I’m going to erect a cathedral in my name and place a giant statue of a penis in the middle of it and see how many people buy into my bullshit. The church is going to be called ‘Zi Penis’ and the only correct pronunciations of it are with a fake French accent.
Saturday morning, he wakes up too early and the apartment is quiet. He listens, ears straining to hear sound but there is none.
(This can either go two ways: 1) he wakes up, hears nothing because the rest of humanity vaporized overnight; or 2) something else entirely. I’m not too sure but the idea of humanity vaporizing kinda gives me the chills and I probably need to probe deeper and research more to write something worthy of that idea, so I’m going to leave it alone. He’s going to go out and get coffee now.)
She was giving him head on the roof when, suddenly, she hears the whisper of distances voices. Her mouth leaves his dick briefly as she scans their surroundings for the source of the sudden intrusion and her heart skips a beat when she spots two shadowy figures on a neighboring roof holding beers, one of them looking right back at her. She bursts out in laughter, as if laughing will save them from this embarrassing, compromising situation in which they now find themselves, as if laughing will make their voyeurs go away, as if laughing, somehow, makes all of this perfectly normally.
Other embarrassing moments in my life: bumping into your other guy friends when you’re on a date and dressed up and then remembering that you need to book a limo with them for prom, so you stop to have a conversation, and all of this reminds you that you lost your prom ticket and that school is ending in less than a week, finals and projects and all, it’s all going to be over, the good and the bad and everything in between, four years and the book is finally over. You’re walking in the last chapter and you’re about to turn the last page.
Something to Look Forward To
Fenton spent a lot of time, in his younger years, looking forward to things, things like his seventh birthday party. He had invited all of his friends and his concept of a friend, at least when he was seven, had been anyone he had ever spoken to. He had even invited his school bus driver.
Smile like You Mean It
You know, not to be stereotypical or racist here, but Asian people, especially tourists or overseas family visiting for the summer, have this thing about taking pictures. They aren’t well posed or interesting pictures. They suffer from poor composition, poor lighting, unsteady hands and an obscenely scaring use of flash. Half the time, the point is to include the person and some historical, natural or just interesting object in the background and the person, depending on their level of, for a lack of better words, Asian-ness, will give the peace sign without knowing even what the gestures represents. For the typical Asian, the peace sign is almost as vital as saying “Cheese!” and hardly anyone really yells out for cheddar when the shutter snaps. Maybe it’s only a Chinese thing, but I’m hesitant to restrict this racial stereotype to only one country or nationality because it’s almost an Asian pandemic. There isn’t anything wrong with people who want to document their existence and the fact that they’ve traveled some thousands and thousands of miles to stand at the bottom, or the top, of the Empire State Building. But, something just irks me when I look back at the volumes of family photos stashed away in photo albums or those little 1 hour photo things. Is anyone really smiling in these photos? Maybe the problem isn’t so much as nagging relatives who want ten thousand pictures of a building you see nearly every day but more the pictures themselves. It’s as if the life, the energy, the spirit of a place, of a person, instead of being captures and exulted on film has been stifled and even strangled by the fake smiles and the peace signs, by how unnatural it looks, how boring, how trite it all feels. What’s the point of ruining something scenic and beautiful just to insert yourself into the picture? Does it make this historical landmark yours, or are you just making yourself look silly? And given the obesity rate in America, I hesitate to even talk about American tourists. Again, there is nothing wrong with taking pictures as a way to document your life, important moments, graduations, prom, visiting the rain forest, something along those lines. A weekend summer party does not warrant tens of millions of photographs taken in haste on point-and-shoot cameras. Who the hell, no offense, wants to see that shit? Why do you want to see that shit? The digital age revolutionized photography, making it readily available to even the most untrained and most amateur individuals. The digital age made photography easy, too easy. I’m no expert on photography, I’ve only taken one introductory course to black and white photography and already, I can see a difference in the way people used to treat and approach photography and the way we do it now. It lacks the care, the love, the skills, the patience, the genius, the elegance.
There is a silent void in my heart, in the place where you used to be. I remember your smiles, your mirth, and your love. The smallest things that seemed so trivial back then now mean the world to me. They way you’d look at me when we walk, hand in hand, down a dark city street. The way you used to kiss me, a sloppy, innocent kiss, devoid of anything less than love. The way you’d sleep next to me, entangled in my bed sheets on a balmy, summer evening. The way your face looked, the way you smelled, the way you held me tight on my roof and danced, a dance I’ll never get to have with you. All tenders of your affections, the lunchboxes, the weekend visits, the gifts, the patience. You put up with so much of me, so many of my flaws and indecencies. I know in my heart you’re not coming back, not the way you used to be. You’ll always be cautious, you’ll always be suspicious and weary, you’ll always be looking around the corner for something better to replace me with. You’re not excited to be with me anymore. All you talk about it guns, all you do is distract yourself. You don’t even send me puppy pictures anymore. You hardly call me any of my pet names and the only time you say what I want to hear from you is when I’m sad and you’re tying to cheer me up. I’m the only girl you’ve been close to and maybe that’s why you still put up with me, because you know if you asked and played your cards right, I’ll be here, waiting for you, wanting you, ready for you, for you to fuck or just cuddle with, for you to talk to, because you know I’ll always be here, because that’s what I said and that’s what I’m trying to do. Didn’t you used to have doubts about us? Didn’t it used to drive you crazy? People deal with things in different ways. Sometimes, I wish you’d humor my insecurities. I’m truly afraid that once you go back to college, you’ll abandon me. You said we can secretly be together on the beach, but every time I ask about it, you’d just kiss me or give a vague answer. I don’t get why. What are you thinking about? What are you conflicted about? I am so afraid I’m going to end up on the losing side. I don’t even know why I really want this anymore. There are so many signs that we’re not truly meant to be.
Cartology
A study of street food carts
CARTS
This book isn’t so much about street food as it is about food carts. Enough has been said about New York City street food
This is a book about carts. Carts that crowd city sidewalks and street corners, carts that are sheltered by colorful umbrellas, carts that are
This is a book about New York City street food carts.
