Yearly Archives: 2006

Meeting Tina

What can I say about Tina?

Fulcrum edi­tor. Dom lover. Farsi speak­er. Cadence Weapon lis­ten­er. Naughty girl dancer.

She’s cool. Certainly cool­er than me.

So when she asked if I want­ed to meet, it made me ner­vous. I’m not com­fort­able around cool peo­ple. I nev­er know how to act around them.

Tina has this laugh though, this girly, ebul­lient-but-not-annoy­ing laugh, that put me at ease. The way she express­es her­self betrays a sub­tle matu­ri­ty for her age. One of those peo­ple who knows what they want and where they’re going. Even with this matu­ri­ty, she retains a youth­ful fash­ion­abil­i­ty. She’s four years my junior but I nev­er felt like we lost each oth­er in con­ver­sa­tion, some­thing I find espe­cial­ly com­mon when talk­ing to peo­ple my age.

On the out­side we’re very dif­fer­ent. At our core, we have very sim­i­lar per­son­al­i­ties. Maybe this is why we got along so well.

Thumbnail: Tina laughs
Thumbnail: Tina jumps
Thumbnail: Tina runs

She oblig­ed me a few pho­tos so I could see if I could cap­ture her play­ful per­son­al­i­ty.

Thumbnail: Dolly attacks Tina
Thumbnail: Tina hugs dolly

It’s obvi­ous that she likes cats, and Dolly was no excep­tion. Normally, I take upwards of 200 snaps when I’m doing por­traits, but she was too dis­tract­ed by the cat rolling around on the floor between us for me to get more than 50.

Tina was the first per­son I’ve met through blog­ging from the Ottawa area. The next blog­ger I have to meet is Sikander. I think I saw him with Lunato walk­ing down Rideau once, but I was too shy at the time to intro­duce myself.

Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend: Christie

I can see the pain liv­ing in your eyes
And I know how hard you try
You deserve to have much more
I can feel your heart and I sym­pa­thize
And I’ll nev­er crit­i­cize
All you’ve ever meant to my life

I don’t want to let you down
I don’t want to lead you on
I don’t want to hold you back
From where you might belong

You would nev­er ask me why
My heart is so dis­guised
I just can’t live a lie any­more
I would rather hurt myself
Than to ever make you cry
There’s noth­ing left to say but good­bye

—Air Supply, Goodbye

Over four years ago, I start­ed this blog because of you. I felt like you nev­er under­stood me, so I need­ed a place where I could express myself with­out any inhi­bi­tions.

I had a lot of hope in you, being drawn to your youth and inno­cence. A lot of hope in us. I always thought you were like clay I could mold. Someone who would even­tu­al­ly com­plete me, but you nev­er changed or showed improve­ment.

It took me a long time to real­ize how wrong it was for me to do that. How wrong it was for me to want you to be a dif­fer­ent per­son.

I nev­er appre­ci­at­ed you for who you were, and you nev­er deserved any of it.

I hope I did­n’t hurt you. I heard from your broth­er that you’re already on your Masters degree. I hope he’s healthy and hap­py. I hope your par­ents are doing well, that your dad is retired and they’re trav­el­ling out east like they’ve always want­ed when you start­ed uni­ver­si­ty.

There are a lot of fond mem­o­ries of our time togeth­er. I won­der if you believed me when I said that I want­ed to mar­ry you. It was some­thing I hon­est­ly felt at the time, until things start­ed falling apart, and I went through one of my phas­es again. It was­n’t your fault.

I had to end it before I led you on any fur­ther.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

  1. Introduction
  2. Ashley
  3. Michele
  4. Christie
  5. Jackie
  6. Louise
  7. Bronwen

Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend: Michele

Why should I stay and pre­tend?
You make me laugh again
My dar­ling, truth is we are not even friends
Love comes and it goes
Where your heart stops no one knows
How did I wind up in this mess, here with you?

Just a moment of weak­ness
I should exam­ine my head
Just a moment of weak­ness
I nev­er meant a word I said

—Bif Naked, Moment Of Weakness

The first thing about you that caught my eye was your plat­form shoes. More specif­i­cal­ly, the lanky way you walked in them with your plaid skirt on. You had such a fun­ny gait that I would study when I was walk­ing behind you in the halls. Sometimes you looked like an injured fawn, vul­ner­a­ble and awk­ward­ly run­ning away with your long, slen­der legs. It was the very def­i­n­i­tion of sex­u­al­i­ty to a depressed, hor­mon­al teenage male.

Those shoes gave you an extra cou­ple inch­es, and I resent­ed every time you sub­tly knelt so you would­n’t be taller than me in any pic­tures.

I only have a sin­gle good mem­o­ry of our rela­tion­ship. You were sit­ting on my lap in the jacuzzi at Cammy’s place. It was February, and there was snow all around us, but we were warm and wet. Every few min­utes, we would dunk our heads under the water, then style each oth­er’s hair, the win­ter air freez­ing it with­in sec­onds.

