selfish and scared

sitting in my parents room tonight while everyone else is downstairs watching television. rainbows, brown adidas athletic pants with big orange and white stripes, white tshirt and a scarf over my mouth. i feel sort of like harry potter.

"saved" was on a little while earlier so i watched a little of it. i know it's just a ** movie and not at all exceptional but i still love it. i'm usually a fan of satire, especially with such an overblown thing as religion. mandy moore's character is almost perfect, although i love jena malone too. i think i usually will like a movie no matter what if i fall for the female lead. unless it's rufus wainwright. him too. usually kind of hate watching stuff like that with my parents though because i know they believe what they believe and probably don't enjoy the satirical nature of it like i do. oh well.

i ordered a guitar strap off the internet today. it's light striped, cotton, and has a peace sign patch on it. i'm excited. also kind of hope i can get that red jacket. i'm a fan of clothes. i wonder when that happened.

every now and then i get to thinking of all the people who would probably ostracize me if i were gay. people make jokes or derogatory comments thinking they're being funny. i never do that. what if it were me? what would they say behind my back? i think a lot of people are scared of it... i just don't know why. it used to be that i could say quite clearly: "i'm not anti-gay but i don't believe it is the right thing to do." {or something like that...} more and more as time goes by, i understand what's going on. maybe i'm just becoming more of an empathetic person, although i've always fancied myself that way. if you asked me now what i believe, i'd have to tell you that i support them 100%. that i believe gays and straights should have the same rights and opportunities. that i don't believe in the christian right preventing their marriages because that's involving church and state and i believe that from a purely state point of view, that with age limits, any two people should be able to marry with rights. as stephen colbert might say, "i don't see sexual preference." i don't know where i'm going with this. i've just lost any weirdness associated with the idea of homosexuality. {and anyway, even if it was beyond his original intent, the god i believe in wouldn't send someone to hell for being attracted to his own sex}



there's an away message i can't stop checking tonight. i don't know how i fall into these fascinations with other people, usually on the goddamn myspace... there's this girl who lives in winston. i've never met her, i think she goes to some tech school. i think i became her "friend" because i liked her name. it's still a very pretty name. i think i told her so and we sent a couple messages back and forth around the beginning of freshman year and i got her screenname. we may or may not have spoken, i can't remember. regardless, it's the first one under the 'wake' section of my buddy list. i never really thought much of her but lately she's been online more and i remembered she lived in town and took another look around her little site. i guess her pics grew on me because everything's so much cuter now. sort of reminiscent of maggie gyllenhaal in 'stranger than fiction' but not in the way you'd imagine. i can't really explain it. just for a little while now, i can't really stop nosing around. i guess i'm just creepy like that. maybe if i actually ever met new people and wasn't such a social giraffe, i'd keep from running into these problems ;)

i think maybe i just need to go to another country and stay a while. i think i'd be better off with a girl who didn't speak english. i can't decide if that would be wonderful or not, having someone you didn't really have to talk to. maybe communication would be that much easier, not having to use words. i always love the sound of another language, though. i wonder if i could go abroad in the spring of next year. that would be an entire year without most people i know at school. maybe that's the best thing.

silwtg

^^^ i hate that. i feel like the gay friend sometimes. i really do.



i'm really getting to be a lazy bastard with publishing this thing. if only intent had anything more to do with it. i've been sleeping early, waking early. up at 6, school at 8. worst part is, i think i'm getting used to it.

i had the most urgent dreams last night. i've been trying all day to remember them. i just keep the feelings, that's all. terrible, urgent dreams. i remember waking up after one of them thinking that it was the worst dream i've ever had.

one of them, there were people coming for me, surrounding our house, invading. it was late at night and the blinds in my room were barely cracked. i saw someone climbing a rope outside our house. when i was sure that's what it was, i flipped out and ran into my parents room to tell them about the intruder. there was this terrible sinking feeling in between rooms in the hallways like time was leaving a lot quicker than i was moving. i ran back into my room and grabbed my box of .22s and the rifle from behind my door, fumbling around with it. there were floodlights blistering my windows, lighting the room in black and white. trucks, soldiers outside, faceless as plastic army men. i don't really know what else happened.

