Cigarettes and wine

Maybe I'll find Jesus at the bottom of one of these bottles. Something to believe in anyway.

I doubt it. God has been absent from my life for a long time now. My celebrations of malaise are as private as they ever were, even when I did Believe.

The last warmth I have is in glass after glass and the tips of these cloves while I let them burn to nothing.

Deja fuck my brain

Lately, I have not been okay. I try many different things to try and be more okay and they don't work.

I've guilted myself into hiding this all from Frank. He saw me depressed and he got me a ferret. I love taking care of the little guy but I'm still fucking depressed and I don't feel like I have a right to say anything because his reactions are so extreme to try and help me.

I had the most depressed birthday of my life. I tried so fucking hard to be happy. Painfully hard. 

I've been considering carbon monoxide. It's supposedly a very peaceful way to go. I have a garage now. It would be simple. I think about it a lot. Just before I fell asleep, calling the non emergency police line from my cell phone. It would take so long to track up here in the hills, and Oakland is so slow to respond to anything less than open warfare in the street, that I wouldn't have to leave it to Frank to find me. He'd hear it from a cop. I thought about it a lot today. 

I lied to my dad last night. I told him that I do not think about killing myself anymore. That it hurt and I didn't want to hurt anymore. 

I sat in the backyard tonight, crying for no reason, hating myself for no reason, empty and broken and thinking about how my life has been plagued by these feelings for as long as I can remember. I don't know how I'm going to live a life always knowing that I'm a paperthin wall away from losing all of my joy. I know the things that make me happy, logically anyway. I know what they are but it is all just so gray and removed from actual emotion.

I'm old, tired, lonely and broken. 

Pride and Kira 1-4

Part one 


She never said the word "love". Not once. Not when her parents told her they loved her. She didn't understand it. She coughed it.She choked on the monosyllabic nightmare that made her wonder why everyone left her alone. But freedom wasn't "alone". Her freedom was feeling alone, being alone, so all alone. Freedom, to her, was not wondering what to do with the endless summers from school. Freedom was a scripture she never bothered to untangle. Or an endless summer, whichever she percieved to be longer. Bleh. Love was "bleh". Love was a throat clearing on the train. Love was a passer-by admired from a distance. Love was "never been kissed", "never been kissed twice", some sappy old movie that she couldn't pull herself away from last Tuesday night. 
Love was. Not is. Grabbing hold of her coat, she thought about herself. She often reflected on what was supposedly the best, worst, only years of her life. This was a break, a relief, though nothing was relief enough. She threw her coat back to the closet. Who cared if it rained. Who cared what her hair looked like after hours of humid frizzing? Who cared about blue cat ears and venom? She cared. She cared too much. She cared about the dogs, the cats, the nameless, somewhat faceless remnants of people that were eager to cyber-fuck her while they claimed to understand love and have all the answers just the other side of a green pixelated dream. Unlocking her car door, she realized how dirty her old Toyota really was. Everything went to seed with her, everything. She still hadn't picked up the glass from the broken bottle, driving her dad home from the bar. She wished he could have been there, made a difference. She wished *anyone* could have been there. She wished life was more than cleaning up other people's messes and identify. But to find more, she would have to know where to look. And she was never good at guessing games. 
On her way to work, she probably ran red lights, the only red lights in the god-forsaken desert she had no choice but to call home. She wanted to turn on her stereo, but her fear of the car battery failing her made null her desire for something to break the chokehold of solitude strangling her. It had been months since she actually talked to another boy under no particular pretense. And even that had been another of the faceless cyber-punks, too smart to turn away from someone so desperate. 
"Need" meant nothing to her. She'd replaced love with desire, desire with want, want with need, and probably ten other useful nouns to fill the gaps between what she had and what she hadn't. And they looked far too similar for her to ignore. It came as no surprise to her that she regretted leaving work in the afternoons. People were special to her. They held something she wanted, and she longed to be with them, even in business or in passing. But who would stop? Who would ask about the bottle? Who would ask about the latin classes? Who would she wake up next to in the morning? Stopping her mind, as well as her beat-up old horse, she shrugged. She took her ritual place behind the desk and waited for fortune to cast a new set of lots in a better favor. But lots of lots couldn't show her how badly she might need to "create her own luck". She'd have done better with the colorful pegs in a lite-brite set. After all, we reap what we sow. 
She touched the still-warm hood of her car. Warm like that, and on the inside. Yes. That was it. Warm like that. On the top, on the bottom, absolutely secret, but warm. Because the desert was cold. For all she cared, it might have been arctic. Who would be the arctic fire? As a narrator, I take liberties I don't deserve. I'm arrogant. Egotistical. Deluded. But I've also been told that freezing to death is the least painful way to die. 
I doubt that. 
She never said she didn't love girls. She never said she did, either. The only hints she ever dropped were enigmatic latin phrases too convoluted in wine or too far past meridian to resemble language at all. The nature of the internet makes me want to *cry*,'(, or perhaps /me sheds a tear) for her, and I don't doubt for a second I'd be less than compassionate enough to try. And that's all that matters. Perhaps she drank, sometimes a lot. Perhaps even God joined in her private celebrations of Bacchus. Or Bachs, depending on how much blood she might sqeeze from her stone of a paycheck. Yeah, that was her. In a nutshell. And a bottle. Was. "Is" is a verb endowed with too many intransitive qualities. Who "is" she? Who "is" anybody? I'd have jumped up and said, "That's easy! I'm myself!". She could never admit to that. Once we decide who we are, we take that with us. And instead of us becoming it, it becomes us. Sometimes, myself doesn't like to see me looking at it in the mirror. 
Kira didn't have mirrors. 



