Epiphany in Baltimore

2002-09-09

Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com

Ever since Thursday, I've been feeling this great degree of freedom that I'm not used to. After the unplanned soul-bearing and the subsequent face-bearing afterwards, I've felt a lot less guarded, and a lot more open. When I returned from school on Friday with the new ID picture, I not only scanned it into my new page, but I used it in an Internet personal ad.

I'm not expecting much to come from it. Despite three responses thus far, they're all from way far away, which doesn't make much sense to me. Like Yelnad had told me, these sites are incredibly male-heavy. It was even more lopsided than I had imagined. I checked out the competition, and there are a lot of seemingly normal guys there - decent looking, good jobs, etc. There were a couple interesting female prospects in my area, but nothing intriguing enough to send a response yet.

I probably won't keep the ad up very long, but I'm glad I did it. The ad, coupled with the mere fact that I posted my pics all over my diary on Thurs/Fri, has - as stated before - taken down some of my guard. On Friday night, I went out and had one of the best nights I can remember in a while. Some teachers in my department arranged a 6pm Happy Hour to celebrate our first week of school. I said that I couldn't go, citing financial difficulties. One of my colleagues offered me $20 to drive her, so I was there.

The night was fabulous. I hung out with a lot of teachers I rarely hang out with in a social setting - mostly older, all cool. As I was driving Dana there to the bar, I was already revelling in my newfound openness. Joni Mitchell's CD Blue was playing on my CD player, and we were both kind of singing along. It's one of my favorites, and I found out it was one of hers as well. Suddenly, when "California" came on, I blurted out a truth that normally I would have kept to myself. "Dana," I said. "This is the song that made me move from Michigan." I told her how the line, "It's so old and cold and settled in its ways," hit me in spots in my soul that I usually ignore, and I listened to the twangs and decided at that one moment during the listening to that song to move somewhere. It wasn't to California, obviously, although that did cross my mind. Dana and I had a good conversation about the manner, one that dipped below the surface places where my conversations tend to remain.

The rest of the night was tremendous. We got a couch area over at Brewer's Art, which can best be described as a New York City style hangout - with trendy art, great ambiance, and excellent beer. Except for Boston Betty, none of the teachers there were generally teachers I hung out with much, so it was a good getting-to-know-you time. As usual, though, I was drawn into a conversation with Boston Betty, the 41-year old fellow English teacher who has become one of my best friends. We talked about age, about how when she hung out with Josh and I the other night, she was struck by how she doesn't think of her and I of having different ages, because I've got an old soul. To her, Josh is way younger than I am, despite only a year in difference in age. I told her about the personal ad, about my recent hangups and insecurities, and she told me, "I know you don't want to hear this, but you're still young, and you've still got plenty of time, and the choices will get better and better the older you get." London Lou, her wonderful husband, came later and told me to keep following my dreams.

Much of the rest of the night was spent gossipping about school matters, and this is always fun. I took Dana home at 11 or so, and despite having only one beer at the bar at 6pm, was feeling goofy and slap-happy. I had three voicemail messages, and returning one of them prompted me to head out to Randy and Nick's to join Randy, Felicity, Andie, and Roger for a bit of rooftop decking. On the way, I decided to call Langoki, who was convinced I was drunk because of my mood. I said, "Well, I hope I'm not drunk, as I'm driving 60 miles per hour in a tunnell under the bay right now." We made arrangements to hang out sometime, as I haven't seen her in more than two years.

At Randy and Nick's, everybody still thought I was drunk, which was highly amusing since I wasn't at all. I was a bit goofy, and definitely more talkative than usual. Fun times, that's for sure.

Saturday was another decent day - a workout, and then Game Night. Since we're all broke, we decided to have a night of hanging inside, playing Taboo. It was a lot of fun, and we didn't finish until 2 or 3am. Yesterday, I spent the whole day cleaning my house, preparing for the house concert I'm hosting on Saturday. (It's with Lilith Fair performer Lori Amey, so if anyone in the area is interested, please shoot me an e-mail.)

Last night was also spent watching HBO shows. Six Feet Under was fucking brilliant last night. I can't believe how good that show is. There was this surreal dream sequence in which Life and Death were personified that I couldn't believe, it was so good. Sex and the City was the funniest episode I've ever seen of the show, with great lines like, "Those in borrowed glass houses shouldn't throw cantaloupes" and "If you promise to come with me to the party, I'll promise to wax my back hair." I laughed out loud throughout. This is certainly one of the five or six funniest shows on TV (along with Friends, Scrubs, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Will & Grace, and The Simpsons). Arli$$ is sucky, but then we had the great season finale of The Wire. I loved the opening scene, on the hospital bed with Sonja Sohn. The other cop wanted her to lie and ID a shooter she didn't see. He said, "It would make it a whole lot easier if we could play the hand with a positive ID." She paused, gritted her teeth, and said, "Sometimes, you just got to play hard." Damn, it was great.

I've tried to stay away from diaryland most of the weekend, not wanting the destroy the high I was on from so much self-revelation on Thursday and Friday. Some of it was brought down a little bit when I heard that Hugasoul found my personal ad, and revealed it to Rocco and my friend who were at the place. This probably shouldn't have made me feel uncomfortable, as I was supposed to be feeling unguarded and free, but it definitely did nonetheless. Things are fine now. I later came back to find a lot of nice guestbook messages, with none at all saying, "You look like a troll. No wonder you're single." That's nice. It's probably not the greatest professional decision to post the pics, but I've sort of came to the opinion that it's fairly easy to figure out who I am based on my entries - do a few Internet searches on some key terms, and I'm right there. I'm not concerned with that, too much. Anybody who knows me and comes across this diary is going to know who I am anyway. My concern is students or administration finding me with a search of my name or some other random way, and the pictures will not increase the chances of this happening. I may take them down soon, but I'll leave them for now.