the other, there was a girl in our house and no family. i don't know who she was and i don't think i'd ever met her before. she was panicking about something and i don't remember what it was. she had long dark hair and some kind of flowery blouse on, i think. crying a lot. i tried to make things better for her, calm her down, hug her, talk to her... i don't think anything worked. she was so scared. i remember once she asked what this bottle of face moisturizer was or how to work it. the top was twisted into the locked position. it was so cute. i don't know why i come up with these things. there was some great twist, a plot even. it was like i wrote it, like some short story. i don't understand how my mind can come up with this stuff, so perfect as it was. her fear terrorized me, though.

have i gotten any better? sometimes i think back to a couple years back, dealing with people. i was a crazy bastard. and i mean it, really bastardly. i can't believe some of the things i said or did. how you dealt with me i'll never know. i guess that's why we don't talk anymore. i still don't understand anything until far too late. i've tried to relax, not to freak out so much. i still torture myself, overanalyze. so i wonder. have i gotten any better? or am i just a different crazy bastard?

i'm sorry if i'm still the way i was.

all of this around us

i wonder how much time i've spent. this generation is defined by the internet as the last one the telephone and the one before that the letter. and i hate it because i have this terribly romantic view of the world where even the telephone is too high tech because it feels like cheating the communication between people. at the same time, i'm grateful because i'm much more comfortable talking to people through something as impersonal as instant messenger. i've carried on relationships this way. i hate it, though, from behind those rosy glasses, mostly because when my kid asks me about my relationship to his mother, i don't want to start talking about im's and chats and shit. it doesn't feel right. maybe if i find someone who i'm actually crazy about, i'll refuse to talk to them online. might preserve a little bit of real life. that and this perpetuating loneliness. i wonder how much time i've spent checking and staring at that little box, watching people come and go, checking to see if anyone's left me messages. far and away, it's an empty, desperate feeling. i'll go crazy knowing someone's there and that they aren't paying me any attention. it's unfair, i suppose, that i expect them to communicate with me without any provocation. maybe they should just know that i need it to feel important. i can define relationships this way. analyze how we've changed.

there's all these little things i wanted to write about but never found the effort or the time to. a couple weeks ago, i had finished studying for finals in one of the sixth floor pods hanging over the library canyon and was gathering up to leave. when i'd gotten there, i saw this stapler behind me chair but didn't bother it seeing as i had just bought one just like it cause i was out of goddamn blue staples (even though i really wasn't, i'd find out later). i was in an odd mood, though, leaving, so i picked it up. i thought about just stealing the whole damn thing but it didn't seem right so i just opened it up. hah - it was packed full of green staples. i pried open the rubber flap on the back and found twice as many. i had to have them. all of them. so i took all the big lines of them, only there was one with about three left. i went to a lot of trouble to get that one stuck upright back in the little rack they sit in. i pilfered, basically. it felt wonderful. green staples. i hope whoever left it there on accident picks it up and then, a day later, realizes all the staples are gone. i hope he's immensely confused and angered. maybe he shakes a fist at heaven. maybe.

a couple days back, i was driving my mother back from somewhere down this 35mph shortcut road heading back to the highway. i was following someone but still going a little fast. this white car came around the corner ahead and drove towards us. there was a cop sitting at a subdivision on our side of the corner. i looked over at the white car as it passed us. a seventeen year old girl was driving, her mother in the passenger seat. her eyes glued to the rear-view as she'd seen the cop while exiting the corner. my mother saw her too. it was a familiar feeling, seeing a cop too late and watching the rear-view mirror in horror to see if he will give chase or not. it's never happened to me. up ahead, the cop flips on his lights and pulls out in front of the car ahead of us. as he passed us, he flipped on his siren too. i was terrified. not because i was speeding, which i was, a little, but for that girl. horrified. what shit.

all alone tonight. i was going ape shit all afternoon here alone in this house. lay out in the hammock and read, starting 'catcher in the rye.' threw a tennis ball against the house, once getting 36 catches in a row until hitting the gutter on accident. played guitar for a while, sang. watched a little television. threw the tennis ball some more, slowed down and got 51 once. got some work done around here. finally went up and read more in the bathtub after locking the house up. still, i'm going crazy. i kept hearing things, especially after turning the water off. creaks, little noises, the door moving. the window was open in the bathroom, which i'm sure contributed to all that but it was unsettling just the same.