The Office 

Kira stood in the office, mug in one hand, fuzzy pen in another. She held a folder between her legs as well as she could with a rather long skirt on. She sighed. What was she doing? Crossing the office soon after putting the folder back in the cabinet, she returned to her computer, a refuge, but ironically, a refuge from a place she knew deep down she wanted to live. She ran from computer to real life back to the computer more and more often and more and more often found both worlds equally unsatisfying. 
She bit her lip as the chat turned to sex, as it always did when she was around. You couldn't blame the boys for being boys. But you could blame her for coming back every time. And that’s what she did sometimes. She wondered why the computer, the thing holding her back had such immense power in her life. Who were these mysterious screen names and aliases? Who cared? As long as they gave her attention from time to time, she guessed it was okay. They. They did everything. They made her life miserable. They were the ones that went to other colleges, and other schools in other states. They were the people she wanted to be with. Not the hot guy at Starbucks. Although she didn't mind him. He would do for a night or two... then she'd get bored, ask him about Palahniuk, and not really expect the blank look in his eyes. He wouldn't be there. They would. 
How does a girl lose all her pride? Kira couldn't figure out where she got it in the first place. She couldn't figure out why the blood wouldn't spurt out of her wrist, no matter how hard she pressed. The wrist wasn't so much a problem as a hindrance of allowing her true emotions to bleed (so to speak) through. She had no release. Everything of hers was second rate. Her job, her car, her body, her character, her computer. All of it. What made Kira different? What made her special? What the hell was she hanging on to? Pride, she assumed, came from somewhere. She had to have something. That was her reason. Not knowing it was appeared to be the frustrating part. Pride, she assumed, came from somewhere. She had to have something. That was her reason. Not knowing it was appeared to be the frustrating part. All she knew was that tomorrow would come, Kira or no Kira. And that bothered her. The world would have to stop when she did. She'd settle for nothing less. But how she would go about proving it would take far more conviction than she'd ever had before. Conviction doesn't come easy to doubters. 
Kira caught a short riff of a song on the radio and promptly dismissed the other half of her thoughts in search of external clarity. The messages on the monitor didn't stop when Kira did, though, and when she came back to herself; she had more messages than she cared to reply to. Someone was going to get ignored today. Someone was going to get a good idea of what it meant to be "Kira". Assuming that the other girl in the room didn't already know. Looking back at that day, I think I might just have a little bit of Kira inside me. Hell, we all have a little Kira. 
Kira left for lunch, although she didn't intend to, and never actually did eat anything. Kira actually stopped at the first red light in her town. It had a slit in the center with a blinking white light in the middle to keep the drivers focused. It pissed Kira off more than it was a point of focus. She expected yet another dating service commercial, and she wasn't disappointed. She tried to be ever aware of the intertextual bullshit they flooded her mind with, and wondered whether even God, or rather 1-800-TRULOVE could help her. She cast her current despair aside in favor of a different type of self-pity. That was probably about the time I stopped sending her messages on her computer. The last one read "Masochism doesn't pay, Kira. Remember that.” She never read that message. But I didn't send it for her. I sent it for myself. 
When Kira got back to her desk, her computer was waiting for her to log in again. Two blocks away, the hot guy from Starbucks was hit by a speeding truck. I might have cried for him. I don't remember. Nor do I want to. But if I cried, it wasn't out of pain. Or joy. Or some sick karmatic belief. I just cried. The loss was tragic. Somebody would miss him. Kira wouldn't. I can't say I blame her. Not like he cared. I remembered what my Communications professor had told us about grades. 90 and above was an A. 80 to 89 was a B, 70 to 79 was a C, 60 to 69 was a D. 59 or below... well, better luck next time. Maybe he'll get a next time. That was when I realized. I asked Kira if she would ever choose to be in a relationship with herself. I thought she was about as tolerant as people get. But she didn't answer that question. Maybe "hot guy" was right. Maybe this was all a big joke for Kira, some challenge, some test. And if it was... Kira pressed down on the razor, just as before. Better luck next time. 



