And down she goes

Brace yourself readers…

It’s time for cheat number 3. And it can’t be abbreviated.

Cheat number one was hard because as the title of that blog suggests: The first cut is the deepest. That’s true and all, but it doesn’t really hold a torch to cheat number 2. And cheat number 2, HurtLocker, is really quite forgivable when you compare him to cheat number three. So although this was not my first OR second heart-break… it was probably the worst. It definitely changed me drastically as a person. And when I look back on my relationship with this person, I really don’t even recognize myself. It’s a very specific version of me that never existed before or after this relationship. It’s very strange. And yet, if I had never had my heart so completely torn apart, I would never have needed 2 1/2 years for it to repair. And if I hadn’t had that time to fix what was broken and set new standards for myself… I never would have made my way to Burny. Life happens for a reason. And although it’s hard to even tell this story… I know that I have to embrace it. It’s part of me.

I met SinkinShip in early March of 2005. It had only been 3 months since I found out HurtLocker was engaged, and not that it has to be said, I wasn’t over that yet. I was still not eating and not sleeping, but I agreed to go out with Lizzard on that fateful night just because I was feeling really pathetic. She picked me up and we had every intention of heading to Pacific Beach (yes, I was living in SD at this time) or somewhere equally as ‘exciting’ but we had to make one quick stop before we began our night to say hello to her boyfriend at the time.

This is what really weirds me out… what if we hadn’t stopped? What if her boyfriend hadn’t gone out that night? What if I had just stayed home like I wanted to do anyway… where would I be? WHO would I be?

But alas, we went to Effin’s on El Cajon Blvd. If you’ve never been there, it’s a rather small Irish pub and one of my very favorite hang outs. I have so many good memories there, both before and after this night. And I find it very strange that I had never seen SinkinShip there before and I never knew him to go there while we were dating either. It was just one of those random, fate-ish things. But he was there on that night. And he was there with Lizzard’s boyfriend. There was no avoiding him. Not that I could have. There was a very strong connection between he and I, even from the very moment we saw each other. I can picture it very clearly, coming in the bar and him looking over and locking eyes… I can even remember what we were both wearing. It felt very cosmic. And I know that sounds cheesy but you’ll see as this blog progresses that this guy had a very strong pull on me.

Lizzard and I approached the table where both her boyfriend, and SinkinShip were stationed. It didn’t take Ship long to start a conversation with me. Lizzard had leaned in close to talk to her boyfriend and he and I were standing side by side rather awkwardly. It was very loud in the bar and he was very tall- 6’5”- so he had to lean way down to talk into my ear.

“I like your shoes.”

That’s what started it all. I was wearing black and pink Converses. I found it really intriguing that that was what he decided to open up with.

“Thanks.”

“You don’t see Chucks on girls very much”

“I wear them all the time.”

It was true… I did.

I was immediately attracted to Ship. He was exactly my ‘type’ if you will. Let me correct myself… he WAS my type; the type I had been attracted to from the time I started to notice boys up until Ship. It also has to be said that he was the last of this ‘type’ that I ever dated. Keep in mind that I was living in San Diego and I was wearing Chucks… Ship was tall and lean. He had amazing blue eyes, dark hair (which is a very rare combo it seems), and he had tattoos.Ttattoos were kind of my trade mark thing. If he looked like a douche, I probably liked him.

Ship was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and I could see a half sleeve (tattoo) just popping out at the bottom. True love.

So we were talking and because it was so loud he kept having to lean down and nearly shout in my ear. And after about 20 minutes of the shouting back and forth, he just kind of left his face near my ear and we talked like that… cheeks touching. I could just feel the chemistry right away, which should have been a huge warning sign for me. I can never think straight when there is chemistry. But as if that wasn’t enough of a reason for me to run in the other direction, I noticed something on his wrist as he was talking to me…

Another tattoo. And just as he was telling me a story about what he does for work- he was in the Navy OF COURSE- I cut him short and grabbed his wrist to examine it closer.

“Tell me this is written in ink!”

Ship looked at his wrist, licked his thumb and tried to rub it off. It didn’t even smudge. The tattoo on his wrist said:

Don’t be a pussy.

Are. You. Kidding. Me.

How on earth did I continue talking to this guy? Who does that? Who tattoos that on their wrist???? Trust me, I asked him all these questions and proceeded to berate him for being such an idiot. He gave me some story about how 12 of his friends all had the same thing and there was some reason for it, which of course I can’t remember now, because really… what reason could there be?

Well, that was a deal breaker for me. I wasn’t drinking and I was keeping my head on mostly straight and I just couldn’t be talking to a guy who had a tattoo like that on his wrist. No thanks! I was just about to leave when… I didn’t.

2 hours later, we were still chatting and Lizzard asked me if it was okay if she just went home with her boyfriend. He lived right down the street from the bar. I said sure, knowing that I had a lot of friends who lived nearby if need be. But also unwilling to leave my new-found idiot. So Ship and I talked well into the night… all the way until closing. I still wasn’t drinking, but NONE of my friends were answering the phone. Without really intending to, and without being even remotely intoxicated, I had gotten myself into a really uncomfortable and probably unsafe situation. Now, I’ve had my days in college but I didn’t make it a practice of going home with random men that I had just met that night at the bar. Certainly not! But at that point, I really didn’t see a lot of options. I could either go to Ship’s friends house with him. Or I could wander the streets at 2am hoping that one of my friends would either answer their phones, or be home when I got there. Neither sounded too great.

I decided to stick with Ship. He promised and swore that he would take me home in the morning and he wouldn’t try anything and that he would even walk me wherever I needed to go if need be. I had nowhere to go. I really hadn’t thought it through. So I decided to trust the guy with the ‘don’t be a pussy’ tattoo.

We went to his friend’s house and true to his word, Ship didn’t make a single move. We made some hotdogs at around 3am and continued talking. Ship had led quite a life. Another HUGE warning sign would have been his past drug use, his arrests, his family life, his crazy relationships… I don’t know, pick one. But at that time in my life, I was in the ‘I will fix him’ stage. I think all women go through some version of that, right? Well I certainly did. I thought to myself: I am going to change him. I am going to be worth it to him. He will change for me. What silly, silly thoughts. Please ladies… don’t ever even try to convince yourself of that. When you put your WORTH in someone elses hands like that… it won’t end well. Trust me.

We pulled out the sofa couch, slept side by side, and he didn’t so much as touch me. He took me home in the morning and dropped me off. We had exchanged phone numbers of course, and as soon as he drove away, he texted me that he had enjoyed meeting me.

And that is how we left it.

How different I would be if that is how we would have left it forever.

In the morning I told KayTown all about my brush with danger. She had been fast asleep when I was calling for a ride and so she was very concerned as to where I had ended up. I’m smiling to myself right now because Kay used to tell me that whatever guy I happened to be talking about was just “one of my guys.” I was somewhat of a flirt. I still am. But back in college, it was out of control. Week to week, my crush was someone different. I am a self-proclaimed lip slut. I love kissing and I had kissed my way across the entire state by that point. Note: A lip slut and a slut are not the same.

So when I told KayTown about my new crush, she brushed it off as if it were just another of my boys. And at first, it seemed like that would be the case. He didn’t call. No word. Not for a week. And then one week later I got a voicemail from a voice I didn’t recognize. It was him, but he didn’t say his name. He said that he had gone ‘out to sea’ and was back and wanted to see me. He said he was having a party at his house and I should come. I ran into Kay’s room and told her to get dressed. She was going to meet my crush! A week of thinking about a guy will always get a girl overly excited. This was no exception.

Kay and I went over to his house. I hate to even bring this up but he walked out to meet us and he was wearing board shorts and no shirt. He was into wrestling so this was a huge selling point, the whole no shirt thing. We went inside and he introduced us to everyone. He was very friendly, clearly the life of the party, and I had no trouble stepping up to meet that standard. Kay and I spent most of the night in the garage, chatting with his friends and he came back and forth to talk with us and then back into the house to be a host. It worked out quite well.

Towards the end of the night, still rather unsure of what the situation was going to develop into between he and I, Ship made a move. Kay and he and I were standing in the living room, just talking between the three of us, and he put one finger up as if to say “hold on a sec”. He took the drink out of my hand, he took the keys out of my hand and he took the phone out of my hand and he handed all of that to Kay, who was standing right there beside us. And then he put his hands on my cheeks, and he kissed me. It might sound awkward, but it was very sweet. And Kay and I were close enough so that it didn’t make her feel weird. She actually said:

“How cute! Was that the first kiss?”

It was the first of many.

I fell in love with Ship pretty quickly, fight as I might. He and I actually set up rules. He knew about HurtLocker, what had happened between us, and how devastated and fragile I was because of that relationship- which makes this story so much more painful- and he was aware that I wanted to take things slow. I know it may seem weird that we opened the X-files so quickly, but I really felt like I had to tell him where I was at. He needed to know that I wasn’t in the market to be messed with. And he seemed to understand and respect that. At first…

It was St. Patrick’s day and he and I had gone downtown with a few of my friends, and we were pretty drunk. I remember standing in the kitchen of my house afterwards and just staring at him and laughing and having a really great moment. And I remember him saying that he was totally infatuated with me. He couldn’t stop thinking about me. He was totally smitten. And I said:

“I’m in LIKE with you”.

One of our rules was that we were not going to say love. We were not going to fall in love. We were not even going to talk about things that had to do with love. Not at all. Being in LIKE was our compromise. And that’s what we used for a long while.

Shortly after we started dating, I became painfully aware of his ex girlfriend and her constant presence in his life. She called on average 20 times a day. He never answered- at least not while I was around- and he was always complaining about how crazy she was. The story seemed to fit. I remember spending the night at his house and finding a HUGE ink spot on his sheets. He said that it happened St. Patrick’s day. She came over and his roommates said he was out and so she broke a pen on his bed. Or so the story goes…

I should have seen this as yet another red flag. That is definitely not something I wanted to be involved with… but I was already in too deep.

Ship and I had a pretty relaxed situation at the beginning, which really was exactly what I needed. He had to go ‘out to sea’ often for training and I was in school and so we saw each other 3 or 4 times a week. It wasn’t everyday and that was nice. And to be perfectly honest, it was he who decided that we should be exclusive. It was he who decided to have ‘the talk’ with me. He made it serious. And I didn’t complain. But we still stayed away from that ‘love’ word. One time he said it on accident, more as a joke than anything else, and he gasped, covered his mouth and started apologizing. I had made a joke and he said: “You’re so retarded, I love you.” That was it. But it lingered…

I guess it was a few months in when things started to take a turn. I was graduating college in May of that year and I was heading to Oxford to study theater for the summer. I was actually planning to move back to Northern California before I left for Europe. That had been the plan and although we hadn’t really talked about it, I was already doubting my decision to move. When I finally did come clean to Ship about my plans, he was devastated. And at that moment, I felt him start to pull away from me and I felt myself hold onto him harder and harder. I really think that was the turning point. That was the beginning of me giving up myself to be with him.

Sometime before my graduation in May, Ship and I had our first major blow out fight. By that point in our relationship I had discovered that his party lifestyle was pretty much just that: a lifestyle. He was nothing short of an alcoholic, which shouldn’t have been surprising given the things I knew about his past dependency issues. And even more than that, he had anger management issues. And when I say that I mean that he was in court mandated classes for his anger management. But until that first major blow out, I really had not seen that side of him.

But that night, I’ll never forget. His roommate had gotten in a fight with his girlfriend and he had thrown a beer in her face. Yes, these are the type of people Ship hung out with. Of course the girlfriend stormed out, and of course, Ship felt that he needed to get involved. He ran outside after her and started running down the street after her car. As he was running, drink in hand, his pants fell down and he tripped and super maned across the cement. It should have been funny, but it wasn’t. It was sad. It was so pathetic that he was that wasted that I started to cry. And at this point in my life, I hadn’t talked to my own father because of his drinking problems for nearly 2 years, so seeing my boyfriend that drunk really stuck a chord with me.

When he saw that I was crying, he stumbled over to me and tried to figure out why. When I told him it was because he was so drunk… he lost it. I can’t really explain it. I have no idea why that set him off, but he completely lost it. He started punching the house and punching trees and screaming and throwing things. It was terrifying. I ran in the house and got into bed, hoping to just fall asleep. But he followed me in there, apologizing but still throwing things around. I was hysterically crying and totally beside myself but he just kept going.

I called Rossco at that point, even though it was about 4am, to come and pick me up. I had never been around someone like that and I was sure that the craziness was about to be turned on me. Rossco didn’t hesitate. He jumped in his car with another close guy friend of mine and he sped to get me. Thank God for that.

But as soon as Ship found out that I had called a guy to come and pick me up, he was livid. And this time it WAS directed at me. And what did I do? I apologized. I begged him to not be mad. I told him that I was stupid for calling anyone and that I was just going to go home and go to bed but that I would see him in the morning. And worst of all… I meant it. I really was sorry that I had made him so upset. Yep, I blamed myself.

When Rossco showed up, Ship insisted on walking me out. I was so scared. I had already seen Ship get into two fights and I was just so sure that that was exactly his intention when we walked up to Rossco. Thank the Lord, nothing happened. Ship kissed me and put me in the car. There was definitely some terrible looks exchanged between Rossco and my enraged boyfriend, but not even a word was mumbled. My friend driving the car had white knuckles he was holding onto the steering wheel so tightly. He couldn’t even look at Ship. I don’t blame him. And to this day I am so very sorry to both those boys for involving them in that. I brought them into such an awful situation and that wasn’t fair. But at the same time, I am so grateful to have had people in my life that care about me as much as those boys do. I feel lucky.