i'll start daydreaming in times like that. i can see people figuring ways in, always armed. i'm sitting down here now with all the lights off. i don't know why i do that. in the tub i can see them and i imagine either myself getting shot in the tub or hearing them coming and maybe pulling on some clothes i have in there and jumping out the window. hopefully not injuring anything and running out in the backyard in the dark to lay down in the shadows and try and watch what's going on. i guess it would have been smarter to run to the neighbors and call the cops. i'll remember that next time. getting shot in the bathtub is scary. i can't imagine life ending, the end of consciousness. my heart has beat once a second for twenty straight years and change. that's quite a record. sometimes i get out and stalk them downstairs with a bat or something. not sure where i get the bat from. the problem with fighting with a bat when not in a sizable room is swinging it without hitting walls or trim of some sort. how shitty would it be to come up behind a guy and swing for his goddamn head and hit the doorway instead. he turns around and shoots you. sometimes i crack him a good one right on the skull. sometimes he sees me first and i die. it's scary to die.

sometimes i get a gun and go hunting for them. i got scared in the tub so i got out and tried to find some of the guns in my dad's room but never saw any. we inherited some pistols, some shotguns, some rifles... they're somewhere. i wanted one of the handguns. i've got ammunition for one of them cause it's a .22. i could just go in my room and get the rifle and load it up with .22's but i wanted a handgun. for a situation like this, i mean. but i couldn't find them. walked downstairs with nothing but my book and a sunkist. didn't find nobody.

so now i'm sittin here in the big chair, as i'll spend most of my summer. bedroom slippers, moose pants, white t-shirt and leather cap. it's a good night for a leather cap. i want to be something different. i have some kind of need to own things that i can talk about, that aren't status quo. i got a bicycle to use at school. it's 45 years old. i've got three ringtones i've boiled down to pick and a ringback. an old soul tune, a fun classy jazz piece, and two relatively hidden pop gems. i'm looking at cars on the internet, and motorcycles. i love my volvo and i don't want to get rid of it but i saw an article in a carcraft from some months ago i haven't read about buying used cop cars. cause, you know, most are like crown vics and caprices and shit, not terribly interesting, but they're also, you know, cop cars. fortified, heavy duty components, often V8's, extremely well-maintained. hot rods. and some are camaros, remember. not only that, but most of the vicky's and caprices can go for under $4000 with ~100k miles. i saw a couple camaros on ebay, about 1997's. one was all black and had about 125k miles. it was pretty damn sharp looking. i mean 200amp alternator, reinforced frame, LT1 chevrolet V8. we're talking ~310hp and 0-60 in 5.5 seconds. and it's a cop car. something like that. oh, and a triumph speed triple, still.

sorry for that last paragraph. i know you don't care.

i need to get back in touch with a couple of people. high school friends who've probably forgotten about me. maybe i'll have lunch with some of them when i start summer school.

i wonder if anyone i know knows that when i'm not away (and i'm talking about that stupid shit messenger stuff again)... if anyone knows that when i'm not away that it's intentional. that i'm leaving myself open, out there, that it's an invitation for a conversation. that when i do it, it's probably a hint that i want you to talk to me. 'you' is only a couple people and really only one has ever figured it out. i thought it should be known anyway, though.

some cute japanese girl just fell in the water on the first challenge of some dumb japanese challenge course show. japanese is underlined in this little text box because i didn't capitalize the j. i left clicked it and a list popped up offering suggestions of what i might have meant to say. one of the options is "japanned." what the hell? maybe that can be my new saying.

bitch got japanned.

ok, i'm rambling. i stopped talking about real things a while back. i'll get back to it later. maybe i'll have some time to write at starbucks after classes the next couple weeks. we'll see.

i love you, whoever you are.

letters

this is the soundtrack that calms me down. it's the one i need tonight. i really should be sleeping. i slept a lot today though... unintentionally. maybe i'm a closet narcoleptic. i'll be sitting at my desk trying to do work and just get so sleepy... just loll my head to the side and rest on my shoulder for a second or if i'm feeling particularly unwilling to fight it, just lay face down in my arms and drift away. i was about to fall out of my chair this evening so i got down on the floor to do some sit ups to wake myself up. well, i woke up thirty minutes later, did the sit ups, and got back to work. how is it possible for me to fall asleep in the time it takes to do a single sit up? i had the hardest time staying awake in class today, too. the last day of class. kind of sad, but in a happy kind of way. i mean, kind of happy... but in a sad kind of way. i'm conflicted about this time of year, can you tell?

