let's go terrapins, let's go, whoo whoo

death is feared not in the pauses and lonely moments but when the store is crowded with people, strollers, and movement. they are animals. and alas, i must be too. the exciting varieties of potato chips will not be eaten by us, but by people i do not even know with strong hearts and even stronger dicks. and goddamn, i want to eat chips forever.

jamie was home for so short a time - i saw her for a couple hours last night before she went to bed and then vamoosh, i wish she could have stayed longer. i had to work yesterday and today and she left this afternoon while i was at work, grinding my teeth, making a shit list of all the customers who were evil enough to support a business open on easter, making it profitable for mister gary cha to force me to come to work, and to not be able to hang out with my sister.

solidarity. workers are supposed to unite you stupid bourgeois motherfuckers.

a customer who i thought was hitting on me before made it obvious today. when we were done talking/ringing up his groceries, he asked me what my name was. i told him. he then said, "matthew," assuming that i also wanted to know what his name was. he winked at me as he was walking out the door. but i didn't want to know matthew's name. i didn't want to tell him mine.

and if we (you and i - not me and matthew, dear god no!) saw each other often, would you sleep with me? i think that may be all i really want. classic rock love songs on the way home from work, for some reason sounding not cheesy at all. but lovely lovely lovely. and the rest is up to you. you - you stupid motherfucker.

mary, mary, quite contrary

ty left his wallet in my car yesterday, and mary wanted to pick it up this morning. well, i get a call from her telling me that she is in jail and to just put the wallet in the mailbox of her old house, where new people are now living. i wanted to know the jail story, which i assume is probably highly exaggerated since mary is the drama queen of drama queens, but she real explain it later ("long story"), and tells me to bury the wallet some place where she can find it. bury it, she keeps on exclaiming. i finally am convinced to put it in her old house's mailbox even though i am sure that it is not going to work out well.

already running late for work, i go to her old house, and of course there are people in the front yard doing lawn work. totally a bad idea. i knew it would not work. so, i just leave it in my glove compartment at the metro station. at work, i leave a message on mary's machine detailing where it is. i just got off of work and it was (and is) still in the glove compartment. so, after i finish this i will give her a call.

today at work when we were closing, this super cute bike messenger boy asked me if we had any produce we were going to throw away. me and evelyn had already raided the produce, but i was going to find produce this boy could have even though this is grade a not allowed by yes, but no scary people were working who would yell at me. so, i gave him this huge box of bad onions and bad potatos that not even evelyn and i wanted. i gave him bad bananas and more onions and what i really wanted to give him was love love love and hugs. the onions would have to do since i was a wuss and he was most likely straight, but i could damn sure imbue those onions and potatos with all my offers of love since i couldn't give him any of that bob marley "goood, goood loving - i want to give you some good good loving." and bike messenger boy distributes food to 26 houses, he said. and boy oh boy do i want a boy to hug and make me feel loved.

"we have to stay to find out who the mystery cum-shooter is!"

so i said to mary, when she got anxy and grossed out and said that we should leave. and she had this morbid fear that she was going to get cum in her hair even though there was no one behind us to jizz in her hair. she was the only girl in the theater.

today, i visited mary's new apartment that she and ty are living in. it was ridicously huge. we then went to the most overpriced goodwill i have ever been to in my short, natural life. a couch was selling for 1,200 dollars. you could buy a new couch for much cheaper.

we then went back to mary's to get trivial pursuit and were headed to the barnside diner to play and eat, but we passed one of this country's few remaining porn theaters, only blocks from her apartment, and she very jokingly suggested we should go there. i made a sharp turn into the parking lot and we were there, both sort of nervous and scared about attending a porn movie, and all the possibly sleazy guys we would see jacking off. the movie didn't start for half an hour. we played trivial in the car while waiting and then went and bought tickets. or i bought a ticket. the sleazy old man who was hitting on mary told her that she got in for free.

and then we sat down to visons of x 2, which i consider a piece of high art. mary was sort of disgusted by it, and did not share the same opinion of it as me. we sat towards the back and talked throughout the whole movie, analyzing its merits and the hottness and techniques of its stars. people in the theater were playing musical chairs and kept switching seats and leaving and coming back and we still don't understand why.

the film itself was the best film i have seen so far this year. no joke. i have not seen a movie that has made me think so much in a while. the movie ripped off the genre parodying technique that scream employed to critique the standard practices and plots of horror films. this porn did this in the brief parts that gave the movie some plot between the long, boring fuck scenes. we missed the beginning of the movie, but when we came in, a mystery cum-shooter had just came on some naked girl on the kitchen counter and the people in the house were discussing who it could have been. there was the pizza boy who was the first suspect because he was a pizza boy and they are always popping up in pornos. and then there was a guy named "dick" who was the next suspect because obviously that is a porn name. and then there were occasional shots of a man in bed and the words, "sketchy character," would blink at the bottom of the screen. we stayed to find out who the mystery cum-shooter was and we never found out. the movie ended after a couple had had sex, and were lying in bed - the guy watching porn on tv. the woman said, "it's 4 am, why don't you turn that off, and go to bed." and he said something about wanting to see the end. and she said, "you know porns never have any closure." fade to black and then the credits abruptly started rolling. how awesome an ending is that? after we left the theater i tried to engage mary in a discussion about the meaning and the artistic merits of this film, but she was still grossed out and saw it as low-class trash. but man, i think it was so intelligent and that the long, cheesy, almost tedious sex scenes were part of the film's sendup of porn tactics. but mary thought i was just reading to much into what was a bad porno. maybe.

we then went to the library, so i could make copies of my tax forms. i then found some dvd's i wanted to check out. it was 8:59 and they were closing at 9, and i did not have a city of alexandria library card. i, at one point in time, had a fairfax library card, and i don't even have a virginia lisence anymore, i have a florida one, but the woman was real nice, and gave me a card because i made her laugh.

then we finally made it to barnside and played trivial. i won. then i took mary to pick up ty from his job. ty was weird and nice to me and told me that he wanted me to come hang out with them, because i told him i was going home to clean my room (which my mom told me to do today). and he seemed offended that i wasn't going to, and its so weird when someone is real nice to you that you think hates you and that you also think is sort of an asshole. he then told me about a guy he had a crush on. and what, is he showing a vulnerable side? how weird.

anyways, i finally left. and my mom has since told me that our relatives are no longer coming down tomorrow, so i do not have to clean my room tonight, and now i have three movies to choose from watching courtesy of the city of alexandria. the choices are: 2001: a space odyssey, lonesome dove, and rear window. all of them will probably put me to sleep since i am so tired right now but that is okay because falling asleep to a movie is quite possibly one of the most comforting feelings in the world.

oh- and tonight me and mary were driving up a hill a little after dusk, and as we got up it, holy fucking shit, look at that moon. it was the hugest i had ever seen - a little above the horizion, and it was like it is in silly movies where people kiss in front of a full moon. huge and yellow and terrifically humbling.

let me see that...

and oh god, i thought i would update now for no particular reason other than the fact that aaron mcgrudder is too on the mark. in "the boondocks," he gave sisqo the most embarassing black person of the year award - and right now i see why sisqo was granted that distinction. watching snl reruns on comedy central. sisqo's awfulness brought me out of what was otherwise a wonderful tired horniness, daydreaming about jimmy fallon, who was hillary swank in one skit and it was just too good an impression.

