I went over to my ex's apt. to watch NFL. In the four hours I spent there, I asked him "who are you?" and he told me that he had sex with a woman in Paris for eight hours straight. "She was an animal" he said with a remembered glint in this eyes. I expected to feel a surge of pain. I felt nothing. So I asked him if he was trying to woo me again with his presents and appropriate calling on occasions like my birthday. I assumed he is not--for he doesn't quite know why he does certain things except for the fact he wants to be at the center of attention of older and newer women at all times. Even if he was wooing him, he wouldn't know how to express the thought for its done on an impulse, from a remembered time of togetherness. He denied wooing me just as I expected him to. I then told him that there are no third chances to which he gave a short smile as if he really had been wooing me but expected me to woo him back because of it--not tell him what I did. I think I took him aback with my assertion. I know this because he agreed to my proposition an hour later--to revisiting the idea of us, together when we are both 50. He didn't even hesitate. So, yes, I know. He was wooing me, even as he continues to pursue other shiny or not so shiny objects of pleasure in this city called body buffet. When he said that he pursues certain women not for the sex but because ultimately we are people who want to be liked and heard--I blew a slight gasket. No, sir. I started. You don't date women because they are people but because you want to continuously remind yourself that you are boy whose idea of self is attached to the idea of as much ass licking as is humanly possible without suffering a heart attack. It is how he thinks of himself as a young boy in heat. This is also how a brown boy from India living in NYC imagines himself white. Screwing white women makes a brown man white--at least in his own mind. But not just any white woman but a woman who professes to some celebrity status--class and race are intertwined. I told him that I don't see him dating ever a black woman from the Bronx--yes, race and class are intertwined. He agreed. Ah! the joys of knowing the ins and outs of a boy from a past. In this whole time, I observed myself the most. How I laughed and joked and appeared happy when on the inside nothing touched me in the region of my heart. I felt like I was watching myself feel nothing at all. I felt strong for it but also sad. I don't want to not feel. I want to feel everything through the depths of me but it is also my undoing. I cannot handle emotion. I feel so much that it is scary. It takes me to the edge of reason and then I fall through the gaping hole, always falling, never arriving. For now, not feeling anything is fine. I have felt enough last year. I am exhausted. I need reprieve. I also need my life to right itself right now. Enough is enough. My ex will remain an ex. For that is what he wanted. Deep down what you want is what will manifest. I manifest an alternate reality where I have what I really, really want--justice in life and love.

For the past hour or so I have been bawling. I wish I could say why. My endorphins should be kicking in after an half hour run but I am still teary-eyed and miserable. Isn't there a time in our lives when nothing makes sense anymore? There is time when you are forced to pause to ask what happened? When and how did my life become a joke? I thought I had a guardian angel looking out for me. I don't think so anymore. This angel is the joker from Batman instead. An angel would shield me from disaster rather than wrought disaster on me every time I give myself the permission to be happy. In 2013 I became the chair of my department and found a man who ostensibly was kind and liked intimacy with me. In 2014, the man betrayed me and I was denied tenure. All within two months of 2014. And the rest of the year I enrolled in a legal case against my institution, applied for every possible job to no avail, and kept postponing a surgery in the hope that I might get an interview call. My phone remained silent. I enlisted my betrayer back into my life for I desperately needed to feel that the world hadn't stopped spinning and I was in some twilight zone on an undiscovered planet. So no I don't have a guardian angel. I don't have anyone. I thought I knew the point to my life and decisions I made all along. A man said to me when I was married to another man to visit him in London, Canada and see if we are soul mates. I took more than half a year to lie my way to him. He didn't say and I didn't ask if we were soul mates. I assumed we were. I spent 10 years with the supposed soul mate hoping he will say he is. Instead he said and did everything that said the opposite. A soul mate doesn't call his other half "old" or look at her with disgust or forget her birthday or even forget to bring her medicine only to have drinks with a colleague instead. A soul mate doesn't see a crying and in pain other and shout at her to stop. He doesn't sit on his sofa with the nonchalance of a cat only to tell a pleading other that he doesn't want to continue with her after 10 years. So no I don't have a guardian angel. An angel would have seen my love and devotion to a mate and said, "ok, let's make her happy now." No, this angel just sat aside eating an apple while my life crumbled. This angel just sat aside eating a lemon this time when my life crumbled the second time--this time my livelihood was at stake. He didn't care. How dare I be happy again or attempt to be? He rather I be a joke to laugh about than be a human woman who needs a break now, who must be paid her dues now for the length of this suffering is unjustified. I need the light to shine at the end of my tunnel. I need a new angel who is not perverse but empathic. I am done with unkindness and entitlement. I need goodness in my life. I need to hope again. I need to live again. I need the universe to heed this plea. I am entitled to a good life for I have been a good "wife." I have worked my heart out to protect and nurture people in my personal and professional life. I have borne too many costs of such nurture. I need nurturing now---a lot. Calling on all good angels for the job. Like I said, only the good ones need apply.

