Alison will be going on a Crazy Blind Date (tm?), courtesy of okcupid … in a public location, hopefully. Ben will be slackin’ off. Kim will be putting the finishing touches on her YA novel. Tara will be in a play, and we’re all going to see it!

A.
True love! Or so I thought. We broke up after he started seeing my lookalike cousin (MY LOOKALIKE COUSIN!!) on the side. We (the cousins) looked awfully similar, to the point where my sister mistook her for me. My sister saw her from a distance and from behind, but still. I broke up with him to be with B.

B.
My first real boyfriend, all through high school. Sigh. Where to begin? He was just an all-around awesome guy. And then we graduated. And never really broke up. (Maybe he’ll wait for me forever …) I may not love him anymore, but I like him so much, I will be genuinely happy when he tells me he’s getting married/engaged/shacking up with someone else. The only boyfriend that still shows up in random (innocent) dreams from time to time, usually accompanied by a stack of impossible homework. Psychoanalysis, anyone?

C.
This time, it’s for real. Or so I thought. He was a heavy gamer, but a good one. Really good. Like, CPL Counter-Strike international tournaments good. We spent a lot of time playing World of Warcraft together. I still have a level 60something warlock somewhere out there, waiting patiently for me to come back. As for C himself, I don’t know. Last time we spoke, it was my birthday and he was breaking up with me. “Why?” I asked, in a strangled voice. (His parents didn’t approve.)

D.
Ah, D. He was ridiculously handsome, and I would melt into a puddle when he missed a shave and let that sexy stubble grow in. We were in the same organic chemistry class, and we would wait outside of class to flirt with each other. We never exchanged phone numbers. Our classmates would yell at us, separately: “Well, ARE YOU OR AREN’T YOU?! GOD!” I think our classmates were more invested in our semi-relationship than we were. Anyway, we would hang out with cheap wine and good burgers (In-N-Out). And we were constantly trying to sexually outdo each other. Ah, those simpler, kinkier times. When our year together ended, we disappeared out of each others lives, like any other classmate would have.

K.
Hallelujah! The cycle is broken — I finally skipped a letter! See, there’s no pattern. My forever link to my favorite video game series ever, he was the son of one of the composers to the Final Fantasy game soundtrack (not saying which one). K claimed that it was hard (ha!) for him to get off, due to a lengthy past of ecstasy-fueled sex (However, bonus!: he lasted a long time. Too bad the relation ship didn’t.). To this day, I still don’t know if that was a suggestion or merely a factual statement. Either way, he never showed up with any of the goods. Except for pot. There was a lot of that. I blame him for my non-completion of FF13, and the guilt I feel whenever I come across anything Final Fantasy-related.

E.
Um. So, it appears that K was an outlier? Anyway, E: Damn it all to hell! I really loved him. Until he broke up with me, immediately after his birthday weekend was over. Sure, I cried. And then I stopped crying when he got pissed off at why I wasn’t going to fight for us. Years ago, I decided I was never going to be one of those pathetic cases, begging their man to take them back, and pleading oh where did I go wrongggg? A few months later, he started dating … another Asian. And now I wonder: was I a person, or a type? I feel kind of betrayed. Fetishized, even. I honestly believed that it had been real, but …?

F.?
Vacancy, please apply within. No birthday breakups!

I am an actress in Los Angeles. This does not make me unique; however, I believe that I have that spark, that special something. Day after day, I sit on cheap chairs in a succession of waiting rooms, waiting to turn my sides into a convincing performance. These waiting rooms always smell like face powder and perfume.

I go in and I introduce myself. Sometimes, they’ll be terribly kind and interested. Other times, they don’t even look at me, because they’re far too busy texting. And always: “That’s all, thank you.” The worst part is when this happens in the middle of my monologue(s).

And then I go back to my part-time job as a bartender, at a swanky corporate chain. It’s a high-pressure environment, where the herd regularly gets culled for any slight infraction. At these corporate places, it’s easy to ax a hourly employee. All it takes is for a customer to write a letter, or drop a name in a negative Yelp review, and that’s it. That’s all it takes. No more job, and certainly no unemployment. Severance pay? Ha!