and i had a beer with pizza, which made me even more tired, and even more silly. i seriously made out with my wrist while watching jimmy fallon in a way too serious manner, that i now tell myself (and you, the reader) was all in jest. but the sad truth of the matter is that it was not in jest at all - i was that much wanting to make out with someone and that much horny and goddamn i want some action. some uh uh uh and some cock basically.

i went with my mom to visit my dad in the hospital tonight. he has been in there the last week while they adjust his medicine. his feet were so swollen, big like mine were when i got bitten by a spider my second year. today was foggy and rainy, and the weather is so fickle these early spring days. i really sort of love it. i waited in the car when my mom went into safeway to grab some groceries. parked under streetlamps. my feet were resting on the dashboard and weird, trippy shadows of the water dropping against and then moving down the windshield reflected on to my skin. on to my legs. drops of water touching me. but not my body. the lava lamp of my legs and regrowing leg hair and water movement and drop and drop and death and life.

if you do not have a dozen donuts, then you will not eat them all in one sitting

Do not mess with me people. At least not today. Or maybe, that is looking too far into the future. Let's make it: Do not mess with me right now. I am a mad machine, ready to take on the world. Also Known As (which is also known as AKA) Yes! Organic Market. That is going to be my world for eight hours today. I will scan groceries like you've never seen them scanned before. I will be the best goddamn cashier in the world, people.

I leave for work in t minus fifty minutes, and by god I just might get in an accident on the way there. Lookout cars, I am hyped up on way too many cups of extremely strong coffee on this most beautiful early spring morning that the gods have graced us with. The life force has returned and I was up bright and early this morning with a pretty little boner at a few minutes before nine, needing no assistance from such silly contraptions as alarm clocks. I was up on my own for the third day in a row, bright and goddamn mothefucking early. My body has joined the sleeping schedule of what I assume most peoples' bodies are in. Most good working peoples of the world bodies. I go to bed before midnight against my will. I cannot stay up to save my life and I wake up with the sun. How many gorgeous mornings have I missed during my lazy years at college. How many hazy mornings have passed me by? How many more will I allow to?

NONE!! God damn it! Shout it from the rafters at the top of your fucking lungs, wear those things paper thin until you're hoarse with the joy and the pleasure of life.

And, I thought that I would do a diary entry now before I leave for work since chances are that I will probably wipe out soon after coming home from work, curled in my bed under warm covers, wrapped around the arousing language of a one Mister Henry Miller, who by the way, I think I may be in love with. And so yes, yes, back to the diary - back to the boring documentation of what angela at one point in time (or actually if you had MTV, when they showed the reruns about ten times a day) referred to as: my so-called life.

The day-to-day life follows in what may or may not be a linear fashion. People, I am quite hyper right now, don't get too demanding and ask for coherency, otherwise I'm pulling the plug and getting ready for work, which by the way I have to do very shortly. These past few days have been of the good variety - of the fucking life is the most wonderful thing on earth and goddamn I'm going to die one day variety.

Maggie is working at Yes now. Which is the most wonderful and also the most hilirious thing in my life right now. How wild is that that we are both working at this tiny organic market not near either of our houses, far off in SE DC, in that most beautiful neighborhood of Eastern Market. She is a gorgeous soul, the carefree Maggie Ray who would dance at walls til kingdom come. We did no work when we worked together on Friday. We danced across the aisles to the easy listening songs we knew. Maggie, a little too carefree for my I got to get paid sensibilities. Singing while she's ringing up customers and getting down, jamming out to occasional stares. And maybe she can purify me. Make me more carefree - less inhibited by what I fear people might think. And I work with her again today and I am so excited. Someone must have told on us though because on Saturday morning I got reprimanded by John for "fooling around" with my "girlfriend". No, shes not, John. Okay well, "whatever she is," he said, stop fooling around. And ha!, Maggie is a girl and she gave me hugs and I'm a boy so obviously she is my girlfriend, you stupid terd. At least, there are still a couple people in this world who can not automatically tell that I am gay. That makes me happy. But, he's sort of a dumb guy anyways.

Yesterday, I saw two insanely gorgeous would-be photographs. As I was getting off the metro and crossing the street to Yes, a bright New Orleans type procession with bright umbrellas on a sunny day and priests in robes and parishoners with palms passed me in I guess a Palm Sunday procession. And it was a wild sight. And there were too many movie street scenes. Easten Market vendors with colorful fruit and veggies. A homeless man sat outside of Yes with three bright yellow daffodils in his hand offering them for sale. The colors. The colors. The stark contrast. It could not have been a more perfect picture had it been staged.

Blade 2 with Rebecca before she left for Harper's Ferry to be a farmer. The movie was silly and good and I fell asleep half way through. I told you I have a hard time staying up past midnight.

Too many boys/men in short umbros and adidas sandals coming into Yes yesterday giving me little boners. And okay, I am stereotypical gay boy, and think soccer players are so fucking hot.

Sujatha loves them goals, and said I need to have them, and was apalled when I said I was a lit. major just because, and no, I have no clue what I plan on doing with that. Don't you want to be successful, she asked. Is that what Led Zepplin meant in their "Immigrant Song"? God, that was un p.c. of me, but whatever, Sujatha fills all the cultural sterotypes I possess about Indians. She said "success" so weird and emphatically, tying my monetary accumualtion to "success"- in a way that scared me.

There's a Whitman College in Washington State, and no, it is not named after Walt, he told me after I excitedly accosted him about his sweatshirt.

And last night, there was an ad in the metro that said, "WHAT DO THE BEST MINDS IN MEDICAL RESEARCH NEED?
YOU!
To particpate in Studies at the National Institute of Health, call:
-1-800-411-1222"

And THE BEST MINDS brought up thoughts of Ginsberg, and of the best minds of his generation destroyed by things, and other lines I still don't fully understand, but maybe come closer to with each ad for research subjects I see. And, unfortunatly I could not help the best minds of my generation (not Ginsberg's) because I did not have any of the diseases or conditions that they were researching.

bonnie has never seen it

some people like lullabies. some like fairy tales to put them to sleep. others, hot sex. and while i would like hot sex to put me to sleep - it's just not happening these days (and to make myself seem real pathatic - these years i should say, it has been over a year now!) okay, the point of this is that i like watching the shining to put me to sleep. since i have come home from school, i have watched the movie at least ten times late at night and fell asleep half way through, cozying up to the creepy slow shots of the overlook hotel.