This is a book about carts. Carts that crowd sidewalks and street corners, carts that sound of iron spatulas dicing meat and onions, carts that smell of hotdogs, gyros, tacos, chow mein, hot cakes, kebabs, Italian sausages, carts that draw hungry throngs at lunchtime, carts that are as common and as New York as yellow taxi cabs, carts that have become the icons of urban street food.
There is no love sincerer than the love of food. ~George Bernard Shaw
| “I am not a glutton – I am an explorer of food” |
| Erma Bombeck quotes |
There are 3,000 carts in the city, operated by people from a wide variety of ethnicities.
Hi nuunuu, I probably should have done this a long time ago, instead of letting it go on like this, instead of holding on to you and not letting you live your life. I was the one who said we should break up, even though I didn’t really mean it then, but after all of my crying and begging and seeing how determined you are leave me because it’s better this way and how much this is hurting both you and me, I know now that breaking up is for the best. You don’t have to spend time with me, hang out with me, see me, go to prom with me, any of the other things I begged and pleaded for you to do. My feelings for you, at present, remain the same. You occupy the same place in my heart as you’ve always had and secretly, I’m still wishing for a miracle to bring us back together. But, this is what needs to be done. I love you Jeffrey. You’ll always be my nuunuu, my teddy, my puppy, my everything. P.S. I still want to know how difficult the physics course is at NYU. AND, I still mi
I love you, I love you so much. I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you
I’m really confused. I don’t know what to do. It’s like I’m walking on eggshells and I’m not doing the best job in the world. My heart doesn’t feel right, with Jeffrey, without Jeffrey, with Steven, with both of them. I don’t know what’s going on anymore or what I’m supposed to do. I just really want things to be normal and not so stilted and awkward. I want him to love me again and to keep loving me and for me to keep loving him. I want to always be with him and even if things are remarkably shitty like this, I want to work it out and I want to figure it out and make it okay. I really want things to be okay. I know I’m not doing a good job and I know I just keep fucking up and fucking up. But, isn’t that the only way I’m going to really learn? Isn’t that how we all learn? From our myriad of seriously devastating and humiliating mistakes? I love you, Jeffrey. Please love me, too.
I want to change and I want to be better, but I can’t just turn on a dime and be a new person. I can’t just make everything that I am change and disappear. It needs time. Don’t monitor my behavior….what does that even mean…
Please tell me what you want. Please tell me what you want me to be….and I will be that…please…give me a direction and I will follow it….give me a road leading back to you…
It really hurts that you let other people get between us…because I’ve been stubborn and adamant and damn near ignored everything. It was my mistake to talk so much, but only because you talked so little. Only because you hardly ever said a word and I didn’t know what to do…for every word you didn’t say, I’d have a dozen, a novel waiting for you…Actually, I haven’t told that many people. Less than a dozen people know on my end. I’m tempted to say that it’s your fault for having shitty friends who walk away with your secrets because Winnie never told anyone about us, about this. I didn’t know what kind of person Zach was, or is, or isn’t, but he was close to you and he was a means to you and I just wanted you back…
I really fucked up last night. I know, I wanted to let go of everything right when you wanted me back. I missed you by just a little bit. I’m not good at picking up subtle things…you have to tell me sometimes…that this is what you want…don’t hold things from me because it just confuses me more and it makes a mess of things, like this…like now…
I don’t like not knowing where to walk and how to walk. I don’t like not knowing what to be or what to feel. I know I have to decide these things for myself, and I’ve decided on you, on being with you, but there are so many other things that muddied my judgement.
Please don’t blame this on everything else, on me, on your friends. If you really wanted to talk to me…you would’ve stayed, despite what your friends did. If you really wanted me…
I know I can’t shut up. It’s hard for me to shut up because I don’t know what’s going on in my own head and I need time to think but I have to keep moving, I have to keep going to school and I have to do all these things and people tell me all these things and it gets messed up and fucked up and I just need to vent, to tell someone, to write it down, to let it go, to do something with it besides just keeping it in my head.
I keep fluctuating because I don’t know…I’m not sure…how do you expect someone who’s confused and freaking out to be stable? What do you mean….that you’ve been monitoring me? Waiting for me to strike the right chord? Why did you even do this…Why did you even have to do this…I’m just so confused…why did any of this even have to happen…you could’ve talked to me…you could’ve asked me to be better…you could’ve just said something…why did you have to make it happen like this…
I love you…I love you so much…I love you Jeffrey Liaw…I love you and that’s all I know, that’s all I know…but this isn’t going to work out….
I just really miss you….I want to see you all the time because you’re never there….please try and understand me…please try and understand why I’m so clingy…why I always need you…I don’t even see you that often…it might be enough for you to see me once every couple of months, but it kills me. Waiting for you…
I’m always waiting…for you…waiting to be with you in the summer, during your breaks…I’ll wait some more now…because I’m okay with waiting now…and I’ll wait and I’ll see what happens with Steven and I’ll see what happens with you…
I’m always impatient because my feelings are fickle…if they aren’t reaffirmed constantly, in time they will fade and I didn’t want that to happen…
If you knew things were going to resolve themselves if I wait…why didn’t you tell me all those times I pleaded for an answer? Just a simple yes would’ve made it better for me. Just knowing that there was hope, I would’ve waited. But you gave me maybe’s and no’s and vague answers that I didn’t understand. You gave your friends the priority and listened to them. That’s okay. I could’ve listened to my friends, too, but I didn’t want to. I love you so much Jeffrey.
