Being Amber Rhea

I figured if I’m going to post music with any sort of regularity, I should come up with my own regular title instead of ripping off Sara and Griftdrift with “Mood Music / Songs in my Head” as my title.

I want you to know I love you;
You’re my favorite thing from the past.
And all of those nights we spent together,
I never had such a blast…

Anyone could tell you were my instrument, he said, I understand you,
You wanna play me.
Everything about us had an innocence,
But everything around us was changing.

I downloaded Little Earthquakes tonight. I have the cassette somewhere, but I’m not going to take the time to find it and then try to import it to my computer somehow. Lots of memories coming back… it’s weird (and it sounds cliché and emo to say) how music can hold so many visceral memories, much like certain scents.

He said you’re really an ugly girl
But I like the way you play
And I died
But I thanked him
Can you believe that
Sick, sick
Holding on to his picture
Dressing up every day

I got something to say you know
But nothing comes
Yes I know what you think of me
You never shut up
Yeah I can hear that

But what if I’m a mermaid
In these jeans of his
With her name still on it
Hey but I don’t care
‘Cause sometimes
I said sometimes
I hear my voice
And it’s been here
Silent all these years

I can hardly believe it, but it was ten years ago today that I graduated from high school.

A lot has happened in those ten years, but in some ways it still feels like yesterday. (And in other ways it feels like several lifetimes ago.)

I was going to scan and post some more photos from graduation, but the photo album they’re in is packed away in a box in one of our closets, and I didn’t feel like digging it out.

Today Rusty and I are celebrating our 3rd anniversary. And if it weren’t for blogs, I think the likelihood of our paths crossing would’ve been much lower.

So here’s a retrospective…

December 8, 2004: Rusty’s first comment on my blog, wherein he expresses his affinity for PHP. I had found and started reading his blog sometime in the month of November. I don’t remember exactly how I originally found it, but I think it might’ve been through David’s blog. I remember being intrigued and perplexed by all the driveway photos.

March 9, 2005: We met IRL for the first time, at a blogger trivia get-together at Central City Tavern. I also met IRL that night: Thomas, Nikki, Jen, Shannon, Tony, Joseph.

April 22, 2005: Blogger bowling. It was a small crowd (just me, Rusty, Jen, and Joeventures) and I was taking the opportunity to size him up, as they say. I even thought about asking if he wanted to come home with me that night, but due to boring logistical issues (and, yeah, nerves), I decided not to. I knew by that point that I definitely wanted to do him, though.

April 26, 2005: I seized the opportunity to drop some innuendo that could, in the event of disinterest on Rusty’s part, be written off as simply a garden-variety sophomoric joke. I asked for several friends’ interpretations of his response (it seems like he was probably doing the same thing as me; gotta have plausible deniability!) and after getting unanimous opinions that this was, indeed, what you kids call “flirting,” I took the sexual innuendo to email.

April 27, 2005: It just so happened that Rusty had sent me a one-line email regarding the new version of Mac OS X, so I didn’t even need a pretense for emailing him - I just replied.

April 27, 2005 - May 5, 2005: We exchanged a series of emails fraught with business metaphors to refer to fucking. It was pretty funny and entertaining until it reached the point where I started to get annoyed and wondered when we were going to fuck already. There was also a four-day gap where he didn’t respond and I started to wonder if he wasn’t interested after all. He blamed it on working 40 hours a week and getting behind on email. Or was it nerves?

Sometime during the weekend of May 1 (sort of tangential): I was visiting Dacia in New York, and I told her about how there was this “local blogger dude” that I really wanted to fuck, and I was trying to make it happen. After I got back home she sent me an email that concluded with, “Good luck with Rusty!”

May 7, 2005 (tangential): The Great Blogswap of 2005 (a.k.a. the “blorgy”) was set to commence the week of May 9, and there were jokes via email about swapping more than blogs. Little did the rest of ‘em know that would be true for Rusty and me! (He drew my blog.)

May 8, 2005: I finally got impatient with the innuendo and said this in an email to Rusty: “Re: interview scheduling, etc.: I love me some good innuendo as much as the next guy, but it’s about time to close the deal. I can provide references… -oh shit that’s more innuendo. Never mind.” He replied: “I agree about there only being so much innuendo before something has to be done one way or the other. If you’re serious, tomorrow night would actually be a good time since I get off work at 6:15 and don’t have to be in the next day ’til 2. Or Friday night, since I’m off Friday and Saturday. If you’re not, I won’t think lesser of you for it.” And I replied to that: “Of course I’m serious. What do you think I am, some kind of asshole? Tomorrow night eh? That’s fine by me, although we could make it interesting by saying Wednesday after trivia. Or wtf, both! Right? Right.”

