Castle in the Clouds

The boy was wearing a black T-shirt printed with some "professional" wrestler star. I remember being a fan of the fake wrestling culture when I was his age. Even after I discovered that the "professional sport" was all fake, I still followed it for a while. The boy was a little cherubic black kid waiting, just like me, for the A train to arrive.

I didn't take notice of him until he started talking less than a minute after the train we got on started moving. He had a box of junk food held on his two arms while he tried to entice us to buy some off him. I didn't dare to look at his face. I was afraid he would see the eye contact as interest. There were only five other passengers in the car. No one was interested. I felt sorry for him. A boy selling junk food to a practically empty car on the day the subway resumed its service after an unprecedented halt of service.

For the first time in its history, the New York subway went quiet for more than 24 hours. More like 36 hours. Forty? When the blizzard hit in December many were forced to be closed, but this was the first time it was deliberately closed in anticipation of the hurricane that came and did very little damage to the city. A lot of debate would ensue on whether the city was overly prepared, if the media was galvanizing fear. But for now, I was in this nearly empty train with a boy who didn't seem too disappointed that no one was buying anything from him. I looked at him a couple of times in the face, and he didn't seem too eager to hang on to me. He was not desperate. He had a life I was too remote to understand. Our common bond rested on that T-shirt with the wrestler. Maybe it wasn't even his T-shirt; if he was anything like me when I was his age, he didn't buy any shirts but inherited all of them from some rich kid.

Watching him, and then after he had left, keeping the memory of his cherubic and innocent face, I thought about the weekend that had come to an end. It was Monday evening already. The weekend was stretched out by the storm. Though the subway was working, the commuter train to work was still suspended on this first work day since Irene swept through with less furor than the vomit from the media and the overreaction of the city government. I was in an A train coming from the northern tip of Manhattan. This place was the enchanted place for me this strange weekend.

That cherubic black boy was like a little angel in the fairytales (except usually it's a white boy). And he was there to end my little enchanted story of the weekend. I was in a castle. It had turrets, and surrounded by other castles, which even had gargoyles high up above. Not too far up the hill was even called Castle Hill. And down the Hill was the glimmering Hudson River, the daily resting place of the only sun we have.

Saturday morning before the last train ran up to the castle from the flatlands of the common people, I packed just one day's change of clothes and carried my laptop and some books (finance books) in my messenger bag and a degree of uncertainty in my head. I was taking a minor risk going up to the castle. I wasn't sure awaited me, and equally uncertain, what I expected there.

I didn't need to be evacuated. In fact, the plan for the weekend was quite the opposite. Because of the hurricane, because my parents were in the evacuation zone, I had to tell my guests to go to another friend's apartment in Midtown, which as a location was much better than mine. I was ready to have my parents come stay with me, along with their visiting relatives. At some point, the lady of the castle asked if I was being evacuated. She didn't make the invitation clear, but she was concerned enough to let me decide if I would evacuated to her protective dominion up north. I was touched. Or maybe I was reading too much into this, as I have so often done in the past. But the idea was planted in me. Still, I invited my parents and the relatives, all five of them.

But then they had other plans. The relatives didn't live there, but with my granny. And the parents wanted to evacuate to granny's so they can take care of them in case the wind and rain got too fierce even if flooding wasn't a problem. So in the end, I was alone.

The story started before my parents' evacuation. The evacuation order was given Friday evening. By then I was already spending some time with the lady of the castle. We were talking, as always, a lot, over dinner. Then the awkward moment came when I wanted again to pay. She felt bad. She said she didn't want to take advantage of anyone. A cold breeze, it seemed, blew through the northern heights of this peculiar island. She felt bad. I wasn't feeling so strange, as I have indicated in the past. She's confused. That's not a good sign. Women in the past were most hurtful when they were confused. But while my mind can learn all the lessons it wants in life, my heart wants always to remain innocent and naive. It wants to think there are signs that this was a different case. Eventually we were in the little Mini Cooper of her friend as we drove along the Hudson toward Midtown in a city where people were busy stocking up water and food (like eight gallons of milk that would certainly go bad in fridges when the electricity got cut during the apocalypse). The lady of the castle held my hand and tried to smile. I was feeling quite at ease, more so than any other similar occasions with other women. Am I learning something after all?

Before I split ways from them, she invited me to join them during the hurricane assault for some hurricane party. I didn't commit.

Until I realized my parents weren't coming. So I invited myself. I wasn't sure if her invitation still held.

The first assault of the rain came two minutes before the 7 train arrived. Then it was sunny by the time I reached the castle an hour later. She was happy to see me.

And she practiced her piano. I couldn't read or write; I just sat behind her and listened as her charm worked its way into every cell of mine, the physical ones as well as the soulful ones. I never felt so touched by classical music as I did this past weekend. That was one of the magical parts of this weekend. I've always wanted to date a musician, just as I would an artist, an athlete, people with traits I identify with. I am not a professional or even really good at any of these things, but I do them to one degree or another. Here was a classical pianist, dancing once again with the piano.

When she wasn't dancing with the piano, she was talking to me. As before, we didn't really talk about "us". We were trying to get to know each other. That was her criterion for dating me, it seems. She needs to get to know me first. In Israel, she said, men didn't seem to care who you were, and she never understood that. That was her explanation on why she never dated anyone while growing up in the Jewish State. Now she wanted to get to know me. Wanted to spend a lot of time with me this weekend, not only alone, but also with her roommate, and her nearby friends. We walked in the torrential rain across the George Washington Bridge (width-wise, not to Jersey), and celebrated the less-than-exciting hurricane with her Russian friend and what I realized later the boyfriend of the friend, both were tango people and both professional musicians. It was fun. The roommates later came and so did another tango dancer. There was vodka, of course, since there were so many Russians in the house. There was wine. There was salad. There was the chocolate mousse I made especially for her Friday night hoping she would invite me to her castle for the weekend.

And after we braved through the rain on the return home, we talked more. I can't believe there is so much to talk about but in a way I had always understood that Russians and Chinese had a lot in common, both avid tea drinkers, and both lived under communism. For me, the added plus was that she's Jewish, a people I always misunderstood but wanted to understand more. I grew up with a lot of Russian Jews, then more Jews from work in general. I had many crushes on Jewish women, ever since junior high. But at the same time, my pro-Palestinian feelings made it difficult to understand the Jewish people. I never shared my views of the Palestinian question with her, but on Sunday we talked a lot about her family in Israel, her views, her ideas of Zionism, feelings being part of a legacy of extreme persecution. What she said made me feel more connected to her, not just informational.

The charm isn't just in the music. Otherwise we wouldn't have a lot to talk about. But the music was a simple and trusted blanket that brought me close to her. All I had to do was sit and listen, and watch her body melt with that wooden giant.

