Alive and conflicted as ever

The girls in my life bring confusion. I'm in Lagos and things have got even more complicated than they previously were. I declined to bring my girlfriend of over a year here. I wasn't ready for the commitment that entailed. Nevertheless giving up the best relationship I ever had, especially when the ex was dead set on carrying on with it, whatever the challenges she had to surmount, was really not an easy thing at all. She didn't make it easy. But I was scared enough of what allowing her to come here would mean, to my ability to adjust to the environment, to my place in the social firmament and the business community, to my family and their expectations, that I stood my ground when last I saw her and made certain she understood that I intended to be alone for the next portion of my journey as an adult.

Of course, that was a lie. I've long since lost my ability to be alone. So here I am in Lagos, trying to date, trying to keep things light. I promised myself this would be a year of promiscuity and fun. I've dabbled in multiple flings but these things evolve as they will and I now once again find myself in a difficult position. One of my flings is threatening to become something more serious, something I'm of course not ready for. An older lady (what a surprise Flint!), she, like my ex, is far more ready to settle down than I am. She wants a relationship with the possibility of something real (read marriage, babies and full accoutrements) while I just want the hot sex and fun side of things. Knowing that we want different things, and having been completely honest about that, we ought to just walk away from one another. But of course, as we're good enough together that she's considering a real relationship, that's easier said and done.

My affectionate nature will be the death of me. If I were able to be a little less considerate of people's feelings and a lot less affectionate in my flings, I might have a decent chance at being a playboy of some sort. But combine my unreadiness to settle down with the ease with which girls feel comfortable around me and my easy affection for them, and you have Flint 2.009, serial heartbreaker. I do not like this.

Of vice and indulgence to come

It's 7.13 PM and I've had two vodka tonics. I'm pleasantly buzzed and eating a cup of chocolate pudding, remnant of my week of soft foods after having my wisdom teeth taken out. A barbaric process that, more traumatic than a car crash (which I have experienced), one that will be thought of in the future along the same lines we currently think of foot binding and female circumcision. I'm still taking Vicodin to sleep through the night because the throbbing in my tortured gums is distracting as monkey at the fucking opera. Thus I feel entitled to indulge my vices a little, enabled in this by the movie Factotum, which is a pleasant indulge in masculine irresponsibility. It's not really a good movie, lacking in the humanity that enlivens Bukowski's work. Matt Dillon is an amazing degenerate but his voice really is no substitute for Bukowski's writing. This is a hollow shell, pleasant in it's callow drunkenness and misogyny but ultimately irrelevant. Nevertheless, vices are being indulged and it seems such a pleasant thing that I feel like I should just go on ahead and do a little indulging of my own.

So then, let us count. Where do I begin, what are my vices? Well... it's hard to think of any. I drink in moderation, eat like a big man but not quite a hog and fuck, with regularity and a fair amount of passion, the very same woman over and over again. Hastening past the irrelevance of my dalliances in booze, I should point out that sex is all that's 0n my mind. In three months I bring to a close eight and a half years of living in North America. It's been a wild ride and the entirety of my adult life. I've grown to be the person I always wanted to be and knew I had in me, although there is much left to accomplish. Nevertheless the portion of the journey is coming to an end and sooner than my mind is able to comprehend, I will find myself irrevocably and resolutely a member of a society much more conservative and less open than the one I'm currently in. Thus it is my intention to indulge, not a little bit, but a lot. Certainly not in booze or drugs (besides the aforementioned Vicodin, which I'm hardly abusing) but in things that might be considered "perverted," in sex copious and casual and fulfilling as I can manage. You should join me. It'll be fun.

Dispatch from the land of ever thirsting drinkers and the one who must serve them

Day 6 of 7: The insane work week continues. The degree has now been complete for almost a week, yet not a moment have I had to go forth and enjoy what ought to be an immense freedom. Instead I spend all my days in a dark cave pouring drinks for ever thirsty New Yorkers who demand I be available from the first blush of daylight till the world is once again swallowed in darkness. I feel I am perhaps being swallowed myself. I must sally forth, break free of those who keep me in the cave, through a mix of stunning incompetency in failing to hire enough staff and a cunning reading of my inability to leave them to fall to their rightful fate. I shall sally forth and return my phone calls, celebrate the completion of my degree, regain a semblance of the life I once had before work, the thesis writing process, the thesis approval process and the unbelievably stressful family celebration of the actual graduation took over everything.

There will be freedom, to roam and to relax, to play and to recover, at the end of this period but it is hard to imagine at this moment. Not when I must report back to the cave today and tomorrow, and then with barely a day's rest, be back again on Friday. No it is hard to imagine that freedom. But how sweet it will be.

There is a girl (there is always a girl). Perhaps she will be different. Actually she already is different. We came a long towards one another over a greater time than I've ever done before we finally came together. I do not have to discover her anew. We have spent a lot of time learning one another. She is amazing. And yet I am scared. What have we done to our friendship by making this move? How will I stay satisfied and quell that restlessness that ends each of these things so certainly?

I don't know the answer to these things but shortly I will be free to find out. I will escape the incompetent restauranteurs I am bound to for long enough to have life again and find different employment that will not keep me so long in one spot. And I will return to this blog world once again with tales of my adventures and misadventures. Thank you for your well wishes. I look forward to returning to join you.