The more I got to know you, the more I learned that it was all a big mis­take. I stuck it out because I did­n’t want to break up with you in the months lead­ing up to your exams. It was espe­cial­ly hard when Lisa start­ed show­ing inter­est in me, but I could­n’t do it.

You were a sex­u­al bore. No sound, no reac­tion, noth­ing in bed. Your friends were all snobs. Your thoughts were trite, and your inter­ests were shal­low.

You nev­er knew it, but I had to decide between dat­ing you and Marina. It tore me up for a week, know­ing that one of you was going to be hurt. I chose you in a moment of weak­ness.

It was the biggest mis­take of my high school career.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

  1. Introduction
  2. Ashley
  3. Michele
  4. Christie
  5. Jackie
  6. Louise
  7. Bronwen

The Diary Under The Bed

On the 25th of September, at 11:04 am, my mom Googled my e‑mail address, and found this blog.

She vis­its every day like clock­work; around 8:30 am when she gets into work, and some­times dur­ing lunch around 12:30 pm. Even though I told her nev­er to con­tact me again, she con­tin­ues to check on me.

It’s some­thing I’ve known for a while now.

The exis­tence of this web­site was a secret I kept from my par­ents for as long as I could. I felt like I owed it to them to over­look my child­hood mem­o­ries because they stayed togeth­er for my sake, so I nev­er want­ed them to know this seem­ing­ly unrec­on­ciled side of me. When they told me they were get­ting divorced, I wrote an entry (that’s nev­er been pub­lished) about how I stopped car­ing. It was their turn to start car­ing about me.

Of course, this was only true in the­o­ry.

To be hon­est, I was dev­as­tat­ed. Bronwen likened it to her mom find­ing her diary under her bed, and I tend to agree with the anal­o­gy.

Chinese kids don’t talk to their par­ents about much. Even after being out of touch for a long time, par­ents will only ask whether they have enough mon­ey, whether they’re eat­ing enough, and how their marks are in school, if applic­a­ble.

The dis­cov­ery must have opened a can of worms. This is where I share my prob­lems. My inse­cu­ri­ties. My sex­u­al expe­ri­ences. My past drug use. The bit­ter mem­o­ries of child­hood. On here, I’m no longer the dis­tant son they’ve known for 25 years. I’m open. Naked. Exposed.

Some were sur­prised that my mom would con­tin­ue read­ing my blog, believ­ing the things I say would be too painful for her to read. It makes sense though. This is the only way she can stay close to me.

So I have to ignore the entries in my serv­er logs that con­stant­ly remind me of her pres­ence. I can’t let it affect the only place where I can write unre­strict­ed. I just have to let go, and con­tin­ue writ­ing. Damn the con­se­quence, as some­one once said. There’s noth­ing else I can do. After all, this is a pub­lic jour­nal. I have no right to com­plain about who comes here.

When you let go, you can write about any­thing.

Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend: Ashley

The lovin is a mess, what hap­pened to all of the feel­ing?
I thought it was for real; babies, rings and fools kneel­ing
And words of pledg­ing trust and life­times stretch­ing for­ev­er
So what went wrong? It was a lie, it crum­bled apart
Ghost fig­ures of past, present, future haunt­ing the heart

—Belle & Sebastian, Another Sunny Day

Our rela­tion­ship has always rep­re­sent­ed the inno­cence of my youth.

The Friday nights, play­ing with can­dle wax in the dark, learn­ing how our bod­ies worked. Or the rush of wor­ry and excite­ment about par­ents walk­ing in the door. Olfactory sense has come to mean a great deal in my rela­tion­ships. From those nights we made love with Beth’s voice com­ing through your tin­ny speak­ers, I get turned on when I lis­ten to Portishead.

I kept the bot­tle of Gap Earth you used, some­thing dear to me since it was dis­con­tin­ued. Every time I smell the noz­zle, it brings me back to the time we were togeth­er.

Out of all my oth­er girl­friends, I thought you would be the one to end up in a D/s rela­tion­ship. I nev­er real­ized it until my own intro­duc­tion to the lifestyle, but the things you did were the most nat­u­ral­ly sub­mis­sive. The way you want­ed to be tied up with our belts, the enjoy­ment you got from pain, your desire for me to be in con­trol, the way you would take my hands is yours so you could kiss my knuck­les. To this day, I won­der if you still like these things.

I’ve always tried to fig­ure out why I’m nev­er sat­is­fied in my rela­tion­ships. It’s usu­al­ly not the fault of the peo­ple I date. Sometimes I blame my par­ents for their failed mar­riage, and how this has made me feel that’s it’s nec­es­sary to find the per­fect per­son so I don’t end up like them. Sometimes I think it’s because you were the first, and you came to define what was “right” or not.

Why then, did I break up with you?

I wish I could explain. I thought things would last, because you nev­er hurt me in any way. In fact, you did noth­ing wrong. Maybe we were just too young. They say you should­n’t mar­ry the per­son you can live with, you should mar­ry the per­son you can’t live with­out.

And I knew that I could live with­out you.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

  1. Introduction
  2. Ashley
  3. Michele
  4. Christie
  5. Jackie
  6. Louise
  7. Bronwen