the one that he'll ruthlessly smash at the end of another one

Maybe I'll just talk about my pants. Bonnie gave them to me this afternoon while I lied on her bed still too hungover to even attempt to do anything productive as I watched her attempt to unpack her stuff. They are a girl's size 6 and they don't fit her - they are low-rise, so tight and fun - yeah for girls pants.

Yesterday Bonnie and I realized that we have not had a sober night since our stayover in Pennsylvannia nearly two weeks ago, and before that who knows when the last sober night was. All of this is starting to catch up with me, it is no longer all right to get trashed on a Thursday night now that I have three classes on Friday, it is no longer all right because I just feel sluggish during the days, not right, not fully living - my liver "pays dearly for youthful magic moments." And in a short few hours, I will be getting sloshed again since our house is having a "tea party" - a long island iced tea party. If you want to come, you should, we live at 8418 Cypress Circle, right behind Viking. The party is going to start at 11, so come. But after tonight, I am taking a long break from the booze until my body cleanse itself out, until something else does too, something vague.

Things of note from the past few days: the VMA's were totally awesome - we watched them in Tiffany and Andrew's Ramada room, got drunk off of stolen beer, and screamed wildy about Justin Timberlake (who is the coolest pop star around - he so wants to be Michael Jackson - and it actually works for him - he fucking rocks), and motherfucking screamed even more wildly about Guns n' motherfucking Roses.

Sean is weird, too weird. I can sleep with him, but not sleep with him and frankly, I think it is all a little juvenile and am about to say good-bye if he does not quit being so conservative about all the wrong things. Last night, I got far too trashed for my own good, was asked by Drew Geer before I left my house if I was going to go "cruise" people out at the wall. I said no. This morning I realized that I might have been lying when I thought back in retrospect about the events of the night, of trying to get Sean to have sex with me, about running after Adam as soon as Sean was out of sight, smoking pot with him, and then smooching some other boy briefly after Sean went to bed, some boy.

Now I am going to go eat salad and motherfucking shit, I love eating, food in my motherfucking goddamn belly, and cussing, that too is fun. I am tired. I am wearing pants that are too tight. I am going home.

happy birthday dad

Scratching my left ankle half an hour ago or so, the one that was attacked by a swarm of fireants a couple days ago, scratching it absent-mindedly, totally spacing out while John Moore was babbling about possesive nouns and masuline and feminine words, neutered ones, and saying throaty greek words, scratching my ankle, making one of the ant bites bleed again, I thought of front lawns burning, of gasoline, of ant hills, and of flames flames motherfucking flames.

There was this incident when I was in elementary school - that whole pre-pubescent era is when big blur of moments, none too well associated with a certain age or grade, but if I had to make a guess, I would say that I was probably in fourth grade when this happened. The front lawn of our Canterbury Lane house, this little duplex, had been literally taken over by ant hills everywhere. I think probably a quarter of our front lawn due to our own laziness about lawn care and matinence had slowly been won, in what was a turf war, a dispute over territories, over the boundaries between our ideas of nature, of green front lawns, and that of nature's idea of nature, huge ant hills, a lawn of sand, ants being drawn to the fallen apples in our front lawn from the red apple tree. Bees were also drawn to our lawn a lot, but their presence was a lot less visible, far less invasive then the dirt mounds slowly eating away the grass.

I think my dad might have been bit by them, or so fuddled by their encroachment, so threatened by what it represented that he set about one afternoon to kill off the massive ant population residing in our front lawn. I think it might also have been a reemerging of the bug killer we all were as little kids, the person that picked the legs of daddy long legs and watched them wiggle around. The hose from the backyard was stretched around to the front, sunk into one of the huge ant holes and turned on full blast. My dad's efforts to flush out the ants lasted for probably about an hour or so until frustrated by the lack of visible results, he got the gas bottle that we used to refill our lawn mower and poured it over all of the massive ant colonies. Matches were lit and dropped with destructive fury, with a casual air as if burning your front lawn in a dense neighborhood of duplexes was perfectly normal, billy, we started the fire, don't lie, we're all pyros at heart, what we build is only as good as how pretty it'll look burning, we all sprung from the flames, and fire is okay, too okay, too acceptable - it should scare us more but we throw ourselves into it all too eagerly, with little thought, little concern for what, if anything will happen, because it just seems like the logical endpoint of it all.

Our front lawn burned pretty much throughout the afternoon, and somehow, by some stroke of luck, only our lawn burned, it did not get out of control, we were not made homeless by my dad's hatred of ants, simple ants, that had taken over our lawn. Neighbors approached the fire with the same casual disregard for the fact that this was fire, fucking fire, and jokingly suggested to my dad that he should get out the hot dogs, that they would bring over some marshmellows. I thought of all this, and more, of things that no matter how long I write this would never be able to convey to you, all the little things, the chipping paint on the side of the house, the overgrown bushes, our old car, what the sidewalk looked like - but so much more, and all of this in a brief microsecond, all of it reexperienced in the quick scratching of a bitten ankle, a whoosh of happy nostalgia before I remember what date it was, that date, my dad's birthday, August 28th. And then I had to somehow reconcile my disgust with my dad of late with things like this, funny things I can recall from whenever, from a time before deportations, before reentrys, before fights, before eighth grade cousins molested, before bigger fights, before lung cancer, before drug addiction, before emminent death, crying, yelling at me because he can't live forever, because he can't yell at death, driving him to the doctor's only to have one of his drug buddies meet us in the parking lot afterward where drugs are sold and snorted in the back of the minivan while I sat in the frontseat and tried to think that I would make it, that stuff like this would not break me, lying to him so that he won't come stay with us, telling him we are staying with my mom's friends even though my mom has bought a house, and for good reason, does not want his parasitic, stealing ass to know where she lives, to know that he can cry and tell her how he's going to die and how he has no money, nowhere to go, and hope, and in fact, know that my mom will let him stay with her, that Catholics are supposed to be forgiving and merciful -- and I fucking hate it, maybe I would yell at him, at motherfucking you, and let you know that it is not all right, that I hate you, but don't want you to die, to just disappear, to stop throwing yourself into our lives when no one else will put up with your shit, that I get sad, really sad when my sister says she hates our dad to me in car rides, and tells me honestly that she doesn't think he ever cared about us, that he probably doesn't even know the names of our schools - and I know that is not true, I know that I would like to believe that, that that would make it so much easier to not give a shit about him, to not feel this horrible whatever you want to call it, where I can not hate him, cannot wish him away, where I still feel like I should call him, that it is his birthday after all - that my body is his, that there is some blood bond, that maybe it is thicker than water - but I don't want to think about this, I want to be like my sister and hate him, and not elevate our bodies, all of ours to some exulted status, where I know that it means something true, something that really can't be verbalized, but something true goddamnit, motherfucking true, that my mom and my dad are me, that I am the product of them, of their genes, of their conjoined semen and egg - that all of that must mean something, or nothing does, that my body is not the product of someone I hate, of an asshole, that there are these things, these burning lawns that make things harder, more gray.

