60 Minutes -

I am officially registered for fall semester 2010 as a matriculated college student.


Wow. Wow. I’m so excited, and proud of myself. This is going to be a long road ahead but it’s one I am actually honored to say I’ve worked hard to get on.


I went over to the school to finalize the actions this evening and the woman who helped me with my academic advisement was kind enough to push up my available registration date so that I had a better chance of obtaining the classes that worked best with my daytime work schedule. I rushed home and completed the necessary clicking-arounds to ensure that I be officially registered for two of the six pre-requisite courses I need to complete prior to entering my nursing curriculum elsewhere. Done deal, readers. Classes start September 11, 2010.


The bus ride home was an interesting one. My iphone battery went kaput after about 30 minutes of listening to music via the Pandora application. This made it impossible for me to drown out the sound of the two valley-girl like teeny bopping, squeaky voiced, bad-make up applied girls who were sitting behind me discussing some boy who was 31 and still a virgin. I will not enjoy the commute home from school each evening if this is what it is normally like. Car, now – please. Anyway, I was able to filter their squawking out while I looked out the window and I realized that this particular bus runs a route that could easily be associated to my entire life. It’s really rather unsettling when I sit down and think about it.

The timeline I was running in my mind in fact started prior to getting on the bus at all. As I entered the campus I looked around at all the youngish faces and remembered myself in this very same place at their age. I was enrolled here right out of High School. At the time of my first semester I was dating a boy named John. I wondered whether or not the bench in which we carved our names was still around. I didn’t check –and instead I walked the halls of the institution and took note of the other handful of ‘adults’ who looked like they were students and not professors. The number was small – and for a minute or so it fucked with my head but I reminded myself that there is no time like the present and what is important is that I am HERE.


The ride home brought me past not only my High School but my Junior High and my Public School as well. We rolled by the giant High School – no students outside hanging about the way they did during my tenure. I thought about the time I’d kissed Charlie, the hottest bad-ass in the school, right on that bench that was outside my bus window. The memory brought on countless other thoughts of boys I’d kissed and girls I’d had fights with. I thought about this one time that I was waiting for the bus at the very stop we were picking up passengers from and some older kids threw a rock out the back-emergency exit flappable windows that are a NYC MTA bus feature. The rock hit me square on the bridge of my nose and cut my face open.




We rolled through Gravesend. This is where the memories are most plentiful. The small stretch of area that this particular route covers in Gravesend somehow managed to cover two previous residences, my public school, the library I did my homework in every night as a child, and a stretch of concrete that was the coolest place in the world to hang out when I was a tween. The first apartment we passed on my way back home was actually the last apartment I lived in with my mother prior to moving out on my own. I remembered the time I walked in and found strangers in the house, and the time I came home to find my niece hysterical crying over a fight my mother and sister had gotten into over their drugs. This was definitely not a good period of my life. The second apartment we passed was the one I grew up in. We had a two bedroom walk-in, with brown shaggy carpet, an eat-in kitchen and a bathroom that was as pink as pink could be. Being that we were on the ground level, we had access to the back yard as well. There were two kids standing outside my old home – and they were playing some sort of ball. I remembered how my sister and I would play stoop ball on those steps – or box ball, a Brooklyn original, in the three concrete slabs outside of our front-door. A lot happened there in the 18 years I occupied that space. There were countless drug-riddled arguments and dramatized events, robberies, assaults, and the most vivid of all the memories, overdoses.


I clearly remember coming home from school one afternoon and walking through our long narrow living room to find the paramedics working on my mother. White foam fell down the sides of her mouth as she seized. I couldn’t have been older than 6. My mother would overdose a few more times throughout her opiate run – and then she graduated to crack.


I was lucky to have family members on my street. Two houses to my right lived my great – grandmother, a woman like no woman I’ve ever met. She was the rock on which I lay my head at night and know that all was going to be alright. Across the street and a few doors down was my maternal grandmother; a woman that never really accepted me because she didn’t like my father – and because I had a father and my sister didn’t. She died some years ago – and we never did really become fast-friends before that happened. Aunts, uncles, and cousins were never sparse growing up in Gravesend – and I thank god for that!


Driving down the main Avenue on which I spent many a night hanging out on street-corners and being a little asshole was a welcomed reprieve from the memories of a gloomy home life. The hang-out scene in Brooklyn back in the early 90’s was fierce. There were literally never less than 20 kids hanging out back then. We all knew each other and we all looked out for one and other. Fights were never real – and if two guys wound up getting into a tiff over some bullshit, they’d have a chance to settle it with the insurance that no one there would let anything truly BAD happen to each other. I miss those days – eating sunflower seeds and drinking Snapple iced teas while listening to old-school hip-hop out of one of the older kid’s car radios. Us girls would hang in little cliques. We’d flirtatiously look at the boys we were crushing on – and give the other girl-cliques dirty looks if we thought there may be an overlapping of admiration. It was a great time to be a kid in Brooklyn.


