Scenes from a Tuesday

The first thing you should know about my day today is that the people I'm apartment sitting for told me that the cleaning lady would come on Saturday, supposedly around 10 or 11, but she actually showed up today at 9:45. Thankfully, I was post-shower and had pants on, but still--unnerving and slightly uncomfortable--I kind of just grabbed as much stuff as I could think of to take to Manhattan with me. One reason why I will never be part of the power elite is that I don't know how to handle these sorts of things.

I began the working portion of my day by reading Rousseau's account of his tweaking out when the Venetian prostitute he was in love with turned out to only have one nipple.

Speaking of which. At West Village Coffeeshop this morning, we sat around trying to figure out what crazy, dangerous thing it was that Spitzer wanted to do with the call girls. I'm going to be a bit let down if it was just "not wear a condom." Lame. Definitely not blowing up your career lame.

I'm still a bit bothered by last night's dinner. Like the way she always criticizes me for things like not being "good" at the kissing hello thing. Um, I'm from the midwest. And, really, 99% of my friends do not greet me the French way. It's not that it makes me uncomfortable, but it's just not so much what I "do." It's not the first time this has come up, and for some reason it seems emblematic. Also: knowing me for a certain number of years does not, in an absolute sense, privilege your read on my situation. It can help, but it isn't the last word. My Ex made this mistake a lot, and I was reminded last night of how much A. reminds me of him in some ways, and it makes me wonder how long our friendship can really last.

On the other hand, what do I know? I'm just the last one of that group not even remotely partnered, I let myself be in a horrible relationship for five years, I have a lot of sex, and some of it is with married dudes. Even if I were okay, she probably wouldn't believe me. And it could be all a defense on my part, right?

I'm bracketing this for now, though. I may run some of it past my friend M. (formerly of Chicago), who I'm meeting for drinks in a little bit. And I should get some pizza or something before that happens. I do want to do a couple of posts on this (sort of by way of definding my username)--first, on the idea of self-presentation and being okay; second, on what I meant when I said to A that I don't feel like I have much in common with her and our other mutual friends anymore--I *don't* think it's a matter of my being in school, which is what she thought--in part because I have this feeling about some grad school people too, sometimes.

For what it's worth, and I may have said this before, I'm not, like, wildly thrilled about the turns my life has taken recently, but I'm also not as completely mired in misery as I was. I think I get to let that be something.