(Note to Jon: this counts as four on the list of nine. Next up: Harvard visit.)

“Yeah… so, her new boyfriend is staying with her for the week. He’s thinking of transferring over here next year,” Ben says to me as we walk up the steps to Vasooda’s house.
“Oh yeah?” I say with my head down, thinking back to the day when Vasooda, or Vee as I would playfully refer to her 3 years ago, sat on a bench waiting for the university shuttle to arrive. The design and color of her top escapes my mind’s eye as I write this, but I remember the long flowing skirt she wore and how it ruffled in the wind as I walked her to her car that autumn afternoon. “Hi,” I told her three years ago as I sat down to her left, “I don’t know you that well, and you don’t know me at all." Fast forward a few hours and the two of us are laying down in her car, watching the clouds pass by and exchanging dreams, wants, and phone numbers.

Her new boyfriend has hair. A lot of hair. Those who know me or who followed my last blog know that I am a proud yet slightly reluctant member of the bald brotherhood. New Boyfriend: 1, Jon: 0. When Ben and I walked into her home, he was there alone and listening to music. His own mixtape. New BF: 2, Jon: 0. Later on, she came home and things were suprisingly not awkward until they put on Lord of the Rings.
“What’s wrong? You don’t like LOTR?” He asks me with a smirk.
“Get this--,” Ben interjects before I can speak,” He’s an English major and he’s never read Tolken.”
“Wow,” new BF and Vasooda say at the same time.
“Well…,” I clear my throat before proceeding,” I don’t like Lord of the Rings because I’m not gay. I dunno’, maybe if I did enjoy sucking cock I’d prefer LOTR to, I dunno, waterboarding.” Overboard, yes, I know.. but it shut them up. Jon: 1, New BF: 2.

Fast forward a few weeks and I’m over at her house again. This time, new BF isn’t there but a girl, a mutual friend of Vee’s at that, accompanied me there because it was Vee’s b-day. The Mavs had failed to win against the Spurs in the playoffs, so Vasooda decided to tease me.
“Quit talking shit about my team or I will pound your face into a jelly,” I say to her. She laughs, turns to the girl who brought me, and says: “See what I had to put up with? A gay bashing woman beater,” she says jokingly. I told her she was dead to me, stormed out of her home and had not spoken to her for about a month because of what she said about my Mavericks.

I’m heading over to her place in a few minutes to drop something off and try to end things on a positive note. I’m leaving San Antonio tomorrow and this could very well be the last time I see her for a very long time.

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“You’re really trying to make a statement, hun?” Sonya says to me with her hands loosely gripping my shoulders. “I mean, really, Jonathan, the Cowboys? And the Texas Rangers hat… and,” she pauses as one hand moves across the length of my clavicle and down my sleeve, “what is this? A bleach stain, honey?”

Indignant at her critique of my I’MMA-REP-TEXAS uniform, I turn my head away from facing her. “Look, pal, it’s just---.”
“No,” she interrupts me. “You’re going to HARVARD LAW! I hope you’re not wearing that. C’mon, pal,” she says sarcastically while pushing me back toward my temporary room.

“No, I was just.. this is just what I sleep in.” I lied.

....

My first visit to Harvard Law School went well. My first trip to Boston as a whole went pretty well too, mostly thanks the efforts of Melissa, who I met back in D.C. a year ago, and Sonya, who I also met last year. I stayed at Sonya’s house throughout my trip there.. as soon as I get my PC back from Geeksquad (srsly,fk dm. It’s been nearly three weeeeeeeks!)

....

Notes more to myself than to the two and a half people who will read this: (Sup, mom?)
Grocery shopping/Dancing with Sonya
Sonya singing to me on the streets of Boston
Harvard Law School feel
Undergraduate douchibaggeriness feel.
Vasooda’s new BF
Seeing Itza
Itza+Vasooda+Mavs Loss= Jon is a gaybashing woman beater
Oh, and graduating.

So that's nine entries I owe myself before the summer ends. Chances are I'll fail (like always) to live up to my promise. Having my PC would help a lot though..

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http://www.pbs.org/wnet/roadtripnation/

So I'm in the final round o the application process. If all goes well, your boy Jon will be a (not so)famous (public reality-) TV star.

Basically, recent college grads travel the US or NEW Zealand(I'm coming for you, Zebra. Be prepared for Mortal Kombat.) and interview famous and influential people about their life and the crossroads they've traversed in years passed.