"you've had your whole fucking life to think things over, what's a few more minutes going to do you know?"

jack nicholson is quite possibly the coolest guy ever. sexy even.

it rained today. and the day before. and the day before that. and the day before that. it has been a gray week. i was running so behind for work today. on my way to the metro, driving down fort hunt road, i let out a ren scream of mad hysteria when i saw the squirrel when it was too late. it was in the middle of the road, still alive and maybe even rescuable. it looked so panicked and was full of motion yet static because it was stuck to the road where it was hit. and then i ran over it, and i kept screaming, fearing my own death in that squirrels, realzing the fragility of it all, and ahh!! i screamed and screamed. i got to the metro and there was no parking and i got stuck in the garage, unable to turn around, i let out another ren sceam and rammed my car into the temporary wall that was blocking me in until i was free. i did not have time to circle the lot forever, and i was already so so behind, so fuck it, i'll just drive to work.

work was so fun today until tonight, this customer said something like, "hey it's really hard when someone is begging for money right outside the door. i mean, i am asked eighty times a day for money, and i give some away, but it's really hard when they're right in front of your store..." and on and on, and i wanted to punch this white lady for suggesting that i should tell this homeless woman who had been standing in front of the store all night to scram. and whitman said something about "what howls restrained by decorum" - and god, how true, i wanted to scream at this woman for being such an asshole but needing my job, meekly said, "it's city property, you can't really do anything about it." and she told me that i could. and how sad, but she was right. there are laws that prevent homeless people from standing on the street. silly white women appearantly have more right to be on the street than these homeless people. and gary usually tells panhandlers to leave in front of his store, but he was gone for the day, and i was not about to. i then let out my aggresion by telling the young guy after her about it, and he was even more pissed than me. and we talked about that evil woman and he said mockinlgy that they [the homeless] shouldn't even be allowed to breath. i was just so hopping mad about this woman, and feeling my own complicity in ignoring the homeless population (so yes, to make myself feel better and rid myself of some of my guilt), i went outside and gave her some of my asian pears that were not sellable and that i had put in a bag with bad produce that i was going to bring home and eat. she seemd so happy that i wasn't coming out to ask to go stand someplace else and was actually giving her food. and i immeaditly felt better. homeless people serve well as feel better about yourself machines. insert food or money and you instantly feel like a good, benevolant person. like mother fucking teresa.

and then i watched the shining and exhausted from work, fell asleep about halfway through it and woke up during the screaming when jack sees the crumbling naked woman in the bathroom. and now, jack is chasing his family with an axe. and my mom commented on how she thinks its unhealthy to watch this movie so often - i guess thinking that i might be a serial killer. and maybe mom. maybe. anything i set my mind to, right?

good news

From: smallgirllover@hotmail.com
To: seniorcitizendiscount@hotmail.com
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 16:23:47

charlie,
i start training at yes! tomorrow at 430. Are you working? can you believe were going to work in the same place? how funny is this?
maggie

love me tender, love me true

i finally watched wild at heart today and it was so good. i love david lynch so much. nicholas cage can be cool. wizard of oz insanity.

now, however, i fear the blockbuster. the movie was due over a week ago. i dropped off my movie in the drop box, fearing that they would know that i had had the movie for so long. i am sort of afraid to even go inside to check how much my fines are going to be. oh, i guess i'll have to start going to power which is like ten minutes more a drive then the so so close blockbuster. blockbuster, can't we just let bygones be bygones so i can go in and use my rent one, get one free coupon?

tonight, i went to borders and bought the little prince, and stole the tropic of cancer, which i am about to start reading right now.

maggie doesn't have black hair

i woke up this morning. twice.

the first time was at seven o'clock, for my eight thirty dentist appointment. i honestly have not been to the dentist in probably two years. everytime i try to make an appointment they are always booked for months, at which time i will no longer be in virginia. so a week ago, i called to make an appoinment. they told me that they had an opening on monday morning or that the next opening was not until may. i took the monday one. i woke up, went in to the bathroom, looked into the mirror and debated whether or not to take a shower, whether or not to go to the dentist. sleep just felt so nice and it was just such a beautiful dreary, rainy morning - the perfect type for never getting out of bed. my bed was the coziest place on earth. thoughts of drilling, of cheeks spread wide, of gloved hands prying around my mouth, of spitting into that thing, of alligator clips and bibs. and then there was the alternative: my warm, cozy, dry bed, with a wet, wild, wild cat stevens world outside. i couldn't decide right then but i knew if i took a shower i would be awake, so i ate some breakfast first. a bowl of cereal and the morning paper. it was too beautiful a day to waste spending it any other place than in the comfort of my warm bed. so i called in sick to the dentist and hopped back into my bed and slept for about four more hours before waking up for the second time at eleven for work.

when i got to work, sujatha told me that someone had come to visit me this morning and that they left me a note. exciting!!! it was a good ol' fashioned note from rebecca that reminded me of so many good times - of ten thousand sloppy handwritten notes from rebecca on any loose peice of my paper in my room at new college. of fun times. of late night adventures. midnight bike rides.

today, i decided to document the music at work, it's a muzak station and is sort of high-art easy listening sometimes and other times just plain crap. i made a songlist, but of course, i somehow left this at work along with names of numerous cute boys that i wrote down after looking at their credit cards. but i remember the first and last song on my list. first was aimee mann's "save me." last was elton john's "your song." and between was lots of sound alike sades and frank sinatras and billie hollidays with occasional marvin gaye, beach boys, fleetwood mac, hall and oates, and lots of bad bad slow jammy stuff.

a man set off the sensor alarms as he walked out the door so i yelled at him to come back and he did. and then i looked in his bag but didn't see anything in it. and then he patted his leg and said it was his leg plate. for some reason, i did not think this was completely ridicolous and was like okay, but then gary came out at that moment and looked into his bag and saw tons of stuff. including the clock off our wall. how out of control is that? he stole a clock off a wall - i am not even that o.o.c. gary tried to make him stay and was holding on to him, but he escaped and took off down the street before we even had time to call the police. i think gary was mad at me for not helping catch the man when he ran away. i felt like i should have but i was ringing up customers and was sort of offput by the absurdity of the whole situation.

then i remembered that i was going to ask gary about this catherine girl. now did not seem like the best time, so i waited until it was too late until he was leaving when i asked him. and he was like oh yeah, i don't remember her last name, but she said she knew you. now i was even more intrigued and asked him if he remembered what she looked like. he said yeah. "Yeah". - what kind of fucking answer is that? - tell me what she looked like dude. so, i ask him if she had curly blonde hair thinking that it'd be the anna-maria catherine. and he was like, nope, black. black hair? what? who could this be?

after gary left, i snuck into his office to see if i could find the applications. i found them, but did not find a catherine anybody's application. i did however find an even more surprising application. one from a "Margaret Ray." maggie ray? now i was real confused and wondering if they were just confused about the name and the hair color or if a catherine from new college applied in addition to maggie ray. and i would be so excited if maggie ray worked there.

*******************
the foundry theater randomly shut down last week because loews didn't think it was profitable enough. i am steaming mad about this. the three dollar movie theater that showed hip, old movies is gone. i had meant to go see mullholland drive one more time there on the big screen but i kept putting it off. i had also been waiting for amelie to come there, but i guess now that's never going to happen. god, i hate loews. i hate it when movie theaters close. i really cannot think of anything sadder than a non-operating movie theater. there was a beautiful old movie theather that was vacant in laconia, new hampshire that i looked at just about every time i passed it with dreams of people sitting in there. vibrant life. the entire world shown to people on these screens and now they are just blank. seats empty. it's like a flat earth with beautiful things being thrown over the edge in fits of rage and an emptier and uglier world exists and something's missing. seeing a happy dog wag its tail and remembering that you used to have a dog and he used to be the most wonderful thing on earth, and you should get another one. hearing your mom talk about juicy lucy's and wishing you would have eaten them too, now they are nowhere to be found, gone with juicy lucy. on king street in old town, the movie theather is boarded and closed and for sale, and i fear that another magical place will be turned into a cvs or a starbucks, and we'll throw more stuff over the edge for no good reason. the biograph is now a cvs. the key that i went to a few times with sarah in high school is now something stupid. and now the last theater that i felt an emotional attachment to is also ka-poot. loews is bulding a twelve screen theater a few blocks away, but i know it is not going to be a three dollar theater because it is going to show new movies and all. and foundry - you are missed.