You haven’t really changed either and I don’t truly see why I’m the only one who has to work so hard to fix this relationship. You never say anything, you always keep things bottled up and tucked away. Has it ever occurred to you that it makes it worse for me, when you aren’t here in person, when the only thing that I can see is if you’re online or not, it just makes everything worse? I really wish you’d say something. I really wish you’d tell me what’s going on sometimes. This lack of communication killed a lot of things. I don’t know why you’re playing these games all of a sudden. I play my games, but they’re short and they hurt, but they go away. I don’t know why this had to happen. I don’t know what’s going to happen in I wait and I don’t know if we’re ever going to be together anymore. But, since people’s opinions matter so much to you, and no one likes us together, this one is up to you. Listen to your friends, be saved by your intervention. There’s nothing I can do to stop you. In fact, everything I do just makes it worse. So, fine, I will wait. I will for the summer and seeing you again. I will wait for the rest of my life to play out. I will wait and wait and wait, maybe for you, maybe not…but I will wait.
Will we be together again? Stay with me.
I love him so much. It hurts so much. I’m so sad without him. I’m so sad. I don’t want to know what’s going to happen anymore. I don’t want to see anything anymore. I just want to feel him. I just want him to accept me, be with me.
somedays, I listen to people and I feel like we should just call it quits. We weren’t good for each other. We weren’t compatible with each other. Admit it, we both toy with each other. But, if I’m making a list of pros and cons, for me at least, the list is pretty even. Maybe it’s just love and it’s blinding my judgment, but I want to be with you. I want to grow old with you. I want to hug you from behind when you cook or machine guns (and hopefully not make you hurt yourself). I want a future with you, but I don’t know what it’s going to be like or how we’re going to be. Right now, I’d give up anything and everything for you. The only thing that stops me is that you might not feel the same way anymore. Maybe you like other girls, maybe other girls like you, maybe you’re just tired of me and want something different, maybe I’m wrong on all accounts but we don’t communicate and it’s hard to tell. In all truth, I don’t think I can change. So, what’s the point of waiting for me to act differently? For me to shut up and stop spamming you and stop telling people the story of our shitty relationship. There really isn’t a point. I did this before I met you and I’m still doing it. I’d type pages and pages of useless crap, directed towards people who would never read it. But, I figured since we were close, I’d tell you how I felt, all of it. I really want us to get back together, but that would disappoint so many people. My parents, your parents, Zach, Winnie, all these people split between us who don’t want us together. Maybe that’s why you’re so upset about me telling people. It’ll be a lot harder for us to be ‘together’ with all these people around. But I’d be fine with it. I know I flip flop and I switch sides and I’m bipolar in my feelings for you, but right now, at this very moment, today, after calling you and hearing your phone ring for the first time in months though without answer, I want to say…let’s just be friends. See how things work out with Steven, see how things work out with whoever you find. Maybe if we meet up in the summer and something happens, or maybe not. But, right now…it hurts too much to care anymore. I know I did this to you for the longest time to, dangle your feelings on my whim, tell you I’m going to break up with you and leave you but beg for you back. But, just from what you told me and from what I hear, girls do that. That makes me feel a little bit more normal. But, I really don’t like what you did to me for the past couple of weeks. Everything you complained to me about that night you ‘hated’ me just doesn’t sit right with me. In my mind, I’m still just wonder who the hell who do that this? Who would ‘monitor’ someone’s behavior waiting for a change, for the right time? Just because I went silent for a weekend, you thought it was okay now, that I changed? Or, did you just miss the constant attention I gave you? And about Zach and your friends and everyone knowing and how they stopped you from talking to me. I don’t know what to say about that. It hurts me that you are so easily swayed by ‘friends’. How many people do you even like in your dorm? How many people there really care for you? Who really gives a shit about you there? Zach? If he’s all he’s cracked up to be, why did he tell all of your personal shit to everyone else? Oh, because I told him, I spilled the beans, I let him know so it’s his duty now to spread the rumors, the gossip? I told numerous individuals, my friends, and so far, none of them have uttered a word about any of this. Maybe it’s weird that I, your girlfriend, approached your friend. But, the way I see it, if he’s really your friend, he wouldn’t go around telling private shit about your life to everyone in the world. Maybe you don’t really care how I feel about Zach, but I hope you still care about how I feel about you, because right now both of you just seem like serious assholes. I’m even afraid to say this to you, to be mean to you, because it might ruin my chances with you. If I yell you, get angry at you, you’ll just withdrawal, run away, tell me I’m fluctuating, I’m not ready. It’s like I’m constantly walking on eggshells. You and I are different people. You put up with me for a long time, but my temper is high and my patience is short. I don’t want to leave this relationship angry at you for all the crap you pulled this month, for how broken I feel on the inside, for all the promises you broke that I thought you were going to keep. I still love you, I still love you so much. No matter what I do, my heart still beats for you, I still dial your phone number and stalk your profile and look at pictures of you and remember all the good times we had together, all of the things that we did. I think of the way you use to look at me and I want to cry. I think of all the late nights we spent together and Columbus Day weekend and I want to cry and cry and cry. It hurts so much to think of you and how different you are now. You’re in the place of power, and I’m begging at your feet. I just can’t imagine why you’re doing all the things you are. I say I’m going to leave you, but I don’t last even for hours before I want to be with you again, because I really want to be with you. Maybe it’s a disease, maybe that’s what you hate about me. I think that’s how you used to feel about me. In your words, you’d destroy yourself for me. I wish you still felt the same way, not that I want you to destroy yourself, but I wish you’d still think that I am your world because you encompass the entirety of mine. I don’t know what I’m really feeling, but I’m in some sort of a limbo, too. I wish the pain in my heart was still there, because at least then, I’d be sure my feelings for you are still strong. I’m teetering on the edge of letting you go and being okay with it and just begging and praying for you to still be mine. I wish you’d get jealous and want me back. I want you to feel bad and regret leaving me, but I don’t think you will, or at least I won’t know. In my mind, I didn’t destroy this relationship. I was upset that day I tried to ‘leave’ you but you took it so seriously. I tell you over and over again, don’t