The next day, Ship refused to talk to me and I was miserable. I felt like the whole thing had been my fault and I was LITERALLY begging him to take me back. And please know that I have never been like this before. I have never been hit, I have never been in any sort of abusive relationship, but all the same… I was totally playing the role of the battered woman. I was defending him to Rossco. I was defending him to Kay and he was saying such awful things to me in return. He called me a slut. He said he never wanted to see me again. He said that I had ruined everything. It went on and on. But I did have one thing that he needed… his work boots. So after an entire day of convincing, he agreed to come over and get his boots so that we could talk.

All that he remembered from the night before was that I had called a boy and went home with him. He had no idea why I did it. He did not remember the punching or the yelling. He remembered that it was my fault. And when I told him about all the rest, he said:

‘Oh well, sorry.’

And that was it. He stayed with me that night. We were back together…

Our relationship only got worse, and I seemed to give up more and more of myself to make it better. Remember when I told you that I had put my worth in his hands… well the second that I convinced myself that I was going to be worth it to him to change his ways… was the second I decided that I was going to be treated this way. The more I wasn’t worth anything to him, the more I needed that worth. The more I tried to BE worth it.

One night he called me, it was a Wednesday and I had school the next morning, but he wanted me to go out with him in PB. He said that he was eating dinner and that he would be over to pick me up in an hour. I tried to convince him that I really didn’t want to go, but at the same time, I was so desperate for him to want me that I agreed. I got in the shower, did my make up, got dressed… and he never came. He wouldn’t even answer his phone.

One day he told me to come down to the beach and meet him. There used to be a huge party in PB every year called ‘PB Block Party’ and it had become somewhat of a tradition. I was planning to go regardless, but when Ship invited me to meet him down there, I was overjoyed. I went down there with DMo and it was the same story… he wouldn’t answer his phone. I was down at the beach for hours and I never found him. I found his car and I left him a note… he didn’t call me until the morning and he was mad at me because I had called him 22 times. He called me crazy. I apologized.

It wasn’t all bad though. It never is. Obviously there must have been some reason I stayed with him, right? Well… yes. But to be honest… I can’t remember the reason. I know he was funny and he could be very sweet. He was great to D’Monk and KayTown but that couldn’t have been all of it. I remember him taking me to a fancy brunch one time and I remember he went to a play just because it was ‘my thing.’ He did want to leave at intermission though… I don’t know. This is why this story is so hard for me to tell… I don’t know why I was this person. I can’t think of what would have come over me. It wasn’t real love. It couldn’t have been. Fear? I don’t know. It just makes me so sad. And it breaks my heart to think that some people live their whole lives this way… afraid. I wasn’t so much afraid of him… although the thought had crossed my mind that I should have been… but I was afraid that after everything, HE was going to leave ME. I just never knew what to expect. And I was just holding on for dear life…

When I graduated college, he was there. He was sitting in the audience, cheering me on with my mom, MacTen and my friends. LemonBass had come to see me graduate too, and of course that had caused a fight. Ship didn’t understand why I would have an ex boyfriend come to see me graduate. I didn’t understand why his ex girlfriend called so much, but I apologized. It was always my fault. And I’m sure that is why he came to my graduation anyway, to make sure I didn’t do anything bad, but whatever the reason I was so glad he was there. I remember feeling so validated that day because he was there. Because he made the effort. LemonBass had gotten on a plane. My family had driven 9 hours to be there… but the validation came from Ship.

That night was kind of a strange night, I have to say. Ship was actually quite the charmer. He stayed with me and my family all night. He even went with us to a gay bar. And he even stayed sober to watch over me and make a good impression on my mom… but that story is one for another blog. It’s actually quite entertaining. But I’m gonna breeze over it for now…

So after graduation, I had a major decision to make. Should I stay or should I go? Obviously we had been talking about it, and clearly I had been thinking about it non-stop. I wasn’t quite ready to leave San Diego, but I certainly wasn’t ready to leave Ship. I knew that would have been the end. So ultimately, I decided to stay in San Diego. I just wasn’t ready to quit. But even though I had decided to stay… that didn’t mean that my house was still available to me. I had already found someone to take my place… I was essentially homeless. But I still felt like it was the right decision.

So what did I do?

I moved in with Ship. It really wasn’t my intention for things to work out that way, but I have to say that I was very happy that they did. And I was even more overjoyed that he was allowing me to move in! I felt like we were finally taking a step in the right directions. I have no idea why the evidence leading up to this event would cause me to think that this was moving in the right direction, but that’s hardly the point. We both knew I was going to be leaving for over two months starting the following month (insert trip to Europe and studying at Oxford here) and so really, it was only ever going to be a temporary thing. He didn’t even give me a key.

Before I left for Europe, I went home to Northern California for 2 weeks. I moved in with Ship, slept there about 3 nights, and then I went home. It was the beginning of an extremely long separation for us. And leaving was very hard. I knew I was going to see him before I left for Europe, but that was only going to be for a few days… this was the beginning of the longest goodbye I’ve ever had.

The night before I left for home, Ship and I spent our last night in MY house. It was a very emotional, very humbling night. Ship was actually pretty broken up about it, and again, that was hugely validating. Anything that showed he cared was all I ever wanted. But he kept saying that I was leaving HIM. He made that very clear. At the time I didn’t think anything of it. I guess I WAS leaving him…

That night he told me he loved me. It was the first time. He broke the rule. And I loved him back.

I left the next morning. When I was home, we talked on the phone every night. One night, he broke out in hysterics talking to me. He said that he had taken everything for granted with me and now I was going to be gone. Remember how I said that when I first brought up the fact that I was leaving… I felt him pulling away. Well, apparently he regretted it. And that was all the fuel I needed to go over seas and feel confident in my relationship. He regretted treating me that way and so all was forgiven! I knew there was hope for us! I was willing to believe that a few weeks at the beginning of our relationship was what was real… and everything since had just been a bad day. He loved me. He really loved me. I felt it, finally! At the risk of being terribly lame and ironic, I’m going to quote one of my husband’s songs:

“That ain’t what love is. That ain’t what love does.”

I had a graduation party at my house in Nor Cal a few days before I left for Europe. Ship actually got on a plane and flew up for it. I couldn’t believe it. He kept telling me that he was going to, but I never really believed that he actually would do it. Even when he said he had bought the ticket, I still didn’t really believe him. But when I went to the airport to pick him up and he came down the escalator with a huge smile on his face, I knew that it was actually real. I thought that I just might be in the relationship that I hoped I was in. And it really felt like all the bad stuff was behind us and we were turning over a new leaf. He had told me he loved me. He had admitted he regretted everything. We had moved in together! We were ever starting to talk about getting married. It was really real.

The night of my graduation party, Ship was introduced as my boyfriend to everyone. Again, he didn’t get drunk and make a fool of himself. He seemed to be very much in control and he was happy to chat with anyone who he came in contact with. He understood that I had to mingle and that I wouldn’t really be able to babysit him. He didn’t need that. Despite it all, come to find out later, no one was really that impressed by him. I was the only one who really fell under his spell.

After the party, things took a change. My cousin, some friends of mine and of course, Ship and I, all went out to the bars. Ship made up for lost time and was quickly intoxicated. He was talking to this girl, clearly flirting with her, which really didn’t bother me as much as he was hoping it would. I knew that he was staying at my house and I knew that he was just trying to piss me off, and so I played right back. I started flirting with a guy friend of mine. About five minutes into that, he came over, grabbed me by the arm and made some rude commit about how I was acting. I brushed it off, but it was obvious that the night was over at that point.

We all took a cab ride home and the total cost of the cab was $12. My cousin had a few bucks, but the rest of the cab fare fell on Ship’s dime. He was my boyfriend after all, and it would have been the right thing to do to pay anyway, but for some reason, this really set him off. We had to walk about a block from where the cab dropped us off and by the time we got into the guest room at my mom’s house, Ship was beside himself. He started screaming at me and slamming doors and hitting the walls. He grabbed me several times and it felt like he wanted to throw me across the room, but he didn’t. I was just sobbing the whole time. He was saying things like:

“You are just like your mother.”

“No wonder your dad doesn’t want anything to do with you.”

He was really going for the gut and he was so far out of line it was hard to know where the lines were. He really didn’t know anything about my dad. Only that he was an alcoholic and we hadn’t talked in a while. But he also knew that it was a sore subject. And he totally used that against me. It was the first time in my life that I was really scared that I was going to be beat up. I was just standing there against the wall waiting for the blow.

It never came. Thank God. But neither did anyone else. Ship was screaming at me. There was a house full of people. And no one even knocked on the door. And you know how that made me feel? It made me feel like everyone thought I deserved it. Can you even believe what one person can do? Can you believe what control one person can have over another person? It still amazes me today.

He finally stopped yelling and started crying. Then came the apologies and the ‘I’ll never act like that again’s.’ I was a cliché.

The next day on the drive back down to San Diego, Ship was driving and he brought up the fight. I asked him if he remembered what had happened and he said he had. He clearly felt the same way sober as he had drunk the night before. I cried the whole drive home.

And then I left for Europe.

If you read my journal from Europe, you would never guess in a million years that a blog like this could ever exist. For the first month, I gush about Ship. I talk about how much I miss him and how much he understands me and supports me. I was gone for over 2 months and I talked to him 3 or 4 times. MacTen talked to her boyfriend almost everyday. Something is wrong with that picture.

But by the second month, about half way through my program in Oxford, a little light started to be shed. I was finally removed enough, and happy enough, and WORTH enough on my own that I was able to see for the first time, that maybe things weren’t the way I thought they were. Maybe Ship wasn’t the guy for me. I was hopeful, but I was also starting to be realistic. And my journal reflects that too. Thank God for Mac. This trip is where we really solidified that we NEED each other and that we will always be connected, no matter what distance comes between us. Mac was my rock through all of this with Ship, especially in Europe. Kay was there for the good times, Mac was there for the fall out. Kay was in New York by that time and although she tried to offer her support, she was going through her own blog-worthy relationship drama.

By the time Mac and I got on the plane to come home, I already knew that my relationship was over. I changed in Europe. My eyes were opened. And I really felt ready and prepared to end things with Ship. I knew it was the best thing for me. And more than anything, I knew that I had out grown him. I had become the person who was not going to put up with that shit anymore. But that didn’t make what was coming any easier…

Ship was at the airport when I got home from Europe. He had insisted on being there. And as soon as I saw him… everything I thought I knew went out the window. Love is stupid like that.

We went home to OUR house and I fell asleep. It was all just too much to deal with. And that’s what I did for an entire week. I just went to sleep instead of dealing with what I had realized in Europe. Instead of getting myself out of the shit hole I had put myself in. I did that until finally, I couldn’t sleep anymore. I just laid there. I just laid there next to this man who I didn’t even know, and I was afraid I was going to slip back into the girl I didn’t know as well. And it was on one of those restless nights that I heard Ship’s phone go off. It was past midnight. Who one earth could be texting him? I had to know.

And so I did something that I had never done before. I went through his phone.

The message had come from the ex girlfriend. The same one who had been tormenting me our entire relationship. We had been together nearly a year, and she was still around. What did she say:

“Hey, is Sarah your girlfriend? Because it says you have a girlfriend on myspace.”

Okay.

First of all: Myspace? Ship had a myspace when we first started dating and he deleted it because he didn’t want his ex to know what was going on in his life. As far as I was concerned he didn’t have a myspace. And now his ex… the same ex he was trying to avoid… was friends with him and I, his LIVE IN girlfriend, was not.

Second of all: Who the FUCK is Sarah?

Third: Why does your ex think that this SARAH is your girlfriend????

And finally: Why does you ex, who you talk to every single day, NOT KNOW that your girlfriend of nearly a year is named MRSWATERCLOSET?!!????!?!?!?

I can not tell you how difficult it was for me to lay there the rest of the night next to him. I can not tell you how sick it made me to kiss him goodbye in the morning. And I can not even begin to explain to you the amount of hate I felt when I got on his computer the second he walked out the door, found him on myspace and discovered that a SARAH had writen on his PUBLIC wall:

“I miss your penis. Come back soon.”

That is exactly what she wrote. I wish I could erase those words from my mind, but I don’t think I will ever be able to. She lived in Newport Beach. He wasn’t just cheating on me. He had a whole other GIRLFRIEND.

I called Mac, we went to lunch, and we planned my escape. I waited until he got home and I told him that I was leaving. I didn’t mention anything about anything. I just said that I couldn’t trust him and that I was leaving. And I did.

Again, I wish that was the end of the story.