*******************
my nerve horoscope for the week is pretty exciting:
"You'll be hot shit this week. At least, you'll think you're hot shit, and really, isn't that half the battle?"

true that.

scuba diving in backyard pools

catherine who? what is her last name? john did not know. but he did know that she went to new college and that she applied for a job at yes. what did she look like? he did not know. i'm going to try to find out who this catherine girl is tomorrow when gary is there. i really hope it is not that anna-maria and catherine catherine.

today i was sneezing nonstop because of this spastic weather where it was t-shirt and flip flop weather two days ago, but cold, wet winter coat weather today.

i am so tired. i have been tired since i woke up at eight and tomorrow i have to wake up at seven. and i'm looking forward to tuesday when i will sleep in until a just plain gross hour like two or three.

i have a video from blockbuster that was due last monday before noon. i am going to have late fines like a motherfucker. i wonder if i can just create a new account. and i'm not returning the movie tomorrow morning either. it's wild at heart and if i am going to have to pay a million dollars in late fines for a movie, i goddamn well better have watched the fucking movie. too tired tonight to tackle that. whoo for alliteration.

my name is not benjamin, but:

plastics

jimmy fallon loves jimmy dean sausage

or so i would like to believe. it is probably not the case though. ian mckellan talked about jimmy's cuteness during his opening monoluge on snl tonight. during weekend update, ian asked jimmy if he was gay - jimmy was silent for a while before laughing and saying no, real cute. after ian's little bit, he asked jimmy to give him a kiss goodbye, turning his cheek to him. when jimmy, the gentleman that he is, did this, ian turned about and gave him a big smooch on the lips. i don't feel like this was scripted because jimmy and tina just looked very flabbergasted. but it was so cute. and made me love jimmy even more and made me so envious of ian mckellan for getting to smooch jimmy. that is all i would like to do. jimmy then ad-libbed something like, -uh, i think i've just been knighted [and then he thought of something more clever], or i think i've just been queened. and then tina gave him a-stop-there-before-you-say-something-homophobic-if-you-haven't-already-look and it was so cute. and jimmy, when are we going out on that date?

craziness at work: gary only speaks korean and english so he was unable to converse with "the chinese mafia," whom he bought the store freezers from. the freezers were not working, gary had just spent most of the morning on top of the roof trying to fix them. cathy speaks chinese so gary had her serve as translator in a very comic situation. freon was the problem.

more: i was glancing around the store and i made eye contact with this man that was checking me out sort of and we both smiled realizing that we were both gay i guess. and then i was running to look at something - maybe horseradish - and i ran past him and i think he thought i was coming to talk to him. because he sort of extended his hand and asked me how i was doing. i was just so confused by the whole thing and still sort of intent on whatever i was running around to do. i sort of ran by him and stopped and said goodhowareyoudoing real fast and real awkwardly. and that was that and i sort of kept on running to the horseradish and it was just very weird indeed. but it made me so so happy and kind of confident that some boy tried to talk to me, since no one ever has. and i was sort of upset at my complete lack of even the slightest bit of suaveness. ricko, i sure as hell am not.

sharon, the deaf girl that got hired about a week ago, somehow really annoyed cathy by talking on her instant messenger all day - and cathy started yelling at her and they sort of got in a fight. and then cathy called gary to complain about her bad work ethic and then she was fired. and she told cathy to "be careful" as she was leaving. and it was all sort of real tense and weird.

even more: a black woman lost her credit card on the street and some white couple brought it in and handed it to me, saying that someone dropped it. i just set it down, forgetting about it, but zenith asked me whose it was, and then the aforementioned woman overheard us and it was her card, and she started screaming about how happy she was. and she was going on and on, basically flipping out. she was yelling about how nice this was, seeming like she was going to cry. she then wanted to know who turned it in. did i remember what they looked like? were they young or old? male or female? black, hispanic, white? then, i was like, well they were a white couple. and she yelled, i love white people, and wanted me to make an announcement to see if the people were still in the store because she wanted to thank them. they magically appeared and she went on for about five mintues ready to cry - about how nice that was of them not to just go use it - about how much she loves white people. and it was definitly the hardest i had laughed in a really long time. she was just such a funny girl.

yep, more: nisaki is selling homemade pies at the eastern market and i talked to him, and he told me that he was so glad he quit yes, after i told him about it how everything was there now. i told him who worked there, and he told me that everyone that works there are women except for me. hah! i love it when i'm referred to as a man, because more often than not i am referred as girly and not a man. but yeah, he's selling pies. i didn't buy one but i did buy a plum from an old man.

yep: is this a red or white grapefruit, he asked. i didn't know. i asked john the nut from boston, who will get his own entry very soon, and john in the thickest of boston accents said that he didn't know and was going to slice it open. he like a maniac went on a mission to go slice it, and the customer said, if they have wild hair, they are wild people. i love these little bits of wisdom i randomly get at work. he could not have been more on the mark about john's uncombed, dandruff speckeld, kramerish frizzy hair. and i laughed maybe even harder than when i listened to the credit card woman.

laughing makes things so much more fun. last night, i saw monster's ball with sarah, and it was a pretty full theater, yet everyone was in the mood for laughing, and when one person laughed at an inopportune melodramatic moment, soon someone else would, and then some more people, until half the theater is laughing at some one dying. and it was so much fun. the man right ahead of us was the giggler who started the whole thing who could not stop laughing even though he tried so hard. but, it was his trying not to laugh that made his laughter all the funnier. and some people would stare real upset that someone was not taking the silly movie and histrionic acting seriously. laughter! goddamn, how rude! people can get so offended by something so innocent as laughter and i spent a goodwhile thinking about this last night but am too tired to recount it since i have to wake up at eight for work. but basically, laughter at a work of art sort of degrades your interpretation of it, if you actually took it seriously - like laughing at the work is by extension laughing at your interpretation and your tastes. this is also related to the phenomenon about people getting upset if someone they like hates a band that they love. it's like a personal affront. laughter is so powerful. it completely erased any power that that film had. laughter as a method of resistance. and so people that wanted to empower the film and grant it meaning were sort or real peeved by all the laughing.

oh, and did i mention that jimmy fallon kissed a boy tonight? he's so my boyfriend.

planewatching (look out irvine)

today seemed like it was going to be bad for some reason. i woke up feeling borderline sick and took five pills of echinecea trying to prevent being no longer borderline but actually sick. i can control you body. i will. bend spoon bend. i then had to take my mom's minivan out to this place so that they could do an estimate on it since my sister bumped it while she was home over spring break into a parked car. the minivan has the tiniest of scratches on it, but for some reason the insurance folks are still demanding an estimate. so my mom told me to bring it there at 11 o clock and to ask for harry. well, in case you have not learned this yet from your own experiences, let me let you in on a little secret: mapquest sucks. it printed out the most roundabout directions in the world and told me to make a wrong turn and so i got there about twenty minutes late. the secretary was a bitch from hell and is so the ageing slut who works at the front of every car place all across these united states. and my dad sold cars, so i am not just making mysoginist generalizations - from my many encounters they have all applied far too much make-up, have had bad perms, and even badder dye jobs - basically they are trying as hard as possible to extend the shelf life of their feminine charms, but it just never seems to work.

