go to work to pay for this car. When I'm forced to look at my life I feel suddenly empty, all of the things that make me who I am are apparently not marketable skills. I once did a five star sudoku in just ten minutes. I can knit a sock without a pattern. I can wear polka dots. All these little achievements don't seem to amount to much.

Where is the olympic team for surviving a really messy breakup? Where is the degree in accessorizing? Where is the fellowship for being a good friend? Those skills that seem important, the moments that define us, those things that make us individuals don't make us money. In fact, it seems that the things that make us more like everyone else are the things that are most profitable. In the quest for accolades, is our self worth ultimately worthless.

At a crossroad like this I have to decide what I want to do. I know I need to do something but I don't know what it is. I've long known that I'm not good at working for other people because I'm stubborn and convinced that the people managing me don't know anything more than I do. I've thought about starting my own business, and in less than a year that may be a possibility. I may have a way of financing a little business but I don't know exactly what I should look into doing. Do I want a cute menswear store? A knitwear shop? A gallery?

Of course I could also go back to school and move toward another industry. I've always loved psychology and was originally planning to be a neurologist but would have never gotten into a premed program out of high school. I don't know if med school is in the cards for me, but there are other career paths. Art therapy, education, sociology, counseling. Or I could knock out the pre reqs community college  and look into being a clinical social worker. I'm young, I can survive another 4 years of school.

Or I could try to get into another industry and work my way up, do the career thing that everyone else seems to be. Each year, as my peers get older and more established I can't help but feel as though I'm being left behind in some ways. It's not that I'm not as capable or experienced or driven, I just don't know what I want to do. 

When everyone is telling us that there are no jobs, no point to expensive degrees, and no hope for small business, how can I jump ship yet again armed with nothing but a BFA and a smile. And what if, in this quest for achievement, all I achieve is more debt and less sense of direction?

The only thing I like about flying...

Is flirting with business men at the airport bar.

Different Service

In different regions you will receive different service. Depending on where you are in the country, or the world, the standard of service and even the quality of the food will be different. Different areas will tolerate different dining experiences. Pennsylvania, where I'm from, is known for some of the worst service anywhere. People also routinely tip about 10-15 percent here. The environment creates different expectations. 

I found myself unexpectedly in my hometown on mother's day, so we did what we do: Brunch. Pennsylvania is not exactly brimming with bars, or cute walkable neighborhoods. We settled on Temperance in Newtown. I'm wary of any bar or restaurant named after a virtue of abstaining in a non-ironic way. The service was embarrassingly slow, the server was almost inappropriately casual, the busboy's worked with more vigilance than any of the other staff, and I didn't see one manager in the entire establishment. Then there was the food. Everyone else in my family thought the food was delicious.

I'm going to tell you what the definition of delicious is in Pennsylvania: The star of the mother's day buffet is a fatty, flavorless, kind of gray looking prime rib. Pasta cooked about five minutes past al dente and another minute away from baby food texture. Oily vegetables and sweating pieces of cheese on an open-air platter susceptible to all manner of airborne pathogen. And for desert, crumbling cakes and pastries. If we served this type of food in Chicago we would have been out of business in a year or less. And If I gave that kind of service I would have been on the guillotine. However, I was the only one who seemed to notice how awkward and slow the service was and how terrible the food was. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying it so I didn't say anything, but I thought about it later. Maybe I've just been conditioned to expect more.

The same can be said about families and how they deal with tragedy. My family's inclination when anything goes wrong is to just have a party, get people together, drinking eating and talking. Somehow things just work themselves out there's food involved. So I'm surprised when I see a family that deals with tragedy in the more, I don't know, victorian way. Little togetherness and more personal mourning. In public everyone was mostly together, if only as a front.

It's as if death brings some families closer and pulls other families further apart. In the last 6 months I've been to two funerals for the same family. One for my friend's mother, and another for her step mother. The unfortunate irony of the situation is that the viewing was on mother's day. My mother, ever the opportunist, suggested I come home for the service and make a pitstop at brunch on the way over.

The timing was not intentional from what I gathered. It seemed as though everything just happened so suddenly that they just made the quickest simplest arrangement they could. It had also been simultaneously happening for a long time so in a way I'm sure the family was expecting what was coming. It was all so different than what I was expecting. It made me realize how different families are in how they deal. Maybe I just came in with an expectation of what the scene would look like and was surprised when it was very different. My friend could not have gotten out of town any sooner after the service either. She didn't want to stay one more day than absolutely necessary. I even offered to let her stay with my family if she wanted another day to relax, but she was determined to flee the scene.