I cried for a day or so. It was totally devastating, even though I knew that it was the right thing and even though I was already planning to do it BEFORE the penis missing Sarah. And if you’ll remember from the HurtLocker story (cheat number 2), I said that the best thing Hurt ever did for me was to just let me go. He never tried to explain. He never went after me. And that is a blessing. I’ll always be grateful to him for that, even though it tore me up at the time. Because that is something that Ship refused to do. He begged me to come back. He refused to leave when I came to pick up my stuff. And ultimately, he got the chance to ‘explain’ himself. I had to come back. All my stuff was there. I had to move out, and he knew that. So he just waited. And finally he got his moment. And he somehow managed to get a hold of me again, and he made me believe the completely ridiculous story that Sarah was yet another crazy ex who was just trying to cause him trouble. He had an excuse for everything. Everything. And I decided to believe him…

He was desperate to get me back, but I felt like I just couldn’t jump back in. Obviously. A few nights later, I was at a party and he was out with his friends and he called me and asked me to come home. I said I didn’t think it was a good idea and so we got into a fight and I ended up crying. I was drunk so I asked my sister if she would take me up to his house so that I could get the rest of my clothes out. I was done at that point. I had had it. He was trying to win me back and it was clear that nothing was ever going to change. I was through.

So D’Monk drove me to his house at about midnight. I knew he was gone because I had just talked to him at the bar. I had never known Ship to come home before last call so I figured we had some time. I was wrong.

I was in the garage, getting my clothes out of the dryer, when I heard my sister talking to someone at the front door. It was muffled and I couldn’t hear what was said, but I flew out of the garage to confront Ship.

I am not kidding you, as I opened the door and came into the kitchen, I saw Ship pushing a girl out the back door and onto the back deck. I was totally floored. Had he brought a girl home? Had he called me and asked ME to come home and when I refused, brought someone else home?? No. Couldn’t be.

I walked to the front door and asked my sister if that was Ship. SHe nodded. She looked totally freaked out. I asked her if he had a girl with him. SHe nodded again. I sighed. I just sighed. And I think I laughed. I was just dumbfounded. I couldnt’ believe it. After everything…

I went to his room, picked up the rest of my stuff and walked out the front door and got in my sister’s car. And just as she was about to pull away, I changed my mind. He couldn’t get away with this. And so I did what every other girl would do…

I became the girl that Ship would tell his one night stand was his ‘crazy ex girlfriend’.

Ship met me at the front door and led me out into the street. He started walking away from me down the street but I wasn’t going to let him get away. He kept saying “baby… just come here.” Can you believe that? And of course I said every cliché in the book.

“You just lost the best thing that ever happened to you.”

“No one will ever love you like I did.”

“You are no better than HurtLocker…”

“Turn around and say goodbye to me!”

All the good lines. And I kept it together… or so I thought. When I got to the bottom of his street I realized that my entire face was wet with tears… but I didn’t even feel them anymore. I don’t think I even let him speak at all. I got back in my sister’s car and I completely broke down. I think D’Monk even started crying. I don’t know that anyone has ever seen me that upset. And to be honest, I think I was crying for Hurt and for Ship all at once. I was feeling the tear of both of them… the first tear I wouldn’t allow myself to feel and so this time… it was so much worse. I really thought I would never be able to trust ever again. D’Monk took me straight to Mac’s house. It was almost 4am.

Even after all of that, the saga of SinkinShip and MWC did not end there. He showed up at my house. He called in the middle of the night. He emailed. He wouldn’t give up… and my heart just couldn’t take it anymore. I kept slipping up. I would go back, for a day or an hour, but it always ended up the same way. He really never changed. And I just couldn’t stop listening to the excuses. I just couldn’t tear myself away. So I decided that I had to move away. I guess you could say that I decided it was time to RUN away.

I remember telling Mac that in my car when we were leaving the gym one day. I told her that I was going to have to move home and she broke down crying. She told me that she didn’t think that it was the right thing to do. She said that of course she didn’t want me to go for selfish reasons, but she really felt like it was a mistake to run away. She was right. I moved in with her and I lived on her couch for almost a year. And that is where I met Raps too. And with the help and support of my amazing friends, I was able to stop answering the phone when he called. And now that he didn’t know where I lived, I was able to avoid him. He was almost out of my life…

I was at my favorite club in PB. It had been months since the last time I answered Ship. He still texted me sometimes, but I had stopped answering. I was standing at the bar, about to order a drink when I saw him. He was standing at the opposite side of the circular bar and he had already seen me. He was staring at me and he has this shit eating grin on his face like I was some long-lost friend or something. I broke eye contact and walked away. I felt my phone buz in my pocket:

“You too chicken to talk to me?”

I ignored it.

But as we were about to leave, I saw him coming at me out of the corner of my eye. There were crowds of people between us and I could see that his girlfriend, SARAH, was standing in front of him yelling at him. But he was looking right over her head at me. And just as I passed, he reached over her, through the crowd and he grabbed my arm. He yelled:

“Why won’t you talk to me?”

I answered:

“Because I don’t like you.”

It just came out of my mouth, but in hindsight, it was a pretty perfect thing to say. I pulled my arm out of his grip and glanced back just long enough to see his girlfriend become enraged. And I felt this huge weight life off my shoulders. I thought to myself, ‘that’s not me anymore’. I don’t have to be his girlfriend anymore. I’m done.

And I went home and I cried. I cried because I was disappointed in myself. I cried because I was embarrassed. And I cried because it was finally over. I was really done. And I was.

I saw him one more time to say goodbye. And it was a real goodbye. We both said our piece and then we went our separate ways. Gotta love closure.

I made a decision after that night at the bar. I realized that even though he was clearly the one doing all the wrong in the relationship, I was the one who not only picked him to be in my life, but allowed him to stay as long as he did. What a waste. Never again. That is what I decided. Never again. Not even if I ended up alone forever. I was never going to let my heart make any decisions. I was not going to talk to anyone with a tattoo. I was not going to even TALK to anyone not worth the time it took to say hello. I just wasn’t. I couldn’t afford it. Between all my failed relationships, I had wasted YEARS of my life. But like I said at the beginning of this blog… hours ago… I was not going to regret a minute of it. Even then, even when it was breaking my heart, I still knew that Ship was going to be THE reason for the rest of my life turning  out well. I knew that if I had never met him, I would have never had such an amazing wake up call. I just wouldn’t have become the person I am now. And for that, I have to thank him.

Absolutely everything happens for a reason.

The next boy I dated…

…was Burny.

And the last time I talked to Ship was when he saw my wedding pictures on facebook. He said I looked beautiful. I did. And I didn’t need him to tell me that. I already knew.

The land where everything is legal

Yes, I am speaking of Amsterdam.

And I am speaking true. Really, everything is legal. Drugs, prostitution, running people over on bikes… it’s all good to go. And it was quite an experience to be there, I assure you.

The reason I am writing about Amsterdam today is simple. I was at lunch with Burny the other day and I was talking about MacTen and somehow that segwayed into talking about eating Space Cake in Amsterdam and before I knew it, I was laughing uncontrollably and Burny was completely lost. I guess it was just one of those things where you had to be there. But then I called Mac after lunch to see if my story was as funny as I thought it was and sure enough… she started cracking up as well. So even though it is one of those ‘you had to be there’ stories… I am going to do my best to bring you readers there.

Enjoy…

So we arrived in Amsterdam, MacTen and I, on June 28, 2005. We had been traveling before hand- New York, London, and then Ireland- and we would be traveling after our program in Oxford, but the exciting thing about Amsterdam in particular was this: All 8 San Diego State students who had been accepted into the Summer Abroad program in Oxford had agreed to meet in Amsterdam the weekend before our program started. And that was this very trip. So not only were Mac and I in a brand new country… we were there with 6 of our college friends! What a completely different experience.

Mac and I flew from Ireland into Amsterdam in the afternoon. We then caught a train from the airport to the part of the city where our hostel- and the rest of our friends- would be waiting for us. We knew we were going to be the last to arrive. We were armed with directions given to us by Rossco, our only friend who had been to Amsterdam before. Now, the directions we had in our possession made me nervous, I have to admit. It’s not that Rossco can’t give good directions, it’s just that he can’t give real directions. The street names in Amsterdam are, well, laughable. They can’t possibly be real words. There is no way Rossco would have been able to say them or even spell them correctly so instead he gave us a different type of directions.

“Get off the train and go straight down the stairs. Head into the square and take a right at the giant phallic symbol.”

I am not kidding you… these were are only directions.

When I asked Mac about the phallic symbo,l she said that Rossco said we would definitely know what he was talking about. Okay. Here goes nothing.

So we got off the train and it was nearly 10pm at night. Now, don’t be alarmed. At 10pm in the summer in Amsterdam the sun is still setting. It actually looked more like 7pm. But the night life had definitely started, all the same. Did I mention that we were staying in the Red Light District? Yes, that’s where we were wandering around at 10pm at night in Amsterdam. So when we got off the train, we immediately  noticed several sets of stairs. GREAT! If we didn’t pick the right stairs, we certainly wouldn’t run into the phallic symbol. Damn it Rossco!!

So Mac and I chose as best we could and headed out into the nightlife of Amsterdam, backpacks and all. There was no obvious ‘Square’ and there was certainly no obvious phallic symbol. Not even in the Red Light District. We made a quick attempt at the map but could not find the address of our hostel anywhere. We found a street sign and tried to locate that on the map to no avail as well. We even went so far as to ask a passer by- by showing him the street name on our piece of paper hoping he would just point- and even he had nothing to offer us.

So we just started walking. No sooner had we began, a man who was clearly under the control of the police officer who was walking beside him, reached out and grabbed Mac’s boob as we passed. He said something rude of course, and then the police man quickly reestablished his hold on the drunk man. I was so flabbergasted by the fact that the police in Amsterdam simply held hands with those people who were under arrest and escorted them to jail. Mac, on the other hand, was scarred for life. I could see she felt very violated and scared. She was on the verge of tears. Oh man… not good. So I grabbed her hand, told her it was okay and started walking even faster towards… well, towards nowhere. I had no idea where we were going at that point. I knew we couldn’t be far because the directions were very short, but we had seen no phallic symbol at all. I was starting to get really pissed at our stupid directions.

Finally, after wandering down crowded allies and in and out of stores, we found someone who spoke a little english and who could point us in the right direction.

We walked up to our hostel- the Bull Dog Hotel- at the same time as one of our male friends from San Diego. We could not have been happier to see him, even though he was clearly high, drunk, and quite frankly just as useless as we were. He did help us check in and find our room though, that was helpful, and then he led us down the street to where the rest of our friends were many, many drinks deep.

I was 21 at the time but for many of our friends- Mac included- this was their first time drinking in a bar. It was quite hilarious, I must say. It’s always funny showing up last to the party. You really get a good idea of where people are at. But don’t worry… it didn’t take Mac and I long to catch up. We drank a lot of ciders, our drink of choice abroad, and met many interesting people. One man in particular I will never forget. I can’t remember his name at the moment but he was very much Italian with a very thick accent and he was very intrigued by the girls in our group. Speaking generally, foreign men were often very interested in the fact that we were American. And this man in particular, was very interested in everything about all of us. He was… to be blunt… asking us for sex. In Amsterdam. Where he could literally walk outside and buy it for cheap. He was telling us all the nasty things he would do to us if we would let him. There was something about his crazy accent that made it more hilarious than creepy, but overall… I was keeping my distance.

Allow me to offer you a direct quote: “I will take three hours to go from your shoulder to your belly… and one and one half hour to find your cheese spot.”

Gross.

Now add an Italian accent.

Really gross.

That was it. We had to cut him off. He was just getting way too graphic for us. And it was at about that time that Mac and I realized that her wallet had been stolen. We had it when we came into the bar, because we had ordered drinks, but now it was nowhere to be found. It was quite a blow, let me tell you. Again, Mac was on the verge of tears. All her credit cards, her ID and her phone cards were all in that wallet. It was really very tragic. Luckily for us, I had plenty of money and she still had some travelers checks. We ran over to the hostel and immediately called her mom and told her to cancel all her cards and send new ones to Oxford. Overall, we dealt with it pretty quickly and moved on as best we could. Mac and I both tried to keep it from ruining our night. After all, there was really nothing we could do about it.

That night we all slept in bunk beds in an 8 person hostel room, where we all tried desperately to hear our Ipod’s over Rossco’s snoring.

The next morning we all walked to the Van Gogh museum. It was a beautiful walk. Rossco led us, confident in his own directions, and we happily followed him up one street and down another. We passed by the phallic symbol that Rossco had mentioned before and yep… it was pretty obvious. Had we have seen it, we would have known exactly what he was talking about.

Amsterdam is stunning. I had no idea. I was definitely not expecting that at all, but it is. It is so beautiful. There are canals between nearly every street, much like Venice. There are bridges and cobblestones and color. Oxford is nearly all the color of sand stone, London is gray and Amsterdam is colorful. There were lots of flowers and the buildings were made from lots of different materials so there was a lot of contrast. It was quite a lovely walk.

Once we got to the museum, I was not nearly as impressed by the art as I was by the city that housed it. I could really take it or leave it, personally, but I am happy that I went and saw some of his original work. I always think that’s very special.

After the Van Gogh museum, we headed back to the hostel, stopping at Hard Rock Cafe of course. America is everywhere. Right smack dab in the middle of this amazing, new culture was Hard Rock. And we were craving burgers. Once we got back to the hostel, we all showered and hit the town yet again. I have to warn you, this is where both the histerical-ness and illegal activity come into play- well technically it’s legal in Amsterdam, the land where everything is legal.

All of us, minus Rossco, took space cake together.

Don’t judge me! If you know me, you know that I am usually totally against this behavior but you know what they say… When in Rome!