and i'm worried because i think i might have fucked up... big time. there's this one application for transfer credits i never knew about. it was due two weeks ago. basically, i went to the trouble to get registered for two summer school classes and i have no idea if they will actually count for anything. so in the morning i get to go grovel in the registrar's office. after classes have ended. and if that doesn't work... try and back out of summer school? get the money back? it was over $500. i can't really afford to be making these mistakes. i know it's on me but really... maybe i'm just immature. i haven't stopped working since january, though. and i don't mean that in the "i haven't skipped class and laid off doing homework for a while" sense. i mean it in the "there hasn't been a day pass on this campus that i've not been working on shit" sense. nobody tells you how this is supposed to work. i managed to pick classes that were pre-approved. i managed to figure out which ones i needed to take for my major, for my divisionals, for my impending transfer. i managed to get the shit together enough to have it all set up this summer. but i didn't know about the form. nobody told me. like that's an excuse...

i was sitting in the corner of the coffee shop a couple nights ago talking online. a friend of mine sitting near me actually asked me why i was smiling so much. i guess it was noticeable. thank you... for that.

i'd kind of like summer to go on and get here. the notion of having limited time here means i don't want this next week to just fly on by all willy-nilly but it's not like i really feel like dealing with it either. not after this semester. i'll be in college a fairly long time anyway. still, it's strange how i can get so lonely surrounded by so many people i know. maybe they just aren't the right people. i'll see about that next semester. i get so sick of their shit. everyone contributes. summertime is for solitude. for me anyway... seeing as how i've burned most of my high school bridges. well... left them in disrepair. summertime is for reading as many books as i can. for playing guitar as loud as i want when nobody else is in the house and singing at the top of my lungs. for tanning at the beach and generally being boring. for riding my bicycle. i can't believe i'm looking forward to that so much. i've found comfort seats online. little trip computers to tell me how far i've ridden. i'll probably hate it. it's karma.

i get this miniature motorcycle-esque notion, though. i guess it's the two wheels. i can't even really explain it right now. maybe i'll just never get tired. keep on riding on into the next subdivision and all through there. a bunch of people from my middle school live out there. i wonder if they still do. i wonder if they'd recognize me anyway. why do i get so nostalgic? i want to take pictures of this room, just so i'll remember it later. just the way it is right now. all the posters, hanging things, scarf, lights, tickets, books, tv, the view out the window... i can still remember sitting in bed last year and seeing out my window into the johnson lounge where some kids on our hall had set up a tent and were camping out to study for finals. what happened to those times? i would go back in a second to last year... except for the whole roommate thing. i just like not having one. maybe a weekend when he was away, go spend that time. back in 2005... the last half of that year was interesting too. every now and then i'll think back and try and decide if there's anything i'd change about it. anything i'd do differently. i'm training myself to stop thinking those thoughts. it's slowly working.



i've tried to write this a couple times, there's just no good way to get it out. before i started writing tonight, i opened up this other blog i used a couple times and read the contents. i almost didn't. i started and it was so strange and unbelievable and just... physically painful that i had to stop. but i went back and read the whole thing. i'm pretty sure it's private... nothing anyone's ever seen or will find. just a couple letters written to one girl. things i could never tell her. a couple from late 2004 and one from early 2005. even now... i can't believe i'd write those words. i can't believe i'd have felt that way. it was back then, back in high school, when i actually felt emotional conviction about things, about people. it's almost foreign to me now, it happens so rarely. i'll find out, too, what i was thinking. i have to know. for years, i've saved conversations from interesting people. it's on my old computer at home. whatever sparked these letters. it's always the most shocking thing for me to go back and read conversations i had in high school with some of these people.

mostly, it hurts like hell.

i don't know if i was naive or if i am now or if i actually felt these things i thought i did. it's hard to imagine having the same conversations today but it's so damn familiar to read. i can still feel it, the giddiness inside. that was back when i was figuring out how wonderful it was to love and to be loved by the same person. whether or not it was real. i felt it. i felt it enough to write these letters and, beyond that, to say the things i did. i can't imagine there being a situation i'd show them to her. it's beyond ridiculous for right now. but tonight, like a torturous time capsule... i'm forced to relive myself. someday i'll read this and feel the same way.

who knows love, anyway?