Echo

Here comes the passion of the julia.

I think the underlying reason when I assume an arrogant dismissive tone in regards to people I meet is because I appreciate experiences and meetings for what they are, but I feel guilty knowing they want to attach to me and I’m never gonna let them. They tell me meeting me is such a unique connection, they’ve never experienced it before. The guy who proposed to bring me in as a partner to run his company yesterday said in his whole life, he’s only met one person with his level of passion…me. I’m flattered, but am so aware of disparity.

To them, this connection feels so powerful and unique, it has to mean something. But to me, these connections happen fairly often and I’m no longer so naive to think they all mean something or try to make more out of it than there is. And that’s where I feel guilty. I know they are making more out of it than it is, and it makes me feel like an instrument of extreme inspiration followed by perpetual disappointment.

Ready to leave Denver.

Lots of exciting developments. New partnerships. I seduced an entire company.

2 job offers, two offers to introduce me to my future husband, one man who almost got his heart broken by following his gut.

I went off on one woman who dared to power play me.

I was a juggernaut of charisma.

Plus I coulda sworn he had a wedding ring on the first day we met…

When a man, in mixed company and under duress, blurts out apropos of nothing that he has a big dick, you can bet on two things:

His male ego is agitated.

He has a big dick.

What I think it is is some kind of gravitational force.

I had two dream synchronicities too, where I found myself in a situation that I’d already experienced in a dream.

The first, so I was sitting across from Dave’s former manufacturer, and it’s like nemeses who have been fighting in the dark for so long, then finally see each other in the light. When I saw him, I thought about how I’d just dreamed of Dave. I wanted to ask Dave if this guy was the salesperson he said he hated, but didn’t really want to contact him. I try to be as uninterested in him as possible on principle. I tried to watch Desperate Housewives on my phone but the picture quality was so bad it was blurry like an old TV. My mind would drift off into really wanting to tell someone what that guy did. I sat on it for a day, then as I was getting lunch on the promenade the next day, I decided to text him. I was sitting on a bench with a group of drugged up bohemian kids hanging out nearby, eating a chicken pad thai I bought from a cute Asian woman in a little food cart. I texted him asking if his former rep was named Shawn. While I waited and ate, I realized I had the perfect comeback. I was so excited about what I wanted to zing him with, finally a way to balance out everything in our karmic circle. I was both anxious that he wouldn’t write back and anxious if what I wanted to say was inappropriate, then irritated I was giving it so much thought. At the same time, I was picking through my food and said in my head, “Is this chicken?This is not chicken,” and bam. Lightning went through me. I looked around. This scene was what my dream had Picasso’d.

Epilogue. I got to say to Dave: If your ex-lovers are as jilted as your ex-manufacturers, I’m glad I dodged that bullet.

It feels good to have said it.

Second synch. The night before I left for Denver, I had a dream I was playing basketball but didn’t have my basketball shoes, only my new running shoes which I do not trust at all for basketball. I decided to go ahead and play, but I was playing poorly because I was not stable and couldn’t cut in my shoes and didn’t want to get hurt.

When I went to play basketball with the guys from the conference, it was a mini half court gym where the three point line just curved into walls on each side. Small space and I was wearing those running shoes which I packed at the last minute but I couldn’t really cut in them and was worried I would get hurt so I only played at 40% aggressiveness. I beat two guys at one on one and then our team won about 7 games of two on two in a row except the last one. I didn’t play poorly but I felt bad about my performance because I knew I wasn’t playing at my usual speed. That night I tosses and turned, thinking about basketball that day when I suddenly realized the images I was seeing now and the feelings were the same as from my dream two nights earlier. But this time my mind was running through them as memories.

How bizarre. I think some people have a thinner partition between the present and the future. Sometimes in our dreams, we encounter bits of the future.

Magneticism. It’s next level shit. I am owning it and owning it and owning it well in Denver.

