instead, i find myself checking your site every hour in hopes of some new pros for me to read, so i can imagine you are talking to me. then i sneak in some poorly thought-out lines myself, in hopes of communicating with you, but not really.

after a few days trapped in this strange house with three little dogs, getting devoured by mosquitoes in the garden and sketching ideas for functional/custom bathtub designs (the one in this house is oddly shaped), it was time for some company. so my cousin, john, came down from dallas today to play. we rode some bikes we found in the garage down to the pool. i was taken back to when i was 10 and mom and i would fly down to florida to visit them. i'd stay in their pool from sun up to sun down. i can still taste the saltiness of their pool water. we sat in the rainy day catching up with each other's lives, and every half hour jumping in the pool when the sun would peek out. the way he spoke sweetly of his girlfriend made me even more enamored with him. he suprised julie a few weeks ago in san francisco and stood outside her window and watched her from the street til she noticed that someone was staring at her. i can see her smiling as she let him upstairs.

we start talking about the same old things that get us all giggly, which then turns to dirty and lots of shocked gasping at what each of us snap back with. we are laughing louder than we should be, and the wine isn't helping. as i'm grinning and looking around our table for a waiter, i notice a women at the table next to us sort of glance over at me with a less than approving look. i wondered if she was annoyed at our obnoxiousness, or at our joyfullness. cause maybe she's lost someone near and dear to her. pangs of guilt start running through my nerves.

i didn't mean to smile.

i want my life back. turning off the tv and laughing with friends is ok. getting back into the normal swing of things doesn't mean you've stopped caring, or stopped hurting.

i think i need to be a doctor

why?

it seems all of these experts' resolutions and opinions don't deal with what i'm wondering. what did we do that pissed em off so bad? even if we weren't at fault... why didn't we know they hated us so much that it could lead to such a disaster? why didn't we do anything to resolve these bad feelings before it escalated to this level? and why aren't we going to do anything about it now?

there are kids celebrating in the streets of palestine as people are dying on the other side of the world. they truly believe this is a joyous event. does it bother anyone that they think we are pure evil? hasn't it crossed bush's mind that, hey, something is wrong here. we are the greatest nation in the world, and they hate us. could it be that they feel just as scared as we do? just as terrorized as we do? what happened to us yesterday, happens everywhere around the world, all the time. children are dying. civilians are being murdered. people are wounded. buildings are being bombed and falling down. and america is not completely innocent of these monstrosities. thanks to the media, we are shielded from the havoc we wreak, fortunately. but unfortunately this means we only see one side of the story. our view of exercising foreign policy is their view of oppression. our understanding of helping out a defenseless nation, is their version of terrorism. and now it has escalated to this. no matter whose view is right, and no matter how irrational the other side is, there seems to be a huge misunderstanding. and the united states is wrong for not trying to resolve it.

i'm not justifying their cowardly actions. and i'm not saying we deserved what we got. what happened yesterday was the most beastly and unimaginitave way to get our attention. but before we get too big of a head, and start flexing our muscles overseas; before it's payback time, i think we need to stop and think about the current state of our foreign policies. terrorism begats terrorism. even if the terrorism only exists in their minds, something should've been done to ease those tensions. we are missing a step here, and no one is addressing this awful misunderstanding. intensifying our military efforts and airport security is not going to get rid of the problem. bin ladem is not a person, he is a fundamentalist. a philosophy. a religion. killing the leader spawns a hundred more. a hundred more that are angrier and even more determined.

if something should happen.

i called my cousin. can't get through. called my aunt and uncle. they say they just talked to her, she's fine. she works off broadway, no where near the financial district. called lori and shannon. can't get through. i can't find mark's new number. charles calls. he's fine. he says julie and elias and david are all fine. i can't find my rolodex with cameron's business card, or michael's number, or danielle's or rob's. i can't get throug to chris or barbara or christy. more and more people i need to call start flooding into my mind. and i worry. i wonder if they went to work today. or if they decided to play sick and stay in bed, or did they skip out and take a walk. or if a relative was visiting and took the day off, decided to go site seeing.

email. i obviously can't get through on the phone. i send out a mass email to half the population of manhatten. i get immediate responses. so far so good. but i still haven't heard from lori. no one else has either.

i suppose it was inevitable. after my visit to the salon (to get my hair trimmed, cuticles cleaned up and a fresh coat of pink polish on my toes for my trip to los angeles) it was well past four and i still hadn't eaten. i quickly scanned the area. it was either a drive thru filet-o-fish on the way home or a sit down chicken salad at the cafe express. i opted for a quiet lunch with my book and my chicken salad at the cafe. an hour and a half later i get up, head out to the parking lot and navigate to the car, when suddenly i hear my name across the parking lot. that very familiar, yet so unwelcome voice pierced through my ears. my heart jumped into my throat. quick! get in the car! pretend you didn't hear him! before i could listen to myself i found myself turning around, plasticly smiling at this man. this man i loved. this man i hardly knew anymore.