So, between routinely being rejected for auditions, and living in fear of being axed at my part-time job, I am an emotional wreck. When I wake up in the morning, I no longer know what it’s like to smile and stretch, and get ready for a new day. I open my eyes and if I don’t feel it yet, I wait the few seconds for it to happen. And then it does. Just … anxiety. Fear. Worry. It feels like I’ve offended someone, even though I know I haven’t.

Someday I’ll make it. I’ll land that one audition, the one that will make all the difference. And then I’ll never have to shake another martini for a living. And perhaps someday soon after that, I’ll wake up and the fear won’t sink in.

Please excuse Ben’s awful photo idea. Personally, I can’t abide the extra whitespace at the bottom. He said it was the only way to preserve the original aspect ratio.

According to Mint.com (and Ben Riley), I am a horrible person. Herewith, I present some choice selections from last month.

Chevron, $44.28
Well, duh. The car won’t run itself. As it is, I only have to fill up my car once a month. I think I’m doing well.

Exxon, $36.87
Had to refill on my way back from Vegas. Which brings us to …

Harrah’s Las Vegas, $40
My share of a three night stay, in a room overlooking the goddamned open-air bar/restaurant/whatever of The Quad. They played the same songs into the late night, every night. I know this for a fact. FACT!

Cosmopolitan Las Vegas, $105
A withdrawal for $100, along with a $5 ATM fee. Not to worry, my Ally bank account has reimbursed my ATM fee by now. As for the other $100 … well.

Flamingo Las Vegas, $105.99
Same. Funny, isn’t it, how Flamingo charges a bit more for ATM access, compared to the swankier, newer Cosmopolitan? I never spent this $100, though. When I got home, I deposited Benjamin Franklin back into my checking account.

Rdio.com, $4.99
Music subscription. Better than pirating … maybe? Total gateway drug, though. $4.99 gets me web-only access, and I can almost see myself rockin’ $9.99 on-the-go access on my iGadgets.

Progressive, $179.60
Yes, my car insurance is astronomical. No, don’t ask why.

Urgent care, $30
After a week of suffering, I finally admitted defeat and turned myself in. I had a low-grade fever, a weeklong sore throat, and a negative strep test. So I received an amoxicillin shot in my ventrogluteal site (side butt), and a prescription for … more amoxicillin. I feel that broad-range antibiotics are like shooting blindfolded: eventually, you’ll shoot something down.

Target, $14
$4 for the amoxicillin, and $10 for some generic drug for the sniffles. I feel that the pricing should have been the other way around.

CVS, $19.80
On my way home from Target: a package of LifeSavers, and a bottle of Seagram’s 7 Dark Honey Whiskey. I was in pain!

Langston Hughes: What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?
Todd Rundgren: A million old soldiers will fade away / But a dream goes on forever

You know what day it is. It’s happy, and it’s St Patrick’s Day! Drive those snakes out of Ireland!

Once upon a time, I was young and Asian (still am) in North Dublin (not anymore). While I was living there, I came to believe that Ireland was one of the best places in the world. I still believe this.

Sure, there’s all that talk about unemployment and the neverending argument about the euro, but never mind that. The “dreary” weather was a dream come true to me, and I couldn’t imagine why others would grumble at the “gloomy” days. “What?! This is great!”, said I. Oh, and the soft rain … don’t get me started on the weather, because I might start looking up one-way tickets.

Ireland taught me to drink a pint, and drink it properly: drink past the head. Yes, that will mean burying your nose in foam. Makes a hell of a difference. Try it sometime.

Not a common sight in Dublin, despite what you may think. I only saw this in one place – the Temple Bar Hotel.

I don’t know why anyone ever bothered with a coin-operated breathalyzer. Just about everyone pooled in for a cab ride home, or took the bus home (if they were lucky enough to live near the late buses). My French friends would regularly walk home to Ballymun, all the way from Temple Bar. One of them finally got sick of walking, and stole a bright purple bike and used that … presumably, until it got stolen from him.

