Pakistani Queer

I met a queer couple the other night. One woman was from Pakistan. Luckily she was from a loving supportive family, but listening to her describe being a queer woman in Pakistan...her fear of death was palpable.

Count your blessings.

International Women's Day 2017

Recently a friend and former colleague who works for a very posh company shared with me that his company has set the goal of hiring X Number of female developers. It is a big company and I seem to recall the number was small, like maybe ten. My reaction was positive. He said, "Okay good, tell me more about why you feel that way because I have a female co-worker who was very upset by it. She said she didn't want to find out she was only hired for her gender." To which I replied, "Why not? It happens to men every day. Men have privilege and they don't know it. It comes so natural to them they wear it like skin. Perhaps they get more credit than is due, just like when men are hired because they are men. And one company has dedicated a single objective for themselves to extend that extra favor to probably ten lucky women.

You may not like it, but if you really want equality between the sexes, women have to acknowledge that while we are underpaid and under praised, men are also OVER paid and OVER praised. They are promoted without reason, taken into the fold, and groomed for success starting at a young age.

Normally women have to be better than all of their peers just to avoid appearing inferior. Here is one small example of a very smart company shifting the balance for a brief moment in time. So don't fight the progress, friends. We have earned it, collectively, and I applaud everyone involved for giving women an edge, albeit a tiny one.

So take whatever they are offering and do not think twice about it. Do it for all the women who are blocked from management. Do it for the women who can't rise up. Do it because we all deserve a little favoritism once in a while.

Rebuilding routines has me like

I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.

Even feminists are guilty

Female value is measured by their use to men.

One night in Antwerpen, circa Feb 2016

Last night I was lost and found myself drawn toward a purple light, which gave an allure of nightclub. I approached the massive doors to read the sign above that said, "Club Silk, an American club." I went to open the door and realized I had to ring a bell. A beautiful woman cracked the door open to talk to me. I asked if she would speak English with me. She said of course. I told her I was American, and lost, and what not. Apparently I passed inspection, which presumably included identifying me as male, because the next thing she did was open the large door under the purple lights to reveal the plush interior of Club Silk. She turned to her colleague and said, "He is American," and walked away to let them deal with me. I knew the moment I realised I had to ring a doorbell that it was not a nightclub, but I was damn curious by then. The mystique lingered a moment longer as I peered in through the open door to the harem of barely dresed femmes slowly coming into view. When I asked where I was, they replied, "This is a strip club."

I was definitely not in the mood for a strip club last night (though under the circumstances it certainly felt like a warm port on a cold stretch of road), but it made for a vivid memory. I especially liked being recognized as a friendly face and welcomed in, even if they were a bit off the mark.

Modern Tech

The internet is listening as you type; scraping your yet unpublished thoughts with JavaScript. Terabytes and terabytes of data are dumped onto the internet every single day. For profit and not for profit ventures alike scramble to segment your virtual page views into interactive client side dashboards, widgets, and modals, oh my. Engineers,  scientists, mathemeticians, business administrators, and bankers all know one thing - they want your metadata, and all they have to do for it is give you an app. With a single set of files - because that is really all an app is, right - they are in your phone. IN YOUR PHONE. It is not  a conspiracy. This is our modern reality. Just like a human tracks DNA through a room, so does your device track packets of metadata à la IP hopscotch, pinging like pong, all the while leaving a trail of trackable characteristics for software to guzzle down into a third party analytics integration. Yeah, baby. And at the end of the day we pay a lot of money for telecom; for tiny phones and high speed connections. Yeah, you know it's true. We are paying them to do it to us.

This prose is brought to you by Why Am I Still Awake Productions.

