Mariah Carey, Emotions

single

A piece of me is missing and I am realizing I am never going to get it back.

Ever since our talk on Fire Island on Saturday, Jacob had yet to make a final decision about our relationship, whether he wanted to be with me or not. The last few days have been fucking hell for me. I cry at random moments throughout the day. I cry as I am falling asleep in the dark. I have been remembering to bring sunglasses with me in case I get emotional on the subway, which has been happening quite a bit.

Today, I thought he might have made up his mind. I knew he hung out with his friend last night that he might move in with and he said that he was going to talk to him about what he should do. When I got home today, he was asleep on the couch, but woke up when I closed the door and gave me the cutest fucking greeting. He got up and gave me a really warm hug and asked me in his cute fucking voice how my day was. I was looking for signs. I was taking this body language as a good sign. I thought that he might tell me he loved me and he was so sorry for putting me through this but that he's realized he wants to be with me. I have sadly been playing out this fantasy in my head so much over the last few days. I kept on hoping that every time I came home, something like that would happen. It didn't. It's never going to. It's over.

We sat on the couch and I asked him what we he was going to do. He said, "I guess we should tell the landlord we are going to move out." I asked him if he was going to move in with his friend and he said yes. They were very definitive answers, absent the vagueness and maybes that had given me some hope that this heartache might be healed still. The flowers and the "I am sorry, I want to spend my life with you" were never going to come.

He sat on the couch for a while and I played on my computer waiting for him to leave for some opening he was going to. I wanted him out of the house so I could actually cry like I wanted to. And I did. I am not sure it's all out of my system. I cannot believe this. A week ago I thought I had a perfect relationship, that I was with the man I was going to be with for the rest of my life. I love him so fucking much. I have been happy for so long with him, for most of the nearly three years I have been with him, that I forgot how fucking shitty and alone in this world you can feel when you get dumped. It's even shittier a feeling when I know that person loves me. I know Jacob loves me a lot and likes our living situation and that's what hurts even more, that the decision wasn't necessary, that it didn't have to happen. He wanted more independence and to experience things that being tied to another person often prevents a person from having. And those are all very respectable reasons to end a relationship. It takes a lot of courage to say goodbye when you are comfortable so that you can grow into something else. It takes a lot of fucking courage to do that and even though I hate his decision and it has broken me, I do admire his bravery.

I have never had anything this good with another person in my whole life. I have never felt so comfortable around another person, so at ease. I really don't want to have to go through this again. I don't want to go on dates and talk about my interests and hope that maybe one day it will turn into something as magical and great as the thing that I had once, that one day I will know a person. And I know that these feelings pass and that at some point in the near future, I will probably derive enjoyment from these things, that I will do fine and so will Jacob. But I wanted to do fine with him. He's my babe.

It's hard for me to even call him Jacob, which I have been trying to do ever since he let me know he wanted to separate. I have struggled not to say babe, which is mainly what I have addressed him as for the last few years. He's my babe though, my cute fucking little Jacob, and I cannot fucking believe that he is not going to be that anymore. I have done so much with this guy, have seen so much of the country and the world with him and I cannot imagine him not in my life. I think the point is coming across, but I am insanely devastated. And I know that it's not in best form to unload all these things on the Internet, that there is something a bit unseemly about such a public detailing of your emotional hardships online, that it's better to keep those things to yourself, that there is something exhibitionist about the whole thing. And, yes, there is, because I am in fucking pain and I want to share it with someone. I want the thing to exist in some space outside of my own mind, to put the words and these thoughts out there in the air so that I can stop carrying them around inside of me.

I also want to to talk through these things, to somehow make sense of them. I want to write these things down and then close with something hopeful, want to realize after writing all these things that I am going to make it, that this is not the end of the world. Though it may be the end of a beautiful world I had created with this other human being, it is not the end of the world.

I don't want to move, but don't know how that would be possible. I really cannot afford to pay the rent for this apartment by myself. I might do it though for one month to give myself a bit more time to think through things and figure out exactly what it is I want to do with my life and where it is I would like to be living. It scares me so much not to live with Jacob. I don't want to. I don't fucking know what to do with myself. I wish that this was a dream I could wake from. I wish he would come running back through that door and tell me he's sorry.

pride

Saturday morning, Jacob and I were riding the ferry to Fire Island for a day trip there. The gay guys in the seat behind us were recounting sexual escapades for each other. One of the guys was telling a story about meeting a 22 year old at Tea Dance, how he hooked up with him after, and how then the 22 year old asked him what his plans were for Pride, if they could meet up in the city. The punchline to this story went something like, “That’s a 22 year old for you – they fall in love with anyone they sleep with.”