Say a prayer/ send good wishes. I'll wear a NuTang.com shirt or something...

okay, maybe not, since I want to keep this place a secret.

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“Dad, I want to introduce you to someone,” Cyra says to her father upon our arrival. The two of us, having met nearly four years ago in some random class when I was a freshman and she was a senior, have had an ongoing lunch date ever since I returned to San Antonio from D.C. Our affinity for one another has blossomed through these weekly meetings, leading to multiple (half)-joking discussions of marriage and spending a life together watching anime, playing video games and making peanut-butter and chocolate hued babies (my words, of course. I told her we could make beautiful reeses pieces together.)

“This is Jonathan,” she says to her father while beaming. Placing her hand in mine, she raises our intertwining fingers to reveal a ring on her second-to-last digit. "He proposed!" she says with a grin. "We’re getting married!”

Her dad, an Iranian who was a part of the mass exodus of Persian descendants after the 1979 revolution, glared at me as I stood there, mouth agape and eyes searching the room for any weapon he could hurl at me.. “He’s going to Harvard next year,” and with that, her dad's expression softened a bit before she fessed that she was only joking.



It’s like my get out of jail free card.

More on this story later.

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“What, Jon? What? You really aren’t as important to me anymore. You’re just like any other friend I have – nothing more, nothing less.”

“I--.. but, what… you and me. We’re one heartbeat.”

“Not anymore, Jon.. and not for a long time. Can’t you see that?”

Years upon years ago, back before I started this blog, before I even started blogging, I met a girl named Caitlin. The fabric of her life story became interwoven with my own ever since we were kids. When we were younger Caitlin and I used to say goodbye to one another the same way every night from ages 11-15: “You and me are one heartbeat.” My feelings for her has been documented on Nutang since 2003, on both this username and my more popular one. Here’s the abbreviated version:

We met, she’s convinced I’m her soul mate at an early age and after a few years I’m convinced she’s right. By this time, drug addiction has ravaged her mind and soul in response to trauma, thus provoking me to don the Superman cape for the first time and attempt to be her rock – a constant stabilizing force in a life of induced chaos and a life I manage to save by doing so. Twice. She finds her way, leaves the drugs, has a kid, goes to college and forms new relationships and begins to live a happy and stable life and her need for me slowly diminishes, thus spurring the above conversation.

I did see it coming though.

“Do you think there are moments in our lives,” I paused to gather my thoughts as the two of us step out of her car and onto the front porch of her mansion of a home, “that dictate the direction our lives go in?” A few moments before I asked the question, she mentioned that she was planning on marrying a guy she was kinda-sorta dating at the time. I had no idea.

“I don’t know what you mean, Jonathan,” she says while stepping in front of me. I refuse to look her in the eye and instead take a step toward the street. “Hey, c’mon, let’s go inside,” she says to me while grabbing my hand. After she leads me upstairs and into her bedroom, I close the door behind us and kiss her. Moments later, I’m on top of her bed, she’s on top of me and her kid falls from the top of his bed in another room and begins to cry.

A month later she tells me I’m nothing to her. Since that day in April I’ve made the effort to distance myself from her. In fact, from April til maybe her birthday in late June I did not speak to her outside of to say “I can’t talk right now.”
She called me a few weeks back to say she’s getting married. A week later she calls me again to ask me if I can stand with her in the ceremony.

I haven’t given her an answer yet.

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I've got this photograph -- an old picture of my sister and I.

I'm about 2 or 3 in the photo and I'm wearing these fine picture-taking portrait type clothes. Sunday school type garb. And the sister is wearing this fluffy white dress. Anyway, I'm sitting there with this big goofy grin on my face and my eyes are as expressive as they have ever been -- and probably ever will be for any other picture i take in my life.

So in this picture, I'm sitting there with my big sister, looking goofy and happy and sincere and I kept thinking about that picture as I interviewed for the Rhodes the other day. Not just the Rhodes Scholarship, but just about every time I put on a suit or there's a dinner in my honor or someone tells me they're happy to meet me or anything that has to do with me and my "accomplishments"..

I think of that picture and think of how I've got the world fooled into believing I'm someone other than a 2 year old smiling goofily into a camera in my big sister's shadow

That's how old i feel. Two.

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