Public school memories are few and far between – and the bulk of them are bad enough that I’d rather not even get into them at this point. Let’s leave it at this: I was the daughter of known drug-addicts who wore hand-me-down clothes and had a problem with my eyes that resulted in my having to wear a patch half of the time…. Yes, I was a poor dirty pirate girl up until the age of 8 or so…..


We passed the neighborhood projects. Building 15, 14, 12 – and I was reminded of Louie Alonzo – I was his first kiss in Junior High. He lived in building 6 with his parents and 3 brothers. Our torrid love affair lasted three hours until I found out he tried to kiss another girl before kissing me. Fucking Latinos are players even at twelve years old… Damn them and their sexy boriquenness.


Onward we moved - my getting closer and closer to where I now call home. We drove through the neighborhood in which I lived prior to moving in with Daniel. It has only been around 9 months or so since I’ve been gone from there but the area looks even worse than it did when I was initially becoming disgusted with it. It’s a completely different world than what it was back in the day. Fully populated by an immigrant mainland Chinese population, the area is filthy. Store signs are half falling off of their canopies – and garbage is strewn all over the streets. Empty store after empty store passed by my window – and I felt a tinge of happiness to be gone from there even considering the circumstances under which I parted. My new area, although not too far from the old, feels much more like the good old days of Brooklyn.


My bus finally took its turn onto the Avenue I currently reside - and by this time I was less engaged in the memories of yesterday – The time-line was an interesting one. It was one that brought up feelings of sadness, shame, happiness, and confusion. It also allowed me to identify the fact that my drive to move up and out of this southern-Brooklyn territory is not at all unrealistic. My entire life was just chronologically recounted on a one-hour bus ride. If that doesn’t scream sheltered I don’t know what does.


Brooklyn… I love you, baby – but this break up is going to happen whether you like it or not.

Fuck you, Daniel ---- and a little more, too!

I’ve been having a bit of a ‘block’ with respect to writing this week. I don’t know why – my thoughts run rampant on a daily basis and I’ve got so much shit trickling through my mind that I can’t even keep track of it. Sometimes I envision the scene in Hackers when the mainframe is attacked and they’re showing all the rambling lines of code – and every now and then a number or a letter becomes illuminated. I suppose the same could be true of the DiVinci Code movie. It’s a constant borage of thoughts floating through the cerebral fluid that is Kitty G.

I’ve had a lot of shit plaguing me this week – There’s the thoughts of Daniel and his would be Match.com meetups that are consistently making me sick. I know I need to not worry about this but it’s really a lot easier said than done. I think one of the major things that is fucking with me is that in his new profile, the section that asks whether or not you want kids is answered with a “definitely”.

Really, Daniel? ‘Definitely’ - ?

Cause, like, a month before our breakup you came to me on some “I never fully committed to having children, Kitty” and these remarks are what sparked one of the angriest arguments we’ve ever had. Now, all of a sudden, you’re ‘definitely’ into the idea of having children? Fuck you! – I told you from the very beginning that I wanted kids more than almost anything. My friends are having children left and right – and above all that, it’s not like I have an abundance of time left in which I can dick around. My biological clock IS ticking like Marisa Tomei’s and I’m not going to pass up the opportunity to perform one of life’s greatest miracles. Shit, even as I type this one of my friends is in the Labor & Delivery ward of a hospital in Staten Island preparing to give birth to her first child. FUCK! What the fuck, Daniel!?

The interesting thing about his “definitely” answer is that in the “describe your perfect match” section, under the ‘wants kids’, he notates that he’d be OK dating women who either “definitely, or someday, or maybe’ want children. – Do you even know what the fuck you want, Daniel? How can you absolutely want children - yet you’ll consider dating someone who may, or may not, mirror your desires? Get your ass to therapy and stop fucking with people’s emotions you heartless fuck.

I think I am slowly entering my anger phase. I wish it would be quicker and that the anger would be fiercer – but, I have to remind myself that I’ve made great strides in allowing myself to feel and that acknowledging my pain is A-OK. That said, I acknowledge that this all still hurts a hell of a lot. And I acknowledge that if I see Daniel with one of his fucking match.com dates in the Bay Ridge area, I will have to hold back on a preposterous scale in order not to spit in both of their entitled faces.

Phew -- Breathe, Kitty. BREATHE!