Different people need different things to be content. The people that live here don't need fifteen dollar cocktails and charcuterie plates, they want a solo cup of warm champagne and some deli cuts. Maybe what one family needs to grieve isn't enough for another. People need to find what works for them. It's not really my place to comment on what different people need to get by, but I still find it interesting how different things are from state to state, city to city, and even from household to household.

Losing Face

Servers give good face. Most of the time. We're trained to be disingenuous. We smile when we're not happy, we thank people when we're not grateful, and we apologize when we've done nothing wrong. We're drones of the industry. We recommend the most expensive items, we use unnatural language, we respond to the slave names waiter and waitress.

The industry rewards those who can fake it, those who can up sell and those who can turn their brains off. Most of us run on autopilot. We clock in and tune out. Entire days pass with little recollection. One shift is the same as the next and over time we forget mostly everything but regulars and liquor prices.

I have to admit it goes against my nature to do many of these things, and I'm not always successful. Yes I can sell, i can sell a pork chop to an anorexic vegan. But I can't always smile at someone who is rude. I get frustrated by people, coworkers, impossible situations.

I'm no stranger to being set up to fail. I work in a place that frequently operates without bus boys, a hostess, glassware, 30% of the items on the menu and adequate servers. The term in the weeds doesn't even adequately describe it. We take on 40+ covers. We make our own drinks sometimes. We have the manager run our food and even take orders for us.

I am a person who needs order to function. I don't deal well with anarchy. I want people orderly, sitting down and I want them to spend approximately $46.00 a cover. I lost it last night. The manager cut our other server just as a party of 35 came in, a party that wanted individual tabs. Then five, three and two twos came in. Cue sweat. Cue meltdown.

Even people who are just trying to be helpful end up just confusing matters more. Four people all ring in things under my number and take orders for tables I hadn't even greeted.

Then after neglecting all of my other tables for this big group they all just end up ordering from the bar after half of them started tabs with me. And I just lost it. It's like watching someone pluck money out of your pocket dollar by dollar. It's not entirely the bartender's fault, it's mostly the manager that basically dedicated me to this party in a room next to the bar without any real thought whatsoever. Of course I was going to get screwed out of it. It's easier for the bartender to just make drinks directly and manage all those individual covers. But the fact that I was just supposed to sit back and watch someone else make all of the money was infuriating.

If any real planning had gone into it the group would have been the bar's from the start and I could have just focused on my tables. But, of course that is a decision that would have taken some thought and consideration-- not the usual fly by the seat of our pants do whatever the guest wants without any planning or foresight. I'm sad to say the latter is our M.O. most days. And making money isn't as much a reward for hard work but a crapshoot often in favor of the greedy.

So yep, I probably shouldn't have lost my temper on the floor and yelled at every person but the dishwasher but I wonder sometimes if it's ever going to get better. After a year shouldn't we have it together? Can't we just run smoothly where everyone is happy and making money? Or will we always have to get by pickpocketing covers from other people?

I learned something about myself this morning.

That's all for today.

Packing to fly home for a funeral/ mother's day brunch. Yes, the two events are happening back to back.

Scabs

Healing is a funny thing. When a wound is healing the number one thing any doctor will tell you is to leave it alone. Don't agitate the injury, don't expose it to unnecessary bacteria, don't put strain on it, leave it alone and let the body heal. When a person experiences trauma, this is the advice they all receive, and it's some of the hardest advice to follow.

As I try to move on from my mistakes in the past the hardest of all the lessons I've had to learn is to just leave the wounds alone. Leave the people who have hurt me be. Ignore the tiny pangs and occasional messages from them. Eventually it will pass and you'll be better off. The problem is sometimes our injuries, the people that haunt us from our past, have a way of grabbing your attention and making it really hard to ignore. These people antagonize, they ask seemingly harmless information. They are a million itchy scabs begging you to just lift up the tiny end and peek underneath.

I have been ignoring one of these people, and this is not a person who is easy to ignore. She is just about the squeakiest wheel there is. But I'm in a tough place because my only two options are to ignore or tell her to eat shit (okay, admittedly there are other things I could say but that is what is most likely to come out).