believe, don’t let me, want me back if I try to. I’m always trying to, but I never actually do. I love you. I miss you so much. I really wish we worked out in the end. I wish I could be with you forever, be your nyanya forever and ever. Live in the happy future I have mapped out in my mind, where, after school and getting jobs, we’d finally be close and together, without parents and worries. We’d live in a nice apartment, have two kitchens, one for you to mess with and one for me to keep pretty and clean. We’d make lots of money because you’d be a dentist and I’d be, at least, a doctor if not a surgeon of some sort. Maybe, we’d get a puppy or a bunny or a hamster. We’d work in the city and meet up after work and go home together. You’d cook me a delicious dinner that we’d eat in our dining room with big, big windows and a great view of the city. Maybe we’d have dessert, watch a movie, snuggle and then we’d be poke every night and fall asleep together. In the morning, you’d probably wake up before me and maybe make me breakfast or pack me a lunch. We’d go off to work and everything would be perfect. Even when things aren’t perfect, we’d make it through it all. Like that Bon Jovi song? Living on a prayer? Hold my hand, we’re halfway there? Maybe, one day, when we feel ready, we’d poke and you’d finally get to spill your milk in me without worries and there’d be a little Jeffy growing in my tummy. We’d raise our child together, deal with all of his crap. It might get pretty hard and the going might get rough, but if we believe in each other, we’d be alright and so will our kid. Pack his stuff and send him to college, which ever one he gets into. Maybe, after that, we’ll buy a house in the countryside. Hopefully, by then we’d have a lot of money, so maybe we can keep the apartment and have the country house. We’d buy a house somewhere that lets you own firearms. Maybe, grow a garden in the backyard and, just like that time outside Mike’s, I’d be impressed by your home grown, home made lunch. We’d be like Carl and Ellie. Two happy, old Asian people in the middle of a white neighborhood, unless we move to somewhere like Bayside, in which we’d be totally normally. And even when the world moves past us, I still want to be trapped in the same bubble with you, caught up only in you, loving only you. Somewhere, in the middle of our lives, maybe we’d take a trip around the world. Go to Europe and I can do all those romantic things you did your first time there. Ride in gondolas in Venice, indulge in my need to cross the English Channel the same way the Allies did, in my need to go to boring museums and landmarks and go ape shit over things that happened nearly a hundred years ago. And, the food! We’d eat like pigs and stuff our faces with all that food. Waddle in expensive Parisian hotels and poke all the time. We’d go to Amsterdam, and do naughty things together. And then, I want us to go through all of the Asian countries, yes, even Korea. We can skip Africa, and maybe parts of the middle east, but I know you love brown food, so we’ll pick and choose countries. I definitely would’ve loved to go to China with you. See all the historical landmarks, all that romantic scenery that so many poets and writers have mused about, fallen in love with. And, still, I want to eat with you. There’s so much food in China, so much street food, different, authentic food, it drives me crazy and it makes me so happy thinking about being there with you. Holding your hand and stuffing food in your mouth and being with my Jeffy. We’d take lots of pictures and buy lots of stuff and we’d go home twenty pounds heavier than we left. And all this, is just my half of what we could’ve been. Maybe you don’t want to do any of these things and you have completely different plans. But, that would’ve been okay. If we were still together, we can work things out. Things can always work out. I really wish they had. I wish it didn’t feel like the world is against us. I want to just run away from here with you. Run away to a place just for you and me, like that Aladdin song? A world just for you and me, a place where no one can tell us no? I just want to press my head to your chest, your wide, muscled chest, listen to your heart and feel your warmth and have your big arms wrap around me and hold me even closer to you. I love the way you smell, the way your hair falls on your head, even if its thinning and you might be bald later, the way you kiss me and how soft, how soft your lips are and I love, love, love the way you look at me, the way when we walk side by side, you’d turn your head to look at me, the way you’d look at me when we were sitting in the hotel, eating chicken wings, I love you so much. I want to be pretty for you. I want to wear nice dresses and pretty make up. I want to go out and eat with you, go to the zoo, I want to do things with you. I’ll love you, maybe not the same way I did before, but I will always love you as a friend. People say things that make me think ill of you. Sometimes, I’m convinced because they’re right. But, I still want to be with you, just to have you in my life. I want to know you years and years from now. If you are still out there, the nuunuu that fell in love with me on the bus, the nuunuu that’s always been here from the start, even if he’s being made to go away, please know that your nyanya is here. Your nyanya is here loving you, always, always loving you, always, always, always…I want my love for you to be eternal because I’m still naïve and I want to believe that what we had was something special, something wonderful, something brings me joy. You’re such a warm person, such a warm, warm person, even when I feel the coldness in certain parts, the darkness, your warmth is overpowering. I think of prom sometimes and I get sad. Not because of Steven, but because I wanted to go with you. I wanted to slow dance to that last song with you, be in your arms, kiss your lips. Sometimes, I really do think we went in different directions. I’ll be the one missing you on my prom night, I’ll be the one wishing you were mine just like how you felt at yours, except, you won’t be there to kiss me in the limo, you won’t be there make corny jokes about the lack of a moon roof in the limo. I’m secretly hoping the summer will bring you back to me, but my heart is hurt and its hiding and its afraid. I still love you so much. So much. If we are meant to be, if we are meant to be, you will come back to me, we will find a way to each other. We will. You are so adorable, so precious…You’re wonderful. You’re my everything. I love you…I love you so much, my puppy…my sweet…I’m fluctuating again…my heart is like an AC current…
I don’t know where you are. You haven’t said anything to me since Wednesday night? I’m not sure. I missed you that night because my internet was fucked up and I was too tired to fix it. I wonder where you are. Are you in New York already? With the IR club? Are you traveling here? I wonder…Oh, nuunuu….
I wanted to go to prom with you…It was supposed to be our night…I’ll never have that night with you ever again…maybe it’ll be replaced with something better…
That song, Hey, Soul Sister…it’s breaking my heart…I want to be with you…I can’t let go…not until…you push me away…not until you stop loving me…
I miss him. Maybe he went away because of what I said….Please…..I hate this shit. Fuck.
As far as the summer’s concerned…just…hang out with me…be with me….let’s hold hands and kiss each other on the cheeks and cuddle….let’s go the Botanical….
Aw, what the fuck. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck. I should just try calling Steven.
