August 29, 2002

sometimes i'm just so numb i don't know where to begin.

i haven't been that depressed lately... upset, yes; depressed, no. so much for that.

coming home from the students for sensible drug policy meeting (which was perfectly okay), i noticed a lot of the depressed thoughts that i used to have. hoping someone would just come out of nowhere, rape me, beat me, assault me, anything. just hurt me, cause me physical pain.

fucking absurd.

(but at least you can understand physical pain.)

I am holding the smell of it on my skin. At 11:30 tonight I was ready to go to bed. My first day of classes is tomorrow and I was sleepy. I couldn't go to sleep yet because I had a date with some crazy women: Midnight. The Dock. Us. Naked.

I went ahead of them.

It's been a rough year and I am standing full circle on the shore of it letting the lake water lap my feet just like I was doing this time last year, and I am tired and I am hopeful that I have actually learned from the past and something miraculous and new is waiting for me.

I sat on the dock alone waiting for the others letting the water knocking under the wood remind me of all the women who had come before me, listening to the night sounds, watching the stars and the opposite shore and letting their minds wander.

My friends showed up and one by one we disappeared into that black water, crashed it's mysterious surface with much screaming and thrashing and joy. We were glad to be together, glad to be in the lake, glad to be back home.

With lake water on me and all sorts of mistakes and horror behind me, somehow now I know classes can begin.

I think a lot of you people, whoever you are, don’t know about my whole moth predicament and how they never leave me alone. They're always lurking around somewhere, waiting to freak the piss out of me.

Anyway, so, tonight it's pretty late. Since I can't sleep, I'm instead sitting at the computer, "programming" this java homework. Everything's going great, really, until I hear this little crinkling sound. Maybe more of a buzz than a crinkle, I've never been so good with onomatopoeia. But it's this strange sound. And the first thing that comes to my mind is The Langoliers, by Stephen King—where these horrible creatures can be heard in the far off distance, and are described as sounding like Rice Krispies in milk, except for the fact that it is a much more menacing sound than your average breakfast cereal. Yes. That is exactly the sound I heard, and it was coming closer. I almost thought I had fallen asleep or something, because when you're sitting in the middle of a dark room with only the light of a computer monitor to see by, things get pretty scary.

Stop getting off track, you dumbass. Okay, sorry,

So anyhow, we've got this sound, this menacing Rice Krispies sound, coming my way. I sort of get up out of my chair, halfway, to turn on another light, when OUT OF NOWHERE this GIANT MOTH (actually it was fairly little, but oh, it was scary) hurtles out from behind my left computer speaker and RIGHT INTO MY FACE. Now, it's been a while since I've seen a moth here in my room, so this scares the hell out of me. It really does ... because there's something to be said about moths, and it is simply that they are not creatures of this earth. They're alien, I swear it.

So this one kept fluttering around for a while longer, kamikaze-ing itself into the computer screen, and I just kept sitting there in pure terror. Pure terror that if I go to sleep, this moth will somehow call out to his other moth friends, and they'll come to attack. Right now the moth appears to be resting next to the pencil sharpener. But I know better. I know that moths do not "rest." They "plot."

Only by eating food made purely by the hand of Man can I avoid the influence of the pagans and their bloody Earth goddess. My steady diet of Hostess snacks and carbonated beverages keeps me strong and alert.

I often feel as if there is one more member of the e2religion discussion group than I can count. The others do not see him (or is it pretense?) but I know he is there.

I think they are in league with the demons. Not like the members of my beloved e2comix group, who sing sweetly of beautiful things to me as I sleep.

I crave pudding.

It seems that I am intent on my own destruction.

Call it lack of self-discipline or a carefully thought out plan, I always seem to come round full circle with good behind me and a path ready to be destroyed looming ahead.

I see this so why don't I stop it?

I might be wrong.
I might be wrong.
I could have sworn.
I saw a light.
Coming home.

Today started off as a horrendously awful day. Gas was turned off for 2 days, thus no hot water. I was filthy, I was hungry, we had no food, I had no plans for the day, and didn't think I would have any.
My destiny for the day was already set. My job was to sit at home and be filthyuntil the gas man came and turned it back on. Tomorrow, I work. Saturday the girlfriend is out of town. Sunday, I work again, but that's not for long. So 3 and half days alone. My biggest concern is getting clean, clean for nobody but myself.

Where'd you park the car?
Where'd you park the car?
Clothes are on the lawn with the furniture.
Now I might as well.
I might as well.

Around noon, I phone my girlfriend's house, hoping maybe she'll come over. She doesn't usually come over, well, doesn't ever come over. I bring her here, or I go to her house, but she's never just gotten on the bus and come here before. Oh. She's not home. She went to the college to get her ID. Thank you. Bye. I'm sad. Oh hey, the College bus comes almost right to my house, she'll probably jump on the bus and surprise me! Yay. Oh christ, I'm filthy. I had the most excruciatingly cold shower ever. Hardly a shower, in fact. Most of my bathing was done at the sink, with liquid soap and a washcloth. My hair took a long time to wash, squatting in the icy bathtub with my head under the tap. I have longish hair, the knots were brutal to brush out. Now I'm clean, and very cold.

