*I wrote this Monday night, as I waited to fly out – I’m a little late posting it*

I am having a glass of wine, killing time at the airport.  I pulled out my iPad and was perusing the library of books in my Kindle app and opened a book of Emerson’s most famous essays, including Self-reliance.  I plunged back into Self-reliance, which felt sort of like catching up with an old friend I hadn’t chatted with in years.  At the bar, there were a few different types of folks, which is one of the things I love the most about international airports – they are like microcosms of the world.  At any moment, you can run into someone from just about any walk of life on the planet.  But before I get into my observations at the bar, let me tell you about the Uber driver who took me to the airport.

Her name was Prudence and she was from Cameroon. She was a petite Black woman in her mid-twenties.

“Jessica?” she said as she rolled down the window.

“That’s me,” I said.

She smiled big and said, “Okay, let’s get you home.”  She got out of her car and insisted on helping me with my over-sized suitcase (which, btw, was 45 pounds – an extra 5 pounds that cost me $30 each way during this trip – be wary of the nickel and diming of Spirit Airlines, or any so-called budget airline).  I made some small talk, asking where she was from, how long she had been driving for Uber.  She was from Cameroon and came to the States 8 years ago.  She had two children, a 12-year-old and a 6 month old.  She told me she was in school and I asked her what she was studying.  “Nursing,” she said.

“What type?” I asked.

“I’m in an LPN program,” she replied.  “It’s hard,” she said.  “Raising children, working a full-time job, driving for Uber, trying to make ends meet, and now, starting school.  This last year was very difficult.”  I smiled and said, “I can imagine.  You’re already my hero.”

She beamed and then went on to tell me that she had just won back custody of her baby.  After she moved to the U.S., she brought her older daughter over and got married a few years later.  She was living and working in Chicago at the time, navigating a new country, a new culture, a new language, on her own.  That… that is boss.  So anyways, her husband ended up, as she explained, “messing around with other girls, you know,” so she divorced him shortly after she got pregnant with her youngest child.  Her then ex-husband and his new wife fought for custody of her baby after it was born, claiming she was an unfit mother because she was working multiple jobs to make ends meet.  She immediately lost the baby and had to pay over $500 each month in child support, all the while, determined to win custody back.  And she did.

I was struck by her tenacity, her courage. She’d had a rough year, but she overcame it and was now working on getting an education so she could make a better life for herself and her children.  I told her about one of my clients, a single mother who immigrated from Africa and had started out as an orderly in a hospital.  She got into a program and earned her CNA, then her associates in nursing, followed by her bachelor’s, master’s, and I had the privilege of helping her finish her research for her doctorate of nursing.  Prudence smiled and exclaimed loudly, “Yes! Yes! That’s what I want to do! Anything is possible when you believe in yourself!”

“It is,” I agreed.  “So keep doing your thing.  The universe respects people with tenacity and grit.  You’re one of them.”

When we got to the airport, I tipped her and gave her a hug.  I walked away thinking about how much that type of thing absolutely fulfills me.  That’s what I live for – opportunities to encourage others (especially women).  And that was a big part of what keeps me going when I feel discouraged- I want to be an example.  It’s not an ego thing, but I want to show other people (especially women) that they can be strong, relentless, beautiful, and fearless – all at once.  There have been many times over the last year, especially, when I decided travel full time, by myself, in an RV, when I was downright scared.  I was scared. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.  But I always knew, I always knew that I had everything I needed to make it through any situation.  Whatever I needed was already there.  Sometimes that means coming up with creative solutions, sometimes that means opening myself up to the help that the universe sends to me, but it’s always there.  And I want other people (especially women) to see that.  If Jess can do it, I can do it. I know that’s a fundamental purpose for this life of mine.  I have moments of anxiety, stress, feelings discouragement and beat-down.  Sometimes, I give myself a few minutes to cry out whatever is burdening me, but always… always, I dust myself off and keep going.  Even when I was younger and far less strong and confident, there was something in me that was always able to power through the tough times.  I want everyone to see that in themselves, to feel that confidence.  To know that vulnerability is a strength.  To understand how powerful it is to own who you are, with all your flaws and past fuck-ups.  To experience the beauty of living a life for yourself – not as an act of selfishness, but one of self-respect.

That brings me back to some powerful words from Self-reliance.  If you haven’t read Ralph Waldo Emerson, I urge you to do so.  If you only read one work by him, let it be Self-reliance.  Even if you only read one paragraph a day (it’s dense), peck away at it slowly.  Here’s the ClifsNotes version – stop worrying so much about what other people are doing or thinking about what you’re doing.  Stop looking for others for your own answers.  Start looking within.  Live your life in a way that fulfills you.  Make decisions based on what is right for you in any given moment, and don’t sweat it if a decision you made yesterday isn’t quite gelling with you today.  Think for yourself.  Respect yourself.  Accept the invitation the universe gave you to this journey of life – appreciate it, love it, sanctify it.  Sanctify your life.  And understand that the peace you seek doesn’t lie in anyone’s approval of yourself… but your own.

I remember reading Self-reliance 15 years ago and being forever changed by it.  And every time I’ve read it since, I’ve been changed more.  There are new messages hiding in it.  I felt so passionately about this essay that I taught it to my high school freshman when I was an English teacher (even though I wasn’t even exposed to until my senior year of college).  These are words to live by, freeing words.  This is how life is to be lived – independently but kindly.  When you follow the reverberations of your own heart, march to your own drum, do your best to live honestly, generously, and kindly, you fall into the flow of life.  It’s not always perfect, but there is always something to be learned, to be gained.

My life is unconventional, like me.  I have to remind myself of that when I find myself trying to crawl into a box that I was never meant to fit into.  Maybe that includes a conventional conceptualization of love and relationships.

