Hello Zulieka,

As a late teen and twenty year old, I received long advice-filled email responses from you that I savored. Now I’m a newly twenty-four year old, working part time as a host and living in my parent’s basement. Life after college has not been what I imagined. You don’t usually respond to the one or two emails I send per year, but I am sending another anyway. I read many blogs, and once I met a blogger who I was a fan of. She was a stripper living in her van travelling the country, and when she came to Portland, she danced for a few nights in the same club that I danced in. That was two years ago, and we were friends for the past two years since, exchanging private emails, facebook comments, and I commented on her newly private blog that requires a subscription to read. I am generally anti-social and have a difficult time making and keeping friends. I only had six facebook friends, including the blogger stripper van dweller. My best friend is my ex-boyfriend. I have a problem where I get into a relationship and have my partner as my friend, and then when the relationship ends, I have spent all of my time with the male that I have no other friends. I usually don’t have a deep interest in other people if I’m not going to have sex with them or be intimate with them, but this stripper blogger was different. She was a few years older than me, and a big sister figure of sorts. I have no sisters. She is from Alaska, and bought a cabin up there after her van travelling days were over. She is white, but she began hanging with the Native Alaskan majority in her village. She began learning how to carve little animal figurines that the Natives make out of soapstone and sell to tourists as genuine Native crafts. One of her posts described how she lied to a man in a bar in order to sell these crafts that go for $100 per carving, told him she was 1/4 Native Alaskan (she has dark features on account of being of Eastern European descent), but he didn’t believe she was Native, and threatened to call the cops on her. This all sparked a long debate and discussion in the comments section of her blog about cultural appropriation, and how whites have historically stolen Indian culture to make it their own. Her stupid white hippie cheerleader plastic shaman fan base supported her lying, said that she could call herself Native because she lives as one with the land so to speak, and I ended up calling her a poseur wannabe who is appropriating Native culture and committing cultural genocide through infiltration. On my facebook page, instead of arguing against my point, she began attacking my style of writing, and then I ended up insulting her a bunch more times and pointing out how ad hominem attacks do nothing for one’s argument. She deleted me from her facebook and took me off the subscription of her private blog about a week ago. I’m kind of glad to not have her in my life anymore, but I also miss her a lot, because I was very fond of her and needed her emotional support that I am sorely lacking.

I’m not sure where I was going with this, but I am still a friend-starved reader of blogs and endless obtainer of romantic boys that I was when I was younger. I turned 24 a few days ago, and I am afraid of becoming a lonely old lady doing these same things. I look at facebooks of my peers I grew up with. They all have babies and spouses. I was ok with being baby-less and spouse-less at 24 if I had a glamorous writing career, but now that I’m 24 and a host, I just feel like a pathetic piece of shit.

I’m starting online graduate school to become a librarian in the fall. I should get 10,000 for room and board, and I’m going to use this grant money to move back to Portland and start dancing again, except the economy sucks right now and dancers, especially in Portland, don’t make an impressive income anymore.

I feel very lost. I have no friends in Illinois, and at the restaurant where I work, I stalk one of the servers online. I know many facts about his immediate and extended family, his life history, his hobbies and interests, all from tireless internet searches. I anonymously instant messaged him and asked him if he was a vegan, and proceeded to ask him questions about his political learnings to find out if he was interested in anarchism or any other hard-left politics. It turns out he is, I learned from another website he left tracks on, but I decided to stop being creepy and leave him alone. That was several months ago, and I hoped he would never know it was me who anonymously messaged him. However, the other day at work, my boss was asking me questions about being a vegan, when the young man overheard and asked me if I was a vegan. I nodded my head without making eye contact with him, because I figured he would probably guess that it was me who instant messaged him those months ago. Since then, he’s tried to make small talk with me and eye contact, but I am so embarrassed that I avoid him at all costs, and sometimes I actually grimace at him when he smiles at me. I don’t know why I have this reaction to grimace at him and push him away. He is so beautiful and nice. I want to fuck him so bad, that walking past him and smelling him at work makes me really horny. I will not breath until I’ve walked right in front of him, then inhale during the stride, usually with a grimace on my face to keep him from engaging with me while I sniff. I feel like an immature school girl, except I am twenty-four and living in my parents basement! When does it end, Zulieka? I think you had your child when you were around my age. When I first started reading your blog, I figured I would be something like you when I got older, but I don’t think I’ve changed much.

The restaurant I work at has lots of cliques and bullies that remind me of childhood. They laugh and are mean to me for being odd, but not the server I anonymously messaged. I found a blog of his he kept several years ago. He made an entry for each drug he tried, beautifully written entries for each one, attention to detail. Combinations of drugs had their own entries as well. He hasn’t written in it for a long while now, and I suppose it’s a good thing.

Anyway, I have been feeling bummed about some things lately and thought I’d give writing to you a shot since you used to make me feel better a long time ago, and the one blogger I talked to in real-life who I was a fan of before I met her has stopped talking to me. I think you might’ve stopped writing lengthy responses to me in 2006 when I began dating a blond hair, blue eyed young man and wrote to you about a fleeting desire I had at the time about wanting Aryan children. I am embarrassed about this brief desire I had and expressed, and thinking about it hurts my tummy. If that fucked up sentiment had anything to do with your lack of responses, I am sorry. If your lack of responses are because I am whiny and hopeless, I guess I’m sorry about that too. I see you don’t update your blog as much as you used to because of your child getting older and needing attention, so it’s probably just that. I still love your blog and feel lucky for each new entry, no matter how sparse. I’ll send you a picture of my odd face and cleavage as a gift.

~ B

We were very old.
We were dying. Death was a photographer; we had stolen his camera. A disease had caused everyone to hate each other and the world had killed itself.

We had escaped to a concrete platform that wasn’t really concrete in a city that wasn’t really Munchen. We sat on a bench and you rested your head on my shoulder.

I opened a lunch bag that was not really filled with biscuits. It was a bag of sunsets. “Look”, I said, after I counted them. “We have enough to last us till we go.”

I took one and placed it in the sky, and you opened your eyes for just a moment to see where the yellow light shining on your face was coming from.

my favorite bit … hope you are well … I always enjoy your words …

We were very old.
We were dying. Death was a photographer; we had stolen his camera. A disease had caused everyone to hate each other and the world had killed itself.

We had escaped to a concrete platform that wasn’t really concrete in a city that wasn’t really Munchen. We sat on a bench and you rested your head on my shoulder.

I opened a lunch bag that was not really filled with biscuits. It was a bag of sunsets. “Look”, I said, after I counted them. “We have enough to last us till we go.”

I took one and placed it in the sky, and you opened your eyes for just a moment to see where the yellow light shining on your face was coming from.

my favorite bit … hope you are well … I always enjoy your words …