After the rain was over we went out to the Hudson River Park just down the hill from her castle. It was a place I had always wanted to go once I moved to New York. Now I was with someone who was becoming important to me to share this experience with. We braved the growing whipping of the rainy wind as Irene flailed her last tail as she traveled north. There were big waves on the river, and the sky's grayness only was matched by the river's. Nevertheless there were lots of people walking on the same path, as well as bicyclists. We talked more. I looked at her as she bunched her big bundle of wavy white hair to one side, and saw how Jewish she looked. I tried to explain to her what I saw, but I failed. I just felt it. Sometimes she looks at me in the eye, as if searching, and I often lose the courage to meet her gaze. I don't know why. And I don't know what she is looking for. Reason to trust me? Why I was spending time with her? What do I really want? I don't really know the answer in words, if there is an answer. Sometimes I am afraid I want a girl just so she can take the crown of My-Girlfriend. Sometimes I want this just so I can undo all the past rejections. But maybe, maybe this time it's different. Maybe this time the charm is raising in me other possibilities. Maybe I want a woman because of her and her only, not because I need something from her, but because of her.

The lady of castle was a little sad to see me go on Monday. I tried to look cool, if not impersonal. I knew that I would leave this castle and end this weekend of unexpected connections with her without a kiss. She put it very simply: you want me to kiss you when I really want to kiss you. When I want someone to kiss me to prove something to me, I guess I want something from her, not that I want her. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but not one that ruined anything. She's going to be as difficult and stubborn as any woman before her. But the difference this time is that she really likes me even if she isn't ready. The difference is that I am willing wait, for my own sake as well as for hers. I am willing to take the time to get to know her so I know for myself what I really want, to see if what I want is simply her, and not what she can offer me as healing.

She wanted to see me the night I left, at a milonga. But I declined. I needed time to process the weekend. Every moment was magical. I left the castle charmed even more, and I hope she's charmed just as much. She's a simple woman who spent most of her life making love to the piano and being hurt just enough times by men to not trust them too quickly with her heart. Her castle is made of a thick wall of rules, but inside, she can charm you with the serenity and beauty of her piano. That's the other difference from previous women: she's not complicated. She actually wants to be loved.

Piano and Weekend

Weekend. What did I do? It seemed to have disappeared again. I am in the train now. Not much time to write down everything, no time to write down the thoughts. The Metro-North train is racing and rocking like crazy toward the City. I am hungry. I am going to meet up with the only guest I have left from this past week. We will meet in the West Village, maybe catch a bit of the sunset, maybe not. Some food. I should be home, resting, or cooking. But it's the last evening I can hang out with her. Tomorrow I have kung fu again, and then maybe tango. I am so sleepy. I don't know how I am surviving.

Friday night was rain rain and more rain. The sky had fallen, or better metaphor, the sky was the bottom of a big bowl of water and it cracked open. I was supposed to meet the pianist. My Turkish guest, the one I am meeting in half an hour, wanted to come with me because she was still afraid of the subway (still is a bit, I think). We climbed up to the train station after braving the torrential rain, and then I saw the previous train still at the next stop. I knew something was wrong. So I got us to go back down to get a taxi. Luckily, one came within 5 minutes.

I was late. The pianist was having her rehearsal (which I misunderstood to be a recital.) I was a little nervous. I didn't like being late. My brain, of course, didn't consider canceling the meet. Of course not.

Being the gentleman, I let my Turkish guest have the taxi once we reached the East Side. I got another one fairly quickly and got to the place where she was doing her rehearsal. She was surprised to see me. She thought I was crazy. She herself got caught in the torrent that broke out just before the sun smiled brilliantly on New York. She didn't think I would come. And I came with a big umbrella, knowing she didn't believe in umbrellas.

Then we went to a nearby restaurant and we started talking. We talked for five hours that spanned the path from the restaurant on the Upper East Side, through the Park, and up the Upper West Side. I had never walked along the Avenue of the Museums at night. So beautiful. So many details you don't notice in the day with the sun, the noises, the tourists, and your own foggy head. Now, in this cool night after the torrent stopped, I walked before the giants that house so much of humanity's art. And all the while, we talked.

And through the Park. I had my umbrella and one-month's worth of kung fu. But more importantly, I had company who made me feel safe, not physically safe, but in the soul. It was nice to be with someone who didn't make me feel judged at any moment. I don't know how she does it. I found myself telling her things I normally would wait a long while with someone. And up we kept walking between the expensive luxurious high rises of the UWS and the dark, quiet forest of western Central Park. All the way to its northern edge where Harlem was in sight. I was tired. I was ready to finish the night with a hug.

Live the moment. It somehow gets harder when each moment becomes more beautiful. Whenever I think maybe there's a future, however uncertain, however short or short-lived, a future with someone, everything becomes scary. What are the rules? What did I learn from the disasters of previous "interactions" (since none were really "relationships"). Don't go too fast. Don't give everything away so soon. Don't show your feelings too quickly. Make her come to you, too. Make her wait. Make her desire you. How? Oh, but every person is different, damn it! In the end, every one of them will just say "No."

I should have at least taken the train with her to the next express stop and take the train back to my home from there. No. I was tired. Sleepy. And scared. In the Park I confessed to her that although I had once really wanted to have a little girl, like the one my sister has, or the one my Korean-German friend has, cute little half-and-half girl, or whatever she is. But I said I had given up thinking about. Not because I didn't think it would ever happen to me, but rather that it was such a useless thing to think about.

Another rule: don't get too sentimental.

I can hear my Italian friend's voice now; she's the one reinforcing all the cruel rules I learned from the women of the past two three years.

But then I wouldn't be too free with her, and this pianist made me feel safe. The worst that could happen, I guess, is ending up yet again another friend.

We danced a lot the next night. I was so tired beforehand I almost didn't go, but I promised her I would be there. She said she felt the same. And we danced the final hour. After that we went for some dinner. More talking. And more talking when I made her accept my invitation to take a taxi all the way up north to her piano apartment on Washington Heights. After that, I had some time to close the night alone in the same taxi back to Queens.

I do crazy things for someone I like. And when it ends the same way, the same let's-be-friend way, I get upset, hurt, and then move on to someone else, hoping to learn from the previous lessons and not repeat mistakes. But something always repeats itself; what makes the difference, I suppose, is what that something is.

Live the moment. It gets harder. It is almost impossible not to hope. But I've been hurt so many times the past two years that it's becoming easier to look away from hope. Too dangerous.

Another reason I didn't completely want to go dancing Saturday was what she told me earlier in the day on Saturday. I went to Washington Heights under the pretense of attending a housewarming party I was invited to. I only stayed there for a little under an hour. Though I was a little tipsy from two sips of sparkling wine. I couldn't wait to go to her part of Washington Heights. I was early. She was still practicing. So I walked around. I have heard of this place. It was my second time here; previous time was also to meet up with her, but that time I was just stopping by for a quick dinner and then go, yes, dancing. This time we would hang out. Not sure what. No plans. Live the moment. I had some time to walk around the neighborhood. Very hilly. I had just finished reading that book about New York, and its ending was in Inwood, the next and final neighborhood if you go further north in Manhattan. All these places had until I met the pianist just names of far-away neighborhoods. Now they mean something to me. I was here, waiting for another chance to be happy, another risk to be hurt.