I was sitting with a 22 year old on the ferry and was wondering if he had fallen in love with me just because we slept together nearly three years ago.

Fast-forward a couple hours later, the two of us are lying on the beach naked, drinking vodka and Arnold Palmers. Jacob had been a bit standoffish the last couple days with me and I asked him about it. He was reluctant to talk at first, which scared me because if someone is hesitant there is usually a reason, the news is probably big news, upsetting news. Finally, he admitted to me that he basically wants to be single, that he misses freedoms he had before dating me, fun he had before dating me, that at times he feels smothered by me.

I wasn’t expecting this at all and wasn’t prepared for this. I had always imagined this man in my life forever. I didn’t think it would end. I told him this and started to cry a bit when doing so.

We were hours from home, away from any cell reception, at the edge of the world, peering off into the ocean, alone with each other. Despite this talk, we spent a few more hours at the beach swimming and tanning and then went and had a couple drinks at Tea Dance before heading home on a ferry as dusk was settling over the bay.

When I woke up yesterday, I looked at Jacob’s sleeping face, trying to fathom what my life was going to be like without him in bed next to me every morning, how much I would miss this sight. I woke up and we had sex. I kissed him a few times throughout but he didn’t seem to be into kissing me and so we just fucked. Afterwards, covered in his and my own semen, I went to take a shower. I turned on the radio by our bathroom, turned it to KTU, and turned it up loud, just wanted to jam out to loud pop music. The song, of course, that came on was Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable.” “Everything you own in a box to the left,” I sang along to in the shower, thinking about what a fucking drag it is going to be to have to move.

We talked on the couch some more yesterday morning before each going to do our own thing for Gay Pride. He said he isn’t sure what he wants, not sure if he wants to be single or not.

At brunch with some friends, I pounded back some drinks immediately and felt better. I was wearing a low cut tank top and some cute shorts. I was getting looks from cute boys on the streets of this city and feeling good. Words of wisdom from Latrice Royale were going through my head when I was getting dressed yesterday: “Get up, look sickening, and make them eat it.”

I watched the parade and then met up with Darnell. We bought nutcrackers on the street and drank them on curbs in the West Village, talking to people, talking to each other about our lives, really bonding in this nice way, opening up emotionally with each other. We then went dancing at a few bars. I ran into Robert and Mark at Nowhere and went with them to Metropolitan. They were playing old disco and soul tunes and people were dancing. I was dancing. At some point, Robert and Mark said bye to me. I stayed on the dancefloor, dancing to song after song, really feeling quite happy and alive.

I walked home and stopped at Gran Morelos. I ate a burrito at the counter there. Some twentysomething guy was passed out a couple stools down from me, waiting for his food. The television was playing some animal special in Spanish. I couldn’t understand exactly what the thrust of the program was or what the voiceovers were saying, but it was really quite depressing footage of animals being pulled apart from each other in zoos or in the wild and seeing the intense loyalty of these animals to each other, the sinking depression as one elephant saw another elephant downed by a tranquilizer. The scene after that was of this family of polar bears, mom and two cubs. One of the cubs was taken by what seemed like scientists and you see the panic and confusion on the face of the mom and other cub. The cub that was taken away made the most depressing yelp that you have probably ever heard in your whole life and the show kept looping the yelp over and over.

The waitress was enthralled by this show and kept gasping, shaking her head, and covering her mouth with her hand. I had to get her attention to pay my check.

I did see though before I left that the cub was released back to his family after he was tagged or whatever it was they were doing to him. This made me feel slightly better.

Thirty-one

I am now thirty-one years old. I spent the better part of my morning sleeping off a hangover, spent most of my day (up to and including now) feeling physically and mentally listless. This is because I spent my night last evening drinking too much. The night ended in a blur. I don’t remember getting home. I don’t remember eating leftover pizza when I got home but I saw the empty pizza box this morning when I was looking around my kitchen for something to make me feel better. I saw an embarrassing text message on my phone that I had sent. I rolled over and went back to bed.

It rained all day and all evening yesterday. That means something, what exactly though I am not sure. 

"our valued destiny comes to nothing"

There is a difference between watching a real murder videotaped and a staged one filmed. I want to explain what that difference is, what it is I feel right now having watched the “1 Lunatic 1 Icepick” video making the rounds on the back alleys of the Internet, the video of Luka Magnotta dismembering his victim, Jun Lin.

I could say I did not want to watch this video and a certain part of me wishes I did not, but if I am to be honest I have to admit that I wanted to see it, that I heard the warnings not to watch it, and that I failed to heed them, steamed right on past them in my curiosity (or perversity) to see this thing. I would encourage you to exercise a bit more will than I did, that you will wish you hadn’t watched it if you do decide to. You don’t need to see everything. There are reasons, very good ones, why your parents, why mine, told us to avert our eyes at times, that certain things affect us profoundly.