The Last 


“Only for the best," she thought as the near-dull edge indented the blood vessels in her wrist. Nothing. Nothing every time. No blood. No mess. The skin held its tension. Perhaps, for once, Kira didn't know what was best for her. But trembling, with the razor in her hand, she regained herself for another second or two before drawing the razor against her skin again. Still nothing. Nobody knows when they're ready to die. God never gave her more than two gifts at a time. She believed in God, but not really. Only on Wednesday nights, after Nip/tuck, and occasionally before finals. She once said in an English midterm that "survival was relative". Kira was, by no means, dead. And when I think about it, that day, Kira was, by no means, alive. She hung her head down in shame. The fuzzy blue kitten ears fell to the floor as she cried. Nothing. Nothing as a way of life suited Kira well. Her first boyfriend? Nothing. Her first kiss? Nothing. Her sexual identity? Nothing. If anything was anything, nothing was better, and nothing would ever change. That's what she had been told many times. Not directly, people weren't that harsh, but by little hints they'd drop day after day after day. One might think Kira'd have gotten used to them and blew them off, but even with pins, you still bleed when pricked. Now Kira stood up, watching the stars unmoving in the sky. So far away, and yet always a reminder of what lies just beyond the world you know, if you can find some way out of what you've dug yourself into. Earth is no solace for someone born to live in the sky. And the stars are where Kira belonged. She always wore her heart on her shirtsleeve, or rather her MSN name. Makes me wish I'd have been in it at times. But you can't be in a heart you can't find. There was probably ten or twenty of those cyber-punks wishing for a place on that MSN name as well. How sincere that felt. 



The Meal

Kira was never satiated. She never felt that she had enough. She ached and yearned and didn't know how to reach out for more without dening someone else the chance. I couldn't give her everything without losing myself and Kira never loved Kira enough to take it.

To fill Kira was sin. While she danced alone, every boy she was with thought it was for him and she ate that. Her emptiness came from inside and was never filled no matter how many watched her with their own hungry eyes. I watched and I was, like so many others, craving to be the one to fill that void. The sin was that the void is all Kira is.

As she sat at her table, Hot Pocket and novel in hand, she wanted to cry. Every invitation she had to dinner was not refused but enigmatically ignored as she changed the subject so gracefully with a quote or a quip. Kira was unable to ever answer for herself, no matter how simple the question. Yes and no were too much for her to answer, being unanswered herself.

Raising herself from the lone table was a chore. Her paltry microwave meal was like her in many ways she would have thought. She felt cheap, frozen inside and artificial. Her bathtub is her one retreat everynight. Surrounded and covered from every square inch down. As she pulled her face underwater, she'd think to herself that this life was an accident like any other. One that could be cleaned away. Every night she tried. He skin is red and clean but she was not in any sense the same inside. Letting the water fill her, ears and eyes and nose, is the closest she could feel to full, the only place she could have said with any semblance of certainty "I am happy." Even then, pangs of doubt at the mental statement made her hair raise on end no matter how much hot water she poured in. She once briefly desribed the sensation to me. I never believed the word 'happy' from her.Like love, happiness was beyond Kira. She craved it, wanted to experience it and wondered if she did, if it would fill some of that void. I would say no but, even today as far as I know, Kira still wonders. Kira never thought of dancing for herself.
x

Nothing bad, nothing good.

cryptic response to myself first. Alls well that ends well, well, well.