anyways, she tells me to sit down, and then just as i sit down, she tells me that i am twenty-five minutes late and that i need to reshedule because harry has an appoinment at twelve. first of all, i was twenty mintues late. i hate it when people feel the need to make your lateness sound just a little bit worse by adding a small amount of time to it - so small that you won't dispute the erroneous time because you don't want to seem petty. but yeah - i was only twenty mintues late. and secondly, nothing is wrong with the car, it should not take more than ten seconds to look at it. but, i was too tired and too sad already to fight with her, and got an appointment for tomorrow at nine. nine fucking o clock. god, that's early. and then she answered the phone a couple of times, and each time said, "it's a great day at koon's collision." no, it is not bitch. it is a horrible day at koon's collision and how about you just say "hello? how can i help you?"

and i seriously felt like crying, but i didn't. i got in my car and it was hot because it was a sunny day and i had left the windows up. heat trapped inside. i got in the car and felt the soothing heat, which made me aware of the sun - of what a beautiful spring day it was. and i sped out of koon's collision center, rolled down my windows, and let the spring day in - i removed the physical boundaries erected to make me distinct from the action and the actual world outside. the drawbridge was lowered from the castle over the moat. the berlin wall came fucking crashing down. and my car was filled with the dancing slightly chilly spring air - moving in circles around the interior of the car, fluttering loose papers, candy wrappers, and moody boys.

what happened after that was a totatlly different day. as ice cube said, "today was a good day." and can you get any more explicit than that? is that what "explicit lyrics" means? i came home and dug my bike out of the back of the shed, threw it into my mom's minivan and headed for huntley meadows park for some fun trail biking. but, i get there and see a stupid sign saying that no bicycles are allowed. what the hell is that? what's next? no smiles allowed? no happiness allowed?

so, i decided to bike down the parkway along the potomac. i drove far past where i normally bike along the parkway. past belle view. past old town. and stopped right past the airport at gravelly park. i got on my bike and took off. remeber E.T.? where that boy starts flying on his bike? that was me. i was waving to people in passing airplanes, singing with the returning migrating birds, and spitting as far as i could, competing against no one but my own sense of how far a boy should be able to spit in this day and age.

if only my bike didn't sound like a dishwasher, this bike ride would have been perfect. it sounded so horrible. my bike's chain is somehow almost entirelly rust and so squeaks and cranks nonstop. but the potomac was probably ten feet to my right. i was wearing a short sleeve shirt. i had my pants rolled up so that they wouldn't get caught in my bike chain. the sky was so blue. all the monuments were right across the river looking so bright and sunshiney in their white stone glory. i biked as far as i could on my rickety bike until my tiredness overwhelmed me. i got off my bike and went and layed next to the potomac. my backpack under my head. and took a nice hour long almost nap on the riverfront. the washington monument was to the right of my pressed together knees. the lincoln memorial was to the left of my pressed together knees. i shifted my legs to the right and parted my knees and lifted my pelvis a little so that from my viewpoint it looked like the washington monument was my erect penis. i'm such a little boy sometimes. i rested some more, listening to the sound of planes taking off and landing and to everything else which was just a jambalya of sounds. i didn't try to detect what the ingredients were. i just enjoyed the peacefulness of it all. the planes were seperate because they were like a big chicken bone in the soup, something that disrupted the flow of everything else.

i biked back to gravelly point and fell in love with this species of mine. there must have been at least thirty people sitting there as close to the airport fence as possible watching planes land. seeming like they were within a tippy toe arm's reach away from the landing plane. think wayne's world - that's exactly what it is like - the planes were so close. families, couples, and people by themselves all gathered here to marvel that somehow we got these huge fucking things up into the air. i joined them and thought the same - thinking how insane it is that this huge piece of metal can somehow fly through the air. watching it land, sort of worried each time, thinking that it was for sure going to hit the trees or something. its just so low.

after that, i called sarah and went with her to starbucks to get some coffee. i yanked the india arie cd from there, and we sat for an hour or so enjoying the setting sun and just talking and not talking (but that being the most wonderful thing on earth - not awkward at all). we then went to wal-mart so that i could buy some wd-40 to try to get the rust off my bike chain. wandering around that area of wal-mart, we walked by the skateboards. they were selling skateboards for $9.92!!! i could not resist. it's only ten bucks. i tried it out in wal-mart doing much better than i thought i would do. sarah bought a basketball. i then skated around the wal-mart parking lot for a while, exclaiming very proudly that i am a skater - that i am a fucking skater - whoo!

we then went to this weird taco bell/kfc combo place which did not even sell 7 layer burrtios and when i asked for a burrito supreme with beans instead of meat, they told me they don't make them that way. i wasn't about to ask why not - I just ate the crap. and then we went to sarah's and played a couple of games of horse with her new basketball. i lost all of them. h-o-r-s-e. i think sarah was only h-o-r each time. i was no iverson. but that is okay. today was a good day. fade us out cube.

sean letter

Dear Sean Williams,

You may find this very scary - but I think that you are the dreamiest boy ever. I rung you up for your groceries today during that after work rush of people. I think all I said to you was "Sign here," when I asked you to sign your credit card receipt. (Which, by the way, is how I know what your name is - I glanced at the reciept after you handed it back to me and began to incant your name, thinking how lovely it sounded.)

I thought you looked gay, but I tend to think lots of boys are and am totatlly wrong all the time. All these guys that come into Yes look so gay in their hip, trendy clothes and then their girlfriend (aka honey) comes out of nowhere with more groceries. No lumberjack men here - they're all the vain sort that wear cute Camper shoes and thick framed glasses. Silly straight boys making it harder for me to tell their sexuality because they have to dress nice. But this isn't to say that you're vain for dressing so hip - not to say that anyone is for dressing any way - but, yeah - it just is hard to tell - but with you - you just seemed to be for some reason - and sorry if that makes you feel less masculine or some bullshit. But, see I don't think it will because you looked like such a rad boy who wouldn't care.

Anyways, this is straying big time from the point of this letter. Um, I think I like you big time. That's the point. I think I want to get a boner kissing you. I want us to run somewhere, because we just sat around talking and were so late for where we were so supposed to be, so we ran and ran and ran, and got there maybe just a little late, and were so out of breath and laughed. I want to do that. Amongst many other things. All of which we can discuss when we actually talk I guess.

