Place #7: Merlin's Rest part 2

In heels, it’s much easier for me to hop up onto those tall bar stools. I’m a wee little 4’11” woman, and I more often than not have to crawl up onto barstools 5-year-old style (a slight exaggeration). But here I was able to scoot my generously sized rear end up onto the stool easy peasy. The bartender attended to me immediately and helped me choose a nice, light beer to my liking. I chose a pint of Stella Artois and took a few unstinting gulps: I was in a bit of a rush to feel the effects. I pulled out my pocket-sized Hating Minnesota notebook (which has a red cover and bold words that read: New York – the Wonder City) and began to scribble in illegible handwriting. I do this when I write in front of people, like on the plane or in a waiting room or…in a bar. I’m ridiculously paranoid that people nearby are going to take a peek over my shoulder and read what I’m writing. No. ‘Can’t allow that. So I write in the worst handwriting possible, just legible enough for me to understand (which on severe occasions, I cannot). This is ridiculous and has no sound footing whatsoever. My notes are hardly private, especially when I share what I write on a live, public blog. For example, this is what I wrote on the first page: “White haired man sitting next to me. Drinking Stella Artois. Atmosphere friendly. Leather booths – authentic looking. But what the hell do I know about an authentic Irish pub? ‘Never been to Ireland.” Profound, Jess. Real profound.

I continued to write more inadequate, unreasonable things, like how I was certain I was going to be stood up by the man I was hoping would arrive. But then I told myself, “You can’t get stood up on this one. You’re the one who told him you were here for your blog. You’d be here with or without him. So if he doesn’t show? Suck it up and get over it.” I next jotted down: “Check time. 6:50pm.” Next line: “Should NOT have checked time. Nerves bouncing again. Tip – ignore time when you’re anxious.” On the next page at the top it reads: “Another tip – keep drinking when you’re nervous.” Down a line: “Drank.”

By this time, I was starting to relax a bit. I deemed it important to eavesdrop on my fellow bar mates. A fellow to my left had lifted his head in response to a baby crying on the other side of the bar. He spoke to the bartender as if he knew him well (definitely a regular), the two of them chatting about being new fathers and how those instincts kick in even when they’re not around their own children. “I heard that baby crying, and I suddenly felt like I had to go see what the matter was and fix it,” said the man down the bar on my left. New fathers. Sigh. What a beautiful thing.

It was a motley crowd, sundry and amusing. An extremely thin gentleman came in through the doors wearing an Edward Scissorhands jacket, a sort of fedora, and cowboy boots. Another older gentleman in a plaid jacket and matching hat was enjoying the company of the people in a booth a few seats away from me. He looked as if he had just stepped out of the old country, a century ago. Another jotted note: “I see balloons. Birthday?”

The air outside was chilly but humid with a steel gray sky. I love overcast skies. I love the threat of rain with no rain. It reminds of me of my hometown. Upstate New York, at least the part I grew up in, was always promising rain with no rain. The sun rarely made a presence, and even though most would deem that gloomy and depressing, for me it’s always quite nostalgic. I love early spring clouds, a hint of humidity, a thawing of the earth that brings smells of dirt and wet pavement. A survival technique I’ve devised to help me deal with my anxiety consists of trying to discover a comfort zone within the outskirts of my comfort zone to give me the illusion of safety. I was definitely out of my comfort zone (zone as in, dating), so I clung to the overcast sky. I told myself, “pretend you’re home… this is how your life was meant to be before so many things disrupted your confidence… you used to love to be out of your comfort zones… adventures used to be part of who you are...stop losing this part of yourself to anxiety… pretend you’re home… pretend you’re home…” The next jotted note: “The sky is overcast, and it’s nice and humid-feels like New York. It’s a very New York day. I like it. I think it’s perfect.”

