iowa.. iowa.. there are definitely hills in iowa. go dar! unfortunately, dar, there are no nipples. i happen to like nipples more than hills.. but i like girls regardless. besides, iowa is outright peculiar. i mean, it is pretty and quaint and hot as hell. there is only one main route through iowa (gotta love rt. 80).

he and i are still on the road, partway ‘cross the country at this point. top’s down (although we see clouds ahead and are a bit worried). i have interested burn marks across my shoulders and my hair has lightened from the sun. we just passed a crop-duster – something i had never seen before. it is a plane that drops fertilizer on crops. very cool. plenty oh moo-cows and truckers. i made the mistake of going into a truck stop in my bikini. oops. male oogles. he said i would be terrified of the men’s bathroom. i don’t think i want to find out.

conversation is peculiar. we are both realizing various stressors on this trip. i mean, this is not a trip outta pure fun and excitement.. it is a trip with a purpose and that purpose is kinda depressing. knowing that when we get to the other side, we have to part.. it is a very surreal feeling. we are both craving colorado and the potential last fling before reality hits. very trippy.. very peculiar.

last nite, we logged in to the network via the telephone in our “motel 6” only to discover a friend online and a very passionate message in each of our mailboxes. a friend that i thought has lost his passion, who i thought had become dulled by life, suddenly showed himself once more in his simple message. ahh… i look forward to see where this goes to.

today is a happy day… douglas adam is reading “life, the universe and everything” through our cassette player. this makes any uncomfortable tension disappear.

midwestern pickup lines used on me today:

– hey baby, i can pay for that.. (taking out his bills in a wad as i searched for a good book on tape)
– i got pulled over last nite

drove through nebraska bare breasted… definitely the way to travel.

sitting, tensely in the front seat of his new phatty car. trying not to pay attention to the traffic or the people around but afraid to pay too much attention to him, crying, half-hysterical at the reality of truly leaving home. unlike the last times we have left home, we always planned to return. this is not one of those times and the reality is stinging him like a wasp. i don’t really understand what is going through his head – i don’t know if i can. i mean, in two weeks time, i will be right back to the same desk that i was at two days ago, doing the same project i was doing then as well. how can i truly understand?? fact is, i can’t.

he just wants time to think. we turn on the drum and base, only to learn that his car battery is not equipped to power both the computer and the CD player (all strung in the front seat full of wires and mishap, connectors and speciality electronics, kinda like my brother’s room). thus, i am in windows, my favorite of all platforms, writing this letter to you, my diary of thoughts.

last year, when we crossed the country, conversation was intense and intriguing, crazy and bonding. i don’t know where to take conversation this year… especially since i need to actually produce work at the end of the trip. he is a peaceful boy, not particularly passionate about anything. while this is not necessarily bad, it means that conversation takes a bit of effort on my part and i feel as though i carry conversations and discussions. hmm.. need to work on that.

he points out a good thought – “did you ever think that we know each other so well that it is difficult to carry conversations?” he is right – we can easily talk about things that happen but there is not a lot that happens without one another. talking about opinions or world-views becomes pointless because we know the response that is about to come. ?have we melted into the same person? one friend told me that his relationship with his lover only works because they only see each other half the time (the rest of the time, he is away on business and when they come back they have plenty to talk about). is it a bad thing that conversation becomes challenging?

holy shit. what a wonderful weekend! friday afternoon, i was sitting at my computer, doing what i m always doing these days, not getting very far, quite frustrated wtih the multi-platformed reality and the unkind element of c++. suddenly, out of the blue, a friend from the past telephoned to ask if she may come down for the weekend. of course! i replied. then, 8 hours later, this gorgeous women who i had stalked during my freshman year of college appeared at my doorstep, looking fresh and lively, exuberant and excited. i almost melted.