So all 7 of us went into what they call a ‘coffee shop’ in Amsterdam and asked the bar tender- who conveniently spoke English- some questions about what would be the best plan for our group. We told him that some of us had smoked before and some of us had not. We told him that we wanted to have fun, but we didn’t want to lose our minds or anything crazy like that. He suggested Space Cake. We agreed. We each bought a muffin of Space Cake and sat down at the bar. The bar tender said that one muffin should be plenty but not too much so we all had our fill. It tasted just like a bran muffin… nothing else.

After we all finished eating, we headed back down the street to the bar were we had been the previous night. If you have ever eaten pot in any form before you know that it can take up to, or even over an hour to kick in, so we were all just waiting patiently. Our eyes were shifting from one person to the next, just waiting for the first person to go. That, in itself, was hilarious. Those of us who were new to the whole experience kept saying “I think it’s hitting me” and those of us who were veterans kept saying “trust me… you will know.”

It was a little unnerving. The only thing that kept me calm was knowing that it was legal, and regulated and safe.

And then we met this guy… I can’t remember his name either, but he was cute enough and he started talking to Mac and I. It had only been about 30 mins since we had eaten our muffin so I was willing to chat for a few minutes before finding a way to ditch him. He kept telling us that we needed to go to this amazing club with him later called ‘Escape.’ We knew our plans did not really exceed tripping out in the bar, but we told him that we would think about it. He was unaware of what we had recently ingested.

About 45 minutes into muffin land, Mac realized that she hadn’t talked to her boyfriend since we had arrived in Amsterdam. We made a rash decision to literally race the drugs and run back to our hostel, use the phone, and run back. We really thought that there would be enough time. And more than anything, I really thought that we were going to be able to feel the effects coming on slowly…

JumpSki, who was there with us, decided to go as our chaperone back to the hostel. What a gentleman. But between the three of us, we had maybe smoked a half a joint combined before this experience so not one of us was going to be any help in that department. Oh well…

We made a run for it. I tried my boyfriend, SinkinShip (aka cheat #3)  first and SURPRISE SURPRISE, didn’t get ahold of him. Then Mac jumped on the phone and started chatting with her much more devoted boyfriend. She was just talking with him, completely normally, and Jump and I were trying to hurry her off the phone, when suddenly… quite literally out of nowhere… I BURST into laughter. I am talking about sitting completely still and normal to laughing very loudly and crazily and uncontrollably in an instant. I guess the drugs had hit me. And the world around me was absolutely the most hysterical thing that I had ever been a part of. Poor JumpSki was trying desperately to quite me down. But lucky for all of us, it didn’t bother anyone. Everyone else around us was already high.

As I was laughing uncontrollably, in walks the same, cute guy from the bar. The same guy who wanted us to go to the club with him. There was no being inconspicuous at that point, so he came right over to us and tried to convince me to go with him to ‘Escape’ again. I couldn’t even answer him I was laughing so hard. He must have been on something too because he didn’t seem phased by my erratic behavior. He said ‘Escape’ a few more times and then walked away and left me to my laughter. Jump finally calmed me down enough so that I could catch my breath. That is when I turned to Mac to get her to hang up the phone so that we could get back to our friends. As soon as I looked at her, I burst out in laughter again. But this time I was laughing for a reason… Mac was still holding onto the phone, but her eyes were closed and her mouth was wide open in the most hysterical silent laughter that I have ever seen. It was amazing.

 Two down!

I don’t even think that she said goodbye to her boyfriend. She just hung up the phone and the three of us stumbled out into the street. Jump was holding both of us up, unsure of what exactly was happening. Apparently he was still unaffected by the bran muffin. The three of us only made it about half way down the street before we had to stop and catch our breath. I just could not stop laughing and Mac could not seem to hold her head up. Jump had his arm around her and every time she tried to lift her head, it jus slumped back down and around and into Jump’s chest. This, of course, was the funniest thing since Dumb and Dumber. Even Jump couldn’t help but laugh as Mac continued to proclaim that she couldn’t hold her head up, and then would prove it by swinging back into Jump’s chest.

Suddenly, Jump got this very funny look on his face. Mac and I stopped laughing and asked him if he was okay. I’ll never forget what he said:

“My underwear just got tight!”

Three down!

He said it so calmly, but Mac and I knew that he had finally joined the club. He continued to describe how the elastic on the leg part of his boxer briefs was slowly cutting off the blood flow. He didn’t seem too concerned… just reporting the facts as he felt them. Mac and I just continued to laugh.

It was at that point that the boy from the bar appeared again… or I can only assume it was him… all I heard was ‘Escape’ over my shoulder and then he was gone. It was so strange.

We finally made our way the rest of the way down the street and into the bar, where our friends had all clearly started experiencing the effects of the bran muffin. Again, Mac and I were the last to the party. And again, it was priceless. It’s at this point where the night gets a little fuzzy but I do remember a few more things:

We were all standing around the bar like models. I kept saying out loud:

“Oh my God. We are all standing like models right now, it’s crazy!”

I took about 8 pictures of us ‘standing like models’ but sadly lost the camera before I could develop the pictures. I assure you though, we were such good models that night.

At some point Mac insisted on finding doughnuts. Now, in all the years that I have known Mac, I have never heard her request a doughnut, let alone even see her eat one when they are available. But this particular night was different. She wanted a doughnut and there was not going to be any substitutes. After we announced our mission to the group, naturally, they all felt the unbearable need for doughnuts as well. So we were off…

Again, lucky for us, Amsterdam was prepared for the munchies. Not more than a block away- or so it felt- we found a magical store with an endless assortment of desserts, doughnuts, french fries, kabob, and anything else you can think of that wouldn’t normally be found in a store together. And other than the one brief freak out by one of the girls when we initially left the bar- it was too dark outside- everyone seemed to be handling themselves well enough.

When we were in the store, and Mac was enjoying her doughnuts, I remember a spider dropped down from the ceiling on its web. My friend Nickle- our veteran druggie- looked at me with the most serious look on his face.

“Don’t tell anyone that just happened.”

I agreed and decided that the reason was because everyone would suddenly be seeing spiders in their food. I wasn’t eating so there was no risk of that with me. But sure enough, as soon as we left the store to head back to the bar, one of the girls started freaking out over her food.

“My fries are glowing. They are poisoned. They are glowing neon.”

Mac and I just lost it again. We tried to hide our laughter from our friend, knowing she was seriously concerned that she was about to die from her neon fries, but we just couldn’t hold it in. And somehow, Nickle trying to convince her that they were fine by eating handfuls of them, just made it that much more funny.

And then, of course, I remember the end of the night. We were all back in our 8 person hostel room, Rossco was snoring loudly, Mac had “sunk into her bed and become tv fuzz” and was sleeping with a huge grin on her face, and Jump and I, along with one of our girlfriends, were sitting on the floor still enjoying the effects. I was just talking and talking and talking, about what… no one will ever know, and Jump and Checko were just laughing their butts off. I felt like quite the comedian. I could do no wrong. I felt like I had never been funnier! And I am a funny girl.

And then suddenly, out of nowhere, Checko stopped laughing… leaned over to JumpSki… and whispered in the loudest whisper I have ever heard:

“She is really freaking me out!”

And then she continued laughing as if I hadn’t heard her, clear as day.

I have to tell you, my high ended right there. I stopped laughing, got incredibly self conscious and said:

“I’m going to bed now.”

And that’s just what I did. I put in my Ipod and went to bed. I didn’t even allow the thought, ‘Why am I creeping her out?’ to creep into my head!

It was about half way through our walk to the Heineken museum the next morning when we all realized that we were still high…

Tune in next week for the rest of our weekend in Amsterdam!!

March 11, 2004

Does that date mean anything to you??

March 11, 2004 is a date in my life that I won’t soon forget. As a matter of fact, March 11, 2004 is a date that an entire people will not soon forget. It’s pretty significant if you really think about it… but to most of you, it doesn’t ring a bell. Not off the top of your head anyway. And to be honest, if I had not planned my trip to Madrid on that exact day… perhaps it wouldn’t mean too much to me either.

As Americans, we sometimes find ourselves out of touch of what is really going on in the ‘real world.’ We let people tell us what is happening instead of looking into it ourselves. So if you don’t know what happened on that date, and if you’re googling it right now… don’t feel too bad. I’m sure you are in the majority.

People forget.

But allow me, if I will, to remind you. Well, actually I’m going to let wikipedia.com explain it because I really couldn’t say it any better myself:

“During the peak of Madrid rush hour on the morning of Thursday, 11 March 2004, ten explosions^[28] occurred aboard four commuter trains (cercanías). All the affected trains were traveling on the same line and in the same direction between Alcalá de Henares and the Atocha station in Madrid. It was later reported that thirteen improvised explosive devices (IEDs) had been placed on the trains. Bomb-disposal teams (TEDAX) arriving at the scenes of the explosions detonated two of the remaining three IEDs in controlled explosions, but the third was not found until later in the evening, having been stored inadvertently with luggage taken from one of the trains.”

Pretty serious stuff, I assure you.

So on March 11,2004… at around 8 in the morning, my flight was landing in Madrid, Spain.

But let me go back just a minute…

EMoney is one of my longest running ‘best friends’. In 2004, my world traveling best friend was studying in Madrid, Spain. She had been gone more than 6 months and was to be gone a total of one year… and let me tell you it had been torture. At this time in our friendship, we were inseparable. We hadn’t been apart from one another for longer than a month since we were 14! When she left for Spain, I have to tell you that I was just broken. I was having a hard time that year as it was, and having my best friend so far away was not helping anything. We emailed almost daily and I could not have been more thrilled to have received a plane ticket to Spain for Christmas that year. Thanks Mom!! It was to be my very first trip to Europe, and I was going to be there with EMoney. It was going to be epic. I thought it was just going to be epic for us… but it turned out to be pretty epic for the entire country.

So after a 13 hour flight, or something equally as daunting, I was finally on the ground in another country. The flight had been hideous. I was assigned a window seat, which at the beginning I thought was a blessing, but when you’re trying to sleep with your legs propped up against the side of the plane for hours and the person next to you is sprawled out comfortably in the aisle, you come to realize that it’s not really a blessing at all. Needless to say I was overjoyed to get off that airborne coffin, and not just because I was finally in Europe- the place I had dreamed of coming to for as long as I could remember.

Now keep in mind… this was my first time in Europe. EMoney, bless her heart, had tried to warn me about ‘sticking out’ and I really thought that I had dressed appropriately. She told me not to wear Tennis shoes, or bright colors or a baseball hat, or anything that said ‘America’ or the name of my college. She said that in Europe, or in any other country these days, it’s best to keep a low profile… I tried:

Please take note of the bland colors of clothing in the background. Yes, those are bright red Chucks. And ps. Never take a duffel bag to Europe. Really inconvenient.

So anyway, I got off the plane and I went through customs, which I remember being no big deal. I was a little concerned that there would be an interrogation, but they just stamped my passport and let me through. Can you imagine? The country had just been attacked only an hour before and there did not seem to be any sort of an uproar at the airport… AT ALL. I noticed nothing.

After I got through that, I followed the signs to the baggage claim area and I waited there, where I was supposed to wait. Of course EMoney was not there as planned, but that didn’t panic me too much. Not at first. But then I started to wonder if I was, in fact, in the right area. And then I thought that if I went looking for a new ‘right area’ I might miss her… so I just figured I would stay where I was and let her find me. By that point I realized that there was no missing me. I had failed in the ‘don’t stand out’ department. My box bleached blonde hair was not helping me either. It was not all the rage in Madrid, like it was in San Diego… go figure.

Finally, I saw a short guy rushing through the crowds of people, bobbing up and down, clearly looking for someone. He looked American enough, but I was waiting for a short blonde girl… wasn’t I? Suddenly I was doubting everything I thought I knew. Was this the right place? Was this the right airport? The sign did say Madrid, right?? I’m LOST in Europe!!

But when this gentlemen seeker emerged from the crowds, I could see he was wearing a UCLA sweatshirt. Ah HA! I was not the only one. He, too, had misunderstood the rules!

As soon as he saw me, he came right over to me and asked me straight out: Are you MrsWaterCloset? He knew my first and last name. And as soon as he said it, I recognized him…

As I told you, EMoney and I had been emailing nearly everyday… and on her end, that included pictures of course. So as this kind man introduced himself, I immediately placed him in all the pictures and stories that I had heard about a guy with his name. And even though I had only just met him, I felt like I knew him well. And the sweatshirt was very disarming, so despite any better judgement, I decided that I would trust him enough to go with him as he was suggesting.

As we got on the Metro, my only friend in Europe, Mr. UCLA, told me about the bombings that had only just happened an hour or so before. He said that EMoney was fine and that she was stuck and couldn’t get to me due to the damage and overall uproar in the city, and so she had called him to come and pick me up in her absence. It made sense to me. Of course, I still did not see this as a very big deal. I mean, I had seen September 11th. I knew what happened at airports and across the country when a major city was attacked… and this just didn’t quite fit with that picture. Everyone seemed to be going about their day as normal. Not that I could understand anything that anyone was talking about…

My new friend didn’t really give me many details about anything, it was all still very new and mixed up, but he didn’t really seem too concerned himself so I decided that I wasn’t going to be either. He took me to his apartment, and I know that sounds odd, but he said it was safer than being out on the street. Safer to who? I wasn’t sure… but I agreed.

