Echo

One night, last week, I called my coworker late at night. He was going through this gall bladder flush program that removes gall stones and improves your joints. He had just taken a mixture of epsom salts and grapefruit juice followed by olive oil and grapefruit juice. According to everyone else in my office who’s done it, it’s some horrific stuff.

“How’s the flush?”

“Oh man, my body is a war zone.”

I laughed.

“You think you’re gonna make it into work tomorrow?”

“I don’t know, I really don’t know.”

“Well, I hope it works.”

“So…how was your gym experiment?”

“Really fuckin’ cool. I could see everything, man. How people were interacting, what kind of people they were just by watching them. And these guys kept trying to talk to me, but it was like something about me was making them all confused and stupid. They were kinda like little boys.”

“So red works, huh?”

“It’s unbelievable.”

“I don’t think it’s the red, honey. I think it’s you.”

“I know.”

“No, I’m serious. You’re like creating crazy energy right now and people are magnetized.”

“I know! It’s the craziest thing.”

I start laughing and can’t stop.

“It’s like their mental compasses go haywire. You should see their eyes.”

He laughs.

“Man, you got mad game.”

There’s a silence.

“So what are you doing right now?”

“I’m taking pictures of myself in my underwear.”

He cracks up.

“I’m really glad you didn’t tell me that at the beginning of this conversation, because I wouldn’t have paid attention to a single thing after that.”

There’s a silence. I change the subject.

“I don’t want to go to work tomorrow. It’s been getting really hard to focus on work. I mean, how the hell are we bettering the world by selling driver’s license scanners?”

“You’ve just gotta think of this as a small step in the master plan. You’re here so that you can do this while you get ready for what you really want to do with your life.”

“We’re completely wasting our potential.”

“Yeah, I know. I know…”

“Man, I’m in such a good place in my life.”

“Yeah, you can tell.”

“People just need to be themselves.”

“You seem totally different from the way you used to be, even at work.”

“Was I a jerk before?”

“No.”

“I was a jerk, wasn’t I?”

“No…you were different. You were more mysterious. Like you would talk, but then it was like the conversations didn’t reveal anything. And we just didn’t know anything about you. And you were always hiding in your office.”

“Yeah, I wanted to be left alone. I don’t think I was very happy.”

“No. But now you’re opening up a lot more, and you’re letting more people into your life which is a great thing.”

“You think I am?”

“It sounds like it.”

“Hey, what’s being a Scorpio like?”

“Hey hey, I can’t give away game plans. Snoop says, your game is to be sold, not told.”

“I’m not asking you for game plan, just what it’s like.”

“Well, we only do things for selfish reasons. I don’t do anything unless I’m expecting to get something out of it, or that it’s going to pay off in some way. You’re always talking about how you do things for people and don’t expect anything back…nu uh. I think of everything as an investment.”

“So everything you do has a motive.”

“Exactly. So us talking, just remember that I have a selfish motive. It’s not necessarily a bad motive…it’s just selfish.”

“Well, here’s the thing though. Us Gemini’s…if there’s one thing we know, it’s to never, ever let anyone catch you. Because if someone catches you, they can own you, and then you’re fucked. You have to be consistently one person for the rest of your life and we can’t do that because we’re all these people trapped in one person. It’s the guys in The Prestige…these facets inside us are all trying to act consistent enough to seem to belong to the same person, but it’s actually a bunch of different people that share one communication hub. They’re all in here and the reason we seem so enchanting to people is because we have so many different personalities, but we know the death of our spirit is for someone to catch us, because they couldn’t keep switching. Only one personality will be allowed to survive and that would mean the suffocation of the others. So we’re driven by this horror and we’re fucking fast. And you’ve gotta be able to catch us first. But no one’s faster than us.”

“Shit, we gotta catch you, too?”

“You can try. But no one is faster and more determined to not get caught than a Gemini. Except maybe a Pisces. Damn, Pisces are hard. I can’t stay away from Pisces. Maybe that’s the thing, Geminis are off chasing Pisces but can’t catch em, Scorpios are chasing Geminis but can’t catch them, and somewhere behind you, you’re driving some poor girl crazy.”

