In a kitschy way I like living in the U.S. I just saw a banner on my email that said "Win a trip to Oklahoma" and I thought it was a joke, but then the banner got animated and showed scenes of people rafting or something, courtesy of the OK State Tourism Board. Wow. Just how would I react if I won a trip to OK? Hmmmn.

However, I'm not here to mock the midwest, rather I figured I'd better pop in and update. I am in deep smit, that's my update. A little over two weeks into it, I'm at the point with J. that we talk every day and see each other almost every day. I know I'm in deep because the "boyfriend shield" is back-- yipes. Rebecca and I went out without him on Thursday, to La Rumba-- poor boy was writing a paper, but I stopped at his place before and after because I'm a sucker. As on all evenings at La Rumba, we lovely ladies were outnumbered and had plenty of male attention, and I wasn't threatened, I wasn't phased. I knew there was a sweet and gorgeous man sitting in his apartment a few blocks away, and that just as my thoughts were wandering toward him while I danced and had conversations with other people, he was focusing his attention away from me to his paper only with great effort. I felt the boyfriend shield. It's the most wonderful and safe sensation, I love being in that spot socio-emotionally, but in the back of my mind it worries me a little because it's awfully soon to be feeling it. On the plus side, I'm not referring to him by the b-word yet. I'm only "seeing someone", but using petnames and other euphemisms, and I'm enjoying it with criminal gusto. He's very affectionate and romantic, and I know I must have been dying for it after the hard, sterile objectivity of the ex-Boyfriend because I'm loving it so much, when it would usually annoy me. I even wrote a line of bad poetry along those lines and stuck it in his pocket while I whispered it in his ear:

Eres agua fresca y dulce; cuando las gotas me acariciaron los labios, s�lo entonces me di cuenta de que me mor�a de sed.

It's okay, he doesn't know Spanish, and hopefully neither do you because that's wretchedly trite, ay me sonrojo, it's embarassing. No miento, he is very refreshing, and in the renewing aspect he's good for me, and he makes me feel creative again. I find myself writing, and not just bad poetry. Last night we went to a pyjama party that a friend of a friend of his was throwing (I was pleasantly surprised by the scarcity of skimpy lingerie-- I hadn't been to one in years). There were screens set up showing weird anim� stuff and there was a DJ, etc., but the highlight (besides being out with my J.) was meeting the host, one Justin Simoni, performance artist. All we had to do was ask, and he took J. and I and a couple of other people back to his studio to show us some recent and current work. He's really into process and documents it well. That touched something in me-- it's been so long since I scrapped the art history plan and consequently fell out of touch with the local art scene, and while I was never immersed in it even then, I found that I missed the energy a little. Artists, like actors, can be exhausting in excess, but talking with Justin about his work I felt a small yearning. I have no illusions and never did, I would make a lousy artist, but I liked that time of having ideas come into my head everyday and feeling the need to write them down, and I loved process more than product. It was a nice evening, a definite change of pace.

And the weird Japanese films-- there was this stuff playing that I'd like to find somewhere, because it's freakishly amusing and everyone should see it. "Hey, Mikey!"-- filmed "scenes" of mannequins having absurb family-situation conversations in Japanese, with English subtitles. Damn funny. I need to find out what that was.

I should call that beautiful man of mine. More news of my downfall to follow in coming days.