When we got to his apartment, he gave me his phone card and told me to call my parents. I told him that I didn’t want to worry them. I knew my Mom was already so much on edge about me traveling abroad as it was… this would only have pushed her over the edge. But he insisted. He said that she was going to hear about it when she woke up anyway. It was still the middle of the night in California. I felt like explaining that America didn’t really care too much about international affairs… at least not little things like this, but I figured Mr. UCLA would know that much… so I called my Mom.

I woke her up, of course.

I told her everything I knew, which wasn’t much:

“There has been some kind of bombing in Madrid. I’m here safe. My plane landed okay. EMoney is fine. Everything is fine, but you might hear about it on the news and so I wanted to tell you that I’m okay so you don’t freak out.”

To my surprise, she didn’t sound that worried. She was half asleep, but even still. It sounded like she felt the same way I did: No biggie.

It took EMoney 3 hours to get to Mr. UCLA’s apartment. 3 hours! He and I had gone downstairs to a bar that he lived above and watched the news in Spanish. I didn’t understand a word of it, but I did get 2 very important things from the newscast:

1) This was a big deal. A very, very big deal. It was like Sept 11th all over again. Everyone in the bar was just silently staring at the tv, mouth agape. No one could believe what they were seeing. Maybe those people from before just hadn’t heard yet, because the people around me at that point were all very much aware of, and obsessed with what was going on in their city.

and 2) Spain does NOT censor the same way we do. You want the news? Here is the news: Dead Bodies. Lots of them. Take a look.

It was incredibly upsetting. I could not believe that they were allowed to show what they were showing on tv. Blood, bodies, body parts… Maybe if they did that in America, we would all be a little more aware of how hideous people can be.

People forget.

When EMoney got to us, she had news from all over the city. She knew about all the different bomb sites and all the dead and all the damage. She knew everything that we were seeing on the tv. Atocha, the train station that was hit the worst, was her train station. It was about a block from where she lived. And the craziest, most everything-happens-for-a-reason thing about it is:

She would have been on that train at that time going to school if it weren’t for me coming in that day. She went to school early to turn in her assignment so that she could be at the airport in time to pick me up. She could have died that day.

That gives me goosebumps even still…

But we didn’t spend too much time dwelling on that. And to be honest, I don’t know how much we’ve brought it up since. But sometime I think that this universe is so crazy that if we were to have never become friends when we were 13… would she still be alive? I mean doesn’t that freak you out?

Anyway… I digress as usual.

EMoney and I took a cab back across town to her house, right around the corner from Atocha. In the cab, EMoney busts out with the most fluent sounding Spanish I’ve ever heard in my life. I was completely impressed. She was asking the cab driver what he knew about the attacks and translating to me what he said. Cabs were expensive but it was literally the only way to get anywhere in the city at that time… and the most informative as it turned out. The Metro’s were down, the buses were down as well. And as we neared Atocha, the crowds thickened.

This was a really big deal.

When we got to EMoney’s place, her Senora- or her exchange Mother, so to speak- nearly burst into tears at the sight of her. She started spouting off all this crazy Spanish, all of which E apparently understood and responded too, before we were allowed to settle in in E’s room.

Although this is irrelevant, it has to be said that E’s room was a tiny little green shoebox of a room and MY room- the guest room- was giant with two nice beds, a tv, and a dinning table. Totally random, but necessary to add.

I wish there was more to the room than what you see in this picture… but there just isn’t. Quite frankly, everything about this house, including the Senora who lived there… was just odd man.

Going on…

It was about 3pm on March 11, 2004 when EMoney’s cell phone received a call from an international number…

My Mother. In a panic. It was 7am in California and guess what… the exact thing that I had told her would be on the news, was on the news. I have to say that it was a much bigger deal in America that I could have ever imagined. I guess we DO care about little bombings like this one. And judging by the amount of emails I received from my otherwise uninformed college-mates, people were talking about it too. But even still, there was no need for my Mother to be up in arms; I had called the woman 8 hours before to tell her that we were fine… I guess she just had to double-check.

We didn’t leave the house again that night at her Senora’s request, but E and I hit the streets to survey the damage the next day. I have to tell you that being in another country while that country is in crisis, is really something unique. I know that sounds strange, but I really feel lucky to have been there at that time. It was really something to see. Everyone was coming together to mourn, to debate, to be angry, to protest…

And speaking of protest…

The next day, day two of my Madrid, Spain adventure, EMoney and I went out to see the sights. We went to Atocha and paid our respects. The Metro system was back in action, at least partly- Atocha was down for a while- and so we made our way to the center of the city. There is a plaza and Metro stop at the very center of Madrid, and Madrid is the very center of Spain… that is to say we were in the very center of the country. If I remember correctly it’s called Plasa Del Sol or something of the like. That is where many of the above pictures were taken, and it is where many of the political buildings are. At the time of the bombings, the presidential elections for Spain were merely days away, so this was a HUGELY pivotal time in Spain’s history. The bombings did end up swaying the election. So as you can imagine, there was a huge display of mourning and protest in that plaza.

But then suddenly, around 2pm… without warning, the streets were just filled with people and umbrellas. It was raining and so the umbrellas were not the surprising part… it was the amount of umbrellas. And they all seemed to be moving in one direction. The plaza was  just swarming with black and grays. Thousands of umbrellas in motion. I’ll never forget it. It was absolutely surreal. And I have to say, frightening too.

E and I quickly returned home to get more information. These people and their umbrellas didn’t seem threatening, but there was something all too eery about the city all of the sudden. People were just coming out of the woodwork and they were all silently joining together. It felt like we had definitly missed the memo.

When we got back to the house, EMoney called some people from school. The official word for students was to stay off the streets. Apparently a HUGE protest was taking place and there had been bomb threats all over the city. I always think about that… if someone wanted to bomb us and kill as many people as possible- which is usually the goal- wouldn’t they bomb where everyone rallies together?

Luckily they did not…

But when I say HUGE protest, I mean 2 million people hit the streets in a city that was about 4 million strong. Now that is a LOT of umbrellas.

Again, it was amazing to be there to see it. I felt like I was an outsider, like I didn’t deserve to be a part of it… but I was. It’s a part of my history now too…

When it was all said and done, 191 people lost their lives on March 11, 2004. More than 2000 were wounded. 10 bombs exploded on commuter trains, EMoney’s train included, and 3 more were found and removed before they were able to kill more people. It was a big deal.

And people forget…

We don’t forget September 11th because it happened to us. Well, this happened to us too. It happened to us as people. Who are we fighting here? Is this about countries or about mankind? I think we have lost our way…

I said before that I feel privileged to have been there at that time… That’s partly because I was able to witness what I witnessed, but also because I know that I won’t forget. It’s not just about me as an American… it’s about me as a person; as a citizen of this Earth. And as long as things like this are happening, and they are still happening, we need not forget. But not only that, we really need to look at the bigger picture. If it’s really about US vs THEM… let’s think long and hard about who THEY are… is it Iraq? Is it Afghanistan? This isn’t a country thing… it’s a people thing.

The sooner we start thinking like that… the better.

Don’t forget…

Espana te Amo.

Travel Light

Welcome back to Sisterhood of the Traveling Thursdays! This might just be my favorite day as my travels are my favorite memories!

Tonight I want to talk about a very interesting experience I had in London on my third trip to Europe, second trip to London. This story includes a character whom I have not yet mentioned, so she requires some back story. Stick with me.

Her name is PeppeLaBabs.

I met PeppeLaBabs under somewhat… unusual circumstances. One of my best friends, EMoney, whom I have known since Jr. High was my roommate for a time around 2006-2007. We lived in an amazing apartment overlooking the Bay in San Diego with her twin sister and good friend of mine, Dewip.

It was during this short, but eventful year, that EMoney decided that she liked girls. Now, as a theater person, I have been around gay people since before gay people existed so I of course had NO issue with this whatsoever. But it was the way in which she decided to like girls that got my blood boiling a bit.

This part of the story is a blog for another day entirely, but basically EMoney met this wonderful guy at a bar and started dating him. He charmed Dewip and I immediately, but apparently his sister was the real charmer for EMoney. LONG, CRAZY story short, EMoney ended up with the sister instead… the sister was PeppeLaBabs.

As the best friend, I was expected to become buddies with the new significant other. I will admit, with the way the relationship began, it was a challenge for me to let my guard down and stop judging them both for being so ridiculous, but after a short time, I grew to really enjoy PLB (PeppeLaBabs is officially being shortened).

She was very funny, very outgoing, very interesting, and very much a girl. This sets up a strange dynamic. When you are becoming friends with your best friends boyfriend, the boundaries are so clearly set up, but when the boyfriend is a girl, the boundaries are not so clear. For example, going to coffee with a friends new boyfriend might be a bit odd. But going to coffee with a girlfriend, which is how I saw PLB, is not strange at all. Well, basically, it was hard to figure out what I was and wasn’t supposed to be doing.

I invited Dewip, EMoney and by default, PLB to Vegas early on in the relationship. At first, all three girls were interested, but as it turned out, only PLB committed and went. This is of course another blog too, but my point is this: When the subject of ‘Who want’s to go to Europe with us?’ came up, and PLB said ‘Me!’ I didn’t think it would be too strange to include her on the trip. She had never been after all, and EMoney and Dewip were not able to go.

Whether this was inappropriate to do or not, I’m not sure… but don’t worry, I learned my lesson.

I’m going to give you the moral of this blog right up front: When traveling… anywhere… make sure you REALLY want to be with your travel mate morning, noon, and night, and make sure you REALLY know that person well, because there are no secrets in travel.

Well, to add just a tad more awkwardness to the situation, PLB and EMoney broke up before the trip. SO now I was taking my friends ex girlfriend to Europe. But I must also say that the other girls on the trip were MacTen, Raps and my sis D’Monk, so it’s not like I was going to be alone with her. It was clearly a girls trip and we were all ready to have fun.

Yea…

NIGHT ONE!

When you travel, particularly when you kind of throw together somewhat of an impromptu trip to Europe, the funds are never flowing like you would like. Everything must be crazy budgeted and you have to be smart about what you spend. Well, PLB started her trip with $100 less than I had told everyone was the minimum they should bring with them. That was not the best start, but hey, I figured maybe she was on a different budget than I was.

Day one in London, after doing the Big Red Bus tour which I swear is the best money ever spent, the five of us ran across London (no joke, we booked it) to catch this walking ghost tour we had heard about. And even though our running had paid off and we were not more than two minutes late, we had either missed the tour or the tour was a ghost itself, because there was no one at the meeting place. As a result, we decided to drown our sorrows of having missed the tour at a pub just up the street from where our tour beginning would have been.

This pub just so happened to be around the corner from Big Ben. The sun was setting as we went into the pub so I requested that after dinner and a drink, we go take a look at Big Ben at night. I had seen the clock, but never at night. I had seen pictures and I knew it was going to be extraordinary, but the whole point was that it had to be at night. The group agreed. The plan was set.

Or so I thought…

We ate dinner and with dinner comes drinks. And with drinks comes more drinks. And with more drinks comes budget out the window kind of drinking. I had a brilliant heart to heart with D’Monk, who I had wanted to bring to Europe since my first trip, Raps and Mac were chatting about their long friendship and PLB sat in the corner rather unsociable. She didn’t talk much. She went to the bar to order her drinks instead of ordering them at the table, which we didn’t realize until later was her way of drinking more than we could monitor.

Before we left the states I specifically asked the girls to always keep a low profile. If you have ever traveled abroad, you know that it is never in your best interested to be American. And of course being polite and respectful should have gone without saying, but I guess I should have said it anyway.

When it came time to leave, Mac did something that I will never forget. She had been doing a ton of babysitting leading up to the trip so she had a good $1000 more than the rest of us had to spend and she offered to cover the entire bill. She said that she had had such a great night and she didn’t want anyone to feel stressed or regret spending the money the next day, so she paid the tab of five very drunk girls. That is the kind of girl she is.

PLB, however, was about to show us just what kind of girl she really was.

We walked out of the bar and headed around the corner towards Big Ben as planned. I tell you, I was so excited. I had been mentioning it through out dinner and drinks and making the girls re-promise that we would in fact go see Big Ben at night, no matter what.

‘No matter what’ did not include PLB not being able to walk and shouting obnoxious things and being all around RUDE to passers-by on the street. I pulled the plug so fast on our excursion out of pure embarrassment. I could not believe she was acting like that. The rest of us made a quick decision to go ahead and spend even MORE money we didn’t have on a cab because we knew PLB would either puke or be thrown off the tube. This was of course right around the time that we were piecing together her ‘bar trips’ and counting the glasses on the table in our heads.

The cab takes us to the street where our hostel is, but there is still a block or so walk. Mac and I quite literally had to carry PLB down the street. Now keep in mind that London is not like Isla Vista in Santa Barbara. There was no one else being carried down the street. There was no one else screaming and making a scene. And I promise you, no one else on that entire street puked on someones doorstep… but PLB did. Mac, bless her heart, stood right there with me while I nearly cried out of hate, embarrassment and shame for my favorite city. Usually I am a good friend during these moments. Usually I am the girl who holds your hair back and scoops the puke out of the sink with my hand, but not PLB. Not when she had just thrown up on London!