Everything is doing great. Except I hate myself, everything around me and I can't stop thinking that I've done everything wrong forever. Fear of failing is different than fearing all historical acts are failures as well.

I hope that Melodramatic is up again soon. I really want to add to pride and Kira.

sostressedthatbreathingisgettinghard

This is a note for my future self to look at when you think that all of Franks ideas are good ones.

Tom emailed. all the cancels.

I will see how this works out and report back to myself in equally cryptic language.

Motive Action

I finally socialized last night. Went to a karaoke bar, sang, introduced myself to people, talked and made promises to meet at other bars on other days.

I have a knack for knowing who the regulars in a place are.

I'm fucking exhausted today. After spending so much energy being normal-ish, all I want to do today is sit and hermit for a bit. And day-drink.

Bad Habit

I've gotten a bit of a blogging bug, apparently. Missed you, Blogspot. I pointed someone I recently started talking to this way and now, when things happen in my day, I consider how worthwhile it would be to save my ramblings about it. Today was a day filled with those thoughts.

Crazy Horse stip club. Great time. So many boobs, all the lap dances. Why does every stripper want to grind on me? I'm not a great tipper, I'm mediocre at best. Two dollars on the walk and I'm being wrapped around by lithe women. My brother, the company advisor and a contract programer were all laughing and hollering at the strippers who were putting my hands on their bodies. One made me slap her ass. Twice. Once on each side. One girl walked through the club, wasn't up dancing and before she goes to the back, she just grabs my tits and says "honka honka" and walks away. This was between sets. The programmer and I are sitting front row and seeing how the dances go. If I put money in front of him, the dancer will dance for me. If he puts money in front of or on me, the dancer STILL dances in front of or on me. One girl did dance in my lap but put his hands on her. All in all, an excellent bonding experience for all of us. 

At one point, the programmer built a small house of one dollar bills in front of me. I was then ground on so hard, things started being pushed out of my pockets. This then had me dubbed a "money pinata" by all three guys. The girl who danced to Video Games by Lana del Ray might be my stripper love. 

Half of the people at the Jack in the Box after Crazy Horse closed were also from the club. 

Today was also the birthday for someone who is very close to my heart, someone whom I consider a surrogate Mom. The family and I celebrated by hanging around the house, sunning by the pool, smoking cigarettes and generally being awesome. 

tiny victory

Today is a good day.

There is a shit ton of sunshine, nobody stole my yogurt, Jon is back (okay, that's kinda shitty. I'll deal), and I had all my shit together when I woke Frank up.

Fuck it, i'm skipping the yogurt and eating leftover pizza.

That's a lie. It's a gym day. I'll get sick if I do that.

. . . don't go to the gym?

eh.

No. Eating yogurt. Today is great and it's going to stay that way.

Exception(al)

Current Music: Mumford & Sons - The Cave

Building, guiding thoughts and feelings. And I can't forget how safe I felt when I was someone.

I'm useless alone. Wit is nothing without remark. And I can't say how alone I am with words. A lack thereof.

Breathing is an effort when it's so easily taken away. Missing an essential element to be complete. A lack thereof.

It's not anonymous. It's just casual.

Drive

Current Music: Deathcab for Cutie - Transatlanticism

I'm too old for the internet.

I'm too old to be unable to talk about my problems without the safety of a glowing screen. I can't open up without the ability to shut it down, immediately, with no repercussion. Being well-adjusted has never been my strength. I value escape and find myself wanting to provide it to others because I know how hard it is to find. I don't have one.

I'm not trying to escape a situation anymore. I'm not heaving against my odds or adversarial people. I haven't fought for years, physically, against anything. I'm stuck in myself and the internet is a place that I can make up what that means rather than the values and identities that are so firmly established in meatspace.

I love my friends. I love Vunc and Chugs. They are both amazing, kind, caring, giving friends who love me back. I just can't share with them the way I can with strangers because they have been there through most of it. They know the specifics and details of all my worst experiences and have their own interpretations of events. The safety of strangers is in how they only know what I share. No one has cracked me on the internet. No one has been able to get past every barrier that I erect to be safe. Because touch.