My mother used to tell me that in life you will be given certain tests, that each person has lessons to learn. And every time you fail that test life will simply throw another similar situation at you until you get it right. I seem to have a weakness for the scabs of my past. I always forgive them, let them back in, and let them cause trouble for me again. It's like quitting smoking. Every time you put out a cigarette you quit smoking. So for the people who go years versus the people who go days, a smoker is a smoker. Can you every really quit the bad habits?

Yes I can ignore this person and not say the things I want to say. There are people all over that I want to confront. I want to blame people. I want to pick fights. I want to make them feel bad about how they acted. But none of it will change the way I feel. None of it will change what happened or the mess I'm in. In fact, it'll just make it take longer to get out of the mess.

I want very badly to heal but I see it in my inbox, my cell phone, on Facebook, everywhere. I see the building I used to live in. I watch the show we used to watch. The wound is begging me in every way to prod it in some way. It will do anything to get my attention. And the more I ignore the worse it gets.

Believe me, I wish they made pain killers for this kind of thing. I could go for a social Vicodin right about now, just to take the edge off of dealing with people.

Shoulda coulda... Cole Haan?

Okay, so I am a person that admittedly lives beyond my means. I have the credit card bills to prove it. There's a reason every sales associate at Burberry knows me by name and my shoe guy at Nordstrom holds sizes for me without even asking. I fully believe in the therapeutic effects of shopping, the same way the potheads will argue the medicinal uses of marijuana. I know it's stupid and unhealthy but one does not achieve a closet of my stature by occasional trysts at Marshals. When I shop I mean to drop bills, son. My motto used to be if it doesn't sting a bit when you pay for it, it isn't worth buying.

That said, I did an embarrassing shameful thing today and I'm almost to mortified to even write it on here.

I comparison shopped.

I know, I know. Shoot me, take away my Neiman Marcus card, whatever. I looked for a deal today and I'm not ashamed to say it.

I finally had to accept that my lifestyle does not afford the things I want with the frequency that I want to buy them. And if I ever want to slim down my credit card statement I need to put my spending on an aggressive diet. No more fatty purchases. Which is hardest in transitional seasons because everything is so versatile. Lots of spring jackets work in the fall, etc. Cute brightly colored brogues are speaking to me. Prada refuses to stop making adorable sneaker-soled loafers that make me cum in my pants when I see them (I know this is extreme but if you saw the shoes you'd understand--google Prada papaya penny loafers).

So this season of restraint has been hard for me. I narrowed down my purchases to two legitimate utilitarian things that I do genuinely need. A raincoat, and a black leather belt that can take a lot of abuse and wear. My choices were obvious, an Hermes belt and a Mackintosh coat. Done and done. Except those two purchases would have ran me close to $2000. So, I had to tone it down. I ended up getting a handmade belt from Haberdash and a black treated cotton trench from Cole Haan. The two together were $350. I didn't even know Cole Haan sold outerwear, I just went in because they had these wingtips on Nike soles that looked interesting and saw that they had ridiculously cheap trench coats that actually fit really well. I don't usually like to talk about how much I spend, I think it's tacky. But when I find really good deals on things that aren't junk I have to admit I am a bit proud of it.

Yes, I've still got my eye on that Hermes belt but think of all the cocktails and dinners out I can buy with the $700 I saved...

Snap to it, or just snap

Sometimes tension is a good thing. In stringed instruments, tension is necessary to create music. However, sometimes tension causes things to break. The trick in life is to make music without snapping. I'm not in the business of making music, I'm in the business of making money. Taking home three hundos on a monday night is music to my ears. So, I should have been ecstatic that my sales have been through the roof while NRA (restaurants, not rifles) was in town.

Talk about MFB, I've been bringing it home five days straight and I'm exhausted. Yes, it's nice to make my rent in one week of work. It's nice to put money into savings, it's nice to be able to afford my lobster cobb salads at Benny's. It's all nice, except when on my day off all I seem to be able to to is lie on my back.

The thing about making crazy money like this is it makes you crazy. But it also gives you blisters and back problems and headaches and arm pain. So why do we do it? Is the MFB that good? Or is bringing home the mother fucking bacon just giving us mother fucking blisters? And at what point does the tension that holds everything together for us become too much and just snap.