And really, I don't what I am trying to say, but that I will say this: that on Saturday night, on Sunday morning, in the drunken haze that was the space in between the two, I went to Sean's room where he was watching Return of the Jedi, that I was naked with him, with either his cock in my mouth, or mine in his, or some other position involving getting our rocks off, that during this, this fumbling towards what we hoped would be ecstasy, the movie continued to play on his tv, it was towards the end of the movie during the big fight between Luke and Darth Vader - Bonnie has told me about all the times she has had sex to Portishead and motherfucking yeah, I have had sex to talk about "the Dark Side," to motherfucking Star Wars, to more talk about what it means to be a father, that Darth Vader can be Luke's father, that "I am your father," that Luke resisted Darth Vader, said No, that yes, this was actually dialogue I had sex to:

Luke: Your thoughts betray you, Father. I feel the good in you, the conflict.
Darth Vader: There is no conflict.
Luke: You couldn't bring yourself to kill me before and I don't believe you'll destroy me now.
Darth Vader: You underestimate the power of the Dark Side. If you will not fight, then you will meet your destiny.

That this means something, that everything does.

first day of class

Get me away I'm dying. Get me away I'm dying

That is what is going through my head right now, that Belle and Sebastain song, I have listened to it on repeat throughout the day and it is all I can think of to say, all I can muster when faced with this text box. The library is finally open, I can finally sit down at a computer, spend some Q.I.T. (quality internet time), can finally update this diary, and all I can think to say, or all I can say is Get me away I'm dying. There is not really too much thinking going on with the whole thing and that is part of the reason that this entry has this stall of an introduction, a stall that will hopefully set me into some sort of flow so I can talk about my life, Florida, being back at school, a certain boy, and any other pertinent things, perinent with respect to things that serve as the aggregate of petty and non-petty things equaling the life of Gun. The sky is big in Florida, it is my favorite thing about Florida, the thing that every afternoon sets me into a flurry of little kid awe at the universe, at how fucking beautiful this entire system is. Walking to the library from our house, Bonnie, Jamie and I sang the line Get me away I'm dying sporadically and talked about how amazing Florida skys are, how they are fucking big. Fucking enormous.

Enough already, let us get into it, let us get the ball rolling, let me tell you about my life (and maybe about yours if we are both lucky). Those tend to be the diaries that I love to read, the ones that straddle the border between detailing every person encountered, every little thing done, and those that are vague enough, silly enough to say something other than all of that without being so annoyingly vague with 8 million codenames for everyone in their life that they fear will see their diaries. To do this, we'll use lot of pronouns today, see if that helps. The you to me to we to the I to the he to the she to the goddamn motherfucking us.

Today was the first day of classes. That should mean something more than it does, but sadly today seemed all too routine. I am moved into my new house. My new house that I love to motherfucking death. This seems like the best living situation I have ever been involved with. I am living with Bonnie, with whom I share a stick of deodorent, and so obviously living with her is wonderfully comfortable, and also with Jamie Seerman, who is also proving to be a great roommate. She frequently sings and plays her guitar which I find wonderfully beautiful most of the time. And she is dating Drew, which means I get to talk to him pretty frequently, which is of course wonderful since I think he is a nice boy. Lots of Ungame, chatting with Skip, a not yet ripe grapefruit tree and a not yet ripe orange tree, trees that both, like everything in this world, will be ripe sometime and will provide us with lots of yummy fruit, with more Vitamin C than your vitamin popping heart could ever desire.

I have secured a job working as a dispatcher at the Cop Shop, a mere two blocks from my house, and start training tomorrow night, which has made me a lot less stressed about the state of financial disarray I currently find myself in after not working all summer and having to scrounge for money to pay the upfront costs of getting a house.

Perhaps best of all, I am learning that I don't have to talk to people I don't like, that I can talk to people that I do like, people that seem nice to me. Living off campus helps with this so much. I can walk away from people that bore or annoy me, and go up and talk to people that I want to. I know that may sound like an incredibly pointless thing to say, as if everyone already does that, like duh! obviously don't talk to people that you don't love, but they really don't (or at least I really didn't) - and it is so good to take control of who you choose to interact with, whose words you want stirring in your head, who you allow to influence you in whatever slight or big ways come about in everyday conversation.

And actually I lied when I just said that that taking control over who I interact with thing is "perhaps best of all" about these past days - that was definitly Example A of my tendency to use hyperbole. Best of all would most definitly be that there is this boy named Sean who I like and who is nice and who I had sex with and who I am off to visit right now to see if he wants to watch a movie with Bonnie and I.

got milks?

I have just signed a lease for a house that god willing I will pay for on Friday, assuming that the checks from both my mom and my last job arrive here within the next day or so, and also assuming that Bank of America has not permanetly closed my account. But all of that is silly, it is worrying about monetary stuff, it is unavoidable - I am reality, or this is mine and I have passively accepted it, I know that I need to get a job to get some cash so that when someone asks me to go get pizza with them, I do not have to explain to them that, "No, seriously, I really am that broke, I have negative money up the wazoo, I could not buy a pack of gum right now even if my chomping heart desired nothing more in this world." Now of course, I could just steal a pack of gum if I were so desirious of fucking bubble gum because I have been doing quite a lot of the looting these past couple days with Bonnie who is also sort of broke. We have been making the daily trips to a rotating grocery store, to spice it up, to stick out less in the employee's memories, and have been stealing our food, what keeps us going, the good stuff dropping into our bellies, and also stealing beer which we down like we are living in the end times once the sun goes down and sometimes we get started even before the sun goes down. But yeah, I are working to better my current financial situation - I am going job-hunting this afternoon.

In other news, stuff that is far more exciting, I kissed a boy last night. His name is Shawn. He is cute.

girls, girls, girls

I am back in Sarasota. I don't know what to make of that, how I feel about it, being back, whether I am happy about this, or whether I hate it - this town, seeing the same people, engaging in the same banal conversations with these same people that I have seen around for the past four or so fucking years of my life, my fucking life, spent here in this town, doing this, this silly shit.

Bonnie and I are staying at our old house on Stevens Road. We got back Friday evening and opened the locked doors to the unoccupied house since Bonnie still had the keys. We have been camping out on the couches since then, talking to Evan who came by to get some of his stuff, and to Tobgye who also came by to get some of his stuff, and who is this very fun boy that Bonnie and I want to come visit us more since he is new, someone I have not met before. Taking breaks from the couches, trying to convince ourselves that we are not that lazy, getting up to look for houses to live in, to go to the beach, to go watch the sunset, to go steal groceries and beer from the many surrounding grocery stores, and to make what usually are dissapointing trips to campus to see people.

An hour or so ago, we went to Palm Court to snag some free food, checked out the first years, some of whom are very cute, particulary black shirt boy, and avoided the returning students, the people we knew, the people that bore us to tears. Whenever some non-first year, someone we knew, would walk by where we were seated, we would turn inwards and feign involved discussion to avoid having to talk to boring people about boring things, people like you.

sarasota

I am back in Sarasota. I don't know what to make of that, how I feel about it, being back, whether I am happy about this, or whether I hate it - this town, seeing the same people, engaging in the same banal conversations with these same people that I have seen around for the past four or so fucking years of my life, my fucking life, spent here in this town, doing this, this silly shit.