I am not feeling it. I met a new man who saw me on Match and strung together a multi-lingual invite to coax me into a meeting. I like words. I am turned on by them. I like when a man can be literarily romantic without really knowing that he is. I like the certainty of words behind which lies an uncertainty about how it will all go down with its target. More the uncertainty, greater the certainty of expression. So I agreed to meet this new man for a drink five emails in a night after. I was leaving for Austin in two days so a drink would not be a make or break. It was just a drink. I had no expectations. His picture wasn't bad though I suspected it was an older one, a younger one. I expected an older man. How old I would know at our meeting. I chose an Enoteca on 69th and Broadway. It was a place to get   a drink without necessarily having dinner. It was a first meeting place, a place to assess a possibility. So I dressed up nice. A ruby red lipstick matched perfectly my checkered red tunic. I was more than presentable. Not hot or sexy--no cleavage for god's sake. No. THAT was not me on a first meeting. I know men are visual but I need to be attracted to a man for me to assuage his visual needs. This was not a date and not a man I was attracted to in any measure by just a photograph. The oomph factor is directly proportional to desire. Greater the desire, more intense the factor. That usually takes time. Though I have to admit I up my factor when I meet either of my exes--just to make them feel shit for not keeping me. I can be devious like any man or woman or child. Sure enough I was the first one to reach the Enoteca. I usually am the more punctual one. Maybe I need to work on being fashionably late as they say. Given his eagerness to see me, I assumed he was having trouble finding the place, hence the lateness. So I called him and sure enough he was standing at the corner of 69th looking for the place. My heart thumped as I waited to get his first glimpse. I saw him through the glass and yes, he looked older than his picture. Confirmation one. I did feel a small disappointment. But I know better than to make snap judgements. Faces do not generally make for a bad or good connection between people. Anyway, I was here and I am not rude so I put on my best smile (which he said he adored!) and welcomed him. He was a little shy but not tongue tied. I did have a good evening over a glass of some house wine. It was the usual first meeting where you are trying to create better impressions and adding snippets of you to the flow of the conversations. So you kind of know just a little more about this stranger but not enough. You don't know whether he has a temper or a sexually transmitted disease. You don't know how much he might have hurt someone in a relationship he has walked away from. You don't know whether he has kids. You don't know whether he hates or loves his mother. You don't know whether he really has a good job or he is being fired the very day you are meeting him. You don't know whether he is good or bad at intimacy. You don't know (but would love to know) if he can shake your world with his tongue, especially if the last one did in the most magnificent way possible. I was looking for a better version of my previous ex---the generous gift-giver with a generous lover. I didn't know if he would be both or whether my luck included such a creature of a man. So I walked away at the end of the evening knowing that I wouldn't be the one calling. He emailed me about how much he enjoyed the evening and wanted to see me again. I ignored it. I left for Austin. One week later, he texted me. He hoped that maybe I had missed the email and a text would certainly catch my attention. I knew now that he liked me enough to wait and try again. I replied. He again expressed how much he wants to see me again. I like a little desperation in a  man. This means he is physically reacting to me. This means he is attracted to me. I can find that attractive, yes. I like a man to want to take over and be the man for a woman he wants. So when I go back to NYC in the next week, I will meet him again to sort out the first impressions and creative imaginations (I might be imagining him more favorably in my mind which may be bad for it will lead to a final disappointment in the second meeting). Anyway, I am ready for a second meeting--just to see how soon we run out of conversation or not. You have got to stay tuned for this one!!!!!!!