Sean, I do not know why I have told you any of this, since you do not even know my name, and so I especially don't know why am I about to tell you this (but hey, do you know why you do anything? I mean, for real - what's the reason behind anything other than just because.): So, I love MTV. Yes, I know that makes me incredibly unhip, but I guess that's good that we got that out of the way now at this point in our relationship. I especially love "Dismissed," perhaps the best show on television. A person goes out on a date with two people and then at the end has to dismiss one of them. Well anyways, I'm sure you know the premise of the show, since you seem like a culturally savy boy and all - so tonight on the show, there was this boy competing for this girl, saying that he was going to win - that he's "got more game than candyland." And, I thought that that was the cutest line ever for someone to say seriously. And well, I do not have more game than candyland. I am the most socially handicapped person in the world about talking to people that I like. And so, it is very unlikely that I will ever tell you any of this, and instead will be left to wonder and dream about the might have been each time I ring you up without talking to you. But, if you get this in time, you should talk to me. The ball is in your court now - you know that I like you - and if you do nothing than I will know that you are not the boy for me and that I can move on to being neurotic about some other boy who wakes up every morning and gets dressed and without shame does his damnedest to look like a hipster.

And, perhaps I have said too much. Perhaps not. If you ever do talk to me, you can let me know.

Love,
Charlie Quiroz

ate produce and produced this for you

i get to take home lots of unsellable (but still eatable) produce from work, and i have made so much salsa since i started working there. today i purged our fridge of all the produce since it was all about to go bad. i made a huge bowl of yummy green salsa and attempted to make roasted eggplant. i am sure i did something wrong, because the eggplant looked yucky and it didn't taste all that great either, and now my belly is feeling weird.

i woke up this morning. it was a gray drizzley sort of day. a perfect day to do nothing but masturbate and sit around all day. i made a trip up to mvc, the scary porn store that is right on route one. getting out of my car, i was so sure ten thousand people i knew would see me going into mvc. i walked quick. i don't know why but i was sort of embarrassed to buy a gay porn because the guy working was this scary, burly man. and, i also think straight porn can be pretty damn hot. so i bought this 5.95 video with "2 hours" of big cocks. the cocks were notthat big, but the video was still okay enough to occupy most of my morning and early afternoon.

i e-mailed a bunch of people about living in madison over the summer.

cheese state dreams

fuck the world. fuck diaryland for closing after i just spent an hour and a half writing and rambling about everything in my life. i stole lots of drugs from work today - this st. john's wort-kava liquid extract and this valerian-poppy liquid extract. i have consumed so much of them and am so mellow and tired, and goddamn i am never going to be able to write anything that i had just wrote. cliff's notes of the goddamn thing:

-i was an asshole to some guy on the metro who tried to make conversation with me
-last night as i was walking to the metro, i was harrassed by two punk teenage thugs who asked me where the gay club was. self-loathing. am i really that flaming? i was wearing jeans, sneakers and a fucking sweater
-some thoughts on diaries, prompted by own tiredness with mine. considering passwording it, so that i will quit being concerned about what reader's reaction will be, which led into me trying not to care about the reader's response by talking about:
-how wonderful my boner felt this morning when i woke up. i stayed in bed for a good hour or so, enjoying the feeling of my cock against my sheets as i was half asleep. it felt like a yawn. tiredness and stretched muscles and some wonderful feeling of comfort.
-i got an e-mail from bonnie today that made my day after being all tired out from work. so much gossip = so much charlie happiness. marky mark is working at the 4 winds, which sounds so cute. and shane. the name enough made me so happy. no one has given me shane gossip since like the summer. but the e-mail also made me feel really alien from new college. and most of the news made me feel distant, like i used to be friends with that person, but hearing about their life sounds like hearing about a friend of a friend. time, space, and lack of love are all pretty good amnesiacs by themselves. but unstoppable when working in concert.
-two deaf people just started working at yes, and i trained them which was at first somewhat difficult and intimidating because i didn't know how to communicate. but they read lips, and by the end of the day we were having fun conversation. and i really like both sharon and the boy whose name i can't remember a lot.
-and then i was going to talk about elton john, how i am beginning to like his greatest hits tape. i used to listen to jasmine's cd when it was at our house. but just to "bennie and the jets." but now, after hearing "your song" at work everyday, i am starting to like the whole tape.
-i'm thinking about going to madison for the summer. there are lots of cheap place being sublet. and i sort of really want to go.

ahh, and bonnie just said on aim, that she'll live in madison with me. okay, bonnie has made my day twice today. i am so excited right now about madison.

she looked like gwen stefani and for some reason, she even sang "hey baby"

okay, i am writing this quick so that i can try to fall asleep to wake up at eight motherfucking o clock for work.

tonight, i went and saw the ever so lovely miss nelly furtado perform at the 9:30 club with sarah. she also played last night, and we tried to go see her last night. but, the show was sold out and no one was scalping tickets. so, sarah today found someone that was selling them in maryland and went and got the tickets and paid a ridiculous amount of money for them. an amount which i will not even mention because i feel so guilty about spending that much money on a fucking concert ticket. i always feel quilty about spending money on anyting that costs more than ten dollars - like i am throwing money away that i have worked too hard for on such silly things, when i know i should be throwing money at good stuff, like homeless people (right bloodysundae?). and that's serious. that is seriously what i think about. i do some schindler economic thinking, estimating all of the "good" things that that money could have bought.

anyways, we paid about three times the price of the actual face value of the tickets, but whatever, we got to go see nelly fucking furtado and it was worth it. for the most part.

i am thinking that i sort of hate the 9:30 club - that the people that go there do not neccesarily go there for the music. the people are dressed a little too well. future yuppies of america all holding a bottle of beer. so much sleazy flirting going on all around me. god, these are such trashy people. sarah and i tried to move closer to the front before nelly took the stage but were roadblocked by a pack of girls that would fit all to neatly into that high school bitch category. the leader of this pack of evil girls with really straight hair told me, "stay there." - meaning that i was not to move up any further. i was not in the mood to be sassed by some smartass eleventh grader with a fake id. we exchanged words and insults, before i finally moved to the other side since these girls were not about to let us by.

sonically the show was not that great. they could have spent a little more time doing sound check. you could barely hear nelly's vocals over the horrible back-up band that was playing with her. but, there was a bried interlude with really fun songs that nelly and male back-up dancers pranced around to - "that girl is poison," "jump jump," "real love," etc. the crowd was really too cool to dance, but that did not stop me - i had already decided that i hated the entire crowd. the entire crowd. no fucking exceptions. they were all assholes. excpet for of course the cute hippy boy that i kept staring at.

lots of fun dancing. me and sarah weren't to concerned about looking silly. we pretty much already looked a little too grungy to be with the rest of the crowd, what's the fucking difference if we got some stares for our shaking our asses?

after the show, everyone is piling out. i spot the bitchy girl who roadblocked us. i go up to her, tap her on the shoulder, she turns around, gives me that what-the-hell-do-you-want look, and i stare her down for a breif couple of seconds before saying, "stand there," while pointing to where she was standing. she looked like she was about to bitchslap me, and so i ran and me and sarah hid in the mass of departing people. they came. they saw. they (conquered?). and now they were all too eager to leave, none wanting to be the last to leave the party. slowly funneling out of the tiny doors with pushes and shoves. not exactly gentle. not exactly loving.