Fuel My Feminist Fire, Fuckface

Yesterday I was having a nice meal with a beautiful woman when two drunk and high men came and joined our booth without asking. The alpha dog of the two smugly slurred his broken English, and within two minutes or less was asking if we were lesbians. My companion, who does not actually identify as a lesbian (though we were on a date), had never experienced anything like this, and I could feel her tension swell without turning my head. I was friendly with him, in spite of his being a malicious idiot. I told him in no uncertain terms that I wanted to continue to enjoy the rugby game with her. Alone. He audaciously offered with a smile that he and his friend were invading, and I smiled broadly back in agreement, but he made no move to leave. Thing 2 then got up and walked away from us, and we felt a brief moment of accomplishment for that until he returned with the beers they left at the bar. So far we made no progress, and not knowing what else to do, my date started to rise as if she would leave me there with them. I clamped my palm down on her thigh and shook my head and told her we would get rid of them together. They basically had us trapped in a circular booth anyhow. During all of this, I am somehow still cool as a cucumber and smiling at my soon to be losing chess opponent. I asked him to please excuse us. He smiled back at me, considering my request, and said flatly, "No." I repeated myself more sternly, and he shook his head. I asked a third time raising my voice just enough that a woman at the next table overheard and actually jabbed him in the back of his shoulder telling him to get lost. He still refused to go. At this point the entire front half of this enormous Irish pub is looking at our table as I ask him repeatedly to excuse us, and finally our waiter comes and plants himself by my side and tells the guys to get out of the booth. Presumably because this instruction came from another male, they ultimately relent, and the malignant asshats return to the bar. My date and I are left there in a state of shock and disbelief. We are relieved but still feel unsafe, and monitor his movement in the public space until we are sure he is gone.

This is my first time being publicly harassed as a visibly queer/butch woman in Europe, and the first time anywhere on earth for my date. She apologised profusely for attempting to leave me there. I told her that we were lucky; that if we had been in an isolated location, I might be telling this story to a lawyer. I feel guilty, because this would not have happened to her without me. I know it is not my fault, but these are the thoughts of a victim of an act of sexually charged bullying, and someone who has learned to cope with the fallout of being me and yet still wants to spare those around her from it.

In the aftermath, I am left to ponder his actions. He saw what he perceived to be two lesbians, and decided to "partake," pardon the expression. He would not listen to me, my date, or the woman behind him. This clearly demonstrates the theory that our society positions women as the property of men, to do with as they wish, and their behavior is only regulated by other men. What is the most disturbing to me now in hindsight is the way he looked at me, and that he felt so sure of his ability to predate us in the presence of literally hundreds of people. What do you do when you come across someone like that, except get as far away from them as possible? But what about the next pair of women he finds? Will they be so lucky?

Fuck. This is the work of the motherfucking patriarchy and experiences like this one only make me more determined than ever to see its total disassembly, piece by bloody piece.

Free Falling Abroad

Two days after I set foot in Europe for the first time, I attended an all employee meeting via conference call from my hotel in Utrecht, Netherlands. My probably stupid and brave, but heavily researched decision to move to this country site unseen happened just a few months prior when I signed a contract with an international consulting firm. They moved me to Europe. I got a raise in a stronger currency, and enjoyed the benefits of being a highly skilled migrant, of which there are many. So began my very promising adventure across the pond.

Then at that first all employee meeting, management announced that there was an acquisition. The company in which I entrusted my livelihood was acquired by a bigger, more established firm in NL that also had offices in London. As they say in the corporate world, I was "the last one in, and the first one out." By Dutch law, they actually don't have to supply you with a reason to let a person go during the probationary period, and they quoted exactly that line and verse from their legal code on the afternoon of my termination.

At first that day felt like a TKO. I was on the mat, bleeding and busted, unsure if I could get up and go on. I felt completely derailed and filled with self-doubt, but mostly I was afraid. It took me months to research and plan my move to Europe. If I had to return hastily to the U.S., I knew I would lose big.

I spent one entire day in full on panic mode. Then the next day I got to work. According to the IND (the Dutch immigration office), I had 90 days to find a suitable replacement for my employer, after which the opportunity to remain in this country would become exponentially more difficult and costly. The clock was already running against me.