Bonnie and I are staying at our old house on Stevens Road. We got back Friday evening and opened the locked doors to the unoccupied house since Bonnie still had the keys. We have been camping out on the couches since then, talking to Evan who came by to get some of his stuff, and to Tobgye who also came by to get some of his stuff, and who is this very fun boy that Bonnie and I want to come visit us more since he is new, someone I have not met before. Taking breaks from the couches, trying to convince ourselves that we are not that lazy, getting up to look for houses to live in, to go to the beach, to go watch the sunset, to go steal groceries and beer from the many surrounding grocery stores, and to make what usually are dissapointing trips to campus to see people.

An hour or so ago, we went to Palm Court to snag some free food, checked out the first years, some of whom are very cute, particulary black shirt boy, and avoided the returning students, the people we knew, the people that bore us to tears. Whenever some non-first year, someone we knew, would walk by where we were seated, we would turn inwards and feign involved discussion to avoid having to talk to boring people about boring things, people like you.

atlanta

Again, I am updating because Bonnie is in the shower and so expect this entry to be another slapdash one of things of little to no importance.

Yesterday, we left Northern Virginia and headed down I-95, driving towards Richmond at which point we switched to I-85 to head towards Atlanta, Bonnie's home. We stopped at the North Carolina border to pee and switch drivers. A couple hours later, we stopped for some Taco Bell. A couple hours later than that, we stopped to fill up on gas and peed in a nasty gas station bathroom. And then a couple hours after that, we had arrived at our destination, Bonnie's house and were at another stop, another pause on our little roadtrip, our last stop before heading off to Sarasota bright and early tomorrow morning.

Last night, in Bonnie's house, in Georgia, in the suburbs of Atlanta, on Jefferson themed street names, I fell into a comfortable sleep after watching a documentary on blaxploitation cinema with obnoxious commentary from Tarantino and "bell hooks," who just to spite her will be referred to as Bell Hooks. Soon, we are supposed to go meet Bonnie's dad for lunch, and then are going to go to Athens to visit Caroline, Bonnie's sister.

There is a list of fifteen people from New College that I would like to have sex with in descending order. There is also a list for Bonnie. This is one of the things, one of the car activites we did to entertain ourself on the drive. We also played MASH and an insane amount of the mountain game, which is played by naming three people and then having the other player say which one they would make their sex slave, which one they would make their platonic friend, and which one they would throw off the mountain. It can actually be a pretty fun game, especially when you pick three people that the other person hates. To be kind, I will use one of the non-New College examples of people: Jesse Helms, Nancy Regan, and Bob Dole. Bonnie chose Nancy as her sex slave, Bob as her platonic friend, and she very excitedly chose to throw Jesse over the mountain.

There were also extended conversations about the word "ho-bag," about sex and guilt, and about Bonnie's excessivly hostile reactions to religion sparked by us passing a "Let's have a talk. -God" billboard. And then of course, there was also the singing along to music to entertain ourselves, but more so, and possibly related to, to keep ourselves awake, to keep from falling into a comfortable sleep with the beautifully blurred images of America passing us by at 70 miles per hour. Colors, individual branches, lane dividers, road signs all blurring into one long trail, losing the distinctions, the visual boundaries that allow us to call them seperate things, a tree a tree, and a row of corn a row of corn, becoming one unified thing, the American road, a thing appearing to move forward like a bullet, a bullet led by us, us sitting at the head of this bullet, watching things blur past us in a long trail of memories of childhood car trips, of giganitc Paul Bunyans and how they are the same as giganitic roadside peaches, and they are always there, always will be approached, looking towards it as one thing, until you get up next to it, your car does, and you pass the motherfucking thing, leaving its static ass in the dust stirred by your car, by your fucking movement, and it melts into the blur of interstate backgrounds too, is another thing passed by us, visually taken in and then absorbed into the larger image as we are moving forward, just moving, on the go always and forever, towards things we hope are bigger and better because we are Americans and David Bowie is afraid of us.

DC

Wisconsin is now a street, a horribly commercial one with scary people who give me looks of death, of what the fuck do you want, of why the hell are you here, here? And I sort of love it - DC has welcomed me back with closed arms, with closed bars - and it is an enitrelly lovely feeling - of being at home for a short while, short enough to make me miss the place, to make me wish I was staying longer.

Bonnie is in the shower now, probably for a very long time since she usually is, and so I am taking the time to update here in my new house that I saw for the first time yesterday, when Bonnie and I stumbled into the unlocked door, stumbling out of her four door Ford something or other, stumbling off of the American roads, off of near death experiences on I-76, of truckers running us off the road in the dark of night on mountainous roads. The night before the one I just woke up from was spent in the town of Somerset, PA - which we got off in right after the aforementioned near death experience and slept in a thirty-two dollar motel reading magazines and watching bad music on MTV.

Yesterday, after we stopped in my house and before we were supposed to meet up with my family for dinner was spent driving around DC doing the touristy sightseeing thing before going to Georgetown, which Bonnie wanted to see, and which we saw, which we walked around down M Street and Wisconsin Avenue and which made me realize that I really do hate Georgetown, that is a huge outdoor mall for rich kids, and that it is not for me. Not at all. We got in the car again, since it was 103 degrees and also sense I was just getting annoyed with Georgetown and headed off towards Old Town we sat and had some coffee before meeting up with my family, seeing them for the first time in months and eating pizza, a food that brings me back to home so much no matter where I am, brings me back to pick-up specials at Pizza Boli's and ordering pizza a couple times a week and yeah, do we love pizza in my house.

This entry is really blah blah blah but you know what, I am not in the mood, am still too groggy, am rushing to write something anything before Bonnie steps back out of the shower. So yeah, time to go, naked boys at Wet, lack of people, Monday nights are dreary, five dollar beer at a swank chill-out lounge, hanging out in my basement, off now to explore DC more.

t-minus 10 hours and 41 minutes until departure

This feels so right, packing things into bags, listening to classic rock, looking at things I had forgotten about, and of course, doing this all so late, just starting to pack right about an hour ago even though we are planning on leaving this town, hitting the American roads in less than twelve short hours with Bonnie, driving to DC to pick up my bike, see my mom, and maybe also to see some naked boys, then driving to Atlanta, before finally making our way towards what will be the conclusion of our little road trip, the town known as Sarasota, Florida.

I don't know how to interpret what just happened two minutes ago; what type of omen it could be read as; what it means for my future; what it will foreshadow about my departure, but I was on the phone in the hall, trying to call Nora, trying to postpone having to pack a little bit longer, and some thing was fluttering above my head and I thought that it was just some big bug, a fly or a moth or something. But then I ducked so I could look up at it, see what type of bug it was, and no, it was not a bug, not hardly - it was a motherfucking bat, a fairly decent sized one, fluttering about, confused in our hallway. Nora's machine picked up right then, she probably thought I was drunk or drugged out since I was flipping out about a bat. The bat then flew down the hallway away from me, only to turn around and fly right back towards my head to flutter about some more, before making its way down the hall again and fluttering out the window, out of my life, having delivered whatever message it was trying to.

I always pack listening to the classic rock stations because there is something so perfect about it, it is the most appropriate soundtrack for leaving - nostalgic yet rocking, looking towards the future, towards another Saturday night - it is almost too appropriate a soundtrack, almost too much (but just almost, not actually) because it allows you to envision your life as a movie too clearly, this is the big scene where you, where I, move on with our lives, we seperate, pack our belongings, our past lives into luggage from our moms, trash bags, whatever we can find, looking at old pictures, letters, and phone numbers written on bar napkins before putting it away, in either the trash or our luggage, and moving eagerly, excitedly towards what lies ahead, the future, walking fast like Mark Renton at the end ofTrainspotting with that bag of cash, off to do wonderful things, to live a new life.