Man, everything I do in life just fails in the end. Seriously. Even when I’m trying. Goddamnit. And I still won’t do math homework.
In the end, honestly, it’s my ego that’s not letting this one go. How the hell can someone I was being nice to reject ME?
Nuunuuu, I will always love you. I will always love you so much. Please, don’t be sad. Don’t be. I don’t want to make you sad anymore. If not being with me makes you the happiest, then that’s okay with your nyanya. Your nyanya only wants the best for you. So she will leave now. But, please, please, don’t forget about her, don’t forget about her and nuunuu. If nuunuu ever needs her, she will be there for him, even if its just to show him her nyanyas or to exchange mwas over the cam. Your nyanya will always, always, always love you, even if you don’t. She will be here, waiting for the day you come back to her. She’ll wait forever is she has to, but she will wait. Owner will keep her door open for her puppy, when he’s tired of wandering and ready to come home.
For how tough he is, for how big he is, for how cold he can act, he’s still just such a fragile person on the inside. His soul is so soft and warm, strong and burning with passions, yet it cracks and chips so easily, is scared and frightened so easily. There’s vulnerability in his character that draws me to him, to want to be with him, walk with him and take care of him. He brings out the maternal side of me that distracts me from the lover, yearning to be with him, to make him happy, to fill his life with as much joy as he has filled mine.
I’m still seeing Jeffrey. I’m not pregnant, or at least the Walgreens brand test says so. I feel remarkably guilty about this all of a sudden and I want to just blurt out to my parents and the world, though the latter for a different reason, that we’re still together, that I love him and that this is what I really want. Maybe I’m just young and naïve and all that noise. I have faith that my parents will still love me. But, this is who I am, this is who I want to be and these are my decisions.
It is a Tuesday when she arrives at his doorstep.
I love you. I miss you. Why is it like this? I’ll figure it out some day, one day….
My heart hurts and I can’t think. I don’t know, I don’t know anything anymore.
He’s not there anymore….I’m just grasping for air…reaching for ghosts…
Do you remember, in the beginning, those letters that you wrote to me? You were so confident in us. You believed so much in us. Where is that confidence now when we need it the most? Is that magic gone? You made all of those silly conclusions, about marrying me, about being with me no matter what, no what how many arguments, no matter the consequences. Is this what life is? Is this what love is?
You don’t want me anymore. All of those things you said are meaningless now. Words don’t have meaning unless someone believes in them. There’s no one left to believe in us. There’s no one left to tell me to hold on, to stay the course, to stay together. Even you’ve given up this false dream, the promises, everything.
I miss you….I didn’t mean this…it might be the right thing, but I don’t want this. I want you. I want you…
Okay. I am angry. I’m going to kill someone with my bare hands. I want to strangle the fucking shit out of something and kill it again and again and again and again until I don’t feel anything anymore because right now I am incredibly fucking angry and I don’t even really know why anymore. I am just really fucking angry. That’s the best bet. FUCK THIS SHIT. FUCK ALL OF THIS. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK ALL OF THIS. I can’t wait. I can’t wait at all. I’ve already waited more than I’ve ever waited for him to get through this shit. If he wants time, he can have all the fucking time he ever fucking needs because I am not going to be here in a few days when he is fucking ready to come around and talk to me. Why the shit did he take it so fucking seriously. Our relationship is fucked up. Leaving each other is for the better. I am done with this shit. I hate everything. I want to kill things. I want to kill everything. If I stood at the lip of the Grand fucking Canyon right now I’d scream until I become mute because I am just incapable of dealing with this fucking shit. I tried everything. Everything requires time, time, time, THIS ISN’T EVEN HAPPY SORT OF PASSAGE OF TIME. This is like me dying slowly on the inside while time passes by quickly. This me not capable of focusing on anything. This is me worrying my ass off about shit. This is me who doesn’t fucking want to live anymore but is too damn pussy to take my own life. Unless I had a gun, in which I’d already be fucking dead. I would’ve been dead a long time ago, or deformed or injured or something. I really can’t fucking stand this place. After all of this shit, all of this shit, where the fuck am I? Square fucking one, lonely, sad, angry and suicidal all fucking over again. THANK YOU WORLD FOR NOTHING. NOTHING. Absolutely NOTHING! Nothing in my short less then two decades life has every been as disappointing as hearing those fucking words. THE BEST BET. FUCK THE BEST BET. FUCK ALL OF THIS. My patience is really thin and I don’t care if that’s how the world works, if the world needs time. FUCK THE WORLD. I don’t have time to give to ANYONE right now and if you ever plan on fucking seeing me again, THEN YOU CAN GO FUCK YOURSELF BECAUSE I AM NOT SEEING YOU EVER AGAIN. I am so done with this shit. FUCK ALL OF THIS SHIT. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK I HATE EVERYTHING. I want everything to die. I want everything to die. Oh my motherfucking GOD DDAMNIT SONS OF BITCHES. I HATE EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. Stupid motherfucker. I can’t believe I spent all of this time, all of these emotions for something as worthless and as STUPID as this. I got nothing out of it but immense amount of pain and confusion and patheticness and all that NICE FUCKING CRAP. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.
I feel like I can’t breathe or talk or feel. I feel like throwing up. I wish I didn’t eat. I wish I wasn’t alive. Why are you like this all of a sudden? It just drains me, whenever things get like this. Because I don’t know where you’re going to go and whether you’re staying with me or not…I just can’t. I’m so hurt on the inside. It feels like I’m going to die. I wish I could just die because I can’t stand this anymore.
How are you capable of just hating me, so instantly and so fiercely? Just like that, snap, and there’s someone new in your place, hating me, hating me, everything I say, everything I do, just hate because of what I said about your guns. Guns, guns, guns, you’d never get like this if it was something about me. If someone disrespected me, you’d never feel so much anger as you do right now about blueprints of a gun. Do you really love me or do you just love these guns that you never shut up about, that you go on and on about.
