In a profile of me for her creative writing course, my friend called me the “girl alone in the riot-proof dorm.” That’s what the past year has been for me: solitude, safety, self-sufficiency. It is everything that seemed impossible less than two years ago.

Contentment is harder to express than the depression or rage of my nineteenth year. How do you say “I am happy” in any way but just that? Pain is common, universal, widely felt, and mulled over. Happiness is fleeting and even if everyone’s had a taste, no one really remembers it or knows it beyond the moment. We recall the details and circumstances, but not the feeling. There are just the moments and impressions.

Sunday morning. Early March of this year. I woke up in a soundless riot-proof dorm from nine and a half uninterrupted hours of much needed slumber. I tapped at my laptop and drew my curtains, finding an email from Patrick and unexpected sunniness in the process. The sun blinked back at me, demanding musical accompaniment, so I put iTunes on shuffle and made my way to the bathroom, taking a route littered with wrinkled clothing, unread books, and half-empty cigarette boxes — pieces of a scattered life. Sometime between the scent of jojoba on my cheeks and the opening strains of a Weakerthans tune, I jolted awake when I took in the full extent of my surroundings. Standing there amid my mess of a room, I realized that I had finally cleaned up my mess of a life; that I had done even better than I could’ve ever expected and found a comfort in my own skin I would’ve deemed inconceivable a year ago.

This clarity comes every once in a while, far more frequently this year than last. Some mornings, I will wake up so inexplicably content that I remain flat on my back with eyes stretched wide to take in the cars and morning joggers beyond my window. Everything else can wait while I celebrate this small moment. I like to think of these instances as an expression of my gratitude, as an appreciative reminder of what I have: the ability to be alone and happy. For the girl who used to find it a challenge to merely emerge from her bedroom, this is a veritable triumph over the melancholic ailments to which she was enslaved.

And now, May is today, and I hardly ever spend the night in my riot-proof dorm anymore. Most mornings, I wake up next to a man and his dog. There is no window above my head. The light of dawn streams into his living room but his bedroom remains cloaked in darkness. My Aveda cleanser sits in his bathroom cabinet and he keeps his hardwood floors uncluttered, save for vague evidence of my presence like the occasional earring separated from its twin.

Like my hard-earned felicity, he too is not something I can verbalize. How can one adequately express the experience of someone else? How do I do justice to the hours between dawn and waking, to the broad expanse of his chest, to morning showers with his soapy hands in my hair, to the weight and feel of him through cotton and denim? There are slivers and glimpses, and together, they pile up into impressions. This is the most I can hope for: impressions that come close enough but not quite. Impressions just close enough to extrapolate from and misinterpret or maybe to understand, hopefully to understand.

There are entire nights spent on his living room floor, the two of us face-to-face with me on his lap and his dog splayed out beside us. For minutes at a time, we look. There is looking and more looking and nothing but silence and the occasional peculiar facial expression. Sometimes, after we have maintained prolonged eye contact to the point of absurdity, he will make a cautiously affectionate remark such as “I really enjoy spending time with you.” When it comes to words, I don’t expect anything more from my stoic German. Enjoyment is concession enough. Invariably, one of us will concoct some sort of prank or ridiculous scheme. We are never up to any good, not on our own and certainly not together. More often than not, we will dissolve into laughter at the prospect of carrying out our ludicrous plans aimed at confusing and provoking ludicrous people. That’s what we spend most of our leisure time doing: plotting and giggling. I make this six-foot-something man giggle.

He’s been asking every once in a while how “that piece” is going. He knows that I’ve been having a hard time writing, that I’ve been working on something about him but I cannot manage to finish it. I have been sleeping beside him for weeks yet I cannot bring myself to contemplate what he or this means to me. It is not a conversation I’ve had with him, my friends, or anyone else; it is not even a conversation I’ve had with myself. And until a few nights ago, I wasn’t able to articulate why I was encountering so much trouble.

I’m afraid of getting you wrong, Patrick. I’ve told you before that I am constantly afraid of getting people wrong. That’s why I feel compelled to ask my first subject over and over if it’s okay to put his coarse curls and careless habits down into words. He has always told me to write what I want without worrying what he or other people might think. You say the same thing.

But how can I tell you what you mean when I can’t even tell myself what you mean? Maybe, what I am really scared of is not getting you wrong but getting you right. I don’t want to write about you because it is too much, because words might give you meaning that I have yet to grapple with. And I am not ready for that. Not quite.