Dave Eggers has a novel coming out September 20th, and an excerpt is in this week's New Yorker. I just found this out, and am so eager to read it, and am so sad that all the bookstores are closed, that I have to wait until tomorrow to go pick up the magazine. I want to read the story right fucking now, damnit!! There is an interview with Eggers on the New Yorker web site, that has me slightly worried. The book is about two Americans flying around the world and giving away money - it sounds like it has so much potential to annoy me, that Eggers may stumble and that book may be rife with colonialist/imperalist implications. But just for that reason, I am so excited, to give the book a postcolonial reading and to see if it holds up. I mean, I kind of want to read it but also am nervous about it, because Eggers is by far my favorite writer but I mean that's a pretty easy thing to be when you have such a small body of work - I've read his memoir and his short story, "After I Was Thrown into the River and Before I've Drowned" - both of which I thought were fucking amazing just because they are so Whitmanic, so concerned with mobility and written with a fast pace. And so I don't want to see Eggers trip, to dissapoint me - I like thinking of him as one of my literary gods, and so I am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that this new book does not dissapoint. God, I wish the bookstore was open so much right now.

All I have eaten today was a bowl of salad, I was doing a sort of fast, and I was trying not to eat again before I went to bed but I am so hungry and am seriously getting light-headed and faint, I might have to microwave a burrito. I was fasting because my stomach and bowels have been utterly insane these past few days, and they both feel better now, but I am just worried about throwing a burrito into the volcano that is my stomach, but we don't have anything more bland, anything non-frozen.

my heart is not strong enough to tell you how not strong it really is

I have glue dried to my fingertips. Moments earlier, before the conception of this, the start, the attempt, I sat, stared at the computer screen and chewed on the dried glue and wondered what it is that I want to say, wondered why it is that when I am most emotional, most burdened with thoughts do I not know how to say it, say them, how to put together coherent sentences that flow from one to the other, how there are so many things I want to say but how do I puree them all together in some coherent fashion, wondering if there is even a way to go about doing it, if I should just give up, just submit to again lying on the couch with my head buried in dirty laundry wanting to cry, to lie next to someone, a certain someone, but knowing that that is not going to happen, just wanting to talk to someone about it, about him, maybe even relating it back to me, but no one is around to talk to about it even when people are around, it is that type of thing, that type of moody broodiness that is making me lie buried in the comfort of dirty laundry, listening to Belle and Sebastian and thinking how much longer should I wait before I open the bottle of Cabernet, at what point do I want to call this day just that, a day, and begin the process of bringing it to a close, circling in those said wagons, and cuddling up in my bed, trying to deceive myself, imagining my sheets as the warmth of another body, that I am in fact, not lying by myself, that I have company on my journey through this town, these days of summer, this world, this lifetime, but even more importantly, this moment, the present, right fucking now.

It is 37 hours exactly until our planned departure time, until we leave behind this town of Madison and head out towards school, leaving behind our summer. Already I am glancing in the rearview mirror from the road, sad that it is over, wishing that it could have been longer, that I didn't have to leave, that a boy would not have become representative of the town, of the city, that he would have treated me nicer, maybe even just a little bit, that Madison would not be a place I wanted to reach out my fingers gently to, cautiously, hoping that my hand would not unsettle it, worrying that my hands would be pushed away, rather than taken up and interlocking fingers into fingers into fingers. In 37 hours, the adventure that was this summer will decide to open that bottle of Cabernet also, calling it, the summer, a day, and the curtains will slowly settle down onto the stage. Of course, that will not be The End - the cast members will all go on to work in other productions on other stages, maybe even in other cities, maybe even on the screen, the big screen - it's just sad, conclusions are, not knowing if the next production will be as fun, missing with nostalgia all those funny moments that you had backstage, this little ending serving as a very subtle reminder of the big ending, but a reminder none the less - a mini-version, a scaled back production of our deaths, of everything we have done, of how we will (or will not) miss them all - the moments and the people that constituted the existence that came, or (in my case) will be coming to a close in a short 37 hours. And maybe this is why Belle and Sebastian "always cry at endings," because they are like me, like you - we all cry at endings with that nostalgic fingering of the lived life mixed with an existential fear of the to be lived life, secretly wondering if there is one, a to be lived life.

This entry is about to change in tone, in outlook a little bit, and that is because there is a temporal gap of about half an hour between that last paragraph and this one, look at that space and there, somewhere, lies half an hour, a decent chunk of my day, maybe even of my life, a period of time occurred where things happened to me, things were consumed by me: words, lettuce and tomatoes. And they have changed my mood, made me a little less melancholy, have allowed me to see a bigger picture besides the rejection of a boy by another one. Sometimes all it takes is a talk with my mom to bring me back into sync. We never talk about anything particular that should rejuvenate my mood, just the talk of how the house is going, where she is going to next week on business, and how I am doing in the most superficial sense. But there is something about her voice, the familiarity of it that grounds me, makes me feel a little less atomized in this country from the rest of its inhabitants, makes me feel connected to people, that there is some order in this world as long as my mom and I have our weekly phone conversation. It is also a small, beginning step in transporting myself, in moving some of my self out of Madison, these correspondences that I have been having with not only my mom, but people from school at a more frenzied pace as the summer has neared its end. I have been writing to people from school, friends I haven't seen in forever, writing them a lot more often this past couple week, sending bits of me to Sarasota, rebuilding the connections that will allow me to feel at home there, putting down roots, as they say.

So let's get to the cause of this bout of melancholy, write it, identify it...At work, Brandi had a Plato quote taped up in her cubicle, "The unexamined life is not worth living." But, to be a little more clinical about the whole thing, this diary writing process, why I felt the need, the fucking need, where I had to get up and write an entry, had to dig my watery eyes out of dirty laundry and sit before Bonnie's computer even though I had no clue what exactly it is I wanted to say, and still don't - I did this because there is some scientific methody proverb that goes something like, "You have to identify the problem, before you can figure out the solution." Something like that, you get the idea. Or at least, I hope you do. That is why I am here now, writing an entry, writing a problem, a drama where the ending will seem all too obvious, where you can be like: duh, anyone can see what is going to happen next. Because I want to know what is going to happen next, what will follow this bout, what will fix it. If I set up the events in a linear fashion determined by cause and effect and effect of effect, then I am giving my life, the world, order - the senselessness of wanting to cry into dirty laundry is the direct result of something else, that I am really not just an emotional mess for no reason at all, that there are reasons, or at least that is what I am trying to tell myself, and what I will now tell you.

The reasons: Last night, I planned on going to the Rainbow Room with Bonnie and the PIRGers, our last night there, one last hurrah in our tradition of going to the RR every Thursday night. I was pretty smashed even before getting there and once there, I got even further smashed, but not in the yelling, making out with any boy in sight type smashed. The type of smashed where I wanted to stick out my bottom lip, have downcast eyes, and feel sorry for myself because a boy did not meet me there. This boy, being the oft-mentioned Giancarlo who a couple hours earlier had said that he "might" meet me there, that he had to go to a friend's party first. And I know about vagueness, I know about ambiguous language, mights and mays - I knew that this was a veiled no, veiled behind the imperatives of social customs, of the need to be nice - but also said because a no would mean that you would lose an admirer, the president of your fan club would turn in their resignation and move on to flatter the irrepressible ego of some other boy with nice cheekbones and scruffy hair. And so yeah, all night I was sad that again I was not going to have sex with Giancarlo, another bead in the necklace of this week, the string of dashed hopes and rejection.