She took me to the park near her piano apartment. I had been to the museum in the park; it's the Cloisters, part of the Metropolitan. But I didn't walk around the park then. We were talking all the time. Non stop.

Except one moment.

Between the glistening Hudson on our left and the giant granite formation on our right, she told me, not sure how she weaseled her way through our nice conversation, that she would never date anyone from tango. I guess she figured out (not something that hard to figure out) that I was interested. I was quiet for a bit. She felt bad. She said she didn't like making nice people feel bad.

Yet, the conversation then continued. I didn't become angry, self-pitying. I remembered at that moment very clearly my ultimatum to the French girl or the India girl, the ultimatum of either we date or we never talk again. Something moved, and the dynamo of that ultimatum became cold that late afternoon over the Hudson River, across from where my Grandmother was resting, no doubt. The dynamo died not because I was ready to be friends. On the contrary, I was defiant. I would not let ultimatums or rules or anything tell me what the future held for me. Yes, I was a little upset. She invited me to dinner at her place, and I told her I had to go home first. I didn't want to yes to someone who said no to me, even though the topics were different and unrelated. She was sad. She did manage to invite me to her apartment. There she played the pieces she knew or that she was trying to learn.

There, standing there watching her dance with her beautiful piano reminded me of the first time I noticed her, first time I liked her a lot. That first time I admired her was when I went to a recital given by a friend of hers but which she also participated in. That was a few months ago, the last time I stayed in a hotel in New York for the monthly Nocturne milonga. It was March. I remember because February I was in a hotel too, with the French girl. That was the last time with her. I have already written about it, so I will leave it at that. That March weekend was when I lost my beautiful blue tango shoes. I left work earlier to catch the recital. I saw her dance the beautiful dance with the piano. Afterward I told her I had never seen someone dance with a piano. She was touched. She told me later that weekend how grateful she was for my compliment. But I didn't do much more with my admiration for her. We had dinner together with other friends of hers, including this man who claimed to have gone to my high school. He was all over her. I assumed he was her boyfriend.

Now, five months later, I was listening to her play the piano again, watching her fuse with the instrument. Later she would tell me what a passion she had for playing the piano. Nothing in the world made her feel so happy in that way. And I watched her, listened to the union of her presence and that of the piano. Then she invited me to tea, trying to convince me to stay for dinner. We talked more, but not about that happened between the Hudson and the granite formations.

I wasn't sad or devastated going home. Mostly because I hadn't given up. She's a very traditional woman in the sense that she wants to be pursued, she wants to be treated like a lady, she wants a man to open the door for her, to pay for her dinner, to be a gentleman to her, to make her feel like a lady. This despite being single much of her life, and she's about my married sister's age. She comes from a world made of mostly piano and music, and the traveling that came with that. She is simple in that sense, and that's one of the draws. I am tired of complicated women who instead of becoming more perspicacious with the years only become stronger and better wall builders. Simple and wise.

It is with this lack of resentment and the persistence of hope that I danced with her that night, till the end. It is a little ironic, in a bitter way, that one of the things that bind us is tango, but it is tango that has given her the mortar to build a wall against me. I am not sure how much more tango I can do with her. I enjoy already our talks, our connections, and the memories of walking through all these places.

When other people build walls against you, the worst thing you can do is copy them, build walls, around yourself. When you live the moment, you don't need to build walls. Walls are for precautions against the future.

We went out to a quick bite again Sunday night after the milonga, where I didn't get to dance with her because of a long line of men waiting to dance with her. She told me later she wish I had asked her. I smiled and said the line was too long. But we talked. And then I walked her to her subway stop before I hopped on a taxi to get to my apartment for a new week. The unpleasant topic came up. I couldn't help it. It wasn't discussed for long. But she reminded me of what she said on Saturday: rules have exceptions, can be broken. She claimed she'd been hurt too many times to just jump into anything quickly.

As much as I criticize rules, walls, accusing sometimes their owners as cowards, I know they are normal. They are what everyone uses to survive, to keep emotional pain and barbs at bay. What I need to do is not let my own rules, my own walls, get in the way of being happy, of enjoying the moment. I see patterns. I get fearful that despite her hint that her rule about not dating tango people might one day not apply to me, part of me saw lots of patterns, pattern of indecisive women who ultimately hurt me a lot with their indecisiveness. If I think others are cowards, then I need to be a hero to myself to make any accusations. To be a hero to yourself is to remove the barricades, break down the rules.

I'll see her tonight, late. I hope I can be a hero.

Approval

So much about the tango scene is about approval. Approval by someone, sometimes a stranger, sometimes a "tango friend", sometimes closer, and every now and then, even approval from a romantic partner.

Not just approval when you are inviting a woman to dance. But also during and after the dance. How many dances would you get. How big a smile she has after each dance.

I don't feel this anxiety over approval all the time, not even most of the time, but enough times to be aware of it, of its effects. It plays very well into my insecurities. Especially with women. I feel I need to do a good job. I feel I am in some test. Back to the world of qualification exams, bringing grades back to parents to see, most of my life, all of my adolescent life. Being judged. Waiting for judgment.

I spent most of my evening yesterday with the pianist. We walked across Central Park from the Upper East to the Upper West Side. The sun was setting. And at some point we talked about being at a milonga. About the stratifications of dance levels, popularity. It's almost like being in high school. Who looks cool, who looks unattainable, who looks like their approval would be the ticket to approval by others. And the pianist said she doesn't care about that very much anymore, even in big festivals. She's already got to face a lot of that in her profession as a professional classical musician. I can imagine. Only. Being a musician. Must need approval to move on, to keep your sanity. She didn't look the competitive type, but I can imagine how difficult a life is when it's repleted of competitions.

We were talking about this past weekend in Baltimore. It was a big festival. Lots of people. You can hardly remember whom you danced with, let alone whom you observed to decide if you want to dance with them. There's the hunt and there's the avoidance of capture. And in all this shenanigan there is the tension. The tension that I realized having talked to my two festival companions before the last milonga, the tension that could cut apart the connection you try to develop in the dance. You worry so much about approval, about performance, about who else to get approval from later, about who has withheld the approval you expected, so much of this that you forget to connect with the person. The teacher I took classes with told us in class that your only job is to dance. Just dance. Forget the things you have to learn to get better; you just have to dance.

Simple. But difficult to do. That's because tango makes me carry the weight of my past on my shoulders while I try to dance. "Try."