when i was 16, he told me that rayuela was his favorite book when he was my age

i really am a laid back person and do not care about piginess or many other things. right bonnie? but, my sister makes me want to pull out my hair with her pigginess and destructiveness. i just came to the computer after watching "come undone" (a pretty silly, gay french movie that was barely good) to find my cds scattered all over the desk begging for scrathes. and no, normally i don't put cds back in their cases, but i also don't set cups of tea on top of them, using them as coasters. so, i clean up this little cd mess and then put on my headphones to listen to the soothing sounds of sade to find out that sound is only coming out of one ear. my sister is a fucking terrorist. i don't know how, but she always manages to destroy the few possessions that i actually am possessive about. since i am always listening to music, i went and splurged on a nice pair of those big headphones, and somehow my sister manages to break them. if she were not asleep right now, i would be big time yelling at her.

she's just so piggy and gross. grrr. the toothpaste in the bathroom is all over the sink, and the actual toothpaste dispenser is twisted and mangled from her sloppy attempts to get toothpaste out of it. she gives me such headaches, i am very much looking forward to her going back to school.

today was a beautiful beautiful day. i opened by bedroom windows and thought today would be a good day to tackle cleaning my room. folded clothes and picked up shit for a couple of hours. dad came over for an hour or so. told me more about his "undercover" doings, explaining how the police tape all these wires to him, and how they gave him a gun. and god, this is too weird. anyways, he left to go do something with the police this afternoon. today, i actually enjoyed by dad. i guess he's stopped selling his pills to his friends now, and so now he takes enough medication to be his usual self. he talked about working with the police like a little boy, sort of excited about doing something james bondish. his literate self came out as he made references to some french film with a clumsy spy and started talking to my sister about greek theater after seeing her drama book. while i was watching news about israel, i heard my dad talking to my sister about oxycontin. saying something like, "i used to think that are all drugs were okay - that they all expanded your consciousness, but this drug is bad, people would seriously kill to get some if they didn't have any." and for some reason, i thought this was real cool of my dad that he used drugs for spiritual purposes, but then i quickly tried to drown out their conversation, getting more and more enraged at israeli bombings of plo headquarters.

later, i went with my mom and sister to meet my aunt molly for dinner, pretty sure that sarah would flake out on our plans to hang out tonight. we went to lebanese taverna, this really swank, new lebanese restaurant in pentagon row. the design was so awesome. the food was not exactly awesome, but still pretty damn good.

we drove home, eighties at eight was playing on 107.3. david bowie's "china girl" served as the soundtrack to our drive past the pretty much completely rebuilt pentagon. down the parkway. potomac to my left shimmering like the gorgeous sequined diva it is. the lit-up monuments and memorials on the other side of the river looked beautiful. i was with my family. my belly was full of yummy food. good music was playing. the car was heated. the sky was looking beautiful. my mom was behind the wheel. and i felt tired, but was kept awake by feeling loved. it was a good feeling.

154 new messages

i just checked my old e-mail account to find 154 new messages in the inbox. the bulk mail box had an even more insane amount. but, even with filters galore on that account, guess how many of those messages were written specifically to me? i'm going to assume that you also get lots of depressing junk mail that gets you all excited thinking that someone actually wrote to you, only to find out that no, no one did, and yes, you are in fact the pathatic loser that you thought you were, because not one of those pieces of mail was written by someone you knew - someone whom you could write back to. they were from teen girls with wet pussys and companies wanting to add spice to your bedroom life (which by the way, you don't have) with viagra or some new method to add one to three inches to your penis. basically, it's very depressing.

and today, i went to the dermatologist to get my accutane prescription refilled, and she asked she me the standard rote of questions: have you been having any muscle cramps? any headaches? have you been feeling depressed? and just as mechanically as she asked the questions, i replied: no no no. but the last question, i wanted to say yes to, to scream: yes, i have been feeling more and more depressed! i am sad!!! yesterday, i just missed my train transfer at l'enfant plaza coming home from work. pouted, started singing elton john's "your song" over and over - which was stuck in my head after hearing it at work - and then i just started crying. not sobbing and screaming like a baby. but stoically crying. and i don't even know why. i go through like hour long funks of deep depression and then buoyantly emerge for a good long while, only to suddenly feel like crap with no identifiable provokation. and, maybe it is the accutane that is making me a nutcase.

or maybe, it's that my dad will be dead in a short three months from lung cancer. maybe i see sarah smoke and want to punch her in the face. maybe it's that my dad is also a drug addict and is such an asshole, making it so hard to feel sympathy for him. maybe it has something to do with my sister verbalizing what i fear to think. that i am a slacker. "so, why aren't you in school right now?," she asked me yesterday when i talked to her. she then with a-why-the-hell-would-you-want-to-live-at-home-when-you-could-be-in-college-around-people-that-you-like-partying-and-living-the-fabled-college-good-life-and-not-have-to-work-and-come-home-to-play-on-the-internet-or-watch-tv-because-you-have-no-friends-to-hang-out-with attitude tells me that i am wasting my life, just sitting at home. and she is so right, this is not why i took a semester off, and i don't even know why i did anymore, fuck, i don't know why i do anything. and she asks me in a way that sounds like she is seriously concerned about my future, if i'm going back to school, like she thinks that i'm not. and i scream yes, yes, of course i am going to go back. maybe it also has something to do with my dad coming back over here today because the nurse from the hospice was coming here, and after she came he was about to go back to manasas and he told me that he had to call the police. that he's "working undercover now." don't ask. please. because i didn't. i just said okay, and retreated to my room with a book because i didn't want to know what type of asshole thing my dad was involved with in snitching on his fellow drug users. i didn't want to know any of it. i just wanted to not be living in this increasingly cartoonish reality that i find myself in these days.

i tried to get sarah to go to a movie with me tonight. she tried to get me to go to her campus's gay pride group meeting with her. i told her that i did not want to go. damn it, i just want to see a movie. she said that we would do something tomorrow night, but she is pretty flaky, and i am starting to think she is dull and suburban and never wants to do anything that i want to do. and so, i may not do something with her anyways.

rather than going to the pride meeting, where i probably could have met some some cute boys, and maybe even made some friends, i went with my mom and sister to tyson's corner mall. my sister needed a dress for some school dance. i wandered around the mall, looking at cds, attempting to look in a couple of stores, only to be intimidated by hot, scary, gay men. kenneth cole was the worse. they were so scary there. i felt so so inappropriate. like a man wearing a fanny pack. except i was not as blissfully touristy and unaware as that, i was so so self-conscious about my fanny pack - about my inadequacies under the what-are-you-doing-in-here stares of guys who thought that they were the hottest thing since boxed macaroni and cheese. i spent the rest of the time in some store called "fancy world," staffed by two nice japanese men who were not scary at all - they were the comforting arms of mom after being scared by hot gay salesdudes. the store sold all this hello kitty, sailor moon, and other kitschy anime stuff. they sold a fucking hello kitty toaster oven, people! and i marveled at all the japanese letters on some of the items, so so wanting to learn japanese.

and then i met back up with the fam and we left for home, which was a fun ride back. high as a kite, looking out the car windows, the happiest dog out for a carride in the whole world. came home watched some tv. real world was actually good tonight. some lesbian fighting going on. and the drama continues next week. showed a preview with police breaking up a fight between anissa and her bitch of a girlfriend, veronica. people, mtv can be so good sometimes.