My mind fucking has reached sublimation. And it’s so good because I put all of myself into it.

I didn’t even have an idea how I ended up on this trip except Jodie said, “Do you want to go to Denver next week?” and I said sure. The company I was supposed to meet, Emulex, was flying me in for a conference, and I thought the name sounded like a childrens’ medication. Didn’t have time to look into it because it was busy and then I went to Tahiti. Was back for one day, had asked some passing people what Emulex did, and not knowing at all what I was going into, I figured I would figure it out when I got there.

I wanted to get in the night before because I wasn’t sure how bad the jet lag would be. My flight got delayed so I ended up getting in at 2am. Discovered they have a Mary Jane’s Pizza and they deliver until 4:20.

First day was an afternoon seminar then dinner, then drinks. Don’t know if it was the altitude compounding the full moon or what, but I was glowingly magnetic. I could feel people drawn, faces opening as if touched by light. I got into a deep conversation with one guy and he ended up telling me how in college a frat brother thought it would be funny to put an ad in the paper for a male escort service, and people actually called. And they ended up actually making some money. I had to know about his first client (a woman in her 60s and he had a hard time getting hard. It was awkward as he’ll and he kept picturing someone else just to get it done). His last time (he was sitting in the woman’s bed in his underwear and her husband came in with a shotgun. He cut his arm jumping out the window). That story was one of the best and most surprising conversations I’ve had with someone I’d just met in a long time. He says his wife kind of found out about it and doesn’t want to know and I think that’s amazing.

Day 2 is brutal having to get up 3am Tahiti time. We break up into round tables and who’s sitting across from me but this guy who’s a competitor. I’ve never met him before. Long story short, his biggest customer is now my biggest customer, and that customer is Dave.

So I see him and he sees me. His name tag is blaring at me as he scrunches up his face and gives me the evil eye. As only someone who now owns someone else’s favorite toy can, I smirked back. Made him real nervous. While other people introduced themselves and a little bit about their company, he just barked out his name and company real abruptly and just clamped up. There was an awkward silence, then the girl next to him said, “uh…where are you based out of?” when it was my turn to introduce, I looked at him and said, “I’m Julia S* from Amax…” then giving him my best I’m so close to fucking you I’ve got the taste of your skin on my tongue look…I say, snarkily, “That would be based in Fremont, which is located in Silicon Valley.

Later that night, I was in the hall talking to a rep when he walked up, made a cross at me like I was a vampire and hissed, then talked to the girl. I was smiling so hard on the inside and outside. I was finally getting the pleasure of meeting a dirty little man I had beaten. He was showing me in every way I owned him.

I wrangled some guys into playing basketball at a nearby gym. Remember how I always say you can tell a lot about a person by how they play basketball? I played with 3 guys and schooled them all. And I’m convinced what resulted was because of the experience–one guy promised me thousands in marketing funds, one guy asked me to come onto his business as a partner and when he found out I’m single, asked me if I would wait for his son. I asked him how old his son was and he said 16. I said the bigger question is how his son feels about arranged marriages.

The third who got the brunt of my jumpers in his face flatly
stated, “You should come work for me,” and was in great danger of chasing me out of the elevator at the end of the evening.

Lot of random synchronicities. Things I read coming up in different places. While I was in Tahiti, the only news I got from the states was a one xeroxed sheet of paper with all the news someone had deemed important. The first day of the seminar, I was small talking with the guy who sat next to me who had mentioned he had been at a hackers conference last week. I asked him if it was the show that gave a Pwnie to Sony for “Most Epic Fail” and he lit up and said he couldn’t believe I knew about that. And I told him about that one sheet of news, and for some reason, out of all the news coming out of the states, someone had deemed that important. And here we were, talking about it. And he’d been one of the voters.

Sometimes it’s the fear of being alone thats drives you to be alone.

In any given situation, I perceive more than I admit. I find that most people struggle with what they want to hide, and what they’re afraid to show. And these tend to be the most obvious.