Last night I didn't want to dance. I didn't want to dance Tuesday but I went, so I got less than five hours of sleep. That was because I had guests coming and I didn't want to be a bad host. Last night I failed to avoid tango because I ended up wanting to dance with the pianist. I didn't have my dance shoes, and my sandals would not allow me to dance with its bulkiness and rubber soles. So I danced barefoot.

That was the point. To dance. Even without proper shoes. Without proper anything. I just wanted to have this musician in my arms. She told me something beautiful about her performance as a pianist. She is an instrument just like the piano she's playing. They together are slaves to the music, and her job is to express her, her something, her soul, her thoughts, her emotions, about the music to the audience. She is a manipulator. She wants to make the audience feel a certain way; her way. That's what I want to do in the dance, not for an audience, but for the partnership, for the woman. My way to tell her how much I enjoy being with her. If you can use the word "love" in the narrow context of the dance, then it's a way to say, "I love you".

There's no room for approval. "Mistakes" are part of the expression.

So she had 15 minutes before her turn to work at the entrance door (in exchange for free entrance). So we danced. I danced without even thinking about approval. I danced just noticing who was in my arms. I danced so she knows how lucky I felt being there with her. She looked at me with a smile but also with intensity, so much could hardly avoid it.

For that moment. We were one. I wish there was something more later, but I managed for the most part to enjoy the moment.

After she excused herself to man the door, I realized the tango bug has bitten deep inside me again. I couldn't leave now. I didn't want to stay before I started dancing, but now I couldn't leave. So for the next two and a half hours I danced barefoot. Even though it hurt my feet a lot, to dance, those bare feet also made me feel lighter. No more desire for approval, no more insecurity, no more comparing myself to the more popular dancers. I am here. I am dancing with this woman or that woman. I am only distracted by the sight of the pianist when she returned, when she looked at me too.

Tonight I am not dancing. It's abad night for dancing anyway. One of my guests begged me to go but I need to take a rest. I haven't showered for two days. I haven't bought grocery for even longer. And don't forget sleep. And this weekend is going to be crazy because that huge monthly milonga is this Saturday. On top of that I have two parties to go to before that milonga. One is a house-warming party; the other is, though unofficial, a farewell party.

And Sunday? Before the weekly milonga? The pianist? No. I can't move too fast. In the past I have moved too fast because I was eager for approval, of a different kind, or maybe the same kind from women. I need some time alone for my internal approval. Approval by me. And reflect on the approval by those who really do care about me, including those who has for so long disapproved of much of what I did (parents!).

On the last night of the festival I had a very good time. Not only because the atmosphere was less tense. But also because I was less tense. I wasn't so anxious about whom to dance with. There was a beautiful dancer I had been wanting to dance with not just during this festival but for nearly a year now. She lives in Los Angeles so it's hard to meet her. And she's one of the most popular dancers so I couldn't find an opportunity to dance with her. But on the last night, I saw her sitting, but looking tired and even in pain. I sat next to her and asked how she was doing. She told me her feet were killing her. She said it in a very sincere way, as opposed to the way some women say that to pre-empt an invitation. She was very sweet in her words and her body language. I felt I connected with her. Without dancing. Without the music. And that was all that mattered to me. That was even better than dancing with her where I probably would not overcome the demon of approval-need. I have a lot to learn, but at least I have the right directions.

We drove through the night. Well, one of my companions drove through the night. It was surreal. Arriving on a Monday morning in New York City even before the finance people in their slick suits walk to their favorite coffee shops before yet another day of stock falls. I realized coming back how much I loved the city, how much I missed it. I don't regret having left. But I was very happy to be back. The city has already given me many paths to walk. And many people to meet. But above all, many connections that are precious and simple like the one I made with the Los Angelina. And not for a single moment did I feel a need of approval from the City. It simply is here, always, unconditionally.

Unexpected Disappointment

A boy has his legs wrapped around presumably his dad's neck, sitting over his shoulders. The entire father-son creature is standing behind the window to the front of the train, and the two heads are talking about the tracks that the train is rolling over, consuming them as the train moves along.

The boy reminds me of my nephew, but only in terms of age and curiosity for trains. My nephew is a little rascal that is always running around screaming, at least in my presence. I think about little children, of having children, of how foreign that concept is, it seems. I don't think much about it, but when something makes me think about the topic, I realize having children may be a concept that lives only in other people's lives, and it remains simply something elusive in my life.

To call it "elusive" implies I can't have it, which implies I want it. I don't know if I want it. It is merely interesting to note that I am unlikely to get it, whether I want it or not.

I am in one of those new trains. I have been taking the train everyday for more than half a year since these fancy M-5 trains were introduced. They were part of all the controversy during the blizzards of this past winter when the MTA was unable to get many of their old trains moving in the freezing and snowy weather. To sit in one, finally, makes me want to pretend I am in a fairytale.

There's a man with a British, or at least non-American but English accent, talking non-stop. I don't know what he is talking about; the whole accent and the fact that he's constantly talking annoys me. Across from me is a man with sunglasses hugging his scalp (it's pouring out, not sure what the sunglasses are for), and he is also using a Mac. The train is noticeably quieter. It reminds me of a European train. It smells new. It's spacious. And the announcement is actually computerized and clear. I wonder if I will be still commuting to Stamford when all the trains are modernized. I wonder how long I will be working here now that I am the sole custodian of the subgroup that I joined only seven months ago.

It's pouring outside, and I think about my roof. I wonder if the coating worked. I wonder what I would do if it doesn't work. Give up?

Tonight I was planning on hanging out with the pianist before I disappear over the weekend for tango in Baltimore. But the rain became one of the reasons for that not to happen. The strangest thing happened to me when she told me she didn't feel like meeting up anymore. I felt my eyes getting tired. My blood pressure rising. My breath lighter but the breathing harder. I found myself irrational. Not seeing the obvious.

And I saw myself, as if from the outside, and wondered how it was possible that I saw myself.

A rather large man is sitting next to me, his legs splayed out as he dozes off after undoubtedly a long day at some financial firm, probably mine. His left giant leg is rubbing against my right one, and I don't know what to do to keep it off my personal space, or what to do to not let it bother me.

Why do things bother me? Why did it bother me that the pianist canceled? Sometimes I know the answer, but when my eyes get tired, when my blood pressure rises, and when I have trouble breathing, all rationality vaporizes. Almost. There's a voice that explains why I didn't have to behave like that. There's another voice that says it's OK to feel whatever you need to feel. It's the feeling of disappointment. Normal except in its depth.

The sun is piercing through the clouds in the direction of New York City. It takes that simple act of nature, piercing the clouds with sunshine, to help me feel good again. The difficult breathing, the heavy eyes, the throbbing pulses, a distant memory.

