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tamadori
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Name: Shawn
Country: United States
State: California
Metro: Los Angeles
Birthday: 11/2/1981
Gender: Male
Interests: Travel, Anime, Food, Art, Music, Literature, Prose, Movies, Sleep, Frat, etc.
Expertise: Fobbiness ::laughs::
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  tamadore
Member Since:
4/2/2003
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| After a 15-hr. workday yesterday, I wanted to leave work early today. Things didn't pan out that way and I ended up only leaving an hour earlier than usual, however, I decided to go to B&N at the Prudential Center and read the 3rd installation of the Flamel series. I stayed there for 3 hours and finished the novel, cover to cover.
I'm still making my way through "The Kid" by reading it on the T, but that doesn't give me a lot of time to make any real headway. It does, however, give me some pretense to steal glances at attractive men riding on the T, not that I notice much. Seeing these sprinkling of men I find attractive reignite my own sense of awkwardness and ineptitude at dating. I realize that I'm single again, and that I shouldn't hide behind books and work, but while I do want to find to love me, I am not in a position to put my best face forward. Since I'm trying to cut costs, I haven't gotten a haircut in a couple months and I don't particularly feel attractive with my plain-Jane hair.
The first step to recovery is self-love. Facial. Haircut. Good clothes. I won't attract a date if I'm not attractive to myself.
Step two: Refocus my center. Cleanse my spirit and get a fresh new attitude. The cup is half-full.
Step three: Along with a new attitude is relearning to be okay with singledom.
Step four: Go out and meet folk. Explore. Converse. Put myself out there to make connections, friends or otherwise.
Step five: With three and four, live my life and see where the cards fall. Rather than worry, I may as well channel that energy and stress to applying for grad school...
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| My co-worker and I bought bus tickets and went to Portland, Maine on Thursday after work and returned on Saturday morning before the Labor Day festivities. It was chill and I enjoyed that quaint New England town. The best part was that while I was there, I read two novels (the first two installations of Michael Scott's "The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel" series) and got free room and board (my co-worker's relatives let us stay over and eat at their Japanese restaurant, Fuji Sushi, YUM!).
Anyway, back at my apt., the bed that the Interim Director of my office loaned me kinda sucks and leaves me achy in the morning. I'm thinking I want to look into getting a bed-topper, hehe.
On Sunday, after trekking through the Blue Line and visiting Revere Beach, I conked out in the afternoon and woke up many hours later at midnight. Having slept the afternoon away, I decide to eat a quick dinner (I wasn't up to cooking, lol) and curled up to read a new book I bought the week before, Armistead Maupin's "The Night Listener." Boy, was that such a great read! I cried and cried!
The characters were very real to me and the breakup scene just tore at me. I couldn't help but think about my own recent breakup and for the first time, I really mourned. So as I read, and as the tears fell down my cheeks, my hand wiped away at my nose only to find that it wasn't just runny but gushing. I look down and my hand is covered with blood. As I try my best not to drip onto the bedsheets, I'm kicking off the covers and jumping off the bed. Drip... drip... drip onto the floorboards.
In the mirror, I look like a hot mess. My eyes are red and scarlet is caked onto my nose, face, and lips. I try to keep my mouth closed as I lather soap on my face and rinse. I didn't want to taste the iron.
Staring at my reflection in the mirror, I thought about my ex and at the pathetic image staring back at me. Only, I didn't feel pathetic, just sad and lonely. I reach for a pair of tweezers and clean up the eyebrows, just a little (I don't want to look surprised). All clean. No more blood or uni-brow.
Back in my room across the hall, I wipe up the blood on the floor and rinse out the tiny droplets that landed onto the white pillowcase. Cool, all clean and good as new, but as I get back into bed, I pull the covers over me only to find yet another red stain on the white/black duvet. Crap. As the duvet is heavy and already neatly spread out on the bed, I decide to use a wet paper towel to mop up the blood. It works, thank god.
I finished reading the book around 5 in the morning when the birds began to chirp and cars scurried outside my window. I called my ex later that day. It's been two months and we're patching up our friendship slowly. It stings but life goes on.