So – second to all that stuff, I am sort of bugging out on the whole school tip. I took the entrance exam last week and am waiting on the results. 10-14 business days is the expected wait time. It’s like a fucking gestation period… What will be birthed out of the result? I don’t know. I went ahead and did a bunch of additional research on the radiological field and job availability. Turns out that via the opening of tons of programs which suddenly offer this training, the market is completely over-flooded with candidates looking for jobs – and, well, we all know the current state of the economy. There are hardly any jobs, anywhere – even in the land of opportunity that is NYC. With this in mind, I am starting to doubt my next moves. I realize this could be my fear manifesting itself like I said it would – and I’m keeping a watchful eye on all of that. It cannot be denied, however, that facts are facts and if there are 1000 folks looking for work and only 100 jobs, my fears are very real and should be considered on a grand scale. I am looking at managing loan payments for a better portion of the rest of my working career. Do I go ahead and complete this program only to come out – unable to find work – and responsible to pay these notes? It’s a valid concern.

As a back up option to the Radiological program, I have revisited the idea of Nursing. I originally planned to try to get into a nursing program back when Daniel and I were living together. His mother is a hospital bigwig down in Florida and when Daniel and I were planning what I thought was the rest of our lives, Nursing seemed a very smart career choice for a number of reasons. Just because he is no longer a part of the future plan doesn’t mean that I should forget that there is a lot of success and, more importantly, merit in the nursing industry. I’m a caring person – and my bedside manner is amazing (just ask the trannys :P) – so, I’m sure this would be a smart career choice. The fact that all of my thoughts are centered around medicine in some respect is a bit calming. At least I know I’m not barking up the wrong tree completely.

In order to move forward and get into one of the two full time nursing programs offered in the evenings in NYC, I need to complete various pre-requisite courses on the Liberal Arts and Basic Sciences. I did the preliminary research and it looks like there are around 6 classes I’ll need to complete by June 2011. I think it’s certainly possible and I’m looking forward to this as a serious back-up consideration if the Radiological stuff doesn’t seem like the best way to go.

So, yeah – this is just a random spewing of the thoughts that are going through my mind today. I wanted to throw something out there in terms of a posting and I just didn’t know where to go with it. Sorry if it’s a bit of a ramble. I know I tend to do that on occasion. It’s the Brooklyn in me!

Speaking of Brooklyn – Tour De Brooklyn is June 6th – it’s 18 miles and it starts in Williamsburg and ends in Williamsburg with a stop off at Redhook Park. God, I never thought I’d be considering doing a bike tour that takes me to RedHook. Brooklyn sure has changed, huh? I know a bunch of you readers are Brooklynites. I see your locations on my stat-finder software ;) (big brother is always watching, motherfuckers!!) – so I am just throwing this little tidbit out there as an FYI.

Destructive behavior at its best

Daniel and I would often kid around about how our relationship was on the wild side due to our both being sex addicts. We'd laugh about it and even throw around the term in a manner meant to mock one and other. The very beginning of our relationship was met with a super concentrated physical union. We were easily having sex three times a day at minimum and, for us, this seemed completely normal. Our nights out were always ended with intense kink. For the first month and a half or so we kept the sex to ourselves but eventually we stepped outside of the normal male/female relationship parameters and introduced exaggerated variations of our kink.

In a previous post of this blog, I mention that I was introduced to the group scene via a dude I met on Craigslist. Scouring the Internet was not that uncomfortable for me. I have, indeed, engaged in anonymous sex. This behavior, looking back, was super dangerous but while you're doing these things you don't stop and look around at the warning signs because for the most part, these actions are dictated by something much greater than the sheer desire to cum.

In the Six Feet Under snippet linked to this post, Brenda goes to see a therapist at the push of her friend Melissa who happens to be a sex worker. I chose to include this clip for a few reasons. At one point, Brenda mentions that she thinks she truly enjoys the euphoric feeling she gets from these random sexual encounters with strangers while she is in a monogamous relationship. Save Daniel, I have cheated on pretty much every boyfriend I've had. There was a point in my life that I was allowing my sexuality to dictate the bulk of my decisions. The idea of being in a relationship that was not centered on sex seemed nearly impossible. I was condoning my behavior by stating, simply, that my activities were a result of my desires. It's a rather simple equation; you want something, you get it. Deep down inside, I think I would often wonder whether or not my behavior was out of the norm and time and time again I would condone it by rationalizing the fact that I was simply acting on my raw needs. And, to a degree, this was true. I did have these desires and curiosities and my acting on them made me feel as if I was a step ahead of everyone that was allowing their repression to filter their desires. I was on top of the world in my mind.

Sometime over the last five years or so, I began to question these decisions. I wouldn't say that I was particularly ashamed of myself for having experimented but I am confident in exclaiming that the events took on an unsatisfying air after a while. They just became a bit substandard at their core and I tried, for a long time, to figure out what had changed and why my interest in these self-gratifying events began to dissipate. I still don't really have a firm answer on that.