although i hadn’t slept in 2 days, i stayed up until 5AM with her, flashing through our shared history and relating our current realities to one another. time stood still for us – there was no sense of distance in time or thought as we wpilled out and reonnected with facts. i was mentally orgasmic as we discussed politics, career thoughts, relationships and theories. those terms only make the conversations seem dry but they were anything but that. emotion flowed from our selves as we explored the intimacies of our own thoughts. even such boring topics as ‘career goals’ turned into lively discussions of women’s rights to abortion, what it means to have technology in one’s life and how medicine could be made accessible to all. going to bed that nite, i glowed with joy.

saturday, after a long walk around the campus that i am currently working at, we sat at the edge of the river, toes dipped in, continuing the intense conversations. at my house, another shared friend and her current !male! lover. we headed out to a nearbye pond for some fun skinny dipping. avoiding the fishermen, we jumped into the lake and tumbled around. afterwards, we headed for yummy sushi and a chill nite back at my place. this _entire_ day was supported by my homemade brownies, which were quite strong. our friend left and the two of us continued to talk and watch the movie already started. my lover headed towards bed.

flash of magic.

she and i started kissing and caressing, sharing ourselves with one another, playfully teasing our friendship to a new level. intensity was in the air as i caressed her cunt and found pleasure in the woman i had craved for so many years, the woman i thought untouchable. what pleasure.

bedtime next, at least for me. my lover repeated what i had already done, a pleasure for him who had also been awed by her for so long.

girlie day. all three girls rejoined in the early afternoon for intense discussions and bonding that lasted 11 hours and two restaurants (and some travel). again, conversation could not be tamed and the communication was intense. it was quite appreciated. it cannot be described well but our mutual friend said it best – i talk about my male friends all the time because we go out and _do_ stuff, bizarre and meaningless; with my women friends, we do this – sit around all day and talk about intense stuff.

it had been two years since i had seen her last but it didn’t matter – our bond still existed and only flourished with real-time, real-space contact. close friends are everything.

bleh. bleh. blah.

that is how i feel today.

bleh.

i never know what to do about my blah moods. i dreamed all nite of being stuck in a cage, forced to reside there because i was a “freak of nature.” i woke up and it was past 1PM, indicating that i slept for 11 hours. no matter what i do, i cannot wake up after less than 10 hours. this is depressing because i so much want my body to be happy after 6-8 hours. but it isn’t. therefore, i will have to return to alarm clocks and the pain endured in the morning as a result.

so i got up, after dreaming of being caged, only to look out the window and observe grayness, devoid of summer happiness. although rain was happily spattering on the browned grass in the strip between the roads in front of my apartment. i flicked on cnn and learned nothing new. election shit has started and the only foreign news i can get is that which we have a monetary stake in. so that is not fun. i flicked off cnn.

i proceeded to eat 2 bowls of cereal, honey smacks, reminiscient of my times abroad where that was the only “junky” american cereal they sold in the grocers.

i walked to the postoffice only to be reminded that airborne express is a separate entity than the post office and therefore, the post office won’t accept airborn express packaged. on to the bank, only to learn that i did not have much money. this did not come as a surprise. walked back towards work, noting that i did not see anyone walking or riding a bike, only in cars on this dreary from-hell day. how depressing. i decided that i am definitely moving back to amsterdam when i get the chance. my other observation came screaming forward. people are fat in the states. i feel guilty recognizing that, almost as though by thinking that i am causing it. i forgot that when you eat like shit and don’t exercise, you are bound to become large. i just don’t eat. this flashed me back to a story that i had seen on cnn this morning. apparently, in beverly hills, you can inject wrinkles with certain types of poison, killing the nerves below them which allows the wrinkle to disappear, making you look younger. a new trend in the fashion-fiend city. i am a fashion fou-pas.

into my office, onto my computer, only to receive a request from a friend to check out his latest webpage: imood.com where you can put your emotion on a webpage for the world to see. “shitty” was not an option. i felt shitty. what a blechy society and culture. we only continue all of the horrors that our culture has started. they become engrained and we let them perpetuate.

i just want to be a hermit.