What happened next will shock some of you, but I assure you that it is completely normal in my field, and particularly so in development hot spots like Amsterdam and Berlin and San Francisco, where there are not enough people who do what I do. What I am referring to is getting overnight feedback, and interviews set up for that very same week that I was let go from my previous job.

For the last 75 days I worked with both internal and external recruiters and have honestly lost track of all of the interviews of which I have been a part. Whether over Skype or in person, technical and non, formal or informal, I have done them all. I also developed a few single page apps in Angular, wrote jQuery widgets, and did a whole array of different coding assignments. From big corporations to budding start-ups, I met with them all. Suffice it to say, I picked a very good city to live in for my vocation, albeit challenging.

Just try to imagine - I spent 75 days of not knowing where I would be in six months. 75 days of flying blind. 75 days of worrying that I would throw thousands of dollars into a black hole just to get myself home, of recovering almost instantly from rejection, of selling myself confidently when inside I was completely freaked out. 75 days in a foreign country with no escape plan.

It was a long strange trip. I did hear a lot of rejection, which was thankfully often coupled with valuable feedback. However, valuable though it was, I usually had to work to decipher it without becoming personally offended. One of the prime examples was realizing that the American tradition of keeping your resume short will not impress foreign hiring officials. They want to see everything you have ever done, in which case the more senior members of the field have many pages of experience.

Generally speaking, I got a lot of attention, and a lot of interviews, but getting to the offer stage was not a simple feat. The more iterations I repeated, the closer I got to the closing table. Then finally, one offer came, and then another, and then two more, but even then it wasn't over. The first company that made me a competitive offer ultimately did not end up signing me after I made a counter offer. That was a crippling blow. That was two weeks ago, and these last two offers came at the end of that same week that the first deal went south.

Ultimately, all of my hard work is going to be justly awarded. This week I finally signed with a new firm, and I am currently trying to relish in the slowly resonating tone of relief as it echos through all previous areas of unrest. I start back to work on Tuesday, and right now I am trying to give myself the latitude to do exactly what my life and my body need with this last weekend of freedom. Today is the second day since I signed the contract, and what I am finding is that I am completely fucking exhausted. I think I could sleep straight through the next few days if I let myself. That seems a bit extreme to me, so I have elected to compromise by keeping it close to home, trying to get some chores and errands done, while balancing that with watching films and spending time with my pets.

So that's what I've been doing.

A story about love - The End

Slowly it happens. You fall from love's grip, and drop to the safety of your heart's ocean. You cannot observe it in progress, but you can mentally retrace the events. It starts with seeing your adored one with more clarity, and ends with release from the fear of losing them. It doesn't mean you no longer care, it just means you are free from your constant concern for them. It may not be graceful. These things usually aren't. That is okay. If your former flame is a reasonable person who is given the time and space to draw fair conclusions, perhaps your lack of grace can be forgiven. Perhaps the two of you can defy conventional wisdom and remain friends. It is entirely subjective though, and only time will tell what the future may or may not hold.

In the meantime, look around you, because you are now free. In fact, take a picture so you can commemorate the occasion. Be mindful. Accept yourself and your place in the universe just as you are. Know that this is a time in your life upon which you will reflect a great deal, so you should do your best to find enjoyment in it. It won't be too difficult considering the sense of relief you experience. Indeed there is sorrow for the loss, even if the lost thing is pain, but it is not worse than what you just finished enduring. You are through the worst of it.

Race Conditions

The tender mercy of time gone by is the only relief for my silly schoolgirl heart. I am not meant to be with anyone right now. I am truly in need of a love affair with myself. For some time I have been cultivating a regimen, which must flex in response to my ever changing schedule, but always ultimately moving forward in my many disciplines. Always progress.

Here I am halfway around the world. I've done the commute to London twice, and there is a sense of deja vu, only this is bigger and better. With fondness I recall the early mornings (before six am) that I would drive into the city, then take the T to the PNC YMCA in downtown Pittsburgh. Doing a triathlon sprint distance at the gym before 8am was a fun challenge. Now I cross an ocean to get to work on some days. Racing across congested cities and through airport and train stations is my new set of obstacles. Not only will I endure, but I will also do it fast. I cannot deny sweating through much of the traveling today. I am serious about the racing business.