We finally made it back to our hostel, and let me just remind you that hostels are usually shared. We had a six person room with only five of us, so there was an Asian gentleman, who spoke no English, who luckily had somewhat of a sense of humor about the situation. He could have easily complained to the front desk and had us kicked out.

Of course I was trying to explain this to PLB, but she was busy being a raging bitch. Oh yes, once we got back to the hostel, she went from crazy American girl on the street to rabid beast with a drinking problem. And most of her fury was aimed towards Mac and I, her rescuers. Raps and D’Monk… yea, they went to bed. Sorry guys… but ya did.

Mac and I, put PLB in the bathroom to finish what she started on someones doorstep and what does she do? She absolutely insists on takeing off her shirt. Lucky Asian guy, more aggravated me.

After about 20 mins of trying to convince PLB that she could not sleep in the bathroom, we decided that we were both about to strangle her and we needed to step out for a moment to gather our sanity. I put D’Monk in charge of the raging girl in her bra. We went downstairs and sat on the front porch of the hostel in our favorite city and talked about how people take us for granted. How we are the friends to have and how we really shouldn’t have invited that crazy bitch.

We were gone maybe 10 minutes. We returned to find Raps and D’Monk sound asleep in their beds. PLB was laying on her back with a mouth full of puke. Lovely. So we sat her up and of course more curse words and accusations and full on swings was all we got as a thank you.

Finally we drug her out of the bathroom and put her on the bed, despite her pushing, swearing and fighting us all the way. I have to say that at this point, I had joined her in the curses and violence. I had had it. I was crying, I was screaming, I was telling her in all seriousness that I would be taking her to the airport if she kept it up. And I meant it too. This was NIGHT ONE guys! I couldn’t even imagine another day with her, let alone 10!

But throughout all of this, Mac stayed very calm, cool and collected.

That is until PLB said and I quote: “THis is your fault anyway [Mac], you shouldn’t have bought all of those drinks.”

Remember how we all ordered everything before Mac offered to pay? Well, Mac remembered because she lost it and literally I had to grab her and pull her off of PLB. I had never and have not since seen Mac attack someone like that. It was like she had just been pushed too far. And it was amazing.

Of course at that point, D’Monk thought that it would be wise to involve herself and so she kicked Mac and I out. But on all accounts, that was fine by us. We took off down the street at a crazy pace that was more floating than walking really. We moved so quickly, crying and laughing with no destination in mind. But we knew once we saw it where we had been heading: McDonalds.

There are only a few times in life where McDonalds is a sight for sore eyes, but this was one of those times. Literally, my eyes were sore from crying. I can’t imagine what the other late night diners were thinking when they saw these two American girls burst in the door, make up running down their cheeks, laughing, gasping for air. But we couldn’t have even explained PLB given the chance.

To this day, I still CAN NOT BELIEVE a grown person could act that way. Swinging and cursing at the people who were just looking out for her. The people who invited her on this trip to begin with. Ever play that game ‘which of these things are not like the other?

‘

Well, if you would have played that with the five of us, PLB was clearly the odd one out that was just kind of a tag-a-long that we had included because we wanted to show her the world.

The next morning she acted like all was well. She even made a joke about how crazy the night had been. But the jokes ended when they were not well received. And then they really ended when we realized that Raps had lost her PassPort in the cab ride which we never would have taken had it not been for PLB.

The rest of the trip we all kept our distance from PLB. By the end of it, we even stopped going sight-seeing together. PLB ran out of money early on so she spent her days hanging around the hostels while we went on our adventures.

I did get to see Big Ben at night on that trip. It was breathtaking.

My favorite part of the whole night, looking back, was after we got back to the hostel and PLB was going crazy. The Asian dude got his English translation dictionary out and got our attention. He looked at us, looked at PLB and said:

“She Cwazy”.

I really couldn’t have put it better myself.

Not her finest moment

Since it’s a WhoopsieDasiey Wednesday, and I have been kind of indulging in the ‘fall’ stories, I thought I would change it up a bit. Let me remind you all that a fall is not the only time one might say ‘Whoopsie Daisey.’ For example, if someone were to make a mistake… or over do it on something like say, alcohol… that would be a ‘Whoopsie Daisey’ moment, now wouldn’t it?

This story is about MacTen. Yes, dear, you. Specifically a very large ‘Whoopsie Daisey’ moment that she and I shared back in Oxford, England. Well, to be fair, JumpSki was there too.

I believe I mentioned this program back in one of my travel blogs, but all the same, MacTen and I were lucky enough to attend the prestigious British American Drama Academy at Oxford University. I had just graduated college and she had not yet turned 21. But in Europe, you’re 21 when you’re born, so she was taking full advantage of that particular freedom during this ‘Whoopsie Daisey’ moment.

It was the final day of the program. All of our scene work had been presented, which was the culminating portion of the entire summer. We, as students, had been attending only 4 classes a day, but they were intense and they were taught by brilliant English and American teachers who were all MORE than qualified to be teaching us, to say the least. I can’t speak for everyone when I describe these classes, but I will give it a go all the same.

Shakespeare class. For me it was taught by a fiery women by the name of Irina Brown. She was Russian and she took being Russian very seriously. I wouldn’t joke about a thing like that. This woman was a nightmare, and the first half of the summer, I hated her. She embarrassed me. She called me out on my weaknesses. She was relentless. She expected so much. But of course, as I grew over the summer, both as a person and a performer, winning her respect became one of my highest goals. It might have taken me a minute to realize, but those are the types of people that are put in our path to teach us… more than anyone else, and I learned a great deal from that woman. I will never forget her. Aside from her erratic behavior sometimes, this woman wore only one thing the entire month of July. Every single day, I kid you not. JumpSki can vouch for this. She wore a floor length jean skirt, and an over sized, oatmeal colored, knit sweater. Her hair can best be compared to the main of a lion simply because her face kind of resembled a lion. So there ya go, there is Shakespeare class.

Movement class. Another teacher I will not soon forget but for entirely different reasons. I am smiling now as I think of him. He was completely opposite Irina. His name was Ben. Just Ben, can’t remember his last name, but we called him Big Ben or Uncle Ben. He was quite tall, impossibly thin and old as can be. There is something in the water in Europe because these people live forever. He was completely insane, but in a ‘I’m high on drugs’ kind of way. He called me Wendy Bendy- which I never quite figured out… because I am NOT flexible in any way- and he always spoke as if he were singing. Every word was drawn out. At the talent show that summer, he wore butt-less pants and played a song on his bare ass. And once in class, he spent the entire 1 hour 45 minute period running us through an exercise that required us to act like we were on a sinking ship. That’s it. For nearly 2 hours, he dictated the weather and we reacted as if on a sinking ship. Crazy but brilliant. That will make you think!

Audition Techniques. In this class I had my biggest break through as an actor. We only had this class once a week, so four times total, but we were expected to have learned a new monologue each week. That sounds simple enough, but learning a new monologue means reading the play from which it comes, researching the era, researching the character, blocking, practicing, memorizing and not to mention, FINDING a new one from Border’s books across the road. I did a monologue from “Tongue of a Bird” that I won’t soon forget. This class was very intense, but I can’t recall much about the teacher, specifically.

Modern class. In this class we worked on very modern, very obscure pieces. For half the month I had Barry… bless his heart. He reminded me entirely of what you would picture an older English gentleman to look like. He had a comb over and wore knit caps, as well as sweater vests. But he was so darling and brilliant. He taught me so much about character research and development, even for the most simplest of roles (if there is such a thing). And for the second half of the month, we had a lovely, young, black man as a teacher. I forget his name at the moment, but I know that he called EVERYONE ‘my baby’… but really it was one word: mybaby. “That was brilliant mybaby.” “No, do you see what you’re doing there mybaby?” Oh yes… his name was Leo, I remember now. He makes me smile too.

And of course Voice class. Not singing. Voice. Like speaking and accents and pronouncing things correctly and all that. This class was where I struggled the most personally. I have a hard time placing my voice correctly. One bad voice couch in college, and everything is ruined. But the teacher was Linda Gates. I’ll not soon forget her name. She was the most entitled, but lovely woman I’ve ever met. So pompous but loveable. I don’t know how she pulled it off. That class often got long and boring because we were sitting most of the time, and nearly running ourselves into the ground the rest of the day, so here and there we would ask her a question to get her off topic… she loved name dropping and getting off topic, if it meant she got to tell us a story about something amazing that had happened to her. She literally spoke with her nose in the air, but you had to love her. She was my only American teacher. Taught in Chicago. Some of the students actually had her as a teacher in the states.

So anyway, that is a taste of my favorite summer to date, but that is not entirely off topic. I had to kind of give you all a little back ground so that you might understand the weight that was lifted off our shoulders the final day of classes. No more scenes, no more rehearsing well into the night on the lawn while the bats dive at us, no more reading plays at all hours, or performing monologues to the walls… all was done. All was performed. We were free.

And in celebration of this, BADA put on a HUGE closing night dinner in the great dinning hall. And by great dinning hall I mean just that. We are talking Harry Potter style. 3 long tables of students, with the faculty at the table at the far end of the hall. Seriously, the movie was filmed just down the street.

We had a great meal- only the very first and the very last meal there were eatable… it was England after all- and all the wine and champagne one could drink. So we students felt that we could really let our hair down and have a good time. 140 kids, most of whom were under age, letting their hair down for a party with the faculty is a terrible, terrible idea. But alas, we had to comply. And party we did.

I can’t say that I remember dinner too clearly. There was great chocolate cake, but I can’t be sure if I actually remember that or if I only remember the pictures of it.

A well known actor spoke at the dinner- I’m not one for names, someone remind me who it was… he was in Shakespeare in Love- and I can’t remember anything that he said, but I remember being moved. When the time came for dinner to be over, even though we had been terribly over served as it was, MacTen decided that it would be a good idea to ‘barrow’ a few bottles of wine and take them back to our rooms before heading down to the dance, where more alcohol was being served. I think her logic might have been that they were charging at the dance, who can know for sure?

So about 10 of us went back to our room, MacTen the ringleader, and we had a few more glasses of wine before heading down to the dance.

I don’t remember the dance at all.

I do, however, remember telling MacTen that I was pretty sure I would be puking and her consoling me and telling me that it would be okay if I needed to do that. I remember going back to my room to drunk dial my boyfriend back in the states- this boyfriend is SinkinShip who will come into play soon as ‘cheat’ number 3- and of course getting off the phone angry. It was sometime in the morning for him, but don’t worry… he was drunk too. And I remember heading back down to the dance and sitting on the steps outside laughing at ALL the drunk people and watching the kids kiss whoever their crushes were throughout the summer. Alcohol has a funny way of lowering your inhibitions.

Then, all at once, MacTen told me that she just needed to throw up a little and she would be fine. Now, for MacTen to throw up… this is pretty much par for the course. For ME to throw up… well, there have only been 3 times that I have thrown up for drinking in my nearly 27 years. Age 20, Age 21 and Age 25. I am not proud of any of these. Surprisingly enough though, this night was not one of those nights, despite the fact that I had announced that it would be.

So anyway, MacTen and I head to the bushes, yes the bushes, and she ador places her finger down her throat. I have to marvel at her every time she does this. I have never been able to do it. My body fights throwing up like you wouldn’t believe. I have done the stick my finger down my throat game, I have even had someone else do it not believing I was doing it right, and nothing. Never. I just can’t make it work that way. But MacTen, she is a seasoned pro. So she handles her business in the bushes of Balliol college. But don’t worry, she was not out of place. As she was puking, a friend of ours comes up and pees in the bushes just a ways down from us. This is why, people, the legal drinking age should be 21. Kids just can’t handle their shit.

After this escapade, I decide to take MacTen back up to my room. As is sometimes the case, once the chamber is open, there is really no stopping it. It’s kind of a 50/50 game. It either frees up the rest of the night and everything is fine, or it makes everything worse. In this particular example, everything got worse. And if you have ever found yourself in a similar situation, you know that a best friend puking is as good as a shower and a cup of black coffee for a drunk person. I went from feeling sick myself to mom mode in about 20 seconds.

On our way up to my room, we stumbled across JumpSki. Now, at the time he was 28. Much older than the average student at BADA, but he was just as plastered as any one of them. This does make me think that perhaps it was not just the young age of everyone there… maybe there really is something in the water in Europe. JumpSki was like I have never seen him, and he was one of my closest friends. JumpSki had driven me home and held me up more than once in our past partying endeavors, so it was quite the surprise for me to find him in such a state. But what else could I do? I threw his arm over my other shoulder and led him up to my room.

Now, I have to take a minute to explain my room here. It was huge. Please take note of the pictures I have included. This college was built in 1212 by a group of magical gnomes. Well, that’s a lie, but it was magical.

My room was on the third and top floor. The winding stairway up to the third floor was cement and echoing like you would imagine a castle. And then of course my room was equally as imaginative; tall ceilings, fireplace, large open space, iron windows. It was beautiful.

In all these rooms there was a small sink. I tell you this because once we got in the room, both JumpSki and MacTen needed to use the sink at once. Luckily, an admirer of JumpSki’s and all around brilliant Irish lass, CrazyBuckley, came in at just that moment and was able to usher JumpSki to the bathroom in time. I, however, was left with MacTen and the sink.

This moment, and MacTen will confirm it, sealed our friendship forever. There is no way I will not love this girl for my whole life after what came next.