So anyways, I thought about this as I was sitting at the bar, thinking back on the past week.  When I first got to the airport, I found myself slipping into a spiral of overthinking, of feeling a little lonely, of wondering if I would always feel this way.  Then I snapped out of it and started people watching, instead.  The interactions, the behaviors, facial expressions.  The way some people would greet one another, embrace…the way others seemed so cold toward one another, so closed off.  The way everyone seems to be trying so hard to be approved of, to fit in, to feel loved.  At their core, I think most people are scared.  I don’t ever want fear to rule my life.  It has stopped me a lot when it comes to writing.  I need to get over that.

So anyways, I’m flying back to Florida, where my RV and dog are, and I’ll soon decide where I’m going next.  I believe I’ll check out Austin for a while and then meander back toward the west coast.

I’d like to catch up with my friends in Florida before I head back out… it will be a while before I’m back.

Well, I made it.  I fly back to Tampa tonight and I have a lot of thoughts on what’s happened over the last few days.  I’ve got a late flight, so I will likely write more while I’m waiting at the airport.  In the meantime, I’m going to share what happened yesterday and a story from a few years ago that sort of parallels my NOLA trip, in a couple of ways.

I got up yesterday morning and I did not run.  I’d only slept a couple of hours and the wine from the previous three days finally caught up with me.  David texted and asked if I wanted to grab something to eat (I did) and we ended up going to a place called Luke’s around 3 for a late lunch.  David is a character – writer, actor, comedian.  Very funny (I can’t remember the last time I laughed myself into a bellyache).  He was tall with graying hair, blue eyes, in his early forties, eclectic and artsy. I met him outside of Luke’s and he was wearing jeans and a long sleeved black button down (with the top couple of buttons open), a pair of blue aviators, an orange toque, and a red pair of casual Nikes.

I wasn’t looking for anything more than friendship, especially after the situation with Jason.  David was very sweet, very complimentary, but I kept it friendly.  He was freshly out of a relationship and his frequent references to it made it clear he was licking wounds of his own.  Some of my best friends are men (you know who you are… if you’re reading this, I love you guys), and I know it’s possible to have beautiful, platonic friendships with people of the opposite sex… but I also know they are rare.

After dinner, David asked if I wanted to walk over to a bar called Molly’s and have a drink. We were having fun, so I figured, why not?  The Saints were finishing up a home playoff game (which they won, and the city leapt with drunken joy) so the bar was loud and noisy.  I enjoyed it, which is out of character for me.  Maybe it was the vodka.  David was drinking a lot and started getting really complimentary (he was a gentleman though, he certainly wasn’t being offensive), but I just wasn’t into it. Then some guy came in that he told me he had beef with and shit got weird.  The guy walked past us and patted David on the shoulder and David nodded and said “hey man,” and then proceeded to tell me that he wanted the chance to fight this guy.

HUH?

Then this strange stare-down between the two began, across the bar.  The other dude had three other guys with him, and they were watching David and I intently.  And you know? That’s when I grabbed my coat and told him I was going to head back to the hotel.  Testosterone, booze, and whatever history of squabbling these two had between them was a potential recipe for something I wanted no part of.  As I got up, David asked if I would wait so he could finish his drink, and I just said, “nah, I’m going to head out.”  As I stepped outside, it began to rain, so I ducked under an overhang and called for an Uber.  David had followed me and the Uber was there in less than two minutes.  I know he was disappointed, but I certainly didn’t want to lead him on, and my gut was telling me there was some shady stuff in the air.  The energy shifted when those other guys came in.  So I was out.

After I got back to the hotel, David sent a series of [drunk] texts to let me know he wanted to ravage my body.

What???

So, just, UGH.  UGH UGH UGH UGH.  Why, WHYYYYY does it always have to come back to sex???  He texted “you should get debaucherous with me” and then told me to come back out and go dancing with him.  I told him I was exhausted so he asked me to “cordially invite” him up to my hotel, followed by “take a nap dammit.”  I didn’t reply.  Here’s the string of texts that followed:

“You like attention.

But you ain’t in love with me.

My ego can’t handle it.

It’s how ridiculous I am.

And aware.

So

It was nice meeting you.

I’m not your type.

I’m psychic.”

So that was that.

After I got back to the hotel, I walked down to Walgreens to get some Advil.  On my way back, I detoured and meandered around for a few blocks, taking in the city, the people, the reverberations of madness from the Saint’s game.  I felt good about how I handled this week, disappointed and upset as I initially was.  I didn’t let the experience gobble me up.  It didn’t defeat me.  It made me think about a situation I experienced in 2011…one I responded to much differently.

I had reconnected with an old high school friend on Facebook who had moved to New York.  Let’s call him Tommy.  I was in the thick of job searching, and many of the NPOs I was interested in working with at the time were headquartered in New York.  Tommy lived outside the city and invited me to come up and use his house as a home base while I went and got some face time with people from the different organizations I was interested in.  I thought it was a great idea – and it was also naïve of me.  Tommy and I had dated very briefly in high school.  I had always had a crush on him – he was a jock, cute as could be.  I was single at the time, so I was open to a romantic connection, but when he picked me up from the airport, it just wasn’t there.  We hung out the first night and I slept on the couch, and then he came out of his bedroom in the middle of the night and tried messing around with me.  I had to shut him down, forcefully, and it scared me… his persistence scared me.  He wasn’t taking no for an answer until I got aggressive back with him.  He finally stumbled back to his room and I laid on the couch the rest of the night, wide awake, planning my exit.

The next morning, he made some comments about how I rejected him the previous night and I brushed it off, knowing he would be leaving for work shortly and waiting for my chance to leave to wherever the hell I was going to go next.  After he left, I called my friend Aaron who was able to get me an employee rate at a hotel in Time’s Square and I packed my suitcase and walked a mile to the train station (not knowing where I was going, really).  I had been to New York City once before, but with my ex.  I’d never navigated the city alone.  So anyways, I figured out which subway station to get off of and then proceeded to tote my pink suitcase down the streets of New York to my hotel.

