Boston, I Love You

Marathon Monday is a Boston institution. No matter where you originally hail from, as soon as you become a student at BU, BC, Northeastern, Tufts, Emerson, MIT, Harvard, Mass Art, New England School of Photography, or one of the other 40 colleges and universities within the Boston city limits, you are immediately inducted to the fraternity of Bostonians and a series of social norms that exist nowhere else in the world.

When walking around lost, do not bother looking for the North Star; look for the Citgo sign and find your way home accordingly.

You are now a Boston sports fan, regardless of whether you’re a sports fan. If you want to avoid public verbal abuse, your wardrobe and general demeanor will express your love and excitement for the Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, and Patriots on all game days. You will watch these games, and like it.

And, the third Monday in April is a holiday. The state finally got around to declaring it Patriots Day, but everyone in Boston was forgoing work, school, and sports to watch the Marathon long before that. It was a day to revel in the first rays of Spring sunshine, come together with the entire Boston community to support charities and friends, and to start drinking mimosas at 7 am.

Cheering on the marathon runners is part of what it means to live in Boston. On April 15^th2013 that joy, and the perfect memories that day is meant to create, were shred apart by the malicious will of those too cowardly and evil to take responsibility for the destruction they have wrought. Boston is not known for its even temperament, or its ability to forgive.

Boston gets even. Boston comes back stronger. With an indomitable spirit, Boston will recover its role as a place of happiness, adventure, and safety for the students and families who live there.

As an alumna who no longer resides on the banks of the Charles River, I can only say that my heart and my hopes are with my second hometown. We must honor the victims of senseless violence by remembering them; including those killed in Newtown, CT, and recently in Texas, but also move forward with a deeper understanding of what it means to live.

Indulging your dreams and passions, living with your whole heart, is the best way to honor those that are gone. To overcome that which cannot be understood, we should strive to know ourselves better, and be the best version of that person we can, all of the time.

Boston, I love you.

Readers, I love you.

Be kind.

Nothing to do With Ships

It is way past time for me to explain the seemingly narcissistic title of my blog. I’m good for a free dessert and a tire change now and then, but I don’t go around claiming to inspire the launch of a thousand ships with my face. I leave that to Helen and her passionate philandering. It also has nothing to do with any kind of Orlando Bloom fan scenario.

It all started one balmy September night on the streets of Boston. I had just moved to the city and was walking with a group of strangers in an awkward meet and greet situation. There was a very nice, but not entirely fortunate looking Asian man in the group, and in the interest of not being a bitchy, lonely hag we were having a perfectly pleasant conversation. Now, I do need to mention that while there may not be wars fought in my honor (or for someone else’s honor, based on their misogynistic ownership of me as a sex object) I am extremely good at giving any and all people the wrong idea about my intentions and expectations by simply smiling at them. Not like a lingerie model, rip-this-lace-off-my-nipples smile, just my normal hey-life-makes-me-giggle smile. Apparently it comes with an addendum of please-treat-me-like-a-slut that I was mostly unaware of until college. Something about the one dimple, I’m sure.

So he starts flirting and I stop smiling, while trying to enact some anti-flirting maneuvers. And his final ploy is putting my name into his phone as Hillary of Troy, which I have to say is both creative and flattering (if odd, since I did not give him my phone number). Not so flattering that I am going to indulge the mixed messages of my smiling by throwing myself on the first mildly creepy Asian gentleman I meet. But nice enough to name my blog after, certainly. So it is that the compilation of my most clever observances and interesting happenings rests under a title I stole. I don’t feel bad about it when I consider it’s conception came from the honest place of wanting to have sex with me.

This is not nearly as good a reward for him, especially considering he doesn’t know about this blog, but it’s all he’s going to get. Which is more than I can say for the contributors of complimentary tiramisu in my life. And to be fair, the last time I saw him was when he attempted to accost me in a glass elevator, so maybe he managed a boob graze or something that makes up for my blatant plagiarism of his seduction techniques.