Touch. An arm. A hug. A safe embrace that says that even without an immediate escape, I still want to be here. I still am going to take in your pain, heal it and lessen it. I still want to know you, even with all the fucked up idiosyncrasies and mistakes and insecurities. I want to make you better, share my own pain and let you heal me back.

This is why I don't date. This is why I don't touch. This is why I can't stop holding on.





Fuck Tecate.

A brief retrospective.

I feel like the phrase "I was an idiot eleven years ago" is going to be true for the rest of my life. 

I just re-read an entire years worth of posts (with pretentious asides and glaring errors) about being in varying relationships with a child molester, an ICP fan and someone who I never once met it person. 

And with this post, I've summed up my whole archive. *exits stage left*

archeological

Wow. Just. . . The things I missed from years ago. 

I was diving through my many pages of ancient web presence and found that old, beat up Livejournal. What an emotional read that has been. I was never positive during that time, I had some shitty friends, I had some really amazing friends and I think I missed someone being in love with me completely. 

I'm pretty impressed with the changes I've made in how I view the world, how I react to others and the steps I've taken to become better for myself. I'd almost completely forgotten about the brief fling with Scott, the humble and doomed Rich debacle, as well as the trainwreck that was my friendship with Anna. My biggest regret is letting my friendship with Gabe fade away. He is such an nuanced and genuine person and I've missed out on years of that. The best choice I made was slowing down on my blogging.

I also found my post about losing my virginity. An interesting look back and, oddly enough, still pretty spot on about how I feel about that whole situation as it happened. 

There are so many posts, in my gaming groups, exhibitionist groups, amongst my friends and my public persona. 

I miss Jaime. I read a short story I had written for her to perform for her ASL class. It was a little beautiful. "Why did you leave your Heaven?" "It became a prison the moment I saw you." I think I can do something with the story I wrote, something bigger than an AIM conversation, anyway. 

The Strong Female Protagonist

Current Music: The Iris - Summer Stars

I do not like most "strong" female leads. When the lead character is a female and described as strong, she is almost, invariably, sexually driven, manipulative or otherwise pretty malicious. Any of this things are perfectly acceptable in any human, I simply resent that a woman isn't considered strong, in media, unless she is very sexual or conniving. I should example this. Based on a true story, a play about "the spiritual leader of Argentina", Evita, comes to mind. A conversation about the named main character is what inspired this tirade. Also, my sentence structure is all over the fucking place tonight. Please, pardon my syntax. My date to the show is a fan of the musical and had even seen it played by a different cast not too long ago. After the show, I say that I liked the play but I did not like the character of Evita for few reasons; I did not see her as a good person, just a social climbing opportunist that cheapened herself by using sex as a political bargaining chip. The conversation went around and she was described as a strong woman for those very reasons and my date even specifically says that's why he likes this play. He likes it because of the "strong female lead".

Sookie Stackhouse, both book and TV version is another. She very rarely drives the plot or story in any direction and is rather the vessel of desires by other, stronger characters. But because she asserts herself sexually, often and without remorse, as well as her uncanny ability to be completely unaffected by any past plot points (no matter how personally and deeply they affected her until her next romp), she is often described as a strong female lead. Sex is great. Sex is wonderful. However, I can not satisfy my longing for female characters that I can relate to with two-dimensional protagonistas on their backs. Nothing she does is inherently wrong, it's what she doesn't do (make choices, assert herself, stand by her decisions, take care of herself) that, again, makes me resent her representation as "strong".

Is the ability to have sex for personal gain, the drive to take advantage of those around you or a predilection for physical altercations all that can differentiate a woman from "standard"?

Maybe I should counter-example to show the contrast? A completely unsexualized example might be Mathilda, from the Ronald Dahl story of the same name. This girl is a shining beacon of strength of character. Given volatile and untraceable powers, her sense of right and wrong remains crystal clear. She rights wrongs, protects those with less power than herself and, even when suffering from self-doubt, is a emotional touchstone for her readers and the characters around her. She is well-rounded, flawed, scared-yet-resilient, delightfully witty, intuitive young lady with super powers. If I could watch a show with a character like Mathilda, with or without any telekinesis, I'd tivo the ever-loving shit out of it.

changes

I'm in this weird transitional stage. I'm moving from one part of my life, the boy, the bay and my career to another. 

My view is gorgeous. 

My bed is cold.