Here’s where the story takes a wild turn, and where my reaction to it was so different from my reaction to the NOLA saga this past week.  Shortly after I checked into my hotel, Tommy got home and realized I’d left.  He texted me, asking where I was, and I told him it would be better if I stayed in a hotel for the rest of the week.  Then he erupted into a fit of texts and voicemails, calling me names even I will not repeat here.  He had an expectation that we would hook up.  I didn’t meet it, he felt rejected, and that was his reaction.  I blocked him and went for a walk to Barnes and Noble.

I felt so gut punched by him, by his reaction, so deflated, and suddenly so alone in this massive city.  I thought I’d have a nice week, hang out with an old friend if nothing else developed, pass out some resumes in person.  It would be great.  But it wasn’t happening as I had planned.  I remember walking back to my hotel, thinking how wonderful it would be if I just took on the city by myself. I was in New York City, after all!  Make the most of it! Get dressed up, take yourself to dinner, see what this experience has to offer you!

But I didn’t.  The next day I booked an early flight back to Florida.  I didn’t want to be there alone.  I didn’t know anyone in the city.  I just wanted to go home. And so I did.  The trip was a failure, and I didn’t have the gumption to turn it around for myself.

This, perhaps, is a fundamental difference between the 28-year-old self I was 7 years ago, and the 35-year-old self I am today.  This time around, I hung tight to see what the universe had in store.  And for that, I feel empowered.

After spending the last hour laying in bed in my hotel room, trying to will myself back to sleep, I made a cup of coffee so I could share about yesterday’s shenanigans.  I got 4 hours of sleep, which, when added to the 1.5 hour nap I took before I went out last night, and a couple cups of coffee, I believe will be adequate to get me through the next hour or so of being conscious.  So I’ll pick up where I left off last – laying in bed Thursday night, feeling like an idiot after getting dumped (is that what happened?) by Jason Whothefuckcareswhathisrealnameisanyways.

Truly, I think it was the feeling of rejection that stung me the most.  In the moment, I was butthurt over it, disappointed that something didn’t pan out as I’d hoped (that’s life, baby girl), and upset I had been deceived.  But now that I’ve had some space to think, you know… that’s on him.  I could sit here and feel like an idiot for not hiring a private investigator to follow this guy around for a couple weeks before I came here to meet him, to make sure everything he told me added up.  But you know? That’s a lot more than due diligence, and I shouldn’t have ask for social security numbers and copies of driver’s licenses from guys to check up on them before I go out with them.  If they lie, I’ll figure it out.  And if they lie, it’s a reflection on them, not me.

So after about 30 minutes of self-flagellation for not sniffing out the truth about dude before I came here (which, by the way, I’m done beating myself up over), I went down to the hotel bar and got a drink.  Then I came up to the room and passed out.  The next morning, I got up and went for a run downtown and along the river.  The night before, I checked flights and considered just going back to Florida early… but during my run the next day I decided that I was going to flip the script and turn this into a wonderful experience for myself.  Lemons, meet lemonade.  That afternoon, I toted my laptop with me a couple blocks and bellied up to a bar, had a couple glasses of wine, and began writing.  I had dinner with one of my clients who lives in New Orleans, and then we went down to the French Quarter and walked around, listened to music, soaked in New Orleans culture on a chilly Friday night… and it was wonderful.

Yesterday, I ran again, drank some more, wrote some more.  I went back to the same bar and wrote Part Deux and ended up meeting another cool chick, named Dee.  She owns a coffee shop here in New Orleans. She was into crystals and spirituality, and she was sassy as hell.  I loved her immediately.  New friend number 2.  Next, I came back to the hotel, posted the blog, and reached out to my friend Bethany (who lives in New Orleans, but is stuck in New York right now) and asked her to recommend some places for me to go that night.  I wanted good food, good wine, good music.  Somewhere I could dance.  So she recommended Mimi’s in the Marigny.  I went back to the room, took a nap, showered and got ready, and then headed back down to the hotel bar where my new favorite bartender was working.  Mimi’s wasn’t going to get busy until 11 or so, and I wasn’t in a rush.

So as I’m sitting there, this guy comes up to me.  His name was Matt and he’s working a Comicon convention in town, selling his vodka-based hot sauce.  We talked for a while – I love hearing stories from budding entrepreneurs.  You know? Their passion, ambition – the two essential components of success for any startup – is contagious.  He was up front about being married (which, I appreciated) and told me a little bit about his wife (who, ironically, has ulcerative colitis, which I also have… and I can’t remember how that even came up).  Around 11, I was ready to gnaw my own arm off from hunger, so I told Matt I was going to get an Uber and go to Mimi’s.  He acted interested in going and gave me his card, so I told him I’d text when I got there and let him know how it was.  It was a short ride to Mimi’s, and when I got there, it was wonderful. The place had a dank feel to it, gritty in the most delightful way, full of all sorts of characters.  There were two levels and the first one was pretty quiet, so I ventured upstairs.  I took a seat at one end of the bar and looked around. I ordered two tapas (the goat cheese croquettes were divine) and texted Matt.  He’d not been flirty or inappropriate at all with me, and ya’ll know I’m not interested in another woman’s man.  Imagine my surprise (**sarcasm) when he replied with a series of texts saying he wished I hadn’t left the hotel (he was staying there as well) and suggested I get some food and come back to his room.

Say what??? 

He said it would be fun…. NSA…. YOLO… and before he could finish sending the last text I could see him typing in ichat, I blocked him.  My gut-reaction was to be appalled, to feel a little more disgust and distrust toward the half of the world’s population with balls swinging between their legs, but instead… I enjoyed my goat cheese croquettes.

To my right, there was a young couple, perhaps in their mid-twenties.  The guy kept trying to get my attention.  I assumed he was drunk as he waved his arms around and made whistle sounds, trying to catch my eye.  I had seen them when I first walked in and my assumption, based on the girl’s body language, was that they were either together, or she wanted them to be together. Regardless, I was not interested in this tot.  At one point, he leaned over her to ask about my tattoos.  I was polite and could tell she was uncomfortable that he was trying to flirt with me.  So instead, I engaged with her, and that annoyed the shit out of him.