hi

hey you

hi, what are you doing here?

oh we just had to return some things, angela's in the car, with the baby. i was just starting the car and i thought that was you

yeah, it's me

so what are you in houston for?

oh, yeah... uh, i moved back

oh really? this weekend?

no, actually about a month ago

oh...
i see.

yeah... i.. i've been really busy... you know moving and unpacking and all... i meant to...

no, i understand. i... we've been really busy too... with the baby

yeah of course, how is she?

oh great, just great. getting big

yeah, i bet

you wanna come say hi? she's in her car seat already but she's awake

oh, no, that's ok. i'm kinda in a hurry.

yeah, sure. well... give me a call when you're not as busy, ok?

ok...
bye

bye

afterwards, we headed over to the chinese grocery store... our usual routine. it was very comforting to enter that tacky old supermarket and smell the pungent yet familiar odors of spices and dried foods. i've spent many weekends here with my family, eating, shopping, talking with family friends. i headed straight over to the housewares section, to take a look at the new shipment of cheap chinese house slippers. after selecting a $5 pair of pink slippers with little embroidered flowers, and grabbing several packages of joss paper for gift wrapping and collage projects, i started over to the snacks aisle and picked up some japanese rice crackers and these chinese milk cookies, which were my favorite as a kid, and is so comforting to eat them now that i'm all grown up. then i hear my dad talking and laughing with someone the next aisle over. it turned out to be our old family friends, tiger and lily. yes, his name is really tiger and hers is really lily. i always called them 'tigerlily' collectively. they have two kids, linda and jeff. jeff and i always played together when our parents had get togethers at each other's houses. linda was just a baby, and when she got older she played with the younger kids that were her age. but for like 10 years, it was me and jeff, cause we were always the oldest kids at these get togethers. we'd play video games, watch movies, teach each other songs on the piano (axel F mainly), talk about kissing and masturbating, and we ate... god did we eat. we stuffed ourselves on all the chinese food our mom's cooked up for the party. when it was at his house his mom always made us american food to snack on, like chicken nuggets and tiny quiches. i remember so many times falling asleep at 2 in the morning next to him watching an old western on tv with a giant bowl of a popcorn and cheese puffs mixture in our laps. i haven't seen him in like 7 years, ever since i left for college. as we are talking to tiger and lily, jeff rounds the corner, arms full of food. after i realized who it was i gave him a huge hug, making him drop his items. and what do you know, he had a huge bag of cheese puffs and the exact same japanese rice crackers and milk cookies i had grabbed just minutes before.

sometimes it's fun to wear your heart on your sleeve. and sometimes it's even fun to let it dangle a little off of the end of your bracelet, just enough for someone to snatch it and play with it for a while. and all you can do is stand there and watch. and sometimes he'll run around the room and show it off to people, people you don't even know. and then eventually he gives it back, sometimes with a kiss. that's all part of this game we all play. we play it cause it's fun. it's fun cause it's a risk. it keeps you on the edge of your seat. cause you don't know what he's going to do with it while it's in his possession. and you gasp each time he playfully tosses it in the air, only to catch it in his arms again. usually when he returns it, it's beating like crazy, and hopefully it's 10 times bigger full of rich, red blood.

and then there are times, you feel like you don't want him to return it. sometimes you feel like it's almost better when he has it. it's almost like, you don't want it back.

"What do you like doing best in the world, Pooh?"

"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best--" and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.

i do have a friend, danielle*, that writes great erotica. of course she does, she's female. girls rock.

at sxsw this year there was a documentary about porn flicks created by and for women. i forget what it was called. i never went to see it for fear of seeing something i would regret (i still think i'm innocent). i wish i had now. i think i would've enjoyed seeing their approach. i do admit to turning on the pay per view to the occasional soft porn flick. but i always enjoy seeing the foreplay, the touching, the licking, the massaging, all of those stimulating details way more than the actual fucking. i imagine most women do. i imagine that's how those films these women made were. what a wonderful thought. 90 minutes of hot fleshy action, all for me, not him.

so what is my approach? i was stuck on this for quite a bit. where to start? i tried the typical scenario: girl takes shower. shower breaks. girl is wet. girl gets in towel. girl calls roto rooter. sexy rooter man shows up. man fixes shower. man's shirt gets wet in the process. girl offers towel to dry man off. girl inadvertently is naked. cut to the probing. then i realized this is a porno i just wrote. then i tried the period setting (you know how those get to me), but then i realized i don't know much about 19th century life, culture or language in europe or in america for that matter. ah i do love a good dangerous liaisons session.

so then i decided i have to work with what i got. what i know. so i started with some scenarios that have happened to me in real life, that could've turned quite interesting had it been the right person and the right lubrication available. i'm writing the intro to my first tale as we speak. hopefully i'll get the courage to share. so, look for to some good home-cooked erotica at an internet terminal near you. don't be suprised if you find yourself, your name, or a similarity in your character or incident in one of my TITilating tales. it's all part of the magic.