Books have become a place of solace. And since I don't have a library card yet, I plan to hole up in a B&N or Borders for a day and read the third "The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel" book (the darn thing costs $18). In the meanwhile, I've borrowed Dan Savage's "The Kid," which is a hilarious memoir about gay adoption, from a friend.
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| 1:30am
I'm in Boston's Jamaica Plain sitting on the couch that is my bed listening to the pants and moans of my friend's roommate's trick coming from upstairs. In the last two weeks, my friend's roommate has hooked up with at least 5 men that we know of, found, of course, through dedicated time on manhunt.com.
Back track to the first night I was crashing at my friend's couch two weeks ago. On the first night, my friend, let's call him Pete, joked that his roommate was a tall lanky "rice queen" and that it'd be funny if we got together. I let that slide. Having just gone through a breakup, I am not in any frame of mind to date. So I meet the roommate, let's call him Joe, and it turns out that Joe owns the duplex and rents it out to my friend and a musician who lives on the first-floor unit (my friend and I are on the second-floor while Joe has a lofted bedroom on the third, which I've never gone up to).
A couple of nights go by and I learn that Joe was in a seven-year relationship with a Taiwanese man and has since been single for the last year. They had owned a restaurant together but sold it off. Well, sometime later that week, my friend Pete goes off to his weekly sports practice while I stay in the house to rest and adjust to the recent move. Joe comes down from the loft and asks if I wanted anything as he was on his way to get groceries. I say no and he leaves. I'm exhausted from work and from the heat and humidity so I nod off. A few hours later, he comes back and asks if I was hungry and wanted to have dinner. I had a half of a leftover sandwich from lunch the day before so I said I'd just nuke that.
As he was cooking, he said there was a lot of food so I should have some, and being me, I said sure, I'll have a little (just to be polite). The next thing I know, Joe is walking towards me and hands me a heaping bowl full of baked chicken over rice while I'm working on my laptop. It was awkward since it felt like he deliberately cooked just for me and that this was a date. We have small-talk and I couch my responses to be noncommittal. Joe tells me about how much he loves Taiwan and Asian culture and asks about my Master's thesis. Turns out, he's also a historian, but went into Architecture for the money. Joe mentions that Pete and him don't see eye to eye about his dating habits, referring to how he hooked up with a guy in the house the night before. It was only later when Pete comes home that I get the full story about Joe and his infamous chicken dinners.
The gist goes: Joe looks for love in all the wrong places and complains to Pete all the time. Pete understands but cannot empathize since Joe is engaging in unhealthy/unsafe sexual behaviors due to his low self-image. Pete takes me outside and explains to me that he's furious with Joe for making a move on me, especially the day after hooking up with some guy off the internet. Not only does he feel bad/mad that his roommate hit on me, but Pete also felt embarrassed for Joe. Pete is offended too since Joe never cooks for him but will cook for complete strangers even after 2 years of being roommates. Of course, there's also a safety issue since Joe hooks up with random people and brings them over and has sex with strangers that are HIV positive. Pete fears that Joe could get hurt by a psychotic killer just like it did to another friend. Also, apparently every time Joe tries to impress a guy, he will cook chicken: fried chicken for his Black tricks, baked chicken for the rest. Pete's nickname for Joe is fittingly "one-trick pony."
Since then, I've been avoiding Joe lest I lead him on by being friendly. It was nice that someone was interested in me, but thankfully, the feeling wasn't mututal. Still, all this got me thinking about the possibility of dating again sometime in the distant future, and I'm afraid. I don't know if I can find someone with whom I get along with as well as I did my ex. I don't know if I could deal with trying to go through the process again of weeding out guys. It literally disgusts me to think that I may have or will date gay men who engage in such risky behavior.
Assuredly, not all men do this, but right now, I don't believe I'll ever attract a quality guy. It seems that only pathetic men are attracted to me (self-defeating, I know). I'm totally aware that I am not ready to date, much less think about it so there's no need to send me any pep talks. Life isn't bad right now. I'm just disheartened and I will get over it.
I texted my ex tonight and his reply made me cry..
So as I wrap up this long-winded entry, the trick and Joe duck into the bathroom together for a shower after their session. It's tacky to bring a trick over when you have a guest, particularly if you have a crush on your guest. How do people do that? What makes someone so desperate? I sometimes wonder if I would ever behave like Joe and the answer is always, I'm too much of a prude and romantic to hook up (not to mention, I'm not too keen about getting an STI).