I know I have crossed a line. My body tingles with pain as a part of me hollows out, certain things dispersing never to be regained.

The video was originally posted to a site celebrating gore videos, presumably by Magnotta. A lawyer in Montana tried to tip off the Toronto police to the video, that it was most likely the murder case they were dealing with. The lawyer was ignored when he tried to phone this in, was told that the video was a fake, was told “why would a killer film his own crime and then post it on the Internet?”

Why indeed? The question perplexing a great many people now that it appears police were too slow to accept tips about this video because they had too reasonable views of human nature. But the question, in 2012, might be why not? This case intrigues me so much because it sits at the intersection of so many narratives – gay killers who seem to kill because they are gay, that the issues of dealing with their sexuality in an inhospitable world seems to bring about a particular form of violent madness; the egomania and belief that everyone is entitled to stardom and riches that also brings about madness and depression in those that never realize the absurd ideal of a great life that mass media can instill in a person; the documentation and exhibition of anything and everything, the need to broadcast all our doings to the world online; the viral nature of content on the Internet and its ease of distribution for content that would have otherwise never made it out of sealed court documents and police evidence lockers; the increasing disappearance of standards and practices in journalism with the competition from the motley, uncensored torrent of content people otherwise have access to (as recently evidenced by Gawker’s gleeful publication of the Miami “cannibal” attack victim’s face).

In this Luka Magnotta case, you have an insane Dennis Cooper novel come to life. Magnotta seems to have emerged from mysterious origins, going by various aliases over the years through his careers as a stripper, escort, porn star, and aspiring reality television star. What brings a person to this point in their life where they are sadistically chopping up men on camera, using New Order’s “True Faith” as a soundtrack to the thing, a blatant reference to American Psycho’s usage of the song, and then posting the whole thing on the Internet? The question eats away at you and you wonder what conditions brought this about, how far removed you are from whatever these lines are that were crossed. Is watching this video a step in that direction, one step closer toward whatever lines he crossed?

There is also the theme of aging, a Dorian Gray horror aspect to the story. Maybe I imagined the quotes I read yesterday as I can’t find them anymore, but be they imagined or be they real, they have created another narrative of this story for my mind to focus on, that of the vain gay male upset about aging. The quotes were from Magnotta, or maybe I entirely imagined them in my fever dreams about this murder yesterday. He was talking about his career as a porn star and said something along the lines of how he had to do lots of work at whatever age it was that these quotes were given because no one wants men when they are over thirty in gay porn. I must have imagined this. Regardless, I thought about this man whose main source of income had been monetizing his youthful looks through either escort work or low-budget porns, and thought about what torture his vain mind must have been going through in his 29^th year with that terrifying number of 30 approaching, with his ability to sell his twink status soon to finally come to an end.

And here I am, along with lots of other Internet viewers, giving him his shot at fame finally. Finally, it’s all paying off. Fame has come his way.

There is a long Internet trail that one can follow, old videos and photos he posted to YouTube and to XTube, fascinating to see, pieces of a puzzle that I am trying to assemble into a narrative. Then there are the kitten snuff videos he is also responsible for newly making the rounds of these same back alleys. There needs to be a story that we can follow. It helps the world seem more sensible, orderly, that our religion of cause and effect can stay untarnished, infallible. And so we read news story after news story about this thing, or about this Miami cannibal, or about this or that horrific event, or at least I do, reading to see what new details have been uncovered, wanting to understand these things, wanting to continue to believe that we possess even vague notions of how the world and humans work.

I watch this video and I try to grasp it. And I can’t. It’s real, the death of a real human being with a family that was worried when he went missing, and I watch his limbs get cut off, I watch his flesh cut apart with a fork and knife, I watch a dog nibble at his flesh, I watch this limbless torso get sexually defiled, I watch Magnotta jerk himself off with a chopped off arm. The whole time I don’t know why I am watching. I am struck throughout by the juxtaposition of the bloody dismemberment and the old movie poster for Casablanca that hangs over Magnotta’s bed; there is something in this though I don’t know what. There are memories of that film, the feelings it inspired, and then there are the feelings brought about by this snuff film, a massive and unbridgeable gulf between the two. I gag and want to vomit and hate myself for watching this video and for living in this world where this is done, where it’s filmed, where it’s watched by hundreds of thousands online, where I am one of these, and where snarky comments are written about it like it’s a late-night B movie and not an actual person’s murder and dismemberment on video. And yet, it is a late-night B movie – increasingly this world becomes more and more of one.