Still, I am a little afraid, afraid of myself. I don't really understand that distant memory, the depth of disappointment. It was in some ways natural. It happened without thought, without desire. It simply happened. It happened just like if you cut my skin blood will come out. There is no will to make it happen or to stop it. And I am afraid it will continue to get me in trouble. It has gotten me in trouble in the past, and by getting in trouble I mean pushing people away, pushing those I want to be with away. In the end, of course, those who really want to stay, perhaps not exactly in the way I want them to, stayed, despite these reactions of mine. Still, I am afraid.

The train is an express back to New York. Perhaps I should linger a little and watch the sun set over Bryant Park. I have time now. I am not in a hurry. I don't need to cook, do laundry, or anything. Something to treat myself with. Savoring the conquest of the sun over the rain in one of my favorite parks.

Job Drama

There was drama at work today.

I was tired from sleep deprivation, again. Sunday night I stayed behind to help with the cleanup. I am not sure why. I mean, the person who organizes the milonga, the person who asked me to help, is the French girl's guy. I prefer to never talk to him again, but then at the same time, I couldn't say no. It wasn't about saving $12 on the entrance fee that he waived in exchange for my help. He knows I can afford it. In a way, I understood that he wanted to connect with me by offering this interchange. That, perhaps, above all, was the reason I couldn't refuse.

Of course, taking the subway very likely would have brought me home the same time anyway.

Anyway, that's not the drama. There was no drama with him. The drama started when I couldn't sit still in my chair without deliberately shaking my body in a pathetic attempt to keep myself awake. But by 9:30, I couldn't do it anymore. So I went to the bathroom, sat in the corner over a toilet seat sanitary cover, and took a nap. It was probably a 15-minute nap. I even dreamed. That was how tired I was.

The bank has suffered the second worst loss of any financial institution this first half of the year. The CEO last week announced the firm would have to cut 2,000 jobs. That was the context, the pretext, to what happened next.

I woke up from my dream and went back down to my office. I noticed that the Korean guy, my Asian boy in the little group, wasn't there. He is usually sitting there; he doesn't go around taking breaks, sleeping in the bathroom, or whatever else his Asian buddy does. That's not to say he's diligent. He is one of those people who care about appearance, the appearance of working hard, the appearance of a good worker. But he complains a lot about his work, about the manager of the group (though like me he doesn't report to him directly). He left on Friday earlier than everyone else and didn't feel too weird about it, as long as the manager was not there. But more to the point, he isn't very good at what he is expected to do. He has no training in programming, and he wastes a lot of our supervisor's time in trying to learn what he needs. (He sometimes wastes mine.) I have seen his code and it's terrible. No structure, no foresight. It's true that even our supervisor has written many scripts that are hacked together to get a job done. But still, they were done with certain purpose, calculation, whereas this guy's code shows aimless wandering and random shots until something worked.

He wasn't there, and I didn't think more about it. Two seconds after I sat down, I heard our manager speak. He wanted us to have a quick team meeting. As you can guess by now the purpose of the meeting was to say that the guy was let go. It was very abrupt. He and I were working just an hour ago, getting something fixed. Now he vanished, from the firm, and likely from my life. Probably while I was dreaming, someone from human resources came up and escorted him down, the same way they escorted that woman down, the one who supposedly sent to her personal email address source code she had done for the firm. No one saw it, apparently, because everyone was surprised. The group was quiet. No one knew what to say.

That was just half of the agenda. The other half I already knew last week. MY own supervisor had decided to accept a job offer at another group in the firm. He sent me and the Asian guy an email last week. The latter was very depressed at the news. He didn't want to work directly for our manager anymore. He thought about leaving the group. Well, now he got his wish. Unless he wanted to stay with the firm in another group. So the subgroup I had joined in January now has just one person: me.

I had thought about the possibility that one day I would have to take over all the responsibilities of the entire group. It was scary. I was hoping it wouldn't happen. I was hoping I would be in the group, intact, until next year when I sell my house and get a job in New York City. Already, the plan is shaking in its foundations. I didn't think the group would break up or shrink so soon.

Yes, I should be grateful that I still have a job.

Yes, I should be grateful I have a lot to do now. This morning, in my desperate struggle against sleep-deprivation, I was complaining quietly that there wasn't any work for me to do. If I had work I wouldn't be shaking my knees to keep myself awake the way people shake themselves to keep themselves warm in winter. Now I got my wish: I have three times the work.

Yes, I should be grateful that not only do I still have a job, but also I am not so easily fired. I am the only one in the subgroup, an entity that is not easily dispensable. One of the the supervisor's buddy, the one I have mentioned sometimes that complains a lot with him about his life and career, told me I should now ask for a raise. Sounds reasonable since I am doing three people's job now. But not yet. I need to prove myself for a month or so. I need to get a raise before I go to the next job. The next job will ask me what I make now.

Yes, there is a lot to be grateful for. I probably won't have to do the thing I dread the most about working here: "late night". That's when one of us goes home earlier just to stay online all night waiting for complaints from our users. Sometimes the phone might ring at 3 in the morning. That would seriously impinge on my tango life, my NYC life. Now that I have so much responsibility, it's unlikely they will make me do late night, even though the Asian guy was one of the people doing late night.

But I am concerned. I am afraid this will take a huge toll, even without late night, on my NYC life. I might not be able to leave work at 6PM as I usually do. That would affect kung fu, that would affect some tango, and whatever else I need to do. Forget about dating. I would need the weekend to sleep, alone.

And the pressure will be high. I have no backup. I don't know how I will take vacation when I am the only player. I joined this group partly because I wanted to be in a team, not only for backup reasons, but also to learn. Now I am back to being alone, just like at Yale, or even before, at NYU Medical. I am not here to learn more programming, of course. I have in these seven months learned nearly everything I need to learn about programming for this job. I need to learn more finance. And the two people who were in this group never really taught me any finance (especially not the Asian guy). I hope the tripling of responsibilities doesn't impede my learning finance.

So we left the meeting glum and quiet. Later the manager came to me and briefly confirmed that I would be sailing the ship alone, captain, skipper, passenger, and everything else. (That's my metaphor; don't expect people in finance to know poetry.) I responded with great and sincere enthusiasm. I have been becoming apprehensive that I would start to get bored because the projects weren't challenging enough. Now I got what I wished for.

I am also apprehensive about working directly with the manager. Unlike my supervisor, he is a real manager, who has rules and expect rigid adherence to them. He is fair, I have said in one of the blog. I admire him for being fair but stern. I don't know how compatible my work style will be with his management style. The main reason my supervisor is transferring to another group is that his work style doesn't chime with the rules of the larger group. He believes programmers should be given more leeway even at the risk of damaging important data, an attitude, I think a bank in general does not embrace. I hope he finds what the new environment at the same firm more appealing. But I am here. I am not going anywhere. I have to take over everything. Not only that, I have to interact with more people, both people who use our (or now my) products, but also vendors with whom I do business. It's scary. I am not sure if I can do it. I am not sure if I want to do it. I came here to work, and the money is a secondary reason, the work itself is a secondary reason; the primary reason is to learn finance, to learn the ropes of working in finance. I am learning, however, that much of what we do everything is the same as what you expect in any big corporation: red tape, small details. I never really understood why so many jobs require a finance background when as a programmer you don't think about finance so much. Perhaps I am not in the kind of programming job I should be in.