Similar to triathlons, there is another aspect to it, which involves not being aggressive. It happened one day last year that I was racing up from the underground T station downtown. I found myself rushing around a mother and son, and felt very unchivalrous afterward. The mother yielded and I overheard the boy asking her - in response to her pulling him out of my way (wince) - about "the guy with all of the bags." It was something that stayed with me. Ever since then I have attempted to lace my race mentality with a thread of patience and temperance. I will not take innocents out in my pursuit of getting home a few minutes faster.

I will however, assert myself in the leagues of suits gushing through the veins of public transportation. I will race to the front. I will break through the openings in the throngs of travellers (today I waited to check my bag in a queue of probably 250 people). Then I will find, like tonight, that my shoulders sag at the end of it. I lost my spring in the last 20 minutes or so, but then I realised it is okay. I'm not in England anymore. I don't have to run. I'm at home, in my new city. Then I think how weird that feels and sounds while the words are still forming in my head.

This is what I'm doing right now. I am convinced that I moved to Holland to learn how to slow down and relax. I need a balance for this intense fire that burns within. Alas. Now it is 1:15 am, and I intend to be at the gym by 6:30 before my commute to Utrecht. I'm not even packed. I guess that's enough of this for now. Thank you, goodnight.

a life that I love

I am tired in a way I don't know that I have ever felt before. I sleep like the dead, and it is never enough. I know there are dreams, but I cannot recall them. 

When I rise from bed my calf muscles are tight like clenched fists. I relax them in the shower under steaming hot water, and some walking around the room, altogether about an hour. Then I inevitably have to go out in the morning, and get back on the bike.

I miss Yoga, but I still can't bring myself to even do sun salutations in my room. Every few days I force myself to run 5K on a treadmill that seems tenuous under my footfalls. Exercise is providing my introduction to the metric system. In other words, I no longer have much concept of what the numbers mean, and I just run like hell.

I have been eating lunch meat sandwiches and veggies with hummus for almost a solid month. I miss having a kitchen and eating warm food, and NOT eating the same exact thing every single day for a month.

This weekend I will begin the creation of my new personal life. Which gym will I join? On what schedule will I work, workout, and commute? How the heck will I approach food now that I have to shop every couple of days? What will become my new favorite recipes for one? For two? I am back at the drawing board preparing to draft new specifications on this newest iteration of myself. Time to focus on the basics, and engineer a life that I love.

A story about love. Part III

As it would happen, she confided recently that her heart is not actually totally closed to me. The newest incarnation of our dynamic is that we are living in the moment, with no doors closing to what the future may hold, and yet still no promises made to provide for that which my heart most keenly anticipates now.

To a logical person such as myself, I have truly been struggling with this. Practical wisdom does not ordain a happy ending in this chapter. Conventional wisdom dictates what some of you may have already concluded; that I am setting myself up for failure. That may indeed be true. Instinctively, I find myself resisting this scenario with her, and asking for how long must I allow my heart to continue to swell for her without reward? For how long can I bear the openness of my own heart? For how long can I sustain this unfed yearning? Will she ever reciprocate the intimacy I want to share with her? You can be certain that you have not imagined any argument against this that I have not already considered.

While all of this is happening, I could not help but think back to another epic infatuation I maintained that ended very painfully last year, and my human instincts recoil and advise me to protect myself from experiencing that pain again. Yet already, if I am being truly genuine with myself, I can see that this interest in her is nothing like the last. She is different (she does have love for me, is physically attracted to me, and has demonstrated as much), the circumstances are different (as no two scenarios are the same), I am different (with any luck), and I have already changed my ways (I overcame my fears and went for it), which means our history together is already different from the past...and yet my instincts still collectively cause a tremor of fear to electrify my senses and keep them on alert.