May 9, 2008: Monday morning I emailed him directions to my apartment. We’d already exchanged cell phone numbers. At 7:09 p.m. I still hadn’t heard from him and I sent an email saying: “Ok dude I know you’re there, you’re commenting on blogs at the same time as me. What’s your deal? Maybe you are too wrapped up in bestbuysux.org.” Then he went on IM and we chatted for a while, about all kinds of things (including the first day of the Blogswap), until finally at 7:50 I said: “are you coming down here or what?”

evilwilly1: haha, sure
evilwilly1: I need to wash the retail stink off first though
AmberATL30309: gah…
AmberATL30309: now are we clear on what this is or do we need to lay some ground rules
evilwilly1: I’m all about some ground rules… your thoughts?
AmberATL30309: uh, no drama. that’s pretty much it.
evilwilly1: works for me, no strings attached
AmberATL30309: fabulous. i was starting to lose my faith in ATL men.
AmberATL30309: and I’m assuming we’re not repeating this to our blog buddies
evilwilly1: nah
AmberATL30309: i’ll have to tell you about the gay virgin sometime
AmberATL30309: anyway what we have here is a “FWB” situation
evilwilly1: kickass, exactly what I’m looking for
AmberATL30309: excellent

After Rusty and I had been fucking for a few weeks, Sara Beth joked that we were going to fall in love, and she was going to speak at our wedding and recount the dirty details of how it all started. At the time, I scoffed at her; but hey, she was totally right!

And the rest is history. :)

The birthday of the Beast

Originally uploaded by cesarastudillo

Today my blog turns six. (It’s also the one-year anniversary of me moving to WordPress. Oh, and I’m celebrating by being at work and being sick.) Hard to believe all that’s happened in that timespan! I’ve graduated from college, started and graduated from grad school, gotten the biggest shock of my life, moved to Texas, gotten divorced, moved to Atlanta, worked at… let’s see… at least five different jobs, met some great new friends, reconnected with some old friends, and most importantly, met the GDBF (and our three-year anniversary is coming up in a few weeks!).

What will be the next chapter in my life with a blog?

So far both the posts from the “secret” pseudonymous blog involve car sex (or truck sex, really). It’s a coincidence, I swear.

[Originally posted June 30, 2005]

It was like I was back in high school last night… Rusty and I fucked in the cab of his big redneck truck, parked in a church parking lot. Not for very long mind you… it was hot but it was also HOT. As in, humid late-June Deep South hot. And we had to turn the engine off to avoid knocking the gearshift around and whatnot, so that meant no AC.

I think I had more balls (figuratively, of course) in high school; exciting as this was, I was way, way paranoid and kept looking around outside (when I was on top and could actually see outside). Then Rusty kept saying he would run from the parking deck into my apartment without any pants on, and I about had a heart attack. Who knew I was such a prude? We compromised; he ended up putting boxers on. You know, to keep up appearances.

I used to keep a “secret blog,” whose existence was revealed to only a handful of people, wherein I gave everyone pseudonyms and wrote about exciting things like the gory details of my sex life, and boring things like the gory details of job interviews.

The last time I posted to that blog was November 2006. It served its purpose when I needed it. I haven’t deleted it, because who knows, maybe sometime in the future I’ll need it again. But I was going back and looking at some of the old posts, and realizing that they do chronicle a very significant time in my life. This one in particular, I just thought was so sweet that I wanted to post it here.

Fair warning: if you’re going to be weirded out by X-rated language explicitly describing acts of fornication by people you know (read: me and Rusty), and/or if you’re my mom, don’t read below the cut. If either of those descriptions apply to you and you choose to read anyway, well, your reaction is your responsibility, not mine. Don’t act weird.
Read the full post »

I’m in a photo mood lately. Here are some more photos of good times, this time all featuring people (instead of just a shadow). My mom always admonishes me by saying, “Now don’t forget to get pictures of yourself!”
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Sometimes I like to just go back through my Flickr photostream and remember fun and interesting times past. And since I’m nearing 5,000 photos (I’ll never catch up with Josh!) it seems like as good a time as any to post some of my favorites.