None of this really matters now. For the next few weeks I have to figure out how to do three people's job in the hours I want to work in. The drama shook me a little I realized I am living in the news. My firm is shedding 2,000 jobs. The stock market is diving, especially against the banking industry. The economy is falling into a second dip of recession. And for the first time, the US government loses its proud status of a AAA rating on its bonds. And this weekend I am going dancing in Baltimore. Something is a little surreal.

I will talk about my weekend another time. I had a good weekend. I experienced human stupidity at the Metropolitan when I witnessed long lines of human beings standing for over five hours to see McQueen's fashion among a sea of people most of whom are as ignorance of fashion as I am. I spent a nice evening with a pianist who told told me a bit of her story. I tried not to make her say too many deep things. I still think, based on my experience with the French girl, that when a girl starts to feel she's in a psychiatrist's sofa with me, she is unlikely to be making out with me in it. It's horrible conclusions because I always want to connect with someone deep. But now I have to be careful. I got her chocolate. She liked it. I was happy, to enjoy the moment, trying not to think about what would happen next. My weekend, more details later.

Cluj and beyond

I told her I would go to Tibet, for some peace.

But not peace as in sitting in a room without walls and remain silent with my eyes shut.

Peace as defined by the absence of current turmoils. Peace can simply be a different set of turmoil. It can be the stress of moving around. Stress of finding food. Stress of witnessing tragedy and injustice. I don't have any of such "luxury."

Tibet has mountains. It has monks who can't speak as freely as monks here. It has solitude. It has excitement. But all so foreign from where I am.

I told her I wanted to hike from the capital to the Nepalese border, or the other way around, depending on the political situation.

She asked if my thirst for peace was because of her, because of all this drama between us. Partly, I guess. Even almost entirely. But in some ways, not at all. Deep down, there's fundamental cause for the dramas that we witness, that we share. That cause needs to be exposed by peeling away all the layers of drama that attempt to hide the problem.

I have a friend from Romania. She has been living in France for quite some time, most of which, in the past six years, in the small city of Reims. Or maybe it's a big city. I only have heard of it because of Joan of Arc, who was either born there or was burned to death there. She's a doctor, my friend. A surgeon. She writes to me, once a year, perhaps once every two years. She's one of the few women who had wanted me more than I wanted them, and no surprise, I wasn't interested. Still, every time she writes to me, it is as if we had been corresponding daily.

She asked me if I had a girlfriend, or was married, perhaps even with children.

Me? The person who needs to go to Tibet, the rooftop "country" within a country, the country that was once my country. People who are married, or even just have a girlfriend, why would they want to go to Tibet to get away from it all? They would need to separate from the person they have found themselves attached to, first.

What about her? She has said nothing. Didn't declare anything.

There's a reason I wasn't interested. It's not just the physical attraction or lack thereof. She's fine looking, not crazy amazing, but I never needed that. She wasn't exciting. And in every email I am reminded that she doesn't like changes. She is in Reims because that's where she feels just fine. We had a long discussion once about how she is satisfied with life, that she isn't like those people who's always expecting more. Some years later I realized there's a difference between striving for a better life and expecting a better life to come to you. To put it differently, it is possible for someone to be ambitious about her goals while still enjoying everything she has currently. She has the done the latter, but she never showed any interest in reaching for something more complex, more challenging.

I guess her life is already challenging. In the latest email, she complains about lacking sleep. As a surgeon on call, she gets to spend a lot of time cutting and gutting. She hates dealing with accidents in the emergency room. She would prefer a life of sleep than having to deal with other people's trauma. I can't imagine my life having to suffer through so much stress and so little sleep. I get much less sleep than I should, but that's dedication to tango, I guess.

She wants me to go to Reims. I have never thought about that city. I know nothing about it, don't even know for sure where it is on the French map. I am intrigued by why she wants me to go. At the same time, I know if I invite her to the US, she would unlikely to get out of her comfort zone. But we're friends; there's no reason to cross the ocean for each other. Silly rules.

I visited her long ago, when I was still living in Europe. I met her on the train, on my way from one little city to the next in Transylvania; I think it was Sighisoara to Sibiu, or the other way. I struck up a conversation with her. And before I hopped off to a town I no longer could recall, I got her email address. Then when I was living in England I got assigned to help out contractors in the Bucharest office. So when I was back in Romania, I traveled a bit more, and that included a trip to the city of her hospital, Cluj. Back then, long after fall of Communism, the trains were still atrociously slow. It took eight hours or more to get from the capital to her city that wasn't that much farther than New York is from Philly.

I remember we went to see a movie, in English, with semi-funny man Robin Williams. She didn't like the movie, while I thought it was fine. We walked a lot.

That was typical of her take in life. Simple things. There was need to go see anything extraordinary. We just walked, walked everywhere. When I later went to visit her in Lille, her first home in France, just across the Channel from me, we walked a lot too. In Cluj, we walked. I remember the houses, the small streams, the big river; was that the Danube that would empty into the Romanian Black Sea coast? I can't remember. I just remember that I wasn't too excited. Our conversations can be amazing, but they also can slow me down. I am very different from her. I am always looking for adventure, especially then, when I was 28. I wanted to see something new every day, every hour. She was happy with whatever life gave her. Of course, if life offered her a choice between staying in Cluj or doing an internship in Germany or France, she would take the time to consider. I don't know or remember quite well her reasons for leaving Romania for Germany and later France. Something to do with being treated with more respect outside Romania. Romania was, and likely still is, very much a machista country, and surgery in any country is the domain of men, so you can imagine what it is like to be a woman in that country in that profession.

I remember she didn't even eat much. I am always looking for something new and exciting to try, savor the differences, or be disappointed at the similarity. I remember she didn't eat much. I remember in Lille I was eating my Bouillabaisse alone, with her watching. She wanted me to stay longer in Lille, but I couldn't, or I didn't want to.

In Cluj I stayed one night, in her tiny tiny apartment shared with another female surgeon. I remember the lighting was terrible. In this country we are used to surgeons having a glamourous life, living the upperclass life. After Yale I realized medical students in general had a miserable life, and that view of luxury came only when white hair has ravaged the sleep-deprived scalp of the scalpel handler. Nevertheless, where she was staying was extremely depressing.

You have to understand that her lack of ambition and lack of expectations for better life is not innate to her. Growing up in the second poorest Communist country (after Albania) with so much fear and suspicion instilled in the populace, you are always grateful for even just sustenance, if not a tiny bit of luxury. Of course, the product can look the exact opposite. My first girlfriend in college was also a product of the Romanian Communism. But she always wanted more, always expected life to give some free lunch, or that there was free lunch to be had. Even after earning six digits in finance she was still a cheapskate. Same origin, different outcomes.