Here I am, suspended in this precarious situation, and I know that if I struggle too much against it, she will actually close her heart to me. I also know that my fear insists that I do not stay where I am, exposed, heart continuing to swell and grow in her light. For what will be the outcome if I remain here indefinitely and never win her love? What shame and embarrassment and pain will follow me throughout this experience, and then continue to haunt me when at last I am able to love again? How will it feel to love so deeply, and then to be rejected? The truth is that these are logical traps, although I do not yet understand why. What I do know is true is that if I continue with these traps, we will have nothing but bitterness in the future, and that is a fate I cannot bear.

Her insistence that we remain present in the now, and not judge what is there, echoes in my mind. I am confused and frustrated by this. I think to myself that I am not Buddhist...and yet...I want to see, for I know I cannot reject her premise without truly understanding it. So I begin my research, and what do I find? I find revelations which both astound and annoy me; astound because they may contain the guidance I need to remain gracefully in limbo; annoy because they may contain the guidance I need to remain gracefully in limbo. My ego does not want her to be right, because it means that I must continue to feel the discomfort of possessing such a tender heart with no promise of salvation from itself.

When I discovered the first link my eyes widened like saucers, and in listening to the words of Pema Chodron liken the experience of unrequited love and how it can relate to Bodhichitta, I wept deeply. According to Chodron, love is not about our partner. It is about us. It is about seeing qualities in our own hearts reflected back to us. We yield against our own defenses, which is usually a hardening of our hearts, and instead soften in the relationship. Therefore, love is a way in which we become more open, and our hearts grow. When love is not returned however, for some inexplicable reason our hearts continue to grow and soften. The reason we cut ties when our affection is not returned is because we cannot stand the sensation of our own vulnerability; to our own softness in the absence of reciprocity.

Enter the Bodhichitta. Now this is a complex concept that I only just discovered today, so forgive me of any misstep as I try to parse this into words. Essentially my understanding is that the Bodhichitta lives beneath the armor of all of our defenses. It is the humanity that finds compassion for our sworn enemies. It lives in each of us, buried deeply beneath all of the mechanisms of protection and walls we build to keep people from triggering past pain. So from this oversized heart absent of all of its walls, we may harvest this beautiful compassion and enlightenment, but we must not shut ourselves down. We must not harden.

Therein lies the beautifully tragic connection between unrequited love and Bodhichitta. For me, I find that I am wearing this gigantic, hugely swollen heart that has completely opened itself like a Lotus at midday. For whatever reason, my heart felt it would be safe to bloom and present its most delicate anatomy to the exposure of sunlight and oxygen. While waiting for this to be reflected back to me, too much time has passed. My heart has gotten bigger and bigger, and just past the point of ripening, it wants to wilt. It wants to close over upon itself and take all of its fruit and blossoms into the ground from whence it came to rot and await a new seed to be planted. But there is still something living in this heart. There is still compassion. There is still love. And in this single solitary moment, I cannot deny it. So to awaken my own Bodhichitta here, I must not harden. I must stay open to all of the pain that it brings, as well.

So here I will sit with this passionate love. I will continue to let her inspire and influence me, and to clutch at the discomfort of my overgrown heart. I will struggle against the suffering I have created for myself; the pain that is defined by my own intense desire going unmet. I do not know that I have the stuff for this. I am not certain I will not break things in this delicate space. I only know that I want this elusive Bodhichitta to come from this, and not to have my passion - which can be so beautiful - become the destructive force and consume this love with bitter resentment.

A story about love. Part II

By the time I made my confession, I only had a few weeks left in the country. I asked her to dinner much in advance of that, but we were entering into the holiday gauntlet, and it was probably lucky we were able to squeeze it in when we did. I told her over dinner; at dessert, actually. The way I presented it to her required no response. At that point I was just grateful for the opportunity to tell her. I remember thinking she took it rather well, just before the lights came up in the restaurant. At that point we checked the time, only to discover we were so engrossed in the conversation that three and a half hours had passed, and we were still not yet ready for it to stop. We took the two remaining beers in the six back to my apartment around the corner, after I promised to be on my best behavior, of course. There we stayed until she finally left at midnight. It was a six hour affair, but was not a Date. Flowers, dinner, great conversation, but definitely not a "date."