So have a look! You can click on each one to go to the Flickr page with more info, because I don’t feel like writing captions for them.
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For some reason today, I’m thinking about good times in rural Georgia:

And if anybody can identify where all four of those photos were taken (without clicking through to look at the Flickr descriptions, of course), then you deserve a crazy prize.

Blogging for Sex Education post to come later today. Keep checking here for the round-up of all posts on the topic.

I’ve got a post about this article (young, hip virgins! w00t!) brewing, as well as an initial review of the book I recently started (Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation). But I don’t feel like writing about either of those at the moment. I’m sitting in the Barnes and Noble cafe in Disgusta, where I paid $4 for two hours of wireless internet service (yes, lame) - and I feel like writing about more personal things.

It feels kind of weird, being here. During my junior and senior year of high school, I spent what seemed like half my life in this place. Studying, hanging out with friends, getting caught up in teenage drama - it was the place for all of that. Jenny, Niki, and I spent untold hours in the cafe, harassing our friends who worked there. We also learned lots of excellent synonyms for “loose woman,” thanks to the plethora of thesauri. Mandi and I were asked on more than one occasion by middle-aged women sitting near us to either change our topic of conversation or move away from them. Charlie cruised this place like the clubs none of us could get into at age 17. And so on and so forth.

If I may employ some hyberbole… it was one of the only places in this godforsaken town where I felt at home. (Except for those times when there was teenage drama going on, of course.)

You wanted “lots of entries about sex”, so I’ll go ahead and oblige with one. (Note: going forward, you may have to allow for a liberal interpretation of the word “lots.”)

Spring of my senior year of high school, I was (as per usual) studying in the B&N cafe one night, and there was this guy sitting at the next table… somehow we struck up a conversation. Sucks that I can’t remember exactly how. I think it was over something really obscure, though. Like British politics in the 17th century or some shit. Anyway, we talked for quite some time, until the place closed; then we exchanged email addresses (nerd alert!) and went our separate ways.

As it turns out, he was 24 (I, of course, was at the tender age of 18) and in the Army. Ooh, scandalous! One night I went over to his place (yes, on the base) to watch a movie. Afterwards, as I got up to leave, he tried to be all smooth by saying he’d “never kissed anyone in BDUs” - referring to the camoflague Army jacket that I wore.

-I feel that this is getting long and boring. So, cut to the chase: turns out that, in addition to being very intelligent, he was also a self-proclaimed born-again Christian. (Although I don’t think he ever used the term “born-again”; but I can’t remember what he did use, so there you go.) What did this mean? Well, it meant that every time after we’d have sex, he’d lecture me about why it was wrong and why that’s not what God wants, blah blah blah etc. etc. That got old real fast. Also amusing was the fact that even though we clearly shouldn’t be doing it, it wasn’t as bad as it could be, because he made sure to steer clear of the dreaded penis-vagina penetration, which is what sends you straight to hell. 69 is wrong, sure, but it isn’t really sex. Right? Riiiiight.

I think he lasted for about two months. A very sporadic arrangement, to be sure. I finally got sick of the lectures and exploded one night into a long rant about how if it was so goddamn wrong then why can’t he keep his hands out of my pants? It’s “wrong” but he’s not saying no to any blowjobs, right? Yet somehow I was more morally culpable than him. Never figured that one out.

Fuck it! Who has time for that shit? Not me. Fucking hypocrites. (Ha! Pun! Whooooo…)

I wish I could file my blog posts under more than one category. This would go under “Personal” and “Sex.” But I can’t, so I must pick just one. Gah.

It can be a weird feeling to suddenly hear a song (or decide to listen to a CD) that you haven’t heard in a long time. Certain CDs really take me back to certain periods in my life. I go through phases of listening to one or a few CDs a lot, and then those songs become stuck with that time period in my memory. So when I hear them again after a long period of time, it’s kind of a weird feeling. A mixture of fondness and pain… you know, nostalgia.

Here are a few examples:

• U2, Achtung Baby - sophomore year of high school
• The Smiths, Singles; and Blur, Modern Life is Rubbish - junior year of high school
• The Verve, Urban Hymns - senior year of high school (although I’ve always kind of listened to that a lot, so it’s not quite as powerful of an association)
• Sarah McLachlan, Fumbling Toward Ecstasy - freshman year of college
• Cat Power, Moon Pix - sophomore year of college

Unrelated thought: I hope whitechocolatespaceegg doesn’t freeze in my car (which is parked on 9th St.) overnight.