Vomit.

Lots and lots of vomit. Into the sink, yes, but just a little, no! And for some reason, she had to have the water running. I tried to turn it off, as it was filling the sink just as quickly with water as she was filling it with her dinner, but she insisted- between gags- that it be left on. And so it was. But this left me with somewhat of a terrible predicament. The sink was filling and there was no sign of letting up. There was only one thing to do, and I only had about 2 seconds to think about it…

Yes, I had to scoop the puke.

It was either that, or let it over flow onto the carpet. And if I let that happen, I would still have to clean it up and my room had a much higher chance of smelling like puke the remainder of the night, so yes, I decided to scoop. I am not ashamed. It was horrible, but I would do it all over again for her. Sorry to be graphic but once I got the chunks out of the drain, the rest kind of went down easier. And before long it was over… well… not exactly.

Shortly after this a series of events unfolded very quickly. A cute boy- the brother of one of my classmates whom I had been flirting with that night- came looking for me and I could do nothing but put him in charge of MacTen while I went in search of more towels. I peeked in at JumpSki, but he was in good hands with CrazyBuckley, so I tried to sneak into my hall mates room to steal some of her towels.

I opened her door, the light from the hall lit up her dark bed just in time for me to witness her throwing up into her garbage can. Shit. So I went inside, soothed her until she fell back asleep and then proceeded back to my room with the stolen towels. No sooner had I returned, did cute boy take off for good. But then, just as I was getting MacTen settled into the nice bed of towels I had made her under the sink, in comes her crush of the summer and up goes MacTen. It was as if she had never filled my sink. She was ready to rejoin the party, no problem. She doesn’t remember this part, but luckily neither does the guy. He too had been overserved.

MacTen finally passed out.

I moved to the bathroom with JumpSki. I must have spent a good hour in there with CrazyBuckley, while JumpSki apologized over and over again, not really sure if it were me or Buckley he was hanging onto. And as our bathroom was communal, and we occupied it for most of the night, we got the occasional head popping in to fill us in on the goings on of the rest of the students. As it turned out, most everyone was in rare form, and bad shape.

After a lot of coercion, I convinced Jump to leave the safety and security of the cement bathroom floor, as much fun as I was having in there, and brought him to my bed of towels to snuggle MacTen. Finally, the night was through. I slept in my bed, while my two drunk friends cuddled on the floor under the sink.

The next morning was… well… interesting. There were a lot of headaches and a lot of garbage, and unfortunately for the janitor, a lot of dried excrement everywhere. But it was also the day we all had to say goodbye… One of the harder days of my life I might add. Letting go of a summer like that, an experience like that, is not easy. The people you meet and the people you share that experience with are with you forever in a way. MacTen and I became the friends that we are because of that summer, but she was not the only one…

I had met another brilliant friend that summer: Will.

He doesn’t get a nickname. I have never seen him since, but I still count him in my best friends and because that summer was so huge in shaping me into the person I am today, he was a huge part of that as well. He was in my class and across the hall. I spent nearly every moment of that month with him and I got to know him better than most. When I think back to that July of ’05, I remember a lot of work. I remember endless studying and reading and never taking any shortcuts… always doing all the work. But I also remember hours and hours of conversation with Will and MacTen. I remember going to clubs. I remember trips to London, the bombings of London, and I remember scooping puke out of my sink. Truthfully, I don’t know how we fit it all in. But isn’t that always the sign of a truly good time?

So that morning, we all said our goodbyes. Looking back, I think those Brits are onto something, getting us all so drunk the night before we all leave each other. Everyone was so hung over and so worried about the brightness of the sun and catching their next mode of travel, that no one really spent too much time crying over those goodbyes. It was kind of just quick, like a band-aid.

It’s funny to think that that amazing program ended just that way, but it did. Random? I don’t know. Everything happens for a reason. Maybe I didn’t get to say all the goodbyes that I would have said, but who needs goodbyes? I was right where I was supposed to be, right Mac? I think so…

Mac, Me and Jump:

I hate Pigeons

My thought process for the blog today goes as follows:

The fella who lives behind my mother trains pigeons. Ever heard of such a thing? I mean who in their right mind wants to have anything to do with a pigeon? Pigeons are rats with wings… truly, that is their street name. Rats with wings. And to train them???? I just don’t know… So yes, the guy that lives behind my mom trains pigeons. Let me explain to you the extent of this pigeon training set up.

There is a ‘shed’ in his backyard. That is what it looks like anyway… but what it really is, is a pigeon house. It’s a huge shed that serves one purpose: To house pigeons.

This man comes outside with a silent whistle and an air gun and ‘trains’ these rats with wings. It’s really something to witness. He whistles (I assume) and the pigeons literally fly into the air, do some circles and shit in unison and come back down and go into this shed. Sometimes they hang out on the roof, sometimes he locks them inside, but if these pigeons don’t come back when he calls… well that is where the air gun comes into play. So far a lot of bird poop and a dead pigeon have been recovered in our front yard. I just don’t understand… but sometimes he has friends over to watch… He must be a big deal in the pigeon training world.

So as I was watching this man ‘train’ his beloved rats with wings I got to thinking about how much I really do hate pigeons. They are so gross and as MacTen would say: They are real reckless. They just have no shame and no fear. And if I were to trace my dislike/fear/hatred of pigeons back to it’s true beginning, it would have to be Europe. Specifically Paris.

So that of course got me on the topic of traveling and how grand Paris was, which reminded me of the fact that today is Thursday (Sisterhood of the Traveling Thursday) and so I really tried to develop this pigeon+Paris thing. Well, when MacTen and I were leaving Paris, we decided to not waste a day and instead travel via night train. So eventually, I will tell you about my experience on a night train… well two of my two experiences on a night train, but first, I must continue my pigeon tangent.

Pigeons in Paris are a different bread of pigeon. Like I said, they have no fear, they have no shame and they are real reckless. So these ‘Paris Pigeons’ often come with fewer toes than the average bird… maybe even some ruffled or missing feathers, and in the case of our friend ‘Stumpy,’ no foot at all.

While MacTen and I were waiting to board our first night train (see… there is a connection) we met Stumpy. Stumpy was inside the train station, which was not too terribly uncommon I’m sad to say- pigeons INSIDE places- and we couldn’t help but notice that he had no foot. The bird was limping. Like… he had a freakin stump! And he was just hanging in there like it was no skin off his back… which leads me to believe that there is no ‘survival of the fittest’ when it comes to pigeons. They just survive man. They just make it.

After meeting Stumpy and nearly gaining some sort of sympathy for the feathered fella, I was dive bombed by his friend for my snack and my hatred was complete. There was just no turning back. And quite frankly, after Norbert, I might have to lump all wild birds into this pigeon category, but we will just have to let the jury stay out a little longer on that one.

So the night train…

The night train was one place, maybe the only place, where pigeons were not an issue. They can’t really get onto trains, thank God, because that would make for an even longer train ride. However, when you flush the toilets, there is a trap door that literally dumps your dump onto the track, so that does leave an opening for said pigeons to crash the train party. So I can’t be sure that they have not found a way… but when MacTen and I boarded in 2005, there were no pigeons.

Now take a minute, if you will, to picture what you think a night train would be like. Think about all the movies and what not that you have seen over the years, and the stories you have read, and then forget all of that entirely. It is not even close to what you think. I mean maybe on some train somewhere, but not on this night train. Not on the Paris to Italy express!

MacTen and I found our ‘seat’ and it was in fact a bed. This is not the unexpected part. The room in which our beds were found was where things got a little… unexpected. First off, the door way to get into this ‘room’ was just wide enough for me and I am by no means a big girl. And the space between the beds once inside the room… seemed less wide than the door way somehow. Now, on either side of this claustrophobic space were three sets of beds stacked on top of one another: six beds total. These beds would not fit a person over 180. They just wouldn’t. But luckily there is something in the water in Europe making all Europeans below that weight so everything should have been hunky dory.

So MacTen and I found that our two beds were the top two, so we would be across the great divide from one anther, but we quickly realized this was the best place to be. At lease the top bunk had some more head room, but you DID have to climb down two strangers beds should you need to use the rest room in the middle of the night. Ups and downs ya know. So once perched in our beds, we realized that our luggage had to also fit in the bed with us. There was no extra luggage shelf or anything convenient like that. So we had to prop our head or our feet up on the backpack. We choose feet.

The train moved perpendicular to the way you had to lay in your bed, so if you struggle with motion sickness, as I do… it was be a long 10 hours.

The sad part is, after 10 hours in this coffin train, we were still in France. We had to take two more 3 hour train rides to reach our destination. But alas, we made it… more pigeons in Italy, don’t worry.

The second sleeper train we took, we were much more prepared for. We THOUGHT we knew what to expect. Sure we were now going from Italy to Austria, but we figured that it couldn’t be too much different than the first train, right? Well, no. Wrong.

The second sleeper train was chairs. The room was slightly larger and there were three seats that rode with their backs in the direction the train moved, and three seats that faced forward. There were even racks for our bags so MacTen and I were thinking that it was going to be a much smoother ride. If I had to choose, after my first experience, I would much rather try to sleep in a seat than in a sleeper car like the first trip… but the majority of the trains that run at night, only have sleeper cars. So we got what we got, but we still thought we would be better off traveling at night.

The idea behind these second sleeper cars is this: The three seats that face each other are meant to both slide out so that there becomes three beds. Now this would be quite remarkable if they only sold three tickets per car. The idea is completely lost if the car is filled with six people. NO ONE gets a bed.

Oh well, we thought and popped in our Ipod’s and settled in for the ride. In a normal daytime train, most seats face one direction, so you are not usually facing strangers awkwardly in a closed room. And it’s not usually  night time so you can look outside and not straight ahead and into someone else’s face. So the trip was proving to be slightly awkward. First of all, there were 100000 kids on this particular train and not one adult among them, so it was a lot of smashed faces on the windows and screaming and rushing around and well… a lot like pigeons.

And it was hot. It was uncomfortably hot on this train. I was sweating like a crazy person, and when you take into account that the average European (or so it seems) does not actually wear deodorant, a hot train is simply not acceptable.

But we made the most of it, first visiting with an Australian couple and then an Austrian couple who spoke very broken English… and yet, I have to say that the English they could speak was much more correct than I’ve ever spoken the language, so I have to give them that. And finally, we tried to converse with an Italian gentleman who had a lot of questions about September 11th.

At some point, we collectively agreed in all our languages to turn out the lights and try to go to sleep- or at least enjoy the incredible lightning storm that was happening. And after a few hours of restless sleeping, the Austrian couple sitting directly across from MacTen and I disembarked, and to our great relief, the gentleman who did come aboard sat across from the sleeping Italian man. EUREKA!

MacTen and I wasted no time in pulling down our two sides of the bed. I felt bad, but not really, because it was not our fault that the other guy sat in front of our Italian friend. Tough break.

The remainder of the trip was very restful. Sleeping the same direction that the train was moving and sharing more of what would be considered a full size bed was much more satisfying, when compared to our first night train adventure. And hey, when we woke up in the morning, we were actually in Austria. Oh yea, we were actually headed to the Czech Repub so I guess we did have to get on another train, but for some reason, that particular trip just didn’t seem as long.

So yes, the moral of this story is two part:

1) Make sure, if you can figure out how, that you get the ‘chair sleeper train with air conditioner’ rather than the ‘coffin bed sleeper train that rides you sideways’ and…

2) Watch out for those bloody rats with wings man… they’ll get ya.

Foggy London Town

I got a text this morning from MacTen about the rain, which in turn, inspired this blog today…

I know rainy days for most are dreary and depressing. But for MacTen and I, they remind us of some of the best days we’ve ever had in our entire lives.

I am introducing the category: Sisterhood of the Traveling Thursdays because I count myself among the lucky ones who have had the privilege of traveling the world. I have been to Europe on three separate occasions, visiting Spain, Portugal, England, Holland, Ireland, France, Italy, Czech Republic, and I stopped once in Austria.

I have also visited the Bahamas, Mexico, and many other US states and travel destinations. I love traveling. It’s one of my passions. I can’t wait to get on a train/plane/bus/tube whatever and head out on my next great adventure, which of course, always leads to a great story…

But for today, I will tell you only about my very first trip to England. Although it was my second trip to Europe, it was the first time I’d stepped foot in the city that would become my favorite city in the entire world (at least what I’ve seen of it):

London.

I will never forget the day MacTen changed my life. It was early 2005 and I was nearing my college graduation date and MacTen- only a great friend at that time, not a best friend- told me of her plans to go to the British American Drama Academy; Pretty much the most amazing program an actor can be so lucky as to attend.

MacTen is a brilliant actor. That is how we met. We were cast as women who fall in love in a brilliant play called Stop Kiss (which will also come into play later).  She was only a freshman then, and I a junior, but her talent was undeniable. It made perfect sense for her to audition for the BADA program. I, on the other hand, did not see myself the way I have now come to see myself at that time. I didn’t see my own potential, as so many of us fail to do.

So MacTen was telling me more about BADA- which I was already very familiar with- and about her plans to travel before and after the month long summer program. I have to tell you, I was crazy jealous because I knew she would be accepted to the program and I knew that she would go to all of these places that she was telling me about.

And then the real life changer came into play.

MacTen said: ‘You should come.’

And I said: ‘Okay.’