From then there were fits and starts. One part of her was very clear that she wanted me, and another part of her was very clear that she would not pursue anything. Both of these parts would continue to do battle. There were some intimate moments shared. There were also rejections. All I knew was that when she came around me, I felt the blooms open and my heart would pump harder, and everything was right with the world. I was doing my best not to have expectations, but that got tricky the closer we became. My heart was already hers, but when she gave me all of that attention, I did not stand a chance. I fell for her utterly and completely. She is everything I ever wanted in a woman, and not one thing I do not like. Each new interaction makes me like and respect her more, even when it has the occasion to sting.

Then our three weeks were up, and I think it was just too much for her. She clearly enjoyed getting to spend time with me, quite a bit actually, but there just was not enough time. There was too much at stake. I was leaving the country. We really did not know one another at all, truth be told. It was upsetting the balance in her home life. For these reasons, and possibly others, she jilted me on my way out of the country. That is a generic word I am going to use to summarize a series of unfortunate events that happened. Essentially, she was there, and then she took her heart and went away from me, without warning or explanation. She did not offer me any consolation. So I left the country like that, carrying a deep sadness with me along with all of my baggage.

Even after I landed in Europe, for some reason I still did not get that she had completely withdrawn from any romantic pursuits for about another week. I actually had to ask her point blank if there was any hope. She said unequivocally no, and yet she wants to be my friend, and she is still just as wonderful to me as she ever was. She is truly sensitive to my feelings, and makes an effort to be considerate and give me time and space.

Everything I read online tells me that I will have to take space for myself away from her, and yet when faced with the prospect of closing the door on a friendship with her, every fiber of my being rejects it. I cannot give her up. She has influenced me in many ways since I met her in March, most of them having nothing at all to do with attraction. We have done nothing but help and learn from one another. However painfully my heart sings for her unrequited muse, I know that I am better off with her in my life.

In terms of the pursuit of love, she has told me there is no future for us, and that is what I am trying to accept now as she and I begin to redraw the boundaries. We are, after all, thousands of miles plus an ocean apart. Alas my heart knows nothing of distance, and is not ready to let go of those precious fleeting moments that we did share. I am still swimming in my memories of her being in my embrace, eyes locked together, suspended in the brilliance of a single moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUimRLO5G0E

A story about love. Part I

It was a Friday in March when I first saw her. I was attending a Yoga class in the gym offered by my employer at the time, and the instructor entered the room. She was a petite brunette whose smile spread across her face as she approached me with hand extended, and said, "I don't believe I've had the pleasure. My name is Adriana." I was instantly attracted to her. Her wide green eyes were so open and warm, and her presence was so sincere. I realized that her hand was awaiting mine, and so we shook and I said, "Butch."

I don't recall much about what we did in class that day, but I do remember her guided meditation. Her closing was, "Think of the seeds you have planted in your life which you would like to take root and bloom." At the time I was undergoing some pretty major change, and was still waiting to see some of the positive effects. Suffice it to say, her closing reached inside of my heart like an invisible hand and alleviated tenderness that was previously unnamed. I left the class uplifted. I was impressed by her holistic beauty. She was lucky enough to be born beautiful, she worked hard to take care of herself and keep a flawless appearance, and her light shone from within so brightly that it illuminated even some of my own inner darkness. It is quite possible that I fell in love with her on that day.

Of course I faithfully attended her class, even though it was probably below my skill level. I asked her to suggest a more challenging class, and she shared the name of another instructor, Renee, who taught a class at the same time on Thursdays. When I joined the following week, I was pleased to discover Adriana in attendance as well. It was a class and an instructor from whom I learned very much, in retrospect. At the time I was doing a lot of healing and changing, so it was very nutritious soul food to be attending these classes in which I was not only doing something very positive for myself, but also enjoying interactions with Adriana before and after, however brief.