I feel much better now that I can stop imagining all of you angrily assuming that my lack of recent posts is due to getting lost in my own eyes while staring at my reflection. And smiling.

Better Than Yours

January092009-01-14_7 My twenty first birthday could not have been more ridiculous or fabulous than it was. This was most likely due to the great number of friends and random people on the street whom I shamelessly informed that I LOVE my birthday, in the days leading up to December. You know that all encompassing thrill and obsession that the average five year old vibrates with when their birthday is coming up? You know, the “oh my god, I’m only 4 and 364/365ths for another four hours! Ahhhh!” Well, whether luck or insanity, this spirit has been preserved in my annual celebrations- except for the counting part. Math is not my thing. Parties are.

It’s amazing what people will do for you when they know that you’re pretty much guaranteed to flip out over it. The celebration of my entering the ranks of the drinking, in Boston, was celebrated over a period of about two weeks wherein I drank every single day, virtually gave up sleeping, and the only food I remember eating was hastily acquired in the interest of drinking more. Taking place at the end of the semester this means I completed all of my finals while drunk. Except the one that I missed entirely because of the boy in my bed- woops.

Since the actual day of my birth fell on a Monday I planned for it to be pretty low key with the whole having to go to class the next day thing and all. Went to the BU Pub for a couple ceremonial drinks, since I could, but the friends I went with somehow turned it into a Boston bar tour through the 10 degree weather. One of them lost her phone which was later found in her bra. I almost ate the origami flower in one hand instead of the chicken finger in the other. And I’m fairly certain I did the splits more than once, in more than one bar (it’s apparently my go-to drunken party trick).

Then there was the actual party- on the weekend, when normal people go out. I’d already been drunk for five days at this point, but now I was dressing up for it. In a wonderful stroke of genius my roommate had organized a James Bond Pub Crawl, thus allowing for all the girls to dress like sexy Bond girls and guilting the guys into wearing tuxes (and I may have told them they didn’t have to get me a present if they dressed up). The night was perfection. A friend who had flown out from California for the occasion was lost between bars 2 and 3 when she wandered into a fire station. I gave my shoes to another friend. Being a massive lightweight I’d had enough to drink that I probably should have been dead a few times over, but the alcohol gods kept me going all night without even an inkling of a hangover.

The walk home was slightly more difficult in having to keep one girl from going home with strangers, realizing we were barefoot at 2 a.m. on Comm. Ave., and getting a short-lived piggy back ride from Christian, a nice boy walking his bike home while holding his broken light saber. That night ended in the amazingness that is challah grilled cheese sandwiches, but the shitshow continued.

Went to the back bar of Our House (around the corner from the foosball tables) where I got to pick drinks out of ‘the book’- I can recommend Sex in a Hot Tub only because it’s the one thing I remember drinking. Edited my entire final movie project with a beer in my hand and my professor thought it was somewhat incredible. Inevitably, since I was treating my body like the rum punch bowl at the assembly hall (read some early 19th c. literature, you’ll get this reference and be very sophisticated- like me), I got a pretty nasty case of the flu. Thus I added a healthy dose of Nyquil to the mix, and a few more naps. This did not stop me from attending $1 draft Thursday night at An Tua Nua upon request. I was not so sure I wouldn’t collapse, but had a couple assurances that someone would catch me, so I danced and drank with energy that came from god knows where. I also vaguely recall agreeing to be somebody’s little spoon.

The ramifications of those couple of weeks followed me for a bit after that. Got a call from one gentleman asking me out who came up on my phone as Creepy Boy. I told him I was moving to California, he asked if I was blowing him off, I said yes. I also garnered a reputation for being a lot cooler than I really am. I suppose I felt the need to live up to that when I flew to London three weeks later.

Basically the festivities of my 21st birthday are so marvelous as to be virtually unmatchable. But I am turning 22 soon…