By this time I had finally conquered my nerves. It was twenty minutes after seven. If he was going to show, he was going to be late. Late I can handle. I’m not exactly punctual myself (this one night being a grand exception). I wasn’t nervous anymore (meaning my physical symptoms had finally resided thanks to the Artois and the self pep talk), but I began to torture myself with stupid scenarios. What if he’s been here and he’s on the other side of the bar where he can’t see me? What if we don’t’ recognize each other? We’ve only seen each other in random, posted-online pictures… What if he came in, didn’t recognize me, and left? What if he came in, saw me, and thought, “She’s not as cute as she is in her pictures…” and left because of that?
Yes.
Neurotic, Reader, is the word you’re probably searching for (insecure works too). I’d like to convince you that I’m really not like this, that I’m really cool and laid back, that I don’t over-analyze every stupid situation I’m stuck in, but I’m learning to come clean with myself. I hide it fairly well (from people who don't me that well that is), but I am indeed, a touch neurotic and almost perpetually insecure. Maybe more than a touch… Confessions are embarrassing, but they’re cleansing. After all, this blog is first and foremost about personal growth. I’m not only trying to build a more loving relationship with Minnesota, but I’m trying to build a more loving relationship with myself. I’m trying to conquer my fears, be disciplined, and with trying to learn how to be an adequate human being I'm trying to learn how to be an adequate story teller. So please bear with me as I embarrassingly lay out my flaws. Self-deprecation is a channel all artists tune in to, and I understand it can be little obnoxious at times. What we’re really just trying to do is give diagnostic tests on ourselves, go in and fix our problems, and try to learn how to live our lives freely. There’s a constant feeling of living in a cage of our own filth, and we just want to be set free from it.

So. Back to the bar stool…

Just when I was about to declare a no-show, I turned around to see a tall man pass behind me. He turned and looked at me, and we, indeed, did recognize each other (as normal people other than myself could have predicted without a second thought). It was a great moment. I was shallowly flooded with the pleasure of seeing that he was even more attractive in person than he was in his photos. I can’t even remember if we shook hands. He made a joking reference to something we had bantered about in our early correspondence, and I was quite pleased about it. This was going to be a good night.

Place #7: Merlin's Rest part 1

I put on my dress. I looked into the mirror and thought, “To tuck away the girls or not to tuck away the girls?”

This particular outing was not only one of my Twelve, but was also a first date. I hate first dates. I never know what to do with myself. On the one hand I do enjoy having a practical reason to put on a dress (I never wear dresses), but on the other hand I can’t help but stand in front of the mirror and say, “You’re trying too hard. This is sort of pointless. It’s nothing but trickery. You’re not actually this cute, you know. You might as well go make-up less and in sweats, see if you can charm your way into his pants like plenty of scrappy, poorly dressed, un-kept men do all the time with us. You’re charming enough… reach for the sweats… I dare you….” But alas! I grabbed my mini cardigan sweater (another article of clothing I never thought I’d own, let alone wear) and put it on over my dress. I pulled on my black tights and strapped on some really old heels.

I chopped off five inches of my hair only three days before. My hair was nice and soft and bouncy now, so that was making me feel pretty good. I dyed it, too, so it was also pleasantly (note sarcasm) spongy and bright, and strongly resembling a discount rack Halloween wig. Regardless, I was still feeling pretty good about the cut (I would just have to wash vigorously and put in extra conditioner to tone down the wig appearance) so I followed through with the ridiculous process of straightening my hair with a round brush layer by layer, and then going through each of those layers again with a curling iron. That doesn’t make sense to you? There’s madness to the natural state of my hair and it has to be tamed in ungodly ways. I had to prove the potential of my hair, I guess, to my date. So I went the full ten yards with the doll-up process. Well, almost. I went easy on the make-up. I ran out of time.

Nerves. Nerves. Anxiety attacks galore! Oh, Jess. Why do you do this to yourself?

I do it because in the long run it’s good for me. I have to face my fears. I have to face the risk of rejection. I have to face the awkwardness. I have to figure out how to re-define and unearth my social graces. I need to figure out how to still love myself even when all of these things fail. I’m often traumatized by the failure of my social awkwardness; it sends me running back into my hermit hole utterly repulsed with my inability to amalgamate with other homo sapiens. I feel abnormal. Handicapped. I envy normal people.

But tonight was going to be different, I told myself. I was wearing a sort-of pretty dress that made the top half of me look awesome (if I do say so myself), my hair was bouncy and cute and curly, and I was feeling relatively confident. I decided to go early so that I could have time to scribble some notes in my blog notebook before my contender arrived.

