it was good to be able to go out to dinner again and not have it be awkward, but what else should i have expected? it's not like there's anyone who understands me better, beats me to the punchlines before i do. the laughs were needed, the food was decent, the beer was just what the psychiatrist ordered. the ride home was equally poignant; he's the only one who'd understand why; the reclaiming of the album thing. it was one i hadn't heard in awhile since it conveniently lost itself for a few months in the cluttered backseat of my car. i found it this morning and decided to pop it in, partially because i missed it and partially because i wanted to see if i could take it. we had played it nonstop several times over the summer on our failed camping trip in the catskills. i say 'failed' because her idea of a campground is my idea of a tourist attraction hell, and besides, we came home after one noisy sleepless night due to the rain. we wound up giving the remainder of our firewood to the drunk white trash that kept us awake all night with their drunken revelry. the one redeeming factor was that i almost taught her how to fish. i say 'almost' because the moments still weren't quite right, just as forced as the other two years. i need to stop explaining my word choice almost as much as i need to get off this tangent. so the ride home tonight was enjoyable and he enjoyed the record as much as she did, but i know i won't regret burning it for him like i do for her. good music is one of those funny things that you regret sharing quite easily after you realize the person isn't worthy. i say 'worthy' because...fuck, wasn't gonna do that anymore. if i had a nickel for every time i said that i wouldn't be here, though.
he's blasting 'holy diver' by dio across the hall and my uncontrollable laughter isn't helping my respiratory infection. but then again neither are the beer or cigarettes. it's too warm in my room, my socks need to come off. i'd turn the fan on, but it'll muffle the music coming from the haggard dj's room over yonder. the price you pay for memorable evenings spent together on respective computers. but it's worth it, since there won't be too many more nights like this. fuck, i need to empty my piss bottle soon. my turn to be dj now. i'm opting for weezer's 'pinkerton' cd. the first track gets turned way the fuck up for both of our sakes; there isn't a more appropriate nerd rock song for right now than 'tired of sex.' my moral half, at least, agrees with that sentiment. the drunken text messages and shameful late night meetings suggest otherwise. (i wanted to use 'rendezvous' there, but the general concensus was unsure of whether or not the plural form of 'rendezvous' is in fact 'rendezvous.' she would've known, all the pretentious assholes took french in high school. the cool kids took spanish. i just realized that this digression has been far too long to warrant the parenthesis, but the killian's doesn't care any more than you do.) my numbers are rising again, though there have been a few recycled sources of (sub-par) orgasmic entertainment. i reached an all-time low in one respect...ok, so i reached it twice...that is far too embarrassing to even mention here, and if you know me you know i'm rather transparent when it comes to my foolish endeavors. the mood just changed here at the mansion, two female friends of ours showed up and lightened things up. platonically, of course. but the music has been turned up and the drinks are somehow going down easier. one of them just came into my room and made me run my hand through her hair to see how nice it feels today. little does she know that's an obsession of mine. it's because when i was a baby my mom would put me to sleep by letting me play with her hair. the sense of comfort it provided has carried over into adulthood somehow. i think that's why whenever a serious girlfriend of mine and i break it off she tends to chop off her hair. it's more than the typical act of female post-relationship redefining, it's an act of revenge. i know what you're thinking, i have issues with assuming the world is against me; more specifically, the female demographic. but understand that it's how i contend with the bullshit. if you assume they're all your enemies, you won't let your guard down for long enough to get hurt. typing that out just made me realize it's not how i operate at all, though it sounds effective in theory. i'm more of a practitioner of a term i coined tonight (while still sober): 'passionate indifference,' though maybe 'indifferent passion' is more appropriate. i'd elaborate on the difference between the two and their applications to my life, but something more relevant just happened. one of the girls heard a song coming from my room and said it was the third consecutive good song i have played this evening, thus crowning me talented dj of the house. little does she know it's more than the four-chord pop-rock song most people hear it as for me since it was the one playing when she im'd me that fateful night three years ago just as i was becoming dizzy from the pills. one-way ticket home from school, kids, as soon as the seven-day stint in the ward was up. after that song played just now another under the radar hit came on that she appreciated. "wow, you're so awesome!"..."i guess people just don't give me a chance."..."yeah, i know!"..."thanks."...followed by his laughter from the other room, and mine. you can't help but roll with the painfully true punches sometimes, the backhanded compliments that remind you why you are who you are and you are where you are. which reminds me of 'where you are and where you want to be,' the words tattooed on my right bicep in a tasteful cursive and the second album by my favorite band, on the might of princes, who is playing a reunion show this sunday in brooklyn which my two friends and i will be attending (drunk people don't care about run-on sentences). i can't wait to be there, far away from all this dreary monotony. a weekend in the city with two of my best friends, and another reunion of sorts aside from the band's show. i hope she's the same as i remember her, but they never are. never. we put them on pedestals to make it seem like times were better once and can be that way again, but it's only a mechanism to prevent us from realizing that this is as good as it gets for most of us. call me cynical, but settling for what's attainable is the unrecognized sign of growing up. again, call me cynical. just fucking call me. please. i miss you. you're not even reading this, because i pretend i don't want you to by keeping it a secret. this paragraph is too long and random, i shall start another.