I’d noticed a guy at the far end of the bar, opposite me, sitting alone.  He caught my eye but I wasn’t going to go out of my way to talk to any guys, not on this trip, anyways.  After about an hour, it got incredibly busy and I was getting ready to call for an Uber back to the hotel when the guy I’d noticed walked up and asked if anyone was sitting in the chair next to me.  I smiled and said, “you.”  He told me his name was David and he set down his beer and asked me to hold the seat for him while he used the restroom.

Within 30 seconds, the arm-waving twerp (let’s call him AWT, for short) walked over to me, pulled out the seat that now had David’s beer in front of it, and sat down.  Bro code violation, right?  After he sat down, and before I could say anything, he asked, “Is anyone sitting here?”

I pointed to the beer and nodded. “Yes, you know that, you watched him walk over here.”

AWT chuckled and said, “well, he’s not here now, is he?”

I knew this was going to be fun.  The thought of giving AWT the shut down was straight up exhilarating.  I almost licked my lips.

“He’s not,” I said.  “But I am, and he asked me to hold this seat for him.  And that’s what I was doing before you came over.”

He drew back in his seat with this goofy ass, incredulous grin.  I watched his brain try to compute the situation, to make sense of it.  “Well, do you want him to sit here?” he asked.

“If I didn’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?” I asked.  “Plus, you’re here with a girl and you know how disrespectful this is to her.”  I could see her behind him, watching us, looking sad.  Maybe they weren’t together, but she was hurt that he was hitting on me.  I wanted to tell her that he wasn’t worth it.

“Well,” he said, “Do you want to talk to me or him?”

“Him,” I said.

He laughed.  “Why?”

I smiled and shook my head.  No, I was not taking the bait, and AWT’s poor head was about to explode.

“Is it because you think he has a bigger bank account than me?” he asked. “I know how women like you are, I know that’s what you’re thinking.”

Women like me? Certainly, I could have been insulted by this twerp for the insinuation that I was a gold digger, but instead, I laughed and said “bingo.”  And then AWT got up and walked back over to the girl and started talking to another dude.  They were both looking at me, I’m sure he was spouting off… which I found that nearly as satisfying as my goat cheese croquettes.  When David returned a moment later, I told him about the near bloodbath over his seat and we both chuckled about it.  Then, he and I sat and chatted for a couple hours.  He was lovely.

Next thing I knew, it was 4:30 in the morning.  David and I exchanged information and he asked if I wanted to hang out later, and I told him most certainly.  Then, I caught an Uber back to my hotel and crawled into bed around 5.

Today, I’ll probably meet up with David at some point. Tonight is my last night here… let’s see what I can get into…

Disclaimer: I’m drunk.  Also, if you’re an unfortunate person who somehow ended up on this page by the powers of Google, here’s some context for this post.

Jason was texting on his phone as we walked back to the hotel and told me he might have to drive in to work the next day because they were on the cusp of some big drug bust.  Although, he used the word “dope,” of course disparagingly.  I laughed to myself as I thought about going through the checkpoint in Texas with Colorado bud in my travel trailer.  Anyways, he was not supposed to return to work until Monday, and it was Thursday.  He was planning his escape after the last name call-out.

So we got back to the hotel and I wanted a drink.  We went to the hotel bar and each got a drink and played Jenga and Connect Four, which were both set up in the bar area.  At that point, I just wanted to have some fun, I guess… to stop thinking about everything.  As absurd as this sounds, I wanted to believe him.  Or maybe I really just didn’t want to believe I’d been played a fool.  While we played the games, he started acting obnoxious and immature.  I lost a game of Jenga and he jumped up and cheered loudly and exclaimed, “How does it feel, LOSER?!” and “In case anyone was wondering, SHE LOST!”

You know, people can be very good about concealing their true colors, for a time.  Eventually, they come out.  The decorum stops.  I don’t wear masks – the person you initially meet is the same person I will be six months from now.  Am I naïve to believe that’s the way it should be?  That people should just be honest? Cut the crap? Be yourself and let me decide if you are person someone I want in my life.  Don’t pretend to be someone you think I’ll like, and then have me begin to fall for you, only to realize I have developed feelings for a fraud.  But it’s also possible that at that point, he was just trying to turn me off, or that he just didn’t care because I was on to his lies.  I am an idealist.  My goddamn idealism really fucks me up sometime.  I see the world as good, people as wonderful, life as beautiful – and people, especially, are not always that way.  I don’t know if this is a problem with me, with my perspective of the world, if I need to be hardened, to become calloused, to trust less.  To be suspicious.  Or if this is on the world.  And if this is indeed the world’s problem, a flaw in the assholes roaming freely among us, how do I protect myself from them without becoming jaded? How do I maintain my effervescent attitude towards people and life without getting burned?

I walked over to the bar to return our glasses after Jason beat me in a game of pool (he was a very good winner, I’ll give him that) and an old man who had been watching us as we played the games said to me, “You know, that guy you’re with, he’s kind of a jerk.”  It was sort of out of left field, as we hadn’t talked to him or anything.  But he was right.  Jason was a jerk, and he was a liar, and why was I even still hanging out with him?  What was my problem?  I think it was defeat.  I think I was unwilling to accept what I perceived as defeat.

So what did we do next? We got ready and went to dinner, of course.  I put on a sexy black romper and he wore slacks and a sport coat.  I told him he looked nice and he said, “thanks, so do you.”  We walked to a restaurant around the corner.  I ordered a vodka tonic and he ordered a water.  I asked him if he was going to go back to Lafayette and he nodded, explaining this was some big bust they had been following for months and this guy moved millions of dollars of dope through Lafayette each month.  I nodded.  I’m pretty sure it was bullshit.  Then he went on to tell me he felt no romantic connection with me…that everything was great the first day and then something changed earlier that day, and he didn’t know what it was, but that he wasn’t “feeling it” anymore.  I nodded and said, “The change happened when I started asking question.  He immediately retorted, “No! That wasn’t it at all. I didn’t care about that.  I just don’t feel chemistry with you anymore.  It was there the first day, but when I woke up today, I felt differently.  That’s why I wasn’t affectionate with you today.”