Oh, Joe baked some chicken with potatoes. That was a clear sign that something was going down tonight, shoulda known, shoulda known, hahaha.
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| Recently, I keep thinking of what my sister once told me about how she felt regarding online blogs and updates. She said something to the effect of why put yourself out there for the world to see? What's the purpose of telling the world how much you aren't able to cope with the comings and goings of your life? What's the use of telling people how much pain or suffering you are in, especially to strangers who can't really help alleviate your problems? I recently broke up with my partner and moved across the nation to get over him. It's not working. I'm keeping very busy at my new position, but when I slow down, I drop into a sad pit of despair. Why blog about that? It's not like anyone is going to come save me from my own process of grieving. I'm not quite sure how to move forward. If life is a conveyor belt (like at the airport), then I'm standing still, keeping up with it, but I'm not the one propelling myself towards a destination. I'm passively letting the belt lead me across the passing of time and space. Sure, there are plenty of shops and restaurants along the way, but I have no direction as I am led forward. I don't know what my next step is as I nurse a wounded heart (I darenot say broken since I truly believe time heals). So here I am, writing what I thought I ought not to. Jesus take the wheel... | | |
| So I am asleep in my cozy bed when I get a phone call from an unlisted number in the morning telling me I had won 150,000 U.S. Dollars! I'm like, what? The lady is speaking Chinese to me and at first I'm confused. She's like, I'm from "Hangkou Science & Technology Co., Ltd." and you've been chosen as our 2nd Prize sweepstakes winner, congratulations! She goes on and on about how big the company is and how they're expanding in Mainland, in Hong Kong and in Taiwan, how I should've heard about them (I say no and she goes on to explain that since I'm in America that's not surprising, but they're expanding to the U.S. in June), blah blah blah, and then is repeatedly interrupted by incoming calls. She says excuse me and picks up the call while I'm still on the line and I can hear her say things like "Oh, I'm sorry, the microwave you won only comes in one color..." etc. Then she comes back to me and asks how would I spend the money and if I'd invest it. Then she asks for some identification number so I can claim the prize money. I reply, I'd rather fill out a form so could you mail one out to me. She says, oh the form is a simple one that we fill out on the computer and verify online. I tell her that I don't trust giving out my information and she tells me to go online and visit: www.boleno.com. I go and read up on the company. Ooh, they use flash animation...
Now she's like we called you before telling you about our live drawing in Los Angeles but you didn't make it. The other contestants got to take their prizes home with them and since you didn't pick up your check, we'll have to wire it into your account, may I have the name of your bank and the account number? And may I also confirm you name in English? I tell her that I can't find my account number and she responds: if you're worried, go ahead and give us an account that doesn't have much funds on it, that way you can track if funds are taken out and you can see exactly when we deposit the amount. I tell her I'll call her back and she gives me her name, Ms. He Xiuxia (supposedly from Taiwan and now working in the Hong Kong branch). I hang up. She calls again twice... I ignore the calls.
I hate to say, but at first I was skeptical, then I was kinda lured in the longer she talked to me, but when she asked for my personal info. I knew it was a scam. Recounting the call, I should have known immediately when she didn't put me on hold to recieve another client's call. If your company can afford to give away 150k, it can afford call waiting. Another hole was their website. I looked at both the Chinese and English versions and needless to say, the English was Chinglish at best... If the company was as big and successful as "Ms. He" was saying, it can afford some English translators, especially if they're based in Hong Kong!!! The site also looks crappy, but real enough so that most people probably wouldn't know the difference. Also, wtf does "boleno" have to do with "Hangkou Science & Technology?" That's totally a rip-off from the well known "Baleno" clothing company. Damn vultures preying on the ignorance/naivete of consumers... tricking people since the name sounds legit. I feel bad for all those senior citizens who are being lured into these schemes... I've reported this to the authorities in Hong Kong but dunno if it'll help... In this economic recession, I can only imagine how many people become desperate enough to fall for this scam.
You can find more information about scams at: http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/sweepstakes.php
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