Leaving for New York on Thursday, a longish flight with a longish layover. I've decided to do the trip out of a backpack... I don't feel like lugging a duffel bag around with me wherever I end up, since I have not quite planned all the various forms of transportation I am going to use to get to my various destinations. I've slid Rilke and Wakefield into my bag, along with Dune for the flight.

Trying to keep my reading this trip light.

My body started crashing on Friday. I spent the evening with a large group of friends that happened to contain one of my best friends. We talked as he rubbed me down, weeks of soreness coming from being hunched over computers or books built into my muscles. We spoke of Darkeyes, my continued anger, and the discussion allowed me to realize that, of all the people who have apologized to me for his behavior, and the friends of mine he has apologized to for his behavior, he's yet to apologize to me, and I will be unable to treat him with more than the barest of civilities unless I receive that apology.

Acknowledgement.

He never understood that.

My aggression is unchecked without his acknowledgement.

It's odd for me to remain mad at someone for this long. Over a year and I'm still furious. Normally I am fairly serene, even when provoked I am able to at least maintain the facade of calmness.

Not with him.

Not yet.

The lack of control... I think is a sign of how deeply he disturbed me, how deeply I disturbed myself in dating him, in allowing things to progress as they did.

It's something to think on, anyway.

Saturday day found me at another coffee shop, plugging away on school papers with the baseline annoyance I find whenever I have to deal with Shakespeare. I continue to theorize that Shakespeare is popular solely because you have to be very, very well aware of all the nuances and cultural references that no longer apply in order to truly understand his work, which makes the whole thing a sort of inside joke for the educated.

But I managed to have fun with it anyhow.

Finishing that, I went home, legs shaking from the constant pushing I've been subjecting myself to, and settled in to relax by myself for once. SciFi Channel horror flicks, my mental candy during Halloween season.

It was not to be. My father called me, drunk, from an Oktoberfest, and bribed me with promises of a chicken hat if I joined him and some family friends.

Chicken hat.

Yeah.

I couldn't say no to that. I had no idea what a chicken hat entailed, but I knew I had to have one. So I drove over there, threaded the crowds of Orange County frat boys turned into Orange County providers with their now pudgy post-sorority wives, and joined my inebriated family. Chicken hat was purchased, and I sat by my father, the aging hippie and bad boy, and listened to his drunken ideas ("That's a man in drag. Yes, in the blue dress. Go hit on him.") and his occasional women of note ("That girl has great legs. I bet she has a heart-shaped ass, even though she's a butter-face." "Dad, she's a butter-face and a butter-torso. Ew.").

There was a point in the evening when my mother and her ex-sister-in-law (three hypens, beat that!) wanted to drunkenly dance to the Chicken Dance and I was wearing the chicken hat, so I got dragged up with them and found myself to be the only sober participant of the Chicken Dance.

I'm not a performer. I'm not a center-of-attention kinda girl. I like to keep things low key, prefer to be an observer rather than a participant.

But I realized, as I sat in the chair and they attempted to convince me to shrug off my typical demeanor, that there are only going to be so many times during the rest of my life that I am going to be able to do things like this with my mother. There is only this moment, no guarantee of any others, that I can make the most of. That I can delight and dance in a public venue wearing a silly chicken hat, laughing and skipping around with my mother.

So I did.

It took me a bit to get over my initial discomfort, but I managed.

And at the end, we were applauded.

So it couldn't have been that bad... or it was horrible and they were attempt to assauge our egos. One of the two.

Often I allow my need to remain under the radar to control my actions. I'm an introvert at heart, combine that with the usual dose of social anxiety, and I'm much happier watching others have fun doing inane things than doing those things myself.

GV8 has no issue with public displays of inanity. He's so comfortable and confident with himself, so apathetic about how he is viewed because he knows without a doubt how strong he is, how successful he is, how he can do anything without failure... that he just doesn't care about the rest.

I try to learn from him. To mimic him. When I'm out by myself and I find that uncertainty chipping away at my desire to do something, I think of him, of what he would do, how he would handle the situation, and I try to act as he would.

It helps. I'm doing things I never would have, seizing moments I would normally let pass me by. He's a good influence, possibly the best influence I could have right now.

He's been confusing me of late, though. Mixed signals which may indicate he's unsure as to what he wants right now.

I was studying at my somewhat usual coffee shop in Hollywood yesterday. I had told him I would be there. An hour or two in, hands drop on my shoulders, then snake around my torso and start fiddling with the button of my pants. I knew it was him from his touch, but I did not understand why he was attempting to get in my pants in a public location.

He had just stopped by to say hello while running errands, we kissed like infatuated teenagers and he took off.

A little later, he texts me to check my pants for gifts. He had slid in a Borders gift card with his manual machinations. Sneaky. I hadn't noticed because the pants were so loose on me, there was no pressure or feeling of intrusion.

Over dinner, at this fairly new pub on Sunset and Ivar called BoHo, we spoke about taking a mini-vacation together, about holiday invites, meeting his family. Not about meeting mine, though.

As the night went on, he became less and less "with" me. Hand-holding would abruptly stop. Sex, always our easiest way of communicating... it's not strained, and he seems into it, but his body isn't responding as it used to, so quickly, so easily. I'm wondering if it's the stress and exhaustion these last few weeks have brought him, if he's just getting too used to me and needs more novelty, or if he's becoming done with me.

The latter doesn't seem right, as we are planning future activities, talking about his family (as I mentioned), talking about things he's planning on how I will be there for them... so I'm wondering if his body has caught onto something his mind has yet to grasp, or if it truly is everything with his business.

I realized with my last relationship that the tired old saying that I've heard so often is true: the sex reflects the health of the relationship.

And he did, when he came in at 3 this morning (pulled another all-nighter), wake me up with sex, with the penetration I had requested, had needed. But he was so sore, so tired, that unless I was going down on him... yeah.

Instilling of doubt, I suppose. We're defined by our sex, me even more so, I would think, since so much of my built identity centers around sexual activity and seduction.

He tripped me up last night, over dinner. Mentioned my minor lust for The Bassist, and I went along with it, acting as though I would actually sleep with the guy. I think that was a bad move on my part. As soon as the conversation shifted, I was kicking myself for playing along with GV8 instead of shutting the idea down entirely. That's something I'm going to have to remedy.

I'm hitting that point where I need to know what's going on. I'm teetering on an emotional brink, possible plunge, but I cannot let go, not yet. I need to feel as though it is safe to fall.

I may see him tonight, and we are doing dinner on Thursday before he takes me to the airport. I'll talk to him then.