I was hit on by an insane number of boys last night, most of them decent looking boys, some of them even fucking hot but I was not in the mood to feign interest, to tell them why I am here in Madison for the millionth time, to put on a smile and dance. There were a couple people, the regulars, the people I knew, that I trusted not to push away my hand who I did smile to, who I did dance with, who I did engage in sincere, animated discussion with. I just got sad during those moments when boys that I didn't know talked close to me, tried to make that type of eye contact with me that precedes a kiss, that they hoped would - they just made me long more for Giancarlo, to lie with him - they made me aware of how silly it is, how silly I am to want this from any of these boys here, perhaps from any gay boy. Fags, all of em. We're a sick fucking lot, unable to sustain tonight into tomorrow, to allow continuity, to talk the next day about anything meaningful - and it just made me so sad to have these boys smiling at me, sticking their hands under my shirt, knowing that it's all for shit. I kept on scanning the front crowd, hoping against reality, against the more rational thoughts in the back of brain, that Giancarlo would appear, that he would walk through the door and restore my faith in him, in gay life, and even more importantly, in myself - that I would not have been the sad loser I have been playing these last couple days, desperate for the boy who couldn't give a damn either way, the boy who when I met up with him a couple days ago told me that he didn't remember anything about the night we fucked and asked me if he picked me up, a boy that says cruel things and does not know they are, does not give a shit either way - that I should not like boys like this that make me feel like shit, piercing my already fragile sense of self with reckless words.

And so I turned down boy after boy last night, too sad to bother with ambiguity, with cushioning rejections in kind phrases, instead saying simply no, walking away, telling one boy even, an Israeli, that I could never get with an Israeli, that I hated them and the state of Israel. I probably should not have said the last bit - he told me I was a racist but yet still he wanted my racist cock, tried to reach his hand down my pants regardless of the fact that I hated him and his country, that I secretly cheer in a score-one-for-the-team type cheer whenever Israelis are killed by Palestinians, that I would smile with a vengeful delight if Israel were bombed out of existence - of course, I did not tell him about the cheering part, I would never tell anyone about that, I did not just tell you, you dreamed it - but I made very explicit my hatred of the state of Israel, and yes, he called me a racist with a sexually hungry smile of his face. And what is wrong with fags? Why don't you punch me in the face, you sick fucker? I pushed his extended hands away, broke free, and made my way to the back bar where I talked to Matt the bartender for the rest of the night and got free drink after free drink and got progressively more and more smashed, more hammered, more drizzityunk as a skizzityunk. I talked to Rebecca a bunch, possibly even kissed her if Bonnie's memory is to be trusted, if any of ours are to be, and made my way home, made my way home very slowly, the long fucking drunk solitary walk home where I very likely thought of no other thoughts except ones of, and ones directly relating to Giancarlo.

When you fall asleep at around three AM, drunk within inches of your life and are supposed to wake up at 6:45, less than four hours later, chances are pretty good that you are not actually going to get up and go to work, chances are really good that you, instead, will turn off the alarm clock with a quickness that appears out of somewhere, out of our superhero reserves, only in such instances. And so, this morning when my alarm clock went off, as should be obvious to even the densest reader, I did not get up for work, turned off my alarm clock with Olympian speed, and went back to bed, to sleep, to the deliriously comfortable, cuddly feeling of my blankets. When I did wake up finally a couple hours later, I called the temp agency to tell them that I was not only not showing up for work today but quitting the job, and oh yeah, could you mail my check to me in Florida? Needless to say, the temp lady was not thrilled and admonished me on how they would have appreciated more notice.

But, we all would appreciate certain things. As has already been mentioned probably what is an excessive amount of times in this already excessively long diary entry, I would appreciate the affections of Giancarlo. Today, the boy, the asshole was on my mind again. Also on my mind today as Bonnie and I went thrifting and out for coffee was our impending departure from Madison, how I have yet to pack one thing, how our room looks like shit and we are supposed to clean it, how I have no money, how Bonnie’s car is possibly going to fit all the crap we have in our room, how Sarasota is just not as exciting as Madison, not in any way whatsoever. And these two my-life-is-so-sad strains of thought morphed into an unstoppable capitalized My Life Is So Sad type of day, especially after Bonnie left to go hang out with Russ, and I no longer had to act happy, enthused. I, against my better judgment, and following Bonnie’s advice who said, “You’re only going to be here for another day, you might as well. It’s not going to hurt anything to call. Just do it,” called Giancarlo to ask him if he was “free,” if any of us are really, if he would be able to hang out with me this weekend, and again the cruel uncertainty of vague words, of “maybe tomorrow, I’ll be free,” of “I might go camping tomorrow, but if I don’t, I’ll definitely give you a call.” And he is never really mean, and he’s never actually stood me up since our plans were never definite, it’s just utterly frustrating and ego-crushing to have a boy that I think is the bee’s knees be so casual with my feelings, with our possible plans. And, I am not really expecting him to call tomorrow, even if he does, he said that he would most likely be going to Club-5 and since we are planning on leaving bright and early Sunday morning, I do not know if I would even go. So that was probably the last time that I would ever talk to Giancarlo, that I would never see him, never get to run my hands through his scruffy hair again, and this made me insanely sad after I got off the phone with him, this sense of finality, and this is why I buried my head into the dirty laundry of our couch, felt emotionally exhausted and just wanted to cry, to lie next to him so much. And that brings us full circle, to the beginning, to me sitting down at this computer and attempting to tell you, the reader something, but even more so to try to tell myself things, to try to work these things out, to come to terms with why I feel so lame, to hopefully alleviate the feeling of loserness and replace it with a feeling of release, of contentment after entering the confessional. And, the same If You’re Feeling Sinister CD is still playing on repeat and now it is being interpreted not as the soundtrack to my melancholiness, but as something chipper, a barely contained yelp of love for life and beauty, as if they are biting their lip not to yell with utter delight, saying loud, happy things in hushed tones. And so, I guess this has worked - I no longer have the desire to bury my head into the couch, into stinky clothes that need to be washed, packed, and somehow placed into a car to be moved across state lines.

my lone attempts to cannonize hank stuever

Hank Stuever, how I love thee. I know I am always posting links to articles by him, but that's because they are good, damn good, and I feel like no one reads them except people that read The Washington Post, but he is the best columnist ever, he almost makes me jealous with his wit, with his fun article ideas that are interesting ideas gone right, written wonderfully, makes me want to be a columnist. He is by far my favorite - I think his writing is top-notch, it always resonates with me in some big way, big time. It's because I remember Canterbury Lane, Bucknell Elementary and "rapist vans" - the windowless ones that did always circle the block, and hiding in the bushes with Michael, Evelyn and my sister whenever they passed, fearing our abductions. And Hank Stuever is so on pulse, always right on it, he remembers it, makes me remember it, and just read him. Here's the link.