But I couldn't take more of the walking and the doldrums. The apartment was not atrocious for me. I was fine. But there wasn't some stimulation, not for my eyes, not for my intellect. And I wasn't crazy about girls back then like now because I had a girlfriend.

Despite that, as I walked up the uncomfortably high steps of the overnight train back to the capital, this woman, this surgeon, gave me two things. She gave me a cross. We went to a service the previous day, my first and so far only service at an Orthodox church, and Romanian Orthodox, too. She knew I wasn't religious, but she also knew my thoughts, my faith, were as much religious as any religion can offer, minus all the symbols. So she gave me a cross with Christ etched on it. I hung that cross in my room wherever I had gone since returning to the US. However, I am not sure where it is now. I hope in one of those small boxes.

The second things she gave me was a kiss on the lips.

It was unexpected. She was talking about this man she was seeing. A man who was married but was willing to leave his marriage for her. Or not. He was one of those men who preferred to lie to everyone than being truthful to a single person. She had been telling me about her predicaments, feelings.

Now, a kiss. Not sure what that meant, either. I didn't know how to take it, and what to do with it in the train, in the airplane, in the journey I was continuing without her. We never talked about that, and not about the cross either. She was still the same, then, or in Lille, and apparently, now.

Am I different? I am for sure a bag of memories. That's what I have, for certain, until the day I start to become senile. The day when most of my worries would seem, in retrospect, so irrelevant that in that old age I would laugh at my youth, spent too often on the incompatibilities with certain women. I am at least for now a bag of memories. I wish I can be as sure that I am a bag of wisdom. A bag of rational decisions. A bag of courage and true grit. But I am not empty of these things, either.

I am a bag of memories. And I remember many things about this woman, this surgeon, who still likes writing to me, and in doing so, reminds me that friendships, however strange, in whatever forms I am not accustomed to, last much longer than most things in life, perhaps some will even outlast memories.

Rum Cake

Some people say the love you put into baking shows in the product. I am not entirely sure what that love looks like as an ingredient and what it tastes like coming out of the oven. It is almost as abstract or obscure as my first yoga teacher telling us to breathe into a certain part of our body, the part is experiencing the difficulty of a posture at the moment. Sometimes things are too poetic for me when I just need to know what concrete steps I should be taking.

However, when I am rushing during baking, that's when I get a good sense of what that love is. And it starts to make sense.

When I am rushing, I tend to make mistakes. Wrong ingredients, or wrong sequence of steps, or wrong quantity. Wrong something. Forgot to let the butter sit out? Or too long. The oven is not on yet, or I haven't removed the cookware inside.

That's when I am rushing. I am not so attentive. I don't pay attention to details. And I am less aware of what I am doing in the kitchen. There isn't a picture of me being in the kitchen. There's just hopping from one corner to the next to get something done. And just like everything else in life, love diminishes when there isn't a soul to the action. So that's probably the ingredient they are talking about: attentiveness and awareness to myself as part of an environment, especially to the thing I am taking care of.

The outcome, well, from a rational point of view, when the ingredient is love, then most likely the outcome is something beautiful, tasty just because you have done everything perfect. It will be as good as the recipe demands, and if you have experience baking, the love you put in my alter the recipe a bit so that the outcome is even better than what the recipe demands.

I was rushing this past Saturday morning when I wanted to make a rum pound cake. It's a simple cake, but I managed to add the eggs before the sugar into the beaten butter. It's obvious that sugar goes right after the butter; I have done it so many times. But I was rushing. I wasn't paying attention. The love was somewhere else, not in the kitchen. It came out all right. But even if it didn't really matter in the end, I still regretted it. Baking needs to be like everything else I enjoy: given the time and attention.

I gave away three pieces, in addition to feeding one to my art buddy who was with me this weekend. I gave the first piece to the guy the French girl is dating. I wasn't sure if that was a good idea; I wasn't sure why I did it; and I am not sure if I should regret it. I don't want to be close to him. As I've mentioned in past blogs, he would have been someone important in my New York life if none of this drama had happened. If the French girl had dated someone else, I would have been hurt, though not as much, and I would probably have confided my pain to him, and he probably would have shared his thoughts from having seen undoubtedly more drama in his longer experience as a tango dancer.

But that's all in the would-haves. He is now a driving force in my sadness, my anguish, and although he supposedly didn't know anything about it, and although I might ignore the reality that he doesn't make it all quiet in front of me, I find it difficult to trust him, and probably impossible to forgive him. But there's a part of me that remembers the days when he came to New Haven to teach and would be very excited to have my sweets. He would tell the class to eat what I brought in because he would be tempted to eat it all. What is that part? Some nostalgia. Some sorrow for an innocent past. But memories are not just the sweet, innocent ones. I remember that in the same classroom how he had already started flirting with her. I was anxious for the day that things actually would happen between them. And that day had come and the saga, what it feels to be a saga, still continues.

To give him a cake just two days after I found out he was going to Berlin the same time as she was is too strange. And I don't want him to get the wrong impression that things are all right for the two of us. Even after their saga ends, I can't imagine the damage would be repaired easily. He and I were never that close, no more than a casual tango relationship.

But I brought him a piece of cake, in any case. Perhaps to thank him for having helped me with adjusting to my new life, for giving me music whenever I wanted, although I never abused that. The French girl says he "loves" me; I don't think she understands what that word means, not enough to know he isn't someone who loves in the way I love to bake.

At the end he offered to give me a ride. He warned and I knew that because I would have to wait until everything was cleaned up and taken care of at the end of the milonga, I wasn't going to save much time in comparison to taking the subway. Why did I consent? Because I don't like saying "no". Because I wanted to be a man about everything and not show resentment. But not because I wanted to bond with him. Not because I want to consider the possibility of forgiving him. I wouldn't have felt worse if I had declined. I only hope he doesn't think I have opened up to him more, especially now that the French girl isn't standing between us, for now. I didn't forget about Berlin. I didn't forget the humiliation.

All this would pass. And the fire that the drama those two had burned across my world will be extinguished one day, soon. For now, I give him a cake but not my forgiveness.

I gave the second piece to my favorite dancer there. We dance well together. We look great together, as people have commented. And she feels great. We also make jokes together while waiting for the next song. We are both Asians so we have an additional connection. But we never spent time outside tango. I guess it's because she's married and older than me, so if I don't show interest in spending time, a married person with her busy married life would not be expected to take the initiative. But she's a good person. She plays a small but significant role in bringing me smiles in New York, especially in this milonga where before I even moved to New York I have had trouble smiling.