Things like your need to be regarded as competent. And how you’ll fight me if I point it out, but your father was a hard man who was stingy with his approval, but you would rather idolize him, idealize him, than admit how unworthy he made you feel. How because you are incapable of giving love to yourself, no one will be able to love you enough, and you’ll always resent them for it and feel guilty because deep down you know what it is you really resent. It will be a one person shadowplay, until the day you open the door and accept.

I never got into these games like World of Warcraft or Second Life. Life already feels like I’m walking around a world of people who don’t realize they’re not avatars.

Do most people remember everyone they’ve slept with? I wonder. When I was much younger, I thought it was strange when someone told me he’d been with 8 or 9 women…he couldn’t remember. I thought it was strange because that’s not a high number to not be sure…it wasn’t like remembering if you’d been with 42 or 43 people. But now I wonder if it’s just that some experiences aren’t memorable. Some experiences turn out not to matter.

4am. Can’t sleep. I spent the day feeling like I was on a boat, bobbing, the symptom of my time by an ocean or the grueling time on planes, I’m not sure. Displaced.

I read in Psychology Today, the US Weekly equivalent of intellectual magazines, about highly sensitive people. How they’ve found 20% of people are more emotionally affected by their environment, how they absorb feelings like a sponge. The article used so many key words that are attributed to Piscean placements.

It was kind of a shallow forgettable article, but it talked about how small percentage of these people are extroverts, but still, they are processing so much stimulus from their environment that it’s taxing. The extreme caution because they are able to see and analyze all potentials. How hard it is to be dismissed as being too sensitive. I asked my mom to read it but she wasn’t interested. Secretly I had hoped she would because she’s always dismissing me as being too sensitive. One thing at least I wish people would understand. I spend so much time alone because interaction with people, while I revel in it and covet it, is very taxing on me. In any given interaction, I’m automatically perceiving on so many simultaneous levels, that I get drained. Being alone is my way of controlling outside stimuli and either recharging or protecting myself. Matt and Jerry once laughed when I said in my private life I can be very quiet. But sometimes, the only thing I need is to put my head on someone’s chest and fall asleep to a steady heartbeat. No noise. No echoes. Just truth. Truth is the only thing I can relax to.

First solo trip repping my company. Taking my magnets to Denver.

We stayed in a beach villa over the water in Bora Bora. Every morning, I would go out to the deck and jump into the bluest ocean.

I had a couple of dreams.

In one, I was at a movie theater and it turned out Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux were in the same row. Jennifer was both making a big deal of not wanting to be noticed, but she was drawing a lot of attention that it made me wonder why she worked at cross-purposes. Justin was wearing a rubber diaper like it was a big joke, and I felt a connection to him when I asked to take a picture with him and I shook his hand. He was a cool guy, I totally wanted to get to know him, but they were going out of their way to draw a lot of attention to themselves while claiming they didn’t want attention.

In another quieter dream, Jerry and I were talking quietly about something while sitting in a stairwell, and at one point, there was a pause, where I could tell he knew how I felt, and there was almost an acknowledging moment, where it was right there between us. For the first time in a dream, it almost happened, where it was so clear he was open to me. I was frozen and I knew it could go either way, but the moment passed. Later, I was with my mom who’d seen the moment. She said, almost sadly, “Jerry really likes you.”

I had a dream about Dave on the plane. I don’t know what it is about him that irritates me so much. He was emailing with me again, being intellectually flirty, and somehow he came to hang out. Except I hung out at some wasteland rest stop like in Bagdad Cafe that was dusty on the outside and a hookah lounge on the inside. We ate some chicken-not chicken and watched foreign soap operas on a shitty little TV. I could feel how intently he wanted me to be into him, such a needy fucker. Some guy I knew came in wanting to snort marjoram, and I was being big-sisterly by telling him this shit wasn’t good for him, while cutting it up finer for him knowing he was determined to snort it. Dave left and at some point I was banging on some dirty piece of metal that came from the sewer or something, trying to fix it and waiting for contact from him. As I woke up, I said to myself, see…that’s what happens when you wait around for a guy like him…you get your hands dirty.  I woke up irritated. I don’t even want that guy close to me in a dream.