Ever since I had an arm injury and damaged a tendon the idea of snapping has been looming over me. At any moment the supposedly superficial tendon in my right arm can just snap like a piano cord and fly back into my arm. But in a less physical way haven't I just been through the same amount of emotional trauma? I wonder if there are the signs that I might be getting pulled a little too taut.

Snapping is common in restaurants. You may not see it dining in one, but in the back of the house everyone has a moment of losing it. Each person has their own trigger: splitting checks fourteen ways, people spilling drinks on us, triple sat when we're already in the weeds. Sometimes we can take a breath stay focused and just do it but sometimes we just need a moment to break down and yell at someone. And usually it's not a person-speciffic type of anger and the next person to cross us gets it all at once.

I feel as though we all sort of understand this and yet I feel bad because yes, our bartenders are slow sometimes and the bussers forget and leave things on the table but this is a night's worth of anger coming out for something silly like a knife left on the table. I've always wanted to be one of those effortless people that glide through life and it seems like nothing ever gets to them.

But I doubt that person exists. A manager who I thought was infallible when it comes to guest rudeness lost it the other day over some foodies that sent a dish back for small portion size. I couldn't believe it. These guys hassled me over everything from the linen to the mar-teeny pours and I just took it and was all the more friendly to compensate. And then what I thought was the master of water-off-a-ducks-back-don't-sweat-it mentality lost it.

Maybe snapping isn't always a matter of strain for some people and it's more about time. In due time everyone will have a breakdown. Every guitar string will break eventually, and it's how you go on, how you repair, and how you recover that really matters in the break. Eventually my tendon will snap. Or, it might never. It's out of my control, which isn't easy to accept given that it's my own body (and also that I'm a control freak). All I can do is hope it doesn't break when I'm carrying a tray of martinis.

What it costs to fix a broken heart

Lately I feel as though the entire world is extending a hand to me, not to help me off the floor or pat my back or anything nice like that, the world has a hand reached out and is asking me to cut it a check. Everywhere I look theres another person asking for a check. Forty dollars, eighty dollars, four hundred dollars, one hundred and eleven dollars, eight thousand dollars. Yes, I owe someone eight thousand dollars. When I said this was the year of painful and expensive lessons the emphasis was on expensive.

As a server I make good money but my money's not that good. So, how is it that as a 99%-er I've somehow ended up with the bills of a 1%-er? Yes, I live in an amazing high rise downtown, I have a weakness for Prada, and I refuse to bottom shelf shop, but these are things I work my ass off to be able to afford. Most servers work three or four days a week. I work full time, forty hours, usually with no breaks (shhh, don't tell my union) and I do it because I want to bring home the motherfucking bacon, or as I like to call it in the polite world, the MFB.

And in the last few months, MFB has taken on a whole new meaning: motherfucking bills. Everyday, another reminder of my past mistakes comes in the mail, and it comes in the form of an invoice. One from my ex asking me to pay for a hole I punched in the closet door two years ago (okay it was cheap particle board I wasn't that strong or angry). Another from my old roommate asking me to pay for her things that got broken in my hasty move out of my last relationshi-pocalypse. Northwestern Hospital has had a hand out to me since my twentieth birthday, not to be mistaken for a helping hand.

These hands are not the hands the feed, but the ones that feed on my bank accounts. Yes, I think it is important to experience consequences for my actions and mistakes in the past. But the consequences have gone from consequential to monumental.

About a year ago I decided I wanted to go to grad school for writing. I was thinking about a career path for myself and as a writer who is not very commercial and isn't cut out for advertising, teaching seemed like my last hope. Through the process of filling out applications to various writing programs around the country I began to get really excited about the prospect of a new school, new city and new start for my life. I was venturing out into the unknown and I have to say I would have been a shoe in for many of these programs.

So why now am I not writing about all of the rejection and acceptance letters from these programs? Well, like a stupid kid I fell in love and no longer wanted to leave Chicago. I had actually made it so far in the process that I took the GRE, filled out the applications, addressed and stamped all of the envelopes. And just before I stuffed the last materials in I met what I thought was the love of my life.

I never applied.