Parking. I’m not sure if I’m borderline dyslexic or have some sort of reading comprehension handicap, but I never understand parking signs. Hmm. Allow me to elaborate: I’m never 100% sure they’re saying what I think they’re saying, and the anxiety of getting towed seems to override my judgment and ability to translate the very language to which I speak. According to a website Merlin’s Rest was supposed to have accessible side street parking. But when I arrived, every side street was marked with signs that read: “15 minute parking; Mon-Sat; 9am to 9pm”. Okay. So mark me if I’m wrong, Reader, but isn’t this saying you can only park for fifteen minutes between the times of 9am and 9pm, Mondays through Saturdays? So, to get good side street parking you have to park after 9 o’ clock at night. What? This can’t be right, I tell myself, especially because there are cars parked on the street. Have they been here longer than fifteen minutes? Who the hell parks in this part of town for only fifteen minutes? It’s not like it’s next to a quickie mart or something. So. After I drove up and down the street seventy times over-analyzing the damn sign, I finally pulled into a nearby residential parking lot and parked in a spot that had no sign at all. I got out of my car, locked it, and hoped I would still find it there when my evening was through.

My pathetic, old sandal heels clicked and clopped up the sidewalk to Merlin’s. Two men clad in black leather, thick, un-kept facial hair and black boots sat in front of the pub smoking cigarettes that smelled like nothing I had ever smelled. The billowing cloud of burning tobacco wafted toward me, directed by a particular wind, and the scent was foreign but delightful. I almost stopped to ask them what brand they were smoking, but my nerves were rushing me through the wooden doors faster than I had particularly wanted.

First mission: scope for a good spot. A leather, gold push-pinned upholstered booth? A wooden dinner table? For two? Or a bar stool. The restaurant side was my to my left, the bar side to my right. I went right and prompted my clippity clopping feet to head for the bathroom. When I was out of the loo, I was going to opt for a bar stool.

PLACE #6 - Minneapolis Auto Show

Re-reading past blog posts is always a semi-poor decision. They say that artists execute their most profound work through the hardest times in their life. Normally I can say this is true for myself, but it was clearly not true through the month of February. If I had been able to write about what I was going through, “profound” would have been the word of choice to describe my posts. But I had to write about romantic love. I had to pretend that nothing was wrong in my life while I wrote it. Fake. I don’t do fake. Re-reading my posts flushed me with embarrassment, and it wasn’t because I wrote about my personal love and dating experiences. It was because those experiences were so ungracefully presented, so horribly written, so lacking in soul and movement that it made me want to remove my entire blog from its unmistakably pathetic existence.

My February endeavor was meant to be profound. It finished up lame. Knock about ten notches off of my self-esteem after stripping me naked, and that is how vulnerable I feel right now. Even as I’m writing this my confidence has plummeted so steeply that I am literally afraid of each sentence as it’s typed out so cautiously, so scared of making an ass of myself yet again. I’m sorry, Reader. I know my strengths as a writer. I know my weaknesses. I depend greatly on my mood for the quality of my work. They say professionalism equates negating emotions and mood, and that whatever is going on with an artist personally shouldn’t affect their work. I am not the professional I thought I could be. I forced myself to write every day in the month of February regardless of my depression, regardless of how much I did not want to write about things that I really didn’t care about anymore, and especially didn’t care about in those moments of writing about it. You can see it in the writing, can’t you? I can.

I went to the Minneapolis Auto Show a few weekends ago. I’ve written it off as place number six of my twelve. I have nothing interesting to say about the show, truth be told. The company I was with was fun and I enjoyed myself. I met Bumblebee and Lightning McQueen. That was pretty cool.

The colors were spectacular, a palate from any artists’ fantasy. The lights gave me a headache. The smells were the smells of things new and expensive. The carpet was soft to walk upon. The designs were futuristic and impressive, and were of a “I think I just stepped out of a time machine and into the future” sort of quality. I sat in a Jeep. I took a free bag. I left feeling quite indifferent.

I don’t feel like writing right now, so this is all I’ve got. My well is dry. I’m not sure I can refill it. So, The End.