As expected the construction woke me up early in the morning. But at least I slept on a bed for a night. I took a shower, which was a nice change. Susan and I had the free breakfast that came with the bed separately. Interestingly enough sitting across from me were a Chinese lady and, get this, a Zainichi Japanese-born Korean. They started talking to each other, and I was kind of tempted to talk to them, but for some reason I wasn't really feeling it. Susan and I had some tea downstairs in the kitchen area and discussed our plans for the day, then we had to quickly check out of our rooms (hand in our keys and such). Technically I don't think we were allowed to be there after that, but our goal was to stay there as long as possible using their amenities and whatnot. We ate free food, and then went and laid in the grass by the battery for most of the morning and early afternoon. Susan talked to her parents for awhile in the patio area and I went and sat on a bench and smoked and danced a little. Then Susan made some lunch with bell peppers, some delicious mango salsa of some sort, koos koos, and broccoli, which was all wrappable in a tortilla. Not bad for a homeless lunch. It was quite delicious. I guess I was feeling a little disconnected from her by this time.
The eventual plan was that Susan was going to go to Authentic World, which I am not allowed to go to, during which I would hang out in downtown, and then I would go meet her nearby. I was kind of excited to meet her friends from Authentic World because I had gathered that she holds them in high regard. Initially it seemed as though she was very excited about that as well, and then I noticed her speech about it diminishing in excitement over time, which made me feel insecure and as though I had somehow not met her expectations. I have no idea what the reality of her feelings on it were. But anyway I do remember that after the resting, and probably some tea drinking and perhaps lunch eating, we were sitting out in front of the hostel overlooking the park. I asked her if she wanted some alone time and she said yes. There are other details to all this - she was going to meet me later or go to the airport in the intervening time... it doesn't really matter as it didn't materialize. What is important is that she said yes, and I was happy to feel knowing what she wanted. She drew me a map of how to get to the mall if I wanted to go there, or the theater where there was free wi-fi (both in downtown, she let me take her laptop), and I was happy to give her alone time by leaving.
It was good to be away from her a bit too - it was something I also had been wanting since "the tension" began, although I couldn't ever come to the point where I wanted to be alone more than I wanted to be with Susan. I walked for about an hour to get over to downtown, and went to the theater so I could use the internet. It was interesting to be back at the theater, as on the first day I arrived that is where we went, although I didn't know that at the time. I felt now like I had an understanding of the layout of the city. A bit of an understanding about the city in general. It was nice to just sit around and use the internet for awhile and do whatever I wanted. Eventually the time rolled around that I thought I should walk over to the area where Susan was doing AW so I could meet her at the decided time of 10:00. I guess I was a little nervous probably - I didn't know what to expect. I looked at there website one last time before I left. My plan was to find a place to eat on the way - it seemed like there were a ton of places on the way over that I had wanted to eat at, but actually on the way over to the AW area there weren't many, if any, that interested me. I also did a little sight-seeing around downtown. I sat on a bench between the streets that the map said enclosed the building where they were meeting and listened to music and smoked a cigarette. A ton of people kept walking out and in to the building I was sitting outside, and eventually when I stopped listening to music I found they were speaking to each other in a manner I thought consistent with how AW people probably interacted - talking openly about their emotions I guess. I wasn't sure if maybe I had unintentionally sat right outside of their meeting, though it turned out that these sorts of groups are just sort of popular in that area. I had been there a little while and I was really hungry but I didn't know what to do because I was expecting to have to meet Susan, so I took out my LSAT stuff and started looking into the truth tables for exclusive or, conditionals, and inclusive or trying to find some equivalents that I knew existed.
About an hour after I thought we were meeting Susan called and said we were going to meet at a pizza place that I had walked past and was right next to where I was. I went over there and got a pizza and briefly met one of the AW people, although he left fairly quickly so there was basically no meeting at all. Other than "T" at the co-op, in fact, I only met one other person from AW and that was Marta, who I was about to meet at the pizza place and whose living space we were going to sleep in that night. When I got there Susan immediately picked up on my being grumpy. I would say she notices before I do usually. It basically manifests in me talking really shortly and overly logically, in a way that I perceive to not LITERALLY be disagreeable, but which actually comes off as mean and callous and overly logically-minded. It's not something I really analyzed much until Susan called me out on it, and I don't really like it about myself. Anyway while we were waiting for Marta we had a discussion about how I felt about Susan losing track of time and how my tendency to swallow things of this nature makes her feel bad. In actuality I think I was just taking out my frustration with a situation that I didn't want to change and which I was fairly content with on Susan for no real reason.
We got our pizza and Marta came and we chatted for a bit. Their method of speaking is rife with jargon and is fairly atypical compared to standard conversational English. It makes the situation seem more cultish than I think is really warranted by the nature of what they're saying. I didn't have a problem with it personally but that was an observation of mine. Marta is very nice, and very open, which I would guess is a characteristic of most AW people. I guess I felt, and still feel kind of disappointed that I didn't ever meet any of Susan's other friends. I don't know if that's because Susan didn't want me to or whether it was just circumstantially not possible or what. The possibility of the former makes me feel sad, but I don't really know and it doesn't really matter now. There was another sort-of-opportunity where I could have gone with Susan to meet Decker, the guy who started this whole business, but Susan didn't want to do that because she feels she has to sort out her feelings with him and she doesn't want to do that with me around, and everything about that makes me feel a maelstrom of emotions that I work quickly, unconsciously, and efficiently to repress. But I liked Marta well enough. She has OCD in a couple of noticeable ways, which doesn't really bother me. When we drove over to her place we had to check the locks a bunch of times so she could be okay with it and whatnot. Just that kind of stuff. Marta lives in an office space that she's not allowed to live in, where she also runs her massage business. It was a neat little hippie-den with a futon Susan and I slept on. I frequently wanted to be cuddly with Susan and touch her, because that's just how I am I guess, but she wasn't really feeling that usually (except for warmth on homeless night), understandably, so by this point I was pretty much over the idea.
Marta asked what our plans for the next day were and I said to sleep as long as possible. She took that to heart and to my surprise I woke up around 11:30 or 11:45 to the sound of Marta singing us a silly wake-up song.
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