It's 10 p.m.

Do you know where your children are?

In the scrotum of the man who is eventually gonna be their father - that's where.

And said man is... well, who the fuck knows? He could be downstairs, in my kitchen, at this very moment, heating up the food that we bought today at Sofia's and attempting to give me time to write after I bit off his head angrily and scolded, "You don't take a writer's laptop from her to google the lyrics of a song that's stuck in your head after said writer has told you she feels like writing, damnit." (How's that for a run-on sentence?)

There are many names that I could give him: Coachella Killjoy, Trustfund Baby, Adorable Doormat, Would-Be-Father-of-My-Kid-If-I-Hadn't-Had-an-Abortion... But I'll call him Wanna-be Romantic.

Wanna-be Romantic and I have been seeing each other for more than two years, and he just walked up my steps, causing me to flinch as I'm utterly paraoid about people reading words as they're falling from my fingertips - especially when the words are about them and they might glean a perspective of themselves that they'd rather not know. So I'm kinda stuck. Forgot where my words were supposed to go and such.

That happens to me around him.

I'm not able to write. I'm not able to concentrate.

Now that I think about it, that description makes me sound like some lovestruck teenager. Strange,when I generally consider those qualities reasons that I could never end up with him. Not for the long haul, anyway.

I tend to think more pragmatically about love and forever.

If they happened to each other - love and forever, I mean - then the person I was to have them with better make me the best person I can be. I don't want to be some second-rate coulda-woulda-shoulda-been version of myself when there's a chance that I can be the best possible version of myself if I were to be with someone else.

And Wanna-be Romantic definitely doesn't make me what I consider the best version of myself.

Still, about half an hour ago, as we were driving home from having dropped off my mom at work, thoughts were forming in my head: lines, really, for poems that I've yet to write. I'm going to Nuyorican tomorrow morning, and while I still have to finish that poem that I'm writing for the April performance, I also have a bunch of other pieces that I'm working on. One piece is called "Past Tense", and it's about how utterly lost I felt until recently, when my personality seemed to take shape, and I closed all the doors to other options of who I might be (for better or worse). Another is a piece about my three best friends, Military Mom, Conventional Creature, and Hard-headed Heartbreaker: how they affect me in so many ways, and how I owe them so much for shaping me and loving me. And though I'm sure there was another poem that I was thinking about, it escapes me...

Anyway, Wanna-be Romantic made me think about those poems. Words and thoughts and ideas were bubbling in my brain. Though I'm not sure I can credit him with the thoughts themselves, I feel like being in his presence puts things in a certain perspective. There's something about him that makes me feel safe, and not in a cumbersome way. When we're together, I feel wholesome and innocent. I can talk and act like a 6-year-old-

I remember now what the third poem was about! It was about being thrust in a position of authority and how strange it makes me feel. I might end up joining this idea with the one for "Past Tense", but anyway, that's what it is.

- and lose myself in whatever I like. I have the childlike awe and wonder that makes me open to different situations. Everything just feels okay.

The thing is, Wanna-be Romantic leaves me with this feeling of "Okay." It's not the kind of over-the-moon-ecstacy that I want from the person I'm going to end up with...

So much for that.

I hung out with Wiccan Swinger today and felt relieved to feel close to her. We gabbed about everything, and it surprises me still that by everything I mean everything, and that her everything took longer to talk about than my everything.

Maybe her life is just more interesting than mine. Or maybe she places more importance on her friends' issues and makes them her own, while I'm loathe to do so. Or maybe she just has more general drama with her friends than I do.

All I know is that she had a lot more to talk about, and I summed up my life really succinctly: having great sex, friends are well and generally good people, family life is crazy but I'm working through it, money is crazy tight but I'm working around the clock and stooping to lows to make end's meet, and the writing's going well.

One of the books I'm reading has this great line about simplicity and how nothing is really simple. That's how I feel. You read the above description of my life and it sounds so boring. But really, there was a lot of work to get to the point where my life and my character are finely-tuned machines.

The thought's just occurred to me that maybe I'd have more to say if I went out more. But, then again, maybe not. I don't know what's worth talking about; I guess it all depends on who I'm talking to.

I can talk about the guy who pinched my ass the other night at the bar, who I slapped across the face; how instantly I felt like a bad movie cliche and thought that I should've slugged him right in his mouth. That sort of thing would've definitely appealed to Wiccan Swinger.

Or I could've talked about driving to meet her, how I attempted to text her to say that I was running late and how an unmarked cop car pulled up in the lane next to me and motioned for me to get on the shoulder of the Belt Parkway. I quickly put down my cell phone, made hand gestures like I was singing along to the song on the radio, and feigned ignorance at the cop's presence.

I could've told her how, fifteen minutes later, as I was getting off the Belt Parkway, I put my cell phone on speaker because in its dillapidated state it wouldn't send out my text or hook up to my Bluetooth. I placed it in the sunglass hutch, right next to my rearview mirror, and threw my voice in that direction. And just as I'm talking to Would-be Romantic about how scared I am that my dad's SUV would run out of gas and I'd be stranded on Flatbush, another unmarked cop car pulls up next to me and motions for me to get off the phone. I give him a look like, "What? I'm not holding it. The law is that I can't be holding my cell phone, and I'm not, asshole."

The patrol car makes that high pitched noise that all the kids mimic. I make my gesture again. I hang up with Would-be Romantic and remember how this exact thing happened to me about a year ago, and how it played out differently: I'd forgotten my Bluetooth at home, was on the phone with Would-be Romantic while my cell phone was perched in the sunglass hutch, and when the cop in the unmarked car put on his lights and chided me, I gave him the finger and continued to do so even after he'd gotten in front of me. He pulled me over and told me that I was rude for doing what I did. I asked what it was that I did, and he glared at me. "You know what you did," he said. "You gave me the finger."

"Really?" I'd taunted him. "Can you prove that?"

A year ago, the cop kept me on the shoulder of Flatbush and chided me paternally. I told him that he'd better have a reason to keep me there, or else I was taking off right then and there. He said something about how I'm being disrespectful; I asked if being disrespectful is a crime, then suggested that my lawyer answer that for me.

He let me go on my merry way.

Sure, I could've told Wiccan Swinger all about these stories, and I would've, too, if it didn't feel like she really needed to get off her chest everything that she's going through.

But these stories do little to inform someone of the changes (and progress!) I've made in my life, or the hardships I have because I'm the kind of person who overthinks and overanalyzes. Compared to the sheer contempt in Wiccan Swinger's stories, I could tell my stories served no purpose except pure amusement - and why settle for a single helping of amusement when you could get it with a side of information?