My regards from the cave,
Your loyal blogger, bartender and now Master of the Arts,
Flinty McFlinterson

Howl

I am capricious. I struggle to cross onto the thirtieth page of a thesis that ought to have been done nine months ago and eat double fudge brownie ice cream out of the container with a minimum of enjoyment. I contemplate ending things with one lover when I see her tonight but yelp with joy when this creature of amazing physical beauty and remarkable coyness I met the other night sends me a message. I listen to blues songs I discovered while researching the thesis that defeats me, rare within my music collection for the fact that I actually paid for rather stole them. I sit in despair in front of pages that will not fill in the day time and reward myself for my lack of focus by partying at night like Armageddon cometh. My sex life is molten but my romances empty. I feel dissolute, my energies unfocused. I romanticize failure and despise myself for it. I am self indulgent, even in writing this.

Two lovers and a friendship that can go no further.

I'm sleeping with two women, both Jewish and both smokers (a strange coincidence as I rarely date within either group). As always I'm passionately ambivalent about them both. The sex is wonderful with one. I'm totally physically wrong for the other, but by Jove the woman has an amazing mind. This year I've learned very well the power of being seduced by the mind. There are two women in my life whose capacity for thought, wit and knowledge amaze me beyond any one, male or female, I have encountered before. One is the one I just spoke of, a classroom rival who passion in arguing against my points caused me to suspect she might shortly stab me in the back with a pencil and wonder if I'd once used and jilted her in a drunken haze. l now know she is simply unable to be argue without arguing passionately and personally. Things other people view from a distance, she holds dear to her heart and when I once triggered one of those passions in bed, I had the very first instance of a woman being so furious with something I'd said that she left my embrace and paced the room as she berated and argued with me. In the calm afterwards, she said "fighting turns me on," and I thought of Jane who once said something to the effect of wanting her romances to be positive not adversarial or manipulative. I don't mind arguments, as long as they are about things of substance. Friction over insignificant things irritates me and is occasionally a source of rancor in this relationship yet I find myself mostly admiring of that diatribe in bed the other night. On some things she was right and in others wrong, but it is hard not to be awed by anyone who holds her beliefs both intellectual and moral so strongly and holds forth on them so eloquently. I find that our chemistry in bed is limited by the basic fact that we're like puzzle pieces from different boards. I'm tall and broad and she is small and lithe and despite the fact that I think her hott, there is an almost comical aspect to our mating. I'm far more experienced than her in bed, which she enjoys but I often wonder if this relationship might be better as a friendship. The thing that keeps me in her bed though, aside of her amazing mind is this openness you don't get except with the intimacy of sex. As someone pointed out to me, it's a lot harder to keep your walls up once you've parted your legs and so there is this revelation that I love and am astonished by that I don't know will continue if we go back to being friends.

Speaking of friends though, the other woman who has seduced my mind is one of those and has caused me no end of consternation. It is testament to how busy I've been of late that I never came here to inquire of your opinions about my dilemma. In short, she is everything I have ever written of wanting in a woman in this space (but for one little thing). She lives close to me. We spend incredible amounts of time together. She is as smitten with me as I am with her. She isn't taken. She's actively looking. That little thing that isn't what I want though is no little thing. I'm not attracted to her physically or sexually. I'm shallow in many ways but I like to think I'm able to put that aside for things that matter. Yet in the matter of romance, I would argue that attraction is extremely important. You can't date someone you're not attracted to. Your eyes will never stop wandering. And still... She is everything I want. Intelligent, kind, thoughtful, intense but playful, lover of art, dedicated to things greater than herself. Her interests and mine coincide in many places and she is by far the best conversationalist I know. And like I said, we're both kind of crazy about one another, except I can't get over that little thing. This happened over time. We known each other over a year. It's just taken some time for us to come to realize how much we like one another. And we've actually confronted this. I begged off, giving no real reason, simply letting her know I thought her amazing but thought it better we remain friends. And she's dealt with it and we've stayed friends but it continues to float in the air because these things don't go away so easy. I'm still conflicted but very much aware of the damage it'd do our relationship if I tried this and it failed. So I'm not sleeping with her.

The other woman I am sleeping with has caused me to reexamine my belief in Succubus. Frankly the woman is insatiable, which is incredibly fun but a mite alarming. Were it not for the fact that we are not able to see each other very often, I doubt I'd ever get anything done. Every time she has spent the night, I've found myself scrambling to get to anything on time the next day. And we've as often just fallen into bed together as made it to whatever event or activity we'd planned for a date. The sex is amazing and she is interesting enough in her own right, but I find there isn't much to our relationship, particularly when I compare it to the two others in which I feel like I'm constantly learning to see the world in the new ways and seeing myself in new perspectives. So I wonder all the time if I should end it and spend my time on more productive things, or if I should shut up and enjoy the sex and let the other relationships be what they will be. A permanent state for me, this ambivalence. Nothing is ever cut and dried.

K2

Long, jagged scratch on my back, still healing, scattered cousins beside it, like the wicked outline of K2's peak, lesser mountains in the back. It hurts when I touch it, so enjoyable a reminder... Nevertheless must be careful with this one, heavenly nights and regretful mornings and all that.

Stuff

I wonder where heads of state and royalty keep all the crap they are given when they travel around the world. Where does all that stuff go?