There was one morning when I woke up crying in his bed. It wasn’t long after I’d come back from seeing Kennedy in Germany. She was doing fine when I got there, meaning she wasn’t 1) institutionalized or 2) suicidal, which were both improvements from the previous week. When I left Heidelberg, I felt immensely better — even hopeful — about my best friend’s mental state. But for whatever reason, I dreamed of her shortly after and I woke with an image of her pushing me away. I was visibly bothered and he wanted me to talk about it. Usually, I appreciate his willingness to listen but on this particular morning, I hated him for it, for his inability to leave things unsaid. Because here is the thing: I am so used to getting upset over stupid, superficial things that I don’t even know how to get upset over real, important things anymore. I don’t want to cry over pictures of me on the Internet because that would mean I’m weak. So I don’t want to cry over my best friend being incredibly depressed and lost because that too would mean I’m weak. Even if what it really means is that I’m human. And he seems to think I’m human, the silly boy.

Human, in fact, was the last thing I felt like being that morning but I made the mistake of telling him something that led to something else and then everything tumbled out after, little bits at first and finally, entire pieces. I told him about resentment and fear and love and fear and loss. I told him about loss. What I lost. What she lost. What I want so badly that I’m afraid she won’t give. I told him about what it means to be family, what it means to be friends. I told him that sometimes there is no difference, that it is my sister I’m afraid of losing.

He said things and I nodded and I was fine and then I wasn’t and I turned away. I was trembling and naked against the morning.

“Come here,” he said. He touched me, pulled me to him, his voice so soft, my throat so hard. That was all it took. That is all it takes. “Come here,” he always tells me in moments like these and I cannot help but break.

“Hey,” he said again. “Come here.”

So I did, and for a moment, I felt human. When I sobbed, I shook.

Since I had my last sections and lectures of the semester today, I feel totally free to reveal the following:

* Some people check their email during lecture. I do that too. But also, I cyber, which is why I have that creepy smile on my face.

* When I get really engrossed in a book and the professor directs us to a selection in it, I will often spend lecture finishing the book instead of paying attention to the professor. This is possibly the geekiest form of distraction ever.

* Section is fantastic because there’s such a diverse selection of guys I can fantasize about. Like the one who barges in fifteen minutes late every week from practice all panting and sweaty; or the cute one who makes cute points in his cute accent; or the stuttering, German philosophy-citing one who definitely thinks he’s smarter than the TF. Oh, and the hot TF. I definitely fantasize about him too.

* I know you judge me for my pink laptop but I don’t give a damn, fuckers. It’s not my fault you’re a conformist.

* If I seriously have no idea what is going on in a course, I purposely choose a seat outside the line of a TF’s vision and lock my eyes to the coursebook. No one ever really gets called on unless they want to speak, but I do this just in case I actually land in a section in which there are no overeager handraisers. Who am I kidding? There’s always a Harvard kid who gets jittery if he hasn’t heard his own voice in the past five minutes.

* See me furiously typing away as the prof covers a coup d’etat, two wars, and a crusade in one hour? That shit is boring. I’m obviously working on my memoir.

Of course, seeing as how I’m a junior, I’ll be in classes again in four months. So maybe I shouldn’t have written this. Oh well, what do I know about being a student anyway? I’m hardly ever on campus since I sleep in Boston and run off to New York at any given chance. As my friend Zac said, “Lena Chen isn’t actually an enrolled student at Harvard. She just hangs out on campus for a few days straight once every 3 or 4 weeks.”

Directed by visiting artist Shelley Bolman and staged in Beale Street Memphis, this Ja zz age retelling of a tale of mistaken identity and romantic pursuit plays out before the rich backdrop of the Roaring Twenties. A time of blues and booze, of post-war partying and prohibition, this period in American life paralleled the raucous Twelfth Night holiday around which the Bard’s tale was set. With a live jazz quartet, 20s choreography and original blues composition, it’s going to be an experience you won’t want to miss!

Performances:
Sat 5/3: 8:00pm
Sun 5/4: 2:00pm, 8:00pm
Thurs 5/8: 8:00pm
Fri 5/9: 8:00pm
Sat 5/10: 2:00pm, 8:00pm
Sun 5/11: 2:00pm

Tickets (at the Harvard Box Office):
$8/student
$12/general

Produced by this incomparable duo:

(Full disclosure: my close friends/pseudo-roomies Tara and Tiffanie)

A year and a half ago, I wrote a series of entries about Kennedy. Our freshman year of college had just finished and we were what I called then an “unlikely duo”. She is many things to me: my first and most significant girl crush, an authority figure who I am more likely to listen to than anyone else (my mother included), and nowadays a kind of sister. “Best friend” always seems inadequate.

We were supposed to go to Europe together that freshman summer but through a combination of my own irresponsibility (made a terrible impression on her family) and simple bad luck, we didn’t. She’s in Germany now and late this May, I’ll be joining her for nearly three months. So it looks like two years later, our trip is finally coming to fruition. This means a great deal to me.