I took a sip of my drink, and by sip, I mean more like a chug, and said, “I wish I hadn’t slept with you.”  I know I’m totally putting myself on front street for the two people who are probably reading my blog, and that’s fine.  Sex is a big deal to me, and I was pretty fucking disgusted that I shared my body with this dude.   He responded with “I knew you would say that.”  Yeah, well, no shit.

So this was it, I was getting rejected.  I sat there, incredulously wondering how the fuck he was the one who got to do the rejecting.  And he went all out.  “You’re a great girl, I’d love to be buddies with you, but I just don’t see anything more than that.  You’re more like a buddy.”  I sat there in my stilettos and sexy black outfit, perfectly painted lips, platinum Marilyn Monroe hair, and smoky eyes as this dude called me buddy material.  The truth was that there was nothing there between us.  I read it wrong, and I was most definitely deceived by him.  But for him to sit there and tell me that he saw me more as one of the guys… that stung.  I’m not one of the guys.  I am absolutely, 100% woman.  Yes, I like hiking and camping, biking for hours, testing myself physically, making my own money, calling the shots in my life. But my independence does not make me one of the guys.  I had an averse reaction to this comment.  It made me feel unattractive and insecure.

So anyways, I sat there being rejected, not quite sure how I was the one getting rejected or being called buddy material, but there I was.  I told him I understood (what does one say in that situation?) and called over the waiter and asked for the check.  Then I paid for my drink and he said “I’m not a jerk, Jessica.”  As if he wouldn’t have paid for my drink.   I didn’t want him to pay for my drink.  So went back to the hotel, he packed up his things, and he left.

After he left, I went down to the hotel bar, had another drink, and made a wonderful friend at the bar. Then I went up to my room, overanalyzed the whole situation in my drunken fury, and finally passed out.

Part 3 coming tomorrow…. Because, there is much more that has developed in the wake of this quite interesting experience. Last night, I flipped the script… and today, I’m flipping it more.

I’m currently sitting at a bar in the business district of New Orleans.  It’s a nice place – upscale compared to the general vibe of the city.  It’s 1:32 and the business lunch crowd is here.  I am the only single person at the bar.  There is a couple sitting several seats down from me.  They are not speaking.  She is staring at the televisions and he’s buried in his phone.  He’s got a glass of white wine, and she is sipping on a cocktail of some sort.  Rum, maybe.  They are bored with each other.  She’s probably in her early 30s, pretty, long dark hair.  She is twirling her hair with her fingers.  She’s thin, wearing a teal long sleeved nike shirt, sporting the athleisure look.  He is significantly older than her,  twenty years or so.  She’s trying hard to engage him but he’s bored out of his mind.  This is what happens when you’re a man in your 50s, going after women young enough to be your child.   He’s got a real-life status symbol.  A tall, thin, brunette, twirling her hair like a 20-something.

At a nearby high top, there are three men, all in their late 40s to early 50s.  Two of them are drinking beer, one a pale ale, one a dark brew.  The third has a glass of red wine.  They are dressed in jeans and button up shirts – I would guess this is a business lunch of some sort.  A casual Friday affair.  One of them just got up and is talking on his cell phone, pacing back and forth in front of the window at the front of the bar.  I just overheard him commenting on how he thinks a guy “throws well” but he’s concerned about his shoulder.  Maybe they are sports scouts.  They look like sports scouts, not that I’ve ever seen one, but I imagine they look like this trio.

Another couple just came in to escape the unseasonably cold temperatures that have gripped New Orleans this week.  They are married and not talking.  Three men just walked out, past the bar, eyeing me like a starved lion may gaze at a maimed antelope.  They were young alphas, maybe in their early 30s.  Everyone I have seen so far, save the trio of young alphas (shall we call them TYAs?) and my gay bartender, are wearing wedding bands.  And then there’s me.  The single, 35 year old blonde at the bar, working on her second glass of wine, typing away on her laptop while none of these people realize they are actors in my latest narrative.

I am feeling jaded.  Well, to be honest, I am feeling a bevy of things I’m still trying to understand, to tease out.  I left my hotel about an hour ago, computer in tow, with no real plan other than to not sit in my hotel room questioning, over analyzing, kicking myself, and wondering what, exactly, the purpose of this latest adventure is.  And so here I am, doing what I do best, drinking wine and writing, pouring my heart out through my fingertips, trying to understand my life.  Or life in general.  Right now, I have no idea what I am doing in this moment, other than writing.  I have no idea if I will ever share any of this.  Maybe it will just be a tool for me to sort out my heart and head right now, which feel so fucking scrambled my eyes just teared up a bit thinking about it.

Sigh.

So let me tell you a bit about how I got here, why I am sitting in a bar in downtown New Orleans, looking pretty and being very alone.  And feeling quite stupid.

I met a guy online.  I literally just laughed out loud and few people turned to look, because you can probably draw your own fairly accurate conclusions about the rest of this post without reading another word.  At any rate, that is how this story begins.  With me, feeling lonely one night in Arizona, filling out a goddamn dating profile online and throwing myself to the sharks – because, I am quite convinced that is precisely what online dating is. Or dating, in general.  It involves sharks.

I have realized something about myself over the last decade.  Oh hell, I’ve realized many things about myself.  Some good, some bad.  In context of the current word vomit you might be reading, I’ve realized that I am very, very bad at picking men.  When I say bad, I mean terrible.  And I’m mostly terrible at selecting men because I have a type that is fucking total and absolute poison for me.  In many ways, my selection of men is self-destructive.  I am wildly attracted to aggressive, alpha male, dominant men.  You know the type – military, law enforcement, fire signs.  Forget it.  I’m putty in their calloused man hands.  They’re irresistible to me. I melt in their presence.  And every time, every goddamn time, I get burned.  (Just to note, I am not claiming to be perfect in any way.  Far from it.  I own the mistakes I’ve made in relationships.  I am simply saying that the type of dude that I find myself wanting to crawl over glass shards to get to, is not the best match for me).

