I’m the girl who kept the first Bartles & James Wine Cooler bottle after my first “movie night” with a  boy  in high school.  I still have it somewhere, along with the love letters from the boy I dated in grade school. We passed them back and forth while our teacher read ‘Where the Red Fern Grows’ in the afternoons. I remember the folder, blue peechee.

I remember my first real kiss, two weeks after my 16^th birthday, on a night I went to a party at Bobby’s house. I lied to my parents to attend, they didn’t know the difference. And even though I threw up from being too drunk while going through a Del Taco drive through, the night was still magical.  I remember the U2 song playing in the background when we lay down together that night, to snuggle and touch. ‘I still haven’t found what I’m looking for’, was the title, but Bobby assured me that he didn’t find this true any longer.

I remember my college boyfriend, who brought me canned Spam on our first date.  He liked Spam and thought it would be a distinctive identifier for him, because in his mind I was being pursued by enough men for him to be competitive and whip out the Spam. I remember feeling like I loved him even after I realized he had an anger management issue. No one is perfect.

I remember years of partying and having a great time in my 20’s. From the guy who looked like a member of the mafia to the man who wore lip gloss, mango no less, and left me voice mails that consisted of nothing but music.  Again U2.

I remember moving to San Francisco and feeling liberated in the dating world. The women weren’t all trying to be thin, blond and aloof.  What a relief.  The men were different.

I remember, back when it was taboo, getting on to Match.com to try out dating.  Momentum was always a theme in my love life, better to come from a place of some movement, meaning some dating/action, than from a total standstill.

I remember a decade of adventurous dating, from Flamenco man to Dolores to The Gambler. What a line up.  Definite momentum.

My love life.  Not boring, not bland, not filled with the same old.  But with standout memories of pieces and parts of a journey through what was and still mostly is to me, pretty mysterious territory.

Her hair was long and dark. Women stared at is as she walked down the street. Of course she wasn’t a bad looking woman anyway but her hair truly had a life of its own. Long, black, luxurious, it was the kind of hair you see in movies or on hair product commercials.  She’s lived a life knowing she was beautiful and knowing that her hair was a thing of envy for many women, and drove men to distraction.  She would feel lucky except that she didn’t.  She had been taught that looks were what got her where she wanted to go in life. That she had to stay fit, beautiful, take care of her hair above all else. That even though she may be smart (this was never emphasized) she would never be smart enough to get anywhere without her looks. Coming from her mother for years this was burned into her soul, and true or not she was not able to get out from behind the thought that she had to lead with her looks, specifically with her hair.

So, it’s for this reason that one day she went through something traumatic that sent her right over the emotional edge. She  went to get a haircut with Dominic, her fabulously Gay hair stylist who she’d seen for years. Except Dominic was out of sorts that day. She should have taken that as a warning.  He was distracted with his own troubles so when he accidentally mixed the wrong chemicals together to add a little color to her hair he did not notice. This is how she went from having long, luxurious black hair to having hair that was gray.  Gray. What? She was destroyed.

Allow me to introduce myself.  I’m quirky, enthusiastic (less so as I age) and direct.  I’m the youngest of a large family, heavily dominated by women.  I’m a proud, almost fanatical resident of San Francisco. Fanatical in my love for the city, not my politics.  I moved here on January 1^st 2000 to take a corporate job that gave me an incredible amount of experience and is the only time I’ve had prolonged insomnia.  I’ve loved it ever since and to this day get a thrill coming in over any of our bridges.  I’m a closet creative, having spent a lot of time in the corporate mindset and world I have all but lost the creative streak in me and am attempting to find it again with this class.  I’m an unconventional wife in a fresh and very happy marriage.  Recently I started my hand at gardening and have found that I am quite good at it.  I have an incredibly overactive mind and level of focus and divert some of that through physical exercise. And now meditation, on the days I can get myself focused enough to spend 15 minutes breathing.  I’m funny and even though I claim to dislike sarcasm, a little on the sarcastic side. I’m a big believer in the basics, like being good to people. This was grilled into me at a young age with the plaque permanently over our family dining room table encouraging us to ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. Along with my mother’s final words to us every day when we got out of the car to go to school, ‘Do something good for someone today’.  My mother is someone who is heavy on my mind these days, she’s not well and who the hell knows how to deal with parents being sick and incapable of caring for themselves.  I keep wishing someone would tell me or that there is a book I can read. Three things about me that most people would be surprised to know:  People are surprised I’m from the West Coast; I’ve lost count of people who think I’m from Boston. I feel that cursing is a necessary part of my vocabulary; some things just can’t be said without a few good expletives thrown in. I’m lively and bright on the outside but quite often dark and cynical on the inside.