So in celebration of our summer together, here is a compilation of entries about my greatest love of the past few years:

- - -

While riding on the Metro 70 this morning, I saw the man beside me reach over to his female companion and pick something out of her hair. A year ago, I wouldn’t have thought twice about the gesture, but that was before I met CK.

CK is one of my closest friends at college. But more than that, she is also the first and only woman I have ever been romantically interested in. That fact is as public knowledge as it is a running joke. But it is also the truth.

Her hair and I are deeply involved. Poofy, unkempt, and unapologetically black, it shuns chemicals that threaten to smooth out its kinks. It has a life of its own. It has a spirit. My job is not to break that spirit, but to calm it. CK looks different when her tangles are neatly pried free. I wish I knew better how to handle black hair, because if I did, I’d pick out her hair completely for her. She rarely does it for herself, and so I find myself constantly retrieving odd pieces of paper and dust from her fro, when not busy taming it with my fingers.

CK doesn’t conform to traditional beauty standards — at all. And yet she has managed to capture my heart while piquing my sexual interest, no small task when considering that I am decidedly preoccupied with what our culture deems pretty. Here is a picture of her, if you can close your eyes and imagine: brown skin, full lips, big mouth, wide eyes, slender legs, round nose, and rounder bottom.

To me, CK is always attractive — but this is not merely an empty compliment I offer all my girlfriends. She is beautiful in a way that wine is better tasting once you have had a few sips to start. She is beautiful in the way that a lover is always beautiful. When she is fresh out of the shower, I sneak glances at her breasts and backside as she changes, because I might catch something new I haven’t discovered before on these seldom-seen spots. I have long determined through close observation that I have never seen a more beautiful body than hers.

For starters, CK has an amazing mouth. It is full and juicy, the most kissable I’ve ever encountered. Sometimes slick with gloss but usually bare, CK’s mouth is a contradiction of sorts. Peeks of metal and colored plastic hint at a tongue piercing, unexpected of this chaste Southern girl. The precise manner with which she bites down on her lower lip is altogether coy and disarmingly seductive. CK is a virgin. But of course.

Invariably, I am tempted to request a kiss, but the rare lip-to-lip contact she makes me crave often comes when I least expect it and never when I outright demand it. She is a frustrating lover who operates on a whim, most affectionate when least solicited.

CK is a small woman, and that too is part of her charm. She is compact, portable like me. Even with all her curves, CK is adorably petite, possessing a slender frame and the features of a cherub. Now that I have known the build of her body, I question whether I could ever be attracted to an Amazon, a taller, broad-shouldered species of girl. And the truth is, part of CK’s appeal lies in the fact that she reminds me astonishingly of me. We are girls who can be broken if squeezed a bit too hard, if pulled more forcefully than expected. And there is a kind of solidarity in living in the same five-foot-tall world.

This started as a piece about my relationship with CK’s hair but I realized in the middle of writing it that there is so much more that must be explained about her body and about her quirks in order to communicate the intimacy of my fingers working through her locks. So I will try, for the first time, to write more clearly than I ever have about what it means to love someone.

- - -

We met on the second night of school via our mutual friend Kam, although “met” implies handshakes and introductions while our meeting consisted of Kam escorting me from the door of a finals club to the door of my bedroom.

Immediately, she hated me. The feeling was more than mutual. She was the worst kind of abstinent. Laying no claim on holier-than-thou coolness, CK refrained from drugs, alcohol, and sex out of personal conviction alone. You could call her moral, but you wouldn’t dare call her straightedge. While she thought, “That rash, drunken whore is going to get herself killed,” I silently fumed, “Who is this short-haired, fully-clothed monster telling me what to do? Kam better get rid of this pint-sized bitch by morning.” Neither of us was particularly impressed with his taste in friends that night.

What followed that disastrous first encounter is a bit of a blur. Against all odds, we came around to liking each other. Precisely how, I can’t say because I barely remember. She informed the gay best friend that I was “actually cool” when sober. JB, in return, sang her praises. I decided that I was a fan of CK after all. After repeated run-ins through mutual friends, we became comfortable enough around each other to hang out, just us. One night in early fall, she stopped by my dorm room, upset at a guy’s inconsiderate actions. Mid-explanation, her voice cracked and eyes welled up. I didn’t expect it. The vulnerability she showed made the difference between friend and confidante. I trusted her completely after that.