I’m not going to use the actual last name of the latest schmuck in this post, even though, as you will see, it’s probably not his real name.  Also, I’m halfway through my second glass of wine, so this is about to get good.  His name is Jason (which is his actual first name, I believe) and he was my trifecta of poison.  Fire sign (Aries), former military (Navy Seal… so he claimed), current cop (shall I keep going…?), big, muscled, handsome… I know that’s more than three things but I couldn’t stop myself.  And I also take full responsibility.  I am not a victim of anything other than my intense desire to give and receive love.  To desire to connect, to feel passion and intimacy.  Of those things, I’m guilty.  But I get so turned around, so absolutely confused in the process.  I’m not a stupid woman but I sure am braindead when it comes to navigating romance.

So anyways, Jason and I talked for a few weeks via FaceTime.  Almost every night, for hours.  We texted throughout the day every day.  I was in Arizona, he was in Louisiana.  I’d decided to come back to Florida to surprise my family for Christmas, and I figured if hot stuff and I kept talking, I could catch a flight to New Orleans and meet him for a few days.  And you know, I’m an independent woman and all that shit, and I also believe strongly in carpe diem.  I don’t want to live my life with any regrets…After weeks of talking with this guy, I was beginning to develop feelings for him.  I felt like he could have been a match, someone special for me.  And I didn’t want to wonder “what if?….”  So I booked a flight and hotel for New Orleans.  And on January 3, I hopped on a plane to meet him.

He picked me up from the airport and it was surreal… magical even.  He was tall, handsome.  I was so excited to see him, to hug him. To feel the things I was feeling in person.  And it was all there.  He smelled wonderful.  He looked great.  He felt amazing.  I was enamored, minus the legit love.  Maybe I was in lust.  A sex and love-starved 30-something, who could blame me. I had a fine specimen of a man before me.  And it felt right.  It truly did.  I didn’t have any alarms sounding, I didn’t have any feelings of distrust.  Nothing.  I felt like, maybe, this was something.  Maybe I followed my heart with a dude and it would pan out.  Maybe, just maybe, this was something that could be wonderful.  Sexy.  Exciting (spoiler alert: I was wrong).

He spent the night with me.  I’ll spare you the details, other than to say it was moderately disappointing, which I’m glad about.  It would have been pretty shitty to have a mind blowing physical connection with someone who ended up being a shady ass lying motherfucker (hang tight, details coming).  Everything felt right, but I am probably deluding myself in some way I haven’t quite figured out yet.  The next morning, he made a phone call to pay a bill and the customer service agent asked him for his full name.  Imagine my surprise when he stated a different last name than what he told me.  He had told me his last name was G______.  He told the phone operator it was K_____.  When he hung up the phone, he realized what he’d done.  He came up to me and said “you know, nobody knows how to pronounce my last name.”  I looked up at him.

“What do you mean?” I asked, fully aware of where he was going with this.

“Well, can you pronounce my last name?”  Of course, this was lyingsackofshit’s way of trying to remember what last name he had actually given me.  Amateur move, although I feel like the real amateur in all of this.

“Well, you told me your last name was G_______,” I said, carefully pronouncing it as he had pronounced it to me when I first asked him for his last name, when we first began talking.  “Although,” I continued, “you told the customer service rep that your last name was K______, and then you spelled it for her.”

“Yeah, nobody can pronounce my last name,” he said.

Say what? 

He immediately grabbed his wallet and explained he was going to go down to the lobby to read the paper and give me some time to work.  Cue Google and Jessica’s feverish search for the new alleged last name.  One of the top results that came up with I searched “Jason+[K_____]+Louisiana was a Dateline NBC article about a Jason K______ who was charged with murdering his wife’s ex-husband.  I’m sure you can imagine the fury this swept me into… of course he lied about his name.  He’s a goddamn murderer and I’m about to become DEAD.  I’m only half joking as I write this.  I was legitimately scared.

I had my dear friend Kourtney jump on the case with me, and she called the police department where he allegedly worked to confirm if a Jason K_____ worked there.  He did – IF he was really that Jason K____.  I didn’t know what to believe.  Now, I want to take a step back for a moment and acknowledge that I did do my homework before I flew to another state to meet someone.  He’d told me he was a former Navy Seal (ALLEGEDLY!) and also had worked for the Department of State (ALLEGEDLY!!!!) when Clinton and Kerry were the Secretaries of State.  If this were indeed true (which, who knows?) there wouldn’t be much available on the internet about him.  I’d dated a guy for years who was a military aid to the vice president at one point – part of his onboarding was cleaning his name from the internet.  So when I couldn’t find anything about a Jason G______ that matched the other [mis?]information this guy had given me, I didn’t think too much of it.

Kourtney confirmed that a Jason K_____ did indeed work for said police department, from the information she found.  So, he ended up not being the murderer in the article (which is good, I think).  Next, I looked a prescription pill bottle he had left on the bathroom sink for some antibiotics for an ear infection, and sure as shit, the bottle read “Jason K_____.”

Several questions overwhelmed me.  Who was this guy?  Why had he lied to me about his last name?  Mostly… what was he hiding?

I needed to confront him, and I needed to do it somewhere public.  Jason lyingsackofshit came back to the room about an hour later.  I’d already gotten dressed and ready to walk around downtown.  We got to a coffee shop, grabbed a cup, and sat down.  I told him I needed to ask him something.  The expression on his face was one of a kindergartener who’d been caught lying.  Childish.  Immature.  I’d seen this expression countless times on the faces of my many poorly-selected men.

I asked him about the name discrepancy.  “You know I have to ask,” I began, “what’s up with your last name?  What is your actual last name?”  I watched him squirm in his chair.  For a narcotics investigator (ALLEGEDLY), he got antsy.  He was giving away all the cues of lying and I was suddenly enjoying myself, for a moment, anyways.  I felt like a lioness who had cornered her wounded prey, watching him desperately search for a way to escape.  You’re going down baby. Don’t fight it. 