they just left. they invited me to go with them, but that town's too far away and i don't feel like going to work on four hour's sleep again like last night (see also: drunken text messaging reference in previous paragraph). he was going to go with them without telling me, but i called him while he was on his way out and he told me he was leaving. i asked what happened to the stiff whiskey drink i made him (canadian club and coke) and he said he put it in the fridge. i knew it would never be imbibed once the ice cubes had melted and i can't support alcohol abuse so i asked him to bring it up to me and he did. it's gonna be a longer night than i anticipated, and the fingers move faster as the blood-alcohol-content increases. which reminds me, i love the fact that he beats me to the "...that's what she said" punchline more often than not. this new medium seems to have turned into a shrine to platonic manlove, but if that's the case then so be it. it is what it is, that was my intention. ***no, it wasn't. none of this was your intention. you didn't want to go crazy. you didn't want to drop out of school. you didn't want to have a career in the building trade. you didn't want to hurt that many innocent people (you're not as cynical as you present yourself). you didn't want to finish that last drink since you made it too strong, but you did. and now you're starting on the next. the next. the next. you're always so consumed by the notion of 'the next' that you fail to be thankful for 'the current.' you want that false sense of security that says there will always be another to come when this one is ruined, you always play it conservative when it comes to some things, you always kept your checker pieces on the back row. and you hate the fact that when you can't take the criticism so well you speak as though you're addressing someone else. but really, you are. she just hasn't found this yet. does that explain the message in a bottle tattoo? you knew there was a reason.
what frightens you is that it's so easy to picture. the prelude, the words to live in infamy, the act, the gore. anything drastic and permanent is so much more frightening when you can break it down into a few simple scenes. but then you think of all the years of simple scenes you'd be missing out on over nothing, or what will seem like nothing soon. you look at the map of the united states he gave you tonight. it used to hang in his room, but he won't need that kind of filler to make his old room feel like home again. you look at the different designations for the different patterns on the map: desert, grasslands, deciduous forest, population. you notice that the latter is merely a splotch of dirty yellows and browns, depending on the extent of human corruption present in the specified location. new york city is the darkest spot. you laugh at the irony of the fact that the landscape is literally littered with the human race and establish that maybe you're not that far off in your assumptions about people.
this drink is almost done, and so am i.
i just stumbled in(to a few pieces of furniture on the way in) from smoking the night's last cigarette (which was a bad idea since i've been coughing up my lungs with this illness). the whiskey is gone and i'm glancing at the trash can next to my desk every few seconds like a friend i might need if the booze doesn't sit right with me. the soda and bourbon are dripping down my chin and sheryl crow is playing so i know i'm really hammered. the smoke went well, i should get used to having them alone. before staggering outside i grabbed a chocolate chip cookie to make the cigarette taste better than it would have otherwise. the package had been left open and the cookie was stale. why is it that things that are supposed to be hard are considered stale when they go soft (cookies), and things that are supposed to be soft are suddenly deemed stale when they get hard (bread)? i'll tell you why: human nature. we don't want to be content, we don't know how. that's why so many double-standards are prevalent, even in the culinary world. overanalysis, i know. that's how i roll. anyway, while outside smoking i blew a snot rocket directly into a tulip tree as a moth fluttered up my bare back and i felt ok with my current state: a haggard (yes, i used it twice in one entry) construction worker still in love with the written word, and maybe even life sometimes. don't let him fool ya, he's in it for the long haul.
currently reading:
'great expectations' by charles dickens.
'south of no north' by charles bukowski.
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