The third piece of cake was given to the pianist. The one with whom I shared an evening of great conversation with. She was the main reason I came to the milonga at all. Otherwise I would have completely the entire week free of tango. She was surprised I had cakes for her. She enjoyed it but didn't show a lot of emotion until later in an email. We danced. I realized I liked very much holding her. She's not the greatest dancer, and I much more enjoy dancing with the woman I mentioned above. But when you're attracted to someone, the feeling is different and the technique doesn't matter so much. I complimented her eyes, which embarrassed her, but this time, unlike other times I embarrassed someone with compliments, I was unapologetic. I stood firm with my compliment.

500 Days of Summer

I was tired, but I was in the mood for a movie. It was past 11PM, and next morning I needed to leave the house at 10AM. I could afford a movie.

My art buddy had recommended "500 Days of Summer". I got it last week and now that she's here, I decided that it was the movie we'd watch. I was expecting some light, silly romantic movie. It was light in the sense that there's no twisted drama and emotional upheaval, at least not for the average member of the audience, I think. It's silly? A little. Boy meets girl, things happen, no one dies, no gunshots. What makes it not so silly, what makes it not so light, is that it mirrors a lot what I have been experiencing, what I have felt, thought, and tried to understand. Its ending is not Hollywood. No drama. Simply, things didn't work, and they aren't together. He doesn't really move on at the end either, but he would.

The story goes like this. Boy meets girl. He likes her. He's cautious. She wants to be friends. But then something shifts and she kisses him and they are together. "Together" in the sense they spend a lot of time together, they sleep together, even has sex in the shower together. But more than the physical intimacy, they share a lot of little romantic moments together. Her name is Summer, and about 300 days later she wants to be "real" friends now. He's devastated. She wants to meet with him, but as friends. And toward the end, about the 400th day, they accidentally meet on the train, they have a good time, they even danced at the wedding they were both going to, and she even invites him to a rooftop party of hers. His imagination gets the best of him, makes him believe they could get back together. But it is on the rooftop that he sees her engagement ring. She manages to meet someone and accepts a proposal and within the remaining 100 days of the movie, get married. This is the woman who says she can't imagine having a boyfriend, to be "someone's" anything. Now she's someone's wife. He's devastated even more than before the train meet. In his devastation he finally quits his job and pursues his career in architecture. And on the 500th day, he meets a woman.

I saw a lot of myself on the screen. Not an exact replica, but the crucial points. And from the movie I realized a few things about the errors I've made and those I thought might be mistakes were actually the right things to do.

I have met women, at least three, who have wanted to be close to me, or who ended up close to me, whether they "wanted" or not. What you want sometimes means much less than what you end up doing. What you tell yourself you want is even less meaningful. I have met these women who ended up being close to me, but always told me, told themselves, we were friends, at least not a couple, not together. They conveniently tried to erase the evidence from their minds that made things complicated, made them confront their own doubts.

In the movie, a crucial moment was that the boy was welcome to her apartment. And it was obvious that she didn't invite just any guy in. She had her walls. She had her internal barricades. And now she, brick by brick, chipped away the wall. And in bed, talking late into the night, she said those six magical words, "I've never told anyone this before." I've had that happen to me with these women. They had put down their walls. They told me things. They wanted to be my best friend knowing that was not a option beyond their weak fantasies.

I want to scream to Summer, scream to these women, the simple truth which I often had doubts about: if the man doesn't want to be your best friend, you can't make him, not anymore than him making you his girlfriend when you don't want to.

That's another point: labels. With all those women, I had trouble with labels. They all thought labels are silly. You don't need to call someone your girlfriend. It's enough to live the moment. I had a lot of struggle with this. I believe personally in living the moment, enjoying what you have. I remember all those conversations with these three women, being convinced by them, by my own cowardice, that it's childish to need a label, that being an adult means I can live the moment.

What I didn't realize until now is that I am letting them dictate what is good for me, that I was living in rules that were convenient for their cowardice. If I didn't care about labels either, that's fine. But it was clear from the beginning that I did, and I lied to myself that I didn't because I thought it was worth waiting for the woman of the moment to come around. And they never did. With the India girl and the French girl, I made it clear in the beginning that we weren't friends, and at least the India girl agreed that we were "dating", even if we weren't a couple.

When a woman opens up to me, convinces herself that she can't imagine her life without me, it doesn't mean she's any closer to giving me what I want, that simple label that actually does mean everything to them, that isn't just some childish rule. When she can't wear that label it's not because she's too mature, too modern to wear it, but rather, she's too afraid to be with someone she isn't 100% she wants to be with. People have the doubts in the beginning, and it was right for me to be patient with them and not force them to wear a label. But in the movie, after 300 days, it was quite clear she wasn't taking him seriously as a partner, but she did take him seriously as a friend knowing she wasn't giving him what he wanted. That's where it's all unfair.

And that's also where his fault lies, where my fault lied. I waited too long. My patience stretched beyond their elastic limit. It's not enough to blame these women for continuing to be with me as if we were a couple but refused to give me that label. It is my fault too not to leave them when it was abundantly clear that they weren't looking at any direction but that of a best friend. It was my own cowardice to linger and hold out that empty hope and not dare to face reality.

That Summer reminds me a lot of the India girl. Those big blue eyes, the slender coquettish body, and genuine smile, all combining to give an air of attractiveness much greater than what her looks alone would give. It is hard to resist those eyes, hard to not offer another day's excuse to linger and nurture the poisonous emptiness of a false hope.

The movie helped me put my rambled thoughts in visual form. I know what I need to do as part of desisting repetition of old habits. It's about self-confidence, of course. If a woman wants to be with me but can't carry the label I want, she has the right to, but I need the strength to move away. I deserve more than that. The India girl told me many times that I deserved someone who gave me what I wanted, and I lied to her and to myself that she was giving me what I wanted already. Life is too short for a gamble on what might not really be love.

What will this mean now for the French girl. I accompanied her to the airport. We connected. As with all the women in the past that I accompanied to the airport, best friends, ambiguous friends, lovers, I waited until the last chance to see her. Now what? We don't know. But if I have learned anything from the past, if the movie reminded me of anything, that is I don't have to put up with people who don't give me what I want. Even if what I want is childish, ridiculous, unrealistic, in the end, it's better to live with my own unrealized desires than to live in the shadow of someone else's rules and desires.

I found out that the guy she'd dating is going to Berlin in September, same month she said she'd be there. It was a stab in the heart, and I didn't know why it was a stab in the heart. But the fact that it was means I really need to get away from all this nonsense. They are moving on with their lives, while I am still living in that same empty hope that got me to wait "just a little longer."

Life is like this movie: hope doesn't translate into reality, there are no happy endings if all you're looking at is a very narrow segment of your life. The true happy ending is learning something from an experience and moving on with a smile. She won't come back, not likely. But the only happy ending with her coming back is if she truly gives me what I want. And if I wait for that ending, my life has already ended, at least come to a pause.