I didn’t have time to get into the details of that night of the full moon. Sir Gawain.

In the Arthurian story, Sir Gawain must answer the riddle of what women want most. And the answer is…free will.

And for whatever reason, this story set the precedence of my interaction with a beautiful, deep-voiced man I met by chance one night on a sidewalk. The night we met, we were two subtle, winged creatures, drawn to the same light. When he said he believed darkness had a stigma, that so much light comes out of darkness, I knew he could understand me.

I don’t give out my number. But he asked kindly, so I did. I asked for his email to send the story of Sir Gawain and the Hag, because he’d brought up his love for King Arthur stories, and I told him that was my favorite.

Then that night, when the improbably happened, when by a full moon, this beautiful stranger showed up at my doorstep, I had gone to bed wearing this:

That night was the first and only time I’ve worn this shirt, having bought it from a local artist because I liked the design, but it didn’t fit. Yet going to bed that night, I put it on and it fit. I never planned on anyone seeing it because it is a private shirt, about private feelings.

That night I was already in bed when I got his message that he wanted to find me.

And under that full moon, he found me.

He had the key. We had so little context at that point that everything between us was the key. But he missed the lock and I let him go.

How can a woman so warm be so cold.

Because I care.

i want to be reminded that i came to the bay area to find a husband in los angeles.

whether or not i have to bring him there, i’m not certain.

the thing about traveling, is that immersion into one world, when your roots have been in another, and that return. like waking up from a night of broken dreams, you don’t know what you’re coming back into, or if you’re the same person returning. somewhere in a million tiny places, there have been fractures.

starting at sunset yesterday, i took a boat ride, a propeller plane ride, a jumbo jet flight through the night, then a commuter flight and long drive to reach home.

home?

i realized landing in los angeles, after spending the week in tahiti, that this was home. walking out into the air, the feel of it, the smell of it, it made me relax into me. this is where i find myself. my home in la is me.

i only spent a few seconds on that curb, but even after flying back to the bay, back where my obligations lay, i still feel it inside me.

the bay area is where i come from.

la is my home.

I’m not smiling at you because your outfit is stupid.

I keep the people who touch me far from the people who know me.

Sir Gawain and the Hag. I’ve told you the story. Either your beautiful wife can be herself in private and an old hag in public, or a hag in the bedroom and a beautiful woman in public. He lets her choose and by respecting her will, the curse is broken and she’s able to stay in her true form at all times.

This guy was so handsome. Talking about King Arthur’s knights like the boychild inside the tall dark man. I told him about Gawain. It’s not like he didn’t know.

Then the night the moon was full, he wanted to see me and I said follow the moon to find me. By a sporting arena, adjacent to a train station, under a double lucky number. And he called from the gate downstairs, asking if it was 88, asking me now that he’d found me, if we could look at the moon together.

He came up and he believed he was home. I could feel his heartbeat behind the trembling of his hand.

I want to be with you he said.

I told him. If we hook up, I won’t take you seriously. If you wait, you might discover the best of me.

It was the Sir Gawain conundrum.

He gave me a big long circular spiel. Semantics. Bottom line, he was willing to take the chance. He was over-confident and blinded by his ambition. Bottom line, he made a mistake.

I knew this would haunt him as it happened. I knew what we were planting in his mind.

The next day, I told him it would never happen again. I say what I mean and mean what I say and I could not take him seriously. He was dumbfounded. You were so self-involved, you never considered me. I told you if we hooked up, I wouldn’t take you seriously. And the bottom line is, you were willing to take that risk.

That’s the last time we spoke.