After a month or so of this, I was telling a friend about her, who then started to look for information about her online. Her results came back negative: there was no evidence of a boyfriend to be found. In truth, there was not much information about her at all, except that she was in grad school. I wasn't interested in snooping, and didn't want to find out anymore about her that way, so I told my friend to stop. I had to say that to her more than once, but she did stop eventually. I just didn't want that to be how I got to know her.

My confidence swelled thinking there was no man in her life, even though I had a pretty strong feeling that she was hetero. Nothing could stop my heart from these feelings, and so I went on with the crush. I decided I wanted to give her a gift and ask her if she would allow me to take her to dinner. I spent an entire week preparing. I researched old fashioned courtship rituals and studied the art of gift giving. I decided that I wanted to give her something that had no other purpose than to give her pleasure. Since I did not know her, I felt like a mani/pedi gift certificate was a bit much. I settled on flowers. An important symbol in the new age sphere is the lotus flower, so that seemed like a good option. At first I thought I might grow one for her, but as it turns out, they are quite difficult to raise outside of their native habitat. I looked into ordering them, and that didn't work out for whatever reason. Then I stumbled upon origami lotus flowers. PERFECT!

I found tutorials online and taught myself the art of folding an origami lotus. It was a perfect task for me, because it allowed me to spend time thinking of her while doing something thoughtful. It was also a puzzle, which I love to solve. It took about half a day to fully understand and absorb it. Then I went out and bought heavier paper, as this fold is difficult enough that you will rip right through lighter stock when turning the petals out. I got my favorite pens and markers out and I spent the next few days before I was to see her again folding lotuses. On that Friday, I picked the most perfectly imperfect one of them all, and I even published a post on social media declaring my plans so that I would not chicken out.

In class that day, she finally mentioned her boyfriend. My heart imploded upon itself, but I did not stir. It was a feat of great self control not to run from the room, but I somehow managed to get through class without incident. Afterward I decided to give her the flower anyway. I approached her when her back was turned. When she turned around she was holding a ringing phone she had to answer. I awkwardly bestowed the gift. She hugged me, and answered her cell. I left the locker room defeated.

Less than five minutes after I arrived back to my desk my phone rang, and it was her. She was calling from her desk, and it was then that I learned her last name. She thanked me for the flower, and apologized for having to take the call. She suggested we grab coffee together sometime, as she finds me "terribly interesting."

There was just enough promise in this interaction to restore my mood. I remember now what she said then, because I remember every compliment she ever paid me in those first couple of months. Just like I remember when we were talking about how I foolishly push myself too hard in physical exercise, and she said it was my Warrior Spirit. Those were the comments that signaled to me that the way she looked at me was not the same as your typical straight girl. She could see more of me than others could. Unfortunately for both of us, I don't think she knew it was happening, or how it made me feel.

I did not take her up on her invitation to coffee right away. I was quite wary of being made to feel inadequate and dissatisfied by chasing someone I could never have. I kept going to Yoga, though, and along the way I discovered quite a few common interests that I can otherwise share with no one, like the fact that I was waking up at 4:30 am every day for training. One day she asked me what time I got up, I answered, and she blinked at me. I think she was stunned. She told me she does, too. My jaw must have dropped. It was then that I decided to make that coffee date.

It was in this fashion that seeds were planted, roots took hold, and something started to grow inside of me. My love for her bloomed and consumed my chest with beautiful blossoms. It was a season of sunshine and joy. I could see the risk looming ahead, and I did not care.The way that I felt about her and the things we shared, however minor they might have appeared to an outsider, filled me up with purpose in a way I had long since forgotten. It was my love for her that brought me to the realization that I had been suffering a great deal at the hands of "love" for far too long. I was invigorated and primed for the chase. I began to write poetry again after taking such a long hiatus from it that I actually convinced myself it was a younger man's trade. My heart was well again, and singing for her muse.

To be continued...