Like a Rolling Stone

My boyfriend isn't talking to me at the moment. He is sleeping or resting... his excuse? "I was up late last night on acid." I'm sorry, but that's a shitty excuse. I don't get why he would think this is an acceptable reason to not be talking. I mean, I'm not saying that how you feel after doing acid is a totally social one, much more about sleeping and chilling, but I don't like being put on the back burner. I've been up since 7:40 am, biked around 10 km into the wind (you don't think that's important until you feel like you're being pushed backwards by the hand of Zephyr), and eaten an assortment of different foods. I'm sorry, but if I can be awake, then he should be. I know he doesn't mean anything by it, and it's not a personal thing, but it still pisses me off because I make myself available to him, even though he doesn't seem to give a shit. So... yeah, I guess I just have to remind myself this isn't directed at me, it's just how it is.

My face is sun-burned... I have a black eye. Well, a bit of a black eye. It's not a very badass story, it's not much of a story at all, really. I couldn't get my eye makeup off because I didn't have any makeup remover, and so I attacked my face with a towel. Now the area under my right eye is swollen and raw. La Rochelle and Ile de Ré was beautiful. The water was cold, as the Atlantic always seems to be (being from NJ, and having felt it also in Ireland). The towers and buildings had stood since the 1400s and 1600s, raising up above the blue water like sand castles. It was picturesque. Quaint. The people were a lot friendlier, although the drunk assholes on the street were just like Paris. I think it's a French thing to be loud and obnoxious for no reason. My friends and I were all having a good time on the metro until about 40 guys came on to our car. They were all French, but of African descent, and were obviously out enjoying their Saturday night. Suddenly, one guy started to grab this girl by the waist, putting his hands all over her; she--luckily--was not gonna take it. She pushed him off and grabbed her friend and got off the train. Another guy then begins to yell at the gropey one, and we watch as a fight begins to ensue in between the area where my friends are all sitting. I'm watching this, trying to keep my face completely immune to the scene, while secretly horrified and terrified. At the next stop, half of them ran out (along with the gropey guy), and I imagined this was when the gropey guy was gonna be beat up, so hopefully he got what he deserved. I just hate the shear lack of respect for women here, it seems to be all Frenchmen. It seems like they feel entitled to some kind of sexual response from all women. I don't get it. Probably never will. It pisses me off though. It makes me wanna show them the error of their ways. It's one of the major reasons I dislike France.

One of the perks of going away was time away from work, so I read one of my new favorite books: Forced Entries by Jim Carroll. Technically, I was reading it for school, but it was amazing. I love it. I love Jim Carroll. To me, he is the mind of New York. As I read, I listened to the Velvet Underground, the band that truly is magic if you listen to it as you walk down the streets. You feel their high, and slowly your feet are lifted off the ground and wherever you're walking, is perfect, you're perfect, and you can feel the pulse of chance down every street and avenue. I want to get back to the City. I've realized why I don't like Paris. For me, New York is a place of possibilities. Every time I end up walking around, something occurs, and my friends and I are off on an adventure. As we trek from borough to borough, drunk, or high, or simply confused we meet the characters that now make up our late stories. The strange nomads and pansexual EMTs, the smack heads and squatters (usually, one in the same), and at the same time we meet our own opportunities for a breath of a new life. Suddenly, we're climbing over subway turnstiles and stumbling home, walking the dark streets of Brooklyn or Staten Island or occasionally Manhattan, home. When we arrive, we recount, and lay down, and fall into the lap of the City that will create us anew in the morning, ready for that day. I'm ready to be back home and feel the beat of life beneath my sneakers.

I'll check you later,

- Lucy

I'm Not Down! (the song/lyrics... because it's awesome!)

If it's true a rich man leads a sad life
That's what they say, from day to day
Then what do the poor do with their lives?
On judgment day, with nothin' to say?

I've been beat up, I've been thrown Out
But I'm not down, Oh I'm not down
I've been shown up, but I've grown up
And I'm not down, Oh I'm not down

On my own I faced a gang of jeering
In strange streets
When my nerves were pumping out
I Fought my fear in, I didn't run
I was not done

I've been beat up, I've been thrown Out
But I'm not down, No I'm not down
I've been shown up, but I've grown up
And I'm not down, No I'm not down

So I have lived, that kind of day
When none of your sorrows will go away
Go down and down and hit the floor
Down and down and down some more
Depression
But I know, there'll be some way
When I can swing everything back my way
Like skyscrapers, rising up
Floor by floor, I'm not giving up

So you rock around and think that
You're the toughest
In the world, the whole wide world
But you're streets away from where
It gets the roughest
You ain't been there

Haha, it's like my song of the moment, I just keep listening to it. = )

I'm not down!

