Semper Idem

11:28, 26 June 2003

I cannot go outside today. Really, the sun is just too unbearable. Too... sunny. Especially for someone who went to sleep at 4am, drunk and stoned. Sweet.

I went out last night with Adeline, Pierre, Piyush and Anu. It was fun; I wasn't too drunk. I had six diet pills, so I was basically vibrating. When I have that many it makes me constantly wish more was happening. Faster, faster, manaically insane fun, now now now!

It was from that perspective that I looked at Piyush last night. Looked for signs that he was having fun, or was even drunk. You never can tell if he's having fun. He doesn't engage. He's never enthusiastic about anything, either postively or negatively. It makes me think of this Poe song that asks: Tell me what you've come for; / What is it you adore? / Won't you tell me? / What would you cry for, / Swallow your pride for? / What would you... go wild for? What, exactly, will break him open? I think I'd rather like to see him cry.

Last night I would have settled for signs that he was having fun. Although I do have to admit that he was laughing it up when Pierre started being hilarious and all of us were doubled over snorting our drinks out our noses. But who cares if Piyush was having fun? I was having fun. His cousin Anu is awesome and I hope she calls me while she's here so that we can go shopping and hang out. Oh, did I mention that she is gorgeous? So thin. Lithe. Svelte. And stunning. But so so so fun and nice that I can't even hate her for it. And she's a totally crazy party animal. Sucks she lives in Bombay.

Hanging out with all these foreigners brings up an old annoying habit of mine. I have this problem where when I am talking to someone with an accent, my English slowly starts taking on the other person's accent. This even happens with Limes... I start getting a little Alabama myself. (Please, Limes, please, call me out on it!) With the Indians, I take on those British speech mannerisms like ending sentences with "yeah?" as in: "My jacket's in the car, yeah?" or: "Let's go to SkyBar, yeah?" Not that any of them will ever call me out on it since they've never heard me speak any other way. They think it's some Swedish thing since my "yeah" actually comes out more like the Swedish "ja".

Eventually, if I get drunk enough, I start speaking pretty much completely in the other person's accent. Like this weekend at Sidarth's birthday on Saturday, by 5am I sounded as if I was born in Delhi. I personally think it is so obnoxious-sounding when I do this accent adoption, but I don't even notice that I do it. On one hand it's good because it makes my foreign language pronounciation excellent, since I mimic the native speakers' pronounciations perfectly. But the habitual mimicry makes me take on whatever pronounciation is around me even in English. I'm like a linguistic chameleon. I wonder if other people notice and think I'm being a pretentious snot? Limes? Have you ever noticed?

So Piyush. Again, I insist I'm over it. But you know what's weird? I'm not so over it that I would choose to do something else other than hang out with him. His indifference where there was once attention... that's the hook. That's what John Steadman (ex-boyfriend in London, circa 1999) did, too. Paid all this attention to me and made me feel so... so... paid attention to. But in a very insecure way, by which I mean that I was never sure I had him, you know? And so I was always sort of grasping for more, even when I was with him. It's like being parched and getting some water but not enough and you don't know when you're going to get more... and it makes you desperate for every last drop that you can beg, borrow or steal.

And then, when the relationship ends and the water you never quite got enough of is whisked away, you can't stop running after it like a lunatic even though you know it tasted bad anyway, when you had it. And that's why I'm not over Piyush enough to not drop everything and come running as soon as he calls. That's why I rearrange my schedule so I can go out and not talk to him and re-realise how much he sucks and how much I'm over it.

I also think part of it is that at least soon after John and I broke up, I moved back to America, which put the Atlantic between us. That always helps... the old "out of sight, out of mind unless you're drunk" trick. Piyush lingering here is just rubbing the same damn blister, you know? He'll be in NY when I go back in July, and he's apparently coming back to LA the last week of July and I'm just like: ohhhh, interesting that we had to break up because you were LEAVING and then you never seem to get on with it!

OK, speaking of "get on with it," how about I get on with my day, since it's 11:30 and I'm sitting here in my pajamas. The only reason I'm still here is because I can't figure out what to eat. I have hangover hunger, which means I alternate between ravenous hunger and mild nausea. It means I'm starving but there's nothing I want to eat. All I have in my house is egg salad, sauerkraut and cereal. Decidedly unsatisfactory.