Before two months had passed, we were living together. I relocated from my tense Canaday D suite into hers in the neighboring building. I liked her roommates better than my own. In a box by her closet, I kept a toothbrush, a towel, and flip-flops. Each evening between her sheets, I cradled my laptop, slept against her back, and crooned off-key the Bright Eyes that accompanied the late night. In the morning, I’d scurry down her stairs, across the courtyard, and up into my room where I quickly showered and changed. But after class and between meals, I’d be found in CK’s room more often than in mine, whether she was there with me or not. Sometimes, all the others were out, and they came home to no one but me, their adopted roommate, napping away in CK’s bed at the most content I’d been since college had begun.

I began to feel more comfortable in her skin than in my own. I took to wearing her clothes like I would wear a boyfriend’s, though I joked that her wardrobe (which ran more casual than mine) was reserved only for my grungy days. Her tshirts and sweatshirts and pants and even socks – they were all fair game, except for the size six shoes that would not fit. And although the mismatched outfits I constructed fit my frame, my appearance was that of a stranger invading fabrics not her own. I looked just as out-of-place in CK’s clothing as I did in the oversized garments of my male lovers.

- - -

I have learned CK’s curves from consecutive nights of side-by-side embraces, from furtive caresses over shoulders and under chins and down happy trails. I like to think that she has a body only I know how to hold and handle, that there are words and gestures belonging to us alone.

CK has a boyfriend now, but I don’t know if he picks at her hair like I do or if she drawls “baby” to him while teasing his cheek with her fingertips. I am certain that her paramour suspects me of being bitter. He would not be incorrect. As much as I adore him, I can’t help but think that he has somehow ruined our relationship.

My animosity toward her relationship is hypocritical. I date far more men than she ever has or will. But in my defense, none of them have ever presented an actual threat. I have been more fully exposed before CK than I have ever been before a boyfriend. And there is no man I have ever loved as deeply as I have loved her. There is a part of her not mine now but I do not begrudge her her contentment. In the same breath that I admit my jealousy, I confess I share in her happiness.

- - -

We were supposed to backpack through Europe this summer, just the two of us. We didn’t go, to our mutual disappointment. Now I don’t know if we missed the only opportunity we’ll ever get to take a trip like that together. Sometimes I wonder if a prolonged journey to another continent would have changed things. Away from boys and friends and boyfriends, I wonder if our thoughts would’ve turned more willingly toward each other; if during one warm, heavy night, we would’ve curled up on the floor of a hostel like we have countless times on her bed; if this time, we would have dared to press our noses together closer than we ever have before.

–September 2006

I tend to hate the photos taken of me next to my laptop. I’m a blogger, so naturally, reporters ask me to pose with my weapon of choice. I don’t mind acquiescing, especially since I’m not a photographer myself and it’s not like I have a suggestion for a better shot. Still, I can’t help thinking that the more obvious setup the setup, the less meaningful the picture. It’s strange that the easiest portrait to shoot is the one that appears the most contrived. I never look natural in my photos next to computers.

But this one I like for some reason. He took it Saturday night. We’d just gotten back to the hotel from coffee on the Lower East Side. I was looking at my Tumblr dashboard when he shot this (you can tell from the screen it’s Tumblr). I didn’t know until we scrolled through his photos later that he had taken anything at all.

An actual candid of me. Pretty rare.

Another interesting photo (from our coffee earlier that evening). I started taking pictures of him with my cell phone and he responded by snapping me with his digital camera at the same time. It was war.

Got back from New York this morning after sleeping at some atrocious hour last night. 72 hours in New York. Christ. Things I did this weekend (with helpful links):

* Got two dresses at AuH2O, this fantastic East Village clothing store with one-of-a-kind pieces made from recycled fabrics. Kate, the owner (who’s only 23!), is doing a custom piece for the Guy. New York fashion students, intern for this woman. She’s responsible for cool, creative, affordable stuff like this Metrocard dress.

* Had a cup of New York’s best coffee at Abraço

* Best meal of the weekend: dinner at a great French place in the East Village called Antibes Bistro. The desserts are amazing. What I recommend: butternut squash ravioli and the chocolate terrine.

* Brought the Guy and the dog along for a fascinating meeting with a downtown production company.

* Visited the International Center of Photography. Really enjoyed the Glenn Ligon exhibit critiquing Robert Mapplethorpe’s The Black Book (a volume of homoerotic images of black men)

* Saw a lot of people, just generally. Consumed a lot of coffee and Haribo gummi bears, just generally (the latter brought back from Germany when I visited Kennedy over spring break).

* Hung out at night with the Guy’s sister who studies fine arts in the city. Wound up in Williamsburg both Friday and Saturday night after disliking the pretentious crowd at Plumm and D’Or. Jules (my down-to-earth NYC companion from last summer who was the only person I knew who lived in Brooklyn) would’ve been proud.

* Took plenty of candid photos and video, somewhat against my perfectionist will, but oh well.

Good drive. Good company. Great weekend.