Apparently people are reading this right now, and I'm posting because my afternoon class was cancelled and I need to make up for my lack of writing lately.

Life is crazy as the semester is winding down. It's the sam

e old same old, lots of papers and tests, and shit I don't wanna do. I should be making straight A-/As this semester, so hopefully that'll get me into the Dean's Circle (it's an organization for people who have a certain GPA, we get to go on a trip and stuff, but only a few people are selected for it)... At the moment, I'm working on a paper about Jim Carroll, one of my favorite poets/singers/authors. We have to pick a famous (and

dead) person to show "our" Paris, too. They're always making us right bullshit about Paris and our experience here and blah blah blah. It's as if they imagine that if we all write about Paris, maybe we too could be a modern Ernest Hemingway or something. This only inflates the heads of all of the boys here who already think they are him.

Mike's alright. He was going to meetings, but some girl said she would give him two bags of H if he could get her a needle. So... yeah, what'd you think he did?

Devinez! Devinez!

If you guessed shot two bags of smack on Sunday, well, you'd be correct! Good job!

What I think is funny is that when he does things like sign off immediately, or a few other tell tale actions, that I don't realize what's going on. When he did that, or talks about watching his friends do drugs, well, no shit he's doing them too. Boys are dumb...

At the moment, I'm not doing drugs. Although, he's now offered to get us H for when I get back, which is kind of putting me in a weird place.

On one hand I think: Wow, this would be awesome... I really wanna do it.

On the other I think: Fuck, terrible idea. This will only screw me up.

I don't know, I can't tell if the two bags he was talking about were the ones he has, or ones he plans on buying. I'm not gonna say anything about it to him, even if he brings it up. I refuse to let him know what I'm thinking about shit like that, mostly because: A) if you're doing drugs with a boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse/life-partner, you definitely don't want to be the one who does not have the connections because that makes you vulnerable... and B) he supposedly wants to be clean, so I don't want me giving him the OK to go ahead and get more drugs. I'm not saying that I control his actions, but it could be the push he needs to go buy more shit, and I'd like to keep myself out of that position. Haha, I know that the A reason is pretty far down the line, but I like to be

logical, and that definitely could be a reality. The other problem with Mike and I doing drugs is that he completely discounts my experience. This is coming from the same guy who couldn't fix himself the first time at fucking 19, I was doing that at 16 by myself. He can barely handle seeing blood. I may not have sunk as low as him, but just because I have been better able to keep myself out of the places he's ended up doesn't mean that my experience is completely void. I just hate being treated like I'm some kind of unexperienced child, and he's some kind of sage-like figure. Fuck that shit.

I haven't slept for the past two nights, and I have almost no homework, so I'm thinking that today I could just fucking kick back, take some shit, and not do shit for the rest of the day. Besides doing laundry, which needs to be taken care of today... or I'm gonna, well, begin to smell... not really. I just will have to wear my less desireable clothes, haha. Not that I'm some kind of pinnacle of fashion, fuck, everyone here thinks they're soo fancy. It's kind of nauseating. I really wanna vomit on a lot of them. Especially some of the Europeans, who think that they are just so above all the Americans, it's really ridiculous--as if France was some kind of pinnacle of good living, let's look at one of the most racist, anti-semetic, and judgmental countries I've ever been to. It's honestly offensive. It also has some of the scariest men ever, I have never feared men, not pulling my drunk friend off of Avenue B at 12 at night, not walking down Jersey St. on Staten Island at 3 am, it was never like this, where every man I see I am afraid is either gonna yell at me, or throw water on me (as one did), or simply give me creepy stares.

I want to get back to NYC! Summer in the city, that's all I want. = )

Well, I'm gonna go do more nothing,

I'll check ya later,

- Lucy

P.S. the first photo is of Mike and I... he will try and say that he's not extremely mushy... but he is (I consider that photo, exhibit A). And the second one is actually of me back home at Dunkin Donuts!!! I miss it so much...