My personal walking record was from Croke Park to Ballymun. Even then, I thought it was a tiring and long walk, and everyone kept giving me conflicting directions. (“The Irish way”, said my now-ex.)

Dublin v. Tyrone, at Croke Park, August 2011. Dublin went on to win the All-Ireland.

Gaelic football is impossible to watch while drunk, because there’s just too much going on, and too quickly. This, said my now-ex, was why he started watching American football.

Oh Och, I miss Ireland the oul’ country. I’ll get smashed for you today. The Irish way.

I apologize for my very-possible lack of coherence. I’ve been on the Bushmills.

THURSDAY.

I feel a tickle coming on in my throat. I drink water furiously and gargle salt, because Mom always said to do that and surely that must be true.

FRIDAY

Sore throat. My coworker and walking pharmacy friend gives me some kind of heavy duty painkiller, and I’m loopy for the next few hours. It’s great, she’s great, I’m great. And then it wears off.

SATURDAY

Mom texts, Giggle (sic) with salt water. OK.

SUNDAY

This is officially the longest sore throat ever.

MONDAY

I go home from work early because I just can’t take it anymore, and my boss can see that I’m visibly ill. Bye.

TUESDAY

I swallow a drink, and for a second, I think that I’ve swallowed glass. Nope. Just my sore throat. I drag myself to Urgent Care after. The nurse measures my fever as 99.1, a “low-grade fever”. I slump over and feel like dying while waiting alone in the waiting room, while I hear my doctor and some lady joking and sharing girly-girl anecdotes with each other in the next room. When I finally get called to the examination room after a good 30 minutes of listening to girly-girls, I see the Other Woman still chattering away with my doctor by the clinic exit. Dr takes all of 10 minutes to prescribe me an antibiotic. What happened to the days when I was a kid, when you got a throat swab sent away to a lab, and a diagnosis the next day? This blind maybe-it’ll-work antibiotics approach makes me want to move back to developing Asia. If they haven’t already gone the Amurrican way.

WEDNESDAY

Last night, I sweated out the last of the fever (I think. I don’t feel feverish anymore. I don’t have a thermometer). I decide to eat multivitamins for the rest of my life. I buy gummy multivitamins because they’re tasty and I’m secretly five years old. And then I buy a pack of LiveSavers in case the multivitamins turn out to be too tasty (they are). I hack up a glob of mucus that’s so thick, it won’t go down the grate. I have to pick it up with a tissue and toss it down the toilet. Ugh.

THURSDAY

My roommate (who had the flu last month) tells me I don’t have the flu. According to him, I don’t seem miserable enough. Also, I discover that Puffs Plus with Lotion has gone cheap on me. Instead of luxuriously swiping my nose, they scratch my nose like any other cheap dollar-store tissues.  Thankfully, Kleenex still makes a decent lotioned tissue.

ONE MONTH LATER, aka TODAY

Summer is here(ish). The seasonal flu is over(ish). And I am well.

The year is 2003, and I am a high school senior. My boyfriend is Billy, and he is the greatest ever.

The year is 2005, and I am a jerk. I see no future for us, and I am too young and dumb to figure out a way to say it – or to say it, at all. An argument ensues. It ends in the only possible result.

The year is 2011, and we finally patch up on Facebook.

The year is 2013, and for the past two nights, I have had dreams/nightmares involving Billy. Mostly they involve me trying to talk to him … but he ignores me. When I wake up, I am a combo-pack of annoyed, disturbed, nostalgic, confused. In my dreams, he looks like the boy I knew in 2003, and nothing like his present-day Facebook photos.

You are with me always, Billy, and it kind of bugs me.

1. Read the first few pages. Yeah, you can do this. Why do people give up? Oh, wait, that’s because you’re an intellectual, and they’re not. Psh. Savages. This is totally readable, and so complex.

2. Who is this incomprehensible Wardine chick? Wtf is this shit

3. Quit. Not that you’re a savage or anything.