In news directly relating to my life - the gossip, if you will - I am going to the Rainbow Room tonight with Bonnie to meet the PIRGers for sure and to hopefully also meet Giancarlo, who said he'd "try" to make it - whatever the fuck that means. I went to the Willy Street Co-op picnic tonight with Bonnie and ate brats, corn on the cob, and drank some beer, lusted after LoverBoy, checked out all the tough young moms with tattoos and bangs. They looked so cool, made me want to be a parent, made me want them for parents, made me not want to leave Madison in t-minus three days towards a town, an attempt at one, with no cool people, no cool places, no strong progressive community, perhaps even no community in the broader sense. And I am now downing a Jack and Vanilla Coke (which Bonnie wanted to try, and which is decent, but just makes me feel like a brand whore since it is the exact same thing as cream soda, it just has a Coke label on it and so it's "good", obviously - because it is a coke product, and yes I am a label whore, I really am enjoying it, probably more so than if I were drinking AnyBrand Cream Soda. There's something sick, something wrong with me, that the knowledge of a brand adds to the flavor, that the hype, the popularity of the drink makes it more enjoyable, makes me cool, part of a consuming public, part of something big, of something, anything, perhaps even making me slighty sexually aroused by the slight power trip of drinking name brand soda, the label moving through me, and yeah, I am drinking COKE. I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. I'd like to buy the world a Coke. And keep it company. Still remembering that song from the commercial, the little African kids singing it, the Asian ones, holding hands, smiling with Coke, the patronizing attempts at diversity, the appropriation of the idea, of the hope, to sell a soda product, perhaps ironically showing the homogenizing effects of multinational corporations, an economic imperialism/colonialism. The commercial played so many times during Live Aid, which my dad taped, and which he occasionally watched (the whole tapes, the performers, not the Coke commericals in between) for years afterwards, well into when I was in high school. I think I liked the commercial, the song more so than the actual concert.)

Anyways, yeah, I am well on my way to drunk, am waiting for Bonnie to get here so that we can go out and get further drunk, and hopefully I will get some sex, some cock-sucking action from my current crush, my near obsession, a one Mister Giancarlo.

free food

Motherfucking goddamn shit, is what I have to say. That is what I have to say first of all, what I have to yell, to get off my chest, before I say other things, these things:

Motherfucking goddamn shit, I am sleeping by myself tonight. Again. Meaning not with Giancarlo. Last night, I met up with him like he wanted me to, and he was there with some friend that I later found out was his ex-boyfriend, his ex that was staying at his place, which was the reason that I could not have sex with Giancarlo last night because they were very obviously going to go bone. But when his ex went next door to a different bar for a second, Giancarlo told me how we should get together and have sex tomorrow afternoon, what was today, after I got off work. I was more than down with this idea since all night I had been staring at Giancarlo, thinking that wow, I actually had sex with this boy, this beautiful boy, and it is going to happen again. This hot boy wants to, and did, have sex with me. We planned on also watching The Shining, which I was beyond excited about since that is one of my favorite movies ever, and because I haven't watched a movie in forever.

So I left Gian and his ex about fifteen minutes before bar closing and made my way to Cafeli's in hopes of getting Bonnie to walk home with me. Found her, ate Greek food with her, got a ride home with Megan Ho, and Mike R. stayed the night with us in our room since he was evicted or some such bullshit. And, I slept on my bunked bed by myself happy with the knowledge that I would be having sex with Giancarlo shortly. It was around three when I climbed into my bed, and I thought about Giancarlo more so to put myself to sleep than because I am just a big loser. The light was still on and Bonnie and Mike were babbling about PIRG since neither of them had to wake up at six for work. To thoughts of Giancarlo, I lullabied myself to sleep, to to deep a sleep because at six o'clock, I turned that motherfucking alarm clock off well aware of the consequences, of the fact that I was not going to work today, that I was going to call in sick. Which I did a couple of hours later.

I went with Bonnie to some podunk town out in the middle of farmland so she could get her car fixed. We were there at the dealership forever, playing MASH and the mountain game, gobbling up the complimentary popcorn not so much because we wanted popcorn but because it was free, goddamn motherfucking complimentary and so we gobbled it up like we were living in the end times. Lips salty salty salty, but still ready, ready to press into Giancarlo's later in the day, and maybe even places other than his lips, places lovely, shaved, and tattooed, places under tight jeans. Around five-thirty, I called Giancarlo and he told me that he was going to happy hour at the Rainbow Room and that I should meet him there or that I could call him later and meet up with him. I (which I am now regretting big time) chose not to meet him at the Rainbow Room because I wanted to hang out with Bonnie, to go to an art opening at Wily Street Co-op where they were having free food, free cheese for fuck sakes, which I did not eat like it was the end times, nor did Bonnie, even though we both wanted to, because we were at an art opening and we were worried about the appearance of doing such a thing, of how we had to act classy or some such bullshit. So, Gian gave me his friend's cell phone number that he was going with and told me to call before nine since he had to go to bed early or also some such bullshit. Every thing, every excuse, every extenuating circumstance, every because, every or, every and, every motherfucking thing preventing me from whatever, whatever whatever is, is for all intensive purposes, some such bullshit.

After the art reception, we walked down Willy Street to this really hip bar, Mickey's, with retro art-deco furnishings, got a pitcher of beer, got tipsy, talked about boys and watched serial killers on cable television without sound, the sound being provided by an Irish band practicing at the table next to ours. And then, a little before nine, I got home and flipped out because I am an idiot, a huge one and could not find the little sheet of paper that I carelessy wrote the cell phone number down on. Because of my own idiocy, my messiness, my lack of orginization I was not going to get any action, any dick, any Giancarlo, or any other boys with cool names and even cooler bodies. I found a sheet of paper with a solitary phone number written on it, no name, no nothing to indicate who might be at the other end of this phone number - so I called it, hoping that it would be the one, and it rang forever but no one picked up, only an answering machine indicating that it was Michael's phone. I didn't want to leave a message on this random phone, so I called Giancarlo's explaining to his answering machine (and by extension, to him) what an idiot I am and how I really wanted to see him and blah blah blah. So yeah, why the fuck did I not go to the Rainbow Room with him earlier? God, I was looking forward to this sex so much, let me tell you. This afternoon, I was so goddamn horny when I was taking a shower, and had such fun masturbation but did not come, stopped beforehand because I am insane and wanted to come a lot with Giancarlo, and so yeah, now I am even pissed about that - and goddamn it, I am going to call Giancarlo the second I get home from work tomorrow and tell him that I want to come over and have sex, to fuck, maybe even like we are living in the end times. And goddamn it, shit like this makes me so sad. Bonnie has left to go bone Russ, and this excites me because now I have the room to myself, and as such I can masturbate since I am not getting any fucking sex from Giancarlo tonight, can jack off like I am living the end fucking times.

cloud nine

Uh-huh. Yeah. That's how goddamn excited I am. How motherfucking giddy I am. I had to muffle my voice, my squeals of delight until I could make it to my room, until I could turn up the volume on this Magnetic Field's song that has pretty much been on repeat for the last three days, "The Luckiest Guy." I squealed, jumped up and down in my room, giddy as all hell, screaming louder than the song because I am the luckiest guy in the world. My hope in the future of tonight, of everynight has just been given a major shot of adrenaline. Jesse, I am keeping it alive. Alive. Alive. Alive. And I just have to break out with a WHOO-HOOO right now. WHOO FUCKING HOOO!!!!!