“What’s the deal with my last name?” he asked (repeating the question back, is of course, a tell-tale sign of lying).  I blinked at him and nodded as I sat back in my chair. “Okay, you want to know the deal about my last name?” he repeated as his eyes darted around.  He knew I wasn’t an idiot (although, that is arguable), this would need to be good.  And so, he gave it a shot.  Allegedly, his biological father was a K_____ – a man who beat the shit out of his mom and was in and out of his life while he was growing up.  When he was 17, he told his father he wanted nothing to do with him.  They had been estranged ever since, although they’d both lived in Lafayette since then (which, by the way, was another lie).  Jason claimed he’d not seen his dad since he was 17 (almost 20 years of living in the same town and never running into one another).  So his mom remarried a man with the last name of G_______.  This man, according to Jason, was the guy he considered his father.  So he identified as a G_______, but his last name was K______.

I listened intently, noting how hard he was trying to maintain eye contact with me as he talked.  His eyes kept darting.  “Okay,” I said. “But I asked you what your last name was, not the name you emotionally identified by.  You realize how shady it is to give someone a name that is not your real last name, right?  Like, to a woman who’s flying from out of state to meet you?  You know my immediate assumption is that you’re hiding something, right?”

Unprovoked, he immediately listed off the things he was (ALLEGEDLY) not lying about, beginning with his marital status.  He really was divorced, he said, for 9 months (previously, he’d told me he’d been divorced for a year and a half).  They were still fighting over money, but he was not married.  She took the house that they’d been living in together and still owed him money for that.  The house, he explained, was in New Orleans (although he’d previously told me he’d never lived outside of Lafayette).  He also had a daughter, that was true, he insisted.  When he was done, I looked at him, nodded my head, and said “thank you for sharing. I hope that didn’t make you uncomfortable, but I had to ask.”

Truly, in that moment, I felt sad.  I didn’t believe anything he was telling me, and I also felt confused.  I had misread him, I guess.  I felt foolish.  And now I was on the second day of a five-day trip in a city I don’t know, with someone who was not who I thought he was.  Immediately, Jason’s body language shifted.  He sat up and leaned over the table and said, “well honestly, it is very private, Jessica.  So that felt really intrusive.  I don’t discuss these things.  I didn’t expect to have to explain myself like this, and I think this conversation was premature.” I’d called him out and he was not on the defense.  He was trying to grasp for a thread of power back.  Then, I made a phone call to a client and he walked around outside.  When I was finished, we walked around town a bit more, but he was cold, removed.

More than anything, I felt humiliated.  How could I have thought I got to know someone and have been so off?

I will write the rest of this story today. That’s enough for one post… but it gets even better.  And by better, I mean, worse.

I had such a great time with Nina here the last couple of days – I was definitely sad to see her leave.  To share these experiences with people I love makes it that much more special.  Nina and I met several years ago when we were both dating guys who happened to be friends.  The relationships with the guys didn’t last, but we have become really wonderful friends. For your entertainment, I have sprinkled this post with pics of Nina and I from over the years

I want more and more to be with people, to laugh and socialize, to share these adventures… whether it’s with old friends who come out to visit me or new friends I make on the road.  I spent the last few years of my life in a pretty intense state of isolation.  Looking back, I’m positive that part of my isolation was from the antidepressant I’d been on for 12 years (this past September was my 1 year anniversary of getting off that shit… a hard won battle).  Traveling has also helped yank me out of that tendency toward isolation. I’ve found that the people who enter my experience are wonderful, and I want to interact with them.  What was it that I was trying to shelter myself from before? Why did I, perhaps unconsciously, work so hard to shut myself out from the world?  I see now how gray isolation can be – dangerous even.  There’s a difference between being comfortable with solitude and shutting yourself out from the world.

I’ve spent the last couple of months renewing friendships and touching base with the people I love.  I understand now, that is what life is really about.

I also have a changed understanding of love.  It’s infinite.  There’s no limit to the amount of love I can give (or receive).  Some things are numbered… my days of life, my threshold for pain, but other things, like my love and grace, are unending.

I’m seeing how beautiful it can be to show whole, genuine love to total strangers, with no expectations of any sort.  To show love and give it – not because the receiver will give me anything back – but for the simple exhilaration of giving it.

I’m seeing all the different forms that love can take.  Giving, whether it’s a compliment, words of advice, cash… whatever… giving is an act of love.  Giving from the heart always feels good because it’s a way of showing love.

After I left Moab, I stopped in a gas station in Navajo Nation to fill up.  A young girl (maybe early 20s) came up to me and explained that she was out of gas and was just trying to get to her aunt’s house, which was about 65 miles away.  She pointed to her car, and before she could ask me for any cash, I pulled out a twenty dollar bill from my wallet and give it to her.

You would have thought I’d just given her a winning lottery ticket.  She thanked me profusely, pulled her car around to the pump next to

mine, and went inside to pay for the gas.  When she came back out, she made small talk with me as she filled up.  That – was love. I expected nothing back.  She needed gas and I could help her get it – and that made me feel GREAT! (also, the more you give the more you receive – I closed a new contract the very next day, which was worth 200 times the $20 I gave to that girl – not a bad return).

I just want to circle back around to my initial discussion of isolation.  In my self-imposed isolation, I closed myself off to all these wonderful experiences of love.  I failed to see all the different ways that love can be given and received – to understand that it is so much more than an intimate exchange with a lover, but rather, a state of being.  The more I open myself up to life, to experiences, the more I feel the energy of love in just about everything I do.  I want to be one of those people who embody love – who just ooze love effortlessly, joyfully, all the time.  Not just with my good friends, like Nina, but with everyone who I am blessed to cross paths with each day.

Today was a quick and easy drive to the Tucson area.  I was in Sedona for almost two weeks, but it wasn’t long enough. There is SO much to see and so many amazing trails to hike.  I had planned to do a lot of road biking but ended up mostly running and hiking.  To get to the really beautiful stuff in Sedona, you have to be on foot.