And so it was done. I would definitely describe myself as very indecisive, but when it comes to huge, life changing decisions, I tend to make those very quickly and with finality. I knew that whether I actually got accepted to the program or not didn’t matter, I would be going on that trip. It was just that simple.

If MacTen had not suggested it, who knows where or who I would be right now. I look back at this moment as one of the more pivotal moments of my life. I would have never considered going. I would have never thought that I was good enough if it were not for MacTen. But let’s not get too mushy here…

Long, brilliant story short, MacTen and I auditioned for the British American Drama Academy and were both among the 170 students world wide who were chosen to go and study at Oxford University. No big deal. We ate burritos after the audition.

So it was done. The plans were in the works. MacTen and I, with the help of our campus travel agent, had planned out our entire 2 month and some change journey from who we were to who we would become.

We left at the end of June 2005. June 22 if I am not mistaken. Our summer in Oxford was planned to start around the 2nd or 3rd of July, so we planned to spend a few days in New York (which we figured we should probably check out since we had been accepted to a program in Oxford and had never even been to New York), then onto London for a day or so. After a stop over there we were headed to Ireland for a weekend and then onto Amsterdam to meet up with the six other brilliant students from SDSU who were also accepted to the program (we had the largest amount of students accepted out of all the schools represented at BADA).

I would like to take this time to remind you that we were leaving San Diego for more than two months and visiting countless towns and countries, with no more than a backpackers backpack each. It is impressive enough to me that two girls were able to pack for two months with only one bag each, but just wait how impressive this story gets…

The morning of our departure, we dressed in ‘comfy’s’ as we call them (aka pj’s). We would be flying all day and we had a lay over and we were not anticipating landing in New York until nearly midnight, so what was the point of wearing anything but comfys?

Well, our first flight was delayed, which at the time we saw as a blessing in disguise. MacTen had her parents and boyfriend there and SinkinShip (my boyfriend at the time) was also there, so we were happy to have the extra time with them before leaving for what felt like forever.

Once we said our tearful goodbyes, boarded, and were in the air, we realized that we were officially on our own. I had her back and she had mine and that was pretty much all that we could really count on from that point forward. I have to tell you it was slightly terrifying, but also very exhilarating. That is until we realized that our first flight’s delay had pretty much eaten up our entire 3 hour lay over in Dallas.

Now I don’t know if you have ever been to the Dallas Fort Worth airport in Texas, but we had not. This airport, we quickly realized, should come with an instruction manual. I’m pretty sure it is it’s own town, with it’s own zip, maybe even it’s own country, I can’t be sure. The thing just goes on and on in all directions, and there just seems to be no rhyme or reason. But it was only mid day and we had slept some on the plane so we were not too out of it to find our way. Find our way… quickly I should add. We had all of 20 minutes, maybe, to get from one end of the airport to the other. We ran, RAN, the entire way… all the while hearing them announce our flight boarding and not able to do anything but run like the wind.

We made it, don’t worry, but it was quite a feat I promise you!

So MacTen and I continue our journey across the country to the city that never sleeps. We land there, as expected, around midnight.

From the air at night, New York sparkles. It was so neat to see it from the windows of the plane, knowing that this was the first step of our incredibly long trip.

From the ground, New York smells like pee and looks like a place people don’t feel guilty peeing. Well, at least the airport did at midnight that night. And now, MacTen and I are exhausted. The adrenaline all day and the running through city/airports and just traveling in general; it does a number on a person.

MacTen and I stumble our way through the thinning crowd to the baggage claim. Not that this is necessarily a problem, but we were pretty much the only white people there. Not to mention the ONLY white girls in comfys. But at this point, we just didn’t care.

We waited at the baggage claim, too tired to even talk to each other, and far too tired to try to think about how we were going to get to the hostel that we had booked only a few days earlier after our other plans had fallen through. So we just waited in silence. And we waited…. and waited… and then we just waited.

I couldn’t help but notice that the only three bags left circling the carousel had been circling it for the past ten rotations, but I was too tired to talk about it. And I mean, what are the odds that BOTH of us would lose our luggage?

The carousel comes to a stop.

Suddenly, it occurs to me that although we ran like the wind to make our connection in Texas… I can’t imagine someone else caring enough to make sure our bags got on the plane as quickly as we did.

So MacTen looks at me, and I kind of smile at her… and I suggest what I think is a perfectly logical thing to suggest when something like this happens.

“Let’s get some food.”

City never sleeps huh? I’m gonna call BS on that. No food. Not anywhere. Not in an airport that is open all hours of the day and night. Nope, all employees home asleep. Finally we find a vending machine that offers us sandwiches. It does the trick, but I have to say at this point, I am very unimpressed with the infamous New York City.

We enjoy our vending machine sandwiches and inevitably find ourselves at the baggage claim desk. I am absolutely certain that our bags are in Dallas. They have to be. It just makes sense. But the lady at the desk saw it differently. She tells us that there is no way of knowing where our bags could be or how long it might take to figure that out. Let alone how long it will take them to get the bags to us. Great help lady. The baggage claim desk must be where they send the doctors who FAIL the bedside manner exam.

So we do the only thing we can think people might do in NYC; We hop in a cab. All the while we are telling ourselves that it will all work out. We are using up our bad luck right up front and the rest of the trip will be smooth sailing… It will all work out tomorrow. etc etc etc.

We give the cab driver the address to our hostel, which I have to remind you again, we had only booked a few days earlier because our other plans had fallen through, and we had not had the opportunity to do any research on the place. The address is right around 100th Street… If you don’t know what that means, read on.

Harlem. That’s what it means.

So MacTen and I are looking out the windows of our cabs, clinging onto our belongings (well, what little we had) thinking ‘what the hell is the big deal about New York? This is disgusting!’ I had never felt more naive.

When the cab let us out on the street, we pushed our way past the cat callers that were perched on the porch of our hostel. We walk in the front door…

This place looks like a horror movie. No joke. Cockroaches, dripping, discolored walls that looks splattered in blood, floors that feel like they could give out at any moment, dead bodies, hookers… Okay not the dead bodies and hookers, but almost…

So we check in.

The man at the desk gives us a room key and points us up the stairs that look like they lead to an attic. I swear a step gave out under me on the climb up. We head upstairs, literally waiting for someone to jump out and stab us or shoot us or worse, and I would not joke about this. I am dead serious… no pun intended.

The room that matches the number on our key is essentially a closet with a bunk bed shoved into it. When MacTen and I squeeze into it, we have taken up ALL the rest of the room in the space. We try to close the door behind us… and it won’t even shut all the way, let along lock. NO go.

SO we go back downstairs, request another room and repeat the process. This next room is painted the most peculiar shade of lime green, and the white-ish bed spread is stained, and so are the towels that lay on top of it. The window is stuck in the open position and so all the sirens and the yelling and often screaming is right there for us to experience. LIVE.

At this point MacTen and I are delirious. We are trying to make the most of it (aka trying not to cry) and I am doing everything I can to make jokes. Our travel agent had given us a ‘travel sheet’ which I had stuck in my carry on for the plane. And thank goodness, because we ripped it up and placed it on the bed JUST so we could sit down on the nasty thing, and try to make a better plan.

I know it sounds drastic, but seriously, we could have died that night.

I had to pee so I made it down the hall to the bathroom and decided I didn’t have to pee that bad. As a matter of fact, I will never have to pee THAT bad.

It’s now nearly 2am in New York. We call MacTen’s parents to get them on the search for a new place to stay in New York. Of course the Plaza is pretty much our only other option with such short notice and on day one of our two month trip, we just can’t throw down that kind of cash.

About this time I remembered that my friend in California had mentioned that he had a friend in New York that we could call if we needed a tour guide or anything.  So I call my friend in California. Let’s call him JC (not just because those are his initials, but because he WAS our savior). He gives us the number of his friend who we will call: NOtsocoolnoAH.

Miraculously, NOtsocoolnoAH answers his phone at 2 in the morning to a number he does not recognize. I tell him who I am and who we know in common and he says that he remembers JC mentioning a friend of his who would be in town! Wonderful. Great start.

I start to explain to this stranger whom I have never met that we have found ourselves with no luggage, in hell on 100th or so street and desperate for rescuing. As soon as I say 100th street he literally says:

“Go outside, get a cab and have him bring you to this address…”

Just the way he said it made me recognize just how dire the situation was. I mean I knew we were in shit and could die, but he made it sound like we WOULD die if we stayed.

So we did what he said. We trusted that his place HAD to be safer than where we were, got in a cab and drove all the way down to Water Street. On the cab drive down there, I have to mention, that NY was making a come back. Manhattan should never be judged by Harlem as it turns out.

NOtsocoolnoAH was a champ. He had the futon laid out for us, a toothbrush for each of us, and some new comfy’s laid out in case we wanted to change. He made a great first impression and truthfully, he rescued us. I can’t thank him enough for that. But as our few days in New York went on, he revealed his true, strange colors… but I think I am going to skip ahead at this point and save NOtsocoolnoAH for another time…

Skipping ahead: We got our luggage on the thrid day. The last day we were in New York. And yes, don’t worry, we did not let the fact that we were in comfys keep us from sight seeing. Check out the pics if you don’t believe me. And we were given a hundred bucks from the airport for being inconvenienced which means we were at least wearing fresh undies.

So now, we are back on the plane, heading to London. Got our luggage, praying that it is still on the plane with us, and ready to check out a new city.

We land in London, head to the baggage RE-claim (which may I point out, is a more correct way of saying baggage claim. You are RE-claiming it after all), and then we find our way easily to the tube station in the airport. I will say that customs was a tad stuffy and crowded and annoying, but we HAD been traveling pretty much our entire life at that point, so give us a break. But truly, we loved London and we had not even been outside. The announcements were all in a cute British accent and all the signs made sense and it was so nice and clean and inviting. Drastically different from our first impression of NYC.

We hop on the tube (subway in London) and we are sure to ‘Mind the Gap’, all while smiling ear to freakin ear. We are just humming with excitement.

We find a seat and the tube starts moving and after a short time, we emerge from the underground tunnel and we are spit out into the English Country side.I could have cried. It was stunning. Stunning in such a random, quant way. Not stunning like NYC was stunning from the air; Stunning in the sense that London is exactly what I thought it would be. It was amazing. And it was raining, as it often is in London, which brings me full circle at last!

MacTen and I again found ourselves in silence but this time, unlike NYC, it was for an entirely different reason. We were simply mesmerized. There just were not words. Their are no track homes. The houses are not on top of one another. They are all unique and old and so British. And everything was so GREEN compared to the red brick buildings. The rain washed everything clean and it was just beautiful.

I can’t remember if we changed trains or not, but eventually we were let out in Earl’s Court, which again, would become one of my favorite area’s of London. With our backpacks on, rockin the comfys, there was no mistaking us for tourists, but at that point we didn’t care. We felt welcome enough.

We weren’t sure which way to head so I approached a gentleman who was sitting on his bike, reading a map. We asked him for directions, he smiled and immediately began his directions is the most thick British accent I’ve ever heard. I could hardly keep my face straight. I wanted to tell him how cool I thought he was, but I figured that would have been strange.

We found our hostel… which was nothing like the hostel in NYC. This was what you picture hostels to be- quant dorms with young people. Not whore houses with murder victims waiting to happen. They had our reservation, all was well, and we found our two person room. The room again was a small space with only a bunk bed and a desk in it, but it was so incomparable to the NYC hostel, that it’s not even worth describing the difference. Night and day, there you go.

At this point it was round 8am London time, and somehow we had lost an entire day. We only had about 4 hours of night on the plane, only 30 minutes of which we actually slept, and now, in London, it was a brand new day. So we gritted our teeth and headed out to explore Hyde park (which is another story entirely as well). After Hyde park, we came back to Earl’s Court and ate lunch at a pub down the street from our hostel. We were pretty much the only one’s in the pub, and the bar tender/owner, an Irish gentleman, took quite a liking to us. He was very curious about American’s and considered us some sort of authority on the matter. Let me tell you, we are not. Turns out I don’t know much about what it means to be an America.

Now in a food coma, and still trying to shake off our travels, MacTen and I decided that we would just lay down for an hour or so to catch our breath. We had been warned about doing this. We had been told to do whatever we could to try to conform to the time change as quickly as possible, but we were exhausted and we were only going to lay down for an hour or so.

We did not set an alarm.

We woke up at about 1030pm. We had slept an entire nights sleep. SHIT!

So we got up, took some Dramamine to get drowsy again in an attempt to get us back on schedule, and headed down to the internet. We sent out a few emails about our somewhat bumpy start to the trip and then headed out into the rain to the nearest pay phone. Again, we were taken aback by London. All we did was walk down the street in the drizzle to the phone, but there was just something so wonderful about it… almost as if London is meant to be seen in the rain. It’s meant to be overcast there because it makes the colors so much more rich and vibrant. I don’t know what it is.

We were in Europe for two more months and it rained a lot that summer. But I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I would not trade in one rainy day for a sunny one. Not one. And for that I will always enjoy the rainy and overcast days more than most. The rain reminds me of the hope and the relief and the majesty I felt when we came out of that under ground tube into the rain of London. It was brilliant. It was life changing… and I will never forget it.

I associate the rain with London. And London with life. If you’ve never been there, go. And bring an umbrella.

This is my ode to Foggy London Town.