and i have to wake up in the morning because plumbers are vague and one is going to show up sometime mid-morning to fix one of our toilets so that our shit can flow like it used to. and i think that is what i want with everything. an equally vague nostalgia is yearning for a return to the past - not any specific one, but just the happiness of the past - for my shit to flow like it used to.

the return of granola boy

he wants his grapes. and he wants them now. but not at the insane prices being charged by yes. he is not granola boy. he is an old man, taking ten years to hand me his grapes and then asks five million times how much they cost when i weigh them. and as i am weighing these motherfucking red grapes over and over, he enters stage left. coming through the door like the movie star he is, rays of sunlight streaming in behind him, walking right past me by the cash registers. probably towards the granola. and i hear the same symphony that diana and the girls heard. he is near, and i am aflutter. he came last sunday too. maybe he only comes on sunday night. his end of the week treat for making it through another. some granola from the bulk bin. old man is still grapes grapes gripping like a fucking lunatic. repetition of grapes had cartoon quality to it. and since i was busy with grape man, granola boy went to the open register, bought his granola and left. i watched, looked longingly at granola boy, hoping he would shorty swing my way, but no. and i return to reality, the unsexual place it unfortunantly is for me, and hear an old man talking about grapes. looking at his wrinkles. at the green counter. at the scale. at the grapes. at things sterile and so not sexually arousing. granola boy please come back in for something else. please. man keeps babbling about something and i keep nodding, thinking about how cute granola boy is, and how exciting it is that i have a crush that makes me giddy and feel light in the stomach. that it has been far too long since i have felt the life force - the desire for someone specifically - the last person was probably marky mark. and fucking okay alreay old man, i'll sell you these fucking grapes for less, just please please go away and leave me to my dreams.

something that induces certainty

andre 3000 was on the tv tonight, performing on snl, and looking as red hot as usual. maybe even more so. my sister was already asleep by the time i got home from work and i'm sure she will not be up before i leave for work in the morning at nine motherfucking o'clock, so i guess i'll finally get to see her tomorrow night.

it rained today. i ate 1.37 lbs of food from sizzlin express. i really need to start making food and bringing it to work. once darkness set in, i just stared out the window at work, waiting to go home and go to bed, and also staring at the neon reflections of store signs on pennsylannia avenue. cars zooming by on the street, their tire tracks breifly disrupting the reflection on the street. but the reflections all goes back to normal in a couple seconds. everything does.

yesterday, i saw these two cute gay boys (possibly a couple) on the metro. one of the cute boys was wearing these really cool clunky white astroman shoes. and i really want a pair of cool white shoes too bonnie. not boots though. i don't know how to describe them. but if i can't find the pair i want in white, i might just spraypaint a black pair white from payless or something.

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my mom dropped me off at the metro this morning. we rode in the car not really talking. me tired as hell, staring out the window listening to the radio. bob seger. someone. third eye blind. and then alanis. i was so excited by the songs i got to hear on the way to the metro. but a couple blocks away, sitting at a light. my mom ended our silence. not the silence, because there was no such thing - the radio was on. she asked, "do you think the birds talk to each other or do you think they just fly around together?" i was real thrown by the randomness of the question and then looked up to see a bunch of little black birds sitting on the streetlamp wires hanging over the intersection. a flock above them flew back and forth, right and left, all moving as one. i laughed and said, "yeah [as in duh!], they talk." then i looked at the birds some more and thought about it, and after too much time had passed to comment further on it without seeming real random, i wanted to say, "they are the same. why can't they be the same? their movement is speech!" and then the light turned green and we joined the other cars making a left turn, and like a flock all sort of independently moved together, unrehearsed and unintentionally.

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at work today, i was trying to help a really old lady find a certain brand of cookies that are really low in sugar content. we could not find them. she kept talking to me about the fact that she can not eat lots of sugar - and i mentioned the insane amounts of sugar i consume daily. she didn't slap me for being so reckless with my body - she merely laughed at the bulletproof bodies of the young and told me that when she was young she didn't have to worry about such things either. saying lots of "when you get my age..." statements, telling me what i have to look forward to in fifty or so years. we talked about how good sugar tasted. and then she said so so insightfully, "that's the way life is - the things we like don't like us." and i said, "true," and could only think about how on the mark that statement was. not just about sugar and fat and things that are bad for our body, but everything. the things we like don't like us.

tired from working all day. tired of my dad's bullshit. tired of loneliness. tired of friends i do have. tired and need to go to bed. or how bout we j

tiredness to the max. why am i trying to write about my tiredness? go to bed you stupid motherfucker.

okay, work forever, came home, mom yelled and screamed at dad on phone because he's the biggest asshole in the world and stole one of my mom's checkbooks the last time she let him stay here and cashed a bunch of checks to buy drugs. god, i hate my dad, and really feel terrible for wishing that i want him to die right now instead of in three months. and i should not have just written that. some things should only be thought. writing gives them a permanence that will i'm sure make me feel like a dickhead when my dad does in fact die. went out with sarah to meet her friends and go to a movie. her friends were not where we were supposed to meet them, because sarah's fighting with lisa, and blah. did not see a movie, sarah drove around looking for their cars at the various diners they hang out at and was so mad, and i was so sad and kept on suggesting we should just go see a movie and stop driving around everywhere. but nope, no movie and two hours driving aroudn NoVA. found them at damons. sarah and lisa fought. i dreamed of how i should have just gone to the movies by myself to see something. there aren't any midnight showings of movies, the last showings were all at like 10:30, what the fuck is that about? then went to ihop with sarah, sat there for way too long. waitress was space cadet galore. i asked for a water and she asked me if i wanted a small or large water. and then lemon or no lemon. sarah asked for a coke. and the waitress asked no questions. too many other weird things at ihop. was falling asleep at table. told sarah i wanted to go. and now am about to snuggle up in bed, before waking up to go back to work. oh and my sister comes home for spring break tomorrow. i am very excited.

ADDENDUM (3/2/02 10:30 pm) okay, two things i forgot to mention about yesterday. good things. gary hit a shoplifter with a big stick. yelling ensued. police and general excitement at yes yesterday. second thing: i got to climb on top of the roof. gary showed me how to reset the coolers, and we got to climb on the roof. spider-man, look out, you got some competetion.

labor movement

when i transferred to the orange line at l'enfant plaza around 2:50 this afternoon, i saw the train approach and thought it was real weird that so so many midwestern looking white men were on the train. normally there are tons of seats at this time of day, but there are all theseguys standing in the aisles. god, i really just wanted to sit down. i get on the train and stand amongst american men. i then see why they are all on the train. they are steelworkers. many holding little protest signs. even more wearing union baseball caps. we all stood there. they knew each other and talked. i sort of eavesdropped. sort of read everyone's hats to see where they were from. ohio, west virginia, and pennsylvannia. we stood there inert. sort of. the metro was moving but we really weren't. i mean we were in the metro, and so i guess our bodies were moving with the metro - but we weren't moving our limbs or anything really. and they were obviously going to go protest something somewhere. i wanted to follow them and go where they went and demand whatever it is that they were demanding, but i had to go to work. i got off at easten market, and this mass of steelworkers continued on to wherever it is that they were going, to demand whatever it is that they were demanding. they all looked like they could have been someone's dad and they were out to do good and demand better, they were labor, they still exist, and there were so many of them, and that is the coolest fucking thing.