“Maybe a Virgo.”

“I can see that. You’re probably driving a lot of myspace girls crazy…”

We ended up talking about how each sign’s game plan differs, the secrets of how we draw people to us, but he was pretty serious about me keeping it a secret so I won’t post it. But I think if you really meditate on the symbols of astrology, you will find that they really really resonate at the core of people.

“Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.”

-Oscar Wilde

I’m Starting to Get It

I remember in college, I was lamenting to a guy that I actually liked that no one is really interested in me. He said, you can have a lot of guys, you just don’t try. I could have probably had something with him, but it was easier for me to say that I couldn’t get anything, as sort of a nothing’s-ever-gonna-happen defense.

And I think it’s worse than the fact I don’t try.

I’m absolutely terrified.

Yesterday, I was at Amoeba Music, one of my favorite places in LA. I was walking down the hip hop section and turned to go around this black guy in a baseball cap when he moved in front of me, almost bumping into me. I was caught off guard and he turned around and was surprised because he didn’t know anyone was behind him. In that split second, I noted that he had really nice skin and kind of looked like Allen Iverson, but cleaner. I didn’t think I had any expression on my face, but when I was browsing behind him, I thought I heard him mumble something to this black girl next to him, “Shit, she actin’ like [something something]” I thought he was talking shit, like telling her that I had given him a dirty look, so I turned around and looked at him. He’s looking at me and he says, “You were looking at me like you thought I was gonna hit you or something.” I was shocked so I said, “What?” because I didn’t think I heard right. He said, “You looked at me like I was gonna turn around and smack you.” I laughed and he laughed too, and it disarmed the moment. That seemed like an absurd read on me, and I thought he was gonna say that I looked at him with disrespect. But then I realized what he actually did perceive.

Fear.

So I thought about what was going through my insides at that time when we interacted. He had almost bumped into me and I was instantly irritated, but that gave way to curiosity while I sized him up. I actually appreciated his looks, though he wasn’t the type of guy I would want to date. But I did think he was goodlooking.

So while I was doing that internally, I projected fear? Apparently such an intense projection of fear for there to be no misreading of that emotion, so much so that he was compelled to comment that I looked like I thought he was gonna hit me, an action which makes no rational sense.

I thought about it a lot last night, because it seemed similar to the incident in the gay bar with the girl. I thought I had been friendly, even leaning close to the girl so I could attentively hear what she was saying to me, yet she was kind of offended that I wasn’t welcoming, and Brian read my body language as one of absolute petrification and terror.

In thinking about my dream last night, I remember one incident with the guy I had liked, where he made a suggestive comment about giving me a massage, and I froze. I felt my senses go completely raw, the way they do when you get in a car accident and you feel like you’re completely exposed and your senses are stripped, and adrenaline bursts through your system. I must have looked absolutely terrified. And yet, I really, really wanted to get close to this guy and the idea of getting a massage from him just blew my mind in a good way. Yet my primal reaction was terror.

Fear. Terror. Petrification. Why?

In this year of fearless living, I have been tackling these little fears one by one but I know which one is the biggest of all.

Why am I so terrified of letting the very people I want get close to me?

I chase after people who are not available, or only make an effort once they have changed their minds about getting close to me. I present a super spiritual side that seems so big as to discourage anyone from being bigger or stronger than me to see through me, but really it’s a massive smokescreen. I’m so soft and vulnerable inside, and terrified that someone’s going to get in there with sharp weapons and start swinging. So my projection of myself is very tough and in control, but how many people can see that it comes from complete and utter terror of being taken advantage of or rejected? And who is strong enough and trustworthy enough to venture in and find me? Because it’s almost a matter of life or death, the way it feels when I get scared of someone. And it’s always stronger when I do want to let the person in.