Please, please, please, please, please don’t leave me again. Please. Please, just a couple weeks and I’m already addicted again, please. Don’t take this away from, right as I am about to walk right back into that same old dream, please, let it stay with me, longer, longer than it did the last, better than it was the last time, a drug stronger than I’ve ever taken before, let your love stay with me, resonate with the rest of me, kill me if it needs be. Please, just be with me again, don’t leave, don’t leave. I’m begging you, please.
I love you so much.
I found out today that my parents smuggled people in and out of China. It’s sort of strange because it puts them, both of them, in a totally different light. Everything is illuminated now feels like an apt description for my state of being. Everything, or at least bits and pieces of something that I had never known to exist, is now illuminated.
Dear Jeffrey,
I’m going to write a letter to you everyday from now on, letters about my life, letters that you might not want to and might not ever read. I reread the two letters you wrote me back in your freshman year, way back when we first started, that first year that you were gone. I didn’t believe in us back then, but you did. You talked about how we were going to get married and be with each other forever, regardless of consequences, of anything. I haven’t looked at them since today, when I was packing away anything in my room that reminded me of you into my closet. They made me cry, like everything did. You sounded so sure of what you were saying, so sure that we were meant to be. You stayed with me through all of those late night arguments, through all of my fickle mood swings and I fell in love with you in the end. You heard me say this more than a few times now, but I wish things were like back then, when I first fell in love with you, when I could feel how much I loved you and how much it warmed my heart to know that you loved me too. I guess things change, people change. Maybe this is what life is like, a cycle of broken promises, of falling in love and falling out of it. We’ve been apart for so long and I’ve waited for so long. I just couldn’t wait a little bit more, just a little more. If I just stayed with it for another month, you would’ve come back and things would’ve been okay. I should stop thinking this way, all the maybes in the world can’t save us now. I feel bad, I stuffed Jeffy Teddy into a bag and tucked him away in my closet. He’s crammed in there with the stuffed seal and sting ray from the aquarium, charmy puppy, mamegoma, chibi yoko, Mr. whale and takoyaki-chan. Just thinking about them makes me want to cry. You were so nice to me, so kind to me. You were the first person to love me. You were my first anything, my first love, my first heartbreak. If you made it this far, you probably think I’m more full of shit than ever. I write these not really for you but, in a way, to console myself. I think that’s why I do this. You have reason to hate me. I’m wishy-washy and unreliable. You made me so sad today when you yelled at me about the hat. It made me feel so bad. There was just a ball of sadness that kept growing and growing and it just broke when you had to leave. Since you lost your webcam, since my cam stopped (and started) working again, things have been pretty bad. There were good nights when you talked to me and kissed me over chat and those made me feel so happy because we used to do that all the time. We used to stay up late and talk and chat and do stupid, cheesy lovey-dovey things over Skype. I miss all the attention you use to give me. I think it spoiled me now that you have friends and a lot more work. I can’t even picture your face in my mind anymore. I have a hard time feeling your love. Long distance relationships suck. I want to be with you all the time and you’re probably pretty annoyed by it. Like you said, I’m probably the easiest girl you would’ve ever hoped to meet. I let you fuck me when we barely even knew each other. I was so desperate for a guy, any guy, to tell me he loved me, to follow me around and buy things for me and there you were. Didn’t I say if I ever let you I’d regret it? Every time I throw a tantrum and try, I always regret it, I never mean to leave you, but I guess this time I pushed it too far and you aren’t going to come back to me. I ruin all the good things in my life. I’m still waiting, without or without you, but now, there’s no one waiting to see me when May rolls around. I bought all that make up and all those dresses and lingerie for nothing. At times, I really wanted to be pretty for you. I wanted you to love how I looked and think I’m pretty. I guess I can’t convince you to come back to me anymore. Who would? After all this bullshit, even I’d probably leave myself. I don’t really want to live anymore after you’re gone. You gave me, for a brief instant, a very compelling reason to live. You made me want to be around. You gave me a reason to wake up in the morning, to get through the day so I can talk to you at night, to see you, maybe, over video chat. Sometimes, though, you wouldn’t be there and that broke my heart. I lived for you. But, I guess that’s not the right attitude to have in a relationship. I shouldn’t rely on you so much. I should give you more space, or something like that. Am I really an obsessive lover? Do I just block out all of the bad things about our relationship and pretend it’s wonderful until this happens? I won’t call you obsessively anymore. I won’t spam you, except maybe with these long ass letters, like I did last time. Sometimes, when I broke up with you, or pretended to, I wanted you to chase after me like I did you. I wanted you to call incessantly, to wait for me, to ask for us to be together again. But, I’m the only one pathetic enough to do it. I’m always the one begging and pleading, even now, even this time. You’re always on higher ground, looking down at me, this stupid, fat, easy to get girl that no one but you wanted and that even you didn’t really want and couldn’t really stand in the end. This is me. I’ll always be at the bottom of your hill, your mountain, trying to climb back up to be there with you. I’ll probably give up eventually, maybe. Maybe I’ll even forget about you in due time. I hope you find a nicer girl, a prettier one, another Jennifer. Someone who’s pretty and cute, with glasses, and kissable cheeks and soft, round breasts, someone who’s everything you like and love in a girl. Someone who’s everything I’m not, everything I couldn’t be for you. Someone who would let you sleep and study and not pester you, someone understanding, someone close to you so you can see her all the time, someone willing to sacrifice things for you instead of the other way around, someone better than me. You deserve better than me. I’m going to miss so many things. I’m going to have a hard time eating anywhere in the city without seeing your face. I’m going to have a hard time even taking a photo without thinking of you. I’m never going to buy a build a bear in my life again after this. I’m never playing a DS game. I’m never wearing my future boyfriends’ clothes. I’m never getting so attached to another guy unless I know for sure for sure for sure that he is the one I’m meant to be with. You were one I was meant to be with, but that’s all in the past now. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I played and toyed with your heart for almost two years and I expect you to still love me. I’m so stupid and silly. I don’t think I’ll ever find someone quite like you again, someone who’s so willing to accept me for everything that I am. I just want to see you again. I just want to try everything over again. Start it all from the beginning, rewind my life like a videotape and go all the way back, all the way back to that karaoke trip. Maybe it’d be better if we never met, maybe I’ll sit that trip out this time, maybe that’ll be better for us in the long run. Deep down, I know I still want to be with you. I still want to see you, I still want you in my life. I know I do. I remember the first time you came back from college. I remember that terrible Thanksgiving. I remember fucking on my roof. I have so many memories of you. I wish time would pass faster and maybe you’ll wake up and love me and forgive me and we’d be okay. I’m still thinking about it like this. I wanted to do some many things with you. I guess you probably got sick of me pulling you this way and that way. I can’t blame you, that’s normal. How can anyone stand my indecisiveness? I just want to kiss you again. Hold hands you with you and walk to Chinatown. Eat somewhere and get cake and ice cream and walk back to my house and poke. Maybe one day you’ll get drunk and hook up with me again. Maybe, maybe. Maybe you’ll hear a song and you’ll think of me, that girl you used to know, used to date, used to annoy the shit out of you, you know, that one. What’s that song you always used to sing? This is the end for you my friend? Something like that. You even took off the relationship status. You’ve never done that before. Just looking at it without your name, it just hurts. I wish I didn’t put Jeffy Teddy away, I wish you were still here, I wish you still here, I wish you were still with me, I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish. I use to wish for someone to love and you came to me. Someone, something out there gave you to me, found a way for us to meet and I ruined it, I ruined something that was so nice. I think I’ve written too much. I guess this is the end, the end of this letter, the end of you and me. I hope we can still be friends. I hope we can still hang out. I hope, I hope, I hope. I didn’t believe in hope until I met you. I love you, Jeffrey Liaw. I’ll always love you, I will always always love you.