So now, instead of acceptance letters from universities, I'm getting rejection letters from life. I'm getting bills reminding me of how badly I fell. And you know what I do? I peel the stamps of the the application envelopes and put them on the envelopes to pay my bills. One by one, I peel the postage off of my future and use it to pay for my past. I can't think of a better or more miserable metaphor for the last three months.

And I know I will come out stronger from all of this, but beyond that there is no positive spin I can put on it. I fucked up my life, every single aspect of it, and I did it for a man. And when all was said and done, the love came back to me 'return to sender.' He turned out to be one more symptom, one more bill, that I will spend the rest of my life paying for.

My love affair with fags

I had to say goodbye to one of the loves of my life recently. We've known each other for many years. I first met this love when I was just eleven years old. We had a rocky on and off relationship for many years but finally I kicked my love to the curb. As hard as it was for me to do, I knew it had to be done. There will always be parts of me that look back fondly on chilly evenings on the balcony with you, drunken walks home, my morning coffee with you. This is my goodbye letter to you.

You weren't good for me, and I always knew this and still kept coming back. Our relationship was unhealthy and would have eventually killed me I'm sure. Your allure and moments of joy were not enough to balance out all of your negative aspects.

I am, of course, talking about cigarettes. My love affair with smoking began when I read the line "I'm just an old man with my Pall Malls and my memories," in a Vonnegut novel. I have quit before but it never quite stuck. I've always used my life as an excuse to smoke. I've used the tragedies, the loss, and the stress to justify my habit.

As part of my moving on these last few weeks I've been trying to cut out everything unhealthy from my life. Cigarettes were the last thing remaining. I woke up one morning feeling awful. I was angry at the people who hurt me. I had a sore throat. I had back pain. I said to myself in that moment that I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm not going to feel bad for no reason. I'm so stubborn and have so much self control in other areas of my life it was strange to me that I couldn't control this.

So, I went cold turkey and I'm blogging it now so I can't slip. I feel like by putting it out there where everyone can read it gives me more reason to not back down and not fail myself. Every single person reading this is another person holding me accountable for my actions. Smoking is one of many bad habits I'm kicking this year. Now to cut down (or maybe just cut up) my credit card.

Well, my credit card is a battle for another day.

Breaking up the boy

Yesterday I did a budget for myself so that I can finally pay down my credit card and build my savings back up. I dug through my charges and found the usual culprits- cocktails at Sable, lunch at Bandera, and desert at the Nordstrom shoe department. The surprising expenditure, however, was not shoes or martinis but therapy. I am now budgeting as much toward therapy as I am toward for food. Today I have to go meet my therapist and ask the really hard question: are you nourishing me as much as food?

Yes, for someone as neurotic and obsessive as myself therapy is not a luxury. But I have to challenge this person. I have to ask him if he's willing to step up and be the kind of therapist I need to help me pick up the pieces of my life and put them back together. Is he willing to go the distance to make this work?

When talking about therapists I often find myself using the same language that I use to talk about relationships, because it is a relationship in a sense. In this case he resembles most of my relationships, a tedious process with an attractive man that is winding up to be too expensive for me and ultimately not working out.

And the hardest part of leaving a therapist is that you've already laid the groundwork and made the investment by the time you realize it's not working out. Like relationships, I sometimes want to stay just so I don't have to go through the hassle of finding another one. Being single in a city full of SWM full of BS sucks, and it sucks enough to keep us in relationships that are not working. Yes, the boat is sinking but it hasn't sunk, and are we really ready to jump into shark-infested waters because of a little leak?

I look back over the last few months. This year has been full of some of the most painful and expensive life lessons that I have ever learned. And because of them, I've made some of the most positive changes in my life. And I wonder how much credit my therapist can take for my efforts to improve my life when he simply sat by the sidelines watching, not cheering, just watching. Occasionally he'll throw me a bone or ask me a question but the real dilemma is that I have set my own goals and held myself accountable to them and started this blog as another step of accountability. But would I have done those things if it weren't for therapy?

I'd like to think that I could make those changes on my own but it's hard to tell. It's hard to quantify and put a value on the effects of therapy, although my therapist seems to have no problem doing just that. Yes his time alone is worth what I pay, but isn't it what happens outside of the therapist's office that really defines a good therapist. Even if my therapist hasn't contributed to my success I am on a good path so why leave him when there's nothing really going wrong?

And this is the point in the thought process of over-analyzation that I would usually consult my therapist for answers.