When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
With your opinion which is of no consequence at all.
What's this...? (I may be paranoid, but not an android)
What's this...? (I may be paranoid, but not an android)

Then the phone rings. I never pick up the phone, it's always creditors hunting down my mother. Oops, it was a payphone, according to the caller ID. Probably girlfriend. Hey, she called back. Oh, she's on her way to my house? Great! All shock value is lost. But at least the doubts about her actually coming are erased. Now I clean my room up halfassed, dirty dishes still strewn about the room. I go upstairs, intending to make Kraft Dinner. She comes sauntering up the street. I stand waiting at the door all creepy like, and indeed, she is creeped out. I swear I wasn't standing there waiting the whole time. Honest.
She comes in, we eat Kraft Dinner, we have danishes she bought at Tim Hortons. Stressing they were bought, not stolen. She works at this place, so it's an honour to have it bought for you. We go downstairs, I pop Vanilla Sky into my horrid PS2/DVD hybrid, and mess with the controls and languages and start the film. We watch the movie la dee da, I love Vanilla Sky. I saw the premiere of it long ago. Not many people will agree, but it is a heartwrenching work of staggering genius. And they play two Radiohead songs, which immediately puts me into a Radiohead trip, as you can clearly tell.

Was that the doorbell? No. 5 minutes later. Was that the doorbell? Yes. Come on in. (Hurry the fuck up.) It's right downstairs. Here's the light. (Just ignite the fucking thing and go.) He goes. We're really not paying attention to the movie anymore. Maybe I'll watch the rest by myself later. Probably not.
Hot water is working back through our pipes in healthy abundance. We have our fun and pack up to catch the bus back to her house. On the street, mother drives by. Go away mom. She rolls down the window. Yes, the water is fixed. A ride? Sure, what the hell. Beats the bus. We get a ride home. I come home. Here I am, typing this. On my Radiohead kick.

I'm a reasonable man.
Get off, get off, get off my case.
I'm a reasonable man.
Get off my case, get off my case.

And there are many more exciting plans set for the coming weeks. Even September 11th, 2002 looks like it'll be fun. Free pancakes.

Takes His Place by Mary Prankster
Says, “Baby, I’m all sorts of sorry.”
Says, “Babe, you know I’m all kinds of sad.”
Says, “Maybe it was fun while it lasted.”
I say, “Baby, I just wish that it had.”
The way music is your clock and traps the passage of time into one burst of sound, that’s how this song is for me now. I put it on His’s mixtape when I was looking for a Mary Prankster song; I wanted to include one song each from Lake Trout (I chose Bliss) and Mary Prankster to remind him of the concerts we saw together. Now that he’s, for my purposes, gone, I can’t stop listening. It’s on repeat now, the only song on my playlist, and I’ve got all the lyrics memorized. “Don’t ask me where it hurts now, I swear to God I couldn’t say.”

And I’m happy with where things are for us, I’m happy with where we left. We never talked about it really, it’s not like there was some monumental decision we made to break up. It’s nothing of the sort. Just this ambiguous goodbye spoken after a night of movies, food, and nothing more than usual. There’s not even that fleeting sense of holding on, though that’s how it was. The two hours out in the rain. It wasn’t raining that hard when we went out there. And we were standing in that corner of the parking garage, for nostalgia’s sake, and holding each other. We were kissing and we kept kissing despite cars passing, despite people walking by. Standing there in the rain, I remember laughing. We were soaked down to the bone except on our torsos because they were so closely pressed together rain just couldn’t get in. He couldn’t see through his glasses, I couldn’t see through the rain. The question came up of course, do you want to go inside? Are you cold? No, no, I’m fine. It’s fine. I like the rain. And I do – I remember our first kiss still. That first night, outside in the sleeping bags, it started to rain. We decided we should wake up everyone else, and I said, wait, one thing first. I kissed him. He asked why, I said I’d always wanted to kiss someone in the rain. So here we are, our last night ever being us the way things were, and the rain just brought things around full circle. Then going home, I borrowed one of his shirts – I was soaked to the bone. It didn’t even occur to me to go in the other room to change because it didn’t feel bad or wrong; I feel so comfortable with him. Now, my first ex and my second ex both saw me in just a bra, many people have, but it always felt awkward somehow, and wrong. With Him, it’s so comfortable I didn’t even realize it’s not a regular everyday happening.

And everyone asks me if we’re doing the long distance thing and I say no. He needs to go to college and move on with his life, and the long distance thing isn’t something I’d be good at either. No regrets. And last night we lived, oh so Buddhist, in the moment. And I’m okay, and I’m not worried. I’m okay. We’re okay. And yet, “If I’m so goddamned strong now, why do I feel so lonely?”