Sometimes, I’m still scared that you might leave me, that I don’t know what’s going on in your head anymore, that I don’t know for sure if what you tell me is true or if you’re just saying it to keep me from being upset. Just bouts of deep uncertainty that, I think, have always been there but they have never been as painful and as bothersome as they are now. I’m wishing desperately that your feelings for me are true. I want to love you so badly, to be constantly in love with you, to be constantly loved by you, to selfishly horde all of your attention, to bury my face in the fabric of your shirt…
She still cries for you, she makes herself sad thinking about all the wonderful feelings you used to have for her and that she made them all go away. And, she doesn’t get why she’s this way, but if she had to do it all over again, she probably wouldn’t do it any differently. This is just who she is. She can pretend and she can try, but at the very end of the day, this is who she is and she’ll always be this way. She just wants you to love her again, just like you did before, just the same, without all of this repressed pain, without all of this emotional baggage. She doesn’t want to start over with someone new because all she really wants is just you. She wants to try it again with you, to feel the same joy she felt before when she was with you and just you, when she was your mochi and you were her puppy. She knows that things are practically the same now as they were before, but it can’t ever be truly the same. She wants it to be that way so badly.
It feels like you’re holding back, always, always just a little out of reach because you still don’t completely trust me. You’re always just a safe distance from me, from heartbreak while I teeter on the very edge of a fall, welcoming it, asking for it. Sometimes, when there’s no one to push me, I make the move and I dive off. Risking emotional sanity just to prove I’m human, just to feel something, just to rationalize that if the fall hurt this much, standing on that cliff must’ve meant something. You’ll never have enough time for me anymore, not like how it was before. Is that all I’m really looking for?
I wish you’d still cry for me. I want to feel like I mean something to you and maybe no gesture is grand enough to ever fulfill that requirement, but the smallest of actions are reassuring. They remind me that you still care, that you still think about me. Like, talking to me over the web cam or making hotpot for me on the roof. I don’t want you to cry because I’m trying to leave you, but because that’s how much you care about me and that’s how much I mean to you. I’m always looking for evidence, proof, of how much you love me, if you love me.
I want to love you always, be with you always.
It’s all just hormones, all of my mood swings, my tears, my indifference, everything. Just a bunch of chemicals fucking around with me, my body fucking around with me, making me feel shit I could do without feeling. But, at the center of it all, I feel love, just love for you. I don’t know how to love people, not very well at least. I’m trying, trying, trying to love you with all my heart and soul and mind. And, sometimes, when you tease me the way you do (about other girls, about not crying because you don’t really care anymore, about not being that one song in your life, about not really needing me, about how you don’t really seem to care or value my place in your life, about a lot of things) it just really hurts. This is a karmic experience to say the least, but it’s something I asked for, prayed for, so I’m going to accept it and try my hardest. I want a life with you, I want it and now that I have it, I don’t know why I’m still feeling sad, why I’m still hung up on the small things, on the small things from the past. I have to move, move, move, walk and forget it all and I wish it’d be easier, wish you’d help. But then, would it be too easy? Asking for your complete and undivided and uninhibited love after I’ve hurt you this way? Should I be giving myself away so completely after you hurt me? Questions, questions and doubts that plague my mind constantly, my mind free from the true burden of work and stress, free to wander in and out of paranoia and anxiety, free to think and ponder and over analyze my every conversation, your every action, sensitive to the many creeping tendrils of boredom, making things out of nothing, a destructive behavior against the very laws of nature.
And, next summer, I will get to see you even less. Before I even make it to next summer, there’s the next school year, my first year in college, your third. You will not be there for me like you were before. You won’t really have time or the privacy to talk to me all the time. The more and more I think about it, I wonder how I will be able to deal with the lack of communication, the lack of attention. Maybe, hopefully, I’ll be too busy to really notice. There’s still a little part of me looking to break free, looking for something new, to truly move on and to truly leave you. But, now that you are here, that you actually came back to me, I don’t see why I need to leave. I’m unsatisfied with the amount of attention you pay me, the way you want to have more friends. Am I not sufficient? Am I not enough company? Fun?
Sometimes, I think too much. This is what I mean. I wish my hormones would stop fucking with me. Some days, I just want to fucking live.