I talked to a friend today when I made this realization about my fear. I told him that nothing scares me more than when I have strong feelings for someone and those feelings are reciprocated. When they give me a sign that they want to be close to me, I freeze. I freak out. And I kill the moment. Of course it’s safer for me to be one of the boys. What absolute terror I feel when they find out my secret, that the truth of me is feminine and beautiful and desirable. What if they decide to just take it? I’ve got no defenses, outside of my camouflage.

More and more, I’m wondering what the hell happened to me that I can’t seem to remember what it is that can make me so scared of people seeing me as feminine and desirable. It’s becoming really hard to ignore, but really frustrating, because I don’t want to make up a memory, but I feel like all signs point to something being there, but I can’t get it to materialize.

It’s like a black hole.

There’s this girl I used to work with who was like my doppelganger. I didn’t think she looked that much like me because I thought her face was really crude, and something about her energy was very manic and uneven. She had issues with her Asian-ness. She was in a band and was covered in tattoos, and she projected this persona that was hyper-sexual and domineering as well as a “true” persona that was intelligent and prudent. She did have a lot of power over men.

I say she was my doppelganger, because I showed my brother a picture of her once, and he thought it was me (I was kind of insulted because like I said, there was something very crude and cruel about her energy and her face that I would hope I don’t carry), and also, the guy I was dating left me for her, and wanted me to keep our previous relationship a secret (he was a dick so they really deserved each other).

Well, I always knew she was gunning to seduce him. We were the only Asian girls in the office so we would chat in Chinese and she would ask me about him. I realized at some point that she was asking me very pointed questions, and that’s when I knew that something had already started between the two…she was trying to figure out what was going on between him and I. I knew it was happening but I didn’t say anything or confront him. I wanted to see how it played out. Even after he broke up with me because “you’re the kind of girl a guy marries, and I don’t know if I ever want to get married” (haha, please), she would keep trying to figure out what was going on in my life romantically, which made me think he wasn’t making her feel very secure either (like I said, the guy’s a jerk).

Well, I knew it was her for sure because one night, I had a dream where I called him and she answered the phone, even though I had never seen them together in my waking life. But one day, we hung out and he was telling me how much he missed having intelligent conversations. But then the conversation turned (I can’t remember how), and he blurts out that he doesn’t want to get back together because he’s seeing someone. So I laugh and say, “Is it []” and he freaks out. He used to always freak out when I pulled seemingly psychic crap on him. Well, of course it was her. And later, he wanted me to keep it quiet that we had ever dated cuz this guy has a history of dating girls in our office. I ended up quitting because I just want to go to work to work, not be involved in drama with stupid people.

Anyway, so I had this dream last night. I was in med school and it had just started so I was really excited and proud of myself. I was there with my new friends, including this guy that I had briefly dated a couple months ago and still have some lingering feelings for. So I ran into her and it was friendly, like she knew what she had done and I knew what she had done, but we chalked it up to us having gotten involved with a shitty dude. So I invited her out with us and she was really relieved and said how she was really excited to be able to go out and not have to wear name brands (I guess she was working in retail and she was happy to be able to dress closer to her personality).

So we’re all riding in this van and we go to pick her up and she’s dressed up the way she dresses, real hip and punk. The guy I liked was sitting in the front seat, and I was really happy because he and I had just started dating and were in the phase of being excited about each other (though a part of me remembered that things had gotten broken down in the past). It was like we were in this new place and excited, though it was still a precarious connection. So she gets in and she sees him. We’re driving along and she whispers, hey I know that guy. We met a few years ago at a concert and dated for a bit, and I totally fucked him a few times.

Oh man.

See, in real life, we had never slept together, and it wasn’t from lack of desire on my end. But to hear that this girl who had already lured away someone I had dated, had also had a history with someone I was currently into, and had not only fucked him but currently, appeared interested in getting something started with him again…it was like my insides collapsed.

When I woke up, I was very, very sad. I just felt like this girl, this dark, stormy hyper-sexed persona, steals everything that I cherish, and at the end of the day, the people I want will always want her more.

I know this is an easy dream to analyze. I am resisting being that person, my dark side who knows how to use her power to get what she wants, my Scorpio energy.