So yeah, let me get to the cause of all this whooing and hooing. His name is Giancarlo, perhaps I have mentioned him. I just decided to be brave, to give him another call, to quit clinging to notions of dignity/pride/arrogance - to call someone I want to see and to see if he'll see me, to quit worrying about all the other times I have called, left messages, and gotten no responses - to fucking throw myself into the wind. I called so nervously, dialed numbers hesitantly, thinking that I should just hang up, that this is insane, that this boy hates me, that I should just save myself the embarrasment.

Before I had time to follow through with hanging up, he answered the phone sleepy sounding, mumbling a hello. I stepped on my foot to keep it in my place, to keep myself from jumping all over the place, from running running running. I said hi. And he said "Hi Charlie," awake and happy seeming. For some reason, the fact that I did not have to prompt him with my name, saying "this is Charlie" - that he knew right away made me so happy immediately. And yeah, the rest is a blur of happiness from there, him saying that he had called me a couple of times and that I was out. And so, yeah, we are suppose to meet at the Echo Tap around ten tonight. And I am fucking giddy - I am feeling this song so much now - I am the luckiest guy on the lower east side. I've got wheels and you want to go for a ride. Fuck yeah.

yesterday retold, version 2.0

In retrospect, things seem differently, things seem overexaggerated that I wrote last night, a little too sentimental, a little too much. Now that I think of my day, of my yesterday, it seems all in all like a lovely day and rereading my entry from last night fails to convey that, in fact it makes my day seem utterly shitty. But, that is not the case, or was not the case, and so I am feeling the sick imperative to rewrite my day, to make it sound better, to write myself a better, less pathatic life. Last night what I wrote is not even how I felt last night, but how I felt at the end of last night, after walking two miles home by myself, insanely drunk, stumbling on raised sidewalk cracks, on curbs that I forgot about, on the self-loathing line of thought that rarely occurs when I am drunk and is the reason that I probably tend to get drunk so often, to avoid it, to hide hide hide in bushes from those thoughts, but which appear nevertheless when three things interesect: solitude, drunkenness, and [percieved] rejection. So that is why last night's entry is so insanely whiney, because it was not written with the benefit of hindsight, was not written when I could rationally and soberly weigh the many pluses of the day against a self-constructed minus - it was written in the heat of the moment, as someone, some singer has said before.

And so, just for my own benefit, my need to see that I had a good day, to write it, to attempt to make it true - here is my yesterday written from the vantage of today, perhaps a more distorted perspective, but whatever, that is so subjective to say that one perspective, one interpretation of a day is no more distorted than any other.

I woke up, bright and early, excited by life yesterday at nine, with energy pulsing through me. Picked up Bonnie from the PIRG house, said good-bye to Jessica, who I will very likely never see again, and which is weird, always weird to say good-byes to people you have spent time with, have had good times with, have formed a Team Satan with - to say good-bye casually and hope that everything works out for them, but even more so, for you - since her departure is also mine, forcing me to conceive of this present time frame as a new one, one demarcated by this moment, this parting, wondering what lies ahead.

And what lied immeaditely ahead, not in the imagined future, but in the one hours away, which still has the perspective of the present, is grounded by the reality of your plans, of your to-do list, of your trip to the bank that you have to take, of what you are really going to dotoday, not in the future where you are going to do big things, big motherfucking things that you tell yourself you have always wanted to do - what lied ahead in this immediate, impending future was indeed a trip to the bank, and then later a trip to the nude beach, Mazomanie, with Jason, Bonnie, and Alex, which was a wonderful experience save for the mosiquitos attacking me and the forced hippy conversations of Jason and Alex that tried to force beauty and wonder on to the moment. The beach was on a river, one with a super strong current that Bonnie and I let drag us far down the river, a little too far, submitted to the current, floating on our backs, being moved, carried, displaced even, by capital n Nature. We then tried to swim our way back upstream, thinking that we would be adventurous rather than walking back along the shore like everyone else. The swim back proved to be extremely difficult with the current pushing us back almost just as fast as we could swim, having to tread water, not being able to reach the bottom, which was scary at times when the current threw us around, and we seemed to be one misstep, one accidental swallow of water away from drowning, from really losing ourselves to the current.

Finally, we did manage to swim our way back to the beach, looked for our towels, for Alex and Jason, and felt an even more weird version of the looking for your towel experience since we were naked and even more on parade to all the people we had to walk by. Sat down, ate delicious cherries that squirted bright, red juice all over my hands, a red real close to blood. Lied in the sun, got rid of my farmer's tan, and people watched, people listened, listened to silly conversations that sounded so good, so comforting for some reason, as if I could be talking to someone about silly things and not care, that this is still an open possibility for me, not closed off yet

We came home, showered, and then I was dropped off at Rebecca's because neither Rebecca or I wanted to go to the "hippy night" [as Rebecca disparinginly referred to it], where Alex was making portabello sandwiches, and then they were going to go to the hookah bar. Rebecca and I instead went to this really nice Mexican restaurant on Willy Street, ate really good food, and drank margaritas. After dinner, we walked to the Paradise where we talked about silly stuff - see I am capable, I can be a normal person one day who talks loudly about nothing and loves it, is thrilled by the domesticness of it all - split a pitcher of beer and felt our bellies expand into little bloated pots of gassy Mexian food with lots of cheap beer mixed around with it all. When we finished our pitcher, we went to the Cardinal Bar with Bonnie and the PIRGers, who we didn't even talk to that much. They were fucked up from their "hippy night" - and left after a short time to go get pizza since they are silly stoners and had the munchies. Rebecca and I sat and talked with Pete, the boy I had sex with last week that gave me tons of coke and voted for Bush. He said that he was calling, trying to get some coke, and I didn't really care, was just sitting with him and his friends because I knew them.

I talked to Brent a couple of times. Brent is this cute, blonde kid who last week when I tried to hit on him, threw me into one of his friends, saying "Here, talk to my friend." He said that he didn't mean to be bitchy, told me about his boyfriend of five years, asked me if I was on drugs since I was laughing non-stop, and I said no, and Rebecca was ready to go, to leave, and I was too - Giancarlo did not show up, and he was the only person I wanted to go home with. Pete can go fuck himself with his I'm-a-rich-spolied-corporte-whore-and-voted-for-Bush self. I said good-bye to Brent who started to hold my hand, which made me want to stay and talk to him more, but the pull of Rebecca on my back was too much for my drunken self to resist, to try to hold my ground against. I left with Rebecca, splitted at James Madison park, and walked home the two miles by myself, having way too much time to think about things, particularly a one Mister Giancarlo, as is evidenced all too clearly by the silly entry I wrote last night after getting home. I also got the nicest e-mail in the world from Tiffany that was astounding in how well it was written, how beautiful she said some things, some things that seemed all too true, meaning all too familiar. And that made me so, so happy - to be able to read good writing. I then passed out into my bed without washing my face or brushing my teeth.