I wished on 11:11 for someone to love me, anyone. And, God, or whoever, some mystical force, some power, gave me him. I didn’t appreciate this gift and now it’s gone. Maybe, if I wish on 11:11 again, he’ll come back to me.
I’m so close to just giving up, giving up on all my wishes, my prayers, my secret little hopes, my fantasy. Giving it all up because I know they’re just lies, they’re just there to cushion my fall when it turns out to be just hot air in the end. I’m not sure of myself anymore.
Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars? I could really use a wish right now. Somebody take me back to the days when things didn’t matter so much, when all the wrong turns brought me back to the right place, when all my wrongs could be forgiven easily, when the stakes were so much lower, when I wasn’t so involved, when I wasn’t so emotional, when I didn’t feel so old, when it was okay to feel like just leaving. I still want to just leave, just lift off this earth, tap the ground, hop a little and leave this planet, see it from space, see it from somewhere far away and nothing is relevant anymore and nothing is clear and its just a dot in a sea of brilliant, glowing dots, glittering embellishment of a far away dream, a far away day dream that didn’t mean anything. I want to be a speck, a speck of sand in something bigger than myself, I want to drown in anonymity but at the same time, I want the recognition, I want to be a diamond in a sea of sand, I want to be the best, the want to try but I’m not motivated enough anymore. I don’t have the drive or the need to try to reach the top of any hill because the hills turn into mountains and it never ends, the rat race never ends, a sea of identical, unassuming rats squirming towards the same finish line just ever so slightly out of reach.
My inner mind is blank, wiped clean like a dry erase board after a thorough cleaning. All the remains are stray marks, remnants of poor decisions and cheap markers that damaged the surface of the board. Faint reminders of old mistakes, always present, ceaseless in their silent and unforgiving presence. No matter how hard I try to get rid of them, to wipe them from my mind, they persist, they survive, like scars, they mar the surface of my consciousness, like notches tallying the mistakes in my life, a constant force pushing me forward, forward, forward into the unknown, momentarily drawing over the past with new strokes, dark, full, wet as they trace their way across the expanse of my mind, momentary distractions: the present.
Where are my shooting stars? Where are my shooting stars? I could really use a wish right now. I could really use one right now. Where are my shooting stars? What do I see when I turn my head towards the heavens at night? A faint orange glow, looming structures, rigid in their architectural precision, towering over the tiny island, bridges spanning the dark river, sprinkled with lights of cars moving up and down the FDR drive, coasting down the East side.
I want him back. I want to try again. Just to try again.
This song is everywhere and it kills me that it’s so damn popular. And, I like it. And, it’s catchy but sometimes I feel like dying every time I hear it. I feel like crying. I can see his face, smiling at me, I can feel his arms around me, I can feel him…
I think I’m just jealous that all these people get to be with him and I don’t anymore. I don’t know what he’s feeling. I have to wait and if…
I’m so scared, I’m so scared no one will love me again. I’m so scared that no one will ever look at me with such love. I miss you. I miss you so much.
I have so much to say to you but I don’t think you want to hear it and I don’t think my words will really make a difference anymore. I don’t think you’ll come back to me, even if I wait for you, no matter how long I wait for you. I love you so much and I know you love me, too. I don’t know why it’s so important for me to be with you because we’re still together as friends right now. I know you’re going to think I’m just being insecure, but, things are different now. It’s different from when we were a couple. I hardly see you or hear you and it feels like you love me, not less, but in a shallower way. I don’t understand anymore, Jeffrey. I wish this never happened. I wish I didn’t have feelings. I wish I was just numb to everything. This is such a bad time. I’m ever so slightly angry with myself, with you, with who ever decided that all of this had to happen right now when I’m sitting on the precipice of a sharp, steep cliff. It feels like I’ve been pushed out of an airplane without a reserve and you, my parachute, just failed me. I want to crawl away from everything. I want to erase everything and start over from scratch. I wish you would let me try again, let me reset my life, our relationship. I just want another chance to make things right because it was so good, what I had with you, and it could be better.
I had a really nice dream. We talked on Skype, over web cam. And, we held hands and yours are still so much bigger.
I’m still waiting…waiting till the day it’s no longer a hypothetical…
I miss you, poo. So much and all the time. Maybe, someday…
I still want to be with him. We were so close to being okay again. Just a little bit more. Just a little bit more and everything would’ve been okay. Just a little bit more, but I fucked up again. Jeffrey, please. Don’t do this again. I’m sorry. Please. Don’t say you can’t. Don’t say you can’t. Please. Please.
Poo, I miss you already. I fucked up again. I love him so much. I miss him already and it’s been only a day. I need him in my life but I can’t have him anymore. I miss him. I miss being with him. I miss his lunches, his big hands. He was so cute yesterday, on the roof, the way he squealed when he came. I miss you, Jeffrey.
Somewhere Only We Know
The Scientist
I’m still pretty upset. I think I’m just ignoring it now. Or, at least I’m feeling sort of normal and content. I still don’t want to hate him, or even see him in a bad light. It’s hard to do that because he seemed so wonderful and nice to me, but I guess this is the only way to really get rid of it, whatever I’m feeling on the inside. Some things I just don’t understand. Like, why people change even though I’m still changing myself. Some things, like that picture of Ted Reno, the guy who looks like Mr. Kennedy, when I see it, it still makes me sad. It still tears me up on the inside thinking about all the things that we could’ve been, completely disregarding all the bad shit that might’ve happened.
Goddamn, I wish you were around, just so you can be with me. It might also be that I have nothing to do, so I constantly obsess about this shit to avoid doing actual work. It’s not the epitome of brilliant, but I do what I have to. I’m not exactly responsible either.
I do have a really hard time fathoming most of what just happened to me, this week, last month.
Okay, yeah, fuck you life. Fuck youuuuu. I wasn’t supposed to talk to himmmmmm….FUCK YOUUUUUU
Godmotherfuckingdamn.
I will be okay. In fact, I am okay now. So, I will be okay after this. Word. Yeah. Fuck you. I don’t give a fuck.
I fucking hate this shit.