Warning : This entry is extremely image and thought heavy

Matt is appropriate Road Trip Buddy material. This means, if shit hits the fan¹, things will still work out. We drove the twelve hours to NYC in nearly a straight shot, occasionally stopping to stretch the legs and weird the locals out with Matt’s enigmatic t-shirts and Libby’s hair²

We spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday until morning in New York City. We went to Rice, the Gardens in Central Park, Serendipity³, Saint Mark’s, The Museum of Natural History, Battery Park and also had time just to chill out and watch Idiocracy.

Having a hugging-size cell model in high school would have helped immensely in Biology.

While it was a fantastic time, New York is certainly not my city. I love the efficiency, how aware of their surroundings people are and how willing to act everyone is. But it’s too dirty. Too dark. Not enough green. People get things done, but it’s not out of a love for it, simply the necessity. People are willing to interact on a minimal level, but I can’t imagine forming a friendship with a stranger while playing Frisbee in the park. It is also stupidly expensive.

People are also attacked by Aquafresh on the subways. The warning signs are therefore necessary.

I missed three things about Virginia: The People, The Naro, and The Sweet Tea.

Saturday Matt and I headed down to Virginia. We stopped in Alexandria on the way to see Dizzy and Caleb. I knew I had missed them, but that we were hugging each other so hard we were shaking told me just how much. These are people I used to geek with. We could talk about nearly anything, and be coming at it from similar angles but with different backgrounds, so we were still learning from each other. I never saw enough of them when we were in the same area, and not seeing them for nearly two years was even worse.⁴ Hard drive sex occurred, and our schedule prompted a departure at least three days too early.

Allen and Christen were kind enough to put Matt and I up our first night in Portsmouth. We then took part in what Allen aptly named “Drinko de Mayo”⁵. Much fun was had. Ernie came over to say hello. I missed those kids.

Sunday afternoon Matt and I went Home. I cannot quite express how I feel about –topher and his (now) fiancée (!!!) CJ. –topher gave Corey and I a place to stay while we were in Virginia. He never wanted rent, though I always insisted on paying him. He is giving and intelligent and laid back to an unprecedented degree. He also has the biggest Geek Penis⁶ of anyone I’ve ever known, except maybe Gregory.

Sunday Matt and I went to The Deck, where I used to work. OMG actual crab!

“Running for office under that name in the South is NOT going to work,” says Matt.

That night we caught up with Vikki, two of her friends, and Allen and Christen at the BierGarden. I really missed that place too. The potato soup… sweet the baby gee. It was really good to see Miss Vikki again. She needs to take a step back and enjoy life instead of being up to her eyeballs in Crap all the time, but I guess that does it for some people⁷. Necessary talks were had.
Monday we went to Ghent and The Naro.

Naro is… hm. Heaven for film geeks. You have to have a degree in film to work there. Any movie you ever had to special order or were told was out of print or just was so difficult to find that you nearly believed it didn’t exist… is there.

I’ll let a picture and a video speak for themselves.

They have a section JUST for Oscar Wilde.

Clearly you can see why I missed it.

We also visited Pagoda, my favorite garden ever.

And I missed the Sweet Tea. The kind the rots your teeth.

Also had dinner with CJ, -topher, Pierski, Amanda, Aftan⁸, Peek, and Richard. Again with the extremely missing people and stuff. Such good people. And to see Pierski and Amanda as parents was cool in the most un-weird way.

I thought many, if not all of these people might not want to see me. After all, when I was in Virginia I was Corey’s Girlfriend^TM. But they wanted to see me for Me and I wanted to see them as Me. And that’s reassuring to my Self.

I did not miss the poor design of the city⁹, the wind, the racism, or that fact that everything always smells in some part like dead fish.

Being in Port Norfolk made me come to terms with some things, forced me to think about things that I had been leaving in the back of my brain.
I expect everyone reading this is a mature adult that has come to decisions about how they feel about people on their own. I am not in any way trying to change those views. I am talking about my experience and coming to terms with it. I am happy to hear responses, but please keep it mature.

This is a long time in coming.

I spent two and a half years with Corey. It took me 6 months to move to Virginia from the day I got off that Greyhound bus. Corey embraced me and whispered “move here and marry me” into my ear. There was never a doubt in my mind. We lived in VA for a year – the first 3 months of which he was unemployed. The last 6 months we lived in –topher’s house. We had many, many magical moments which will always be ours and no one else’s. We also had many screaming matches. I was a bitch and he was an asshole. But we were madly in love, and that seemed to end every argument.
We moved back to Indiana so I could return to college. He moved with me. We made things work. A year passed and I could no longer ignore the fact that things weren’t actually working.

I think, had the rest of the world not existed, we would have been together forever. Perfectly happy.

But he saw things as us against the world. Our backs together, guns blazing. I wanted to be in the world, talking to people, changing things, living and breathing and loving. We weren’t there for each other in the most fundamental way that we needed each other to be. I had taken on his cynicism, but not his detachment.

I didn’t get to adjust to the way I was going to feel about him after our relationship ended before he and Libby started dating. Don’t get me wrong… if it made Libby happy then all was well. But the way he treated her trumped any residual emotions I would have dealt with from my own experience. Coming back to Virginia forced me to come to terms with these things. Because as many bad things happened, he showed me Cyberpunk. Industrial music and snythp00p. Most importantly, Transhumanism. Maybe I would have found these things on my own, but not when I was in the environment of Virginia where it could flourish.

So thank you for that. But I hope I never see you again¹⁰.

“You’ve grown a lot. And it’s for the better. It’s good to see.”

1. Lost in Missouri, god knows how we got there, the car explodes with all of our belongings in it. A good road trip buddy will say “alright, let’s figure this out.” A bad road trip buddy would run around screaming “OH GOD, THE CHILDREN.” Matt is the former.
2. Which just so happens to be on my head.
3. Reminding me that my Aunt knows EVERYONE in the city, when Matt told her he was thinking of going to Serendipity, she beamed “Really?! Oh, I must call Steven to see if he can fit you in!” Apparently it’s nearly impossible to get in there, but she and one of the three original owners are old friends. wtf.
4. Reminds me that the people I like best are the ones you don’t necessarily need to talk with every day, or even every week or month… but you can pick up with them after years apart as if no time has passed.
5. A bottle of Patron Silver and several beers later… we watched a poorly acted but somewhat intriguing film called The Attic Expedition. I can’t say that I recommend it. Honestly I don’t remember.
6. Rasturbated artwork on the walls. Light-up remotes. A Mac Mini installed in his Prius so there is an excessive amount of music and movies to entertain you while driving. Oh, it also syncs with his Bluetooth phone so if someone calls while you’re driving you just talk to the car. How fucking cool is that?! Total geek lust.
7. oh yeah, me.
8. Most adorable child evAr. She was mesmerized by the crin hair and refused to let go. Engaged in the world. She’s gonna pwn.
9. Yayyyy tunnel traffic! And following signs for Portsmouth which actually lead you to North Carolina.
10. you: diaf