Sedona is a special place.  The selfish part of me doesn’t want to gush because I don’t want it to become too popular, to commercial.  In this society, we have a way of destroying nature’s beauty.  Sedona is perfect the way it is.  But…with that said, it’s a really special place for seekers – those who are looking to grow inward and upward.  A visit to Sedona won’t magically make you happy, but it might help you discover what changes you need to find happiness and fulfillment.  There’s special energy in those rocks.  I can’t explain it, but I felt it.  To commune with nature is a powerful thing, but to do it somewhere like Sedona is particularly epic.

I know that not everyone is into energy and vibrations…but I am.  My understanding of those things have radically changed my life. I am certainly not on a mission to convert anyone into a believer in the law of attraction, vibrations, common consciousness, or the power of positive thinking – but to periodically share my experiences and perspectives (which often harken back to those things).  Take from this blog with you may – so long that what you take affects you in a positive way. 🙂

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been seeing a lot of “memories” pop up on Facebook – flashbacks of posts from 4-5 years ago.  I’m not sure if I was just posting more often back then or what, but a lot of what I see in those old posts… makes me cringe.  Truly.  The cynicism and negativity that was oozing out of me a few years ago is hard to stomach, now.  The crazy thing is that I actually considered myself a positive person.  I’ve been looking back at these cringe-y posts with gratitude – thankful that I’m not that person anymore.  It’s no wonder life felt so rough then; my attitude toward it completely sucked.

The common thread in those old posts is judgement.  Heavy, harsh judgement on just about everything. From politics to pop culture, I had something critical to say.  I started working on suspending judgement about a year ago, and that’s probably resulted in one of the most significant, positive changes in my outlook.  I still recognize things I don’t like, but rather than dwelling on them and wasting my energy crafting lists of all the things I don’t like, or why something is wrong, or detailing my distaste for someone’s behavior – I just remove those things from my focus.  I’ll recognize when I don’t like something, but I choose to keep it moving until I find something good to focus my energy on.  So instead of giving my attention to things that I do not find pleasing, I give it to the things that make me smile.  It’s a conscious shift in focus, and it feels good.  This compulsion to focus on the bad in this society is toxic – it does not bring improvements to anyone’s life.

Whenever I do something clumsy in front of someone (like trip or bang my head on something), I usually laugh and announce “nothing to see here!” or “keep it moving!”  Maybe it’s a silly analogy, but that’s how I respond when I encounter something that elicits a negative emotional response.  Keep it moving.  Find something better to spend my precious energy on.

At any rate, I’m calling it a night.  I’ve got some work to do in the morning, and then I’m going to explore a bit.  The scenery is beautiful, the cacti are huge, and the weather is going to be perfect.  Much to love.

This morning when I took Lola out, the guy parked behind me apologized for the ruckus he’d caused so early in the day.  He was a younger guy, maybe mid-thirties, in a motorhome.  He introduced himself to me yesterday.  His name is Christian and he’s been on the road for five years in his 1979 motorhome.  He’s from New Jersey but spends most of his time in Arizona now, as he’s got two kids in the Phoenix area (as he explained, “I met a girl, our kids are here, so I stay in the area most of the time”).  He does a variety of things to earn a living, including training dogs to help injured veterans, handyman work…repairing RVs.

This morning, Christian’s fridge malfunctioned and began spraying chemicals (Freon?) everywhere.  He couldn’t get it to stop, so he decided to rip the fridge out of his rig.  Literally.  Ripped the damned thing out.  The problem was that the fridge was wider than the motorhome door, so after he got it out of the interior cabinet, he had to rip off the framing around his motorhome door to actually remove it (I’m resisting the urge to comment here about how that’s not likely a scenario a woman would find herself in… ).  He explained this unfortunate situation to me as he pointed to the old, broken fridge on the ground outside.  He also showed me the framing that had been ripped off.  His attitude about the whole thing was refreshing – peculiar even – but I kind of loved it.  “Hey,” he said, “When you’re a road dog, you just gotta learn to fix things. It’s part of the life.”

A road dog, eh?  Is that what I am now?

Road dogs, as Christian called them (us?), are a breed of their own.  I’ve been on the road for nearly three months (a veritable newbie, no doubt), and have met quite a few people who are full time travelers.  And although plenty of couples in gorgeous rigs with price tags in the hundreds of thousands of dollars live in their rigs full time, they aren’t quite road dogs.  Road dogs are more minimal, some by choice, some because they are living on a shoestring budget.  Road dogs know about solar.  They understand how precious water is.  They consider electric hookups a major luxury.  They have calculated how much power they can get out of their batteries.  Some are super friendly and social, some choose to keep to themselves.  It’s always interesting to me to see who sets what up outside their rigs – the different kinds of chairs, water bottles, rugs, flags, etc.  Some people, like Chris, stay on the move and don’t set things outside.  Other people set up for longer periods, like I do.  When I first got here, there was a woman in a motorhome who had set out several little solar stake lights around her front door.  The guy across from me right now has a yellow lab, and he set out a full-sized pool chaise lounge (you know, the kind made of PVC pipe and vinyl straps), which is just for his dog.  He’s also got three large dog bowls near his front door (his dog is well fed).

The type of people I meet in free boondocking spots, or even national forest campground where there are fees, seems to differ a lot from the people I meet at RV parks or more posh state parks (I consider them posh if they have amenities like laundry and a dump station).  There was part of me that was a little hesitant about free camping, concerned about the type of people I would encounter… but truly, I think I prefer the rough and tumble free campers.  I also have come to realize that I create my own experiences, and I choose not to attract in anyone with ill-intentions.  Only awesome is invited to this party 😉

Chris headed out yesterday, so it was just Lola and I on today’s hike.  It was really nice to have someone to hang out with for a few days and I look forward to catching back up with him at some point.  I’ve only got a couple days left in Sedona and then it’s south to Tucson where my Florida friend, Nina, is flying in to meet me for a few days.

It’s a good life. I am grateful.

Here are a few pics from my hike today near the airport.