*******************************************
Oh, and Rebecca is real excited that they put her picture on the Cardinal Bar website, andhere's the picture. It was taken last Saturday night, and the guy she is with is Mark Pocant, a state represenative, and one of the many people I made out with that night.

looking for my towel at the beach after getting out of the water

I have never felt like this before, never felt this extent of patheticness, never felt this amount of phyical longing, of wanting a certain someone in my life. And yeah, everyone says that all the time, that I have never felt this way - but fuck them, and even more importantly, fuck you and your smugness, your whatever you do or don't want to call it - I am not in the mood. I am sad. I just walked two miles home alone drunk out of my mind, and desiring sex, love, Giancarlo, and it has just started to rain - I barely missed the rain, and whether that's a good thing or not is questionable, but the fact that it would not have made a difference in my level of sadness is important, note-worthy and all that.

So, I left a message on his machine again, telling him how much I wanted to see him, how much I wanted to hang out with him, and how he should meet me at the Cardinal Bar - and yes, he did not meet me there, did not call me back, did not bother to reciprocate the feelings of whatever you do or do not want to call it - that thing, that fucking thing that made me feel wonderful on the night I slept with him, the night he moaned sweet, sweet things into my ear, and now makes me feel like shit, like the biggest patsy in the world, like someone who took a one night stand too seriously, as something more, as a boy who liked me. And yeah, I was at the Cardinal Bar with Rebecca who wanted to leave, with Brent, who curtly rejected me again this week, and with Pete who talked about coke and who probably thought I was going to go home with him again tonight. But I bailed, ran for my life, for my tears which I didn't want to come while I gagged on his cock later, coked out by his generousity, by his purchase of me and my sex.

And Giancarlo, I offered you my fucking sex, and more than that - whatever you wanted, my time, my emotions, my want-to-be love and you left it on the table, did not even taste from the dish, were just not hungry or just not into the presented meal, and my fucking sex you rejected, my goddamn body, you said no to, you did not even bother to call me back - and yes, I don't know why I love boys who think, maybe even know they are too good for me, why they make me.

And I went to the nude beach today with Bonnie, Jason, and Alex and it was good, I saw cocks in motion playing vollyeball, carelessly like natural animals, and I daydreamed about Giancarlo's limp one between my fingers, holding it - and yeah, that did not happen tonight, which is not that big a surprise with people familiar with the ways of the world and with my own life, people not being me, me unaware of how this is all too typical of me to obsess over a boy until he shows disinterest, indifference to this, all I can offer up to him. And Tiffany, I love you.

dedicated to Ann M. Martin

Fucking shit is all I have to say - I am just so disppointed right now, all I wanted was some hot sex tonight, some hot sex with a Mister Giancarlo. People, I am even going to let you in on a little hush-hush secret to let you know the depths of patheticness, the intensitity of my wanting to have sex with Giancarlo, my just all-around loserness. So today, after getting home from work, after daydreaming all day about Giancarlo, after calling his house and leaving a message for him, I decided to trim my pubes in the hopes that I would be sleeping with Giancarlo since he talked about how he liked them trimmed. I even shaved my asshole like his, like he said he thinks is hot, hoping that I would be sleeping with him again, hoping that we would be able to hang out on Thursday, today, like he said we might be able to do a couple of days ago.

But no, no, no, and goddamn no. I just walked into the house in a happy/tired mood with a cup of coffee in the hopes of medicating myself into a happy/energetic mood and was handed the phone by one of the agriculture boys, and it was his lovely voice on the other end and I got way more energetic than any amount of coffee would have been able to do, getting giddy talking to him on the phone, asking him if he had plans for tonight - and goddamn he does, he is going out with his friends to the Green motherfucking Bush and then later to Club-5. He told me I should meet him at Club-5 later tonight, but fucking hell if I am going to drive to that club all the way wherever it is, when I can just walk to the Rainbow Room and dance with Bonnie and the PIRGers. So he told me that I should meet him at the Green Bush. You, my non-Madison residing readers know just as much about the Green Bush as I do. I had never heard of it, and have no fucking clue where it is. I told Giancarlo this, told him this again after he tried to explain what it was by, naming places just as familiar sounding as the Green fucking Bush. And I told him that maybe I'd meet him at Club-5, but I knew I wasn't really going to and so did he, and goddamn it, I really wanted to have sex with him tonight. With him. It's not just sex I want because I know I could easily get that at the Rainbow Room, I wanted to have rough sex with Giancarlo, to have him bite me way too hard, to ease his fingers, his nails out of my side, lifting their death grip.

I am so lame. I was even thinking about how tired I would be at work, how I probably just wouldn't sleep tonight, and should just wear something I could wear into work tomorrow, and how I would drink lots of coffee at work to get through the day. Hey, you would be pathatic like this too, if you had eight hours of time to kill, sitting in a cubicle all day with nothing to do but dream, dream, dream like those motherfucking Everly Brothers said. Fucking hell. And, being gay is okay these days - I didn't care what the scary ag boy who handed me the phone thought when I told Giancarlo how much I wanted to see him, to get together again with him. Die ag boy, die. I am such a teen girl cliche - every boy that blows me off, that is just the right amount of bitchy to me, these are the boys I love, the ones that I daydream about cuddling up next to - the boys that are nice to me, that call me, that are too kind, these are the ones I cannot stomach, the ones I want to kick in the teeth. And so, my Giancarlo crush is growing out of control, boy oh boy, I like that boy so much, and hope I can get some more sex from him before I leave Madison. God, I know it's been a while since I've done this prayer thing, but if you could somehow make Giancarlo change his plans, maybe make his friend's car break down, or maybe have Club-5 shut down for health violations or something, I would be so so happy and would pray everyday. Please lord, align the stars to let me have some hot sex with Giancarlo tonight, I mean is that so wrong to want? Amen.

alfred hitchcock, i hate you

I am so scared to get back in my bed. I was in that almost asleep zone when I heard stuff crashing off of our desk, and I exclaimed, "What the fuck?" to no one since no one is in here, brushing it off, thinking that something was just on the edge of the desk, and tried to fall back asleep. Seconds later, I felt something fly by my head and heard something scraping against the ceiling, no more than two feet above my head, since I sleep on the top bunk. I screamed, hopped out of bed, ran for the light, flipped it, and saw a little brown bird, flying like a maniac around our tiny little room, our room which is tiny as hell. I thought it was going to poke out my eyes and that I was going to die, die, die. It fluttered around my head, and I am pretty sure it is still in our room since I didn't see it go into the hall and how the hell did a bird get into our room?

please meet me. please.

"Waaahhh," just like Lucy might say. Again and again, pouting, kicking feet, pounding fists into the obligingly non-resistant air, yelling Waaahh because you didn't get your way, because I didn't, because some motherfucking things are just like that, like this, like whatever the hell I am trying to talk about, words not entirelly connecting, but that's how you like it baby, isn't it? You stupid motherfucking bitch - I mean if you don't know what it means (really, you don't know what anything does) you'll say Ah-ha, s/he's saying something important here, it's between the lines, it's somewhere in the ambiguity, it just has to be dug out - and you are just the person to do it, break out the motherfucking shovel, asshole - I mean if I say random shit like: Waffles float through electric air, sizzling on rays given off by my plastic cups, the feeling of you here to me in this our sad, pathetic two seater. If I say shit like that, or if I address a You, saying something like: You are a fucking moron, you masochistic bitch - then you love it, you gobble it up, wondering who am I talking about, invariably thinking that it may be you because this is a [insert your name here]centric world. And fuck it, Waahhh. Wahhhh. Fuck you and you and you.