When Daniel and I went to a group event, I found myself taking a moral inventory of the attendees. I was creating scenarios in my mind of all of their lives and the paths that brought these folks to the same room in which I was sitting. How fucking condescending of me. Of course, none of this was said aloud, but I certainly do remember having choice thoughts about two women in particular. One was the very youngish girl that had come along with a much older man. Her skin was as alabaster as a fucking porcelain doll and her hair as healthy as could be. I would guesstimate her at around 20, tops. I wondered what type of fucked up shit had happened in her childhood to bring her to this event on the arm of a 40+ bi-sexual male with whom she didn't seem to have very much in common. The other area I focused the remainder of my attention on was this socially awkward mid to late 30’s female. It was very evident via the weird small talk we had that she was a very self-doubting woman. She was on the heavier side, probably around a size 14-16, and while I didn’t find her particularly sexy or attractive, she was not an eye sore either. I studied her awkwardly work the room while she was fully clothed and later sat back to watch while she turned into this sex-beast who suddenly exhibited the confidence of Aphrodite. It was a transformation like none I'd ever seen before and all that continued to run through my mind was the sadness I felt for this woman who could only feel strong and beautiful when she was a sexual object. Now, far be it from me to cement any of these observations as real. My opinions are nothing but opinion - and a part of me plays with guilt for even having these types of thoughts but our minds are interesting creatures and they will go where they may. After the get together and my little thought session I turned the tables onto myself and played with the ideas of why I had found myself in this scene at one time. I still participate in these thoughts and I endlessly come up with the same answer: I use sex as a coping mechanism.

When the therapist in the clip above introduces the basic fundamentals of sex addiction she says some choice words. "It involves the sublimation of emotions that are too painful to address". My onset into the world of extreme casual sex came less than a year after the death of a man I was dating for five years intermittently and was sure would eventually be my husband. My entrance into the world of sexual activity at all, came at the ripe early age of 13 and I was unquestionably looking to escape the reality that was my home life. My parents are recovering drug addicts. The word recovering in the previous sentence might as well have a toggle switch because their lengths of clean time vary even to this day.

I have no hesitation declaring that the bulk of my sexual experience was gained via the attempt to not sit down in my own skin and deal with my life. This makes the most sense to me now because as I go through the motions of this break up with Daniel, I have never struggled more with feelings and I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that it is because instead of having a dick in my hand, I am actually allowing myself to go through this. I don't know if I would go so far as to say that I need to attend sex anonymous meetings - but I am positive in exclaiming that avoiding unhealthy sexual encounters is becoming a real struggle for me. I am starting to set myself up to jump back into this behavior pattern and I need to keep a watchful eye on it because this is NOT what I want to revert to. If for no other reason than to have a one-up on Daniel, I cannot go out like that. But, seriously, this has absolutely nothing to do with Daniel. This is about my healing process and I'm proud of myself for actually feeling the pain.

Three days after breaking up with me, I spotted Daniel on a strictly-sex site looking to hook up. He'd been staying at a friend’s place over in Washington Heights and I noticed that his 'location' on the site had been changed to reflect his current whereabouts. I was hurt, obviously, but more so I was actually a bit stunned that he would so quickly revert to this behavior. We'd discussed our sexual exploits and repeatedly he'd mentioned that he did not want to go back to being "that guy". Here I was in our apartment, drowning in a bed of tears, looking at the online profile of "that guy". It was heart breaking on a number of levels. Even now, nearly two months have gone by and I can't help but check his online status on that site every now and again. He's still active, still seeking hookups. I went and looked further today - and found that he now has a match.com account, too. I was joking with a friend of mine after having read Daniel's Match.com profile and said "He's going to make me go out and suck a dick, and I don't want to do that!". The real joke is that I don't know how untrue that statement is.

I have not had sex with anyone since Daniel which may honestly be the longest period I've been without intercourse in over 10 years. It's a conflicting feeling because a part of me is missing the intimacy that comes along with intercourse. I want to have someone’s hands running down my post-coital flesh. The issue with this is that anyone that I would fuck right now doesn't do the snuggle thing. It'd be strictly sex and I am just not 'there'. Reading Daniel's Match.com ad had me nearly in tears. It's my own fault for looking, obviously - but the Internet will test your limits if nothing else. I am just 'not ready' for the next steps and I suppose that means I'll need to hold off on getting my rocks off accordingly. This is difficult.

Rebounds can be a good thing. Rebounds deflect and I need deflection. I want to nerve up the energy and resources to build my own damn Match.com account - or at least to go out to a bar, or actually attend one of those meetup.com meetups. Why the fuck did I even join if I'm never going to attend an event? Pointless! I suppose my process is one that will work at its own pace. And, I need to make certain that I don't lose sight of the fact that I am not the one with active sex accounts looking to hook up. Typing that sentence prompted me to check his online status - what do you know? Online! I have to stop that, seriously.